AWAKE, SLEEPER!

 

Paul wrote:  "For this reason it says, "Awake sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."  (Many Bible scholars believe this is part of an early church baptismal hymn.)  There is no O.T passage that can be found that can be pointed to as a direct quote.  But Isa. 26:19, "wake up and shout for joy," and 60:1, "Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord rises upon you," might be mentioned.

 

God is a God of second chances.  He is a healer, a redeemer, a restorer and a re-builder par excellence.  Every person needs sleep.  We are restored and rejuvenated by sleep, if we wake up!  But on the other hand, sleep is, symbolically and literally, a time of darkness and inactivity, of unproductively and isolation.  Waking up from sleep can be likened to arising from the dead!  We come back to the world of waking, to conversations and colors, to acting out and doing things in this world. 

 

Why sleep?  To teach the lesson of dependence on God, no doubt.  We are helpless, just lying there at the mercy of anyone around who can approach.  Even the greatest martial artist or heavily armed man cannot defend himself while asleep if someone can stealthily approach his sleeping body. (Remember David and the sleeping King Saul, how he spear and water jug (I Sam.26:11).

 

Rom.5:6 says that Christ died for us "at the right time, while we were still helpless."  God cannot be appreciated, neither His grace and mercy shown (only) through Jesus Christ, until man's pride is stripped away and he stands naked and helpless, defenseless and without excuse before the eyes of the great Judge of all the earth, and is ready to humble himself in the sight of the Lord.  Unfortunately or not, it is only when we are at our lowest point that we learn to look up.  This is true throughout history.  God has to peel away the paint of our self-justification and defenses against His incredible love.  We continually want to save ourselves, or not even bother to think about salvation at all!  This pushing away of God cannot be overcome without the awful realization that man apart from God is totally lost in a matrix created by the clever Deceiver of mankind, that Devil.  It is likened to a place of darkness, but the darkness is primarily instead our heads, in our own minds.  (Not that it isn't real of still completely fatal to our souls!!)  Satan is the great mind deceiver: 

   "So this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind (Italics mine) being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart...." (Eph.4:17-18) Satan is the "prince of the power of the air" (airwaves?) and actually controls the information and thoughts that pass through men's minds, thus working in "the sons of disobedience, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind - making them "children of wrath." (Eph.2:2-3) This further description of Satan's activity in the unsaved is preceded by these words:  "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins." (vrs.1)  Paul includes himself in this with the pronoun "we".

 

Being dead in sins and being asleep, then, are in some ways synomonous.  Now we must admit that God allows this.  It doesn't catch Him by surprise.  He factored in this situation in His divine equation to glorify Himself in the church.  The church is the second chance of God for man to wake up, to "Arise, Shine and give God the Glory, soldiers of the cross...and the crown of Christ"!

 

Hence we have the heroic story of Ezra and Nehemiah's rebuilding of the temple and Jerusalem's restoration work.  This is a great second chance for Israel, after her iniquities brought her so low.  God had foretold in Lev.26 and Dt.28:15 - 29, that He would destroy the same nation that He had powerfully brought out of Egypt to be a nation in the first place.  He warned of increasing disciplinary measures that He would take if they didn't straighten up and follow His good and holy, and unchanging laws and precepts. 

 

But look carefully at those passages of doom and gloom on Israel of stubborn, willful disobedience to their founder and creator:  there is hope in the end, a second chance in Lev.26:40-45 and Dt.30:1-4.  This is a remarkable prophecy, that after 70 years of captivity in Babylon, which made up for all the Sabbath years that they didn't keep, (a big lesson there about putting God first in our lives and taking time on the Lord's Day to honor Him ....or else!), they would be brought back, a (relatively) righteous remnant.

   "So it shall be when all these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the LORD your God has banished you and you return to the LORD your God and obey Him, with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the LORD your God will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you and will gather you again from  all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back...and will prosper you and multiply your more than your father." (Dt.30:1-5)

 

In Lev. 26:40 -45, God tells them that if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers (our cultures and customs are not good enough, but full of sin!), which caused their exile and punishment, if "their circumcised heart becomes humbled so that they then make amends for their iniquity", then God would remember His covenant with their forefathers,  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and would "remember the land".  This will happen because they didn't remember to rest every 7th year from cultivating the land and trust God in that Sabbath year as the provider and sustainer of their life from the fruit of the soil.  But that is another lesson.  The main point here is that God would give them a second chance to return from Babylon and be able to have the temple service restored, which was to become a house of prayer for the nations. God said: "Yet in spite of this" - that they were faithless, overall - "when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God." ( Lev.26:44)

 

