Let us begin by turning to a few Scriptures in the New Testament.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her;
so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word;
that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory,
having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing;
but that she should be holy and blameless.
Let us turn to Revelation 19.
Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and His bride has made herself ready.
And then, in Revelation 22, verse 17:
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”
And let the one who hears say, “Come.”
And let the one who is thirsty come;
let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.
Our Lord, we come to You this morning. We are thirsty to know more of You. We come this morning, Lord, to hear and to be able to respond from our hearts: “Come, Lord Jesus.”
And we come even into this larger dimension, that which is Your church, destined to be Your bride. We want to learn how to find ourselves in single voice with the Holy Spirit, Who is interceding for us deeply within and saying, “Come.”
Lord, bring us to this place of preparedness. We know not exactly what needs to be done by way of righteous deeds. Perhaps it is only a turn of attitude, and then You will come to instruct us and give us understanding of Your way and Your will in these last days.
We pray You have mercy and grace upon us. In Jesus’ precious name we pray. Amen.
We know we are near the end of time, the end of history as we know it. So much is going on in our present world that shows there is a tremendous shaking of kingdoms going on all about us.
And we see, as we have studied in the book of Revelation, that the shaking is not something that is just happening because of the sinfulness of the nations, though that is true. The shakings are actually a result of One Who cannot be seen but Who nevertheless is in heaven, holding a scroll and loosing seals.
With every loosing, there is something shaken here upon this earth. There is a process of destiny which will bring this earth into a millennial reign and then, through tremendous fire and heat, be transformed into eternity.
And this course is unstoppable.
We are part of a great mystery, because the Lord is preparing His church. We read in Ephesians 5 that the Lord is preparing His church in order to present the church to Himself in all her glory.
Our Lord is presenting her to Himself. So, in one sense, our Lord is sitting on His throne in the heavens, and yet, in a mysterious sense, He is down here, very hands-on: washing, smoothing, working out the wrinkles, of course, by this precious Holy Spirit.
The Spirit has been assigned by the King to get the bride ready. And we know our Lord says that what He begins, He finishes. The Alpha is the Omega.
And so, in one sense, we gain great assurance from this fact: the Lord will finish and prepare a glorious bride. We see there in heaven how they are rejoicing because finally the wedding has come, and there is a bride for this Bridegroom.
What a heart He has had all along. Remember in John 17, His prayer actually had a lot to do with this:
O Lord, would You make them one,
and sanctify them by Your word,
so that I might share My glory with them, and they with Me,
and all could see My presence in them:
I in them, and You in Me.
The Lord has so much on His heart. Yet, is it not interesting that there is a place for us and some work for us to do?
The very statement, “The bride has made herself ready,” implies that we have cooperated in this sanctifying process. So it is not for us to sort of lay back and say, “Okay, Lord, do Your work.” It is for us to be exercised in our will, as our brother so wonderfully shared last night.
And exercised not only in matters of personal sanctification, but in a transformation of character, so that when the bride says, along with the Holy Spirit, “Come,” the bride will not look ugly.
She will have the character of Christ.
The mystery must further be stated: somehow, since the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit was set upon this earth to do this finishing work, in some sense the bride and the Spirit have been saying, “Come,” for a long time now.
There are many saints who have been sanctified and prepared by God, now gone into glory, in the presence of the Lord. How wonderful.
But we see in this verse that there must be a representation of this bride of sufficient character and maturity upon this earth that it can join with the Spirit and say, “Come.” Listen: our Lord Jesus Christ wants to come to this earth.
So the saints in heaven are not praying, “Come”—that is, “Come to heaven.” Well, they are already in His presence. But, on the other hand, we realize that those in heaven clearly see that our Lord’s design is for a kingdom on earth.
Nevertheless, somebody on earth needs to say, “Lord, come here.” It means, “Come here.”
The Lord wants this united voice: the Holy Spirit, Who has been whispering this and shouting it since He came down at Pentecost. But somehow, in this mystery, there must be found those people so united in that Spirit, so full of that Spirit, that this is their major cry.
And that is why we look around us and say, “Well now, is the church ready? Do we hear those cries?”
And we have to respond: there are places on earth where there are people who are ready, and there are people to whom this is their lone cry.
I have noticed, as I have traveled around and ministered in various places, that where I hear this cry, “Come, Lord Jesus,” from the church the loudest are places where, frankly, the saints have little other hope.
They do not have much prospect for the future. They do not have much income. They do not have a free society. They cannot get ahead. They cannot chase all the things Americans chase.
Some of them are under intense persecution, even hatred by their countries, for what they believe. They have only one prospect. Some of them are in jail because they had a Bible and got caught.
And they have a cry. What is that cry? “Oh, Jesus, come. That is our only hope of glory. We are not going to get it by changing the administration of the United States government. Our only hope is that You will come.”
So perhaps we ought to pray that all of us would fall into the darkness of an evil nation, that Babylon would be our citizenship, and that we could be under such intense persecution that that is all we have left to do.
We would have some part of a Bible that we had torn out and hidden in our pants. We would read it, and we would cry, “Lord, come.” We would have nothing else to look forward to.
But unfortunately, the Lord wants to do something that gives even greater glory to Him. He wants to find a people who are so blessed and have received so much, and that stuff does not even affect them anymore.
Because they have found the pearl of greatest worth. They know Who their real treasure is.
