Let's go back tonight to Ephesians
chapter five and verse 14. Ephesians chapter five and verse
14. Now, as we read this text of
scripture, understand to whom the apostle is speaking. The
words of our text were written to men and women whom the Apostle
Paul declared to be blessed of God with all spiritual blessings
in heavenly places in Christ, chosen, redeemed, accepted as
one with Christ, sons and daughters of God Almighty, men and women
who had been born again by God the Holy Spirit, called, given
faith in Christ, and having all the blessings of God in covenant
mercy, sealed to them by the Spirit of God. They are a people
who once were far off, but now are made nigh by the blood of
Christ Jesus. They are a people who are described
by the apostle as the family of God. Men and women who walk
together in the unity of the Spirit, in the blessed bond of
peace. These are saints. Saints of God
living in this world. The words of our text are specifically
addressed to believers. Men and women who live and walk
in the Spirit. Men and women who live with God
and walk with God. Men and women who have the blessed
privilege of laying hold of every promise of God by faith in Christ
Jesus and saying, this promise is mine. These are God's words
to you and me who are his. They're God's words to you and
me who are his. God's words to his people in
every place, in every generation, in every circumstance. All right,
let's read the text, Ephesians 5, 14. Wherefore he saith, awake
thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead. And, now here's
my subject, title of my message, And Christ shall give thee light. Awake, arise from the dead. God says to you and I. There's an assumption made here.
An assumption made with regard to true believers. An assumption
made with regard to all who are born of God. There is a sense,
obviously, in which we are always found in a stupor, almost like
death, a sleep that he describes here as being dead. He calls for us to awake, to
arise from the dead, and gives this promise, Christ shall give
thee light. What a blessed word from God
that is. When we fall into that death-like
sleep of lethargy and indifference toward God our Savior, not if
we do, when we do, we most commonly do, that which so quickly seizes
upon us as in the beginning, When the Lord God first called
us by his grace, if we awake, it will be his work that does
it. If we arise, it will be his work
that raises us up. If we are awakened, it will not
be by stirring ourselves, but by him stirring us. It will not
be by a decision we make left to ourself, we never would. But
the Lord God comes to you and to me and says, awake thou the
sleepest, arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee life.
For God's elect, for every heaven born soul, with every fall comes
an awakening. With every fall comes a call
of grace. Did you hear me? For God's elect,
For the heaven-born soul, for you who are gods, with every
fall comes an awakening. With every fall comes a call
of grace, which causes us to arise and come to the Savior. And the promise is given, and
Christ shall give the light. Oh, what a mercy. Our Redeemer
comes to awaken us when we sleep, to revive us when we're dead,
to restore us when we're fallen. Blessed be His name forever. This is what God our Savior has
promised. You can read it for yourself
in Jeremiah 32 when he speaks of this covenant mercy. He says,
I will cause them to dwell safely. I will not turn away from them
to do them good. They shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them
to do them good. I will plant them assuredly with
my whole heart and with my whole soul. So will I bring upon them
all the good that I have promised them. Awake thou the sleepest. Arise from the dead and Christ
shall give thee light. When I read this word from God,
I cannot avoid thinking of one of the last statements that Micah
made back in Micah chapter 7. I want you to turn there. Micah
chapter 7. God's servant Micah in chapter
7 here in verse 8 says, Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy,
when I fall. He doesn't say if I fall, he
says when I fall. As if to say this is a matter
of certainty, fall I will. When I fall, I shall arise. When I sit in darkness, and I
surely will, the Lord shall be a light unto me. I will bear
the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him. until
he plead my cause and execute judgment for me. He will bring
me forth to the light and I shall behold his righteousness. Awake thou that sleepest and
arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light. Here is
a great mercy of our God that we commonly fail to appreciate. that we commonly have thankfulness
for as we ought. The Lord our God graciously hedges
us about with his providence and his grace so that God's people
in this world, for the most part, most of the time, are kept by
God from behaving in such a way outwardly that we bring reproach
to the name of our Redeemer. Not always, but commonly. God's
people are kept from terrible outward evils, outward acts of
ungodliness that bring reproach upon the Savior and give cause
for the reprobate to blaspheme God. Sometimes, sometimes, a
man who has found grace in the eyes of the Lord, like Noah did,
will be found in a drunken stupor His naked sin open before the
reprobate and the reprobate will have a heyday in exposing his
shame. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes
a man of great faith will choose to pitch his tent towards Sodom
and for some reason refuse to leave that place and bring great
sorrow on himself as did our brother Lodge. Sometimes a mighty
Samson will lay his head in Delilah's lap. That does happen. It has happened that a man after
God's own heart, a man after God's own heart will commit adultery
and murder to cover his adultery. That has happened. Sometimes
even the wisest man upon the earth, will give in and bow to
the will of a wicked woman and bow with her at an idol's altar. Sometimes even Solomon. Once
in a while, there may be a great preacher, a truly great preacher
like Peter, who will deny the Lord Jesus. Sometimes the most
soundly, thoroughly orthodox of all preachers, will shave
his head and take a Jewish vow. You just shake your head at those
things. Why are those things written
in the book of God? As they clearly are. Those falls occur and they're
plainly recorded in Holy Scripture for our learning and our admonition. But they're not common occurrences.
