Why Be Watchful?: Pt 1

Intro

We started this study by looking at what it looks like to be watchful.

Today we are going to start wading into the reasons for being watchful.

Over the next couple of weeks we are going to unpack the reasonings given in our book.

Watchfulness can see like an exhausting task.

It can even seem unimportant in situations where spiritual safety is relatively felt.

But it is the times that we fall asleep at the wheel that we are most likely to crash.

The cost of watchfulness is worth it because the cost of not being watchful is greater.

Our book gives us 7 reasons to be watchful.

I’m sure that we could come up with many more, but this is a pretty thorough list.

Let’s look at the first 3 this morning.

1) Your heart is valuable

2) A hard heart is dangerous

3) Temptation is always just around the corner

The Value of the Heart

You have to see your heart as valuable.

Your hearts rules the way that you feel.

Your heart is the source of your words and actions.

Luke 6:45 ESV

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Your heart is indivisibly linked to your soul and is changed when Christ saves you.

Ezekiel 36:26 ESV

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

The problems is, while we can trust our Savior, we cannot trust our hearts.

Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Our hearts deceive us by being drawn to sin as if it were a magnate.

It constantly wants to return to it’s old master.

And we, if we truly value our hearts have to pull against this.

We have to work to reshape our loves, to reshape our desires.

If our hearts have been changed, we have to keep our hearts.

1 Peter 2:10–11 ESV

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

Wage war!

Be watchful.

Keep your heart in close proximity to Christ because your soul is valuable.

Next...

The Danger of a Hard Heart

Watch over your heart because a hard heart is dangerous.

Hard hearts are not formed overnight.

It’s like the calluses on the fingertips of any guitar player.

They are formed through repeated use and frequent practice.

Likewise, your heart becomes callous to sin by repeated compromise.

It usually begins small.

A little click here.

A little taste there.

A little conversation.

A little white lie.

But, but before you know it, it hardly phases you when you take the next step.

Just as we keep watch because our hearts are valuable yet deceitful, we watch against a hard heart because the heart’s default setting is unbelief.

Hedges says on pg 45...

Unbelief always leads to departure. Sin deceives us, and our hearts are hardened.

- Brian Hedges

Departure from the faith should put a healthy and holy fear within us all.

It should keep us awake and watchful.

Not that you can lose your salvation.

But your response to the gospel can be proven to be shallow or choked out by the cares of the world as the parable of the sower describes in Matthew 13.

If you harden yourself against the gospel time and again, the prick of conviction will become less and less noticeable.

So keep your heart tender through watchfulness, prayer, Scripture.

Intentional care for your heart and cultivate the depths of your faith.

Watch against sin and be quick to confess it when it happens.

Help each other in this!

Hebrews 3:12–13 ESV

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Exhort one another!

Watch out for one another!

Don’t let your heart, or your brother’s heart become hardened by sin!

And that leads us into the final reason for watchfulness that we will examine today...

The Danger of Temptation

In Matthew 26:41, Jesus tells His disciples...

Matthew 26:41 ESV

Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Watch why?

“That you may not enter into temptation.”

Now, let me state alongside our book that it is not a sin to be tempted.

What you do with that temptation is where sin enters into the picture.

James 1:13–15 ESV

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Temptation fans the flame of our desires.

When we give into those desires and submit to them, that is where sin comes into play.

But the only way for temptation to be dealt with rightly is to flee from it!

Think about it.

A temptation saunters into your life and you ignore it.

You haven’t acted on it. You haven’t sinned.

But you have let it take up space and live, unaddressed, in the recesses of your mind.

Just like our hearts become callus to sin, they can become callus to temptation to the point that it tips us over the line and into sin.

So FLEE!

Chase it out!

Deal with it decisively then and there!

And we are once again given the words of John Owen on how to be watchful against temptation.

1) See temptation as dangerous.

It is a threat.

It is a beast.

Treat it as such.

2) Understand that you are helpless against temptation in your own strength.

You need the Lord.

You need others.

You need strength that is outside of you to bear up under temptation.

3) Exercise faith in God’s promises.

He has promised to uphold you.

Take Him at His Word this time, while reminding yourself of how faithful He has been in previous times.

Conclusion

Next week we will unpack the final 4 “whys” behind being watchful.

Let’s take some time to discuss the questions around your table.