Whether they have a million dollars or ten thousand in the bank, they know Who their treasure is, and they are crying, “Come, Lord Jesus.”
This world really needs the Lord Jesus to come back. There is just something missing, no matter how happy your life is, if you spiritually realize it.
So now here we are in the process. The Lord is gathering some people, and He has gathered us as part of that cleansing and preparing work of our Lord Jesus, Who is preparing His bride.
That is even why we have been gathered together this week. Think about it. He wants to wash us with the water of the Word and strike our hearts so that we would cry out with a renewed anointing of the Holy Spirit, “Oh, Lord Jesus, come.”
But now I need to talk about the bride and the church on a wide basis. I know that there are some of you here who are almost perfect and ready to be raptured. There are some here who are just getting started.
Maybe, by the grace of God, this MP3 will get out somewhere for the church to hear, and so we need to talk to the church as a whole.
When we look at the church—and by that I mean blood-bought children of God who have been saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ—we see a strange mystery that is commented upon in the Bible very clearly: its problem and its remedy.
If I could put it simply this morning, I want to indict the church for its sleep and command it to repent.
The church is asleep, and the Lord says, “Wake up.”
It is interesting, when you look in the Scriptures, how much of our own understanding and how much of our prophetic warning comes to us as Christians from the state of Israel in its various stages.
Just as an example, let us look at this mystery of sleepiness. Isaiah, our gospel prophet, received his call in Isaiah 6. Let us turn there for a moment.
After Isaiah falls before the Lord, which we will talk about a little bit, it comes to his commissioning, where he hears, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Isaiah says, “Here am I. Send me.”
Now listen to this commission. Verse 9. This is what the Lord, the enthroned Lord over Isaiah, says to him:
Go, and tell this people:
“Keep on listening, but do not perceive;
keep on looking, but do not understand.”
Render the hearts of this people fat,
their ears heavy,
and their eyes dim;
otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts,
return, and be healed.
That return, by the way, is shuv: turn, repent, and be healed. But Israel had come to this strange position of sleep.
This sleep involves a spiritual blindness, but not that kind of total blindness where, if you knew you were totally blind, you would immediately seek a remedy. No, this is the kind of smearing cataracts.
You have known somebody who has had a cataract operation, I am sure. I always say, “Well, how did it go?” And they say, “I cannot believe it. I see colors. I see people. I used to see people walking as trees. I did not know how blind I was until these cataracts were lifted from my eyes.”
But Israel had cataracts. They saw the Lord, but they did not see the Lord. They read the Word, but did they hear the Word?
You remember, as I spoke last time: they read, but did they hear? Maybe they heard, but did they heed?
And if we, in our spiritual response, do not go through that full cycle of reading, hearing, responding, keeping, treasuring, and doing, there is a deafness that comes in.
Forgive me for making a specific reference, but I remember the first time I was sent to speak to young people. I used to work with young people before I was old, gray-bearded, and all.
One time, a Pentecostal church asked me to come. They had a hundred and fifty kids in Brooklyn, and they sent them out into the country somewhere. They asked me to go speak to them.
Well, I got up to speak to them. They were so obnoxious, so unruly. They were carrying on despite all their leaders trying to quiet them down. I spoke for ten minutes, closed my Bible, and went back to the cabin.
The leaders came and said, “What are you doing? What are you doing?” I said, “I am not speaking to them.”
Then they began to say, “You know, the problem is they hear about repentance, discipleship, and committing their lives, and their gospel has hardened. That is what the leader said. They have heard it so much that their ears have just gotten hard to it.”
They say, “Oh yeah, we are going to get a thing on consecration today.”
See, our ears get heavy. Now listen: there was nobody better at reading the Word than the Jews. In the days of Isaiah, they were reading the Word and having it read to them.
They read and read and read and read. They had their daily devotions. And as our brother Lance says, they got a new daily devotion every day.
But there was something missing between getting it out of the box and getting it into the heart, because the heart was asleep.
When they heard a word, they said, “Oh yeah, yeah, that is the Word. Wait, I have to take notes on that or else I will forget it.” They took notes on it, put the notebook away, and forgot about it.
This is a strange disease—spiritual blindness and spiritual deafness—because the thing about it is, you do not know your deafness because you are hearing.
One time, I foolishly plunged into the deep in some paradisal spot in Hawaii and came up with my ears full of water. Suddenly my wife was talking, and I heard my wife.
That was the first time I could actually claim spousal deafness. I could not understand. My ears were full of water. I had gone down the wrong way and gotten something up in there. It took days to get it out.
Well, this was the situation in Israel. Of course, you say, “Well, you see, that is Old Testament people. I mean, for goodness’ sake. But we are Christians. We do not forget the Word of God. We do not see and not see, and hear and not hear.”
It is interesting that Jesus quoted this exact passage when He was explaining why He had to use parables.
Jesus was saying, “You know why I am using parables? Because if I start speaking about the kingdom of God, their ears close up and their eyes smear over. So I have to catch them off by giving them a parable.”
They say, “What? Seed in the ground? What? Treasure in the field? What?” And by throwing them off, He tried to get them to see these precious things that we are so familiar with that familiarity has bred contempt.
Despite the fact that Jesus, while He was here on earth, gave many warnings about how we need to stay awake and watch and pray, we can see in the New Testament that the church has the same problem.
