Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ -Matthew 4:5-7
Temptation in the Wilderness
Full of the Holy Spirit and fresh from his baptismal blessing, Jesus entered the wilderness for 40 days. Here the Son of God’s journey paralleled the story of Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness. He successfully faced temptations where Israel had failed. Jesus’ quoting from Deuteronomy is meant to hyperlink your mind back to the stories of Israel’s time in the wilderness. Jesus is doing something new here.
While all three tests are fundamental to understanding the nature of the Messiah and his ministry, I wanted to home in on the middle temptation today. Surely the Son of God can defy the laws of nature? I mean, God can do anything, and God would never let the Messiah die like this. So prove your faith and jump. If you are who you say you are, God will surely save you.
This test reminds me of every person who claims that if you just have enough faith, God will save you from…well you name it. Poverty, disease, death, or even being gay. You’re still battling cancer because your faith isn’t strong enough. You’re still “struggling with same-sex attraction” because you aren’t praying hard enough to change. Is it too strong a statement to say that this line of thinking is from the devil? If Jesus had faith to jump off that building, it would have killed him, just like anybody else. And that’s exactly what that line of thinking is doing to people today…it’s killing them.
A man dying from cancer is told by his faith community that the only reason God hasn’t cured him is because he has a life insurance policy. So he cancels it to prove his faith and be healed, dies anyway, and leaves his family in poverty.
I met a man with ALS who was told his parents had sinned and his disease was a punishment for their generational failure. Unless he repented and believed without doubt, he would die from this disease.
I met a woman who would die unless her legs were amputated, but her faith community convinced her that this was a test of her faith and that the Doctors were the devil in disguise, tempting her to doubt.
Myself, and countless others like me, wasted decades of our lives praying desperately for God to make us straight. Only to remain gay, burdened by the shame that our faith wasn’t strong enough to change us. The church has bought the lie that being gay is a disease, a disorder, something you choose but can change. But the reality is, God made us this way. God delights in our difference and wants us to thrive in it. But because the church continues to actively antagonize the gay community, LGBT youth are four times more likely to consider suicide, make a plan or attempt suicide than their peers. (Learn more at Trevor Project).
Throw yourself down.
You have the Holy Spirit.
You are baptized and called to be God’s ambassador in this world.
Surely someone as faithful as you will be protected against the laws of nature.
Well, family. Jesus said NO to that lie. Instead, Jesus chose to be Emmanuel, God-With-Us. God-With-Us as we experience the laws of nature and the limits they place on us. God-With-Us as we mourn the pain of suffering and death. God-With-Us as we celebrate who we were made to be. God-With-Us as we accept our limits. God-With-Us as we go out to love the world and all its limits.
Surrendering to God does not mean giving up your ability to think critically. Surrendering to God does not mean a sudden upheaval to the natural order of the world. You do not have less faith because you buckle up in the car. You do not have less faith because you trust modern science and medicine. You are not faithless for questioning long-held interpretations of Scripture that have proven harmful over time. Poverty or financial strain is not proof that you have feeble faith.
Surrendering to God is trusting that nothing can separate you from the love God has for you in Christ Jesus. You don’t need to test God to prove you’ve surrendered. That’s just not how this faith thing works.