Watch and Pray

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family. 

We’ll be in Luke 21 again today, finishing Luke 21 out. Luke 21 verses 34 through 38. Before we go into the text, I just want all of us to think through a scenario together. Think through just a normal Sunday morning at Christ Fellowship. Where you come in and you’re talking with people before the service. Then Mike comes up here to preach. We’re all listening. And this is what Mike says. Mike says, there’s a war coming here soon. Mike says, nations are going to start battling against each other. We’re going to run out of food soon. Disease is going to start to spread. And more than that, we’re actually going to start being persecuted for our faith. And those who you think are closest to you are going to turn their backs on you. Or get into this period of suffering. And then Jesus is coming back. So if Mike just laid all of that out on Sunday morning, that’d be a lot for us to take in. Like, wow, that’s Mike’s really bringing a lot to us this morning. But that’s pretty much what Jesus just tells his disciples in Luke 21. He’s teaching them. Jesus tells them that nations are going to start warring against each other. He tells them that famine and disease are starting to come. He tells them that they’re going to be persecuted, betrayed. Some of them are even going to suffer death. So it’s a lot for the disciples to take in. And I’m assuming the disciples are probably like, what are we supposed to do now? We know all of this is coming. We know we have a hard road ahead of us. What do we do now after hearing this? And I think we, we’re not the disciples, right? But we have a hard road ahead of us as well. And we may not face the same trials, but we will face trials. We will experience the chaos of this world. We’ll experience suffering in our own lives here. And we need to ask that question as well. What do we do now? How do we go forward as we wait for Christ to return? And in our text today, Jesus, he gives us this instruction. These two pieces of instruction he gives to the disciples are this. He tells them to watch and he tells them to pray. It’s very simple. Watch and pray. Let’s go ahead and read our text. Luke 21 beginning in verse 34. But watch yourselves, bless your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life. And that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place and to stand before the Son of Man. And every day he was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and lodged on the Mount called Olavet. And early in the morning all the people came to him in the temple to hear him. So the first instruction that we see Jesus give here is watch. But notice that he doesn’t say watch all these signs that are going to come. He tells them to watch themselves. He says watch yourselves as these signs take place. My brother and I joke because at every big family gathering where we have all of our extended family come, he gets all the legal questions because he’s a lawyer, my family coming up to him, asking him legal questions. And I get all the end times questions since I’m in ministry. Like, what does this war mean about Jesus coming back and all of this? I’ve heard some crazy theories, none of them true yet. But I think this instruction is pretty helpful for us. Yes, on the one hand Jesus does say there are signs that are going to take place. Maybe the most obvious one is we’ll see Jesus coming out of the clouds. But at the end of all these signs Jesus says, hey, just watch yourself. Watch over yourself as you’re waiting. I think we love to watch the world around us. Maybe we’re probably not all trying to figure out the end times. But I think we do have the tendency to look around at signs in our life, try to figure out what’s God’s plan here, what is God trying to bring about in my life that I need to work and figure out. I can fall into that, what is God’s plan for me? What’s going to happen in the future? And really I think this is relaxing, affirming instruction that all we have to do is just mind our own conduct. We trust that God has a plan. God’s going to bring his plan about, our responsibility to watch over ourselves. Verse 34, Jesus says, Watch yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness in the cares of this life. And so really the image that Jesus is painting here, what it means to watch ourselves, he’s painting this image of like a guard standing watch at night and the guard’s trying to stay awake. He’s paying attention to himself, trying to stay awake so that he doesn’t fall asleep. That’s what watch means. He says, don’t don’t your hearts be weighed down, which is a Greek phrase basically meaning don’t fall asleep. Don’t let your hearts fall asleep. And so what Jesus is saying here is as we wait, we need to pay attention to ourselves and guard ourselves against the things that can put us to sleep. The things that can leave us unprepared for him to return. The things that weigh our hearts down and make us numb and unaware of the call to faithfulness. I think one of the worst feelings is when you wake up and you realize that you’ve overslept and you’ve missed a meeting or something like that. Recently I overslept and I missed a lunch meeting, which is like embarrassing. It It 11 a.m. and I had to text this guy, hey, I’m sorry, I just woke up, not going to make it. So it’s a horrible feeling. And I think when we think