They're not common things. For the most part, God's people
in this world are graciously prevented from such activity,
from such heinous activity. But don't let that swell your
head and swell your heart with pride. Because all of those things
that we may be kept from by God's restraining hand of providence
and grace, and that's the only reason we're kept from them.
Those very things rage in our hearts, not occasionally, but
all the time. All the time. All the time. We have struggles with law and
works as real as if we went to Jerusalem with Paul and had our
heads shaved for a Jewish vow. And we have struggles with all
the other evils that are commonly looked at by men with great scorn. And when they see them in believers,
they mock and deride and laugh and blaspheme God. But all those
things, Mark Henson, are in us all the time. All the time. Therefore, Micah says, Rejoice
not against me, O mine enemy, when I fall. You see, the believer
recognizes that while we're kept from grave, gross, outward acts
of wickedness, the righteous fall. We fall, as the wise man said
in Proverbs 24, 16, seven times. Seven times. I went through the
scriptures again today and looked at the number of times those
terms seven times are used. Seven speaks of completion, of
fullness, of totality. So that the wise man says, the
righteous falleth at and falleth, and falleth, and falleth, and
falleth, and falleth. He can't take a step without
falling. He falls all the time and the
Lord raises him up. Micah didn't say, if I fall,
he said, when I fall. He said, I am a man full of sin. And when I fall, the Lord will
raise me up. The seventh chapter of Micah
here begins with a word of Whoa, Micah said, whoa is me. Whoa
is me. He doesn't behave like this happy,
clappy, nonsense religious generation that seems to indicate that if
you believe God, if you trust God, if you believe on the Lord
Jesus, everything's gonna be sweet and happy and delightful
all the time. That's just not the way it is.
When you come to know the Son of God, you enter into a conflict,
a warfare, a struggle, from which there is no reprieve, but only
continually increasing warfare, conflict, and struggle. When
Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up,
with his train filling the temple, like Micah here in Micah 7.1,
he said, woe is me, for I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. Jeremiah
expressed much the same thing. He said, what sadness is mine? Oh, that I had died at birth. Ezekiel, when he had written
his role within and without, it was written with lamentations,
mourning, and woe. What was the cause of Micah's
lamentation? What was the thing that bothered
him so greatly? Certainly he saw the decline
of the professed church of God. He saw the low, terrible condition
of Israel, the nation and people he loved. He saw the moral corruption
and debauchery of the age in which he lived. But the thing
that crushed him, the thing that broke his heart, The thing that
brought him to his knees in humble brokenness and contrition before
God was his own deeply felt, deeply felt sense of the fact
that he was his own horrible, corrupt, sinful self. That his
soul was barren, unfruitful, and empty. Look at chapter seven,
verse one. Woe is me. For I am as when they
have gathered the summer fruits, and as the great greetings of
the vintage, there is no cluster to eat. They've gathered everything
up, they ought to be filling up the barns, and there's not
even enough to have a meal with. My soul desired the first ripe
fruit. There's no greater source. continual
sorrow for God's saints than the sense of our own emptiness,
barrenness, and lifelessness. We would be filled with the fruits
of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and
praise of God. If you're God's, I know that's
your desire. I have a every day, every day,
for 50 years, throughout the day, beginning the day and closing
the day, and all through the day, begged for grace to honor
God. And I have confessed every day,
in the beginning of the day, at the end of the day, and throughout
the day, I have been anything but honoring to my God. And when I contrast my miserable
unprofitable condition, my coldness, the deadness of my heart, my
proneness and propensity to every evil, my backwardness and disinclination
to everything I know to be right and good and holy, when I contrast
my constant wanderings and departings from my God, my depraved affections,
my sensual desires, my carnal lust, and my overmuch love of
this world. When I contrast the glaring realities
of my life, what I know to be so, with the marvelous, free grace
of God, and what I know should be the fruit of that grace in
me, I cry, woe is me. Woe is me. This I find to be
so with God's people throughout this book. I know it's not commonly
spoken of in the religious world around us. I know that folks
in the religious world are scared to death to tell the truth. They're
scared to death to acknowledge what they know goes on in them.
