The Temptations of JesusSample

The temptation to worship in order to have.

In this third temptation, the enemy does not question Jesus' identity but rather his loyalty and purpose. After undermining our sense of identity, the enemy seeks to compromise our purpose, enticing us to focus on accumulation and material possessions. God originally commissioned humanity to fill the earth with life, as stated in Genesis, but the fall led to a loss of intimacy with Him. How can we truly give life without that intimacy? Instead of nurturing quality, humanity often resorts to simply achieving greater quantities. From the very beginning, the enemy has tempted us to "seek to have" in exchange for bowing down to the god that represents our desires. This god of materialism has offered great cities and wealth at the cost of our true lives.

Humanity has succumbed to this temptation countless times: we sacrifice time with our families for new appliances or create neon cities that intoxicate us with waste. We have been sold aspirational models that spend on a bottle of wine what a schoolteacher earns in a year. We bow down to those clay gods, forgetting that the more we try to resemble them, the further we drift from the dream that God had for us. We become irrelevant to eternity, embracing the lie of "the more you have, the more you are worth."

What was Jesus' response? Go away, Satan, for it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.' Jesus chose to connect His purpose and allegiance to fulfilling God's divine plan for your life. At this time, service becomes an expression of worship. Many years ago, a man of God, William Temple, said: 'To worship is to enliven the conscience through the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purify the imagination with the beauty of God, and to open our hearts to the love of God, submitting our whole nature to God.'

Jesus faced these temptations not only to understand human challenges, but to show us a way not to succumb to these three streams of thought: believing that our identity lies in what we do, can do, or have. Whoever embraces the identity and purpose that God gave him connects with his essence and, from there, what he does and possesses connects with eternity.