Servants of God 1973

From Matthew 4, 10 and 11, 8. Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him. On the one hand, we have the people who insist there is no devil.

And on the other hand, we have those who not only know there's a devil, but they're paranoid about it. Oh, the devil's giving me such a hard time. Three weeks now, he's been hassling me.

I can't seem to break out of it. If the devil can't make you think that he doesn't exist, he'll do the next best thing and try to get you to believe that he's almighty, that he has you trapped, that you might as well give up. There's nothing you can do.

He's got you. Now, it's significant that we see Jesus sending Satan on his way with a simple word from Scripture. You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.

Whenever the devil comes up against a person who is really worshiping God and really serving him, there's not a thing that he can do. When Satan finds you truly worshiping God with all your heart, serving Him with all your mind and strength, it fills him with terror. It makes him to know that he's already been defeated, and it reminds him of the glory he once had and would still have if he had not turned aside to worship himself.

Now, he is indeed the prince of this world. While his time is short, he still has great power, but the only place on this earth where Satan has authority and power is among those people who refuse to worship God. They may go through the motions of it, but they're not doing it.

Those people who refuse to serve God or who serve God with a divided heart. Wherever he finds such people, and he finds them everywhere, he is Lord over these people. Even if they sit in church seven days a week, even if they quote the Scripture all day long, even if they've never committed adultery, never murdered, never broken the Sabbath, Satan doesn't mind if you quote Scripture so long as you stay away from genuine worship and genuine service to the living God.

It doesn't bother Satan in the least if your life is chased so long as you stay away from real worship of God. You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. For what other reason were we put on this planet? For what other purpose do these hearts beat within us? Birds were made for the air.

Fish for the water. The trees were created to send their roots down into the soil and lift their branches up toward the sun. We were made for the living God.

To worship him and serve him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. And as long as Adam lived that way, there was nothing that Satan could do to him. Satan was nothing but a worm under his feet.

It was when Adam joined Satan in dishonoring God and serving himself against God's will that he then became a worm under Satan's feet. When you get up in the morning praising God, really praising God, and when you step forth into the day truly serving him with all your strength and all your heart, Satan can't do anything to you. He can't mess you up.

He has to step aside and let you go by. He has to give way to you. Not only that, he has to actually cover his face, hiding his eyes from the glory of Christ that shines forth from you, lest his eyes, what little eyesight he has left, is blinded.

Satan can't even see what you're doing when you're living in the worship of the living God. But when you get up in the morning with your mind on yourself, when the first thing you do is go around and collect all your aches and pains and grudges and complaints and lusts and cravings, and then go shuffling into another day of spiritual gloom, you may be extremely religious, you may consider yourself one of the few good people left, you may be very upright as far as you're concerned, but I'm going to tell you something, your soul is shriveled. You are a slave in Satan's power.

You are serving him whether you like it or not, whether you admit it or not, and you spread death everywhere you go. Even if you carry a Bible, or even if your face is set in what you think looks like a saint, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Can we honestly say that we are living this way, that we're fulfilling this command, that our minds at this very moment are given over, yielded utterly to true praise, worship, glory, honor, thanksgiving toward the living God? Can we honestly say that these bodies of ours and all the material substance that surrounds them are being poured out, really poured out, not stingily but with utter abandon, in service to the living God? Notice that it doesn't say that you are to worship God one hour a week, or perhaps two or three going to fellowships and Bible studies and prayer meetings, and then the rest of the time you worship your bank book, or your favorite ambition, or your reputation, or your loved one.

If you worship God, then you do it with all your heart, in all circumstances, in all places, under all conditions, continuously like the angels. Anything less than that is only token worship. It's a form without any life or power.

Nor does it say that you serve God 10% of the time, and the other 90% you spend doing your own thing. If you're serving God at all, then you're doing it all the time, with all your heart. Now, nobody can live that way, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, unless worshipping God with all your heart, serving Him with all your strength, unless this has become your delight, your supreme joy.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. His delight is in His law. And on His law doth he meditate, day and night.

I delight to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my heart. Jesus came in order to make it our delight to live like that.

