In Peter Allison's sermon, 'Taking Heed to Ourselves,' the focus is on the importance of vigilance and self-examination in the Christian life. The sermon is based on Luke 21, where Jesus warns his disciples to take heed lest their hearts be weighed down by carousing, drunkenness, and the cares of this life, leading to being unprepared for his return. Allison discusses the transition from the end of the Old Testament age to the New Testament age, emphasizing Jesus' messianic reign and the final judgment. He draws a comparison between driving a car and monitoring one's spiritual life, highlighting the need for believers to stay alert to their spiritual state. The sermon warns against becoming spiritually drowsy, distracted by worldly pleasures or concerns, and stresses the necessity of prayer and watchfulness. Allison uses the parable of the ten virgins to illustrate the danger of not being prepared and emphasizes that believers must actively engage in spiritual duties to avoid being caught unprepared. Ultimately, faith in Jesus as the Son of God is presented as the means to overcome worldly distractions and stand worthy before God.

Luke 21. Begin reading this morning at verse 34. Hear God's word. But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing drunkenness and the cares of this life. And that day come on you unexpectedly, for it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the earth.

Watch therefore and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. And in the daytime he was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and stayed on the mountain called Olivet. Then early in the morning all the people came to him in the temple to hear him. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would seal to our hearts your word this morning.

And I ask that you would cleanse my sinful lips that they may proclaim the grace of God and speak holy words. I pray that as we continue to worship, Lord, you would give us faith. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, much of this chapter has been focused on the end of the Old Testament age. I'm not going to review this morning all that we've been looking at and on that, all that this chapter has said on that.

It's, Jesus has talked about what is a rather significant, very significant event in the life of the church at that time, the end of the Levitical priesthood, and the ceremonial types and shadows of the earthly temple, and the inauguration of Christ's messianic reign, and His coming in judgment on the unbelieving and apostate Jews and on the Romans. See, that was the great question in Jesus' day. And rightly so. It was a big event. It was a big change.

And it required a lot of discussion and instruction. But now having explained these signs and the events by which his disciples would be able to recognize these last days, and giving them instructions on what to do when they saw those signs of the last days, Jesus now turns at The end of this private discussion with His disciples on Mount Olivet, He now turns to that day, the end of the New Testament age, and His bodily return in judgment at the resurrection and the final judgment. Now, in Luke it's a rather short close. In Matthew's account there is a whole other chapter that is devoted to this time and to Jesus teaching about it. This is where he told the parable of the Ten virgins the five wise and the five foolish.

This is where he told the parable of talents and he ended with the description of the final judgment, where the sheep would be on one hand and the goats on the other. And Jesus said to the sheep, they would enter into his eternal rest, to everlasting life. But to those on his left, depart into everlasting destruction, everlasting judgment. Now, but in this text, we know that Jesus is referring to a different time for a couple of reasons. Well, in verse 32 and 33 that we looked at last week, he has just said that All these things would take place before this generation, the one that he was talking to, passed away.

And then he says, but, but. So there's a we know that there is a contrast of some sort that is coming. A contrast between what he's been just finished talking about and what he's about to say. And now, And he then in verse 34 speaks about that day, but of that day. Whereas previously he's been speaking about those days.

In verse 6, these things which you see, the days will come in which not one stone is left on another stone. Or verse 22, for these are the days of vengeance that all things which are written might be fulfilled. Or verse 23, but woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing babies in those days, for there will be great distress on the earth and in the land and wrath on the people but but that day is something that will affect the whole earth. The day will come as a snare on those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. You see, previously the signs were affecting Jerusalem.

When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then flee to another city. But this event in this last day, there's no fleeing from anything because it's going to impact all those who dwell in the whole earth. Now, in Revelation, the word for earth that is used here, or geis, refers to the land of Israel. And speaking of the land of Israel, usually in comparison to the rest of the world. But in other contexts, it can refer to the entire earth.

For example, in verse 34, just prior to this, it says, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away. There it refers to the entire earth, not just the land of Israel that won't pass away or will pass away but God's Word won't. And also we see it here in this passage we see it even more so in Matthew's account of this but there is the discussion is more general And it's a general truth that when events that are far off are spoken of, there is less detail than when those events are closer. When the proto-evangelium, the Gospel, was first given in the garden, it was just given the seed of the woman will crush the seed of the serpent. A very general statement.

