Grow With Pastor Joe

You will spend around one-third of your life asleep. If you live to be 75 years old, then you will be asleep for 25 years of your entire life. Life is short. Time is precious. Time is borrowed and seems to fade faster each moment. In reality, time is only experienced in the present tense. Everything in life is right now. We think about the past and plan for the future, but we are only ever living within the present confines of time itself. C. S. Lewis wrote, “The present is the only time in which any duty may be done or grace received.” For the believer, we must presently focus on the eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:14-18). Because we have been redeemed, we must now redeem the time that we do have (Eph. 5:15-16). Each moment is an opportunity to live life for the sake of eternity. Each moment carries the weight of eternity. Unfortunately, many Christians today are spending more than one-third of their physical life sleeping. They are unproductive, uninterested, and unmovable. Many Christians are spending their spiritual life asleep at the wheel. Time is passing by. Souls are slipping past us. The enemy is moving while we are blissfully unaware. More importantly, Christ, our Savior, Shepherd, Bishop, Head, Bridegroom, Prophet, Priest, and King is coming. Any day. Any hour. Any moment. Yet, these realities hardly stir the soul of the slumbering saints. The thought of Christ’s imminent return for His Bride is something that should both comfort and convict our hearts. It is time to wake up.

            In Romans 13:11-14; Paul writes, “¹¹ And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. ¹² The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. ¹³ Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. ¹⁴ But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” Paul is writing to the believers of Rome who need encouragement and strong exhortation to live faithfully in the present conflict for the future consummation. Christ is coming! This was the heartbeat of the early church. They lived from the gospel by His grace and for His glory. This is how we should live today. Most of Paul’s letter to the Romans was all indicative truths about the gospel, grace, and glory of Christ so that the believers of Rome would see their position and possessions in Christ. The latter portion is focused on the imperative commanding statements of responsibility for each believer to live worthy of the gospel that has saved us. Our life should be transformed. It should be radically different to the world. It is one that is lived in relationship to Christ, His Church, and our communities. We are called to submit to His authority and to be good stewards of our time as we testify of the gospel, grace, and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ who is coming again. This is our motivation and message. It is the means by which we live. We are to be gospel fueled grace filled and glory focused. But we can’t do that while we are asleep.

            On an April evening in 1775 the signal was lit that the British were coming. Paul Revere was one of several “midnight riders” who went out into the countryside to rouse up the “Sons of Liberty” to the coming danger. The Brits were on the move that night and the militias were quietly sleeping in their homes. As these riders rode throughout the darkness they did so with urgency to give the wake-up call. The revolution was beginning, and the fighting was about to begin in Lexington and Concord shortly thereafter. For us today as Christians, it is not the British that are coming, it is the Bridegroom. I believe that it is the midnight hour, and we are soon to hear the cry of the Bridegroom for His Bride. The clock is ticking and is ever nearer to the time when time will be no more. It is time that we would awake from our slumber. It is time that we hear and respond to the wake-up call of our day. Rom. 13:11-14 instructs us on how we are to live in holiness while waiting for His return. Today, we will focus on verse 11 alone with the two things that we must first do. We must wake up and we must look up.

            Paul begins by saying that “knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.” Do you hear the urgency that he is communicating? NOW! NOW! NOW! UP! UP! AWAKE! ARISE! GET UP! LOOK UP! There is no time to delay. Within the heart of the believer, we have the indwelling Holy Spirit who leads us to wake up and look up as He teaches us through the Word of God that the hour is approaching. It is time. The first “time” that is given in this verse is the word “Kairos” which means a specific and strategic moment of time. It carries the weight of a significant event arriving. It is used with the implication of a decisive moment, much like that of Paul Revere, however, this is much more urgent than that. Paul uses this word to show the urgency of the commands he is about to give to these sleepy believers. Paul chose not to use the word “chronos” which is the word used for chronological time so that he is able to carry the weight of the urgency of the moment. Right now, is the only time you have and right now is always a moment of decision. Life should be lived with the urgency that eternity brings. Eternity must be stamped on our hearts and eyeballs. Today is not insignificant to eternal things in destination or reward. Now that we see the urgency we will look at the two decisions that we must make right now in our Christian life.