I mean, it gets so bad that even in 2 Peter 3 there were believers who were scoffing at the second coming of the Lord. Believers.
Now, there are many Christian groups that do not even believe in the second coming of the Lord. What they really say is that the second coming of the Lord came with Pentecost. But Jesus is not coming back to earth.
There are many Christians who believe that. So they never get flustered, and they never attend such a conference as this—or they attend one session and then do not attend anymore—because they do not believe it.
But you believe in the fourfold gospel, right? A. B. Simpson, I think, came up with that term before the Pentecostals grabbed it.
He said, “We have to preach Jesus as Savior, Jesus as Sanctifier, Jesus as Healer, and Jesus as coming again.”
Many people say, “What? Coming again?” Because he was a Presbyterian, A. B. Simpson. They do not talk about that stuff. Well, A. B. Simpson did.
He started New York City rocking and rolling in the early twentieth century because he preached the fourfold gospel: Jesus is coming again.
But scoffers, even in the church, say, “What is this about His coming? Ever since the beginning they were saying He is coming. Everything is still the same.”
They say, “This is not a progression of history to be climaxed when Jesus comes again. This is cyclical Eastern history, where everything is yin and yang, and yang and yin.”
Everybody here who is smart knows everything that ever happens is going to happen again. Why, Ecclesiastes told us so. And yes, he told us that when he was spiritually blind. All he saw were things under the sun, everything working around and around.
And so we have Christian scoffers. You talk about the second coming, and they say, “Well, yeah, yeah, right, right.”
Now let us look at this, because here is the key: our only remedy for sleepiness is repentance.
The only way we will come to repentance is if the voice of God can speak to us and awaken us.
Have you ever tried to awaken a sleeping Christian? They usually just roll over on your shoulder and start snoring louder.
It is only the voice of God that can awaken the church to its true state.
These two things that are spoken about in the book of Revelation are so foundational to the church’s understanding. I would like to take a moment to say something that Lance already said.
John was on the Isle of Patmos because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. Then we read later, as our brother Stephen mentioned, that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
Our faith is built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, and our understanding of the objective reality of our faith is based upon the Word of God.
We do not have any hope of being awake unless our foundation is upon the Word of God.
But the unique thing that happened on the day of Pentecost is that the church was also given a spirit of wisdom and revelation. Because our spirits were quickened, we not only had the Word of God—which the Jews certainly had—but we also had spiritual interpretation.
In the old dispensation, a prophet here and perhaps a prophetess there would receive prophetic understanding as well as the Word of God. That is, they could spiritually interpret what God was saying. That was the Old Testament.
Now, on the day of Pentecost, “Your sons and your daughters will prophesy.” Your maidservants, old people, will dream dreams with a spiritual interpretation.
I do not want to spend too long on something you know so well, but listen: you and I were born of the Spirit. That means we were born with a capacity through our spirit to see things unseen, to understand, and to discern things—even things that are going on.
Jesus said to the Jews of His day, “You are able to see the signs in the sky and understand the weather, but you have no spiritual interpretation.”
But He said to His disciples in Matthew 24—it is worth looking there—as He talks about that tree and its spiritual importance.
Now learn the parable from the fig tree:
when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves,
you know that summer is near.
So you too, when you see all these things,
recognize that He is near, right at the doors.
Here is spiritual discernment. When you see the fig tree ripen, I think almost everybody here understands that in 1948, suddenly that fig tree sprung to life.
Now, the church—the disciples of Jesus—should have the spiritual discernment to hear and sense that this means the Messiah is right at the door. He is almost here.
Is that what you see? Has it altered your whole life? Do you see what I am saying?
The church can only be prepared if it not only has the Word of God as its foundation, but also a spirit of revelation through which it can see Christ and what He is doing.
I go to a fellowship in Flushing, Queens, in New York. Our dear brother Christian Chen, I understand, ministered a tremendous message just last Sunday. It was all about the spiritual indications being seen in the Middle East, especially with regard to Iraq, and the fulfillment of this fig-tree process.
I did not get to hear it, but do we have this kind of spiritual capacity? How can we hold the testimony of Jesus if we do not understand spiritually what is going on? How can we be ready if we do not understand the spiritual state of things?
It is interesting, when we look in the New Testament, that this spiritual sleep is not some strange, unknown doctrine. Let me take you through a few references so that we can settle this in our hearts. This is a major problem.
First Thessalonians 5. We see Paul talking—perhaps in his earliest letter—to these Thessalonians, with whom he had only been able to stay for two or three weeks before he was chased away.
Yet in those two or three weeks, he had established them in the gospel, filled them with the Holy Spirit, and told them the details of the second coming. It is really incredible.
But when they got saved, they met together and said, “Let us have a meeting this morning.” “Good. What are we going to do now?” “Well, let us have lunch and have a meeting this afternoon.” “Okay, great. What do we do now?” “Let us have dinner and have a meeting tonight.”
When Paul was done with three meetings a day, now only Indians can do that anymore. It is too much for human beings.
But they had such a hunger for the Lord. They were together with Paul only a few weeks, and already they knew about the second coming, the Antichrist, and all. Is that not amazing? Wonderful.
Now Paul tells this young church:
Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren,
you have no need of anything to be written to you.
For you yourselves know full well
that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.
While they are saying, “Peace and safety!”
then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child,
and they will not escape.
