Now, turn back to the text in
the Song of Solomon, chapter 5. The title of this message is Spiritual spiritual somnambulism, spiritual
somnambulism. I'll explain that here in a minute.
But I stated last Wednesday night, or the last time we met together,
that is, that I hope to get back to this thing of what I started
out to do, that is, to make these messages short and sweet and
very practical, very helpful. during these midweek messages,
because I know we're tired during the week, and I know our minds
won't allow for weighty, profound subjects. And I, too, am very
tired, very sore pressed for time lately, and very tired of
body myself. And so I must make these simple. And they are. My title's not,
though. But I'll make these simple, and
I hope to make this very short. out of necessity. I'm trying
to be clever with a title. I always have liked clever titles. I don't want to be clever with
a message. There's no room for cleverness in the message. Spurgeon
was a lover of titles to his messages. And I don't know, sometimes
they have a way of helping us remember. But somnambulism, a lesson in grammar here, vocabulary. Somnambulism is sleepwalking,
or a somnambulist is one who walks in their sleep. So I entitle
this spiritual somnambulism, or, that is, trying to worship
while you're in your sleep. Spiritual sleep, or one who worships
in their sleep. Now, this is not a message. This
is not a message about sleeping in church. I said spiritual sleep. It's not a message about sleeping
in church, nor do I want to scold anybody for that. On the contrary,
I believe this will be a comfort to you. I believe it will be
a message of real comfort to anyone who has felt this spiritual
drowsiness that we all go through. Every one of us go through a
spiritual drowsiness. That is, you're unmoved by the
message, or you're untouched. by the messages, or you're unaffected
by the preaching, or by reading the scriptures, or whatever,
by praying, by singing, you're unaffected. We've all gone through
it. Perhaps somebody's in it right now. And we've all felt
it. And in fact, I've felt like a
zombie pretty much my, that's an old, there used to be an old
horror movie, the zombies, you know, that's what they did, Walking
Dead. That's what I felt like lately,
spiritually speaking, a zombie. And I've wondered if it's shown
in my preaching—perhaps the Lord has overruled—but the best of
men and women go through these times of spiritual drowsiness
and sleepiness. The best of men and women, even
the saints in the Scripture, we see very clearly, go through
these states of indifference and laziness and lethargy and
spiritual drowsiness for many reasons. Mostly sin, worldliness, unbelief. Mostly. We're mostly to blame. We're mostly to blame for this.
And there's really no excuses. We're to blame. We really are.
There's really no excuses. But I've said this before, that
I'm so thankful for the biographies of men and women contained in
the Scriptures, because they give me hope. They give me comfort. When I read about men like Abraham,
though he was the father of the faithful, a man of great faith. Yet I see him a couple of times
with very little faith. As a matter of fact, with none
at all. A coward. And that helps me. That helps
me. And I read of old Noah. Old Noah
was delivered miraculously. Chosen. Elect. Delivered miraculously. And right on the back of that
great and marvelous deliverance It was obvious that the Lord
delivered him, and it's the same with some of us. It's obvious
that the Lord has touched our lives and delivered us with a
miraculous deliverance. But right on the back of that
deliverance, old Noah was out there just wallowing, wallowing in sin again,
wasn't he? Right on the back of that. That
gives me some comfort. That gives me some comfort. And
old Lot, the Lord called Lot a just man, didn't he? Who the
Lord calls just. We can't condemn him, can we? Who's he that condemneth? God
justifieth. Called Lot a just man, yet he
was living down there with a bunch of perverts. Living down there. He had to have been taken a little
bit part in some of their iniquity. Had to be. He wouldn't have been
there. He couldn't have stood it very long if he hadn't rubbed
off on him a little bit. Then there's old David. Up and
down. Up and down. That's me. And I
take comfort in the life of David, a sinner and sometimes a saint,
not very often a saint, most of the time a sinner. And then
old Peter. All of us can take comfort in
the life of Peter. We can all find something of
ourselves in Peter. But all we like sheep have gone
astray. And if we're God's sheep, if
we're God's sheep, God comforts us sheep after we've gone astray
out there in the wilderness of this world. He comforts us. I
looked, and I see some footprints out there in the middle of the
wilderness. All the way out shooting now,
we've gone astray in this wilderness world. We'd be out there thinking
that we're all alone and just feeling miserable and lost, and
all of a sudden we look down and say, hey, footprints. We see the footprints in God's
Word of Abraham and Lot and David and these men. He's been here,
too, and that comforts me. It comforts me to see their footprint. But like that little poem says,
we see Christ's footprints, most especially. But the sins and
the fall—listen to this—the sins and the falls of the saints are
not for our imitation, no. They're for our warning, while
we do take comfort from them. And they do put our minds somewhat
at ease about our condition, or at least God's mercy and grace. They're not for our imitation.
