Good points. Get a shovel if you are willing to dig deeper. To get the rest of the story, one must realize what happened. The tempting/testing of God in the wilderness was the result of rebellion, grumbling, and complaining. Matthew Henry's Commentary makes a compelling point which suggests the combination of rebellion, grumbling, and complaining led to the challenging Moses and ultimately God. The temptation found in Exodus was founded in rebellion. One cannot say the same thing about snake handlers. The snake handlers are not living a life of grumbling and complaining like the children of Israel did in that passage. One of the meanings of the the place Meribah means contention. Webster's Dictionary defines contention as
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a point advanced or maintained in a debate or argument
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a synonym listed in the same definition is discord. The same dictionary defines discord as
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active quarreling or conflict resulting from discord among persons or factions.
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Strife is also listed. But we won't go that deep unless we have to.
I don't see how these snake handlers sowing discord, living in rebellion, or grumbling and complaining, attributes when left unchecked will cause one to tempt God in a way that is sinful.
Thnx for providing the need to dig further.
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Originally Posted by pelathais
I think I found the source of our disagreement here. It's in the way the word "tempt" is used. I suppose we could blame the King James for this, but since that's the default version for most online tools we can still move forward using it.
To "tempt" the Lord is not to "tempt" Him with sin. Jesus was quoting scripture in Matthew 4:7, and to understand the bigger picture we need to read the passage He was quoting. That passage was Deuteronomy 6:16.
In the original passage, Deuteronomy 6:16, the "you" (or "thou") is not Satan, but the people of God. The verse reads, " Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted him in Massah." Thus, to fully understand this, we need to go further back and look at the events that took place at "Massah." This is found in Exodus 17.
Exodus 17:7 sums it all up nicely: "And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not?"
This, then is the sin that Jesus rebuked the devil for so many years later on that pinnacle of the temple. The devil twisted Psalm 91:11-12, and turned that passage into a "test" for a believer to see if God was really there and if God would really "bear up" the believer. Jesus said, "Do test (or tempt) God..."
In the famous documentary on Snake handling sects, Foxfire Five (the book is available here), a particular Pentecostal preacher is shown saying, " You better have faith when the snakes come out..." The whole service was one where the people were testing themselves to see if God was really present in their lives. This is exactly the sin that the children of Israel commited at Massah and that Satan tried to get Jesus to follow in Matthew 4:5-7.
They were not "tempting" God to sin. They were "testing" God to see if He was really there. To do this is sin in both the Old and the New Testaments. 1 Corinthians 10:9 and Hebrews 3:8-11 and Hebrews 10:28-30. |
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