Deuteronomy With JesusSample

Putting God first

Jesus’ response to Satan’s final two temptations was to quote two verses from the same passage in Deuteronomy 6 (Deuteronomy 6:16 and 6:13). It is all about putting God first in everything that we do and building our lives around him.

The passage starts with the famous call to “love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5), but it continues with the less familiar calls to ‘fear’ and ‘serve’ God in verse 13. The love that Moses is talking about in Deuteronomy 6 is not simply about feelings or emotions. It also requires that we recognise God for who he is, and then actively respond in surrender and service.

Satan’s second temptation challenges this call subtly but directly. He uses a quotation from scripture (Ps 91:11-12), and encourages Jesus to show that it works. As he does so he twists the purpose of the promise in the Psalm, turning a word about protection into an encouragement to test God. Even scripture can be misused and twisted!

Jesus spots the problem in what the Devil is telling him to do. To test God would effectively be to take control of the relationship between himself and God, recasting it on his own terms. He resists, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16: “it is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

The quotation refers to an incident where the people demanded the miraculous provision of water (Exodus 17). In many ways what they were asking for was not unreasonable, but it was the demand and testing of God that was wrong. They wanted to be in control of their relationship with God, for him to answer to their needs and demands as they saw fit.

I think that this temptation is particularly acute for us today in our modern world. We live in a culture which encourages us to take control of our own lives and live them in the way that we see fit. It can be easy to import that perspective into our faith. We can expect God to affirm how we want to live our lives and respond to our lead and our dreams. It is a subtle temptation to invert the surrendered love to which we are actually called, fearing and serving God. Sometimes the things we demand of God can actually be good things. Yet when we try to set the agenda and timeframes, or grumble when we do not have what we long for, we are actually trying to take control back from God – we are putting the Lord our God to the test.

Prayer

Take some time to reflect and pray about any areas of your life which aren’t fully surrendered to God – it might be worth asking God to reveal any that you may have missed, as this is an area where we can often be very blind! Then pray that he would help you surrender and trust him instead.