And I hear, I've heard people do that. I heard a man that left
his wife and pleaded the excuse of David, what David did. That's wicked. That's abominable.
That's what that is. We don't plead these, we don't
try to imitate their the falls of sin for our warning. They
do comfort us, because we may go through it. But you know,
we're so sinful that we—this is what we do. We emphasize people's
thoughts. We dwell on people's weaknesses.
We say, well, look at that old J.C. Ryle. He wasn't too strong
on the atonement. Huh! He was wrong there. I don't
care if Bishop Ryle—what else he preached? If he was weak on
a particular redemption, he was wrong there. See, we don't, you
say, well, Spurgeon got, he was a little bit too tolerant in
his latter days of some of these Armenian, well, he was wrong.
We don't imitate people's weaknesses. We don't emphasize their weaknesses.
Like Rick and I were talking one time. What you do, I don't
care who the man is. You take what you can get from
him, that's according to this book. You take what you can get
that's according to the truth and leave the rest. as being
just a man. That includes this man. Take
what you can get out of me as being as close to the gospel
as it is, and leave the rest. Say, well, he's just a man. That's
good advice. We're not following men. If you
follow men and women, you're going to fall, because we're
following men and women, right? Follow Christ. Don't follow men. Don't follow sheep. Follow the
shepherd. Sheep longer. You don't follow
sheep. You follow them as long as they're
following the shepherd. But the prongs of wonder, that's a sheep. Bang! You know, and the shepherd's
got to keep ringing the man. Don't follow the sheep. Follow
the shepherd. Look to the shepherd, because
it's the tendency of sheep to roam, to stray. And that's, if
you know yourself very well at all, you know that's you. But
nevertheless, we can get much comfort from these events in
the lives of God's people. We can get much comfort in seeing
others fall into the same thing. Having fallen into the same thing
that we have or will, we can get comfort from it. That's the
reason God puts them there. Not for us to imitate, but to
warn us and to comfort us. Now, here in Solomon chapter
5, I just want to take one verse here in chapter 5, and I hope
this will be a comfort to you about this thing of spiritual
sleepy-headedness. drowsiness or indifference. Solomon
chapter 5. Now, I've got to confess that I'm very intolerant of sleeping
in church. If you haven't noticed it, if
I haven't said enough by now, I'm very intolerant of it, but
not like some. Some folks would already have
been kicked out of some places. Some of these so-called, well,
I'll not give the name. I'll give myself away. But some
men, if you've been in Arthur Pinck's church, Ed, he'd have
come back and tapped you on the shoulder, or sent a deacon back
here and said, I'm not talking to you, Ed. Ed knows what I'm
talking about about Pinck and some of these fellas. Come back
there and run you by the neck and run you out of here. I mean,
there's some men that are downright mean about it. But I excommunicate
people. But this is the reason I said
that, because I think it may have been good for me the other
day while I was preparing this message, the other day while
I was attempting to prepare this. This was Tuesday morning, yesterday,
yesterday morning. I was so sleepy. I could hardly
keep my eyes open. Oh, it was everything I could
do. Everything I could do to keep my eyes open, try to pay
attention to what I was doing. And I was searching and hunting
and reading, doing everything I could, drinking coffee and
reading this, reading that book, reading this, that, and I just
could not get around. And the Scripture, the Scripture
came to me. And I turned over there and looked
at it, and I was so tired and so sleepy. Yet my mind and my
heart would not let me go to sleep. I had a message to prepare.
And this is exactly what this woman's saying right here in
Solomon chapter 5, verse 2. And perhaps you've gone through
it or are in it right now. You know, these times of drowsiness,
they're not just one isolated time, usually. They're usually
a whole season. You know what I'm talking about?
It's a whole season. of spiritual lethargy. But look
at this. Here's this woman's case, verse
2. See if this is your case. She said, I sleep, but my heart's
awake. I sleep. You ever been like this?
