The believer's life in this world
is not, as most religious people pretend it is, and are taught
to pretend it is. It is not a continual life of
bubbling joy and walking with sweet fellowship with the Savior
and rejoicing in His goodness. I don't say that it shouldn't
be. I'm just here to tell you that's just not the way it is.
For my own self, and I can't speak for you, for my own self. I have to acknowledge that my
life as a believer is spent most of the time shrouded with great
darkness. Most of the time with little
awareness of sweet fellowship with the Redeemer. Most of the
time consciousness of overflowing grace. Oh, there's an abundance
of grace, abundance of mercy, but little consciousness of it.
Most of the time in great need of reviving by His Spirit. That's just the way it is. I
have no interest at all in what men commonly call revival, emotional,
ecstatic experiences of religion. There's enough of that to last
the world over. I have no interest in it. Real
revival in my soul. I crave every day. And sometimes
God gives it. Sometimes he opens the windows
of heaven and opens my soul. and floods me with the blessedness
of the knowledge of my Redeemer and His grace. But most of my
life, my God I confess, has been spent sleeping. Sleeping. My text this evening is Ephesians
chapter five and verse 14. The title of my message you'll
find in the text. Wherefore he saith, awake thou
that sleepest. That's my subject. Awake thou
that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give
thee light. Now read the scriptures always
in their context. Brother Frank Hall and I had
a lengthy conversation late last week and then again today, it's
a matter of interpreting scripture. Always interpret scripture in
the immediate context in which a portion of scripture is found.
Always read it in the light of its immediate context. And then
in the broader context of the whole volume of inspiration.
In this passage of scripture, it is obvious that this is a
call from God to you and me. It is the call of God the Holy
Ghost to his people, the call of God the Father to his elect,
the call of God the Son to his redeemed, the call of the Lord
Jesus Christ to his bride, his beloved, his church. Awake thou
that sleepest. The promise given at the end
of this verse makes it clear that this is a call specifically
to God's elect. The promise is, Christ shall
give thee light. What a blessed word from our
God this is to such poor, needy souls as we are. Wherefore he
saith, awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give thee light. Wherefore? That is because Christ
the light, the son of righteousness, who alone is life and who alone
gives light, because the son of righteousness is risen with
healing in his wings, because the light of the son of righteousness
is both efficacious and easily accessible. God the Holy Ghost
says to you and me, awake thou that sleepest. He saith, he saith. But where does our Lord say that?
I searched the scriptures carefully. Paul is not here giving us a
direct quotation from the Old Testament scriptures. You will
search the scriptures in vain to find these words anywhere
else. Remember though that Paul wrote by inspiration. And he
frequently, in quoting scripture, didn't give us the direct words
of the quotation, but rather gave us the sense of the quotation. And he did so by divine inspiration. So that you will hear sometimes
when I'm preaching, I'll say, it is as though Paul were saying,
Well, when Paul quotes Isaiah, he's not saying it as though
Isaiah was saying, he says, this is what Isaiah is saying. This
is what the words mean. And so perhaps he's referring
to some of the prophecies given in the book of Isaiah. Turn back
to chapter nine of Isaiah. Let's look at two or three of
these. Isaiah chapter nine and verse two. Paul may be giving
us the sense or the meaning of what Isaiah says here. Isaiah
nine, verse two, the people that walked in darkness have seen
great light. They that dwell in the land of
the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Now this
prophecy here in Isaiah nine refers to our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Messiah, who came to enlighten the world by his gospel. We see
its fulfillment in Matthew chapter four. The people which sat in
darkness saw great light. And to them which sat in the
region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. So when our Lord
Jesus comes in his saving power and grace, he causes his light
to shine upon us and in us and raises us up. Look at Isaiah
26. Isaiah 26 and verse 19. This too is a prophecy fulfilled
for us in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah 26, 19. Thy dead men shall live together
with my dead body, shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that
dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the
earth shall cast out the dead. God, who is rich in mercy, for
his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in
sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and made us sit
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Obviously then,
Isaiah 26, 19 is talking about what we experience in the saving
grace of our God. But that which comes nearest
what the apostle says in Ephesians 5 14 you'll find in Isaiah 60
Isaiah chapter 60 and verse 1 Here again, we have a prophecy of
the church the blessed state and condition of God's church
in this gospel age arise shine For thy light is come And the
glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. God has caused the light
of the glory of God in the face of Christ to shine upon you.
