Warning and Encouragement 2

I think many of you will not need me to warn you of it. Still, if you do want to know, let me ask you to compare yourself with what you used to be. Are you as lively in divine things as you once were? Is prayer as fervent and refreshing to your souls as it once was? Do you find that willingness to pray that you once had? Do you find that you have to find yourself into your closet, and, when you get there, do you offer up your prayers and desires with coldness which you were wont to offer with warmth and loving fervor? Do you still continue to have the blessedness you had when first you knew the Lord? If not, that is a symptom of sleep.

Then also, compare yourself with what you ought to be. Think how you ought to have grown during the years that you have been a believer. Are you what you ought to have been? Then, if you are not, you must be asleep, or else you would have made better progress. Compare yourself with what others have been, and you will see cause for shame; and if so, my brethren, you are asleep; you are in a dangerous condition, and I pray the living God, by the demand for watchfulness when the prince of this world comes, by the agonies of Christ in Gethsemane, yes, by the blood of him who poured out his soul unto death, to arouse you out of this deadly sleep; for it is a state that will lead to some great and grievous sin, some black and terrible fall, unless God shall prevent it by his grace. First you sleep, then you slumber, then you sin, then you sin again, then you go deeper still, and so will you continue, unless God, in his grace, steps in to deliver you from the consequences of this dreadful sleep.

II. Yet, secondly, there is, in the text, A HOPEFUL SIGN.

I think that most of us, though we do sleep, can say as the spouse does, "my heart wakes." Beloved, it is a blessed sign that 'the spouse knows her state, and truly confesses it'. She does not say, mark you, "I am a little tired; my eyes are heavy;" no; but with honesty of heart she says, "I sleep." Ah, it is a good sign when you and I know our state, and are willing to confess it before God. I have heard of a believer in Christ, who, on one occasion, was intoxicated, and he was expelled from the church as the result of it; but he was visited by many Christian brethren, and among the rest by one who prayed with him. They prayed together to God, but he could not get any peace. "No," said his friend, "and you never will until you come to the point, and confess your sin as it really is;" and when the man said, in his prayer, "Lord, you know that I have disgraced myself; I have been drunk", it was then that he obtained peace. He had directed the lances to the wound; he had put before God the right state of the case; and this is what we must do, beloved, if we would have restoring and renewing grace-- we must tell the Lord what our sin really is; as the spouse did, we must confess, "I sleep."

But you will observe that the spouse is as bold in saying, "my heart wakes," as she was in saying, "I sleep." What does this mean, "my heart wakes?" Why, just this. "My conscience tells me that this sleepy state is not a proper one for me to be in; and my heart cries that I must get out of it. I cannot find any rest while I slumber. At a distance from God, I cannot be happy." Peter may follow afar off, but Peter cannot be happy afar off; Peter may sit and warm his hands with the servants in Pilate's hall, but he cannot warm his heart. Sinners may say, "Why make all this fuss about a little sleep? There is no great sin in it." Ah, but little sins trouble believers far more than great sins trouble sinners. If a Christian's soul be but a little away from God, it is sufficient to mar his joy, and make him unhappy. A man clad in armor may go walking through the woods, and may never feel the thorns; but another man, who has had his armor taken off, will be scratched and torn therewith. Sinners clad in the armor of sin feel not the thorn of Christ's desertion; but saints who have thrown this armor aside, and are tender of heart, feel even his slightest frown.

My dear hearer, perhaps you are slumbering this evening, and are content to be so; then you are no child of God; but if you are slumbering, and there is some power, something within you that keeps crying out; "O God, I would be delivered!" though this voice be never so feeble, though this cruel sleep of yours may almost have gagged it, yet still, if it does rebel against this state, and cries out, "Lord, I would be changed; I would be different; turn unto me, and I shall to turned; revive me, and I shall be revived;" if there be such a longing as this in you, you are still a child of God, and well may exclaim, "I sleep, but my heart wakes. Lord, I would live near to you if I could. I am like a man that rides a sorry jade of a horse; the horse will not go, but he spurs him, hacks at the bit, and strikes him again and again, for the man would go if he could; and so it is with me. 'The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak;' and 'when I would do good, evil is present with me,' and 'how to perform, that which is good I find not.' Lord, help your servants, and let them not sleep any longer!

