[Sermon Archive]

This Week's Sermon First Midweek Lenten Vespers 28 February 2007 "What Does It Mean to Tempt God?" LSB Series C Pastor Philip G. Meyer Soli Deo Gloria!

A portion of this Psalm is quoted by Satan when he tempted Jesus:

"If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, " 'He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,' and " 'On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.' "" (Luke 4:9-11, ESV)

"And Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.' "" (Luke 4:12, ESV)

Jesus does not want us to doubt that we have the protection of God's holy angels in our lives. We pray for that morning and evening when we pray Luther's Morning and Evening prayers:

"Let you holy angel be with me that the evil foe may have no power over me."

But there is a limit to his protection. Satan tried to get Jesus to go outside of God's established limits. Up there on the roof of the temple Satan tried to get Jesus to do something that human beings cannot do, namely, fly like a bird through the air. No, this isn't an argument against the use of airplanes, but of human beings doing foolish things. Let's take an example from our day. Say a Christian teenager listens to these words about God protecting him against danger and harm, so that he doesn't even strike his foot against a stone, and concludes that he can do some "car surfing." Perhaps you have read about or even seen this absolutely stupid activity where teenagers stand on the roofs of moving cars and act like they are surfing. Someone doing that cannot count on God's protection because he steps outside of God's boundaries. He puts himself in danger deliberately, and when he does that, he is putting God to the test. He is tempting God. God does not allow himself to be tempted by man in such things. God's promise of protection extends only to those situations where he has promised to be. Jumping off the roof of the temple was not one of those things. Surfing on the roof of a moving vehicle is not one of them either.

Most of us can see the foolishness of such things and recognize that this is putting God to the test, that is, of trying God's promises, but there are countless other ways in which we can tempt God. Luther pointed out that the whole monastic way of life tempts God. How is this so? Because such persons cannot be continent, that is, they cannot live sexually pure and decent lives. They deliberately stay away from marriage, thinking that they can do so without sin. In fact, such celibacy is still mandatory in the Roman Church, yet this enforced celibacy continues to be a major problem for them. Just today the Diocese of San Diego had to declare bankruptcy because it has paid out so much money to victims of sexual abuse by the clergy. Marriage was provided as the only proper place for sexual activity.

Take yet another situation. Let's say that a person says that God will protect him no matter what, so he doesn't have to go to the physician when he is ill. You know of so-called Christians who refuse to take their seriously ill children for medical treatment with the result that these children die. They also deliberately play with poisonous snakes to prove their faith. That is tempting God because they refuse the very means by which God protects them and the child. These fanatics distort the Word of God. They never cite Scripture correctly. They use it just as Satan did in tempting Jesus. The end result is that they end up tempting God, and the Apostle Paul warns us,

"Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap." (Galatians 6:7, ESV)

There are numerous examples in Scripture of those who tempted God and were the sorrier for it. The Apostle Paul warns us in his First Letter to Corinth about not doing what Israel did in the wilderness.

"Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer." (1 Corinthians 10:7-10, ESV)

Another way of stating it is to say that testing God is the same as willfully or boldly challenging him to see if he really means it. Israel did it over and over again in the wilderness. God warned them that they were testing him, which is to say that they were guilty of unbelief. The Psalmist records God's warning and his promise to punish: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, "They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways." Therefore I swore in my wrath, "They shall not enter my rest."" (Psalm 95:7-11, ESV)

The great danger for us is to test God in deliberately sinning by telling ourselves, "God will always forgive me because he has promised to forgive. God is a God of love, so I can do this thing and repent later." No one should question God's desire to forgive our sins but one should also not step outside of God's boundaries by deliberately sinning. What this means is that we are trying to get control of God, that we are putting ourselves in his place, pushing him to act as we would act-in sin! That God will not do nor will he permit! His promises don't include condoning our sin! You cannot set God against his own Word! That is precisely what Satan tried to do with Jesus and what he continues to do to us. It is the power and strength of all heresy. All heretics quote the Scriptures and adjust the Scriptures to themselves. They even set Scripture against Scripture in order to prove their point. But that is testing God and the end of that is disaster. It is for good reason that Paul reminds us about our temptations:

"No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." (1 Corinthians 10:13, ESV)

In the congregation at Corinth the Corinthians treated the Sacrament of the Altar with a certain contempt. They abused it and used it in ways that God had not promised to bless. Whenever the church reduces the Sacrament of the Altar or either of the other two Sacraments to mere symbols, then it ends up tempting God. One must never go beyond or outside of the Word of God. When we stay within the Word, then we can be sure of God's protection, not just of our physical lives but especially of our spiritual lives. We have his promise that he will be gracious to us for the sake of Christ who endured temptation for us and who did not tempt his Father, but rather suffered for us and for our salvation. The way that Jesus does it is by way of the cross, by submitting to the Father's will, by being servant for all.

The way of the cross is still the way for us, too. It is trust in the Word of God as Jesus shows us and fulfills for us. Jesus did not tempt God and so he conquered for us. May our Lenten journey teach us to rely on God's protection in God's way.