through why does that happen, as I was thinking through it, why do we sleep past our alarm or fall asleep when we need to be awake? I think usually it’s because we’re pouring all of our time and all of our energy into something else the night before. If I stay up late, if I stay up till 2 a.m. watching TV, I’m going to be drained and it’s going to be harder to wake up in the morning. And I think this is the principle that Jesus is getting at here. He’s saying these things in the world that try to weigh you down, they’re trying to distract you and put you asleep to the call to faithfulness as you wait. And he lists a couple categories of what these things could be. He says, don’t let your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness in the cares of this life. That’s that first category, dissipation and drunkenness. He’s just referring to a very obvious sinful lifestyle where you’re drinking all the time or you’re addicted to something. Just a very obvious destructive lifestyle that is calling you away from faithfulness to God. And maybe that’s the case for some of us, these vices that seek to put us to sleep. He gives another category as well where he says the cares of this life. This is more neutral things, right? What are the idols in our life? Maybe they’re not bad in themselves, but we begin to pour all of our heart into this area. Maybe it’s our family, maybe it’s our career, maybe it’s our status. Where are these things that distract us away from the call to faithfulness to readiness that we pour all of our heart into? These things all have the same purpose of distracting us from the faithful call to just wait, to just guard ourselves, to battle against sin, to seek to be faithful. It’s a hard call. Like we said earlier, it’s a hard path that we have ahead of us as we wait for the end. It’s a lot easier to turn to the things that can put us to sleep. It’s a lot easier when we’re feeling anxious, we’re feeling worried, to just get on social media, right? Just not think about anything else. It’s all easier to do that instead of coming to the Lord, being comforted by Him. It’s easy to find all of our identity and our hope and our family, our kids or our spouse, instead of finding our identity in Christ and living out of that. It’s a hard call to faithfulness, but it is a serious call. And Jesus, he pairs it with a serious warning. In verse 35, he says, This This will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. And so Jesus, he’s talking to his followers here and he’s saying like, this applies to you. This applies to us as followers of Jesus. That we need to be ready, that we need to keep watch over our lives and fight to be faithful. Fight to stay awake and stay conscious through the things of God. This is the first instruction we have, so watch ourselves as we wait. But Jesus, he continues to go forward in verse 36. He says, Stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things. And so the next instruction that we see Jesus give here is to pray. He says, pray that you may have strength to escape these things. And I think on an initial reading of this text, at least when I read this text at first, my mind instantly went to, I need to be strong enough to endure these things that are coming. But when we really look at this verse, Jesus says to pray for strength. And so what he’s communicating is actually an act of dependence, that we’re acknowledging that we don’t have strength in ourselves. We need to pray that God will strengthen us to endure these things that are to come. Jesus, he’s not teaching us to rely on our own strength, but to rely on his. As we face these trials, as we face these hardships, I think one of the most discouraging things in the church right now is all the pastors that are falling into scandals. It seems almost normal now to see a big-name pastor, even not a big-name pastor, fall into some, have some moral failing, right? And I wonder when I hear about this, how did they get to that point? How do they get to the point where they decide this sin is worth it? How do they get there? I was listening to a podcast done by a couple pastors recently, and they interviewed some of these pastors that had fallen into sin. And as they were interviewing them, they said that a theme reoccurred over and over again. It wasn’t that these pastors weren’t trying to be faithful. It was that these pastors weren’t asking for help and being faithful. They weren’t opening up to their friends. They weren’t admitting their weakness. They weren’t confessing. They weren’t repenting. They were relying on their own strength, and that’s what led to failure. The truth is, we can’t rely on our own strength to fight these battles, to endure this temptation that comes with living in the world. We don’t have the strength within ourselves to be faithful. Christ is the one who provides us that strength because we are weak, but we have a mighty Savior, a strong Savior. Paul, one of the greatest Christians, we would say, he has a struggle that he talks about in 2 Corinthians, and this is what he says about the struggle that he has. Paul says, three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulties for when I am weak, then I am strong. When you are weak, you are made strong in Christ. As you face these difficulties, as you come to terms with your own weakness, Christ comes and he is your strength as you go forward. This is the instruction that Jesus has for us. Watch over ourselves, identify the areas in our life where we get distracted from being faithful, and cry out to God for his strength. Be aware of the areas that we fall short, that we struggle in, and go to the Lord in constant prayer, asking for help, asking for his strength, admitting our weakness. And as we do this, we find that we do have strength in Christ to escape all these things that already come, and to one day stand before the Lord. Jesus, he says, we’ll escape from these things, we’ll stand before the Lord. This doesn’t mean we’re not going to feel these trials that come. