CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 13:35. Watch ye.—Be ye wakeful.—A military image. Don’t be caught napping at your post. Same word in Mark 13:37. At even, etc.—The Roman divisions of the night. The four watches, of three hours each, began at sunset and ended at sunrise.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 13:33-37
The command to watch.—In this brief parable the Church is compared to a great mansion, with many offices, duties, servants—a vast, complex, interior ministry, every function of which must be diligently discharged if the house is to be kept in order and the household are to live in comfort and peace.
I. The authority which the departing Master confers on all His servants.—We know that in a household where the father and master is served from love and not from fear, when he goes away for a time, the children and servants, if they are faithful, bestir themselves to shew that they are not unworthy of the trust he reposes in them. A pulse of quickened affection and activity spreads from heart to heart. A new and invigorating sense of responsibility stimulates them to a more steadfast and earnest discharge of duty. If our ruling motive and inspiration be love to Christ, we shall not dream of saying of any work which needs to be done, “This is no business of mine,” or “I am not bound to do that”; we shall be eager to do whatever we can for the general good. No task will be too mean for us, no detail too petty or trivial.
II. Besides this general authority, common to all, we have each of us a special task to do for Him and for the family named after Him. “To each one his own work,” i.e. the work he is specially fitted or called to do. And, indeed, the forms of service are so many, and the call for service so imperative, that no one need lack suitable employment if only he is bent on finding it. None is so weak or so poor in endowment but that he may do a little good, if only he be of a willing mind. In the Household of Faith, as in the world, there are many forms of service, many ways of gaining spiritual food and strength and skill; and there are many servants in it who do not feel that their gifts fit them for one kind of labour more than for another; some doubt whether they have any gifts, any calling, worthy of the name. But if necessity is laid upon them, what will they do? Naturally they will try this kind of work and that, till they find a work which they can do, and perhaps a work they can like as well as do; or they will take up the work that comes first to hand, and gradually make themselves fit for it by doing it. What we chiefly want, if at least we are doing little or nothing for Him, is more love, and of that kind of love which will make us feel that we must do something for Him who has done so much for us. As we get more love we shall do more work, and settle down into our proper vocation.
III. To work we must add watchfulness.—The porter is to look for his lord’s return; but so are all the servants: i.e. they are to expect it, to be ready for it, to desire it. We are not to be as drudges who have no pleasure in their work, nor as hirelings who care only for their wages. Our labour is to be bright with hope, with the hope of a great happiness to come, and that may come at any moment. The Lord is always coming to those who look for His appearing. We see His advent on a large scale in every crisis of the great human story. In revolution, in reformations, when the thoughts of men’s hearts are revealed, when they are summoned to accept new forms of truth or to enter on new spheres of duty, we know that Christ has come once more to try their works, to see whether they have been faithful to Him and are ready to greet Him with love and joy. And in like manner, though not so obviously, He comes to us in the crises of our individual history, when one page of our life is closed and a new page is opened. For each one of us there is an advent of Christ as often as new and larger views of truth are presented to us, or we are called to leave a familiar round of duty and to take up new duties and more laborious. If we are so absorbed in the mere routine of our previous service, or so attached to old forms of truth and labour, that we have no eye for new aspects of truth, and no ear for the call to new labours, we miss another happy chance; we are like servants who, stolidly plodding through a familiar drudgery, do not hear when the Master stands at the door and knocks, and are even flurried and vexed should He bid them do what they have never done before. But if, while going resolutely and happily about our accustomed tasks, we look alertly and hopefully for the joy of Christ’s return; if, because we know so little, we expect Him to teach us new truths; if, because our service is so imperfect, we expect to be called to new and better modes of serving Him, we are like servants who, living daily in hope of the Master’s return, catch the first signal of His approach, hurry out to welcome Him, and are rewarded for their watchful diligence by having greater authority committed to them, and ministries which bring them nearer to His person. And all these advents of Christ, in new truths and new duties, are but preludes of that great personal advent for which we look none the less earnestly because we know neither its day nor its hour. We know that He who once came and dwelt among us in great humility will come again, in the glory of the Father, to complete the work He then began—to finish our redemption, to reward every act of kindness as though it had been done to Him. And therefore we are watchful, and strengthen the things which are ready to die, not suffering any grace to perish out of our hearts in this world’s unkindly weather, but guarding and cherishing it for the summer of eternity; nor permitting any good enterprise to fail for lack of help, but breathing into it the life of our help till happier times arrive.—S. Cox, D.D.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 13:33-36. The duty of watchfulness enforced.—
I. The duty inculcated.—Watchfulness and prayer are often united in the Holy Scriptures as duties of the first importance. In themselves they are different; but in their exercise they are inseparable: neither would be of any avail without the other: prayer without watchfulness would be hypocritical; and watchfulness without prayer presumptuous.