So arise and shine forth. The glory of the Lord is risen
upon you. We're exhorted to rouse ourselves
up to be mindful of the grace of God and to walk in the light
of the gospel, holding forth the light of the gospel of the
glory of Christ, proclaiming Christ everywhere for the salvation
of his elect. It may be that Paul is not giving
us quotation at all. Perhaps he is simply giving us
some sentence that was spoken by our Lord while he walked on
this earth that was in the memory of the church in that day. Or
perhaps the Apostle Paul says this is the voice of God speaking
because God spoke by him to us. He's saying, the Lord God says
to you, as I write to you, awake thou that sleepest. However the
case may be, the important matter is to understand to whom these
words are addressed. They were addressed to the church
and people of God. They're addressed to God's elect.
These words were written to God's church at Ephesus in the day
the Apostle Paul wrote to them. They were written to God's church
in Danville, Kentucky in this day. The Lord God by his spirit
in his word here says to you and me, awake thou that sleepest. Arise from the dead and Christ
shall give thee light. Now, then comes a question. Is
this talking about our first call by God the Holy Ghost, raising
us up from the dead in the new birth? Or is this talking about
the many after calls we experience having been called into life
and grace in union with Christ Jesus the Lord? It refers obviously
to both. What child of God can read this
word from God and not be overwhelmed with the remembrance of that
first regenerating, life-giving call that brought us out of darkness
into light, out of death into life, that call issued by God
the Holy Ghost that raised us up from the dead, revealed Christ
in us, and gave us faith in his Son. God's elect, though given
by the Father to the Son from everlasting, though redeemed
by the Lord Jesus Christ, and never the objects of God's wrath,
never the objects of God's anger, always accepted in the beloved,
were until the day we were called by His grace. just as dead, just
as corrupt, just as fallen as all Adam's race. So that we were
by nature children of wrath even as others. That does not mean
that there was a time when God was angry with us and God hated
us. We were accepted in the beloved from everlasting. But all the
days of our lives we lived with the wrath of God abiding on us. With a sense of God's wrath justly
abiding upon us because of our guilt and our sin. And we were
totally unaware. of all the wondrous transactions
of grace on our behalf before the world was, unaware of election,
unaware of the blessings of the covenant, unaware of our acceptance
with God, unaware of our forgiveness, our justification, our righteousness
in Christ, utterly dead in trespasses and in sins. And then the Lord
God called us. Before he called us, we had no
interest in these things and no capacity of enjoying these
things, dead in trespasses and in sins. But then he calls us
and brings everything to light. Turn to 2 Timothy chapter one. God, who commanded the light
to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. What happened when God saved
us? What happened? What changed? Everything in our experience
changed. Everything in our knowledge changed. Everything about our lives changed,
but nothing changed. in our relationship with God.
Nothing changed in our union with Christ. Nothing changed
regarding our acceptance with God. The relationship we have
with God of grace is a one-way thing. It is all God's doing. We come to experience it and
enjoy it in life when we're born again by God the Holy Ghost. Look here in 2 Timothy 1 and
verse 9. Let's see if I can make good
on that. God hath saved us, see it? It's already done. And called us with an holy calling,
not according to our works, but according to his own purpose
and grace, now watch this, which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began, but is now made manifest. It's now brought to light. It's
now understood. It's now made manifest by the
experience of grace, by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ,
who hath abolished death and brought life and immortality
to light by the gospel. There comes a time called the
time of love in the life experience of every chosen redeemed sinner
When the Lord God causes the son of righteousness to rise
with healing in his wings in our souls and causes all things
to be brought to light in the experience of his grace. Only
after Christ comes light in our souls Only after we've been called
by grace from death to life, from darkness to light, do we
see. It's then that the heaven-born
soul is first awakened and sees. For the first time, he sees his
sin and guilt before God by reason of his unbelief. And seeing now
his sin and guilt before God, the law revived and sin died. Now I recognize my guilt because
of my unbelief. He is made to mourn before God. When the Spirit of God comes
and calls by grace, the chosen redeemed sinner sees what Christ
accomplished at Calvary. Did you ever notice in Luke 24,
I think it was verse 43, our Lord Jesus said to his disciples,
you go and preach repentance and remission of sins. He didn't
say go command folks to repent. We do that and we ought to do
that. All men everywhere must repent. But he didn't say, go command
folks to repent. He said, go proclaim repentance
and remission. The repentance and remission
being connected together. He's talking about the fact that
God was in Christ, reconciling the world of His elect to Himself. And He's not imputed their trespasses
unto them, for He has turned them by the doing and dying of
the Son of God to Himself, reconciling us to Himself. That's the repentance
and remission. The remission of sins because
Christ Jesus has died in our stead. These things being accomplished
by Christ calls the heaven-born soul then to turn to God. To turn to God. Let me help you
with repentance. I don't suggest that it's to
be separated from sorrow and mourning and those things that
are commonly talked about, about repentance. I don't know that
I've repented enough. Repentance is not something that's
measured out. Repentance is a turning. It's
a turning. It's a turning. I'm going to,
the Lord willing, Friday morning, leave Danville, Kentucky, Headed
east. I'm going to Ashland. And I'll
preach there Saturday morning, have lunch with my friends down
there, and then I will leave Ashland, Kentucky. You know what
I'm gonna do? I'm gonna repent. My truck's going to repent. That
doesn't involve emotion or feeling. That's not something you measure
out in quantity. It simply means I'm going to
turn and head from east to west, going in just the opposite direction.