But as that time approached, the prophecies of Christ and His coming and what He would do became more and more specific and more and more detailed. So Jesus' account here or His discussion of this second coming at the end of time, the end of the New Testament age, is general in Matthew's account Jesus says watch therefore for you know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of Man is coming watch because you don't know when he's coming you see that's a completely different exhortation then look at the fig tree and when you see it budding then you know that the summer is near. So also when you see all these signs I'm telling you, then you know that the kingdom of God is near. This is a very completely different instruction. He's saying the second coming, we won't know.

You won't know. You will know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. That's in Matthew 25. And so Jesus gives us a charge. He gives us a duty.

While we are waiting. And that duty is to take heed. Take heed to ourselves to be watchful. We have a duty to continually take stock of our condition and our responsibilities. Take heed.

Take heed to yourselves. Let's do each of us as individuals that we are to take heed to ourselves. Now what does that mean to take heed to ourselves? Look at our fingernails, our belly button. No.

Let's say you're driving a car. If you're taking heed to your driving the car, it means you're monitoring all the gauges and the lights and the indicators on your car's dashboard. It means you're aware of them and you're checking them. You're keeping an eye on them as you drive the car. You're keeping an eye on those things.

You're looking at how fast you're going. You're looking at whether the engine is too hot. You're checking that there's enough oil in the engine. You're monitoring for any unusual sounds or smells that might indicate there is a problem. Just on our way to church this morning, we were sitting at a light and making a left turn and a car came down the road.

A truck came down the road and it's and there was all of a sudden this large squeal and I thought it was a big big vehicle that was trying to break for the light but it turned out it was a truck that his wheel was falling off and the wheel was the squeal was because the wheel was being pushed down the road sideways I don't think he realized it for a minute, for quite a while, actually. Take heed. If you're taking heed to your driving, you're paying attention for unusual sounds. Used to have actual gauges for these things. Now they just have lights that come on.

But to take heed to one's driving means we're continually monitoring all these indications so that we can immediately detect when there's a problem. And what happens if we don't take heed while we're driving and there's a problem? Well, in this case, the guy's will fell off right in front of us, right in our view. Or maybe If we don't take heed and all the water in the engine leaks out, the engine overheats. And the engine block cracks and the engine is destroyed.

Can happen if we're not taking heed. Can run the car out of oil and the same thing happens. Jesus charges us to take heed to ourselves as we are living, as we're going through our lives. That means that we are monitoring what we allow ourselves to do, how we are spending our time, we're paying attention to that, we're thinking about that. And we're asking ourselves, is this a good use of my time right now?

And we're asking ourselves that over the year, over the month, over the week, have I made good use of my time this week? What have I made use of my time doing? How are we spending our time? What things are we thinking about? What are our thoughts dwelling on?

Those things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, good report, or something else. Are we speaking of the Lord's praise and glory? That's what we ought to do. What groups are we getting involved in? Who are our friends?

How much time are we spending on spiritual matters versus temporal matters? How much time on sleep versus work? How much time eating and feasting versus producing food and serving the needs of others? These things aren't wrong. It's not wrong to eat and to feast.

It's not wrong to sleep. We need to sleep. It's not wrong to spend time on temporal matters. We need to do that. But when we're taking heed to ourselves, we're paying attention to this balance, and to what we're doing, and to what we're thinking, and to who we're spending time with, and asking, is this somebody that is edifying?

Is this a friendship I should be investing in? Or is this a friendship that's leading me astray? See it's easy, Very easy for us to be deceived. Paul had this same concern for the Corinthian church. He said, for I'm jealous for you with a godly jealousy, a good concern for them.

I have betrothed you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ, but I fear lest somehow as the serpent deceived Eve by her craftiness that your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. See, even sometimes even the good things can become a distraction if they are not properly balanced. If you spend all day reading the Bible and have no time to work to provide the necessities of life, Jesus said, God says you're worse than an unbeliever. These cares though of the world can distract us from the scriptures and from prayer and from meditation on the Word and the study of the Word and the memory of the Word. If our mind is continually taken up with them, and there is no time in our thoughts for the Lord to remember His work and His Praise.

