Episode Transcript  

One

The Second Temptation

In the Second Temptation, the Devil took Jesus to the holy city and made Him stand on the parapet of the Temple. He said to Him, 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written: He will put you in his angels' charge, and they will support you on their hands in case you hurt your foot against a stone.’ Jesus responded, 'Scripture also says: You must not put the Lord your God to the test.'”

Two

Do not test God 

When Jesus responded to the Devil, He was quoting Deuteronomy 6:16 in which Moses said, “Do not put Yahweh your God to the test as you tested him at Massah.” What happened at Massah?

God heard the cry of the Israelites in slavery in Egypt, and what did God do? Some pretty amazing things. He sent ten apocalyptic plagues to the Egyptians that didn’t affect the Israelites one bit, even though they lived in the same place. God divided the Red Sea in two, through which more than a million Israelites walked, and then God wiped out the largest military force in the world by collapsing the water over them. Then God showed them His constant presence by a miraculous pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. 

God did all this to save Israel. What did they do in return? They forgot what God had done for them and then accused Him of not being there for them when they needed him and demanded He show Himself and prove His love and care. Crazy, right! But we do the same thing as the Israelites

Three

We Forget and Blame God 

God gives us life and then takes care of us every step of the way. Then we experience some difficulty, suffering, or loss. We somehow forget all that God has done for us, and we immediately doubt Him. We can even become angry with Him for not being there for us when we needed Him and blame Him for the evil we are suffering. Then we demand He prove His love and fidelity for us, otherwise we won’t believe and be faithful to Him. 

Yep, that is me over and over. 

Pope Benedict XVI, in his book Jesus of Nazareth, had a profound insight about this temptation. He writes, “We try to make God submit to experiment. He is “tested,” just as products are tested. He must submit to the conditions that we say are necessary if we are to believe…The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of finding him. For it already implies that we deny God as God by placing ourselves above him…by no longer acknowledging as real anything other than what we can experimentally test and grasp. To think like that is to make oneself God…”

Four

The Way Out 

The sin of the Israelites was to forget what God had done for them and then do something sinful. A new difficulty arises, memory collapses, fear or anger or some passion takes over, God is treated as absent, and sin follows. It is always the same pattern: forgetting, pride, self-reliance, trial, and sin. 

Trials do not cause sin. Forgetting does. So then, what is the remedy for forgetting? It’s simple, remembering. 

Moses made this clear, “Remember how Yahweh your God led you for forty years in the wilderness, to humble you, to test you and know your inmost heart - whether you would keep his commandments or not. He humbled you, he made you feel hunger, he fed you with manna which neither you nor your fathers had known, to make you understand that man does not live on bread alone but that man lives on everything that comes from the mouth of Yahweh. The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet were not swollen, all those forty years.  Learn from this that Yahweh your God was training you as a man trains his child, and keep the commandments of Yahweh your God, and so follow his ways and reverence him.”

Panic and sin come from forgetting. Faithfulness and peace come from remembering. 

Five

Our Resolution 

What should we do to avoid the temptation to put God to the test? We need to practice remembering.

We should review the history of our lives. God has taken care of us from our conception to this very day. There are probably even miraculous ways God has taken care of you. But our memory is so short. We forget all that God has done, then we doubt Him and we demand He prove Himself. 

Regularly, if not daily, look back on the last day, week, year over the entirety of your life. Remember all the ways God has taken care of you. He carried you through trials before. Thank Him for this. He will carry you through the trial you experience now, and He will carry you through all future difficulties, sorrows, and losses. Thank Him ahead of time for this as well.

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