But God's people, God's people throughout this book acknowledge
just what I'm telling you. Isaiah said, my leanness, my
leanness, woe is me. Job said, my leanness, rising
up in me, beareth witness to my face. Paul said, oh, wretched
man that I am, recognizing and confessing what we are. Turn back just a few pages to
Lamentations chapter three, Lamentations three. Here is God's prophet
Jeremiah. Listen to how the weeping prophet
speaks. Listen to how he speaks. This man, Jeremiah, he says,
I am, Lamentations chapter three. I am the man that has seen affliction
by the rod of his wrath. He hath led me and brought me
into darkness, but not into light. Surely against me is he turned. He turneth his hand against me
all the day. My flesh and my skin hath he
made old. He hath broken my bones. He hath
built it against me and compassed me with gall and travail. He
hath set me in dark places as they that be dead of old. He
hath hedged me about that I cannot get out. He hath made my chain
heavy. Also when I cry and shout, he
shutteth out my prayer. He hath enclosed my ways with
hewn stone. He hath made my paths crooked.
He was unto me, God my Savior was unto me as a bear lying in
wait and as a lion in secret places. He hath turned aside
my ways and pulled me in pieces. He hath made me desolate, empty,
barren, lifeless. He hath bent his bow and set
me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the arrows of
his quiver to enter into my reins. I was a derision to all my people
and their song all the day. He hath filled me with bitterness.
He hath made me drunken with wormwood. He hath also broken
my teeth with gravel stones. He hath covered me with ashes.
And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace. I forgot
prosperity. And I said, my strength and my
hope is perished from the Lord. Remembering my affliction and
my misery, the wormwood and the gall, my soul hath them still
in remembrance and is humbled in me. When Rebecca found that
she had in her two warring armies, she cried, why am I thus? Why am I thus? I get correspondence
or telephone calls or when I'm I will invariably run across
a believer who asks that very question. Mother of God, if I
know the Lord, if I'm God's, how can I be in the shape I'm
in? Why am I like I am? The Word of God gives us the
plain, factual, simple, clear answer. That which is born of
flesh is flesh. which is born of the Spirit is
spirit. All believers, the youngest to
the oldest, the most experienced to the most inexperienced, all
believers are men and women with two natures. Those two natures,
flesh and spirit, the old man and the new, Adam and Christ,
sin and righteousness are constantly at war with one another. There's
no reprieve. There's no terms of peace, just
constant conflict and war. The flesh will never bow to and
surrender to the Spirit. and the spirit will never give
way to the flesh. There's just constant warfare,
constant battling, constant strife, constant confusion from within
between flesh and spirit. And there are some reasons for
that. There are some reasons why we will carry this body of
death until at last this physical body of death is laid in the
grave. You and I must never, never,
never, God help me not for a moment to forget, we must never forget
that the only distinction between Babi Estes and any reprobate
sinner in this world or in hell is the distinguishing grace of
God. That's the only difference. That's the only difference. We
must never forget that our only ground of acceptance with God
is not what we do, or think, or feel, or know, or experience. Our only acceptance with God
is Jesus Christ, his son. And we must never become content. Maybe this is the most difficult
part of it for us. We must never become content with life in this
world. We must never allow ourselves
to be content with things the way they are. Sometimes I hear folks talk like,
well, this is the way it's gonna be, this is all right. Oh my God, this is never all
right. This is never alright. Let us
continually, continually strive that we may enter into Christ's
rest in heavenly glory, in the perfection of that glory. Now,
turn over to the Song of Solomon, chapter 6. Last week I wrapped
the message up in chapter 5. I couldn't get to the promise
of our text, Christ shall give thee light. So let's look at
it. In the Song of Solomon, chapter
six, verse 13. After the Lord Jesus has come
to his garden and he comes and knocks at our heart's door and
we push him aside and say, come back later. and he hides himself
and we go about seeking him and he sends his watchman to take
away our veil from us and to expose our sin to us and he stirs
our hearts and finally shows himself through the lattices.
Now in chapter six in verse 13, the Savior speaks. Return, return,
O Shulamite. The word Shulamite is really
Solomon. female or the feminine gender
for the word Solomon himself. Return, return, O Solomon, return,
return that we may look upon thee. What will we see in the Shulamite? What will we see in Solomon? The Lord Jesus calls to his church,
his bride, to you, to me, awake, thou that sleepest. Arise from
the dead. Four times he says, return, return,
return, return. Oh, Solomon, return, return to
me. And what will we see in you?
We, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, you return and
we'll look upon you in love, in forgiveness, in kindness,
in pleasantness, with satisfaction. But what will we see in Solomon? What will we see? The word Solomon
means peace. We'll see peace in you. You see,
the Lord Jesus so loves his bride, his church, that he's given us
his name. As Solomon calls his espoused
wife, his bride, his oh name, Solomon, oh Shulamite, peace. The Lord Jesus has given us his
name. and He calls us the Lord our righteousness. So that there
is in this name, Solemn Peace, because the name means perfection.
Christ Jesus is our peace because Christ is our perfection. And
we having his beauty, his perfection, his righteousness, have peace
with God in him. And when he looks on us, he sees
nothing but himself. But the church responds. He says, what shall we see in
Solomon? And she says, this is what you'll
see in me, as it were the company of two armies. The company of two armies. There is in me a warfare, a conflict,
a struggle, and I can't get over it. There's no peace. There's no end to the warfare,
and no truce, no time when this is not true. Now let me make
a few observations, and I'll wrap this up, and I pray God
will speak to your heart by His Word. This warfare, these conflicts,
are facts of the life of every believer. The believer's life
is not all sweet and joy and peace. Faith in Christ brings
some bitterness, some pain. It's painful to know what you
are. It's painful to be confronted
with what you are so that you can't escape it. And faith in
Christ brings the light of what you are and exposes what you
are by nature so that the believer, being born of God the Spirit,
has a constant struggle between flesh and spirit. Now, some folks
like to fuss and argue about that, but for you who know God,
evident as the nose on your face. We see it throughout the Song
of Solomon. The Song of Solomon is just, oh, one of the things
that makes it such a beautiful, sweet, blessed portion of Holy
Scripture is it takes us chapter after chapter, verse after verse,
line after line, word after word through the constant experience
of our hearts. A little reviving and falling. Reviving and falling. Lifting us up and falling. Walking
with Lord and falling. Being carried in His arms and
falling. Constantly, constantly showing
us, I am black. I'm black. Bless God comely through
His comeliness. He's put upon me, but I'm black.
We seek him through the nights, whom our souls love, but often
find him not. And then when he comes and knocks
at our heart's door and we hear his voice, we push him away. These conflicts, displayed throughout
the song of Solomon. We see in David's life, Psalm
42, Psalm 43, Psalm 73, David says, he said, my steps were
almost gone, my feet had well and I slipped. He said, I looked
out at the wicked. And I said to myself, I've been a fool. I've been a fool. It's vanity
to serve God. My ungodly neighbor doesn't have
the warfare I've got. He doesn't have the trouble I've
got. He doesn't have the struggle I've got. His family, they get
together, everything's given, everything's all right. They
have a wonderful time together. My family, everybody in the family's
at odds with each other. He has everything his soul can
desire. He'd never been to hospital,
never had a sick child, never married a wife. He's never known
any of that stuff. And then David said, then I went
to God's house and I saw their end. I saw, Lord, you set them
in slippery places. The reason that fell over yonder
lives in such prosperity and peace and fatness and happiness
and ease is because God's left him alone. God's left him to himself. He
said, I was as a beast before you. Whom have I in heaven but
thee? And there is none upon the earth
that I desire beside thee. God's people are like the Apostle
Paul, we must confess, O wretched man that I am. These relentless unending inward
falls are the daily experience of God's people and our super
abounding sin is overcome and abounded only by God's infinite,
superabounding grace overcoming our sin. This is no strange thing. I read about it in the book of
God and I read about it in history. John Bunyan one of the most remarkable,
remarkable characters in church history, that, that thinker who
was so vitally used of God, who was so greatly used in his day,
John Bunyan. He wrote a book one time called
The Holy War, all about these conflicts of heart and soul.
Richard Sibbes, the Puritan, wrote a similar book called The
Soul's Conflicts. And the reason God's people throughout
the ages have had these same conflicts is that we all have
within us a corrupt nature that can do nothing but sin. We have
also within us a righteous nature that can never sin. And between
these two, there's no peace. There's no peace. In 1 John chapter
3, John tells us that That which is born of God does
not sin. That which does not righteousness
is of the devil. And Merle Hart, that's who you
are. And that's who I am, really and truly. Years ago, Brother
Todd Nyberg called me one day. We talked for a long time about
1 John 3. He said, but which one am I? I said, yeah, that's
what you are. That's what you are. that which
is born of God and cannot sin, perfectly righteous, and that
which can do nothing but sin, that which is born of the devil.
