The Lord, our God, spake unto us in
Horeb, saying, Ye have dwelt long enough in
this mount.
Turn ye, and take your journey, and go
to the mount of the Amorites, and unto
all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain,
in the hills, in the vale, in the
south, and by the seaside, to the land
of the King of Nights, and unto Lebanon,
and unto the great river, the river Euphrates.
Behold, I have set the land before you.
Go in and possess the land which the
Lord swore unto your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, to give unto them, and to their
seed after them.
This is Old Testament truth, and it has
to do with real estate and acreage and
terrain and landscape and fields and forests.
And they were to journey to it and
take it, it was theirs by the gift
of God.
Theirs was a journey for their feet.
Ours is a journey for the heart.
To recapitulate briefly, Israel had all the land
of promise before them.
Yet they settled down and made no effort
toward taking it.
They stayed where they were, quiet contended, and
God sought to goad them into action.
So he told them bluntly, You have been
here long enough.
Don't you see all of that is yours,
why don't you go take it?
The Church and its individual members, as I
have tried to make clear, is in precisely
the same condition.
It has settled into a contended rut.
Remember last week I said that there were
three things, the rote, the rut, and the
rot.
The rote is the routine, or rather, just
a little before the routine.
It leads to the routine.
It's when you get to doing things rather
automatically.
That leads us into the rut, and after
we've been in the rut long enough, comes
rot.
The aim of these sermons has been and
is to awaken some from the rut.
I don't know that I can awaken everybody,
but if I can awaken some, and I
use the word awaken here very advisedly and
very carefully, because in the Bible there is
a significant teaching that gathers around the words
sleep and wake.
There is first of all the natural sleep.
He giveth his beloved sleep, I will lay
me down in peace and sleep, for thou,
Lord, wilt sustain me.
Our Lord Jesus Christ slept in the boat.
There is such a thing as natural sleep,
it's scarcely worth mentioning, because it's a gift
of God to us, and we sleep if
we can sleep, and we can't sleep something
wrong.
So, sleep, natural sleep, is innocent, provided it
isn't done when we should be doing something
else.
If you sleep when you should be praying,
then it isn't innocent sleep, though it's natural
sleep.
Natural sleep is innocent sleep when he giveth
his beloved sleep.
But for instance, those disciples that slept when
they should have been awake, praying with Jesus,
that was natural sleep, but it wasn't innocent
sleep.
However, we'll leave that aside, for that's not
what we're speaking about particularly tonight.
I'm thinking of moral sleep and spiritual sleep.
The moral sleep is suggested in 1 Corinthians
15, verse 34, awake to righteousness and sin
not, and so on.
There is such a thing as a moral
sleep.
It's entirely possible to be asleep morally, for
you notice that the sleeping man isn't dead.
Lord, if he sleeps, he's doing well, they
said properly to Jesus, our Lord.
If he's asleep, sick people don't sleep, and
if this fellow is in a sound, natural
sleep, why make the trip?
He's all right.
They thought they meant natural sleep.
But there is such a thing as moral
sleep, where we're not dead as Lazarus was,
but are alive, as the disciples supposed, but
are sleeping.
And it's entirely possible to be displeasing God
and grieving the Holy Ghost by our being
asleep morally.
That is, by permitting what should not be
there.
Nobody wants to hear this kind of preaching.
Not very many people do.
Some do, or you wouldn't be here.
Or at least you're willing to endure it
for something else you come for.
But most people don't want to hear this.
They want something added to what they have.
But they don't want to be told that
they're permitting something that shouldn't be there, or
else they're doing what they shouldn't do.
But you say, is that true of Christians?
You believe many Christians are doing this?
I have no hesitation in saying that all
the symptoms in the Church today point to
Christians doing things that they shouldn't be doing,
and failing to do what they should be
doing.
That's been negative into positive, sins of omission,
sins of commission.
And then to be unaware of it.
This is to be morally asleep.