If these things become separate from each other, then we can become deceived and we can go astray. It was in this context, in Matthew's account of this discourse on Mount Olive that Jesus told the parable of the ten virgins. Remember there were five that were wise and five that were foolish. And What was it about the ones that were foolish? Why were they foolish?

Because they didn't watch their oil levels in their lamps. They didn't have cars. They had lamps. And they left, and the wise ones took heed to the level of oil, the amount of oil that they had, and they were prepared for the weight. They had enough oil to last through the weight.

The foolish ones didn't take heed to their oil level, and they didn't have sufficient oil for the weight. They ran out of oil. And then you remember they had to run off and buy more oil. And it was in that time that the bridegroom returned and admitted the five wise ones into the marriage feast. And the foolish ones got back.

It was too late Because they hadn't taken heed to something that was important. That's our duty. That's what Christ charges us to do. Take heed to yourselves. Now why?

There's a danger. And The danger is that our hearts be weighed down with carousing drunkenness, carousing dissipation, dissipation, drunkenness, and the cares of this life. To be weighed down means to become drowsy or dull or insensitive to God and His Word. And beginning to doubt in these practical ways the Word of God. We would never say we doubt the Word of God, but we doubt it in practical ways when we don't apply it.

We don't live as if it's true. See we have a duty to be vigilant about our spiritual state, to be spiritually awake as we go through life. The danger is that if we don't watch ourselves, self-indulgence and material concerns will distract us and we will fall asleep in a spiritual sense and become dead to spiritual things, drowsy to them, not alert. And when we're not alert, we're not able to take heed. We're not able to watch for the indications of trouble.

And that day comes on us unexpectedly. Don't be weighed down with carousing drunkenness and the cares of this life. Carousing is just dissipation. It speaks of both intoxication or being drunk and the result of it, which is a big headache or hangover. It has both of those wrapped into this word.

It means really dizziness, staggering. The head is refusing to function. Dissipated is when energy is dissipated it's not useful for anything. Right, if you take the heat of a stove and you just let it dissipate into the outside, it doesn't do any good. But when you contain it in a room, then it can heat the room.

So dissipation of a person refers to their abilities, their gifts, their time is just like spread everywhere. So it doesn't really accomplish anything. Nothing is done, useful, nothing edifying happens. That's dissipation. To have a heart that is weighed down with carousing or dissipation is just somebody that's looking for the next party.

Somebody who's living for the weekend. They can't wait for the weekend so that they can engage in their pleasure. Drunkenness is a loss of self-control. This is a life wasted pursuing pleasures. And nothing good is accomplished.

These two things really go together. Dissipation and drunkenness. It's easy to see how this world could cause, how this would cause somebody to become insensitive to the things of God. But then Jesus also says, take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with the cares of this life. The cares of this life are good things.

Having food to eat, clothes to wear, taking care of our family, and all the things that go into that. Paul said, Paul was weighed by the cares of the church After listing a number of physical hardships and afflictions that he had endured, he said, besides the other things which come upon me daily, my deep concern for all the churches. He had These matters weighed on him. He had a concern for them. That was something that's good.

We ought to have some concern for the cares of this life. But these mundane things, these cares of this life, these important things, can wrongly preoccupy us so that we begin to live in fear or so that they distract us. We can either live in fear and anxiety or we can be distracted. To live in anxiety over these things is to live without faith in God's Word. It's as if God isn't.

As if His Word is not true. As if Jesus is not reigning as King of Kings. That's in essence what we are saying when we are weighed down by fears about the cares of this life. We can also though just be distracted. So busy with the cares of this life that we have no time and and God is not in our thoughts.

Our relationships with friends you know can be a good thing but it can become a distraction. Pursuing our dreams and our goals can be a good thing. Because he asked, he said, to cast our bread upon the waters and we will have a return. But when pursuing those dreams and goals becomes so important to us that it begins to distract us and push away other things, then Jesus is saying, beware, beware, take heed that our heart is not weighed down by these things and that day come upon us unexpectedly. We can become distracted just pursuing a living, building our house as it were.