And the repenting of God is turning his people to himself in Christ. And it is God graciously causing
sinners called by his grace to turn to him in reconciliation,
bowing to Christ the Lord. And the sinner is born again.
For the first time he sees the righteousness and complete justification
accomplished and brought in by the Lord Jesus Christ. He sees
for the first time the faith, the faithfulness of Christ in
the accomplishment of all salvation by which he is called to have
faith in Christ. Now, I don't suggest that you
put it in those words. I don't think I'd ever thought
of it in just this way until preparing this message. But this
is exactly what happens with a person born again and given
faith in Christ. He sees the faithfulness of Christ
in all that he accomplished and that causes him to have faith
in Christ, to trust the Lord Jesus Christ. He sees the judgment
is finished. Justice is satisfied by Christ. The prince of this world is cast
out, and that causes the sinner, knowing that God has accomplished
all things for him, to have a good hope through grace of life everlasting. What can be more wonderful or
can be more delightful than the sweet experience of God's grace
by the call of God the Spirit. Having escaped the shipwreck
of fallen humanity, standing safe on the shore of grace with
Christ by God's sovereign mercy, we look back and behold the great
gulf over which grace has carried us. The abyss from which grace
has delivered us. And we see untold multitudes
sinking fast into hell, lost forever. And we're astonished
at God's mercy. And we say with the wondering
apostle, Lord, how is it that you have manifest yourself unto
me and not unto the world? all human beings, of all lost
souls, none more unworthy of your favor than me. How is it
that you manifest yourself to me and not unto the world? Oh my God, let me never get over
the wonder of your grace. Such were some of you, but you're
washed but you're sanctified, but you're justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus. And by the Spirit of our God,
you're bought with a price. You're not your own. So glorify
God in your body and in your spirits, which are God's. And
look back at our text again. Ephesians 5, 14 certainly has
reference to those after calls. the many countless calls of grace
that come to our souls when we fall into death-like sleep of
lethargy and indifference toward our dear Savior, that sleep that
seizes us so quickly and so often. As in the beginning, as in the beginning, none but
God awaken us. David, it's our responsibility
to awake ourselves, just as it's our responsibility to believe
God, but we cannot by anything we do stir ourselves up to life. Any more than we can by anything
we do stir ourselves up to believe God Rather only God can awaken
us Only God can cause us to come to Christ again. Only God can
give us faith in our Savior wherefore he saith Awake thou that sleepest
and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light It is a
great mercy of our Redeemer that He comes frequently to awaken
us. Let us take care that we do not
spurn His mercy, love, and grace, but rather awaken to Him, rise
to Him, open our hearts to Him, and He will give us the light
of His presence. Awake, awake, blessed saints
of God, redeemed with precious blood, By Christ redeemed, by
Christ made just, awake to Christ your trust. Walk as children
of light and day in his beauty arrayed. Awake thou that sleepest. And let me just say two or three
things about this and I'll wrap this up. First, here is a sad,
sorrowful condition into which Believers are prone to fall. It's described as sleep and death. Awake thou that sleepest and
arise from the dead. Now he's writing to living saints. He's writing to folks who are
born of God. He's writing to people who know
the Lord Jesus, who are born again by His Spirit, folks who
trust His blood and righteousness. He says, awake thou that sleepest
and arise from the dead. You may have difficulty finding
a way to explain that and understand that with doctrinal precision. But if we're honest with ourselves,
We all have abundant reason to confess. We know exactly what
he's talking about. Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart. Oh, take and
seal it. Seal it for thy courts above. I have been privileged to be
pastor of most of you for a long, long time. And God has preserved
you and kept you in faith and faithfulness for many, many years. But the fact is, you continue
to believe God, Mark Henson, only because God won't let you
behave and go as you would go by nature. And the same is true of me. How
oft we would abandon him and forsake him altogether if he
left us just to ourselves momentarily. Every renewed soul here, I'm
certain, will confess we know something about this. We're often
sleepy. Yes, there is something within
us, inclining us to awaken as well. I sleep, but my heart waketh. We read in the parable, however,
about the wise and foolish virgins in Matthew 25, at midnight, both
the wise and the foolish slept. Both the wise and the foolish
slept. Even the wise children of God
often sleep. The apostle speaks here of believers
being dead. He uses the word here just exactly
like you and I often do. He does not mean dead in an absolute
sense, but rather he talks about the appearance of death. I had
been places to preach, and somebody asked me how things were, and