What was He doing those three and a half years of His ministry, but teaching His disciples, these men and women, the joy of worshipping God and serving Him only, as the days passed more and more, these people were filled with awe for God, as they saw God's glory coming out of the face of their master, by faith. They didn't see a halo around his head, they didn't see it shine physically, but they saw God's glory. And as they listened to Him teach, and they saw the dead get up and walk, and the blind receive their sight, and the deaf hear, and the lepers complain.

And again and again and again they hear Jesus teaching them that only one thing matters, and that is doing the Father's will. Not making other people think you're doing the Father's will, but doing it. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. When Jesus was on the cross, it appeared as if His disciples hadn't learned a thing. They were gone.

Jesus is left alone, hanging there, still serving His Father right up to the last breath. Pouring out His blood as an atonement for the sin that has held this human race in bondage since the days of Adam. But when Jesus died, the curse was broken.

And we notice as we read the gospel from that point on, we see worship as we never saw it before in the disciples. What do they do when they see Jesus risen from the dead? They begin to worship, really for the first time. We see the picture of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the first ones to see Him alive from the dead.

As soon as Jesus comes to them and says, Hail, they run up to Him, grab Him by the feet, and worship Him. Then the disciples, the eleven, went into Galilee to a mountain to which Jesus directed them, and when they saw Him, they worshiped Him. Thomas, put your hand here and see my hands.

Thrust your hand into my side. And be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answers, My Lord and my God.

He worships Him. And this worship goes on. When Jesus ascends to heaven, they return to Jerusalem with great joy and are continuously in the temple, blessing God.

Ten days later comes the Spirit. What do you think this utterance is that comes forth from their tongues? But worship of God. Day by day in the temple, together, and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God.

Now, if you are, in fact, a disciple of Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ has come to dwell in you, the proof of this to the Father and to the devil is that, in fact, you worship the Lord your God and serve Him only. And the power to do this is now in you in a way that it was not there before you came to Christ. The power is there, but you have to exercise that power.

You have to assert your will in God's direction. You have to present your body as a living sacrifice to God. You have to give your mind over to His renewing Spirit.

God isn't going to wake you up in the morning and cause you to praise His name. You have to do that. God isn't going to make you praise Him when you come together with other believers and worship Him.

You have to do that. God isn't going to make you love your brother. God isn't going to make you lay down your life for your neighbor.

God isn't going to make you generous with your money. God isn't going to make you pull out the eye that causes offense and throw it away. God isn't going to make you proclaim the name of Jesus before men.

God isn't going to make you discipline yourself to prayer. But when you begin to do these things, He wonderfully helps you. There are people here, and I say this under God, who have never in all their lives abandoned themselves to true, joyful, wholehearted worship of God.

And I'm not saying that you have to put your hands in a certain way or say certain things. God knows when it's worship. And there are people here who have never allowed themselves to serve God beyond certain, carefully set limits of convenience and safety and what they consider to be good taste.

And this, my friend, is why Satan is giving you such a hard time. And you know what? He's going to go right on giving you a hard time. So long as your heart remains a worshipless habitation of self-pity, complaining, and critical spirits.

Cry out to God. Ask Him to help you. Ask Him to break those chains that hold you down to yourself.

Lord, deliver me from myself. Lift me up into the company of the angels. Help me to open my heart.

Enable me to come forth, loose my tongue, Father, that I may truly sing to your glory. And Satan will go right on giving you a hard time. So long as your life remains a neat little package, safe, convenient, easy, of half-baked service to God and loving, wholehearted, kind, devoted service to yourself.

What is your life? Is it truly a living sacrifice? Or is it a rotting pile of hoarded energies and hoarded possessions? Whoever would save his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. When we worship God, we lose our lives in Him.

When we serve God, we lose ourselves in His purposes. And I say that it is high time for many of us here to start losing ourselves for Jesus. Before we come to the place where there is nothing left to lose, you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.

May God just burn that command into our hearts until it controls our living. And may He do it without any hindrances from us. And may we yield to Him doing it while we still have time.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we hear you speaking to us today, and we're crying out, Lord, for help. Oh, Lord, break those things that chain us down to ourselves.

Do whatever, Lord, you have to do to smash our neat little Christian package, our safe, comfortable little lives. Deal with the seething pot of complaining and bickering and discontent that rules our hearts, that we may truly be given over to worship of the Father, Lord, and lives that are a glory and a praise and an honor to the name of the living God. We ask it for the sake of your blood, Lord Jesus.

Amen.