1. What we should watch and pray against. Here we must include everything which has a tendency to lull us asleep. We see how intent men are on all the things of time and sense: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life so occupy them that they find no time nor inclination for spiritual concerns.
2. What we should watch and pray for. To be found ready, at whatever moment our Lord shall call for us, should be the one object of our ambition.
II. The considerations with which it is enforced.—
1. The uncertainty of the time when our Lord shall call us. There is not a moment of our lives when we may sit down secure.
2. The awfulness of being found in a sleeping state. It will be to no purpose to plead that we were not engaged in any wicked projects. We were “slothful servants,” and therefore are justly regarded as “wicked.”
III. Our Lord’s concluding admonition, “What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch,” will lead us to address some different descriptions of persons.
1. The old. Is so much of your time gone, and will you not improve the remainder?
2. The young. What security have you against death, that you should delay so necessary a work?
3. The afflicted. God sends your afflictions on purpose to awaken you from your slumbers, and to stir you up to heavenly pursuits. What an aggravation will it be of your guilt if these dispensations pass away unimproved!
4. The backslidden. What an awful thing is it that, instead of having advanced in the Divine life, you have lost in a good measure the life which you once had! Attend to God’s admonition to the Church of Sardis, lest He execute upon you the judgment that He threatened to inflict on them (Revelation 3:2-3).
5. The more steadfast Christian. Experience proves that the exhortation to “watch” is not less necessary for you than for others. How many who are on the whole pious grieve, by their unwatchfulness, their Divine Master.—C. Simeon.
Mark 13:33. Watch and pray.—Two duties.
1. The activity of the eye earthward.
2. The emotion of the heart Godward. Watchfulness is like the hands of the clock that point; prayer is the weight that keeps the machinery in motion.—T. J. Judkin.
Mark 13:34. Fidelity and watchfulness.—The whole which our Blessed Master, when He ascended into heaven, recommended to the care of His servants, consisted in fidelity and watchfulness: fidelity, in doing everything well which is to be done in His house, in the heart, in the Church, according to the full extent of their duty; watchfulness, in suffering no stranger nor enemy to enter by the senses, which are the gates of the soul, in permitting nothing which belongs to the Master to go out without His orders, and in carefully observing all commerce and correspondence which the heart may have abroad in the world, to the prejudice of the Master’s service.—P. Quesnel.
Every man the porter of his own heart.—It is the business of each one of us to stop, by God’s help, evil thoughts from coming in and good aspirations from going out. We must watch and pray that we enter not into temptation.
Mark 13:36. Remissness and negligence, as well as the greater sins, are often the occasion of our being surprised by death. A porter asleep exposes the house to be robbed, and well deserves to be punished. A Christian whose faith is not watchful exposes his own heart to the enemy of his salvation, and to those who are continually watching, in order to steal away all the valuable things which God has laid up there, as in His own house.—Ibid.
Mark 13:37. Reasons for watchfulness.—
1. Because you are liable to drowsiness and slumber.
2. Because means are constantly being used to seduce you from the ways of saving peace.
3. Because you have given yourselves up as soldiers of the Cross.
4. Because you have many duties to perform.
5. Because you know not when the Master will come to demand an account.
Watch.—
1. To prevent evil.
2. To further good.
Watching for Christ.—He watches for Christ who has a sensitive, eager, apprehensive mind; who is awake, alive, quick-sighted, zealous in seeking and honouring Him; who looks out for Him in all that happens; and who would not be surprised, who would not be overagitated or overwhelmed, if he found that He was coming at once.—J. H. Newman, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 13
Mark 13:33. “Watch and pray.”—The sentinel picketed to watch the enemy does his duty by giving the alarm if the enemy approaches, not by advancing single-handed to the conflict. So the duty of a Christian, watchfully discerning the approach of temptation, is to convey the case to God. It is foolhardiness to adventure into the combat unsent and unprovided for.
