You Gotta Serve Somebody

Matthew 4 
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ² And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. ³ Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”

⁴ But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”
⁵ Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶ and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written:

‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’

and,

‘In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’”

⁷ Jesus said to him, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’”

⁸ Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ⁹ And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”
¹⁰ Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”

The first temptation; Satan tries to get Jesus to give evidence that Jesus really is the Son of God by turning stones into bread. 
The second temptation; Once again Satan tries to persuade Jesus to prove He is indeed God's Son by throwing Himself off the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and being "saved" from being dashed to pieces by angels.
The third temptation; Satan changes the game plan and stops trying to get Jesus to fall for having to prove Himself and instead offers Jesus dominion over the kingdoms of the world and their glory via worship of Satan.


As a substance abuse counselor one of the many challenges that I face with my clients is their use of a commonly used defense mechanism known as denial. Floyd P. Garrett M.D. describes denial for the addict or alcoholic "as a psychotic defense mechanism because it involves the denial or major distortion of reality itself. And a psychosis –state or condition of insanity- consists of being out of contact with reality, i.e. of believing something that is not true, or disbelieving something that is true." Dr. Garrett goes on to say that addicts and alcoholics take denial into the realm of delusion by stating, " a delusion is a false belief, not shared by the patient's peer group, that is not corrected by reason or contrary evidence"[1]

There are times when denial is a useful tool given to us by God to keep us from tail spinning into complete insanity. Such as when you get the news that a close loved one has just died or you get the news of you or a close loved one having a terminal illness. The mind goes into a kind of shock and there is a disconnect between the reality you have just been told and you not wanting to believe this reality. I see this as a manifestation of His grace because it allows us to slowly, very slowly absorb the emotional impact of a reality none of us wants to live with.

And there are other times when denial doesn't protect us but causes further damage and pain, like in the progressive process of addiction. Or when someone falls for the lies of the father of lies. 

Satan appears to me to be someone who is deeply out of touch with reality and is one of the most extreme cases of psychotic denial I have ever encountered. If I were to give him a diagnosis it would be someone who has severe personality disorders such as narcissistic, anti-social, borderline, paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, histrionic, obsessive-compulsive, sadistic and self-defeating personality disorders. And of course a psychotic disorder known as delusional disorder.

To put it into plain laymen terms, Satan is a wack job. And a severe wack job at that. If Satan were a human being he would not be allowed to walk free because his crimes against humanity are of the greatest extremes possible. He would be seen as the single greatest heinous criminal in all of human history. He would make Adolph Hitler look like nothing more than a misguided dog lover who had an insecurity complex. He would make Charles Manson look like someone who simply was an egomaniac with a messiah complex. He would make all the serial killers look like poor little boys who didn't get enough of Mommy's love.

Or he would be celebrated, adored and even worshiped. Which by the way, he is.

It kind of works like this; whenever any of us rejects God we are by default worshiping Satan. In Matthew 6:24 it states that, "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other." In the context of the chapter it is talking about trying to serve God and money but it also works for the context of rejecting God. Joshua 24:15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” The first of the Ten Commandments echoes this, "you shall have no other gods before Me". The second commandment states the same idea. It's all throughout the Bible.

All of us have rejected God even after receiving Christ as savior. But it is important to understand that by rejecting Him who we are embracing by default. This doesn't make us full blown Satan worshipers but it does put some things that take place in our lives and in the world in perspective. When we reject God we are embracing and by default worshiping someone who is as out of his mind as is humanly or even supernaturally possible.