And this is what Jesus talks about in the parable of the of the seed that was sown. Remember some fell on the path and was Satan took away but some fell on ground and was it was stony ground and so when affliction came there wasn't a root there and it died off. But some fell in ground that was actually the soil was okay, but there were lots of weeds in in the ground And those weeds choked out the believer. The weeds choked out the seed that was planted. The competition for everything else, the cares of this world, distracted.

And no fruit was brought forward. So take heed to yourselves as your hearts be weighed down with corrosive drunkenness and the cares of this life and that day come upon you unexpectedly first Thessalonians 5 is a is a really a parallel warning and it explains I think a little in a little more detail what Jesus means when it talks about this day coming upon us unexpectedly for it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. What does this mean for this day to come to us unexpectedly? Didn't Jesus just say in Matthew 25 in this discourse That we won't know the day or the hour? So why is he now saying, take heed so the day doesn't come upon us unexpectedly?

Well, it's not that we're going to know when the day comes, but it's rather that when this day comes, we are not found distracted and outside of Christ. That's the concern. That's what it means for this day to come upon us unexpectedly. We're to be about the Master's business. And Jesus told these parables of this kingdom of heaven is like the master going away and he's going to come back at a time And what's he going to find us doing is he going to find us busy?

About the work that he gave us to do or is he going to find us not busy or in one case beating the people or stealing or something else from the Master. First Thessalonians 5, but concerning the times, verse 1, but Concerning the times and seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you know perfectly well that the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night." Again, this sense of you're not going to know when it's coming. You don't know when the thief comes. He's unexpected.

"'For when they say, peace and safety, then sudden destruction comes upon them as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night or darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but watch and be sober.

Take heed. Okay? So the opposite of taking heed is to be drowsy, to be sleeping, to be not alert to the indications. Therefore, for those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of hope as salvation.

For God did not appoint us to wrath but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. What's the contrast here? The contrast is those who are alert, not asleep, enter into God's rest. Those who fall asleep enter into God's wrath. They're appointed to wrath.

In Paul's statement to the Thessalonians is God didn't appoint you to wrath but to obtain salvation. Therefore comfort and edify one another just as you are also doing. So being awake, being watchful, and the day not catching us unprepared means that we are always busy about the work of the Lord. That we are always watchful of the indicators, the spiritual indicators in our life. And day by day as we live we are mindful of these things we are paying attention we're taking stock we are watching the gauges the spiritual gauges of our life but where what our thoughts are on where our time is going where our money is going, where our heart is, what treasures we're building, what work we're doing.

Are we doing work that will endure gold and silver and precious stones and metals, or work that will be burned up? Now there is a temptation to think of that day as a long way away. Christ is going to come back in a long time from now. Some would say, well, the church is young. That Christ is going to have conquered all his enemies by the time he comes back and we're a long way from that.

Well, maybe that's so. I'm not here to say one way or the other on that question. What I am here to say this morning is that that day for us is as close as the day God calls us home that day for us is as close as the day God calls us home and We don't know when that day comes. It could be today. That could be today.

It could be tomorrow. There are many people that will wake up today not knowing this was their last day. This is that day for them. Because it is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment There is no more opportunity after God calls us Out of this earth after we depart And so as we think about that day, I'd encourage you not to just think about some future event that may be thousands of years away, or maybe is tomorrow, but rather think of what That day is for us, for me and for you. It's the day God calls us home.

That's a lot nearer. Jesus tells us to watch. His remedy is to watch and to pray. To watch and to pray. The way to overcome and not be caught off guard is to watch and to pray.

The world is constantly pulling us away. There are constant distractions of this life. But we need to be watching, taking heed to ourselves, watching ourselves. Some people think that this might mean they need to watch CNN and watch the news and watch the media so that they know when these things are coming. But I don't think that's what Jesus is talking about.

He's not saying watch the news so you know when these are coming. We're not going to know. He says nobody's going to know. He's not talking about watching the world events. He's talking about watching ourselves, taking heed to ourselves.

Watching our own spiritual temperature, watching our own spiritual oil pressure and our own spiritual water temperature, to use our car analogy. We're to watch whether we have fair winds and following seas, or whether we have difficulties in trials and tribulations. This is the key to not being caught off guard, to the day not coming as a thief in the night and coming unexpectedly. See, if you're always doing, if you're always alert and always watching, then you never have to worry about when Christ returns. You never have to worry about the day He calls us home.

