part 5 of “Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table”
When you go fishing, you have one goal in mind - to catch fish (hopefully). The reason why you drive to the lake with all your fishing gear is to catch fish. The reason why you go through all the trouble hooking the boat up to the truck and taking it to the lake is to catch fish. You take the boat into the water and get everything organized, make yourself comfortable, and cast your line out. The fish immediately jump on the hook and you have some many you can’t even keep up. Nope. Not how it works. You need to be sneaky and crafty to catch fish. You need to make sure that you have the right lure on the line, you make sure the water conditions are right, and that the boat is in the right spot. The reason you want the right type of lure is because you are trying to entice the fish to come over your way and get caught on the hook. You want to lure them in if you will. When they get close enough, they are on the hook before they know it.
The enemy does the same thing to us as well. He uses bright and shiny lures to get our attention. He uses lies and twisted words to get our attention away from the Good Shepherd. He wants to hook us in and drag us away. The enemy doesn’t want us to trust the table that the Good Shepherd has prepared for us. He doesn’t want us to trust the Good Shepherd at all. He wants to lure us to a place that he says is better, but it’s not. Where he wants to take us will destroy us. The enemy wants us running on the hamster wheel.
Have you ever seen a hamster running on the wheel? It is interesting to watch. The hamster is running for all it's worth on that wheel, but he’s not going anywhere. He’s just wearing himself out. If you are lucky, you might see a hamster get a little behind the speed of the wheel and wipe out. He just got too tired to keep up with the wheel. This is what the enemy wants. He doesn’t want us to “lay down in green pastures” (Psalm 23:2). He wants us on that wheel so we are tired and worn out. He knows that when we are tired and worn out we are more likely to give in to his lies and schemes. Let’s look at a story from the life of Jesus for more.
After Jesus was baptized, He was taken out to the wilderness by spirit. Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. The devil came to Him during that time of weakness and started talking to Him [1]. The enemy was trying to get a seat at Jesus’ table.
The enemy tempted Jesus with food first. After all, Jesus was hungry. The enemy told Jesus to turn stones into bread. He probably talked like this “Hey Jesus, 40 days and 40 nights is a long time to go without food. I bet you’re hungry. I bet you could use a nice piece of bread with butter. Oh, look at these stones. They are shaped sort of like bread. Hey, I know what you could do, you could turn these stones into bread and have all the bread you want. Won’t that be nice? I bet it would be good.” But Jesus refused and quoted Scripture and told the devil that “people do not live by bread alone” [2]. The enemy comes in when we are weak and goes right for our weakest point. This is exactly what he did to Jesus, Eve, and what he does to us. He attacks our weaknesses. When the enemy wants to get us to fail, he attacks the areas he knows we will cave easiest. Whether it’s what we think of ourselves, drugs, alcohol, or porn. The enemy gets our attention, lured us in, and before we know it we are in trouble. It is important to remember that the Scripture Jesus quoted also said “but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”[2]. We need to keep focused on the Good Shepherd and the words He tells us at the table.
The enemy then tempted Jesus with stuff. He took Jesus up to the highest place he could so Jesus could see everything. The enemy told Jesus that it could all be His if He would just worship him. But Jesus once again quoted Scripture and told the enemy that God is the only One to worship [3]. This is the same thing the enemy does to us. He tries to tell us that things are better at a different table (the lie of comparison we talked about last week). He also will tell us, like he did Jesus, that if we do certain things or act a certain way we will get what we want. This is all a lie. Jesus had the right answer, we need to be at the table with the Good Shepherd.
The enemy lastly tempted Jesus to test God. The enemy took Jesus to a high point and told Him to jump off because “He will order his angels to protect and guard you. And they will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone” [1][4]. But Jesus told the enemy to ”get out of here”[1] and then quoted Scripture again telling the enemy to not test the Lord [5]. The enemy does the same to us as well. He tries to get us away from the table and take a flying leap into something that he knows isn’t going to help us at all. He just wants to get us away from the table. This is what he was doing to Jesus. He was trying to get Jesus away from the table. But as Jesus did, we can tell the enemy to “get out of here” and because we are at the table with Good Shepherd, the enemy has to get lost.
But this wasn’t the end of the enemy’s attacks on Jesus. The Bible says this after Jesus’ altercation with the enemy:
“When the devil had finished tempting Jesus, he left him until the next opportunity came.” - Luke 4:13 NLT
The enemy doesn’t give up that easily. He didn’t give on attacking Jesus and he doesn’t give up on attacking us either. This is an ongoing battle we have to keep our seat at the table. But we can fight it by keeping our attention on the Good Shepherd as Jesus did. We need to hang on to every word that the Good Shepherd has for us. We need to keep our focus on the Good Shepherd as Jesus did, no matter how the lure looks. The lure the enemy is using doesn’t lead us anywhere good because it will lead us away from the table with the Good Shepherd. Stay focused on the Good Shepherd and hang on His every word - for He is your life! [6]
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**This series is based on the book Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table” by Louie Giglio. The thoughts and ideas in this post come from the book, but are put into my own words and are not directly quoted. All direct quotes from the book will be noted as such and identified. You can pick up a copy of the book wherever you buy your books.
[1] The Temptation of Jesus is recorded in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. For this post, I referred to both passages.
[2] Deuteronomy 8:3
[3] Deuteronomy 6:13
[4] Psalm 91:11-12
[5] Deuteronomy 6:16
[6] Deuteronomy 30:20
“by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding closely to Him; for He is your life [your good life, your abundant life, your fulfillment] and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord promised (swore) to give to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. - Deuteronomy 30:20 AMP
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