            First, we must wake up. It is “high time” that we “awake out of sleep.” If you aren’t anticipating His coming, then you won’t be alert to His coming or the present conflicts of life. You will sleep away your time to serve the Lord. The word “awake” is the word “egeiro” which means to rise from a sitting or lying down position, awaken from sleep or death (Mt. 8:26; Rom. 4:24). The idea is to be lifted up from inactivity to urgent activity. I fall asleep on the sofa a lot. When my wife tries to wake me up, even ever so gently, I wake up ready to fight whatever just touched me. Noises startle me and I jump up and into action. It is my natural fight or flight response, but it seems to mostly be stuck in fight mode. Sleep is needed, but the idea of sleep here is not the typical sleep that we take to recharge our bodies. The phrase “out of sleep” is the word “hupnos” which is the word used for sleep, but it is also used metaphorically. Here, sleep pictures spiritual lethargy, apathy, disinterest, or inactivity. The human body can do a lot while asleep while the individual is unaware. We can walk, talk, hear, think (dream), sing, kick, scream etc. Just because you can do it while you are asleep does not make you conscious of the activity. Sadly, many Christians today are just going through the motions of their spiritual life. They sleepwalk with no real energy, effort, or purpose. They talk with hyper-spirituality with no real depth. They hear the world pass by but refuse to react. They think shallow thoughts of God and spiritual things. They sing in church without any heart, gusto, or genuine heartfelt devotion to God. They kick at their sin with their own self-effort and self-righteousness but fail to see their sin mortified. They scream out with emotional excitement, but never have their heart moved by the truth of the gospel, grace, and glory of Christ. WAKE UP! I believe that there are three things that we need to awake to or awake from.

One, we must awake to satan’s influence. Don’t forget that he is very active in this world. He is the prince and power of the air (Eph. 2:2). He is the ruler of this present world if you will. The spirit of antichrist is already at work (1 John 2:18-22). Satan’s influence in the world is overwhelming. His work is a counterfeit of God’s word, work, and will. The devil will counterfeit and contradict God’s word, work, and will and has done so since the beginning. There in the Garden of Eden, he posed the question that he still does today, “Did God really say? Is God really good?” If you don’t see his influence in this present age then you are either blind, dumb, ignorant, or you are under his influence yourself. WAKE UP!

Two, we must awaken from our sinful indulgences. Paul will address them in depth in Rom. 13:12-14 which we’ll cover in the weeks to come. It is not appropriate for us to feed our flesh and to seek out sin in our life. We are no longer darkness or in darkness, but we are in the light and are to walk in the light of Christ. When you choose to feed the appetite of your flesh, then you are going to spiritually starve and grow sleepy. Sin always lulls us to sleep as satan sings his wicked lullaby over any who will listen to his voice. 1 Cor. 6:9-20 speaks much to this need to live a life of holiness because our body, soul, and spirit belong to Christ. He has bought us by His blood and therefore our lives should not be to glorify our flesh, but to mortify it so that we may glorify Him (See Col. 3). WAKE UP!

Three, we must awaken from our slothful inactivity. While satan sings his lullaby and our sin closes our eyes to sleep, we can’t help but want to be slothfully inactive. We use terrible excuses for why we don’t personally evangelize, pray, read our Bibles, attend church, engage in the life of the church, or serve. Leonard Ravenhill preached, “Today’s church wants to be raptured from responsibility.” We use the rapture of the church as an excuse to simply hold on until the ride is over. We choose to keep the covers over our head and instead of putting on our boots, we keep our slippers on. The Puritan Samuel Rutherford wrote, “You will not be carried to Heaven lying at ease upon a feather bed.” Stop replacing sleepwalking for your real walk with the Lord. Your twitches and mumbling while you sleep are not true life. Christ has given you life and a work to do. Live in Him and for Him. Labor in Him and for Him. WAKE UP!