Satan goes to Jesus and tells the Son of God to prove He is the Son of God by turning stones into bread. Instead of chasing the devil out with a broom or binding the devil in the name of Jesus, the Bread of Life stands there and uses scripture to defend His position (a lesson in itself that many Christians could stand to learn). The Word tells the poor, deluded, cast out of heaven angel that "man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God". I can almost hear the hungry, weary Jesus sighing when He responds to Satan's insanity. Satan then takes Him whose human body Jesus referred to as a temple that would be destroyed and that He would raise up in three days, to the pinnacle of the temple and tells Him to jump to prove His Son-ship so that angels would catch His fall. Jesus essentially uses Scripture again saying, "don't tempt the Lord your God". Here is Emmanuel, God with us, God in the flesh dwelling among us telling Satan, "don't you know Who you are tempting here"? Satan then goes over the brink into total insanity by taking Jesus to the top of a mountain and offering Him the world if Jesus would only bow down and worship Satan. Satan is offering to the Instrument Of Creation (see John 1:3) the world He created and would one day return to get back completely what was His in the first place. At this point Jesus has had enough of this lunacy and tells Satan to hit the road and that trying to get others to worship him was what got him kicked out of heaven in the first place and that worship of anyone other than God is simply and completely unacceptable and not welcome here.

You would think that at some point Satan would get a hint, a clue, something that remotely resembles rational thought and figure out who he is actually dealing with here. But no that doesn't ever happen. In fact the Bible tells us that Satan will insist until the fiery end that he is going to try to whup God and take over the universe.

If that's not just plain crazy I don't know what else is.

Satan obviously knows the Bible. He knows the end of the story. But he insists of doing it his way, all the way to his complete destruction. Kinds of reminds me of some teenagers I know who when they get caught in an obvious lie insist it's not a lie but is instead the truth and will fight the truth to the bitter end. Out of touch with reality. Psychotic denial. Loonier than an outhouse rat.

Even Bob Dylan understood that "you gotta serve somebody. It may be the devil or it might be the Lord, still your gonna have to serve somebody".

Do you ever wonder why the world seems to be getting crazier by the minute? Or have you ever wondered why stuff seems to get nuttier in your own life? Who does the majority of the world serve and worship? Who do you and me end up worshiping when we reject God? Two and two equals four. Rejecting God and by default serving and worshiping Satan equals madness. Every time.

Who will you serve today? God or a lunatic? You might be surprised at how many people are choosing the lunatic. But hopefully that will change too because God is in the business of salvation and is not willing that any should perish. There is still hope yet. So be staying away from worshiping crazy Old Scratch by submitting to the Lord your God.

References: [1]-

Why is Recovery So Hard? Some Thoughts on Addiction and Recovery Floyd P. Garrett, M.D.

The Hero

MATTHEW 2:
¹⁶ Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men. ¹⁷ Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying:

¹⁸ “A voice was heard in Ramah,

Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refusing to be comforted,
Because they are no more.”ves

Like most, I too struggle with many passages of the Bible. This is one of them. Many have written off any idea of believing in God because of these types of passages. And quite honestly, I can understand why.

The commonest of all questions posed by the skeptics and the unbelievers: "how can a loving God...?"

How do we answer this one that will actually satisfy the questioner enough to walk away with "understanding"? How many of us really understand this ourselves?

We struggle with passages like this one because within most humans are morals and values that are pretty much commonly shared. Of course there are exceptions like those with such severe personality disorders that conscience is as foreign to them as sprouting wings and flying is to the rest of us. One of the things the unbeliever shares with the believer is a profound sense of right and wrong. The believers really don't have any leg up on the unbelievers when it comes to morality. For those in the church who've perpetrated that myth there will one day come an extremely rude awakening when judgment occurs.

We cringe in horror and confusion ourselves when we encounter such passages. Something in the moral fiber of God's creation; of those made in His image and likeness (obviously including unbelievers) is repulsed by the idea of a God whose plan includes the killing of children and the subsequent life of incomprehensible pain for the surviving parents and family. And we are repulsed for good reason. Death is repulsive, especially the death of a child.