I don't want to sound abusive, because some
of my best friends are asleep, and I
haven't been able to wake them in years.
But they're morally asleep.
Then when he says, Wake to righteousness and
sin not, he indicates that there can be
a sudden waking, like an alarm clock going
off, that rouses you out of sleep.
When I was in the Army, I used
to hear first call, the little sound of
the high trumpet.
And I have never gotten over it.
To this hour, if I hear anything that
indicates that it's there to wake you, I'm
awake.
Some people at alarm clock run down and
go back to sleep, but not me.
I'm out on the floor by the time
the thing has hit its first few little
taps.
I'm trying to say that there is such
a thing as being asleep, and then suddenly
be awakened out of sleep.
And this is often surprising to people.
I've had people say, and heard them say,
I was living a life displeasing to God,
I was a Church member and I didn't
know it, that I was displeasing God, my
life wasn't right, and then suddenly I was
awakened by God.
And it was a surprise, not only a
surprise, but it's disconcerting to be traveling one
way and driving and your wife beside you,
and you have decided which way it is
and where you are on the map, and
then suddenly you find landmarks that indicate you
are just plain wrong, that you have been
going the wrong way.
It's not only a surprise to you, but
it's disconcerting because you lose self-confidence, particularly
in front of your wife.
This loss of confidence in yourself, to say,
what's the matter with me here?
I've been living a life that has been
displeasing to God, and I simply didn't know
it.
Oh, God is in this place and I
knew it not.
This is none other than the gate of
heaven, this is the house of God, and
I didn't know it.
Jacob must have been rather disconcerted when he
woke up and found he had been in
the presence of God all the time, but
he had been asleep.
He wasn't dead, he wasn't cut off from
the covenant, he was asleep.
And there is such a thing as spiritual
sleep.
Ephesians 5.11--"Awake, thou that sleepest, and rise
from the dead."
This is often spoken to sinners, but it's
not written to sinners.
This Ephesian epistle never was written to sinners,
it's not intended for sinners, it's not a
message to sinners at all.
It's a message to one of the best
churches of the New Testament, the Ephesian church.
And yet he says, "...Awake, thou that sleepest,
and rise from the dead, and Christ will
give thee light."
Some of them were in a somnolent condition.
That is, they were morally good, obviously, but
unenlightened.
They were religious, but unanointed.
And it's perfectly possible for a church member,
a good church member, a faithful and loyal
church member, to be spiritually asleep, being in
a state spiritually that parallels natural sleep.
When your husband, your wife, your child, your
relative, your friend, or you, goes or go
to sleep tonight, the fact that you are
unconscious and out of the running for a
while isn't bothering you.
You know that normally you awake again.
You are not dead, but you are cut
off from your environment, all that which is
reflex, breathing and a lot of other things.
Now it's possible to be a Christian, be
in the church, and yet be asleep spiritually.
And then to have to be awake suddenly
and be ashamed of yourself, angry with yourself,
frustrated and disconcerted, and say, What's the matter
with me?
All this long period of time I was
just near to being awake, but not quite
awake.
Now, what is the present condition of the
evangelical church, of which this church is a
part?
Well, the bulk of Christians are asleep.
I don't mean by that that the bulk
of Christians, those who come to the evangelical
churches, are not converted, because if I meant
that, I'd say they were dead and that
they never had been born again.
But I say they are asleep.
And yet, these sleeping Christians, it's possible to
be morally asleep and intellectually and mentally and
physically completely alert.
It's possible to be spiritually asleep and be
mentally, intellectually, physically and theologically alert.
The present condition is that we are asleep.
And yet, these sleeping Christians do two things
that I think God must grieve over.
One is, they control church affairs.
Because you see, we're democratic, and if we
don't like the pastor, we give him the
bounce or pray that he'll get another call.
And then when it comes time to vote,
we vote in whom we want and out
whom we want out.
Church people control church affairs, because they are
intellectually, mentally, physically awake, but they may be
morally and spiritually or morally or spiritually asleep.