But you, brethren, are not in darkness,
that the day would overtake you like a thief;
for you are all sons of light and sons of day.
We are not of night nor of darkness;
so then let us not sleep as others do,
but let us be alert and sober.
The time is near. That is the young Christians there.
Then Paul later wrote to the Romans, whom he had never met at the point when he wrote Romans. Let us look at what he says in Romans 13.
When you are writing to somebody you have never met, you do not want to say anything that is going to turn them off too much. But Paul shares the whole counsel of God in Romans.
We get to the end of Romans 13, verse 11, and we see this exhortation stated straightforwardly, as if it were commonly understood by all Christians that there is a problem with the church falling asleep.
Do this, knowing the time,
that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep;
for now salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed.
The night is almost gone, and the day is near.
Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
Let us behave properly as in the day,
not in carousing and drunkenness,
not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality,
not in strife and jealousy.
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.
Let us take at least one lesson out of that passage: our flesh is what makes us go to sleep.
The disciples shamefully said to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Our flesh is heavy stuff. When somebody lives in the flesh, they have a lot of baggage.
I have some dear friends here from Russia, a family of four. They came over here with one suitcase. They now have four. And they are heavy.
Just by way of advice for young people here: do not carry Lance’s suitcases. If you are not working out at the gym, it is an impossible deal. Even with four roller wheels on it, you still need some kind of hand truck.
The things of our flesh are what cause us to be heavy. When you live out of your soul-life, even if you serve the Lord out of your soul-life, you know what happens? You become totally exhausted, and you fall asleep.
If Christians do not learn how to live out of the resurrection life of Christ, if they have not died so that Christ can live in them, many Christians become completely exhausted.
The first thing you say to them is, “How are you doing?” “Oh, I am exhausted.”
Well, you have too much flesh. You are accumulating too much stuff. You have too many attitudes, too many likes and dislikes, too much of this and too much of that.
The complexity of carnality exhausts you in your Christian life, and many Christians fall asleep right out of that.
There are some this morning taking a good snooze. Hopefully it is not because this is a carnal preacher.
Make no provision for the flesh. That is in connection with this matter of waking up. Wake up. If there is something making you tired and exhausted, check it out.
It may not be something the Lord commanded, but something you are doing for your own self-fulfillment. It is making you nice and sleepy.
Let us look at another passage. Maybe Paul’s favorite church was Ephesus. Even in Ephesians 5, where we read before, let us turn there.
Paul talks to this church not only built upon the Word of God and the foundation of the apostles and prophets, but built with spiritual sensitivity. Their church was born in the midst of spiritual conflict.
They were born in the midst of magicians, books of astrology, and things that had to be burned for Christians to go forward in the Lord. They were born in the midst of exorcists. They were born under the principality of Artemis.
Not merely a god of the Persians, but a principality that had its spiritual impact of oppression over that whole area of Asia Minor. The church was born despite all spiritual opposition because these people had spiritual insight.
They had a spirit of prophecy. They understood the times, and they understood the things of the Spirit.
It is to this very church that he says, very practically, in Ephesians 5:
Awake, sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.
Therefore be careful how you walk,
not as unwise men but as wise,
redeeming the time,
because the days are evil.
I hope you see, if nothing else, that he is talking to Christians when he tells them to wake up. I know a lot of preachers like to use this in gospel preaching, but when you are preaching the gospel, you are calling people to arise from the dead.
Unfortunately, with Christians, they came to life and now have fallen asleep.
What is Paul talking about in Ephesians 5, just preceding these verses? He is talking about the darkness of this world in which we live. But we are not to walk as children of darkness, but as children of light.
We are to live as children of the light and even reprove the deeds of darkness. So he says, “Now, if you understand these times, wake up.”
We are living in a dark world. And you know what darkness makes us want to do? You guessed it: fall asleep.
It is so easy to sleep in the far corner of the auditorium. Just put on some sunglasses. The next thing you know, it seems like it is late at night.
Oh, how easy to fall asleep. But do you put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh? Do you see that there has to be some counteraction?
Otherwise, sleepiness is guaranteed for Christians—well-intentioned Christians—unless we are doing those things that make for walking in the light and in the day.
We fall asleep.
When we fall asleep, then the enemy has won a partial victory, because you are one of God’s children and you are useless. Useless.
I am speaking in the spiritual kindergarten here when I say, “Here is the enemy’s strategy.” We should not be ignorant of these schemes.
The enemy wants to fill your suitcases with so many things that you no longer have time to serve the Lord.
Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly,” but He said it in this context: “The devil has come to steal, kill, and destroy you.”
“Here, take this. Here, take that. Put that in your suitcase. Add this to your baggage.”
Yesterday, my wife and I did this walk around the upstairs gym. You can see how much better I looked today.
We could not help but hear, “Ooh! Ah!” because the U.S. football game had a television there in the place. So I went over there to look and watch.
Of course, I had to stand up, because all of these little Chinese ten-year-old kids were taking all the seats. So much for respect.
But as I looked closely, I noticed something. There were four boys sitting on the main sofa right in front of this television. The soccer game was going on, and all four of them had devices.
They were looking at the devices. They had earplugs in. The game was there. Maybe they were seeing the blow-by-blow description of the game. I do not know.