Have you ever tried to—I'll illustrate. Have you ever tried to wake up,
say your husband or your wife or your son or daughter or whoever,
and you go in, and, hey, wake up. It's time to get up. And
they go, no, no, no. and you walk out of the room.
Now, they answered you. You thought you aroused them.
When they answered you, you thought, well, they're awake. And you
go back in a little while later, and they're back asleep. They
slept, but they answered you. They were just half in and half
out. Half in and out of sleep. We get like this spiritually.
We get just like this. We go through the motions. We
look the part. We say the right things. We're mild to words. You know?
Yet we're really asleep spiritually. We don't hear what's going on.
The songs we sing are just rolling off our tongues, languish on
our tongues. That's the only place these words,
these beautiful songs are, right here. They're not in here, and
they sure ain't down here. You ever been there? Sure you
have. We go through the motions, we
look the part. Now, my wife, she She likes to sleep with her
head under the covers. And I've warned her. I'm afraid
one of these days I'm going to come in and find her asphyxiated
or suffocated. And every morning I grab those
things off of her head so she can get some air. Well, she's
got her head under those covers, covered up. And sometimes I'll
try to awaken her and she'll answer me and I move around a
little bit. Some of us are spiritually asleep,
yet under a cover of pretense and good fakers. Any good fakers
in here? I used to be the best there ever
was. I wouldn't, I don't know, I wouldn't dream of falling asleep
in church. Just if I had to take toothpicks,
I'd put them under my eyes, I wouldn't dream of, but I was asleep. Believe
me, I've been asleep in church with my eyes wide open. But I
was a good faker. It seemed like I knew when to
shake my head at the right time. Sometimes I would catch myself
shaking my head, and I'd wonder, have I been shaking my head for
the last 30 minutes? A dead giveaway that I'm not listening, you know.
Any good fakers in here? Yeah, you are. We're all the
same, head nodders. Some can't fake it, though. I've
been preaching here long enough now. I can see it on the faces.
And I'll try to fake it. Yeah, I'll try to fake it. Try
to fake it. But here's a good sign. I like
this woman. Here's a good sign. She recognized
the problem. She recognized she had a problem. And that's the first step here
to recovery. She recognized the problem. She
said, I'm asleep. I'm asleep. You see, if you say, I'm asleep,
that means you're not. You know, nobody, I've been asleep
before, sleeping, and many woke me up, and I didn't know I'd
been sleeping. You been that way? Of course you have. She
said, you're snoring. Well, I didn't know I was snoring.
I didn't know I was snoring. Well, if you can say, I'm asleep,
then you're not. That's the word of comfort there.
If you can acknowledge it and mourn over it and feel uneasy
about it and long for something to be done about it, then take
comfort. You're not totally asleep. Not totally. Listen to these
quotes. He who mourns his pride retains
a little humility. You know, a proud man doesn't
mourn his pride. He's proud of it. He's proud
of himself. But he who mourns his pride,
even though he's a proud man, he retains some humility. He
who feels his hardness of heart, got a little soft spot in there
somewhere, a little soft spot. And he who can say that, I sleep,
say that mournfully, I'm sleeping, I'm asleep during this whole
thing. He who can save us, their conscience is somewhat awake.
And this is the work of the Holy Spirit. This is totally the work
of the awakening spirit to arouse, to revive his people, to show
them the condition they're in. If you weren't God's people,
if you weren't God's sheep, the Holy Spirit would leave you,
like Saul. You know, Saul, and some people seem to have these
things at first, like Saul. So I was given the Spirit of
God in strictly a governmental way. While he guided and led
the people of Israel, while he led them and guided them, the
Spirit, those were God's sheep. So the Spirit dwelled with him.
But not in a spiritual sense. I mean, not in a saving sense.