That is, in the rut, down so far
that they just don't see out.
So that's one thing.
We control church affairs.
This is a horrible thing.
Then it gets into societies, it gets into
whole conferences.
And men will meet at the big expense,
the expense of the local church people.
And they will read minutes and pass resolutions,
but they're asleep.
You know they're asleep by the way they
talk as soon as the benediction is pronounced,
as soon as they have adjourned.
And you know they're asleep by their conduct,
their things they're interested in or lack interest
in, yet they control church affairs.
Then the second thing that these sleeping Christians
do, they set the standard for new Christians.
So when you bring a new Christian in
and get him converted, he automatically takes on
the coloration and the general mood and temperature
of the psalms and saints around about him.
And pretty soon, he's where they were.
And we have no examples.
And of course people resent any word reflecting
on them.
But every once in a while there appears
an awakened soul, some way or other he
got awake.
Somehow God Almighty waked him, if it was
by the crowing of the rooster or by
the braying of Balaam's ass, he got him
awake.
And he arises and ceases any longer to
be mediocre and somnolent, and he becomes a
blazing and shining light.
Then the sleeping Saints pay to have him
do their work for them.
They send him out to South America or
the Far East to do their work for
them, and they stay home and sleep spiritually
and earn the money, because they're intellectually and
physically awake, to send him.
When he dies, they write his life, and
maybe even go so far as to take
up a collection to put up a little
library or something else in his memory, and
call it the Waked-Up Saint Memorial.
But they're very careful not to be waked
up themselves.
They're very careful.
They're perfectly happy to talk about how wonderful
Jaffrey was, but they won't pay Jaffrey's price.
They can talk endlessly about wonderful Dr. Simpson,
but they will not go Simpson's way.
Very careful not to follow the man whose
life they write and whose memorials they erect.
I want to do something in closing that
I rarely do.
It involves me, and the reason it involves
me is that these letters were written to
me, and I wouldn't have seen them if
they had been written to you or somebody
else.
But I saw them, they're here.
I want to read a few excerpts from
two letters I received.
One from a student who was a student
at TBC, and another from a woman, obviously
a married woman.
This boy is in Calgary, Alberta.
The woman is, I'll not tell you the
name of the town in Connecticut.
She pledges me not to let this letter
be seen.
So for ethics' sake, we're not even going
to tell you the name of the town.
Here were two people.
I want to give you an example of
what I mean when I say it's possible
to be morally asleep and suddenly come alive
and come awake.
It's possible to be spiritually asleep and suddenly
come awake and get out of the rut.
This one amuses me as well as pleases
me.
It's written by a young chap who has
just finished at the Bible College.
It's says, Dear Dr. Tozer, It hadn't been
long before you arrived in Toronto that I
decided to visit the Avenue Road Church.
I believe it is one of the first
sermons that I heard you preach.
It was about having things as idols.
Things, H-I-N-G-S.
The message so struck me that I decided
to go through all my belongings and throw
out all that I treasured.
It wasn't a rash decision, but a calm,
cool decision to get rid of the trash.
I am glad those things are gone and
thankful to you and God for preaching that
sermon that night.
I don't know exactly what those things were,
but I can give you some good guesses.
Some time later, he says, I now attended
the services at Avenue Road regularly.
After you had preached on absolute surrender, a
fellow came to see you after the sermon,
he's the fellow writing the letter, and told
you that he couldn't and didn't have any
desire to surrender.
I remember the boy, about two years ago,
came and said, Mr. Tozer, I'm a Christian,
but I don't want to surrender.
So I prayed for him that God would
make him willing to be made willing to
surrender.
Well, it was some months later after I
knew that I should surrender and felt very
unhappy that I hadn't, and there was constant
friction in my heart as between two pieces
of very rough sandpaper.
And the unhappy thought that I would be
like that, the rest of my life.
So on February 2, 1962, he says to
be exact, I spent from ten to twelve
o'clock dedicating and surrendering everything that I
had, and would have, and be to Christ
my Master.