The kids have so many things now. “I am sorry, I do not have time to pray. I have to Skype somebody, Facebook somebody—what is the other one? Twitter somebody. I have to…”
If you can get the most toys, you will be out of the loop for spiritual things. You do not have time.
One brother told me there were two great days in his life: the day he finally got up the money and bought himself a boat, and the other day was the day he sold the boat.
If you know what it is like, you have to have a boat. You have a girlfriend on the side. You have to spend a lot of time on that little thing. I wonder if it is worth it in the end.
There is going to be an accounting for all the things we do and all the time we use.
Paul puts it this wonderful way in Ephesians, and I am going to interpret it. I am just prophetically interpreting some things this morning: we need to redeem the time.
Now, that means to buy it back, because the world has your time.
There are a couple of you—and praise God, you have probably been working forty years or more to get to that place where you can pretty much work as much as you want to. But most of you, the world has your time.
You are on the world’s clock. Some people here have to call in every time a meeting is over, find out what is going on, and do some extra work at night. The world has your clock.
You have this to do and that to do. Then the school says you have to do this with your children and that with your children. Your clock is completely occupied.
Unless you buy back time for the Lord, it will all be gone. Redeeming the time costs something. You are buying it back. The devil stole it. You need to buy it back.
Otherwise, you will never be prepared. You will be asleep.
Of course, we know—it is sad to say—it is such a simple thing. Again, I speak as kindergarten. But many people are asleep because they have been in the shadows of unconfessed sin.
You just will not admit that thing is a sin. Because you will not admit it, the blood of Jesus will not be applied to it. Because the blood of Jesus will not be applied to it, you live in a kind of spiritual shadow.
Until you confess and get it right, you are wasting time, marking time in the shadows. And Jesus brings the light.
One of the simplest and most profound problems among Christians is unforgiveness. It puts you right into shadows. How can the Lord answer your prayer if you cannot forgive your brother?
So simple, and it takes you right out of life.
And something more subtle: delayed obedience.
Delayed obedience, or the “I will get around to it” intention that never materializes.
Is it not interesting that the children of Israel decided to go in and take the promised land the day after the Lord said it was too late?
When the Lord said, “Go,” they said, “No.” Then the Lord said, “Okay, you cannot go.” Then they said, “Now we are going.”
Now there are many brothers here, and you are in midlife now. God has a calling on your life for perfection and fellowship in the bride, but you have delayed it and not been faithful.
You have stalled on the calling of God and put yourself into some kind of slumber where you can actually sit in an assembly and not feel you have any obligation to live by the life of the Lord among God’s people.
And the church in the assembly is sorely needing brothers. Awake!
So you are into your second million, are you? Is that making you happy? You are in bondage to the world. You are having to bow down to Babylon. Is that making you happy?
Here is the thing: the Lord does not tell you to quit your job. He tells you to be His disciple. He does not tell you not to go to school, not to pursue a vocation, or to forget about getting married. No, no.
In the midst of all that, seek the kingdom of God first and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added along.
As soon as these things get put up in some kind of a place where they start delaying obedience, we are in serious trouble.
What is the Lord’s remedy for sleep? I speak as a fool. Somehow the voice of God has to shout, “Wake up!” And we see it put in these simple terms: repent.
If we are talking about the church being ready to express with the Spirit, “Come, Lord Jesus,” we are talking to a church which, in the book of Revelation, five out of seven times is told, “Repent.”
Awaken from sleep.
Let us understand what this whole matter of sleep is about, because people are very busy, but they are sleepwalking. What does it mean to be asleep?
All of you know that our primary example of the need for repentance came at that juncture in history when John the Baptist was raised up to prepare the way for the Messiah to come.
Now there was a problem. What was the problem? Israel was completely unprepared for a Messiah.
How do I know that? Because when Jesus came, most of them looked at Him eyeball to eyeball and could not see that He was Messiah. That means they lacked spiritual preparation.
But John was sent, and this is God’s mercy. John was sent before Jesus came, and here is what he said: “The kingdom of God is upon us, and you are not ready.”
“You are naked. You are full of sin. You are not ready for the Messiah. Repent. Come in these waters. Prepare your heart, for there is One coming right around the corner.”
“I am not even worthy to untie His shoelaces, but He is coming, and you had better be ready for Him. He is coming, and He is going to sift out wheat and chaff.”
He was talking about Jesus. How close was Jesus, coming around the corner? Six months at most.
John came, and this is how God divinely wakes up the church: God sent a voice.
They asked John, “Are you a prophet?” He said, “I am a voice.” Let us be even more specific: he was the voice predicted in Isaiah 40, “A voice crying in the wilderness.”
But when he spoke, it was God’s voice spoken through him. Mercifully, there were a large number of people who woke up.
It was a shock to their Jewish system. These people actually woke up when they heard God’s voice after four hundred years of prophetic silence.
God spoke to individuals during that time, but to Israel there had been four hundred years of prophetic silence. Suddenly, boom, like a thunderclap, John said, “The kingdom is here.”
People found themselves immediately unprepared.
Up to that point when John spoke, I will tell you, brothers and sisters, those people—especially those in Judea, those who hung around Jerusalem, religious people, professional religious people, or full-time amateur religious people—thought they were ready.
People who would go to this conference, then WCC, then WCCC, then the Far East Conference—all those people thought they were ready. That is spiritual sleep.
