{"id":921,"date":"2013-11-10T20:51:30","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T03:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/?p=921"},"modified":"2013-11-10T20:51:30","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T03:51:30","slug":"do-what-jesus-did-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/10\/do-what-jesus-did-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Do What Jesus Did"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the book Whole Bible Christianity<\/span> chapter 9 Whole Bible Instruction section titled “Do What Jesus Did” <\/p>\n

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, \u201cIf you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, \u201c\u00a0\u2018He will command his angels concerning you,\u2019 and \u201c\u00a0\u2018On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.\u2019\u00a0\u201d Jesus said to him, \u201cAgain it is written, \u2018You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.\u2019\u00a0\u201d (Matthew 4:5<\/a>\u20137, ESV)<\/p>\n

Guideline four here might be a little more obvious if we realize that the word \u201cput\u201d is the same word as \u201ctest.\u201d Literally, \u201ctest God with a test.\u201d And testing is exactly what we think it is. We do not make God prove Himself with tests of our own making. This is what the deceiver was trying to get Jesus to do by throwing Himself off of the Temple. Testing like this includes a lack of belief and even outright disobedience. The Satan quoted parts of Scripture (he\u2019s skilled at part-Bible doctrine) and Jesus responds with the missing sections.<\/p>\n

16\u201cYou shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested Him at Massah. 17\u201cYou should diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and His testimonies and His statutes which He has commanded you. (Deuteronomy 6:16-17<\/a> NASB95)<\/p>\n

Israel \u201ctested\u201d God at Massah (a word that means \u201ctest\u201d) by moaning and complaining about the lack of water, and faulting God for failing to provide. They were questioning whether God was present, and disobedience followed. Instead, they should\u2019ve had patience and trusted that God would not have led them to that place without providing water.<\/p>\n

7He named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the Lord, saying, \u201cIs the Lord among us, or not?\u201d (Exodus 17:7<\/a> NASB95)<\/p>\n

In effect, they were saying that God couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t follow through. That implied either He was too dumb to know they needed water or was deliberately messing with them. They were saying that God did something wrong on purpose. They made up a fault in God and were using that to remove Him from the throne and put themselves in His place. Testing God in this way is nothing more than high-handed disobedience, and shows we do not trust God\u2019s Word. When we test Him with a test of our own making, it is because we are afraid He won\u2019t live up to His Word. Or that we want to use a perceived failure of the test for an excuse to go our own way.<\/p>\n

A different kind of test is laid out for us in Malachi. This testing is approved by God.<\/p>\n

10\u201cBring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,\u201d says the Lord of hosts, \u201cif I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows. (Malachi 3:10<\/a> NASB95)<\/p>\n

The testing mentioned here is within the bounds of obedience, as in \u201cobey the Lord, and in so doing test Him and see that His Word is true. He will deliver as He promised.\u201d We don\u2019t test God by disobedience; we test Him by trusting His Word and obeying it.<\/p>\n

When we decide on our own to switch the Sabbath to another day, this is also testing God with a test. He doesn\u2019t immediately (or apparently) zap us, so we think we\u2019re okay. Then we go on to break other laws. If we eat bacon and don\u2019t drop dead we keep eating. We presume on His grace, making it cheaper. Then we compound our sin by sharing the results of the test with others. We encourage them to test Him in a sinful way also. It just keeps getting worse and worse. Either we stick with the whole of His Word, carefully and exactly, as Jesus did, or we test Him to justify our own knowledge and pride. I think I\u2019ll pick the testing of obedience, myself.<\/p>\n

Shalom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the book Whole Bible Christianity chapter 9 Whole Bible Instruction section titled “Do What Jesus Did” Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, \u201cIf … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217,296,183,242,288,96],"tags":[153,71,520,382],"class_list":["post-921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-2","category-fear","category-hermeneutics","category-humility","category-righteousness","category-whole-bible-christianity-book","tag-faith","tag-fear-of-god","tag-kingdom","tag-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":923,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921\/revisions\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}