            Second, we must look up. This is the reason that Paul gives to us to live a holy life of alertness and activity for Christ. Here is your motivation to heed the wake-up call. The verse says, “for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” I believe the reason that Christians today are asleep at the wheel without any sense of urgency is because they don’t really understand their salvation. They don’t know their position in Christ or possession in Him. Most Christians just know that Jesus saved them from sin and Hell. If you don’t grow in the knowledge of the rich depth of the gospel, grace, and glory of Jesus then you are going to miss out. Our salvation in Christ has three tenses. We have discussed this in our study of Romans 12-13 addressing this issue that we are saved, being saved, and will be saved; we are delivered, being delivered, and will be delivered; and that we have been transformed, are being transformed, and will be transformed. Let’s look at the three tenses to see why we must look up as we wake up.

One, your salvation has a past tense. You have been saved. This is your justification before God where you were converted and clothed with the imputed righteousness of Christ. The moment you were *past tense* saved, you were delivered from sin’s penalty. This was the activation of your everlasting eternal life in Christ. It was completed with a continual eternal effect.

Two, your salvation has a present tense. You are “being saved” from sin’s power over your life. This is what we call the believer’s sanctification, much of it is covered in Rom. 12. This is where our salvation is daily experienced through the appropriation (to take for one’s self or as one’s own) of our position and possessions in Christ as so clearly seen in Rom. 6-8. We live by the gospel and grace of Christ to the glory of Christ. This is where we spend our life, in the present tense.

Three, your salvation has a future tense. You will be saved from sin’s presence in your life when you take off this mortal flesh and put on immortality (See 1 Thess. 4:13-18; 1 Cor. 15: 51-58). This is what we call our glorification where our bodies will be resurrected to a glorified body when Christ calls His Bride home. This is coming at any moment. There is nothing that we are waiting for in order for this to occur. This is why we are called to be awake and alert. This is why we must wake up and look up. G. Campbell Morgan wrote, “I never begin my work in the morning without thinking that perhaps He may interrupt my work and begin His own. I am not looking for death. I am looking for Him.” Within the context of this passage, it is clear that “our salvation nearer than when we believed” has the third tense of our salvation in view. We are waiting for Christ’s imminent return to receive the fulness of our salvation, deliverance, and transformation. This will happen in an instant. Yes, indeed, the very instant we see Christ. Eternity is a breath away. Your tent is pitched closer to home than the battlefield each day. The war is won, but the battle is still raging, but dear believer we are closer to resting in our home with our Lord than we were just a moment ago. As I’m writing this, there are two soldiers of the cross who have been carried off the battlefield on their shield of faith within the past twenty-four hours. Both were good and faithful servants. Their faith is made sight. Their battle is won. They are home. While their time to look up is no more, because now they may look into the face of their Lord, we must look up and keep looking up. Faith looks up and out to Christ, not to the left, or right. Faith does not look inward for help or hope. Faith does not look down on the things of earth. Faith does not look backward or behind us. Faith looks to Christ. Faith gazes through the lens of the gospel to the eternal grace and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Heb. 12:1-3 gives us the principle of the need to wake up and look up as it says, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, ² Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³ For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.”

Where are you looking? When you wake up you naturally look up. Up is the first thing you see each day. Therefore, the first thing that we must do each day is as we wake up we look up to Christ for strength for the day and rest in His sufficient grace. We wake up and look up to Him in faith so that we would have the influential songs of satan drowned out and our sinful indulgences and slothful inactivity destroyed. Dear Christian, are you drowsy? Are you like the old man in the chair who is just “resting his eyes?” Are you distracted by the things of the world? Are you doubting? Is there discouragement? Wake up and look up to Christ! Jesus is at the threshold, and we are waiting for His call! Are you awake and alert? Are you living and looking? The lost world will never be won by a sleepwalking church. Our children will not be discipled by sleepwalking parents. Our families will not be Christ honoring with sleepwalking husbands. Wake up and look up! Time is short and we are almost home. Be convinced that He is coming so that we would live with the comfort and conviction to live in, by, and for the gospel, grace, and glory of Christ.