They said, “Why, are you kidding? I gave sacrifices. I just came and spent twenty-nine dollars on a blemishless lamb. We ate the way we were supposed to eat. We prayed the way we were supposed to pray.”
“We went to the temple, listened, joined, worshiped, went back home, and did all the things we were supposed to do. I screwed a little paper thing on my head. I did all these kinds of things. I am ready. I am ready.”
“Oh, we want the Messiah to come. We want Him to throw down the Roman government. We want the Messiah. We are ready for Him.”
And their spirit was completely unready. They thought they had to do some more religious stuff and maybe the Messiah would come. They were praying for the Messiah to come just to knock off Rome and set Israel free at last.
Then here comes the Messiah. Who was ready for Him? John and Andrew.
Who were they? Little Johnny Fisher-boy and Andrew, Peter’s brother. The only thing they had going for them was that when they heard John the Baptist, their hearts were undone.
They were crushed, went into the waters, and were baptized. They were hanging around John when Jesus came, and John said, “There is the Lamb of God.”
Old John and Andrew went and followed Jesus because they saw Who He was. They woke up, and they followed the Messiah.
There were others who woke up as well, thank God. Jesus gathered some disciples. Who were those disciples? They were people who woke up.
The whole point is this: the Bridegroom is saying, “Behold, I come quickly.” That is the divine voice from heaven for His church.
And we do not hear it.
I suppose we are very satisfied with this world, when you get right down to it. And we are also very unprepared.
Our King is so great that, actually, to tell you the truth, I do not know how I could work this out doctrinally, but even if the Lord Jesus wanted to come for His bride in her present state, our Father would disallow it.
Because it would be an insult to our King. Our King is so worthy, so glorious, so full of love, and so longsuffering. He has been waiting such a long time.
But He will not come to a babe. Heaven insists that He come to a bride.
This bride’s voice has to be changed from babyhood into a single cry of an adult, mature, Christlike vessel who can say, “Come.”
And the church is not at that point.
Actually, when some people hear that Jesus is coming soon, I hear Christians say, “Oh, Jesus, do not come. Do not come.”
As if this is some kind of thing He wants to hear. “No, no, I am not ready. No, my family is not ready. No, no, no. Please, I am not ready.”
Better you speak against yourself and say, “I am not ready, and I may not be in that wife-band, but Lord Jesus, come.”
Oh, we have such selfish hearts.
The fact of the matter is, He can only come to a bride who has first love. He can only hear the voice of somebody saying, “Come,” who is showing in their life that He is their special treasure.
If He is not those things to us, we are not really there yet.
Now, do we believe in His coming? Maybe it is as simple a start as that. Do you believe in His coming?
Second question: do you desire His coming? Do you desire His coming?
Now, do not give me a religious shibboleth. Do you desire His coming, even if it is against yourself? Even if it means you do not get married? Even if it means you do not get that bonus? Even if it means you never fulfill your life’s dream?
May you seek the kingdom of heaven in such a way that His coming will be your life’s dream.
Are you prepared for His coming? Church, are you prepared for His coming?
I do not think there is any of us—I am not sure how sure you are—you could say, “Yes, I am prepared.” So I am going to ask you another question. This is not a loophole, but it is a reality.
If you cannot say you are prepared for His coming, then I have a question for you: can you say right now that you are preparing for His coming?
I believe that, in the end, at the moment He comes, there will be Christians of maturity and Christians newly born. But the fact of the matter is, they will all be preparing, growing, spiritually increasing, finding a fuller possession of Christ in their lives.
They will be allowing the Spirit and the work of the cross to build something in them. They are in a preparation stage.
Now, by preparation, I am not talking about some automatic thing that happens as you just take it in by osmosis. Are you preparing for the coming of the Lord?
Then repent.
Our brother Lance talked about a word which is really one of my precious words: this whole matter of awakening.
Repentance is awakening. That is what repentance really is: a whole new thought process that comes because you have been awakened out of your sleep.
There are two things that happen at the same time when somebody is awakened out of spiritual sleep. They bring us immediately into a place of preparation.
What are those two things that happen when we repent? Of course, it is by the sovereign majesty of God that He awakens us. We cannot awaken ourselves.
“Dana, wake up, wake up.” It is no good.
The Brazilians say you are “going fishing” when you are doing this, because your head is bobbing in the water. Every time I speak, I can look around and find somebody.
I have seen sisters punching brothers, trying to wake them up. Usually, it is all in vain.
We speak the Word of God to one another, but unless the Holy Spirit speaks into your heart, you will not wake up. You will remain in spiritual sleep: eyes all greased up, ears too heavy to hear, and a heart as dull as a stone.
But if the Spirit speaks to you and you awake, I tell you, it will not be the same.
Two things happen in an awakening. First, you immediately become aware of your real spiritual condition.
I mean, it is an undoing to be awakened. It is true that you also become aware of the real spiritual condition of the surroundings.
If we could use Isaiah once again, when the Lord opened up the heavens and he saw the Lord sitting on a throne, he said, “Woe is me.” That was his first response: “I am undone.”
He said, “I am a man of unclean lips.” But he also could see, in that same moment of clarity, “I live among a people of unclean lips.”
It happened all in a moment, and he was undone.
I put to you something that I cannot prove right now, but I believe it: before Jesus came and stood in the midst of the seven churches in the book of Revelation, none of them had any idea they were anything other than fully prepared.
