A TIME OF TESTING

So, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me through the forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ (Heb. 3:7-11).

The period in the wilderness was, for the Israelites, a time of testing, but who was being tested? Both! God was testing His people to see what was in their hearts, and they were testing God’s love and patience by their rebellion and unbelief.

God often deliberately led His people into seeming cul-de-sacs because He wanted to know what was in their hearts. Of course He knew what was in them. He knew them better than they knew themselves. But that was exactly the point. Until they were in a situation where what was in them could come out, it was of no value to them. So what did He do? He tested them,

Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Deut. 8:2, 3)

And how did they fare in this test? Their unbelief spilled out in a torrent of abuse and complaint against Moses and against God. Gone was the remembrance of God’s covenant and His promises. Their circumstances blotted out everything except the awareness of what was happening to them right then. They whined; they threatened Moses; they complained against God, and they got it from Him!

How did they test God? They spoke against Him; they failed to understand what He was doing; they negated His promises through their words of unbelief, and they brought His wrath down upon them by their murmuring. Instead of being encouraged by His miraculous intervention time and again, they tried His patience by conveniently forgetting both what He had done for them and what it was really like back in Egypt. They were quite willing to go back there and suffer under a cruel and ruthless Pharaoh rather than trust the God who was doing everything to make their journey as comfortable as possible for them.

Since it was Jesus with whom the writer was comparing Moses and the ‘house’ over which he was a faithful servant, how did He react to His testing in the wilderness? He trusted the Father in those horrific forty days when He had no access to food, water, shelter and protection from the heat of the sun, the cold of the night and the venomous creatures that lived there.

He had to face all this alone without wavering in His confidence in the Father. He made no plans to go it alone. He would not capitulate to the enemy’s insinuations and suggested solutions. He would not break His unity with the Father. He chose to die rather than betray the Father, and because of that He lived.

He taught His disciples to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ Those words were loaded with meaning for Him because He had been there. He knew the strength of Satan’s tests and the pull of His human desires. This is not so much about what the devil can do; this is about what we can do when under pressure from the devil. We are not victims. If we were, God could not hold us responsible for falling into temptation.

There is no such thing as ‘The devil made me do it.’ We alone are responsible for the choices we make. Neither God nor the devil can decide for us. All the devil can do is to plant lies into our minds. What we do with them is our choice. If we, like Jesus, are fortified with God’s word and empowered by His Spirit, we will do as He did, ‘live by every word that comes from the mouth of God’.

Jesus, our high priest, is qualified to intercede for us because He was faithful over God’s house as an obedient and trusting Son. When our faith in God is put to the test through hardship and suffering, we have both His example and His Spirit to see us through if we are willing to trust Him instead of, like His ‘house’ over which Moses was a servant, revealing rebellion and unbelief by our bitter murmuring.

When God tests us, let us not test Him. His tests always have a miracle and a blessing in store if we trust Him and live in the gratitude of His presence and His provision. If we endure with faith and patience, we shall inherit the promises (Heb. 6: 12).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.