SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/10/2020 11:20 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “Temptation of Testing God”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 4:5-7
Message of the verses: “5 Then the devil took Him into the holy city; and he had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God throw Yourself down; for it is written, ’HE WILL GIVE HIS ANGELS CHARGE CONCERNING YOU’; and ’ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, LEST YOU STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE.’" 7 Jesus said to him, "On the other hand, it is written, ’YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST.’’”
In our last SD we talked about sensationalism and stated that Jesus would not have any part of that and so He then tells Satan “It is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” God did not need to prove Himself to Jesus and once a person becomes a believer they will learn that God does not need to prove Himself to them either as He has certainly showed His love to believers by sending His Son to take their place on the cross in order to pay the price for their sins.
In our last SD we talked about people never are satisfied in sensationalism as they always want more, and the example was when the Lord fed the five thousand and the next day people who were fed only wanted more food. They may have been thinking that if Jesus could feed them at no cost to them and if He could heal the sick and raise the dead that Israel could then go against Rome and win without any trouble since Jesus would take care of all their needs. This is not the way that God had planned things as we have seen in the end times that the revised Roman Empire headed by the anti Christ would be defeated by the Lord when He comes back in glory as described in Revelation chapter nineteen.
John MacArthur writes another reason why Jesus refused to take part in a spectacle like Satan wanted Him to: “Second, and more significant, no matter how noble and important we may think our reasons are, to test God is to doubt God. And to doubt God is not to trust Him, and not to trust Him is sin. That, of course, is what Satan wanted Jesus to do. To induce Jesus to sin, if that were possible, would shatter His perfect holiness, and therefore shatter His divinity and man’s hope of salvation. Had Jesus put His Father to the test, He would have separated Himself from His Father and prevented the divine plan of redemption—the very purpose for which He had come to earth.” By the way it was impossible for Jesus to sin, but the temptations He went through were real and were difficult on Him as He was not a human.
Jesus would never put His judgment and will above the Father’s which He would never do as seen for example in Matthew 26:49, and 42: 39 “And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." 42 He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.’” One more verse we can look at and that would be John 5:30 “"I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”
There are move verses that speak of Jesus always doing the Father’s will, but that is all we will look at this morning.
In the church that I go to we are planning to remodel what we call the gym as it is over 40 years old and has served the church family very well over those forty years. Other than our worship center where we have our services this building is used the most. Three years ago we raised about a million and a half dollars in order to pay off the mortgage on our buildings and also as a part of that we gave a hundred thousand dollars to help the “day” pronounced dye language have their own Old Testament made. The next thing that we wanted to do was redo the gym an had something like four hundred thousand to do that but after looking at the project it was found that we needed another six hundred thousand to turn our old gym into a Ministry activity center or (MAC) and so the church asked for people to give the rest of the money to do this project. After all of this was tallied we come up a hundred thousand short and voted on going ahead with the project believing that the Lord would provide the rest of the money in His way. I tell this story because there are some people and some churches who will want to do something without a plan and just put God to the test. This is wrong and it is similar to what Satan was trying to have Jesus do. Our story was that there was a plan and even though we came a little short we are not putting God to the test because He has provided over 90% of the money to do this project and thus we believe that only being 10% short this will keep us on our knees praying that He will provide the rest of the needed funds.
John MacArthur concludes this section by writing “God expects us to take risks, and risks necessary, in order to obey His will. When we risk our prestige, our money, our lives, our families, or anything else to fulfill the Lord’s calling, we can rest confidently in His divine provision for all that we need—if we accept the truth that only He knows what our needs really are. But when we take risks simply to fulfill our own ambitions or to put God to the test, He gives no promise on which we can rest.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I don’t want to put God to the test ever, but I suppose there were times when I did and hopefully learned from those times. Having a plan like we have at our church should be what I want to do when it comes to do something for the Lord.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust that the Lord will continue to teach me humility, and give me Joy as I study His Word each day.
2/10/2020 12:12 PM
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