Because the Spirit doesn't leave His people. He'll never leave
them in a saving sense. But the Holy Spirit dwelled with
him to restrain him from this and that and the other. But finally,
it was evident that he was not one of us. He was not one of
us. But if the Holy Spirit is with
you, he'll never, never let you totally, finally, completely
go to sleep. Go to sleep spiritually. Now
listen, here's the complaint. She said, not only did she acknowledge
it, I'm sleeping. But I think she's saying this
in complaint. I'm asleep. I'm asleep. What's wrong with
me? What is wrong with me? She's
complaining about it. And the spouse or this spouse
or this church member, that's who she represents, she's not
pleased that she's sleeping. She's not pleased about it in
the presence of her beloved. And you ought to be able to say
the same thing if you're God's people, if you truly. If the
Holy Spirit still abides with you, you're not pleased with
yourself at all when you go through these times. As a matter of fact,
you mourn it. You bitterly complain of this
problem that has crept over you, bitterly complain of it. And
she's not bragging about this. We do this sometimes. Sometimes
rather than confessing false, we're bragging about it. You
know what I'm saying? Rather than just admitting a
fault, we're kind of bragging about it. Oh, I know, I've got
this, I'm proud. When we're bragging about it,
we ought to be mourning it bitterly, mourning it. We may be pitied,
but we're mostly to blame, mostly to blame. Our Lord said this
to the sleeping disciples when he went to pray in the garden,
you know, and he came back and he found them sleeping. He said,
this is where the scripture is. I said, oh, the Spirit is indeed
willing, but the flesh is weak. Now, Christ can say that to us. He can excuse us. Now, listen
to what I'm saying. He can excuse us with that, not
we ourselves. How many times have you used
that Scripture? How many times have we used that Scripture as
an excuse? Well, the Spirit's willing, but
the flesh is weak. No, Christ said that to his disciples. But
do you know what he said right before that? He said, Watch and
pray that you enter not into temptation. He said, Oh, the
Spirit is willing to flesh His way, flesh His way. And He can
excuse us, but not we ourselves. Let others excuse you, but not
you yourself. Judge yourself, the Scripture
says, and you'll be not judged. You see, we need to judge ourselves
as hard as we can. be as easy as we can on others,
but judge ourselves just as hard as we can judge ourselves. Because
if we judge ourselves, we'll not be judged. If we go easy
on ourselves, we may be judged. Make good sense? Let others excuse
you, and you excuse others. Let's excuse every fault, every
weakness, everything in others, but not ourselves. See what I'm
saying? This is the spirit of true repentance
and humility and complaint of our This is the spirit of that. So let's don't just acknowledge
our faults, let's mourn about them, complain about them. I
believe that's what the true spouse says. Because we're missing
out. This spiritual sleep is a very
low state of enjoyment, needless to say. You can't—we lose all
of our sensitivity. Sleep is—it may be peaceful,
it may be a time of quiet, but it's akin to death. It's real
close to death. Listen to this. You look the closest you'll ever
look to death when you're asleep. Come up on somebody when they're
laying there asleep and look at them. That's how you're going
to see them in the coffin someday. That's as close as you'll look.
You'll look just like it. And after just a little while,
you start even smelling like it. You know it? You wake up in the morning and
you go talk to yourself in the mirror. You smell like death. Poison of asps. Asps come out
of these lips. Your throat's an open sepulcher,
literally. That's the closest we come to
death. And this spiritual lethargy and drowsiness and so forth that
creeps over us, that's the closest we'll come to departing. Christ won't let us. He'll arouse
us by His Holy Spirit. It's really a miracle. It's a
miracle that anybody wakes out of physical sleep. You know,
your heart rate slows down, your pulse, all your vital signs go
way down to nothing. Some people literally slow down
to nothing. And it's a miracle that anybody
wakes up. Sleep, you ever thought about
sleep? It's a marvelous, amazing thing. This is a type of the
resurrection. It's a miracle that anybody,
that anybody awakes out of this sleepiness in this world, wakes
out of this spiritual sleep, or death. Because this is a time
of low enjoyment, and it's going to, what's it going to take,
what's it going to take to get us out of this These doldrums,
this drowsiness, what will it take? It's going to take the
same thing it took to arouse us in the first place. It's going to take
the same thing it took to arouse us in the first place. It's going to take the same thing
it took to arouse us in the first place. It's going to take the
same thing it took to arouse us in the first place. It's going to take the same thing
it took to arouse us in the first place. It's going to take the
same thing it took to arouse us in the first place. It's going
to take the same thing it took to arouse us in the first place.
It's going to take the same thing it took to arouse us in the first place.
It's going to take the same thing it took to arouse us in the first place. It's going
to take the same thing it took to arouse us in the first place. It's going
to take the same thing it took to arouse us in the first place And let me note these
things about this spiritual sleep. You can't taste the good word.
