Have you ever had something taken away from right under your nose? You may have been proactive in keeping and eye on it, but what seemed out of no where it disappear.
In a crowded cafeteria sported a large sign reading: “Watch Your Hat and Overcoat.” Bobby was determined man to keep an eye on his coat, and he kept turning every minute, almost choking on his food. His pal, Bubba, kept on eating, without thought of his own coat on the hook. Finally Bubba said, “Calm down. You can stop watching our overcoats.” “I’m only watching mine,” replied Bobby. “Yours has been gone for more than half an hour.”
While in the Navy, I did a lot of keeping watch. Standing watch required us to be in extreme cold and heat, windy and high waves. No matter the condition, we was required to stand watch and being vigilant. Yet, there was a time when I fell asleep on watch, and boy did I get in trouble. But let me tell you, that never happened again. The watch station was on each side of the ship, and each person was in constant communication with the bridge. As soon as we see something, we alerted the bridge officer and sometimes they alerted us if they saw something on radar or sonor. Either way, there was constant communication. Being on watch meant to be prepared for something, being ready to act.
In working with todays sermon, I came across many different angles that I could approach todays subject, and none of them we could get through in just a few minutes. But I would think, the subject of Our Watch Tower, plays a critical role in todays reading from Pauls letter to the people of Corinth.
"For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters ,that our fathers were all under the cloud and they all passed through the sea; and they all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and they all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased; for their dead bodies were spread out in the wilderness. Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they indeed craved them."
We can actually visualize ourselves here as partakers of the same problem as our biblical predecessors in hearing these words. In this chapter, I find keywords like unaware, not pleased, dead bodies, and crave that stand out above others. Paul tells these people not to commit themselves to sinful desires but to stand firm in God. And not only to remove ourselves from the desires but learn from previous examples.
(Larry Gilmore) In Florence, Italy, a young artist labored long and hard over a marble statue of an angel. When finished, he asked Michelangelo to examine it. The young artist concealed himself. No Master looked over the work more carefully – it was perfect in every way. The young artist waited. But his heart nearly broke when he heard, "It lacks only one thing."
The artist could not eat or sleep for days until a friend called on Michelangelo at his studio and asked him what he thought. "It lacks only life." This tells a statement how life is fulfilling and completes us in every way. No matter what sculpture we create, we can actually give life into our actions and words through Christ.
SO when we really think about how we stand firm in Christ in a world full of selfish desires foolish temptations, we must do something, stand watch, and be ready and vigilant.
"These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall."
Without us standing watch, we become lazy, incoherent and even reckless at times. When we give in to the fleshly desires, we fall flat on our faces, don't we? The prophet Habakkuk said in chapter 2 "I will stand my watch and set myself on the tower, and watch to see what He will say to me."
Let us think about Pauls words about how we need to watch out that we do not fall. How do we fall in the first place? Romans tells us for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We each are held captive to the desires of sin and the flesh. I am constantly reminded what God told cain in the book of Genesis "If you do well, will your face not be cheerful? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it."
How could we even consider mastering something as deadly as sin? What tools do we have in our arsenal?
Friends, we have several, from putting on the whole armor of God in the letter to the ephesians to what we are talking about today in Standing Watch in our Watch Tower.
Being ready and prepared is vital to what Christ tells us in scripture. He often states how we are preparing ourselves as a Holy and Living sacrifice. Just as Jesus was tempted in the desert for 40 days, He quoted scripture to defeat the wiles of the devil. He was prepared!. But are we special enough NOT to be tempted, to go beyond our reach to find God? "Therefore let the one who thinks he stands watch out that he does not fall. No temptation has overtaken you except something common to mankind; and God is faithful, so He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it."
The Greek word temptation (pi-ras-mos') means trial, probation, testing, calamity, affliction. This houses the word that we today relate to and experience intimately in some form and fashion in our lives.
So should we think we are special when receiving this trial or temptation? Are we the only ones that ever lived going through something like it? Of course not! But regardless of knowing we are not the only ones going through it, our pain is still real isn’t it? It still hurts.
Standing watch and being prepared is a task each of us need to take in order to conquer as good soldiers in Christ.
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring charges against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, but rather, was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or trouble, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? Just as it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; We were regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Friends, nothing on earth shall ever take hold of us without God's permission and God's ability to help us through it. For us to stand watch, we must be strong and courageous, just as God told. And when we look further into the scriptures, we find the everlasting words in Revelation “Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
We are never to sit idly by and watch the world float by. When we are tempted, tried and persecuted, we need to be ready and not fall short just as Paul mentioned the people of Israel done time and time again. When we stand watch being ever so vigilant, we can rest knowing God is always in control. We can actually breathe with relief. When we look beyond our walls and see the incoming evil of the day, we should hold onto that very same faith found in Jesus the Christ.
Another important concept of standing watch is when Christ returns. In the Gospel of Luke tells us “But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have allowed his house to be broken into. You too, be ready; because the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you do not think He will.” You see, when we are NOT ready, we will actually live a life that ends in destruction. And let me give you a sobering thought! When we fail to stand watch, and when Christ returns to fulfill his promise to all of us, we each, believers and non believers alike will meet God. And some people that are not ready will say these words found in the book of revelation, “and they *said to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the sight of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.”
What a terrifying thought for someone who is NOT ready, that no mountain too high or rock too big can hide us from God. All because they was not ready to meet God. Paul tells the people of Corinth in his second letter, “now is a day of salvation.”
In 1912, 39 year old, Rev. John Harper a Scottish preacher was making a transatlantic trip to preach at the Moody Church in Chicago. As fate would have it the vessel he chose was the Titanic. We all know the story about the disaster but not too many know about John Harper. Harper like many others ended up in the water, and as people desperately tried to survive in the chilled waters, Harper swam to them.
The minister asked people in the water if they knew Jesus. Eventually, Harper approached a passenger clinging to a jagged piece of wood and he pleaded for the man to trust Christ. The minister was completely exhausted at this point. As he succumbed to the conditions and went under the water to his death, Harper said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." A few years later, at a meeting of survivors of the Titantic, the final man who encountered John Harper told the group that he had been saved twice that night. First, he had accepted Christ as his personal Savior because of Harper’s efforts. And, of course, he had been rescued from the deep Atlantic seas. He said “Alone in the night with two miles of water under me I believed, I am John Harpers’ last convert.” Just think, how many others may not have known Christ that night. If only they had been ready! Let us be vigilant friends, be ever so willing to stand watch in resisting the evils of the day, and be ready for Christ’s return. Let us not wait for destruction to hit us, let us be prepared like a good soldier of Christ, as Jesus tells us in Gospel of Luke, “Be prepared, and keep your lamps lit.” Amen