DON’T TEMPT GOD
By Bishop Mike Okonkwo
Sunday 15th September 2024
“Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Matthew 4:7 (KJV)
In the first temptation, Satan asked Jesus to turn stones into bread. When the devil saw that Jesus would not fall for any of that, the devil decided to go spiritual. In the second temptation, Satan quoted Psalm 91:11-12, “For He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone”. You will easily fall for the devil’s lies if you don’t know the Word. But listen to Jesus. In Matthew 4:7, Jesus said unto him, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” In other words, Jesus was saying why must I cast myself down to prove a point? What does that change? He knew He was the Son of God, and nothing could make Him doubt His identity.
If Jesus had done it, He would have broken His head and His leg. God will not protect Him because God didn’t tell Him to do it. God’s protection is only guaranteed when you are in His will. As long as Jesus was in the will of God and doing what God asked Him to do, even if He was in a hundred-and-fifty building, and there was the need for Him to jump down or should he have fallen from there, the angels will protect Him. But it would be a different story for him to jump simply because he wanted to prove a point. Why? Because it will be a show-off. Never allow the devil to push you into tempting God.
It is also like seeing a rattlesnake, and you say Jesus said we shall pick up the serpent, and it shall not hurt us. Then you say to everyone, watch; Mark 16:18 is about to prove itself. Beloved, the serpent will bite you. But if you are on the gospel track, doing what God told you to do, and a serpent decides to bite you, as it did to Paul, it can’t harm you. When the snake fastened on Paul’s hand, he shook it off and felt no harm.
Further Reading: Matthew 4:5-11
Daily Bible Reading: Morning- Proverbs 22-24; Evening- 2 Corinthians 8