Although Ezra and Nehemiah were successful,  by 516 B.C and 445 B.C, respectively, in leading the Jews back from captivity and rebuilding the temple and then later the walls of Jerusalem, this was not the final outcome that God's prophecy was talking about.  The ultimate second chance for Israel to awake from the dead and have Christ shine on them would come much later, when their Messiah came, the Lord of Glory prophesied about for so many years. As Psalm 119:22-24 would prophecy, it would be Jesus who would be the foundation stone for the new spiritual temple of Israel, started among unsaved Jews on the day of Pentecost through Peter's preaching, then among the Gentiles about 10 years later in Caesarea in Cornelius' house.  By the way, the second outpouring of baptism with the Holy Spirit on the Romans at Cornelius's house was a second chance for the unbelieving Jews to get with God's program to be part of the worldwide spiritual temple of praise to God's glory, the church. Soon, most Jews were destroyed by the Romans in A.D 70 and that was the end of their temple, sacrifices, priesthood and worship system therein... until this day and forever!

 

Now we know that after the Jews arrived back in Jerusalem in Ezra and Nehemiah's time, and after they had finished the second temple - remember that Solomon's original one was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar - that they were never really free of foreign dominion.  David's eternal reign didn't really begin until Jesus came, died and ascended to glory to sit on the heavenly throne, and become, as it were, the corner stone for the new temple. After Persia, the Greeks and then the Romans ruled over them, just as Daniel foretold.  So obviously, the full meaning in Lev. 26 and Dt.30 wasn't exhausted by what these restorers (Nehemiah and Ezra) did.  They were symbolically pointing to the coming ultimate Restorer, Jesus Christ. Jesus would take men, and change them within by the miracle of new birth through His working them through His gospel and the Spirit working therein.

 

God was able, through comparison, with Old Israel and the old temple, to prepare mankind for something far greater - the worldwide temple of praise, made up of people from every tribe, nation and ethnic background.  Plus male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile - all one in Christ Jesus.  The actual building and completing of this amazing spiritual temple or house of prayers and praise  - of great, awesome and positive attitudes of people towards God the Father and their brothers and sisters and Christ, despite incredible outward differences in the human sphere is where the fullness of God dwells, and His glory is revealed to the very angels, proving His eternal worthiness of worship.  Only by His Spirit can this be possible!  That's the real meaning of Zech.4:4-6, not the dinky little second temple that the Jews were barely able to rebuild.  It is the worldwide spiritual temple of praise.  See Acts 15:15-18: "So that all the rest of mankind may seek the LORD, and all the Gentiles who are called by My Name, says the LORD who makes these things known from long ago. (or does all these things which were known)."

 

Here is how it works:  Every individual, every living stone (I Pet.2:4-10), gets to be perfected and laid to rest within this spiritual temple, the church (Eph.2:19-22) when they repent, like old Israel did while in captivity in Babylon, and come out of the prisonhouse of sin (Gal.3:22-24) into the freedom of the glory sons of God. (Rom.8:21) But now this glory is hidden from prying eyes, within our bodies as jars of clay. It has not yet appeared as we shall fully be when Christ comes, who is our hope. (Rom.8:23-25; I Jn.3:1-2; II Cor.4:16 - 5:6)

 

Now is our time to wake up and live!  We are resurrected when we are buried and raised with Christ in baptism by immersion. ( Rom.6:3-11; 7:4-6)  This new life starts within us by faith.  Faith is holding in your head, in your brain, in your own mind, the truth of who Christ is and who you are in Him - a brilliant new creature made in His very own image!!!  This truth, when properly understood and held onto will actually deprive Satan of his control through fleshly mindedness, over his ex-sin slaves.  Only if we allow our minds to slip into carnality and unbelief can Satan reassert control and sin surface back up again.

 

Ephesians 5 is all about saints, about Christians who need to do what is really the only "natural" and proper thing - to walk awake in the light. This means that we reflect and shine with the glory of Jesus.  Each one of us doing this makes a lighthouse of God's awesome glory.  This simply means that we really believe. And belief means trust and agreement with God's eternal plan to expose His glory to the angels.

 

We must wake up and show the angels the full qualities of God's character that they could never fathom without the church revealing them.  (I Cor.4:9;I Pet.1;12; Heb:1) His compassion, his loving-kindness, his forgiveness and grace.  His ability to take what is weak and useless and make it strong by His redeeming power.  The weaker the vessel, the great the glory when God strengthens and restores. The lower the fall, the deeper still the grace of God.  You cannot have fallen deeper than the unplummeted depths of God's unending grace and mercy in Christ Jesus!  He is glorified in our repentance and personal restoration.

