I N t h e s ix t y - f o u r t h chapter of Isaiah, the prophet is longing for a manifestation of God: “ Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence.” He knows that God is able, that His re sources are unlimited: “ For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, 0 God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” Isaiah knows that God will do business with anyone who means business: “ Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways.” But there is a hindrance: “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” Mind you, it is not our sins here but our righteousnesses, the best that we are and can do in ourselves, that are filthy rags—” rags because they do not cover us and filthy rags because they only defile us.” There is another reason why God is not coming down in mighty power and with that we are concerned just now: “ There is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.” We are living in a tired age. Everybody is tired. “ That tired feeling” has become one of our standard expressions. We wake up tired and go to bed tired. We take a pill to put us to sleep and another pill next morning to keep us awake. We are always resting, but we never get rested. We take a vacation in order to recuperate and then we need another vacation to re cuperate from our vacation. We are physically tired and mentally tired and then we are drowsy with what this same prophet Isaiah called a “ spirit of deep sleep.” The devil has chloroformed the moral and spiritual atmos phere of our time and most of us are living in a stupor. We go through the motions of living but we are walk ing in our sleep. Of course the unsaved world is dead in trespasses and sins and all around us are thousands of animated corpses. They might not appreciate such a description but dead they are. “ She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth” is the way God’s Word puts it. Some of these corpses get around pretty fast and appear anything but dead, but dead they are, dead to God, dead to salvation, dead to eternal life. To all such God says, “ Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” But I am thinking now of Christians who have heard God’s all-animating voice and have awakened to salvation, but who have fallen victims to the hypnotic languor of these days and who need to awake to right eousness and sin not. I am concerned about these slum bering saints who sleep the sleep of the slothful like the sluggard in Proverbs: “ How long wilt thou sleep,
0 sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth, and thy want as an armed man.” Like the disciples in Gethsemane we sleep while our Lord suf fers and He asks, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” “ Sleep on now, and take your rest” He said to these slumberers and some of us take Him pretty literally on that today! But do not forget that He added, “ Rise, let us be going!” No wonder the Bible continually urges us to “watch and pray,” “ stir up the gift of God,” “ awake out of sleep” and “ gird up the loins of your minds.” We sleep late and waste hours that would give us a working knowledge of the Bible. We hurry to bed with a thoughtless prayer — or none. We sit in church listless and critical. We stay away from prayer meeting while the devil packs the show places of sin. We deliberately disobey God for forsaking the assembling o f ourselves together. We take our rest at God’s expense. Church members sit for hours in theatres and weep over the glycerin tears of Hollywood divorcees but at church they complain, “ Behold, what a weariness is it!” “ There is none . . . that stirreth up himself to take hold of . . . (God).” There is nothing more dangerous than our present-day comfortable disinclination to take hold of God. “ It is high time to awake out of sleep,” for most of us Christians are semiconscious. We sing hymns and do not know what we sing. We hear sermons and we don’t hear them. Our ears may register vocal sounds emanating from the pulpit but our minds are busy with something else and our hearts get nothing. We read the Bible but Satan hangs a veil over the sacred page and if asked “What did you just read?” we could not tell. Some of us know our plight but will not rouse our selves to apply the remedy. Sometime ago I awoke in the night. The weather had changed and I was cold. There was a blanket at the foot of the bed but I was too sleepy to rouse myself sufficiently to pull up the blanket. I knew my condition and I knew the remedy was at hand but I went around next day with a crick in my neck because I did not stir up myself to take hold of the blanket. Some of you know your spiritual state and the remedy but you do not stir up yourselves to take hold of God. We need to be aroused. A woman had taken an overdose of a sedative. The physician ordered that someone walk the floor with her and not allow her to rest until the effect of the drug wore off. She pleaded, “ Please let me sleep,” but they knew better. Too many modern churches want pastors to be bedtime story tellers and lullaby crooners when we need floorwalkers
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