This is the way God worked with Israel in the Old Testament as well. Where in the Book of Exodus does Israel say to God, "If you get us out of Egypt, then we will serve you and be your people?" No. It worked the other way around. God called all the people together at the foot of Mt. Sinai and said, "If you will hear my voice and keep my commandments then I will be your God and you will be my people. It is not we who must test God to see if God is faithful to His word. It is always God who tests us to see if we can and will be faithful to our word.

The faithfulness and power of God should never be our concern. God is faithful enough to wake us up each morning to see another day, but it is entirely up to us whether or not we wake up singing: "I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Jesus. Hallelujah!" God is faithful enough to give us the continued activity of our limbs and our mind. It is entirely up to us, however, whether or not we are willing to sing,

"Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee.

Take my moments and my days,

let them flow in ceaseless praise ..."

It is not God, but us, who must stand beneath the scrutiny of the word If. It is not God, but us, who must be proven to be faithful.

Do not test Jesus, just trust Him. Let us not ask Jesus to prove Himself faithful to us. Instead, let us seek with all of our hearts to prove ourselves faithful to Him. See how these two men represent the right and wrong way to pray to the Lord. One man turned to Jesus out of an attitude of trust, and his reward for that was a home in paradise that he would inherit that same day. The other man sought to put Jesus to the test, to make Jesus prove to that man's satisfaction that Jesus really was the Son of God. That man received nothing at all.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this man with his subjunctive relationship to Christ was asking for something that was impossible to accomplish. He said to Jesus, "Save yourself and us." He obviously did not understand the theology of the cross. He did not comprehend the issue of substitutionary atonement or vicarious suffering. This man did not know anything about Isaiah 53, where it says that "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquity, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed." Do we all understand that Jesus could not do both of the things this man was requesting? Jesus could not save Himself and us. In fact, Jesus could only save us by not saving Himself. By staying on that cross, Jesus was paying the penalty for all sinners for all time. He was dying the death that we deserved as the consequence for our disobedience toward God. By staying on that cross, He was wiping away the stain of our sins from before the eyes of God.

Understand that Jesus could have come down. The story has no power if there was no possibility of His coming down. But He had more than enough power to come down. If He could raise Lazarus up from the grave, He had enough power to come down from the cross. If He could feed five thousand people with two fish and five loaves of bread, He had enough power to come down from the cross. And God who was watching in heaven also had the power to intervene at any moment and rescue His Son from that instrument of torture and death. He could have sent ten thousand angels to wing their way down from the positions in heaven and set Him free from that cross. He could have shaken the earth, as He would later do for Paul and Silas when their prison doors shook open and their chains shook off. The point is that Jesus could have come down from that cross. The Gospel is that He would not come down, because He was willingly sacrificing His own life so that He could save your life and mine from the penalty of sin.

And by the way, this is why I claim Jesus as my savior and Lord. I am glad that He fed five thousand souls one day on a mountainside in Galilee, but that did not feed my stomach. I am glad He turned water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana, but my thirst was not quenched. I am glad that He was able to calm an angry storm that swept over the Sea of Galilee, but I was not threatened by those howling winds and crashing waves. But when He died out there on Calvary, He was dying there for me. When He shed His blood on that cross, He was washing away my sins. When He sacrificed His life, it was so I would be able to enjoy abundant life and inherit eternal life when I die.

There are no Ifs in my relationship with Christ, Here are only affirmations. He is my Rock in a weary land. He is my shelter in the time of storm. He is my deliverer from the strong hand of Satan. He is my key to the gates of glory. He is "My help in ages past and my hope for years to come, my shelter from the stormy blast and my eternal home.