Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
Before we get into our Verse of the Day today, I just would love to give you the context around this verse. You probably already know Jesus fasted for 40 days, and at the end of the 40 days before He even started His earthly ministry, the devil came and tempted Him three different times.
This is Jesus's response to one of the temptations. It's really important. The reason why spending time delving into the context of this is important is because there are actually principles behind just the context before we actually get into what the verse itself says.
The Power of Scripture
The key to the context and what Jesus is saying is this, and make sure to capture this: Jesus was tempted by the devil. Jesus, being God, could have literally spoken His own words as God, and it would have been God's Word. Yet Jesus demonstrated in this moment the value and power within the Word of God, within Scripture, that we have ourselves. He quotes Scripture to the devil to combat him.
That's why it's so powerful to know the context of this, because Scripture refers to the Word of God as our sword, as our weapon for spiritual warfare.
Jesus Chose Scripture as His Weapon
Jesus, being God, could have just said whatever words He needed to say because they would have been words of God, but He chose to use Scripture because it is such a powerful tool that we ourselves have. It's really important to note that before we get into actually what the verse itself says.
As we look at this verse, Jesus was tempted by the devil and told him to look out over all the kingdoms of the world. The devil said: "You can have all of the kingdoms of the world. I'll give them to you if you bow down and worship me right now."
Understanding the Real Temptation
For years, I never really understood that because I thought, okay, that doesn't even make sense. I mean, for the devil to tempt Jesus and say, "Bow down and worship me because You'll rule over all these kingdoms of the world."
Jesus came from heaven. He's going back to heaven. Why would that be even a temptation? Why would he think that that would be a temptation?
Until I realized that from that moment to His return actually was His crucifixion. At some point Jesus would pray out to His Father and say: "Father, let this cup pass from Me."
In that moment of temptation, imagine if you were in His shoes and thought, I could actually rule all of these kingdoms and not have to go to the cross.
That is a whole different perspective. Imagine in that moment He knew: "I could. I am choosing to go to the cross for you when I could be ruling these kingdoms."
The Beauty of Eternal Kingdoms
The beauty of it is, we know now, looking back at all those eras of kingdoms that Jesus was able to see at that time period—they're all ruins now. The kingdom of Jesus, the kingdom of our Lord, will last forever.
Understanding Worship
Now, let's focus in on the words of our Verse of the Day and break it down. Worship and serving Him.
It comes from Luke chapter 4, verse 8. "Jesus replied, 'The Scriptures say, "You must worship the LORD your God and serve only Him."'"
The word worship itself—a lot of times we have a lot of different mentalities, a lot of different things that people say about worshiping God and what that looks like. Some think it's just worship music, but it goes beyond that.
That's why I'd love to give you a different definition than what you've probably heard. What if we looked at worship as simply placing ourselves truly in the presence of God? When we do, it may look differently for you and for me, but we would be strongly compelled to worship.
It may look differently between us, but we wouldn't be able to help ourselves but to worship Him. And that's why we need to live into worshiping God, and that's why it's so important.
Living in the Presence of God
Our lives should be lived in a place of worship. If we're constantly living in that place—and that's not stopping and singing a song necessarily as much as it is constantly living our lives in the presence of God—then our lives, the way we live them out, will be living in a place of worship.
Serving Only Him
The second part is serving Him. Just breaking down what that looks like, serving only Him.
Whomever you serve, whomever we serve, dictates our level of service. If you're serving a boss or serving a spouse or serving someone else, we would behave and we would serve at a level that we think they may be deserving, or serve at a level dependent on whether they care about us.
That's why it's important to serve only the Lord, because when we're serving Him, it doesn't matter how our boss is or how our spouse is or how someone else is—we are serving the Lord. Our service dictates our level of service.
Whomever we serve dictates our future. When we think our boss or our spouse or someone else has our future in their hands, if we're serving the Lord, our future is in His hands.
Effectiveness Comes from God
Lastly, whomever we serve dictates our effectiveness. Again, you have those different relationships of people we may think that we serve, but when we're truly only serving God, He can allow us to be effective far beyond our service, or our duties, or our tasks that we live into.
If we can actually live out this verse—"You must worship the LORD your God and serve only Him"—living in His presence, worshiping Him before Him in everything we do and serving Him only, we will change the dynamic around us. We will do this because we are worshiping and serving our Lord, because He is truly worth it.
