Daily Worship

When worship becomes life giving

Albert Bogle March 14, 2017 0 2

Deuteronomy 8:1-5

Deuteronomy 8:1-5

Keep and live out the entire commandment that I’m commanding you today so that you’ll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors. Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child.

 

Luke 4.8

Jesus refused, again backing his refusal with Deuteronomy: “Worship the Lord your God and only the Lord your God. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness.”

There is a back story to the temptation narratives we are following this week in the New Testament. If you look at Deuteronomy chapter 8 the writers tell the story of how the wandering of the Children of Israel for forty years became for them a time of humbling and dependence on God. It’s worth taking a moment to read the account and see the parallels in Luke’s gospel.

Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness reflect the same kind of dependancy on God. In the second temptation Jesus is offered wealth and power in exchange he must worship Satan. In Deuteronomy Moses warns the people against thinking power and strength comes from their hard work.  Moses reminds them that  it is only God that gives the ability to produce wealth. Jesus responds with words from scripture saying,  the message puts it very plainly, worship belongs only to the Lord and we are called to worship him with an ‘absolute single - heartedness.’  

 

Lord,

How easy it could have been for you

To fall for this temptation

Wealth and power

With an empire at your feet

The crowd calling your name

You giving the people what they want

But you could see beyond the offer

You would not buy real estate that was yours already

You chose to come to your Kingdom another way

You chose the nails

You chose the way of suffering

Because you chose to love

To stand with us in our shame

To come among us and be with us

Emmanuel

Come to comfort and rescue his people

Help us to worship God like you have taught us

And to serve with absolute singe-heartedness

 

Lord today we turn from the temptation wealth offers

Instead we choose to live another way 

Teach us how to dethrone Mammon 

 

Today we choose to worship 

The one to whom all we have belongs

For all things come from you

Dust we are and to dust we will return

And from dust

You will remake us and raise us once more 

To life!