I have heard sermons on testing God, and they come in one of two varieties. Either we preach on the Old Testament story of Gideon who tested God with a wet fleece (“God answers our tests to help our faith, our trust in Him”), or we preach the New Testament text of Jesus tempted in the wilderness telling Satan we shouldn’t test God (“God will not be tested because He’s in control, not us.”) Today, we find more passages about people testing God.
First, it’s the Sadducees, known for their denial of the spiritual realm including angels, demons, and the resurrection of the dead. They think they have a stumper for Jesus so they ask Him about marriage after the resurrection. Last night watching a television show, one character was belittling another for believing in angels. This modern day Sadducee didn’t use argument but mockery to disprove what he refused to believe. The argument was typical of our modern age – let her believe what she wants and don’t mock her for it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Next come the Pharisees, known for their obedience to and knowledge of the Old Testament law and surrounding laws they’d created around it. They challenged not Jesus’ belief in the spiritual, but His knowledge and interpretation of the Law. In our current discussions around the LGBTQ+ community, this same line of questioning keeps coming at us: which is the greatest commandment, or how do you interpret the commands of the bible.
Regardless of who is testing us, its important that they are not testing God, just our belief and interpretation of God’s word. Whether people ask us how we can believe in the spiritual world or how we interpret the bible, like Jesus we must turn for answers to the Word itself. Any other answer that comes from any other source must be suspect and superseded by scripture.
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