III. Now, thirdly, here is A POTENT REMEDY: "the voice of my Beloved."

Some Christians try to get themselves into a healthy state of heart by looking to the law, by self-examination, and by a thousand other remedies; but, after all, "the true cure for every disease in the Christian is in Christ himself". You may try to chasten yourselves for your sins, but you will continue to sin if that is all that you do. Beloved, I know that the heart has a great objection to coming to Christ after being in a sleepy state.

Old Legality whispers in our ears that, "You cannot go and trust Christ as you did, for see how badly you have behaved; you must not go to the fountain filled with blood now, as you did at first, for see, you have played the harlot, and you cannot go with the same confidence as you went at first." "Ah, Old Loyalty, I can, and I will." The law never did bring us out of our state of nature, and will it bring us now out of our state of lethargy? If the law had first of all quickened us, then it would to well to look for restoration by the law; but inasmuch as we found our first life by simply believing in Christ, the only way to renew that life is by believing in Jesus Christ again. I will listen, then, not to the voice of the curve, not to the condemnation of Moses, but to the voice of my Beloved, for no music is like his, and nothing can so wake my soul as hearing him speak to me.

Hear, then, the voice of your Beloved in the Gospel; he is your Beloved still, though you are asleep; but he sleeps not; and he calls to you, "Come to my bosom; come, my beloved, open the doors of your heart to me. Come, my affianced and precious one, I have not sent you away, though you have grieved me, and opened my wounds afresh. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Open the doors of your heart to me, and let me come into communion with you." It is the voice of Jesus speaking to you through your minister, and he cries to you, "Come to me now; trust me once again; and your spiritual strength shall be renewed."

Then turn to this precious Book, and you will hear the voice of your Beloved there; in words like these he speaks to you, "Turn, backsliding children, says the Lord; for I am married unto you." Hear him as he cries unto you, "I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon." Hear him as he cries to you, ungodly ones, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon"

Hear, then, your Beloved's voice; and mark, dear brethren, if you do not hear the voice of your Beloved in the days of prosperity, you will be likely enough to hear it in affliction. If nothing else will keep you awake, the rod will. If you will sleep in prosperity, you shall have adversity; and sooner than you shall be lost, you shall lose everything. If, my brethren, God sees we cannot stand our present peace and prosperity, he will send his servant Death into our families; he will take away our possessions; he will place us in adversity; he will wither all our fair flowers, and break all our idols, and dash in pieces everything that stands between our soul and himself. Oh, that we were wise, and would hear his gentle voice! "Do not be as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle;" but hear what the Lord says to you from the watch-tower of his ministry and from the witness box of his Word, and then you shall escape the rod.

And perhaps, my brethren, the Beloved may speak to you without the ministry, and without the Word. If he shall do so, I beg you to catch his words. It may be, while you are sitting here, or when you are walking home, or perhaps at the Lord's table, where some of us hope to meet directly, you will hear him whisper some kind, assuring word that shall sink your fears again. I have known what it is to preach, sometimes, on a Sunday here, and I have felt like a butcher, who stands in his shop cutting out joints of food for others; they are fed, but he himself has nothing; or as a cook, who prepares and sends up dinners, but cannot so much as get a taste himself. Them I have gone downstairs to the Lord's table with a dull heart, and, perhaps, in a second, as though a strange miracle has been wrought, my soul has been as full of devout joy and holy mirth as ever spirit was out of heaven; and if you ask me how that has been caused, I would say it has been caused by some kindly look of my Beloved, some loving glancing of his eye, or some sweet word from his mouth, and my soul has rejoiced with joy unspeakable. Why should it not be so with you tonight? That is the best thing to waken you up. If your heart is dull and heavy, as soon as your Beloved speaks, you will at once awake to spirit and to life.