That is just the way we are. We deceive ourselves in our sleepiness.
Let us spend the last few moments looking in Revelation 3, at the church of Sardis.
Here is the Lord Jesus, the glorious High Priest, examining the lampstand in Sardis.
To the angel of the church in Sardis write:
He Who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars says this:
“I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.
Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die;
for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.”
This is Jesus talking. “Wake up.” Jesus is talking to a church by the end of the first century, not to a church in the twenty-first century.
“I, Jesus, stand in the midst and say, ‘Wake up.’”
I know that probably all of you have studied these seven churches. You have examined them and seen what the Lord commends, what He rebukes, and all these things.
But what I am asking for is that you and I might see with eyes of the Spirit the Lord Jesus standing in the midst of your assembly.
That is our only hope. Wherever you meet, have you ever seen the Lord Jesus stand in the midst of your assembly? What does He say about it?
I do not care, for the moment, if you can define the poor Laodiceans or the Ephesians. Forget them. Have you ever heard Jesus speaking in the midst of your assembly, saying, “This I commend you for; this I rebuke. Repent, and do that”?
Now, I guarantee you, He wants to stand in the midst of every assembly. But I also almost assure you that we are so asleep that we think we are okay.
Especially if you look around at some destitute assembly and say, “Oh, well, we are a lot better than that.”
I do not know. When the Lord Jesus comes in your midst, there is only one church you have to deal with: the assembly you are in. Are you asleep? Is your assembly asleep?
Imagine Jesus saying, “Wake up.” “What do You mean, wake up? We were just praising Your name. Praise God, la, la, la.”
He says, “Wake up.” “What do You mean?”
He says, “I have commanded you to do things. You got halfway into them, then you did not finish them. Do you think that is pleasing to My God? Is that a testimony? You fell asleep.”
“Strengthen the things that remain, because you had a reputation that you were a living church, but you are dead to Me.”
He is talking about spiritual awakening.
Of course, the church of Laodicea has been mentioned so many times that we hesitate even to mention it. But can you imagine this church?
Do I have to argue the case that Laodicea thought it was a pretty good church? A pretty good church, outside the door aside. A pretty good Christian fellowship.
This is such a serious matter because it applies to most of the church today in this age of Laodicea.
The Lord comes in and says, “I am ready to spit you out.” It is so displeasing to Me: half-heartedness.
Praise with one hand up in the air. Prayer with one eye open, looking at your watch.
You are so self-sufficient. You have all the money you need. You have your preachers, your Sunday school system, and everything so nice. You have it all set up just the way you like it.
And you are getting pretty particular about the way you like it. If somebody says something a little different from what you like, you say, “Yeah, that guy.”
But the Lord comes and says, “You know you are poor, wretched, blind, and naked.”
How can He come? How can He come for the church of Laodicea? I am asking you.
“You are poor, wretched, blind, and naked. So I am asking you to get some eye salve, to get that grease off your eyeballs, and to buy some gold instead of that junk you are carrying around, thinking it is valuable.”
“Wash your robes. Make sure they are white. No stain, no sin. Wake up.”
But notice what He does say at the end. This is the longsuffering of our Lord Jesus. In Revelation 3:19, after He speaks to Laodicea, He says:
Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline;
therefore be zealous and repent.
Oh, wonderful, wonderful, that when the Spirit spoke into the church of Laodicea—I do not know how big that church was or how many members it had—I am so happy to say that there were some who heard and repented.
They will be able to sit on the throne of God, even as Jesus overcame. There were some there.
But the first thing you see when there is an awakening—and it is an awful awakening—is that when we talk about the great awakenings that have happened in church history, we often think of the ingathering of souls saved during those times.
But that was actually the aftereffect of the church repenting and coming back to what the Lord wanted.
When the church in Wales repented and came back to the spiritual condition the Lord desired for them, people got saved as fast as they could come and hear the testimonies.
If the Lord can find a church that is truly awake, living, serving, doing what He wants, loving Him, and waiting for Him, the Lord can do magnificent things through such a church.
But the first thing is to see our true condition.
At the same moment—and this is the redemptive thing about this—at the same moment we see our spiritual condition, we see the sovereign God alive, standing over us, ready to bring us into His preparation work.
Do you understand what I am saying? You see your state, and then you see a Lord Who sovereignly already has a plan for you to make it.
As an example, there is Isaiah. He fell apart and said, “Woe is me, a man of unclean lips.” Then the Lord said, “Whom shall I send?” And Isaiah said, “Send me.”
He saw there was a plan. There was something he could do about it.
You see, Isaiah had this wrong: he was trusting in King Uzziah, and he was trusting in the kingdom of Judah. When he saw Who was the real King of Israel, it changed his whole life.
He died to trying to serve the king of Judah, and he lived to serve the Lord sitting on His throne. He said, “Lord, what do You want me to do? Forget being a prophet for Judah. I want to be Your prophet. What do You want me to do?”
Long story short, maybe it sounds funny, but God said this: “Preach to the stump.”
He said, “Go ahead and prophesy to people who will not listen. Talk to people who will not hear. Talk to people whose hearts are deaf. But I want you to go on and preach the truth anyway, because there is a stump—a remnant—that is alive, can bear seed, and can grow.”
“So go on. Speak to the remnant.”
We know that is what he saw. That was his way forward. “I have spoken to all, but they will not listen. But there is the stump that is listening. All right, stump, let us get together and pray.”
