"Then Jesus replied, 'Away with you, Satan!
For scripture says:
The Lord your God is the one to whom you must do homage,
him alone you must serve.'"
- Matthew 4:10
The greatest temptation lead us to the greatest sin: the denial of God or making a god out of something else or of acting like God.
The serpent said to Eve, "You will be like gods knowing good from evil!" [see Genesis 3:5]. With the Lord the Devil tried to tempt the Lord to worship him in exchange of giving Him all the kingdoms of the world [see Matthew 4: 8-9] which he does not even own in the first place but merely controls due to his cunning and deceptiveness.
Without our knowing it, many times we fall into this trap of the evil one. Without us recognizing it we begin worshiping other "gods" and slowly deny our allegiance to Him who has created, saved and sanctified us. He who gave us life and everything else in this world we deny in what we think, say or do even when we do not mention the words "I don't believe in God anymore!"
When we give more time to earthly affairs, give more attention to celebrities and people in power, care so much more about what tomorrow will bring, believe in superstitions and follow activities and beliefs of other religions, aspire for great things without reference to God, and many more even when these are seemingly intended to "honor" or "give glory" to God but in reality are only for the sake of our own personal greatness or fame - all of these are examples of succumbing to the temptation of the evil one to be like God or to worship the evil one through something merely created.
People nowadays "find comfort" in the fact that God does not directly communicate with us. They make excuse of the sinfulness of some members of the Church He has established on earth upon St Peter and the Apostles to say that God has not provided for a clear guidelines to follow after all since there is no "true religion" to follow on earth. Even some members of the Church seem to add to the confusion by saying that the Lord did not really intend to set up an "institutional Church" but He merely intended us to preach and proclaim His command to love one another!
But God did not intend to confuse His people. He made straight revelations and commandments: "I the Lord am your God, you shall have no other god beside me!" "You are rock and upon this rock I shall build my Church!" "Go and make disciples of all nations teaching them all that I have taught you and baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!" "Behold, I shall be with you until the end of the world!" "I will send the Holy Spirit who will guide you into all the truth and shall remind you of all that I have taught you!" "Receive the Holy Spirit!"
God alone deserves all our service and worship. When something else try to distract us from our obligations to God and damage our relationship with Him, then these must be the temptations that the evil one is trying to use just to lead us to him. Be watchful then and beware of the things that lead us to sin. We only have to follow the example of Jesus Christ our Lord - He who is God Himself but never held on to that status while on earth but humbly accepted the condition of a mere human being! More importantly we must never forget that if we will only remain steadfast, He will provide the necessary assistance that we need after we have overcome all the trials [see Matthew 4:11]!
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