I'd say, well, sadly, that place is dead as a hammer. They're
just dead. There's not any life there. We
often speak concerning ourselves in the same way. Just so dead. As if our hearts are without
emotion. As if we're past feeling. When
you're physically tired, you say, I'm dead. This is talking
about something more than just being physically tired. It's
talking about a state of mind, of heart, and of soul. The sweet
doctrine of the gospel. The persons of our blessed Savior,
our God, our Father, our Holy Spirit. Heaven and hell and sin and righteousness
and death and life, time and eternity, seem to have no powerful
influence on our lives. Seem to have no real meaning
to our hearts. Is it not so? Faith is sometimes lulled into
sleep. in the darkness of this world,
so that God's people become more and more subject to the desires
and passions of the flesh, more easily stirred and moved by the
most meaningless things of earth than by the most important things
of heaven, the most empty things of earth. than by the fullest
things of heaven and eternity. I sleep, but there's hope in
my heart waking. Turn back to the Song of Solomon,
and let's look at this one more time. When the believer sleeps, he's
in an insidiously dangerous condition. It's not, it's quite possible
for us to sleep and not know it. And when a person sleeps,
he has dreams. Just utterly foolish dreams.
My wife will tell you, I used to have nightmares when I was
a boy. I don't have nightmares very often. I wake up with some shocking
things, but I dream a lot. And most of the time I dream
in Technicolor and I remember it, most of the time. Sometimes marvelous things. I, not long ago, dreamed that
I was dancing. I used to could dance. Man, I
was a good dancer. I enjoyed dancing. It's been
a long time, a long time, but I was dancing good that night.
I was dancing good. Not long ago, I dreamed I was
running. It's been a long time since I
ran anywhere, but I was running good that night. We often dream
things that just aren't so. When we sleep, we dream that
we're rich and increased in goods. We dream that we're strong and
mighty. We dream that we can do much,
when the fact is we're poor and needy, weak and helpless, and
can do nothing. A person who's asleep may have
taken great care to make sure when he went to sleep that nobody
bothered him, disturbed his sleep, woke him up. He bolted the door
and that's strict orders not to be disturbed. His doctrine's
sound and precise and everything's all right. He's got everything
fixed just fine. The sleepiness in the believer. is dangerous because it can lead
to a great deal of harm while we sleep. We sometimes look as if we were
wide awake and people admire us for all the wonders they think
we do. Sometimes we sing in our sleep
and read in our sleep and pray in our sleep. God forgive me
more often than not I read in my sleep and pray in my sleep and sing
in my sleep. How sad. But if you read the
Song of Solomon, you will see that this is ever the experience
of God's saints in this world. It seems that God's church, throughout these
eight chapters of the Sermon on Solomon, is constantly either
in a terrible state of darkness and coldness and indifference, Lethargy, emptiness. And then revived by God's grace,
given fresh revelations of Christ and fresh embraces of Christ
and enabled freshly to embrace Him. And it goes on over and
over and over again. Because the fact is, in our lives
in this world, The believer's life is a constant experience
of fall, coldness, indifference in the flesh, and reviving by
God's grace, by which we are more and more convinced day after
day, the longer we live and the more grace we experience, that
our only hope in this world is Christ and the free grace of
God in Christ our Redeemer. Look at the song of Solomon chapter
four. We pray. Awake, O north wind,
come thou south. Blow upon my garden that the
spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his
garden and eat his pleasant fruits. come to God's house and we pray
that God will visit us. We pray that the Spirit of God
will be with us. That the Lord will make Himself
known in our midst. I hope you don't ever tire of
doing so. Pray that God will visit us. He'll visit His church. I said to several preachers this
past week as I try to write to or call brethren around the country
and around the world and encourage them when they get ready to preach
on the Lord's Day, wouldn't it be wonderful? Now this will just,
if you just stop and think about it, this will spin you around. Wouldn't it be wonderful if when
God's people around the world all meet together at the throne
of grace on the Lord's Day? If the Lord God would again pour
out his spirit as he did on the day of Pentecost and call out
his elect by the thousands. Wonder what might happen should
God be so pleased to meet with us. We pray that he will grant
such reviving in our midst and wherever his people gather. And
in chapter five, verse one, the Lord responds to our prayer. I'm coming to my garden, my sister,
my spouse. I've gathered my myrrh with my
spice. I've eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I've drunk my
wine with my milk. Eat, oh friends, drink. Yea, drink abundantly, oh beloved. The Lord Jesus comes. But when
he comes, he calls for a response. Brother Ralph Barnard used to
say, when you preach, always preach for a verdict. Always
preach for a verdict. Every sermon ought to be a summons.