The nature of Adam, that's the child of the devil. The nature
of Christ, that's the child of God. And yet in the new birth,
men and women born of God had these two natures. so that everything
we do involves the two natures. This conflict began and is caused
by the new birth. In the new birth, God doesn't
change the old man. and He doesn't eradicate sin
from us. He simply puts in us a new man,
created in righteousness and true holiness, and that man in
us is Christ Jesus the Lord. Again, we don't need any proof
of this. You know what I'm saying is so. Our thoughts, the best of them are corrupted. Our prayers, at best, pride and
selfishness. I read the scriptures. You read the book of God and
you have to beg God line by line, God speak to me by your word.
Because if He didn't speak by His word, you could read worn
ads in the newspaper with greater interest. The only way you'll
read it is if God speaks by His word. come here to his house
and you want to worship God, you pray, Lord help us, help
Brother Don to preach, help us to hear God, help us to worship
you. The only way on this earth you
can focus on what I'm saying and your heart be engaged in
it is if God speaks by His Word to us. I learned this too. God could remove these things
from us. Like that. Like that. Just like that. And He's going to. Just like
that. But He could, while we live on
this earth, cause us to live in the presence of ungodly, sinful
men. with all the purity of perfect
righteousness and no sin, no thought of sin, and no inclination
to sin, just as the holy angels live in the spirit world in the
midst of the fallen creatures who were once their companions
at the throne of God. He could, just like that, cause
us to live just exactly as we shall in resurrection glory.
but He has chosen not to do so, because it's best. It's best. It's best. When we have reached the other
side, we will look back over time with amazement at God's
goodness in arranging things just as he has. By our struggles
with sin, he curbs our pride a little. By our struggles with
sin, he sweetly forces us to lean on Christ alone. By our
struggles with sin, He causes us to prize His faithfulness. It is of the Lord's mercies that
we're not consumed. Because His compassions are new
every morning, great is Thy faithfulness. Our struggles with sin will make
the glory of heaven sweeter and makes it more desirable. These
struggles cause us continually salvation is of the Lord. And
it may be, it just may be, I say that in that way deliberately,
but the fact is it's really this way. When God's done with us, we will see that by our falls,
our constant, constant falls, our corruptions, our failures,
the Lord God may have prevented a greater fall. And by these
things, opened a door and made us more useful than we could
otherwise have been. Now I'm sure of that. I'm sure
of that. Because Peter gives us the example. That man, Peter. He would never have been the
man he was when you get to Acts chapters three and four. Had
he not been the man he was back in the gospels on the night of
the Lord's betrayal, when he cursed and denied the master.
He could never have been the man. The apostle Paul, And Acts
chapter 21 went to Jerusalem. This man who'd been saved out
of Jewish legalism. This man who'd been saved as
a zealous Pharisee. And James persuaded Paul to take
a Jewish legal vow. And he shaved his head. I read
that and I just, I stand amazed. How could he do that? And then
you turn over to Galatians chapters one, two, three, four, five,
and six. And you get to Colossians chapter
one, two, three, and you say, oh, this is the reason. We would
never have had those great epistles had Paul not himself experienced
the bondage of legality and the bitterness of returning to it.
These inward conflicts also have their comforts. Christ shall give thee light. Micah said, when I fall, I shall
arise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord
shall be a light unto me. Satan roars and rages and laughs. and he taunts and jeers and pokes
fun and torments us so that we look at ourselves and he raises
up Moses and accuses and we start to raise up Moses with him and
accuse until at last the Lord Jesus steps in and silences Satan's
accusations and declares us righteous just as we read of in Zachariah
3. When I fall, bless God, I can't fall from grace. I can't fall
from my Savior's hands. I can't fall into hell. When
I fall, I shall arise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord
shall be light unto me. Awake thou that sleepest. Arise
from the dead, and Christ shall give thee Oh, what light He gives when He sweetly forces us to
arise and come to Him. Light to again see with clarity
our sin. Light to again see with clarity
the fullness of His grace of His salvation. righteousness
and acceptance with God in him, light with which to see the blessed,
blessed union of our souls with him. He says, return, return,
O Solomon, Return, return, oh, my beloved. Return, return, oh, the Lord,
our righteousness. Return, return, perfection. Return, return, peace. Return, return, with all my beauty. Return unto me, return unto me,
and we will look on you. And all we will see, my father,
The Spirit, myself, all we will see is the perfection of beauty
in you. Soon, soon, these conflicts will
be over. And what a blessed end that will
be. Christ shall give thee light. Oh, I'm anxious for the light
of that day. when God graciously causes me
to see all things in His light, in the light of His wisdom, His
goodness, and His grace to me, in Christ Jesus the Lord. Amen. Adam, let's have a hymn, please.