People leave the church all the time. And it didn't happen because overnight, It's a process. It's a gradual process. And it begins the day that we stop watching. The day that we stop praying.

The day that we stop taking heed to ourselves. Now you're thinking, that started a lot of times. Yes, it has. But by the grace of God, the Lord preserves His people. And the sign that He is preserving us is that we persevere.

That when we see ourself going off in the wrong direction, in whatever way that might be, that we see that, we take heed to that, and we make the correction. We are continually evaluating the influences that are finding their way into our lives. When people leave the church, it's the result of a long process of falling asleep that begins little by little. So we begin to not take heed to ourselves. We begin, then doubts begin to creep in and we begin to not believe God's word about our lives and the basic things about our lives.

And that unbelief leads to more unbelief. Until one day we no longer believe that Jesus is God, or that Jesus' law is just and right and good Bart airman is a professor at a Seminary Who's not a believer anymore, and he's written a number of books many of them very profane but he does in one of those books he describes his life of how He went from in high school a zealous, knock on door evangelist in Christian to a navigator, memorizing the scriptures. And if you know anything about the navigators, they are very big on memorizing of scripture. And if you're in their organization, you're likely to be asked at any time, what are you memorizing? And if you're not memorizing, you might, something that weak, you get the what for from them.

They're very zealous. He was a navigator. And he charts his course into unbelief and it didn't happen overnight. It was a step by step process. It's the way it always is.

Charles Templeton is another well known, he was an evangelist bigger than Billy Graham. He was Billy Graham's mentor. Ended up writing a book at the end of his life, Why I Do Not Believe in God. Was not taking watch, watching and praying day by day. What are those first signs that creep in?

One of them is when God's commandments become burdensome. When God's commands are burdensome for us, that's a sign we're not loving the Lord in that case. And when we see that His command, something He calls us to do, is pinching us, that ought to be a warning to us. That we need to watch, and we need to pray. That His commands would be a delight to us.

And His Word our delight. Staying awake is not something that we do in our own power. It's not something we do in our own power. If we try to stay awake in our own power, we will fail or we will give up. We need His strength and His gracious enablement to overcome the world.

What is the victory that has overcome the world? It's our faith. It's not our striving. It's our faith. Yes, we are enabled to strive by faith, by the grace of God.

That doesn't begin with our strength. Whatever is born of God does overcome the world. Who is he who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is God, is the Son of God? Who is he who overcomes the world? That's what we're talking about here in in not allowing the cares of this life to weigh us down.

That is overcoming the world. And who is he who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? That we believe the Word of God as the Word of God and we walk by faith and we pray watch and pray that you be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. Understand that in the same context that we talked about in 1st Thessalonians 5. But what it means to be overtaken for the day to overtake us as a thief means we fall under God's wrath.

Watch and pray that you become worthy to escape all the things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. We preserve, we persevere. We persevere because we are in Christ. And not otherwise. Not otherwise.

Jesus was himself a very example of what he's calling us to do. In the daytime he was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and stayed in the Mount of Olives. In the daytime, this is two days before he is to be crucified. It says in Matthew 25 that Passover was two days away. Right up until the end, Jesus is busy engaging in what He was called to do.

He was called, He came to teach. He came to seek and to save those that were lost. And that is what we find him doing. He's teaching in the temple and early in the morning all the people come to him in the temple to hear him. He's their teaching.

He's not off worrying about the crucifixion that he knows will happen in a few hours. We have a duty then. We have a duty to pay attention, to take heed to ourselves, Because there's a danger of our heart being weighed down with the cares of this world and the pleasures of this age But the exhort Jesus Jesus answer is to watch and to pray that we may be able to escape these things by His grace. May God enable us to do so. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that it is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Lord, may we take heed to it and to ourselves. And may we do so not in our own strength and not in our not in the arm of flesh for we've been crucified with you and this life that we now live in the flesh we live by faith in the Son of God, who has loved us and given Himself for us. Help us, Father, to live by faith, To walk by faith and not by sight. To believe your word in all that it teaches us, in all that it says.

That we may not be distracted, but overcome this world and stand before you, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, preserved by your grace, and by that grace enabled to persevere to the day of your coming. Through Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.