Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1022
Delivered by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Let us not sleep, as do others.”—1 Thessalonians 5:6.
WE DO NOT usually sleep towards the things of this world. We rise up early, and sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness, for Mammon’s sake. In this age of competition, most men are wide enough awake for their temporal interests; but, so is it, partly through our being in this body, and partly through our dwelling in a sinful world, that we are all of us very apt to sleep concerning the interests of our souls. We drive like Jehu for this present world, but loiter for the world to come. Nothing so much concerns us as eternity, and yet nothing so little affects us. We work for the present world, and we play with the world to come. Quaint old Quarles long ago likened us to roebucks as to earth, and snails as to hearer; and then he oddly enough rebuked this fault in rugged verse:—
“Lord, when we leave the world and come to thee,
How dull, how slur, are we!
How backward! How prepost’rous is the motion
Of our ungain devotion!
Our thoughts are millstones, and our souls are lead,
And our desires are dead:
Our vows are fairly promis’d, faintly paid,
Or broken, or not made.
Is the road fair, we loiter; clogged with mire,
We stick or else retire;
A lamb appeals a lion, and we fear
Each bush we see’s a bear.
When our dull souls direct our thoughts to thee,
As slow as snails are we;
But at the earth we dart our winged desire,
We burn—we burn like fire!”
A piece of news about a fire in another continent makes a sensation in all our homes, but the fire that never shall be quenched is heard of almost without emotion. The discovery of a gold-field will affect half the markets in the world, and send a thrill through the public pulse; but when we speak of that blessed city where the streets are of gold, how coolly men take it all, regarding it as though it were a pretty fiction, and as it only the things which are seen were worthy of their notice.
We sleep when heavenly things and eternal things are before us. Alas! that it should be so. Even those choice spirits which have been awakened by the Holy Ghost, and not only awakened into life, but aroused into ardor, have to complain that their fervor very frequently is chilled. I was recommended to try a pillow of hops to obtain sleep during my late illness, but I find now that I want a waking pillow rather than a sleeping pillow; and I am of the same mired as that ancient saint who preferred a roaring devil to a sleepy devil. How earnest, how diligent, how watchful, how heavenly ought he to be, but how much are we the reverse of all this. When in this respect we would do good, evil is present with us. We would have our hearts like a furnace for Christ, and, behold, the coals refuse to burn. We would be living pillars of light and fire, but we rather resemble smoke and mist. Alas! alas! alas! that when we would mount highest, our wings are clipped, and when we would serve God best, the evil heart of unbelief mars the labor. I knew it would be seasonable—I hoped it might be profitable if I spake a little to you to-night, and to myself in so doing, concerning the need that there is, that we shake ourselves from slumber, and leave the sluggard’s couch.
I intend to take the text in reference first to those who are born again from the dead, and secondly, in reference to those who are still in the terrors slumber of their sin; and I shall gather my illustrations to-night from no remote region, but from the self-same Word of God, from which I take the text. The text says, “Let Us not sleep, as do others.” We will mention some “others,” whose histories are recorded in Scripture, who have slept to their own injury, and I pray you let them be warnings to you.
I. First, to those of you who are THE PEOPLE OF GOD, let me say, “Let us not sleep, as do others.”
1. First, let us not sleep as those disciples did who went with their Lord to the garden, and fell a slumbering while he was agonizing. Let us not be as the eight who slept at a distance, nor as the highly-favored three, who were admitted into the more secret chamber of our Lord’s woes, and were allowed to tread the precincts of the most holy place where he poured out his soul, and sweat as it were great drops of blood. He found them sleeping, and though he awakened them, they slept again and again. “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” was his gentle expostulation. They were slumbering for sorrow. Though our Lord might in our case make an excuse for us as he did for them—“The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak,”—let us endeavor by his grace not to need such an apology, by avoiding their fault. “Let us not sleep, as do others.” But, beloved fellow Christians, are not the most of us sleeping as the apostles did? Behold our Master’s zeal for the salvation of the sons of men! Throughout all his life, he seemed to have no rest. From the moment when his ministry began he was ever toiling, laboring, denying himself. It was his meat and his drink to do the will of him that sent him. Truly he might have taken for his life’s motto,—“Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” So intent was he on saving souls, that he counted not his life dear unto him. He would lay it down, and that amidst circumstances of the greatest pain and ignominy; anything and everything would he do to seek and to save that which was lost. Zeal for his chosen church, which was God’s house, had eaten him up: for his people’s sakes he could bear all the reproaches of them that reproached God, and though that reproach broke his heart, yet still he persevered and ceased not till salvation’s work was done. He was incessant in toil and suffering, but, what are we?