WEDNESDAY October 16th
Luke 4:5-8
‘And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”’
The second of the temptations which we have recorded in Luke’s gospel that the devil sought to distract Jesus with, was all about worship.
Imagine the cheek of the devil to try and get the Son of God, who is the Word in the flesh, that is God as a man to worship him. I thought to myself as I prepared this, ‘How stupid the devil must have been’ for Jesus who we have already discovered was about his Father’s business, would also have known the command that his Father had given to the children of Israel way back in the time of their wilderness experience, ‘I am the Lord your God. . . You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God . . .’ (Exodus 20:2-5).
Now, maybe the devil is stupid, but unfortunately, he is also subtle! And he will put whatever he can in front of you and I, position things in our lives that will if we are not careful cause us to take our eyes of the true and living God who deserves our full attention, and we become stupid! We begin to (and maybe we do not realise it) worship other things instead of making the worship of God our priority. We allow other things to become more important in our lives than being and becoming the person that God longs for us to be. And one of the biggest areas is when the devil will convince us that several other things are more important on a Sunday morning rather than making our way up to the house of the Lord where we join with others to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
Who or what do we seek after rather than to give 100% of our lives to the Lord God? What takes up priority in our lives that means that we cannot truly say that we are committed to loving the Lord God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might. What have we allowed to be gods or idols in our lives that have distracted or diverted our attention from the One who not only deserves but has the right to demand, my soul, my life, my all.