Amen.
Praise the Lord.
What a difference surrendering makes!
Boy, it's terrific!
Now, that's the good slang of a young
fellow, that God had riled, had awaked.
You see what happened there?
This one I read with caution and with
great reverence.
This is written by a woman of culture
that writes beautifully and with finest English.
I told her, I simply cannot resist any
longer the urge to thank you.
I have spoken to God so often about
it, now I have to tell you, too.
Two and a half years ago, I was
deeply troubled.
Emptiness, meaninglessness, and most of all, guilt, were
becoming burdens too heavy for me to carry.
As a lifelong Church member, I attended Church
in vain, searching for the answer to my
uneasiness.
Then for the first time in my life,
I turned to my Bible in desperation, not
duty, and still I could not get through.
One day I glanced over the books in
our Church library, and here is where I
am involved in this, and I apologize, but
I can't give you the benefit of this
if I don't read on.
He says, One called Pursuit of God caught
my eye.
I carelessly thumbed through it and was about
to put it back when I saw an
inscription on the fly leaf.
Someone had presented it to a soldier, and
the soldier had written beneath the inscription, What
good is this?
Only one in ten thousand knows anything about
the triune God.
If we can't understand it, what good is
it?
Then she says, God bless that soldier, and
thine infinite mercy, she prays, which uses even
our pride to draw us to thee.
Pleased with my own intellectual accomplishments, I accepted
the challenge and brought the book home.
O God, all I had been hungering for,
all the secrets it seemed the Church had
conspired to keep from me, were here emblazoned
across my heart.
O incredible!
There are no words to tell you how
I felt.
I read it over and over again to
be sure that I had not misunderstood.
Then I saw that there was no doubt.
This was what I had been looking for,
and I had been sought by one who
would find me if I would let him.
O the incredible foolishness of God to extend
himself for such as me!
Now I know who had been pursuing me.
God alone knows the next two weeks, but
I am sure you understand.
The invitation personally extended the wrenching Abraham experience
as material possessions and loved ones, and everything
went.
I said good-bye to them, even to
my own life.
For me this was not enough to push
the stone from the door.
He would have our most cherished core of
self, the final surrender of intellect and sanity,
and all was done.
After death came the astonishment, the awakening of
the newborn, the burning heart, the throbbing flesh,
the stifled groans, vain efforts to contain the
joy so intense that it bordered on pain,
love that shatters the soul till you plead,
O God, for my mortal frame, I can't
bear it.
My heart will burst here on the sidewalk.
Now I have read this to you, one
by a student, one by, I would assume,
a middle-aged married woman who had attended
church for years.
It so happened that that little book bumped
her off.
It could have been something else.
It could have been a testimony, a sermon
by someone, an old book she had dug
out someplace, or maybe even a humble little
tract.
But God got hold of her.
And she said, I saw then that not
only must I pursue God, but all this
time he had been pursuing me.
But here was the awakening.
Friends, this is what Christianity is about, the
awakened soul, the morally awakened, spiritually awakened.
God who seemed so far away suddenly becomes
close.
God who had been seen all out of
focus, a blur, now is seen to be
the Son of Righteousness, clear sight with healing
in his wings.
I read those letters in order that you
might see that I'm not preaching around in
a circle and there's nothing to what I'm
saying.
This works for a few people.
It could be more, it could be everybody.
You've been in this rut long enough, says
the Holy Ghost.
Rise!
Let's take the victory.
Now I want you to close, and I
want you to do something.
I want you to sing a song, our
brother will announce, as though you had never
heard it before.
And for the musicians, please, don't play it
too fast.
Let's give ourselves time to enjoy it.
Not that you have been, but I merely
mention that this one we want tempo just
enough slow that we can get time to
enjoy it.
I want you to say to yourself, I've
never heard this before, or act as if
you haven't, or try to feel as if
you haven't, and see what the Holy Ghost
will say to you.
What number?
329.