Day 7 | Keeping God’s Word on Your Heart (part 2 of 3)

The second exchange between Satan and Jesus goes like this…

“And he [Satan] said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.  So if you worship me, it will all be yours.’  Jesus answered, ‘It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only”” (Luke 4:6-8).

Here the devil had arrogantly attempted to succeed in his fight against God by diverting Jesus from his mission.  It is a simple fact that Satan owns the world but Jesus knew all to well that to gain the world by submitting himself to Satan would be failure.  By submitting himself instead to a death on the cross and rising from the tomb he not only conquered death and the fires of hell but he revealed a glimpse of God’s glory and won lost souls over to the kingdom in the process.  There are so many times in life when the obvious route, although in itself is not wrong or harmful, takes us off the path God intended to bring about his kingdom in an even greater way.  By knowing this verse Jesus recites from Deuteronomy 6:13 we too can avoid failure by taking a short cut.