Wake Up, Wake up!
Is 51-52 July 8, 2012
Intro:
I am not one of those people whose eyes pop open minutes before the alarm goes off, who dive out of bed with a smile eager to embrace the morning sunlight, who are ready to chat and laugh and have a productive breakfast meeting at 6:45am. Nope – not me. It takes me a long time to wake up; I am slow and grumpy and groggy in the mornings.
So I understand that state of being where we are half asleep; groggy; drowsy. It is not really being asleep – there is a vague awareness of the world and life – but that vague awareness drifts in and out. It is like hearing the alarm go off, waking up enough to silence it, then rolling over and drifting back asleep for another 15 minutes till the snooze button wears off and the alarm sounds again: we heard the alarm, were aware of it, responded to it momentarily, but then turned around and went back to sleep.
I wonder: does that describe any of your spiritual life? Aware of the reality of God, having responded at points of time in the past, but then turned around and gotten back to life as normal doing what we want and pursuing our own ideas and agendas? Is there anyone here who feels spiritually groggy; half-asleep/half-awake; aware of God and believing in God but slipping in and out like I do every morning when I am waking from sleep?
To help answer that question, let me describe some possible symptoms of a sleepy Christian, and contrast that with one fully awake. I’ve borrowed these from an old sermon by CH Spurgeon.
Sleepy Christians: unaware
When we are asleep, we are unaware of the world around us. All kinds of things could be going on, but when we are asleep we have absolutely no clue. I remember one time being on a choir bus tour and one of the singers was fast asleep. We ripped off long lines of scotch tape and created a web just a couple inches in front of their face, then yelled Boo! and woke him up and he jerked awake and stuck his face right into the tape. Not particularly kind, but you see the point. When we are asleep we are unaware of the world around us. Spiritually it is exactly the same; sleepy Christians are unaware of what God is doing around us. We step into a beautiful summer day with birds and flowers praising God and we walk right past without noticing. God gives us another precious day of life and breath so we can love Him and love others and we think only of ourselves. We hear of a friend with some need or struggle but instead of acting we plop in front of the TV or computer and vaguely entertain ourselves. Here is how Spurgeon describes it:
Christian, behold your condition. Have you not sometimes been brought into a condition of insensibility? You wished you could feel; but all you felt was pain because you could not feel. You wished you could pray. It was not that you felt prayerless, but it was because you did not feel at all. You sighed once; you would give the world if you could sigh now. You used to groan once; a groan now would be worth a golden star if you could buy it. As for songs, you can sing them, but then your heart does not go with them. You go to the house of God; but when the multitude that keep holy day in the full tide of song send their music up to heaven, you hear it, but your heart does not leap at the sound. Prayer goeth solemnly like the evening sacrifice up to God's throne; once you could pray, too; but now, while your body is in the house of God, your heart is not there. The hymns and the prayers are just the same, but you have fallen into a state of slumber. Once, if you thought of a man's being damned, you would weep your very soul out in tears; but now you could sit at the very brink of hell, and hear its wailings unmoved. Once the thought of restoring a sinner from the error of his ways would have made you start from your bed at midnight, and you would have rushed through the cold air to help rescue a sinner from his sins. Now, talk to you about perishing multitudes, and you hear it as an old, old tale. Tell you of thousands swept by the mighty flood of sin onwards to the precipice of destruction, you express your regret, you give your contribution, but your heart goeth not with it…
On the flip side, a fully awake Christian sees God everywhere. Prayer is continual and delightful – an ongoing conversation with a friend who loves you deeply and whom you love deeply. An opportunity to worship is anticipated, not just routinely endured. The chance to share faith with someone who doesn’t know Jesus is sought and gripped and rejoiced over, as is any opportunity to serve however menial – and when that service goes un-noticed and unappreciated by others it is an even deeper joy because we are aware of God’s great pleasure in that secret service to Him.
Which of those sounds more like your life – sleepy or awake?
Sleepy Christians: not in reality
When we sleep, we dream, and those dreams are not reality. Sleepy Christians likewise live in a state of non-reality. The reality is that God loves us and has demonstrated that most fully in Christ on the cross but sleepy Christians start to question God’s love for them, usually based on some external circumstances in life that are hard. The thoughts come: If God loved me why would I be having this hard time? Or maybe even I’m not sure God is even real. Those are not reality! Sometimes the non-reality we live in as sleepy Christians is that we don’t need God for daily life. This one hits us when things are going fine, we are managing life on our own. Then the delusion is that we are self-sufficient and can live in our own strength. If we are spiritually asleep we suffer those kinds of delusions.
Fully awake Christians, on the other hand, live in truth and reality, not in delusion and lies. These Christians live in the truth that we are adopted children of a loving God, and live in daily dependence on God for life and identity and value and purpose. They live under the cross and beside the empty tomb, with that reality and all it means for us ever present and ever powerful.