It's a time of low enjoyment. You can't taste the good word,
the milk and honey. Why, other people who say, weren't
that good? You say, and you fake it, yeah, that ain't good. You know, you ever done it? Yeah,
of course you have. You can't enjoy the fragrance,
the smell since the smell's gone. You can't smell yourself. You
can't smell the fragrance of the rose of Sharon while others
may. You can't see the beauties of Christ in the Word. You can't
see. You can't hear the words of comfort and cheer and gladness.
Sleep! I sleep! I'm asleep. And if you ever come into God's
house, if you ever come in here and somebody tells the old, old
story—I don't care who the preacher is—tell the old, old story and
it doesn't move you, I tell you, Joe, It's awful, isn't it? To hear
that story about Christ, that love, the love of God in sending
His Son down here, and brutally shed His blood for us such unworthy
creatures as we are, and be unmoved by it? We ought to be crying
out, I'm asleep! I'm asleep, complaining about
it bitterly. I'm unmoved by this. What's wrong
with me? You know what I'm saying? If
you come in here and others are singing praises, it seems like
they can enter into it, and you can't. You just have to mouth
the words. You ought to be crying out, I'm asleep. Mourning, complaining. And if you partake of the Lord's
table, the closest you ever get to communion, and the Lord does
not draw an eye to you in this Lord's table, you ought to be
screaming at the top of your lungs, I'm asleep. Lord, come
in with me. in your broken body and shed
blood. And if you cry loud enough, maybe
somebody will hear you. The one who counts. Maybe he'll
hear you. Maybe he'll hear yourself. Ever
woke yourself up when you're sleeping? Snoring? Ever woken
yourself up? Sure you have. Maybe you'll wake
yourself up. Spiritual sleep is not only a
low state of enjoyment, but it's a state of danger. Christ gave
this parable. He said, while men slept, the
enemies came and sowed tares among the weak. We've got an
adversary and an enemy. If the Lord, like the prophet,
bade the Lord to do for his servant, open the sky and see our adversary, It scares to death. It scares
to death. State of danger. Enemy comes
in, sows terrors. Sows terrors while we're asleep.
Thieves break in when you're sleeping. Nobody breaks into
people's house in broad daylight, usually. They come at nighttime
when everybody's sleeping. Thieves break in, and spiritually
speaking, while we're asleep spiritually, the enemy will break
in and steal our joy, steal our peace, steal our comfort. Steal
our assurance, and like Jeremiah said, steal the words of God
from us, we forget the gospel. Right back where we seemed like
where we started from. All gone. We've become poor and naked,
miserable, blind. Well, let me give you some helps
now. I've talked about the problem
long enough. But I've been giving you the help from the very start. Here's the first thing. Look
at verse 2 again. She says, I sleep. Why does she
say this? She's calling out. Call upon
the name of the Lord. Call. Who said we shall call
upon the name of the Lord? That applies to the believer
even. Who said we shall call upon the name of the Lord? That's
not just a lost person. The believer daily must cry unto
his Lord and repent. And call and cry out, call upon
the only one who can truly help us and save us, right? And raise
the dead and raise this sleepy head. Lord, save me or I'll perish. I'll fall asleep. David said,
lighten my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lord, wake
me up or I'm just going to fall plumb asleep and then just fall
out, fall away, fall from grace. Well, call. That's the first
thing. That's the first thing. Call.
Call upon him who only can help. He's the only one that can wake
us up. No amount of pleading, the preacher does. No amount
of praying or Bible reading or anything else will avail unless
he who wakes the dead with his voice calls and awakes us out
of this sleepiness, this drowsiness. So call. And then there's some
means. There's these means. Now listen, lack of exercise
will cause a sleepy disposition, physically speaking. I haven't
been getting any exercise, and I've found myself to be lazier
than I've ever been in my life with this desk job. But it'll
render you in a sleepy disposition, and lack of these means that
God has ordained like gospel preaching, and I see it overcome
people. I see it overtake people who
fall out and miss and so forth. Get in this lethargy. Gospel
preaching doesn't necessarily apply to anybody here, but reading
the Scriptures, prayer, all this, a lack of these things will render
us sleepy, asleep spiritually. You know it's such. You know
it is. And listen to this. Do you remember one Sunday morning, six months ago or more, we spent
a whole Sunday morning talking about preparation for worship. Preparation for worship, and
then I put several things in the bulletin. Helpful. Helpful.
