IT is impossible to read the Epistles without observing the fervent desire of the writer that the Lord’s people should be awake. Our young Christian readers, and also older ones, will note with interest the occasions, as well as the urgency, with which the call comes. After presenting to the Ephesian believers a chain of entrancing, soul-thrilling, emancipating, elevating truth there comes the trumpet call: — “Wake up thou that sleepest, and arise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee” (Eph. 5:14,14Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. (Ephesians 5:14) N. Tr.).
So in the Epistle from which we have culled our text, we have the most exquisite unfolding of the Gospel as that which shows us how poor wretches like ourselves can be picked out of the very gutter of sin, and set down in the presence of God in the image of His Son; and then there comes this startling word: “It is high time to awake out of sleep.”
As we read such words we are simply compelled to stop and ask ourselves,
ARE WE ASLEEP?
We will, for thee moment, leave the Roman and Ephesian Christians out of account, as well as others to-whom similar words were addressed, and ask ourselves this pointed question.
Shall we bring it a little nearer home and ask,
AM I ASLEEP?
Let us consider. We once heard the Gospel in its simplicity, we believed it and we were saved. Then we sought to know that Gospel better, and, as we endeavored to, plumb its depths, we delighted in it. We were—attracted to Him who is the theme of the Gospel, and, as we became increasingly attracted to Him, we found ourselves more and more detached from the world and from our former habits and manner of life. And then—? And then?
Something happened. We began to cool off., Our Bible reading became more perfunctory; our prayers more formal; our desire for the things of God decreased; our hankering after those things that we had dropped increased, until we became spiritually asleep. Just as a kind mother arouses her boy and says, “My boy, it is high time to awake out of sleep, or you will lose your situation:” so our ever-gracious Lord, His heart wounded, His love grieved, arouses us, and says in effect: “It is high time to awake out of sleep, or you will lose all spiritual vitality.”
Why this stirring call? Because the time of opportunity will soon be past. “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” In view of that we need to be awake, alert, active, as those who realize that the time is short, and that “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”
Where this clarion call is found it is in connection with our walk. It is not a call to work, to preach, to do things which might make us conspicuous, but to walk. First, we are called upon to “cast off the works of darkness, and to put on the armor of light” (verse 12).
We would fain paraphrase the first sentence “Let us therefore cast off—?” But we will each complete the sentence for ourselves. You know, dear fellow believer, just what it is that is sapping the spiritual life; that is hindering divine growth. That thing, that habit, that muse-in-the-fashion idea that you once dropped but you have taken it up again. That unholy alliance which you contemplate, and which has already affected your relations with the Lord and with those who belong to Him. Shall we hear the long, loud, insistent call? Shall we awake out of sleep? Shall we cast off the works of darkness, and put on that armor of light that will at once detect and refuse all that is not pleasing to the Lord?
We are approaching the end of the journey; we are getting nearer to the moment when we shall see His face; and when He will review with us all our life history. How many years of sleep will have to be recorded? How many things that we had “cast off” and taken up again will be recalled? We cannot remedy these things now for they belong to the past, but we can “wake out of sleep;” we can “cast off the works of darkness;” we can “put on the armor of light;” we can, to sum up, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof” (verse 14). Shall we here and now seek to do so?
As we lay, aside this paper, let us drop on our knees; own our lethargy; confess our sin; judge ourselves in the presence of God; ask Him for grace and power to “cast off,” to “put on,” and to “walk,” (verse 13). so that we may be no longer slumberers and cumberers but may be found here pleasurable and serviceable to our blessed Lord.
“Praise, praise the Lord, and vigil keep,
As those aroused from death’s dead sleep;
He Comes I He Comes I spread round the cry,
Awake! Awake! the Lord is nigh.”
W. Bramwell Dick.