I've seen it where well meaning fools tell the recently bereaved that "everything happens for a reason" thinking they are somehow helping the person who is just beginning to try to come to grips with something they were never even made to come to grips with in the first place. Man was made in a pure state of sinless perfection. It is not in our DNA, our makeup or in the image and likeness of God to adequately deal with this repulsive thing called death. I really love it when people talk vainly about idealistic concepts like "closure" or "acceptance" when it comes to our "dealing" with death. It is all wishful thinking or a whistling past the graveyard. I too have suffered from the loss of those who I love and I "accept" that their not here any longer but even after many years, the pain from the loss is at times just as painful as it was during the funerals. Something about the deaths I am referring to continues to strike me as simply wrong. It's not like I'm in denial about the reality of death, I know it all too well. There is just something about it that feels out of whack with the natural order of things. I know it's considered to be "natural" but it wasn't a natural occurrence in the garden when God breathed His Spirit into dirt and brought it to life. The primary consequence of sin is as unnatural as it is for people to bestow "worship" on Satan (more on that wack job next post).

Death is our enemy (John 11:28, 1 Corinthians 15:26). And the only hope that man has to adequately deal with death is the conquering and overcoming of it by the death and resurrection of Jesus. I have counseled those who were reeling with trying to come to terms, grips, whatever the heck you want to call it, with the loss of someone. Even many years after the death people still struggle tremendously and there are no counseling methods or models that can come barely close to the work of healing that Christ provides. And even that requires dealing with feelings and pain that we were not made to deal with.
So it is for very good reason that we struggle with passages such as this one. But I believe that one of the reasons God includes these passages in His word is because God is truth and truth challenges and confronts us not just with God but with ourselves as well. The God I know loves to bring me face to face with the truth. Even when that truth is extremely painful. I believe that God included passages such as these not just to reflect so much on what He allows as they reflect more accurately what we asked for and insisted upon.
You might be surprised right now. You might be asking yourself when in the world did I ask to have to deal with death? When did I ask for incomprehensible pain, loss and suffering in my life or for anyone else? When did I ask to wake up and wonder if it is a just a bad dream only to be reminded that no, it's not a bad dream, that FILL IN THE BLANK is gone. Just exactly when did I ask for that?
The difficult and painful truth is that we asked for death. God warned us. When we choose to be our own gods and follow ourselves or the influence of a snake instead of Him we invited death into our lives. When we placed our wills above His we asked for funerals and graveyards and incomprehensible pain. When did we ask for that? When God told us not to do and we did. When God told us to do and we didn't. When we made a god of ourselves and our intellect and understanding to be supreme intelligence of our universe and went against His holiness we ended up having to exist with insane madmen like Herod who went berserk when things didn't go his way and was so threatened that he ordered the execution of hundreds if not thousands of innocents. We unjustly and unfairly blame God for these events. Our blame is misdirected. We are to blame.
God showed me recently that all of it, every single little speck of our being and lives all comes down to trust. Who do we really put our trust in? The voices around us?  The voice within us? Whenever our trust is directed anywhere else other than at God we are asking for death. The condition that God has always placed on man in order to be "right" with God has always been about trust. Not about religion or what church you attend or even if you attend church. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes (trusts) will not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16. Abraham was declared righteous because he trusted God. I am declared righteous only because I trust God and His salvation that comes only through the atoning work of paying for that penalty of sin; which is death; via the cross and then the glorious blessing and hope from the resurrection.
Did Herod trust God? Not only did he not trust God he hated God. And I am 100% sure Herod was being influenced by the supreme hater of God; Satan. Who else would be behind lying besides the father of lies? Satan. Who else would've been on a campaign to eliminate the Savior when He was a child? Who else would be behind the massacre of innocent children?
No one less than a blood lusting madman hell bent on bringing pain and suffering to those who God loves. And who does he use? People who not only distrust God but are far more concerned with themselves and their position in life than they are in anything else. People who make themselves into their own pathetic little gods.
This is what God has allowed. He followed through on His promise. He always does. He allowed us to have things our way. But He also allowed His Son to suffer, die and rise again as the final and only solution to the penalty of sin which is death. God allowed us to have faith and hope and trust that He is powerful enough to have defeated our enemy. The loathsome thing none of us was made for. The horrible thing that is unnatural. The thing we asked for
God gets none of the blame and all of the glory. Glorious is He who snatched us from the sting and penalty of death by providing Himself as sacrifice.
This is why He is my Hero.