I know they're tried and proven. I've gotten them from God's Word,
and from tried and tested proven saints, and from my own personal
experience, things that work. Have we availed ourselves of
those things? Do we remember those things? Go back. If you
keep the bulletins, go back and hunt those things up. A helpful
thing, necessary thing, helps, such as this. Listen in to tapes. I don't know of anything better
during the week. If you can't, don't have time
to read, don't have time to whatever, then listen to a tape. It'll
arouse you. It'll help you. It'll help you. Read. Read the
Word. Now listen to this. If you can't get anything, it's
just good practical advice here. It works, it's true. If you can't,
if you sit down to read the Scriptures, and you can't get anything out
of it, close it. Put it down. And generally, this is my own
personal experience, this is the way it is. Generally, He'll
lead you back to the Scriptures. with some kind of something to
you see what I'm saying. Don't fight it. Don't just keep
fighting it and fighting it. You'll just fall asleep. I know
it's so. Now, have you ever been here?
Reading and you can't make it. You just catch yourself like
a kid and you finally get through it and say, well I did it. You
do nothing. You might as well not have read
it. If it's not touching you, close it. Go to something else.
Find something that touches you. Start praying. Do something.
Don't go through the motions. But do something. And eventually,
I found it to be so. You'll be led right back, you'll
be led to something. Something will spark you back
to the Scriptures. And you'll come back and it'll
open up to you finally. That's just, that's so. It's found that out from experience. Every day I come over here in
the study, I can't just sit right down and find a message. Sometimes
it's just like a closed book. I can't just, I can't find anything. And so I close it, and I give
down a sermon, or I give whatever. And eventually, somebody will
say something, or I'll hear a word. Somebody will quote a verse of
Scripture, and it'll turn me back to it and say, Oh, there!
And then it'll bless me. So that's good advice, I believe. Christian fellowship. Fellowship
with other believers. A word in season. You know, God
sends people. to us. Yes, he does. We are for one another. That's
what we're for. We're for chiefly, primarily
the glory of God. We glorify God in helping one
another. It's the truth. We're for one
another. We're members one of another.
You hear Brother Donnie's message? We're members one of another.
We're for one another. And this is vital. This is vital
to the spiritual well-being of the body, is that we get together.
We help one another. We strengthen one another. We
build up one another in this most holy faith. It's helpful.
You're not going to get anything from people out there. They're
going to drag you down. But God's people will boost you
up. And God sends his people. He sends brothers and sisters
to us with a word in season sometimes. Just what we need. Just what
we need. We need to be listening, not
just waiting for our turn to speak. We need to be listening,
because God may have sent somebody. And I'm guilty. I'm the worst.
I know it. I mourn it. But we need to be
listening to one another. Because God may have shown, Joe
comes to me, a visit with me. God may have shown Joe something
that I need. Or may have shown me something
he needs. You know what I'm saying? God visits with his people and
teaches his people, and we all haven't got a complete handle
on everything, and we can learn from one another. And we get
these words in season. God sends his people to one another. Let me give you an illustration
of that. And who hath to despise a day of small things, the Scriptures
say? These times together, they're invaluable. You don't know what's
going to come out of them. You just don't know. I'm talking
about now just a brief visit. I'll give you an illustration.
The other day, when I was preparing this message, like I said, I
was so tired and so sleepy. I didn't know what I was going
to do to keep awake. Nothing seemed to help me. Nothing
seemed to help me. And Jenny Williams popped in
to study. And she said to me, she had Sarah
with her and a little Seth Austin, and she said to me, She said,
I was just over giving Rick some lunch. I just took lunch over
to Rick. And she said, I don't know why,
but she said, I felt compelled to stop by and give you this
candy bar. It was past lunchtime. My car
was still here, and evidently she thought I hadn't gone out
to eat lunch, and I hadn't. And she gave me a Snickers candy.
That's about the only candy bar I'll eat. It really is a Snickers.
Why don't you buy a Snickers? But she gave me that candy bar.
And that was on a Saturday. Wasn't it Saturday she bought
you lunch? It was on a Saturday. Well, that wasn't the day I was
real sleepy. That was on a Saturday. I said,
thank you, and we talked a little while, and she finally left.
And I put that candy bar down on the desk, fully intending
to eat it. But I didn't need it at the time.
