A WORD TO A PEOPLE
NEITHER DEAD GOD-WARD, NOR AWAKE,
BUT ASLEEP
“The night is far spent, the day is at hand” Rom 13: 12
This, the sleeping time of the church, is set forth in Matthew 25: 5.
Reader, are you of this company? And if so, are you alive to this sleep which characterises it at this moment? I do not ask if you are alive to what marks the world, but are you alive to what marks the company to which you belong, and which therefore, for aught I know, characterises you? See to it, are you awake? Those who are, are going forth to meet the bridegroom.
The apostle says, “They that sleep, sleep in the night”, 1 Thess 5: 7. Two things characterise a sleeping man. He has no true sense of the state of things that surrounds him, and he has no true sense of that waking scene to which his life really belongs. Christ was life and light here, but Christ is absent, and in so far as man could do it, both have been extinguished. A wonderful fact it is for this world (one of the most wonderful perhaps) that life and light have been here, and that both have been here not only for God but also for man. “In him was life and the life was the light of men”. “The true light was that which, coming into the world, lightens every man”, John 1: 9 NT. But night (that is, moral darkness) and sleep, which suits the night, have again settled down upon this world, for it is true today that men “loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his should be reproved”, John 3: 19, 20.
Now the apostle says that what characterises the night, speaking generally, is sleep. There is no exception in the verse which states that sleep came in while the bridegroom tarried. Christ went away, and sleep is what immediately characterises the company which Christ left here for Himself, moral sleep, or indifference to what suited God and to what Satan was doing. I shall try to call your attention to the sleeper presently; now I only want to insist on what has characterised and does characterise the company. Scripture says, “While the bridegroom tarried they all slumbered and slept”, Matt 25: 5. Not but that there have been some awake (the apostles, for instance, were awake in their day, and so were many in the dark ages and some even today), but what characterised the mass of the living is still marking them. It is this: Christians as a whole are morally and spiritually asleep—“They all slumbered and slept”. Speaking of them as a whole, alas, this is true of them; the word is, “Wake up thou that sleepest, and arise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee”, Eph 5: 14 NT.
The coming of the Lord is a waning doctrine. Who is awake? I think but one answer can be given. Those only are awake who are looking out for the absent One. If all slept, light was useless. Light is only of use to those who are awake. The cry was heard and awoke them. They got the good of light, and they go forth afresh to meet the bridegroom! I do not see therefore that any saint can be awake who is not consciously in the freshness and daily expectancy of the Lord’s second coming, the Lord’s return!
It has been said that the rapture of 1 Thessalonians 4 is not the ‘coming’. This is only a word. No one will entertain such a statement as a difficulty in view of John 14. The Lord says, If I go away, I will come again unto you, and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also. The awakened Christian will say, ‘If the rapture is not His coming to earth, at all events the rapture is His coming for me! Oh, the joy of the thought that Christ wants me!’ A soul that can say that in reality, a soul which lives in the joy of that, is awake. He has but one object. It is not said ‘cometh’ in Matthew 25; it is said, “Behold, the bridegroom”. Christ has become the one absorbing object. But again He is coming then! We understand Paul a little, who said, “For to me to live is Christ” (Phil 1: 21): and this Christ was to Paul the coming One. “Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour”. One who is asleep (naturally) has no clear perception of anything; he dreams perhaps, but to him everything is out of proportion, unreal, and in confusion. This is the figure the Lord uses here! What a sad state for a Christian to be in. One who has life, but is either unconscious or a dreamer. Yet he has life and should live—live with the life faculties in activity! A Christian has divine senses—senses exercised.
What is our point? Why, that all men are, before God, dead, or asleep or awake! Reader, which are you? Of what use is a man who is asleep? If you are awake today, you are ‘going forth’. You are going “forth to meet the bridegroom”. This is what you are doing. And if not this, O sleeper! then it is high time for you to awake out of sleep, Rom 13: 11!
I delight to meet one who is awake. I know him. He is watching for Christ. ‘He may come today—before this present day’s secular work of mine is done!’ May the Lord increase the number of such! May He add to the number of saints who are awake, though the mass of the living remains as yet in lethargy and in all this moral slumber and sleep God-ward. Let us again pass along the word. CHRIST IS COMING!
From Helps for the Poor of the Flock—vol 7, 1902
