Something that you may come across from time to time is a Christian asking God for a sign to confirm biblical teaching.
What happens is that
the Christian thinks that the Bible teaches something, but because they don’t
like what it teaches, they decide that they will obey its teaching if God
provides a sign confirming that this is what He wants.
Some examples
As a case in point, I
can remember some years ago hearing about a young Christian man and woman who
were engaged to be married.
One evening they were
feeling amorous and were tempted to sleep together before the wedding. Instead
of choosing to resist this temptation and wait until they were married, they
decided to pray that God would send someone to tell them not to sleep together if
He really didn’t want them to do this.
They then prayed but
no one was sent, so they slept together.
A similar situation
that sometimes occurs is when a Christian starts to commit a sin, watching
expectantly for God to give them a strong warning that they are outside His
will, maybe by striking them down with an illness or something like that.
However, to their
surprise, nothing seems to happen. The apparent lack of response from God then
makes this Christian think that this sin probably isn’t actually a big deal in God’s
eyes, and they keep committing it.
Two important
points about biblical revelation
These examples highlight a couple of very important points about biblical revelation and Christian living.
Firstly, if the Bible says that something is wrong, that's all we need to know to decide not to do it.
Secondly, if the Bible says that something is wrong, it is a big mistake to expect God to intervene in our lives to confirm this.
We know from life
experience, as well as from Scripture, that God allows us to go wrong in many
ways. It is true that there are times when He does take action to stop us
committing a sin. But there are also many occasions when, in His wisdom, He
allows us to commit sins.
So for any Christian
to think that a sin can’t be a big deal to God, because He didn’t take action
to stop it, makes no sense at all.
Testing God
Asking God for a sign
to confirm biblical teaching is not just pointless and foolish. It actually
amounts to testing Him.
In Matthew 16:1-4 we
read about a time when some Pharisees and Sadducees did this:
‘And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him
they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.
He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will
be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will
be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret
the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An
evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to
it except the sign of Jonah.”
So he left them and departed.’ (ESV)
These Pharisees and Sadducees were asking for a sign to
point to something that should already have been obvious. It should have been clear
to all who saw and heard Jesus that He was sent by God.
We must note too how strongly Jesus condemns what they
were doing. He calls them ‘evil and adulterous’ for seeking a sign.
What these Pharisees and Sadducees were doing is really
the same thing that I spoke about above, i.e., asking God for an unnecessary
confirmation of something. So this Bible passage should leave us in no doubt
that this is something the Lord deeply dislikes.
God will answer our prayers when we ask for something in
faith and in line with His will (1 John 5:14-15). But He is hardly at our beck
and call to do things that are completely unnecessary. We need to fit in with
where He is at rather than expecting Him to go out of His way to pander to our
desires. There is something really insulting to the Lord, not to mention
arrogant, about asking Him to give unnecessary confirmations of things.
Did God really
say that?
In Genesis 2:16-17, we
are told that after God created Adam, He said to him:
‘You
are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it you will
certainly die.’ (CSB)
Then in Genesis 3:1
the snake asks Eve, who has clearly learned from Adam what God had said:
‘Did
God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?’
(NLT)
The snake in this
passage represents Satan, so here we see Satan trying to put doubts into the
mind of Eve about the truthfulness of something God had said.
In this respect,
nothing has changed. Today, just as ever since the days of the first humans,
Satan and his subordinates, i.e., evil spirits, continue to lie to God’s people
in this way. Revelation 12:9 says that Satan deceives the whole world, and one
way he does this is by inciting doubts about what God has said.
If the Bible says
that something is wrong, however, that is enough. That is all we need to know
to make our decision about how to act. We need to accept what it says and obey
it without testing God by asking for confirming signs.
See also:
Salvation Is Not by Doing Good but Only Those Who Do
Good Will Be Saved
The Importance of Taking Steps to Avoid Temptation
The Radical Nature of the Normal Christian Life
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