I didn't need it. So I started studying. Saturday,
I was having a good day studying. No problem. And eventually, later
on that evening, After about finished studying, I reached
and grabbed that candy bar, and it was just melted. It was under
that lamp, under that desk lamp of mine. It was melted, and I
couldn't eat it. So I went and put it in the refrigerator.
Well, Tuesday morning, I needed that candy bar bad. That's when
I was, oh, I was sleepy. I was asleep, but my heart worked.
I said, if there's liquor in there, I'm going to go get that
thing. And I went in there and started eating, and it aroused
me, and a scripture came to my mind, and here we are. God gave her—who helped to spy?
Now, I'm not being silly here. Really, I'm not being—who helped
to spy today is a small thing. And a word in season from a brother
or sister, just when we need it. We might not need it at the
time, but later on it may pop up. And you remember what they
said, and just what your heart needed. But if you're like this
sister here, in verse 2, she mourned it, she said, I sleep.
She mourned it, she complained of it, she cried out because
of it, but she didn't despair. Look at it. She did. She mourned.
She said, I'm sleeping, so sleepy. But she said, but my heart wakes.
Don't despair. She said, my heart wakes. And
even, have you ever been spiritually asleep for a while? And you think, you think, I'm just, I don't
know, I'm in long periods of time. I've been through it. And
you think, it's all over with me. I'm just going to waste away
tonight. You think I'm going to eventually
prove to be an apostate or something. I just don't know what it's going
to take. You say, I'm so sleepy. But then the gospel comes to
you and awakens you one more time. You say, maybe I'm not
dead after all. Huh? Everybody learn? Oh, I'm
so sleepy, but then the gospel finally comes and touches you,
touches your heart, and you say, maybe there's some life in there
after all. Maybe after all. Oh, boy, there are many excuses.
Let me say this in all fairness and compassion. There are many
excuses for sleepiness, body fatigue, especially Wednesday
night. I said I'm going to be short. But sorrow, people go
through depression, and anxiety and pressure and all these things
literally make people sleepy. They really do. That's the problems
we have. But this God-given repentance,
calling upon the Lord, calling out to him, it will avail something
eventually. And you say, like you say, you
say, Lord, I'm not what I want to be. I'm not what I should
be. Lord, help me. And he comes to you in the gospel.
He comes to you. Because He knows your frame,
He remembers that you're dust. Aren't you glad? Aren't you glad
He doesn't waylay you and cut you off entirely? But He knows
you. He remembers you're just dust.
He didn't say that. I bet when He came to those disciples,
He didn't holler at them, saying, are you sleeping again? And kick
them in the back, wake up. No, He didn't do that. He said,
oh, that's when He said, the Spirit is so willing, but the
flesh is so weak. He did chide them. He did, get
up now, wake yourself, arouse yourself, get up, watch, pray
that you enter not into temptation. And if only I as a preacher could
remember that, that even those disciples, I mean right in the
face of the Lord's greatest hour of temptation, they fell asleep.
Right on the back of that, right in the face of His greatest temptation,
the disciples fell asleep. I wish I could remember that.
in regards to you folks, because surely some of you are going
to sleep while I, as the young preacher once said, while I confound
the scriptures. He's trying to say expound them.
He said confound them. Surely somebody is going to sleep
on this old babbler. But here's the ultimate cure.
Here's the ultimate cure. He says, I sleep, but my heart
waketh. Look at it here. Now, he says,
this is what she's saying, I'm sleeping. I'm sleeping, but no,
no, wait a minute. My heart's awake. I don't want
to be asleep. So something's in there, something's
telling me I ought not to be asleep. I'm dull, I'm lifeless,
so cold and dead and dry. I'm sleeping, and I mourn it
and I hate it, but my heart cries out, Lord save me, or I perish. And then finally, in mercy and
grace and love and in tenderness You hear that voice, the voice
of your beloved. Wake up. Wake up! Sometimes it's
a still, small voice. Sometimes it's a holler. Sometimes
it's a powerful message. Sometimes he doesn't have any
liberty. But the Lord knows when and how to wake up his people. And you hear that voice, the
voice of the beloved Savior, and here's what he says. He says,
I'm here. I haven't left you. That's what
David thought, didn't it? Many times. If you read through
the Psalms, you'll see it. David thought, ah, he's gone.
