I. How gently, yet how earnestly, does Christ call upon us to watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation. To watch and to pray; for of all those around Him some were sleeping and none were praying; so that they who watched were not watching with Him, but against Him. In our careless state of mind the call to us is to watch; in our over-busy state the call is to us to pray; in our hard state there is equal need for both. And even in our best moods, when we are at once sober and earnest and gentle, then not least does Christ call upon us to watch and to pray, that we may retain that than which else no gleam of April sunshine was ever more fleeting; that we may perfect that which else is of the earth earthy, and when we lie down in the dust will wither and come to dust, too.
II. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How great is the lovingkindness of these words! how gently does Christ bear with the weakness of His disciples! But this thought may be the most blessed or the most dangerous thought in the world: the most blessed if it touches us with love, the most dangerous if it emboldens us in sin. There may be some here who may go on grieving Christ and crucifying Him afresh for as much as seventy years; and He will bear with them all that time, and His sun will daily shine upon them, and His creatures and His word will minister to their pleasure, and He Himself will say nothing to them, but to entreat them to turn and be saved. But as these years pass on Christ will still spare us, but His voice of entreaty will be less often heard; the distance between Him and us will be consciously wider. From one place after another, where we once used sometimes to see Him, He will have departed; year after year some object which used once to catch the light from heaven will have become overgrown, and will lie constantly in gloom; year after year the world will become to us more entirely devoid of God. The increased weakness of our flesh has destroyed all the power of our spirit, and almost all its willingness; it is bound with chains which it cannot break, and indeed scarcely desires to break.
T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 174.
These words of our Lord in the garden, when He came from His agony and found the Apostles asleep, are very sorrowful and touching. They show an ineffable depth of tenderness and compassion. He made the disciples' defence for them; His very warning taught them how to plead with Him; and by teaching it He acknowledged the truth of the plea "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak!" Let us consider these words.
I. By the "spirit" is to be understood what we call the heart or will, illuminated by the grace of God; by the "flesh" is to be understood our fallen manhood, with its affections and lusts, so far as they still remain even in the regenerate. (1) We may trace the weakness of our nature in the great fluctuations of our inner state. (2) We may take as another example of this weakness the speedy fading away of good impressions even in those that live lives of real devotion. (3) This same weakness which besets our imperfect nature, is the reason why we fall so far short, in effect, of our aims and resolutions; and, in a word, of the whole law and measure of obedience.
II. Do not be out of heart at the ever-present consciousness of the weakness of your moral nature. It is well known, and better understood, and more closely scanned by Him to whose perfection you are mystically united. It is the very condition of the regenerate, and the law which governs the knitting together of His mystical body, and the educing of a new creation out of the old, that it should be gradual; imperfection passing into perfection, death being slowly swallowed up of life, sin through long striving cast forth by holiness. Moreover, we know not what mysterious purpose in the spiritual world may be fulfilled even in our weakness; how the glory of the Son of God, and the abasement of sin, may be perfected in our infirmity. And once more, as there seems to be some great purpose in the permission of our weakness, so does there also appear to be as deep a design in permitting the infirmities of the saints to cleave so long and closely about them. We must be made partakers of the humiliation of Christ, and therefore we are left girded with the burden of our fallen nature. It is by learning the depth of our fall and of the evil that dwells in us that we are to be fully abased. Our weakness and faults are left to abide in us that we may learn the perfection of hating what God abhors. They are as a purifying fire, which eats through us with a sleepless pain, and an anguish which cleanses the soul. Our soils and our sins lie so deep, they must needs be long in the refiner's fire. Pray rather that, if need be, you may be tried seven times, so that all may be clean purged out.
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. i., p. 223.
In the precept, "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation," there is enjoined a feeling of apprehension and alarm. It is equivalent to saying, "Do not suffer yourself to be at ease." Beware of quietly enjoying your life. You are lost if you live without fear. As to moral and spiritual dangers, the greater number seem to have determined to indulge in a careless and almost unlimited confidence. As a natural consequence, they are overrun and spoiled and ruined by what they so little dread and guard against that is to say, by temptations.
I. "That ye enter not into temptation." The words seem to say very pointedly: Beware of the beginning, for it is in fatal connection with the next ensuing, and yet connects what is behind. And since temptation is sure to be early with its beginnings, so too should watching and praying; early in life; early in the day; early in every undertaking. "Enter not" that is, that we be cautious of venturing into anything which we have reason to believe or suspect may soon become temptation. It may be fair and harmless at the outset; but how far on? "Enter not" that is, that we be considerate how a thing may become temptation. This demands an exercise of discerning foresight.
II. "That ye enter not" that is, that we may be quickly alarmed at the indications that a thing is becoming temptation. "Here a questionable effect is beginning upon me; nay, but it is a bad effect. Certain principles of truth and duty are beginning to slacken their hold on me." Beware of becoming so partial to a thing that this circumstance shall become a trifling matter. You may have seen such examples; uneasiness has been felt for a while; there may have been a questioning whether to relinquish the object; but the heart grew faster to it. Be cautious of pursuing an evident good in a way in which there must be temptation. Be specially fearful of that where, if there be good to be obtained, the good is to come afterwards, but the temptation first. If the temptation coming first shall blind my discernment of the good cool my zeal or destroy my relish of it I should stop with the temptation and abandon the good. Beware of the kind of companionship that directly leads into temptation. But let no man be beguiled to think that he is safe against temptations at the times when his only companion is himself. The whole tempting world may then come to him through the medium of the imagination. The great deep of his own evil heart may be broken up. In this solitude may come that tempter that came to our Lord in the desert. In truth, unhappily there is no situation or employment in which temptation is not to be apprehended.
J. Foster, Lectures,vol. i., p. 42.
References: Matthew 26:41. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 418; J. H. Thom, Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ,p. 114; F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxviii., p. 60; J. Pott, A Course of Sermons for the Lord's Day,vol. i., p. 346. Matthew 26:42. H. Allon, Three Hundred Outlines from the New Testament,p. 30.