Watch and Pray

We reflect on a day like this on the sufferings of Jesus,
particularly his death on the cross.
But I think we easily forget that part of the battle
for Jesus was not when he got to the cross.
By then, the die was cast, the issues were settled.
The real struggle for Jesus, according to the Gospels,
took place prior to his arrest when he wrestled
with a cup of suffering in Gethsemane,
the battle between good and evil,
the battle between Jesus and Satan,
the battle which Jesus ultimately wins
by his death and by his resurrection,
and the battle that he invites you and me to share in.
And this morning, as we reflect on his journey here
in the Garden of Gethsemane,
and as he begs his disciples to watch and pray with him,
and as we prepare for communion,
I want to share with you as quickly as I can three broad observations.
Please note these, first of all,
according to the Bible, spiritual warfare
is a devastating reality.
That is to say, beyond the physical world that we see,
and all the struggles that we experience in the physical world,
there is a spiritual reality.
Some of it is on the side of God,
some of it is on the side of evil,
and the conflict of the ages continues to this very present day.
And that's why Jesus, in this passage,
as he wrestles with a cup of suffering,
says to his disciples,
watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation.
The Spirit is willing, but the body is weak.
And that also is why the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6 talks
about spiritual warfare in this context.
He says, our struggle is not against flesh and blood,
but against the rulers, against the authorities,
against the powers of this dark world,
and against the spiritual forces of evil
in the heavenly realms.
And what he means is that just as there are people groups,
in this world who vie for power, control, and authority,
so there are also spiritual forces in the universe
who seek to rest the world and its inhabitants away
from the true and the living God.
They are in alliance with the power of hell,
and even as God is trying to build his kingdom
by getting people who will do his will
and who will love him from the heart,
so the Bible teaches Satan,
is constantly at work seeking to draw men and women
away from the true and the living God to serve him.
And while there are many, many tools and methods of warfare
that he uses, there are four in particular,
according to Scripture, that he uses with great effect,
all of which are pictured for us in this Narnia clip.
Let me quickly walk you through them.
His first tool, in his toolbox, is a thing called deception.
The Bible calls him the great deceiver, Jesus says,
he is a liar and the father of all lies.
And he not only deceives nations, lying to them about who they are
and lying about who he is and what he has to offer
and lying about who God is, but he also deceives or tries to deceive
men and women, boys and girls, even God's people.
Here's how Paul puts it, he said, I'm afraid.
But just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning,
your minds may somehow be let astray
from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
And to be deceived is to buy the lie.
It's to be blinded, it's to have your vision be clouded.
And in the video clip, you see that represented by the fog.
Isn't that an amazing green fog that comes pouring in?
You know, I'm always the kind that looks at how the world
really do this.
And how do they make that look so real?
Because you do know it's not real, right?
But there's the fog.
And the fog causes them to not be able to see.
The captain of the ship says, I can't see a thing through this fog.
And then the fog has all these voices that are whispering
in the background that pictures the great deceiver
who is the whisperer.
And how many times in our own lives aren't we led astray
because we listen to the whispers,
the gossip, the slander sometimes,
the lies about God and the lies about reality.
Satan is the great deceiver.
But the second tool is that of temptation.
Watch and praise, Jesus, to His disciples here,
that you will not fall into temptation.
The Spirit is willing, but the body is weak.
And temptation, of course, is when we are drawn into something
that we should not do.
And it happens when Satan finds something in us
that he can grab hold of and play with.
And James puts it this way, he says,
when tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me.
For God cannot be tempted by evil.
Nor does he tempt anyone.
But each one is tempted when by his own evil desire.
He is dragged away and enticed.
Then after desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin
and sin when it is full grown, gives birth to death.
Each one is tempted, he says,
when by his own evil desire, he is dragged away
and he is enticed.
It's Fisherman's language.
You bait the hook.
You try to trick the fish into believing that this is good food.
But the idea is to get your hook in him
so that you can drag him away.
And the temptation in the clip shows up particularly
in the form of these figures that are morphing
out of the fog of confusion.
There is the white, the wicked witch,
who first appears in the first movie, The Lion,
which in the wardrobe.
And it appears in the form of Caspian's father,
who, as we'll see in a moment, accuses him.
And temptation comes in the form too
of the wicked witch saying to Edmund,
come with me, be my king, I'll let you rule.
What can be more tempting, what can be more enticing
to a young man than the prospect of power and authority?
In fact, we know from the rest of the movie,
if you want to carefully, the monster,
when he surfaces, is the extension of Edmund's fears.
It becomes the personification of what lives inside.
So Satan is a deceiver, Satan is a tempter,
but he is also what the Bible calls the accuser
of the brethren, Revelation 1210,
the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them day and night before our God
has been hurled down.