He's left me forever. Left me forever. And he had a
right to. But then right on the back of that, he said, oh, but
I've hoped in your mercy. I've trusted in your mercy. And
he rejoiced. At the end of that Psalm 51,
that psalm of such repentance, he was rejoicing. He was rejoicing. And you hear that gospel again,
that same old message. that you've heard so many times,
but you hear it again for the first time. Like that cornflakes
commercial. Toast it again for the first
time. And sometimes, like old Tim James said, sometimes you
get saved. You'll get saved in this life,
to quote the Armenians. Don't misinterpret me here. You'll
get saved, he said, ten or twelve times, you know. the course of
your life, maybe in the course of a message, one message. That's what he said one time
on the back of some great gospel message. I got saved five times
tonight. But you'll hear that gospel seem like for the first
time again. It'll be so fresh and sweet to
you, that gospel of God's glory, who God is on his throne, and
how we've rebelled and sinned against that holy God, but yet
in love and mercy and kindness and grace He chose us out from
among this fallen, doomed race, and sent His Son down here in
love to us, and brutally shed His blood, did to Him what we
deserve to have done to us, and did that for us. And Christ lived
that perfect life for us and gave that to us, and made Him
to be sin for us, and put Him in the grave where we belong,
and then raised Him from that grave and seated Him at the right
hand of the Father to intercede for us. And you will hear it
for the first time. again. And it will cheer your
heart because it's the voice of the Beloved. And because he
ever lived, you live in him. And he's knocked once again.
That's the sense of what he's saying in the Revelation about
knocking on the heart's door. He's not knocking on the sinner's
door now. Knocking on everybody's heart's
door. No, that's not the sense of that at all. He's knocking
on the door, the heart of the believer, because that believer
is falling asleep, like this woman. His spouse is falling
spiritually asleep. And he says, wake up, knocking
on the door with the gospel. And we hear it once again. And
we hear it by his Spirit and be awakened to it. And he comes
in. If he gives us the strength, gives us the heart to receive
it, the Holy Spirit comes and opens our hearts to receive that
message. He comes in and sits with us around the gospel table
one more time. One more time. One more time. Now, let me say this in closing,
and I'll hurry it. We need to beware. We need to
beware of falling asleep right after a real time of joy and blessing. This is good advice here. Evidently,
this woman here, did you see up there how it said, verse 1,
he said, I've gathered my myrrh with my spouse, I've eaten my
honeycomb, my honey, I've drunk wine with my... Evidently, he'd
been entertaining her the night before. They'd had a good time
together. And right the next morning, she
fell asleep. He's all forgotten. It's all
over. We need mercy every morning, don't we? And you can, I can
count on it Monday morning just being, if you're on top of the
mountain and don't go to sleep, you'll fall off. You'll fall
off of that mountain. Right on the back, you better
watch for a fall right on the back of a blessing. It'll happen. Sunday night's highs will soon
turn into Monday morning's lows. It almost always happens. This
is the reason that we need to Keep his sayings. This is what
Christ is talking about. I keep it in my saying. Laying
up these things to heart. It would be a good thing Monday
morning to wake up first thing Monday morning. But you can be
prepared for it. Be prepared for the Monday morning
blouse and so forth. Wake up first thing and seek
his face afresh. Don't be relying on Friday's
manna. You know, the children of Israel,
the Lord told them now for the weekend, for the Sabbath, they
were to gather two days, they weren't to gather manna on the
Sabbath, but to gather two days' manna. And you know, we come
in here on a Sunday, we have a good day and all. We need fresh
manna Monday morning, and we're going to have to gather it. It's
good advice. We're going to have to gather
it. It's not going to come to us like it does Sunday. See what
I'm saying? See what I'm saying? It's not
going to come to us. We're not going to gather it
for two days' time. We're going to have to go out
and get it Monday morning. We're responsible to use these
means and so forth. And that's good advice. Seek
his face afresh on Monday morning and Tuesday morning, or you may
drag in here on Wednesday night on your last leg. It's generally the way it is,
isn't it? Yes, it is. It's generally the way it is. Well, I don't know if that accomplished
anything or helped anybody at all. But if you haven't gone
through it and you're not in it right now, you will go through
it. And maybe you will recall, maybe this candy bar is meant
for another night, for another day. Maybe you'll use it another
time. Stand with me in all this, Mrs.
Simpson.