Arise From Your Sleep

ARISE FROM YOUR SLEEP

Eph.5: ¹⁴ Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

¹⁵ See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
¹⁶ Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

Matt.24: ⁷ For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

⁸ All these are the beginning of sorrows.

We see how the world is coming apart. It has always been fallen and full of sin and unrighteousness. But go to some Bible school or seminary and you will find an abundance of classes and books on how to build a church or eschatology or a long list of “ologies”. The Bible will be “studied” and test will be given as to your Bible “knowledge”. And men and women are granted degrees simply because they passed most of the knowledge tests. In fact if they get a little more college loan money and do a little more Bible quiz work they will be granted a master’s degree.

In evangelical circles many men and women are granted an unearned doctorate so they may place it in front of their name. And many of the larger churches when searching for a pastor look for that “Dr.” in front of the candidate’s name. But where did the church get such a system? Where did the church learn to seek such titles and book knowledge? Of course they learned it from the world’s systems and copied it. And now, sadly, you have an evangelical system which copies the systems of the world with a little Jesus fluff.

Where are the colleges which teach a three year course on prayer? Where are the courses on fasting 101, 102, and 103? Where are the yearlong studies on being clothed with humility? Where are the Bible schools which teach students how to live without debt and live in abject moderation? How many classes are entitled “Forsaking All 101”? These Bible schools claim to be raising “champions for Christ” or Warriors in the Spirit” or some other self serving monikers when in fact they should be training and nurturing humble servants of the Lord Jesus. When will being filled with the Spirit be a power that is unmistakably observed in a life rather than a written doctrine or a onetime experience?

Let us be painfully honest and quit parsing words. We have lost the faith. Our religious institutions are producing Christian leaders who know very little about Jesus except what they read in books. Many are sincere and nice, and many are hard working, but how many have forsaken all? The divine anointing is now measured by people in pews, land and buildings, and weekly offerings.. And of course certain letters before a person’s name mean he is a special representative of Christ. It is all so tragic and sad. This is surely not the faith that led the martyrs to the gallows, or led men like Livingston to give his life to reach African natives, or led Jim Elliot to give his life for some unknown tribe.

What we have now is a system which has become a religious beast which feasts upon the culture and knows not the Lord Jesus nor the power of the Spirit nor the call of the everlasting gospel. This beast has a voracious appetite for more of what people want to fulfill their own lusts. Sacrifice and self denial are relics of days gone by. And this system, this beast, continues to fare sumptuously on the culture while maintaining a paper thin veneer of Christianity through some familiar words and a few outward ceremonial practices.

But, you say, “I respectfully disagree”. Yes, I know.

Hos.10: ¹² Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.

¹³ Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men.

When will we hear the Spirit’s call for repentance? This is not a time where the church is just hard of hearing and remains spiritually stagnant. This is a time when the visible church is running with great relish to receive and consume that which God abhors. All around us men run away from God and unto a god of their own creation. And churches fill their pews with people living fully entrenched in a fallen culture and loving to have it so. The pulpits are hollow; the music is fleshly; the debts are offensive; the message is worldly; the teachings are selfish; the fellowship is earthly; the prayer closets are empty; and yet the people rejoice? The church should be on their faces weeping.

We as believers experience a literal plethora of emotions. We are joyful and we are melancholy. We are bold and sometimes we afraid. We are rather confident and we are rather unsure. We are at peace and yet sometimes we are in turmoil. Yes, we are within Christ and yes we have that eternal assurance, but we still live in a temporal body which is subject to all the temptations known to mankind.

But we who love and follow Jesus also feel a great sense of sadness at times when we think of the colossal price our Savior paid and how He is rejected and mistreated even today. We live in a culture steeped in hedonism and pleasure. All around this nation there are water fountains which spout clean water simply to supply a visual ambiance and to the aesthetic nature of man. And at the same time people in many parts of the world die without clean drinking water. And on top of this obvious disparity, people in this culture actually throw money into these fountains and make some sort of wish. This the world in which we live and if we truly follow Jesus we must feel sad about the selfishness of man.

The blindness even among believers is astounding. I once shared the plight of the people in Darfur with a godly woman who reads and prays and loves Jesus. After hearing about the wretched conditions and the starving children she remarked, “But we don’t live there.” That pretty much sums up the attitude of the evangelical church in America. People will save up money making some sacrifices and with great energy in the planning and go for an experience of a lifetime to visit the Holy Land. And just in case you cannot go to Israel you can pay $45.00 to visit the Holy land Experience in Orlando. It goes beyond the absurd and is actually sinful on a grand scale.

But even though we feel some sense of anger and righteous indignation we also feel a profound sense of sadness concerning what is happening all over the world and what the western church has done to the faith. Do you desire a holy experience? Then go into your prayer closet and seek His face and His holy presence. There is nothing like it on this earth.

But instead of seeking the presence of the Holy One people have created a church where the desires and wishes of man reign supreme. People ask others, “How was church?” which usually means was it exciting and were you blessed or was the preacher’s message something you liked. But just the question openly indicates just how self centered and even humanistic the church has become. People now gather to be motivated and to learn how to achieve a greater level of earthly success. And in tens of thousands of local church financial prosperity IS the gospel. The faith once delivered unto the saints has now become a product that is advertised and sold as a necessary commodity for a well rounded western life.