Watchfulness and prayer.—“I often recall,” says an old sailor, “my first night at sea. A storm had come up, and we had put back under a point of land which broke the wind a little, but still the sea had a rake on us, and we were in danger of drifting. I was on the anchor watch, and it was my duty to give warning in case the ship should drag her anchor. It was a long night to me. I was very anxious whether I should know if the ship really did drift. How could I tell? I found that, going forward and placing my hand on the chain, I could tell by the feeling of it whether the anchor was dragging or not; and how often that night I went forward and placed my hand on that chain! And very often since then I have wondered whether I am drifting away from God, and then I go away and pray. Sometimes during that long stormy night I would be startled by a rumbling sound, and I would put my hand on the chain, and find it was not the anchor dragging, but only the chain grating against the rocks on the bottom. The anchor was still firm. And sometimes now, in temptation and trial, I become afraid, and upon praying I find that away down deep in my heart I do love God, and my hope is in His salvation. And I want just to say a word to my fellow-Christians: Keep an anchor watch, lest before you are aware you may be upon the rocks.”
Mark 13:34. Work for all.—Let us be thankful that there is a growing and more universal recognition of the Bible teaching, that each individual believer has some apportioned work in the Church of God, some appropriate niche assigned him to fill in God’s sanctuary. Just as it was of old in the Jewish Temple, extending from its outer gates and outer courts, to the rites of the Most Holy Place. Some were engaged in hewing fir and cedar logs for altar fuel: others disposing of the ashes of the sacrifices in the great conduits leading to the Kedron: some ministering as sacrificial priests; others occupied in ceremonial lustrations: some, more honoured, in bringing the golden bowl from Siloam at the Feast of Tabernacles. Here are the silver trumpeters who wake up the city at early morn to the duties of a new day, or at similar stated intervals proclaim the appearance of the new moon. Here are the sons of Korah mingling their voices with “kinnor” and cymbal-tones, chanting psalm and Hallel. Here the sympathetic and beneficent among the worshipping throng are seen as they retire, aiding with alms and deeds the cripples laid at “the Gate Beautiful.” Here are the aged Annas and Simeons coming in to wait for the salvation of Israel; or to present once more their lowly tribute-offering, and sing their nunc dimittis. Here are the children of the Temple twisting wreaths of olive, myrtle, and palm, to greet their Lord with glad hosannas. This daily acted parable of the old Temple dispensation needs no further interpretation. The Great Master gives it in His own laconic words: “To every man his work.”—J. R. Macduff, D.D.
The joy of working for Christ.—A beautiful incident in reference to Mr. Townsend is mentioned in the Life of John Campbell. “Finding him on Tuesday morning, shortly before his last illness, leaning on the balustrade of the staircase that led to the committee-room of the Tract Society, and scarcely able to breathe, I remarked, ‘Mr. Townsend, is this you? Why should you come in this state of body to our meetings? You have now attended them for a long time, and you should leave the work to younger men.’ The reply of Mr. Townsend was worthy of his character. Looking at his friend with a countenance brightened and elevated by the thoughts that were struggling for utterance, his words were, ‘Oh! Johnny, Johnny, man, it is hard to give up working in the service of such a Master!’ ”
This life the time for work.—“Are you not wearying for the heavenly rest?” said Whitefield to an old minister. “No, certainly not!” he replied. “Why not?” was the surprised rejoinder. “Why, my good brother,” said the aged saint, “if you were to send your servant into the fields to do a certain portion of work for you, and promised to give him rest and refreshment in the evening, what would you say if you found him languid and discontented in the middle of the day, and murmuring, ‘Would to God it were evening’? Would you not bid him be up and doing, and finish his work, and then go home and enjoy the promised rest? Just so does God require of you and me that, instead of looking for Saturday night, we do our day’s work in the day.”
