In trying to improve my personal prayer life, I’ve been studying the teachings of Jesus about prayer in the New Testament. It has been very rewarding, enlightening, edifying, motivating, and at times troubling. This morning’s session was one of the latter. I’ve been working on the passage in Mark 14:36-39 about the Savior’s prayer in Gethsemane. Parallel versions are in Matthew 26:36-46 and Luke 22:39-46.
Jesus has the disciples who are with him sit while he goes to pray. In Mark 13:34 he tells them to “tarry ye here, and watch.” In his prayer, he asks the Father if this “hour” might pass from him. Inverse 39 of Matthew 26 he prays that “this cup may pass from me.” It seems evident that he is asking if he may be relieved from the suffering he is experiencing in Gethsemane. Yet, he tells his Father, “Nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.”(Mk. 14:36) He returned to find the disciples sleeping and gives this instruction in verse 38:“Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.” A similar injunction is in Mt. 26:41, but it is not in the Luke account. However, in Luke 21:36 there is something similar: “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” It is the “watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation” that upon closer examination has come to trouble me a bit.
The same Greek word is translated watch in Mark and Matthew, and it basically means to “keep guard,” or be “vigilant” or to “watch,” according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. There are other Greek words translated watch in the New Testament and it is used 29 times there. Interestingly, another Greek word that is translated watch is accompanied by the injunction to be sober. (See 2 Tim. 4:5; and especially1 Peter 4:7.) This is because the Greek word means to abstain from wine or avoid intoxication.
A watch can refer to a sentry or a group of guards, who are on guard or watch at a military instillation, or in a community at night. In both Jewish and Roman culture the nights were divided up into watches, when a watch was on guard for a certain period of time during the night. So the question arises what are we to understand by the phrase be on guard, vigilant, and watchful and prayerful so that you will not enter into temptation?
Some commentaries are helpful here, but I was particularly struck by several who note that the idea of the watch is often associated with the military and it is worthwhile to consider the implications of this “military figure.” W. H. Aitken said no soldier likes watch duty. They prefer the excitement and danger of the battlefield to the “long weeks of patient vigilance” required of watch duty. Another point he makes is that the military analogy is about war, and “it is just so in the spiritual war” we are engaged in. He goes on to say that the guards have to be vigilant against the double dangers of the night and of intoxication.
But intoxication is not my worry or the point of this blog. The point is that to watch implies that we are to expect the approach of an enemy. That includes an examination of possible points of attack. That is what you prepare for, and where you prepare. Aitken continues:
We need to remember that we are in an enemy's land, and that unless we are constantly breathing the atmosphere of heaven, the atmosphere of earth, which is all that we have left, soon becomes poisonous, and must produce a sort of moral intoxication.(1)
The famous early American preacher, Henry Ward Beecher agrees with Aitken:
It is here taken for granted that we are making a [military] campaign through life. The assumption all the way through is, that we are upon an enemy's ground, and that we are surrounded, or liable to be surrounded, with adversaries who will rush in upon us, and take us captive at unawares. We are commanded, therefore, to do as soldiers do, whether in fort or in camp — to be always vigilant, always prepared.”(2)
In 2018, President Dallin H. Oaks taught:
Opposition is part of the plan, and Satan’s most strenuous opposition is directed at whatever is most important to God’s plan. He seeks to destroy God’s work. His prime methods are to discredit the Savior and His divine authority, to erase the effects of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, to discourage repentance, to counterfeit revelation, and to contradict individual accountability. He also seeks to confuse gender, to distort marriage, and to discourage childbearing—especially by parents who will raise children in truth.(3)
Vigilance and watchfulness requires that we must make a thorough assessment of our present situation in life and of our weaknesses–the places we are vulnerable to attack from the Adversary. This is where the discomfort begins for me. I have tried to be vigilant about many things through my life, but I honestly have to admit there have been very few times when I have seriously sat down and conducted an introspective review of my weaknesses and then prayed for guidance to set in place a plan to deal with them and for the strength to follow the plan through to completion. Beecher said,
Watchfulness requires that a man should be honest, and should know where he is, and where his danger is. Let others set their watch where they need it, and you set yours where you need it. Each man's watchfulness should be according to his temperament and constitution.”(4)
He added another helpful reminder:
Your excess of disposition, your strength of passion, and your temptableness are not the same as your neighbour's. Therefore it is quite foolish for you to watch as your neighbour watches. Every man must set his watch according to his own disposition, and know his own disposition better than anybody else knows it.(5)
My resolve is to be awake, alert, and vigilant, and to make such an assessment and consult God to give me the vision to see the dangers, to honestly see my most serious weaknesses, and in creating a strategy to deal with those that he wants me to bolster and fix now. Consider joining me in this endeavor to step to a higher and holier way.
Let’s think together again, soon.
Endnotes:
1. W. H. Aitken, “Watchfulness,” in Biblical Illustrator, at Mark 14:38. Biblical Illustrator is a multi-volume compilation of “illustrations” which are generally helpful quotations which illuminate a particular Biblical passage. All citations from this source are available online at Biblehub.com, at Mark 14:38. It is located in the list of commentaries under the acronym BI.
2. Henry Ward Beecher, “Watching–A Military Figure,” in Biblical Illustrator, at Mark 14:38.
3. Dallin H. Oaks, “Truth and the Plan,” Ensign (November 2018): 27.
4. Beecher, “Advantage In Knowing One’s Weak Point,” in Biblical Illustrator, at Mark 14:38.
5. Beecher, “Each to Guard Against His Temptations,” in Biblical Illustrator, at Mark 14:38.