And if the devil first the devil tries to deceive us,
then the devil tries to tempt us,
and then when he is succeeded into drawing us into sin,
what does he do?
He accuses us.
And who of us here hasn't found himself
or herself in a situation where we have been paralyzed
about going forward with God
because our sins and our failures stared us in the face.
How many of us have hesitated talking to our neighbors
in finding the hope campaign because,
well, we've had some bad experiences with our neighbors,
and we're a little squeamish about trying to preach to them.
Or how many of us don't boldly dare to go forward in prayer
or in committing ourselves to the purposes of God
because, well, we know that, you know,
we've got some things that we're sitting in or on
and areas that our lives have entered into
that we're not particularly proud of,
and it all comes to us, and so we just shut down
and fall asleep like the disciples
because it takes too much energy.
Jesus says, watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.
And we see temptation or accusation,
and we see accusation here, of course,
particularly in the context of Kaspian's father
coming to young Kaspian Prince.
He says, you're a great disappointment to me.
You call yourself my son, act like a king.
Can you imagine what that feels like
when you get the rug pulled out from underneath you,
like that?
So Satan employs deception, he employs temptation,
he employs accusation,
but he also employs destruction
because the Bible calls him a murderer and a destroyer.
And Jesus talking to the Jews in John chapter 8
when they plan to kill him, he says,
you belong to your father, the devil,
and you want to carry out your father's desire,
he was a murderer from the beginning.
And of course, in the movie clip,
you see that in the form of this sea serpent
or the mighty dragon.
And again, you marvel at the ability of movie makers
to make that real and the conflict of the ages.
Throughout the Bible, Satan begins as the serpent,
but he ends up as the mighty dragon
because as history unfolds and he wins more and more people
over him, he gets more and more power.
Because you see Satan doesn't have a lot of power in the world
except through you and me and all the rest of humanity.
And so where he gains the power,
his aim is always to destroy, he is a murderer.
And we read then in the book of Revelation
that as the Abyss, the pit of hell gets opened up
and all the evil spirits are released,
they had as king over them, the angel of the Abyss,
whose name in Hebrew is Abandoned and in Greek Apollyon.
And both those terms in English mean the great destroyer.
Satan, if he can get hold of your life,
will destroy you spiritually, emotionally,
and physically.
Spiritual warfare is a reality.
And whether we know it or not, accept it or not,
believe it or not, the Bible says it is real.
And one of his most powerful tools, of course,
is to let us asleep so that we cannot watch
and we cannot pray.
Ask the disciples, they were experts at it.
Second observation I want to make quickly,
is that according to the Scriptures of the Church,
plays a rather critical role in the issue of spiritual warfare.
Because listen again to the words of Jesus
to His disciples, watch and pray so that you will not fall
into temptation, the Spirit is willing,
but the body is weak.
He says, in my moment of aloneness,
in my moment of my greatest struggle where I am wrestling
with God about what it is that awaits me,
I need you to be there for me and watch and pray.
And of course, earlier on in the Gospels,
when he sends out his disciples, the 70 of them,
and they come back all excited, he says,
I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions
and to overcome all the power of the enemy.
Nothing will harm you.
And again, Paul, in that classic passage, Ephesians chapter 6,
he says, in light of the fact that we don't fight
against flesh and blood, put on the full armor of God
so that when the day of evil comes,
you may be able to stand your ground.
And after you have done everything to stay in.
It's the human race that let the devil into the world
when Adam and Eve first fell into seeing.
It's the human race that under Christ,
as we'll see in a few moments, has the responsibility
to get the devil out of here.
And we do that by making sure that he does not have ground
in us.
And the Bible teaches that as we try to walk faithfully
before God and avoid giving him the ground,
then Satan's power gets broken.
Paul writing to the Roman says,
I want you to be wise about what is good
and innocent about what is evil.
And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
And so in the movie, you see Prince Caspian
and his crew and Edmund particularly engaged
in battling the monster.
And what a battle it is because it is winner takes law.
And if you're a follower of Christ this morning,
then he invites us to watch and pray with him,
and he invites us to share with him
the battle that rage is for the control of this world.
The church is a critical component in the waging
of spiritual warfare and bringing about the coming
of God's kingdom.
So spiritual warfare is real.
The church plays a critical role in spiritual warfare.
But the victory, of course, belongs to Jesus.
He is the seed of the woman who overcomes the seed
of the serpent, prophesied in Genesis 3, verse 15.
And the apostle Paul writing about his victory on the cross
describes it this way, having disarmed the powers
and the authorities, he that is Christ,
made a public spectacle of them,
triumphing over them by the cross.
And Satan thought he had Jesus in his grip
when he could lead him to the cross and kill him.
And I believe all hell stood on its heels with great applause
when Jesus finally breathed his last.
But oh, what a miscalculation.