Permit me a brief rabbit trail: virtual reality scares me. I am not anti-technology at all, I see it as a valuable tool. But it scares me when I see and hear of people spending so much time and energy in worlds that are not real. I’m concerned for them, especially for their spiritual lives. These virtual pursuits are becoming more powerful the more realistic they become, but they aren’t real! War simulations are not real. Fly fishing video games, no matter how realistic they are, are not real! You won’t encounter God with a video controller emulating a fishing rod – but sit by the edge of a river or in a boat on a lake, with a real fishing rod, and you just might. What scares me is how easy they are, and that is what undermines life and reality and faith. They produce the feeling and emulate/simulate reality while requiring nothing of us (except spending money to buy the game), and this creates patterns in us that expect that life should be like that as well. We should be able to sit comfortably on a couch and have life delivered to us in a neat, clean, easy package. It sets us up to expect relationships with other people, and with God, to behave in the same way – comfortable and neat and clean and easy – and if they don’t then we can just turn off the power or switch to a different game. But that is not reality. Fully awake Christians live in reality.
Sleepy Christians: inactive
The third obvious description of sleepy Christians is inactivity. When we are asleep, we are doing nothing. Just lying there, breathing slowly. Have you ever seen Christians like that? Saying they believe, but not actively serving God – sort of breathing slowly, but doing nothing for God or for His Kingdom? Fully awake Christians, by contrast, are active – they choose to spend time doing things for God and His Kingdom, both inside the church and outside the church as a representative (ambassador would be the Scriptural word for it) of the Kingdom of God.
Asleep or Awake?
I’m sure there are more characteristics of sleepy Christians than being unaware of God, not living in reality, and being inactive. But that is, I think, enough of a start to help us ask and answer that original question: are you a sleepy Christian or a fully awake Christian?
Isaiah 52:1-3:
I wanted to share a fascinating conversation between God and His people in the book of Isaiah, chapters 51 and 52, one I think that might be helpful for us today, but I’ve abbreviated down to 3 verses. It is bold, almost reckless; it is vast and grounded; it is full of hope and promise and action. What is most fascinating to me is the back-and-forth between God and His people. The prophet begins with pleading with the people and reminding them of God’s promises and faithfulness, then God speaks words of hope, and then the people say to God Wake up, wake up, O Lord! Clothe yourself with strength! Flex your mighty right arm! Rouse yourself as in the days of old. (Is 51:9). That is pretty bold, almost reckless. Telling God to wake up! But I understand the cry of the people; maybe that is your cry this morning also, sometimes it is mine as well. And God’s response is gentle. He turns the call to wake up back on His people, twice actually, but I am only going to read the second one:
1Wake up, wake up, O Zion!
Clothe yourself with strength.
Put on your beautiful clothes, O holy city of Jerusalem,
for unclean and godless people will enter your gates no longer.
2 Rise from the dust, O Jerusalem.
Sit in a place of honor.
Remove the chains of slavery from your neck,
O captive daughter of Zion.
3 For this is what the Lord says:
When I sold you into exile,
I received no payment.
Now I can redeem you
without having to pay for you.
It is a call to wake up and get ready. At this point in time, the people are still slaves in exile. The city is not rebuilt, life is still a mess, the deliverance and salvation promised in the rest of the dialogue has not yet happened. The party is still a promise, the celebration is still at some time in the future. The first reality is that the people are still slaves in exile.
But that is when God commands them – us – to wake up, get dressed up in our finest, to rise from the dust, and to remove the chains of slavery.
Because here is the second reality: God is awake. God is on the move. God is powerful. The promises of salvation and deliverance and power are true and real and they are coming. If we are asleep we will miss them. Sorry if that is harsh, but it is true. Sleepy Christians will miss it. God will be at work all around and we’ll be snoring in a corner.
Now is the time to wake up, to clothe with strength, to put on your beautiful clothes, to rise from the dust, to remove the chains of slavery. To shake off the slumber and awaken to the reality of God among us so that we are ready and alert when God shows up. Remember Jesus’ parable of the bridesmaids: (Matthew 25)
25 Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 The five who were foolish didn’t take enough olive oil for their lamps, 4 but the other five were wise enough to take along extra oil. 5 When the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
6 At midnight they were roused by the shout, Look, the bridegroom is coming! Come out and meet him!
7 All the bridesmaids got up and prepared their lamps. 8 Then the five foolish ones asked the others, please give us some of your oil because our lamps are going out.
9 But the others replied, we don’t have enough for all of us. Go to a shop and buy some for yourselves.
10 But while they were gone to buy oil, the bridegroom came. Then those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was locked. 11 Later, when the other five bridesmaids returned, they stood outside, calling, Lord! Lord! Open the door for us!
12 But he called back, Believe me, I don’t know you!
13 So you, too, must keep watch! For you do not know the day or hour of my return.
Conclusion:
I began by talking about how I struggle to wake up. I shared some of the content from a sermon by CH Spurgeon – he ends basically yelling at people trying to get them to wake up, which might have fit his time and his personality and his congregation, and I enjoyed reading it. But I’m not going to yell at us. I hope we aren’t at a place where we need that screaming jolt to fully awaken us. Instead, hear my gentle plea: come fully awake.
Many of us have experienced a rude awakening, like my friend on the choir tour bus. But we’ve also probably experienced a gentle awakening. A spouse, parent, maybe even your child coming quietly in, gently putting a hand on your shoulder, speaking softly, saying good morning, wake up, I want to spend some time with you today. I know when that has happened to me it is precious and cherished.
I see God the same way this morning. In gentleness, with closeness, His hand on our shoulder, His still small voice with the same message: wake up, wake up! I want to be with you, I want to spend time with you, I have an incredible Kingdom I want to bring, and I need you and want you to be part of it.
Will you hear His gentle call? Come awake; come awake. He is coming, and it will be good!
