Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3013
“I sleep, but my heart wakes: it is the voice of my beloved that knocks, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.” Song of Solomon 5:2.
How changeable is the creature! In the verse preceding our text, we find the spouse in a happy, healthy, heavenly frame of mind, for her Beloved was with her and she was in the enjoyment of the closest communion with him. We find him saying, “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk; eat, friends; drink, yes, drink abundantly, O beloved.” Yet, from the height of this glorious fellowship, how soon the spouse comes down to the depths of such a cry as this, “I sleep, but my heart wakes”! Truly, the weather of our isle is not more variable than the feelings of Believers. One day the sun shines hot and strong. The next day comes a black cloud, accompanied with the lightning flash and the voice of thunder. Then come the rattling drops of hail and then, in a few more hours, it is hot again, or perhaps the chilly North wind begins to blow. Have you not been on Mount Tabor at one moment and at another in the Valley of Achor? Have you not been at one time like the chariots of Amminadib, driving so fast that the axles were hot with speed, and soon after you have been like Pharaoh’s chariots when the wheels were taken off so that you drove heavily? Now you mount as upon eagle’s wings and soon you sink as in deep mud where there is no standing! At one moment delighting in God’s goodness and mercy, but the next moment, crying, “All Your waves and Your billows have gone over me.” Lord, what a changeable creature is man! When You have taken him up to his highest altitude, how speedily he comes down, by the force of Your hand, to the very depths! How soon do You bring him down from his highest eminence even to the very dust!
Christian, when the Lord favors you and your soul walks in near fellowship with Him, remember that there is a devil within you and a devil outside you. Be careful of your footsteps—even when you are on the top of the mountain, even when Jesus is sitting by you and whispering in your ear that you are His, watch with the greatest, possible care, for you never lose your corruption! Your communion may be transient, but your corruption is perpetual. To be with Christ is but a thing of a moment with you, but to be with your corruption is a thing of every hour in the day! I pray you, keep this in mind and whenever you are in your best frame, then be doubly careful lest you should lose your Beloved and have to cry once again, “I sleep, but my heart wakes!” Dr. Ives, who used to live on the road to Tyburn at the time when prisoners were always carried in a cart to be hanged there, would frequently say, when he had any friends with him, if he saw the criminals riding by, “There goes Dr. Ives.” And when they asked him what he meant, he replied, “Such crimes as that felon has committed I would have committed but for the Grace of God.” That is true even of you who live nearest to God. You who have the most familiarity with Christ and enjoy the most holy fellowship with Him may soon become the very leaders of the hosts of Satan if your Lord withdraws His Grace! David’s eyes go astray and the sweet Psalmist of Israel becomes the shameless adulterer who robs Uriah of his wife. Samson one day slays a thousand of his enemies with the might of his arm and the velour of his heart—another day his honor is betrayed, his locks are shorn, and his eyes are put out by a strumpet’s treacherous wiles.
How soon are the mighty fallen! Behold Solomon, the wisest of men, yet the greatest fool who ever lived! Even Job fails in patience and Abraham staggers as to his faith. “Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” These observations seem to rise at once to our minds when we consider such passages as abound in this “Song of Songs, which is
Solomon’s.” We find, at one moment, that the spouse is so happy that she cries out, “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love,” and, at another moment, she is searching for her Beloved and cannot find him, and mourning because of the darkness, and of the cruelty of “the watchmen that go about the city.”
The text very readily suggests three subjects for meditation—first, a lamentable state—“I sleep.” Secondly, a hopeful sign—“but my heart wakes.” And thirdly, a potent remedy—“It is the voice of my Beloved.” Nothing can wake a Believer out of his sleep like the voice of his Beloved!
I. First, here is A LAMENTABLE STATE—“I sleep.”
I think I can describe this state pretty well because I experience it too often and I am afraid many of you could also describe it with some degree of accuracy, for frequently you, too, fall into it. What is it for a Christian to sleep? Well, thank God, there is a sleep which the Believer never knows. He can never again sleep that deadly sleep in which Christ found him while he was in his sinful state—he shall never sleep the judicial sleep into which some were cast as the result of sin! He shall not sleep, as do others, to his eternal ruin, yet he may sleep dangerously and sinfully—and this is the state in which the Christian is found when he thus sleeps—in a state of inaction. You are doing something for God but you are doing it as a matter of custom than as a matter of loving earnestness. You pray. You go up to the House of God. You teach in the Sunday school but you do these things mechanically, as a man walks who is sound asleep. You are in a sort of spiritual somnambulism! The work that you are called upon to perform, you do after a fashion, but there is none of the power of God in the work—there is no earnestness thrown into it. It is done, and that is the end of it—but your heart has been absent from it.