Because little did they understand the wisdom of God
because God had determined that through death,
the prince of death would be destroyed.
Remember, Jesus was without seed.
He didn't die because Satan killed him.
He didn't die because the Romans nailed him to a cross.
He didn't die because they stuffed a spear up his side.
He died because he gave up his life.
And because he gave up his life,
he had the power, as he says in John's Gospel,
to take it back up.
And so as we'll celebrate Lord Willough at Easter Sunday morning
from the grave, he arose as the song says,
with a mighty triumph or his foes.
Jesus paved the way.
He conquered the serpent,
and he reigns today as Lord of Lords and King of Kings.
And that in the video is represented by the seven swords.
The seven swords in the movie belong to the seven lost Lords.
And the purpose of the voyage of the dawn treacher
is to recover all those seven swords
and place them on Aslan's table.
Did you see that happening when Eustace?
You know, he gets hit by the remaining sword
which comes from this last island.
Don't you love that wave of sand?
The way he just scoots in there.
My land, that's a beautiful sight to behold.
But then along comes Aslan.
And with a mighty roar,
the dragon that he has become returns into Eustace,
who now has learned his lesson
and engages into spiritual battle.
And takes that final seven sword,
puts it on Aslan's table.
And then you see that old beam of light
which represents the resurrection life,
the victory of the Lord Jesus.
And it is then, of course,
that Edmund stabs the dragon in that might he last seen.
And don't you love the way that he keels over?
And he gets lost in the water.
And what a picture in the book of Revelation.
More in that last and final day,
Jesus Christ with his church
through his angels takes the mighty dragon,
who has caused so much bloodshed
and so much pain and so much agony.
And he throws them into the lake of fire,
where he will be tormented forever and ever.
And I don't know about you,
God's people are all going to stand around.
And they are going to whoop and hauler
and praise God in ways that you have never seen.
If you think people celebrate
when they are delivered from an enemy,
if you think people are excited when freedom comes to them,
imagine the kind of celebration
that's going to be in all creation.
When evil is finally slain,
never to return.
And God makes the new heavens
and a new earth.
I don't know, that's still you anywhere at all.
Man, that's where history is going.
And your challenge in my challenge
is we celebrate Good Friday today.
It's to watch and pray.
It's to stand guard
and to avail ourselves of the victory of Jesus,
knowing not only that spiritual warfare is real,
but you and I are caught up in it,
and we have a mighty role to play in it.
And you will have found as I have
that the more you commit yourself to following Jesus,
the more you commit yourself
to wanting to see His kingdom come
where the nations of the world become
the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,
the more spiritual warfare your experience is,
that not true.
Most of us didn't even know that devil existed
until we became Christians.
And most of us even as Christians
didn't really know that devil existed until we said,
Lord, use me any way that you want to use me.
And all of a sudden we discovered
there was trouble in the horizon, didn't we?
We hear the whispers.
Do you ever hear the whispers?
God's not real.
Who do you think you are?
You're the first weight until I tell everybody
what your fears are.
Just wait until I expose your past history
to other people to hear and to see.
Do you know what the fears are?
Do you know what the whispers are?
Do you know what the fog is when it comes rolling in
and you don't know the top from bottom
and you say, I don't even know what God exists.
And I believe all the right things, I think,
but I can't connect.
I can't connect with God.
I can't connect with other people.
I've never been in that kind of place.
No?
Me the only one?
Be a little honest with me, please.
And what about temptation?
The temptation to have you reach, succeed your grasp?
The temptation to bypass the cross
and to be significant and to be important.
Edmund, I can make you a king.
Doesn't that remind you of Jesus
in the wilderness and the devil coming along
showing him all the kingdoms of the world
and saying to him, all of these in their glory
I will give you if you will put bad down.
And worship me.
And how many of us haven't compromised
our commitment and our loyalty to Jesus
here and there and everywhere?
Because we wanted to be rich or we wanted to be successful
or we wanted to be loved or we wanted to be seen
or we wanted to be recognized.
And how many times haven't we stepped into things
that we shouldn't have stepped into?
Because the tempter was there.
He knew how to find my places of vulnerability.
He's not going to attack you where you got your armor
in place.
He's going to find a chink in your armor.
And he knows you better than you know yourself
and he knows exactly where to point the arrow
to pull the rug out from underneath you.
And how many of us here haven't faced the voice
of the accuser at some point or another?
You call yourself a Christian?
You'll never overcome that sin.
God doesn't really love you.
He may love everybody else.
He's not going to do for you what you want him to do.
He knows how to find your failures.
He knows how to find your past sins
and he loves to rub your nose in it and he loves to tell you,
well, you're never going to make it
because you just don't have what it got.
What you need to have.
So just give up and throw yourself back into sin
because, well, you've gone so far,
there's really no redeeming.