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to be immune to hardship in life. Escaping doesn’t mean we’re not going to feel the effect of pain and temptation and hardship. It didn’t mean that for the disciples, right? After they hear this, they do escape these things, but the disciples, they endure persecution. Some of them endure death. And that’s where the promise of God is in that will, not be affected by the things that already come, but we will not be overcome by them in the strength of Christ. And so this morning, you may be fearful. You may be feeling discouraged about maybe temptation that you’re wrestling with in life. Maybe you have fear that you’re going through of an unknown circumstance in the future. And the promise that we have is that though we will endure these things, Christ, he will sustain you through it. Even though you will fall short, even though you will feel pain, Christ, he promises to be our strength. And so the call for us is to grasp that, to hold on to that as we go through this life. And the truth is that one day we will escape these things, and one day we will stand before Christ as our judge as the Son of Man. And this can seem like a daunting reality for us that one day we’re going to stand before Christ as our judge, and we’re going to give an account of our lives. One day we will all be judged. And so this can be a daunting reality because only perfect righteousness before God is acceptable. God is completely and perfectly holy, and only those who are made holy can stand before him. And the good news this morning is that the strength that we have to stand before God, it doesn’t come from our righteousness, it doesn’t come from our faithfulness over life. The strength that we have to stand before the judge comes from Christ’s righteousness on our behalf. This is really what we see Jesus doing in our texts. We see Jesus being faithful, constantly faithful. In these last two verses, Luke tells us that Jesus, he’s teaching every day in the temple, we’re turning to the mountain of olives every night. And so Jesus, he’s being faithful but I think Luke’s doing more than just wrapping up this narrative. Because in the next chapter, we see all the things that are about to happen to Jesus as he nears this crucifixion. So really what we see happening is Jesus knows that the end is coming for him. He knows that coming soon, Judas is going to betray him. He knows that Peter is going to deny him. He knows that he’s going to be arrested and then mocked. This is what we see in the next chapter of Luke. Jesus, he knows these things are coming and yet as he awaits the end, he is faithful. He remains constant. In the next chapter, as we’ll get to in the coming weeks, Jesus, he’s on the Mount of Olives and he’s praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. And Jesus prays, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done. Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. So what is the instruction that Jesus gives us? It tells us to pray that we may be strengthened to escape the things that are to come. We look at Jesus here, we see him in the garden and what is he doing? He’s praying that he can escape what’s to come. The difference is Jesus, he doesn’t escape what’s to come for him. He is strengthened but he’s strengthened to bear the full weight of what is to come. Jesus, he bears the full wrath of God in our place. He endures the worst suffering for us so that we can actually escape it when we stand before him. Jesus, he turns this day of judgment and he turns this day of wrath into a day of hope and a day of glory for us because this is what he’s achieved for us. And so this is where we find the strength to persevere. As we do go forward, as we do endure hardship, as we struggle with temptation, we have the promise that the righteousness of Christ, the grace and the mercy that we have in him, because he has taken our place on the cross, this is where our strength is found and this is what will get us to the end. Our job is to watch ourselves, our job is to pray that we can be strengthened and that love that he has for us. I want to close with this prayer that we see in Ephesians 3 where Paul, he’s praying for the Ephesians as they are going forward in life, as they are enduring hardship. He prays that they’re strengthened by the love of Christ. This is my prayer for us. This is my prayer for the church, for those in our lives that are trying to walk faithfully. Paul says, I pray that out of his glorious riches, God may strengthen you with power through his spirit and your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord’s holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who’s able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Let’s respond by worshiping our Lord together.