It ought to call for a response from the people. And our Lord
Jesus comes. but he comes demanding. He always
comes demanding. He always comes demanding. He
demands that we join him at his table, that we drink and drink
abundantly of his grace. But our response is always wrong. It's always wrong, I sleep. But
my heart waketh, I sleep. But there's hope, there's life
in there somewhere. It is the voice of my beloved,
I hear him. And I know the voice, it's the
voice of my beloved that knocketh. And this is what he's saying.
Open to me. Open to me. Open to me. What a strange word. The Savior
says, open to me. Now listen to how he says it.
My sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled. I made you my sister. I made you my love. I've given
you dove's eyes and you're my dove. I made you nothing but
sin to be undefiled. And here's how I did it. With
all my work for you, my head is filled with the dew, and my
locks with the drops of the night. My sufferings and my sorrow,
my toil and my labor are fresh on my mind, have you forgotten?
And here's the response. Lord, in a little while. Don't bother me right now. I
put off my coat. How shall I put it on? Everything
going all right right now. I don't need to be disturbed.
I've washed my feet. How shall I defile them? But as I said, he won't leave
us to ourselves. He said, I will put I will put
myself in them, and I will hold them, and I will not turn away
from them to do them good. And so she says, my beloved put
his hand in by the hole of the door. I haven't studied things
in great deal, If my memory is correct and what
I have read in ancient times, they didn't have locks on doors
like we have now with keys or electrical combinations, but
rather the man who built the house would make a lock and he'd
have certain tumblers inside the house and he'd stick his
hand inside the hole and turn the tumblers on the lock and
open it up. It was his door, his house, his
lock, and he knew the combination. And she says, my beloved put
his hand in by the hold of the door. In other words, he opened
the door. And when he opened the door,
my bowels were moved for him. I was moved from the depth of
my inmost being for him. And I rose up to open to my beloved. When I reached and got hold of
the doorknob, my hands dripped. My hands dripped with sweet-smelling
myrrh upon the handles of the lock. He had left his scent there. I smelled the cologne he wore,
and I opened to my beloved. But graciously and wisely, with
that wisdom Alan read about in Job 28, graciously and wisely,
my beloved had withdrawn himself and was gone. Then my soul failed. My soul
failed when he spake. He spoke and I failed to respond
to him and now he's gone. I sought him, but I couldn't
find him. I called him, I prayed, but he
gave me no answer. The watchman, the preachers that
went about the city found me. Oh, how blessed. How blessed
when God speaks by his word and finds you and speaks to you. You hear the word coming, that
was just for me. Sound like preachers been reading
my mail. They found me. And when they did, they smoked
me and they wounded me. They didn't make me feel good
about myself. They told me the truth about myself. The keepers of the walls, those
faithful, faithful men, took away my veil from me. That is, they exposed all my
naked guilt and depravity and sin. Bill, that's my business
as your pastor, to constantly expose Bill Raleigh to Bill Raleigh. and I'm not faithful to your
soul if I don't. It took away my veil from me
so that I have no excuse. I have no excuse. If the Lord
should cast me off into hell, it'd be exactly what I deserve.
Look at verse eight. I charge you Oh, daughters of
Jerusalem, you, you who know my God, if you find my beloved,
tell him something for me. Please tell him something for
me. Will you tell him that I'm sick of love? Oh, how I miss
him. Would you tell him for me that
I've got to have him, that I can't live without him? He's the fairest
among 10,000. He's the chiefest among 10,000. He's the altogether lovely one,
my beloved and my friend. Tell him. Tell him for me. Maybe
he'll hear you, that I've got to have him. Amen.