And how many of us haven't met him as the destroyer?
The one who destroys body, soul and spirit.
I see this happens so often somebody will give their life to Jesus.
And I know often it makes us afraid
and the first thing that happens is they could diagnose with an illness
or they develop emotional struggles in some places
where they never had struggles before.
And then the temptation is to just throw in the towel
to say this is too dangerous, this is too hard,
and we fail to recognize the nature of spiritual warfare.
Jesus sweat drops of blood.
He was sorrowful even to the point of death
because he knew the horror that awaited him
because the cup of suffering that he faced
was not only fighting all hell and all its powers,
it was to take upon himself all sin and all consequences of sin
for the whole human race throughout the course of history.
And when you're the perfect son of Gohan
and you have to be abandoned by your father
and you have to subject yourself to the powers of hell,
that is horror beyond comprehension.
But he did it so that he could give life to you and to me.
And this morning, as in a few moments,
we turned to the celebration of communion.
He died and he arose to give us new life.
And he says to you and to me,
there is a spiritual battle that wages.
And he says to you and to me,
I want you to watch and pray with me,
I want you to share that battle with me.
And he says, when you get tired,
when you get fatigued, when it seems too much,
remember, I went there first.
I won the victory.
I gained the battle, the victory is secure.
You abide in me and I abide in you
and I will give you what it takes to be faithful to the end
and to watch the victory come.
Because if there is one thing that Scripture is absolutely about,
we're on the winning side.
And evil may abound.
Family and friends may abandon and forsake us.
They may turn their backs on us.
Evil may increase.
Nations may go in battle against nations.
But the reality is,
the Lamb sits on the throne.
And he is waiting for every enemy
to be made a stool for his soul.
And he is recruiting soldiers in the battle.
People that will take up his victory and his sword.
And who, by not loving their lives,
even unto death, who by the word of their testimony
and who by the blood of the Lamb,
will stand firm and solid,
until all hell is gone.
Will stand firm and solid,
until all hell gets cast into the lake of fire
and God's kingdom will come.
So would you join me this morning
in our celebration of communion,
knowing that we are joined both in the death
and in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
He grants us his spirit.
And as we abide in him and he abides in us,
he'll show us how to do that.
And he'll take the weakest of us and make us strong.
Because the power doesn't lie in our own strength,
it lies in Aslan's sword.
And Aslan's sword when it stabs the dragon,
brings him down and drowns him in the abyss.
I love the gospel.
I don't know about you.
I love the victory that God has promised to his people.
Amen.
Stand with me as we pray.
Lord Jesus, we're just so grateful
that you have overcome.
And that you share your victory with us.
And that you'll love us enough to invite us
to join with you in the battle.
And you know what that looks like for each one of us.
You know those places where
we're the whispers undo us.
The places where
we can't seem to resist that temptation.
Those places where
the accusation just knocks the socks off us,
time it again.
And those places where we feel the clutches of the enemy
on our body and our soul and on our spirits.
Help us, Lord, to believe your word
when you say that in your authority
we can tread on serpents and scorpions.
And all the power of the enemy has been gone.
Jesus has paid it all.
Thank you, Lord God,
that it may be Friday today.
But Sunday is a coming.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Jesus is praying.
Peter is asleep.
Judas is betrayed.
But Sunday is coming.
It's Friday.
Pilate's struck.
The counselor is conspired.
The crowd is vilified.
They don't even know that Sunday is coming.
It's Friday.
The disciples are running light,
sheep without a shepherd.
Mary is crying.
Peter is denying.
But they don't know that Sunday is a coming.
It's Friday.
The Romans beat by Jesus.
They roam Him in scar.
They crown Him with thorns.
But they don't know that Sunday is coming.
It's Friday.
Jesus walked the calf.
His blood tripped.
His body stumbled.
And his spirit spurred.
But you see it's only Friday.
Sunday is coming.
It's Friday.
The world's winning.
People are sick.
And evil grip.
It's Friday.
The soldiers nailed my Saviour's hands to the cross.
They nailed my Saviour's feet to the cross.
And then they raise Him up next to Christ.
It's Friday.
But let me tell you something.
Sunday is coming.
It's Friday.
The disciples are coming.
What is heaven for sinners?
And the Pharisees are seven.
The disciples needy has riddish.
But they don't know.
It's only Friday.
Sunday is coming.
It's Friday.
He paid it all to the cross.
Feeling forsaken by His love.
Left alone and gone.
And nobody seen Him.
Oh, it's Friday.
But Sunday is coming.
It's Friday.
It's Friday.
The fucking year is Friday.
Oh, it's long.
Death and war.
It's coming.
And save just a lap.
It's Friday.
Jesus is dead.
He sold your standings gone.
And a rock is rolled into place.
But it's Friday.
It is only Friday.
It's a cup.