My time has gone, but I want to say this to you, I am sometimes, no, I am often haunted with the fear lest we, as a church, should fall asleep. Oh, how greatly has the Lord blessed us these many years! And what favor seems to rest upon every agency! The preaching of the Word has been very successful, but still it is open to the conversion of many. In our classes how is God honored! Ah, you little know, some of you, what others of us see; and even we do not see one-tenth of what God is doing in the class conducted by one of our sisters here; and our Sabbath-schools may very well be a delight, for the Lord is working a great work in them; but I am always jealous over you, lest you should slumber. How easy it is to fall asleep! I often fear that my voice, which was once like a trumpet to you, will become like sleep-music; that you will become so accustomed to it, and I, perhaps, shall become so dull and heavy, that the life of God will almost die out among us. My soul weeps and cries to God over this matter.

My Master knows that I would cheerfully resign, that another voice might speak to you, if that would keep alive your zeal and enthusiasm. If it is, however, not my fault, even a changed ministry would not suffice. When churches grow to a great size, people think they must always continue so, and that God will always bless them as he has done. Why, sirs, as our first blessings came in answer to prayers all future blessings must come in the same way.

I remember well, when we used to meet together in Park Street to have holy communion with the Lord, how we used to wrestle with him in prayer, so much so that I have scarcely been able to pronounce the benediction, much less give any address, because we all seemed to be carried away in the mighty majesty of wrestling prayer. We have now, sometimes, very choice seasons; but I am afraid not altogether such as we once had. At any rate, if there be any falling off, I thank God there is very little indeed; it is scarcely perceptible as yet; but how soon may there be, unless we watch and be jealous with a holy jealousy? Let us work with Christian earnestness in prayer.

O you who have done little for Christ of late, I beg you, do more for him. You who think your time of service is over, and that you may retire like pensioners, and no longer fight, I want you to enlist again, put on the colors once more, as if you were but raw recruits. You, who once could defy persecution, and stand up in the street to preach Christ, and laugh at all your fears, gather up your courage once again. Oh, that you would wake up, as a church, and put on your beautiful array of past times, when you were despised and persecuted, and the minister's name was a byword! and a proverb, and you yourselves, because you were linked with him, were thought to be fools and the off-scouring of all things.

But now I tremble lest we should grow respectable and great, and lest men should think we are respectable, and depart from us. My soul begs and beseeches of you to renew your prayers for me, that I may preach with greater vigor. What if my ministry should become as dull and stupid as the ministry of one-half of my brethren; what if it should become as useless and as unprofitable as the ministry of nine out of ten who occupy the pulpit? I had sooner die than live to be such a being as many who stand up in the pulpit wholly to waste people's time, and not to win souls. My spirit pants to have the consuming zeal of Baxter, and the earnest, passionate enthusiasm of Whitefield; but I cannot get it, except through your prayers; or getting it, it cannot be maintained without your vehement cries and entreaties before the Lord.

Perhaps we, as a church, have been brought to our present state for a great purpose which has never dawned upon us. We have done something for God already; we are filling the pulpits of our village churches with men sound in the faith, and earnest for God; we are erecting a great barrier against the every-day increasing encroachment of heresy and infidelity; but we need to do something more, and something looms upon us in the future-- I scarcely know what-- some high and holy purpose which this church has been brought up to this point to accomplish. Shall we draw back?

Men of Ephraim, will you draw back in the day of battle? Will you be condemned for not coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty? Shall the angel pronounce over you the sentence, "Ichabod, for the glory of the Lord has departed from you, because of your declining to continue earnest in zeal?" If it is so to any extent, let us return unto the Lord; let us take to Christ words of repentance and faith; and let us beseech him to make this church again his buckler and two-edged sword, and to make his minister once more a captain in the midst of the Lord's hosts; for the day of the Lord is mighty, and the battle of the Lord is terrible; and every man must take his place, and every soldier must draw his weapon from his thigh; for the day of the Lord draws near, and the battle of God is to be fought now, even now.

Let us arise, my brethren; let us rush like lions to the prey, like swift eagles to the chase; and God shall help us, God shall help us, and that right early. This church cries tonight, "I sleep;" but she can also say, "my heart wakes." The heart of the church is awake still. I think my voice to you tonight is an echo of the voice of your Beloved. Sisters, brothers, bestir yourselves: let us cry mightily unto God; let us labour for the winning of souls; let us pant and pray for a great increase to our membership; and God will save sinners, in answer to our prayer, and his name shall be glorified forever and ever. Amen.

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