 

Restoration is the return to God's purpose for His church.  Ezra and Nehemiah did it in their time, fulfilling, in part, the prophecies of Lev.26:40f and Dt.30:1-6.  But it also involves each of us individually, as single stones of unique value and infinite worth.  Christ died for each lost sheep individually.  He died for you. He resurrected for you.  The entire church when into a terrible apostasy or falling away.  It went to sleep, as a whole, during the Dark Ages as they're called.  True Christianity faded into the night of demonic days of spiritual darkness. The church disappeared into hibernation.  But then God's Spirit began to move across the surface of the earth.  The printing press was invented by Gutenberg in the 1400s. Men began to challenge the official church.  Bible were translated into the vernacular of the people.  The Campbells called on a restoration of the ancient book as the only creed book and the ancient-   N.Testament - polity or church organization. The ancient name, Christian, rather than Lutheran, Anglican, Baptist, etc, was recommended and restored by the Haldane brothers.  Walter Scott called on the ancient gospel message of faith, repentance, confession of Jesus as Lord and Christ, and immersion into Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, plus the perfect life of Jesus' character restored.  Jay Wilson has elaborated on how to achieve this by faith in Christ's glory as our own heritage, and I have preached and taught that we must restore the ancient purpose of the Lord's original disciples - to go out and make disciples by mission effort worldwide at whatever cost it takes. 

 

Who will listen to the Spirit's call?  Who will stand up and be counted to help build the worldwide spiritual temple of prayers and praise, the church in all her glory as envisioned and taught by Christ and His Apostles?  Not a return to the signs and wonders outwardly, but the renewal of the inner man, the total transformation and makeover of our hearts to be in total submission and conformity with that of Christ Jesus?  Then awake, sleeper! 

 

One last thought:  Each of us will need to repent many times in our lives on earth.  Some hold that they did this once and for all at their immersion.  Not true!  The N.T calls us to a forward,upward call that is increasingly steep.  Higher heights must be scaled by deeper repentance of sins of omission and commission.  So don't get complacent because you've been baptized.  Don't think that God is through with perfecting you yet. Let go the baggage, the worldly pursuits that act like fat on a marathon runners body.  Prepare to get lean and loose more unnecessary weight and add needed muscle.  The LIGHT will confront you where you are at.  All the shameful things done in darkness must go.  All the ungodly attitudes, actions and thoughts must be eliminated by the presence of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Unless you can truly say that you have unbroken fellowship with the Holy Spirit, communion with Christ in the inner man that never ends, then you still need to grow and become what God has called you to be.  Let Jesus confront you within your mind, and listen to what He is saying!  Then willingly obey.  This will often seem intensely painful as we drop whatever it is that is slowing us down.  Weight loss hurts!!  Sin elimination is not fun!  But it will only be a Spirit-filled people who will succeed in being the spiritual temple of prayers and praise to God.  We cannot have unity and work together with all kinds of people in one streamlined, effectual army of Christ and hold on to any sin or worldliness. Grace is time and space to grow, not an excuse to stay the same and camp in the valleys of Sodom or park in our comfort zones of low-level, churchy-churchy games that justify ourselves.  We must be willing to be stretched far beyond our wildest expectations.  Marrying people from different age and time and culture zones.  Living in places that we would never dream of.  Speaking new languages learned by hard effort powered by love of people who are not our own.. Our prejudices and personal agendas must die for us to rise, like the proverbial Phoenix, to fly higher than eagles in spiritual freedom where the world's gravitational pull has no more effect due to our minds being truly set on things above where we have been seated, in the Spirit realm, with Christ.

 

Do you really think that you are a living stone? Then let the Lord put you in the body exactly where He knows you need to be, and quit whining about it!!  If you are a wife, then love it.  If single, likewise.  If in Africa, America, or wherever, love it.  God is placing in the body each Christian exactly where they need to be.  Quit thinking about running like Jonah and rather stand like Joshua.  Be a Isaiah and say: "Send me, Lord"   Be a part of His eternal solution, not a part of His headache.  Contribute gladly your own quota in proportion to what the Lord God has so graciously blessed you.  Play your part on the team, whether quarterback or lineman, waterboy or slam-dunk king.  And give all the glory to God. That is what this is all about, this planet, this universe, this age, this local congregation, your very existence as a human being - it is purposely about exposing and revealing God's glory in a unified body of His called the BRIDE of Christ, His glorious church.  So turn of the self and turn on the Spirit, and die to sin and live to Christ Jesus our Lord.  Look up - His throne of Glory!  Look within - His Spirit of Glory, Christ within.  Look out - at the ripened harvest fields where millions of potential building blocks for His worldwide spiritual temple of prayers and praise are waiting for you to bring them in as living sacrifices - and your sacrifice - to the one true God who will fill all things with His glory.  WAKE UP! GET OUT and evangelize a lost world by both your perfect holy lives and by your message of His glory.

 

Amen?  AMEN!