The Church Aroused

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Ephesians 5:14

Why he said, Awake you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

I. THE STATE OF MIND INTO WHICH A CHRISTIAN MAY SOMETIMES GET.

1. The insidious character of it,

(1) A Christian may be asleep and not know it. Indeed, if he did know it, he would not be asleep.

(2) A man who is asleep may be kept in very good countenance by his neighbours. They may be in the same state, and sleeping people are not likely to be very active in rebuking one another.

(3) One who is asleep may have taken care before he went to sleep to prevent anybody coming in to wake him. There is a way of bolting the door of your heart against anybody.

(4) A man can do a great deal while asleep that will make him look as if he were quite awake. For instance, some people talk in their sleep, and many professors will talk just as if they were the most active, the most earnest, the most gracious, the most warm-hearted people anywhere.

2. What is the evil itself? It is an unconsciousness of one's own state, and a carelessness of such a kind as not to want to be conscious of it. The man takes everything for granted in religion. He seems, too, to be perfectly immovable to all appeals. The best argument is lost on a sleeping man, and then this slumbering spirit spreads itself over everything else. There is a heartlessness in the manner in which everything is gone about.

3. Now, two or three words upon what makes this evil of Christians being asleep a great deal worse.

(1) It is this: they are Christ's servants, and they ought not to be asleep. If a servant is set to do a certain duty, you do not continue him in your service if he drops off asleep.

(2) It is so bad for us to be asleep, too, because it is quite certain that the enemy is awake. You recollect old Hugh Latimer's sermon, in which he says that the devil is the busiest bishop in the kingdom.

(3) And meanwhile souls are being lost.

4. What is it that sends us to sleep?

(1) We are inclined to slumber from the evil of our nature.

(2) It is easy to send a man to sleep if you give him the chloroform of bad doctrine.

(3) The sultry sum of prosperity sends many to sleep. Fulness of bread is a strong temptation.

(4) In some people it is the intoxication of pride.

(5) In others it is the want of heart which is at the bottom of everything they do. They never were intense, they never were earnest, and consequently they have such little zeal that that zeal soon goes to sleep. This is the age of the Enchanted Ground. He that can go through this age and not sleep must have something more than mortal about him. God must be with him, keeping him awake. You cannot be long in the soporific air of this particular period of time without feeling that in spiritual things you grow lax, for it is a lax age — lax in doctrine, lax in principle, lax in morals, lax in everything — and only God can come in and help the Pilgrim to keep awake in this Enchanted Ground.

II. CHRIST'S MESSAGE TO THOSE OF HIS PEOPLE WHO ARE ASLEEP.

1. Jesus speaks this in love. He would not say "awake," were it not the kindest thing He could say to you. Sometimes a mother's love lulls her child to sleep, but if there is a house on fire the mother's love would take another expression and startle it from its slumbers; and Christ's love takes that turn when He says to you, "Awake! Awake! awake!"

2. It is His wisdom as well as His love that makes Him say it. He knows that you are losing much by sleeping.

3. It is a voice, too, which you ought to own, for it is backed up by the authority of the person from whom it comes.

4. It is a voice which has been very often repeated. Christ has been saying, "Awake! Awake!" to some of us many hundreds of times. You were sick, were you, a few months ago? That was Christ, as it were, shaking you in your sleep, and saying, "Awake, My beloved, awake out of thine unhealthy slumbers!"

5. A personal cry — "Thou." Not, "Awake all of you"; but, "Awake thou!" Shall I pick you out one by one?

6. He puts it very pressingly in the present tense. "Awake! awake now." Not a few years hence, but now. This moment.

III. THE PROMISE WITH WHICH CHRIST ENCOURAGES US TO AWAKE — "Christ shall give thee light." What means this?

1. Instruction.

2. The light of joy.

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