And we should feel a real sense of sadness as we see what should be the glorious and humble bride of Christ turn into an adulteress who seeks everything but her Bridegroom. In an ingenious and diabolical metamorphosis the cares of this world have become the core of the faith called Christianity. If we really know the Christ and accept His Scriptural mandates for His own church then it should be profoundly distressing as we watch what has and continues to happen. This is not the faith of the Scriptures. This is not the blood bought church of Jesus Christ. This is a man made concoction created to accommodate the concerns and desires of man and not the commands and the heart of Almighty God.

And at the very core of this unfathomable rebellion is the disparaging and the minimizing and indeed the very rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. None of us can honestly claim to be a completely surrendered follower of Jesus, but when another Jesus has been created and held up as our pursuit then we are resigned to a literal apostasy. Can you read that word “apostasy” and not feel an overwhelming tsunami of emotions run through your being? If so than you are a prisoner of that very apostasy. This is not some doctrinal game of chess where someone moves and then his opponent moves and on and on it goes. This is life and death…eternal life and death. In these perilous times the Spirit is calling people to come out from among them and forsake all. But the church remains uninterested in the sincere milk of God’s Word and instead has become weaned to the dictates of the fallen heart of man.

And even among so called “orthodox” assemblies there is scant heartbreak that would result in a sacrificial return to prayer and fasting and a voracious appetite for the Word of God. This is not just about having our doctrinal ducks in a pretty little row. This is not just about being able to pin the tail on the apostates. This call of the Spirit is to us and it is profoundly serious. God’s holy power is still available by His grace to whoever will take up their cross and follow Him. We have been called to expose false teachers and apostates, but our message must still be Jesus and His gospel and our lives must be crucified vessels which openly and dramatically shine His very Person.

I know… words, words, and just some more words. Our ears have become dull of hearing and our eyes have become blind and our hearts have been temples of stone. We no longer even understand what God desires of us to say nothing of pursuing it. The local churches operate as businesses with ebbs and flows but with a redundancy which keeps the people coming. Some believer gives up smoking and we receive it as a miracle. Our expectations of personal change and commitment are now so low that we accept coming to church as a colossal sign of a true disciple. And if you took 100 church members and lined them up with 100 moral unbelievers from the same community there would be almost no difference.

In centuries past the evil one has used the stake and the gallows to do battle against the Lord’s people. But in these last days, especially in the more industrialized nations, he has changed his tactics and now employs a more clandestine and sophisticated method of injecting compromise. Instead of threatening death he now offers the church the pleasures of this life. And this strategy continues to work with incredible effectiveness.

We have constructed our own evangelical tower of Babel which in the end leads nowhere. We have mixed the holy with the profane. We have become a wild ass, running and frolicking without any restraint. We have jumped the fences of the Lord and we are grazing in the pastures of the heathen.
We dine at Hollywood's trough on Saturday night and lift up dirty hands on Sunday. Our church buildings are our glory and our prayer closets are our shame. We worry about the economy but sleep well while souls perish. We make celebrities of preachers and show disdain for praying grandmothers.
We openly herald politicians but refuse to preach Christ on the street. We criticize lost sinners but speak well of the harlot church. We have become prisoners of America's hedonism and yet we proclaim we are free. 

Where is the sadness; where is the shame? We gather on Sundays with the same smile we had last week and we fellowship with each other as if it was a class reunion. But all the while we are powerless. Do our gatherings make the devil tremble and the world take note? Imagine a city where their dikes had burst and the water was rushing in. It has already washed out major parts of the outlying areas and it is moving toward the center of the city. And all the inhabitants of the city are aware of what has happened and what is continuing to happen. But they still are flamboyant and content in their situation and they do not seem very anxious at all.

What kind of people are these? Who sees oncoming peril that has already destroyed much of the city but whose demeanor has not been seriously impacted by the crisis? And they do not seem to care about the lives of those now being destroyed or the lives of those around them which are in peril. What kind of people are these?

There is a call from the Spirit for personal brokenness. The fallow ground which needs to be broken up is within us. Should we not feel deeply saddened by the coldness of our own hearts? Like quicksand this culture both secular and religious pulls us with great force and seeks to imprison us.

But there is living water in all of this for those who will dig deep enough to find it. It cannot be found in this world and it cannot be found in the religious institutions that fill the globe. This water comes from the Lord Jesus and His Spirit. It alone can satisfy a soul and bring forth life everlasting. In the midst of our sadness, we still can have a living hope. This is an everlasting well which both satisfies and transforms the soul from an enemy of God into one of His own children. How can God’s children drink from the cesspool from which we were rescued? Does the cross mean that little to us? Do His sufferings only evoke some Easter emotions but no spiritual commitment to endure hardships ourselves and follow Him along that same blood soaked path?

Our heritage is one of great glory through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The church exploded on the Day of Pentecost and believers fresh from the City of Peace were sent to the far flung regions of the world. The gospel was preached with great power, souls were saved, and lives were so dramatically changed that governments sat up and became threatened. The ashes of the martyrs cry out “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!” Hundreds of thousands of believers gladly went to their reward through death at the hands of wicked men. The light that was lit could never be extinguished and the Spirit of God gave believers great courage even before the New Testament had been penned.

And down through the centuries humble men and women of God served the Lord Christ with such sacrifice that sinners were drawn to their Savior. Through tears and trials they were found faithful and they left us a legacy which should have been our path as well. Is it not time to stir up the gift that lives within us? Can we not break up the fallow ground which suffocated the Spirit’s voice? Is Jesus worth denying ourselves and following hard after Him? Is eternal life not enough and must we have everything this world gives us?

And now it is up to you and no one else.

No one else. No one but you.

Arise from your sleep.