Temptation And Worship by Pastor Dolapo Lawal: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Luke 4:5-7

Then the devil, taking Jesus up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, "All this authority I will give You, and their glory, for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours."

What It Means to Be Shown

Pay attention to that word, showed. The devil opened Jesus' eyes to see the glories of the world, the same word pattern used when the devil opened Eve's eyes in the garden. Genesis 3:6-7 records that after the serpent's suggestion, the woman saw that the tree was good, and once they ate, their eyes were opened and they saw themselves, naked, exposed, ashamed.

Compare that to Luke 24:30-31, where Jesus broke bread with two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and their eyes were opened, and they saw Him. When the devil opens a person's eyes, they end up seeing themselves. When Jesus opens a person's eyes, they see Him. John 3:3 ties this to the new birth: except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Sight itself is a spiritual function, not just a physical one.

Worship Is Obedience, Not Singing

The first mention of worship in scripture is in Genesis 22, when Abraham went to offer Isaac in obedience. Worship there had nothing to do with singing or dancing, it meant submission, making something the governing object of your life. When the devil said "worship me and I will give you the glories of this world," he was really saying, "make me your operating authority, and receive what God intended through my shortcut instead."

The Kingdom the Devil Never Had

Revelation 17:17 shows that the kings of the earth had given their kingdoms over to the beast. Every kingdom, except one. The kingdom of Israel remained outside the devil's claim, because Abraham had already surrendered it to God, on that same altar, in that same act of worship, offering Isaac in Genesis 22. That is why the Messiah had to come through Israel, that ground had already been given to God by worship.

When the devil told Jesus "this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish," he was offering Jesus a shortcut to something that was already rightfully His. Matthew 28:18 records Jesus, after the resurrection, declaring, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." Revelation 11:15 confirms it: the kingdoms of this world became the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. What the devil offered as a shortcut in the wilderness, Jesus received legitimately through the cross and resurrection. Faith is not simply having something, it is having it God's way.

Counterfeit Encounters During Seasons of Fasting

Whatever God has already destined for a person, the enemy will often try to offer a counterfeit, faster version of it during a season of heightened spiritual sensitivity, like fasting. This is exactly the temptation Jesus faced: he knew the glory was coming, so the devil tried to hand him a distorted, premature version of it. Not everything that looks spiritual during a fast is from God. Some encounters are genuine memory, not revelation. Not every dream about an old house or a former relationship is prophetic; discernment, not assumption, is required. Something looking like God does not mean it is God.

We Worship to Worship

If your worship is transactional, you will miss God. Cain and Abel both worshipped and both offered sacrifice, but it was Abel, whose offering was accepted, who died, and Cain, whose offering was rejected, who lived on, marked and protected. Worship is not a formula for automatic blessing. There are moments when God gives specific prophetic instruction to praise as strategy, as in 2 Chronicles 20, but that is obedience to a specific word, not a transaction. Worshipping God in order to receive something turns worship into leverage instead of surrender.

Ambition Is Chosen, Vision Is Revealed

Ambition is a self-generated desire rooted in personal will, ego, or comparison. Vision is God-initiated direction rooted in divine purpose. Ambition asks, "What do I want to become?" Vision asks, "What has God revealed that I should be?"

• Abraham's ambition was a son. God's vision was a nation.
• Moses wanted to defend Israel inside Egypt. God's vision was to raise him as a deliverer who would bring Israel entirely out of Egypt.
• Peter wanted to catch fish. God's vision was to make him a fisher of men.
• Joseph, at best, imagined managing his father's estate one day. God's vision was to make him prime minister of a nation he was never born into.

Ephesians 3:20 calls this exceedingly abundantly above what can be asked, thought, or imagined. A genuine vision from God will typically feel too large to have originated with you; it will not fit neatly into a five year plan, because a true vision is not something a person can strategise their way into, it must be received. Joel 2:28 promises that in the outpouring of the Spirit, old men will dream dreams and young men will see visions, glimpses of a future too large for the person carrying it to construct on their own.

Vision does not usually arrive with drama. It tends to look like ordinary circumstances, a sudden dismissal from a job, a door that closes, that later turns out to have been God repositioning someone toward something they could never have engineered. Ambition is pursued. Vision is obeyed. A person who does not understand this will live as a victim of their circumstances, when God intended those very circumstances to work for their good.