The importance of vigilance.—The duty entrusted to the porter is of great importance. His negligence lays the house open to every intruder. If the sentinel falls asleep at his post, the whole army may be surprised and cut off. If the man stationed at the gate is unfaithful, the fortress may be taken without assault, and the whole garrison put to the sword. A man ignorant of the management of a ship, when he sees all hands busily at work, some climbing the mast, others hoisting the sails, and others plying at the pump, will be apt to look on the pilot as a lazy supernumerary who spends his time in gazing idly at the stars, and amusing himself with turning a piece of timber from side to side, not aware that this man’s services are of all others the most essential to the progress of the vessel on her way, and to the safety of all who are on board. In like manner, though there are Christian graces and duties which are of greater dignity, vigilance is of the greatest utility.
Each at his post.—An Arctic explorer found, floating helplessly about among the icebergs of that cold, lonely country, a ship. Going on board, he found that the captain was frozen, and sat dead at his log-book, while the helmsman stood at his post, and the men on watch still on duty, but cold in death. What happiness will it be when our Lord comes to know we have done our duty, and can welcome our Saviour as He bids us “come up higher”!
Mark 13:35-37. On the watch.—How many striking pictures this word brings before us! We may think of the old times when the first colonists settled in North America, when they had planted their log-wood cabin in the little clearing, but knew that the dark woods beyond might at any moment hide the fierce Red Indian. Dreading the treachery of the savage, how often the anxious settler would listen at night for any sound of danger, how carefully would he scan the shadowy edge of the forest! The loaded rifle is kept at hand, the faithful dog unchained. He is perpetually on the alert, watchful against the unseen but stealthy foe. Or the word suggests the watchfulness of a mother over a sick infant: how unweariedly she hangs over the cradle, how quickly she rises at the slightest sound! Or we may illustrate the word by the mariner who paces to and fro looking forth over the sea, lest his vessel should run upon some half-hidden and jagged rock; or the fisherman’s wife placing her little taper in the window as she counts the number of the returning boats.
In daily life how important is watchfulness! A sailing yacht was cruising about the entrance of the English Channel. It was night, but a night clear from mist and fog, when the crew saw a huge steamship approaching. She came on straight in their direction; but as their yacht had lights hung out they felt no alarm, though the yacht could not get out of the way. But still closer and closer came the great steamer. In terror those on the yacht raised their voices and shouted with all their power. There was evidently no watch kept on the bow of the large vessel. Secure in her own strength, she swept onwards, and the crew of the little pleasure-boat foresaw that instant death was imminent; the monster ship would crush them down and pass over them and leave no trace behind. But at the very last moment, by God’s mercy, she changed her course slightly, and passed close alongside instead of over them, and they could note by the many lights in the cabins how merriment and occupations had caused a want of watchfulness which nearly destroyed a number of their fellow-men!—Dr. Hardman.
Watchfulness constantly needed.—No number of false alarms cancels the duty of watchfulness. In the town of Amyclæ, in Italy, false reports of the approach of the enemy had been so often spread that a law was passed forbidding any one to pay attention to them. In consequence of this, when the attack was really imminent, no one felt at liberty to heed the warning that was given, and the city was taken. From this circumstance the epithet of “Tacitæ” (silent) was given to Amyclæ.
Watchfulness—how important to the soldier! In the Middle Ages a town, strongly fortified, had often resisted siege or capture, but one day the gate was thrown open to receive a train of waggons loaded with hay and corn. One of them, accidentally as it seemed, for some trifling cause, stopped under the arch of the gateway. The soldiers on guard observed nothing suspicious in the occurrence, nor marked that the waggon had so stopped that neither could the gate be closed nor the portcullis lowered. A moment afterwards the loads of hay were cast aside, and bands of armed men leapt out from their concealment beneath! And thus the city was captured for lack of watchfulness.
A Christian asleep.—The devil held a great anniversary, at which his angels and ministers were called together to report the result of their several missions. “I let loose the wild beasts of the desert,” said one, “on a caravan of Christians, and their bones are now bleaching on the sands.” “What of that?” said the arch-fiend; “their souls are all saved.” “I drove the east wind,” said another, “against a ship freighted with Christians, and they were drowned every one.” “What of that?” replied he again; “their souls were all saved.” Then stood up a third, and he said, “For ten years I tried to get a single Christian asleep, and at last I succeeded, and left him so.” Then the devil shouted, and the night stars of hell sang for joy.