Isaiah gave us more insight into what the remnant was like than any other prophet in the Old Testament. That was the Lord’s way forward.
The Lord comes by His Spirit. He stood in front of all seven churches and said, “This I see, and this you must repent of.” Then He said, “Okay, now who can hear Me? Who is hearing Me?”
Many of the people did not hear, obviously. But those who heard, heard and heeded and repented, found themselves in a life gathered with some other ones who loved the Lord so much.
They overcame all the currents that were working against them. They overcame. And they added to their prayer, “Oh, Messiah, come, come.”
When the Lord reveals the devastation around you, He also reveals that He has a plan forward.
Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9 is one of the great prayers of confession, where he prayed on behalf of all Israel in captivity. But why did Daniel pray that prayer?
What gave him the forward impulse of the Spirit to pray that particular prayer about their going back to Jerusalem? It was because someone gave him a scroll of Jeremiah.
He realized it was only seventy years before God had a plan for prosperity, hope, and a destiny. Daniel started praying because he saw that God would move them back to Jerusalem to build the house of God.
You see, there is a plan forward.
If you notice, in all seven churches, in the five where He commands them to repent, He always adds, “And then do this.”
To Ephesus, He says, “Remember from where you have fallen, repent, and do the deeds you did at first.”
It does not change what deeds were done as much as it changes the fullness of Christ expressed as they did the deeds out of first love.
For each of the churches called on to repent, there was a way forward: “Do this. Keep this.”
Wonderful Lord.
Is it worth the awakening? Is it worth the awakening to discover the living God in our midst? Is it worth it to you?
We have a particular problem. I end with this—I see them already, crazy overtime. All right, let me just end with this.
We have a special problem: what do you do with people who were once awakened and now have cataracts again?
This is the greatest complicated thing in the Bible. It is one thing to be a Christian in the church and be awakened to see that we were asleep and not prepared.
It is another thing to have been awakened twenty years ago, thirty years ago, forty years ago, and now to find cataracts settling back in. What do you do?
The two most difficult books that I know to expound in the Bible are Malachi and Hebrews, both of them speaking to people who once were enlightened and now have fallen back asleep.
What do you do with Malachi? Who is Malachi writing to? He is writing to the remnant who sacrificed all, came back from Babylon, built the city of God, and built the temple.
Now it is a hundred years later: the grandkids of the remnant that was faithful.
The Lord comes to them and says, “I have loved you.” They say, “Have You loved us?” God says, “You have robbed Me.” “How have we robbed You?”
God says, “I am weary with your complaints.” “How have we wearied You?”
This is the attitude of modern Christians. The Lord says, “I want you to come, follow Me, and prepare yourselves for My coming.” We say, “Well, what am I going to do? What have I not done already? Have I not done enough?”
“You are offering blemished sacrifices.” “What do You mean by the sacrifice?”
Boy, you read the book of Malachi, and you see the churlish, rebellious state of God’s children—except at the end, where you see some people who feared the Lord.
They listened. They talked to one another. They prayed. The Bible says from heaven God looked down, saw that remnant, and wrote their names in the book.
And the rest of them—what do you do with people who grow cataracts again? When you remind them to repent, they get churlish and say, “What more do I need to do? Have I not done enough?”
“Why, I have served You for forty years. Is it not time for me to retire and just sit on back?”
It is a good argument. But the Lord will win that argument if you will fall before Him.
I know these are heavy words. I am sorry to be one who brings such a strong word, but if we do not hear the Spirit calling us to repent, there is no hope—not in this generation.
If we do not hear the Lord telling us, “You are doing something wrong, and you are on the wrong track. I want to talk to you about it, but you will not even listen to Me. You do not even realize you need repentance.”
Repentance is an awakening. If we see the real condition, then we do not go around blaming other people, because the first thing we saw was our own spiritual condition.
And the fact is that you exist in a whole congregation who have learned your habits and are just as bad.
Oh, leaders, if you do not see, your people will never see.
If we are too busy trying to perpetuate our own situation, then may the Lord have mercy on us.
Now He is looking for a bride who can join in one voice with the Spirit and say, “Oh, Jesus, come.” But the bride has got to wake up.
Just as those virgins had to wake up at the coming of the bridegroom, it is time to wake up and be prepared.
Who knows but that just the awakening, the change of attitude, and the repentant heart—seeing your unworthiness and unreadiness, repenting of that which He shows in the light, asking the Lord to be in the midst—perhaps just that attitude changes all that is necessary for the Lord to say, “Now I am ready, and I will come.”
I am not sure how many more works and things need to be done, or how many more people need to be saved. I do not know these great mysteries.
But I know that in the twinkling of an eye, the Lord can come.
If our attitudes can just be broken in repentance, and we cry out to the Lord, and we see Him in the midst—moving, doing something, already doing something in your life.
Believe me, if you have been awakened, seen your condition, and seen the Lord, He is already doing something in your life. You are under repair already. You are preparing.
I hope that everybody here who has already awakened truly has a heart of repentance. But I share these things lest there is someone who has been asleep.
It is time to wake up. Salvation is nearer than when we first believed.
Do not dawdle around. Do not get so many trinkets, or become involved in the world, in darkness, in flesh, or in any of those kinds of things that would hinder you in any way from being prepared for what is about to happen.
May the Lord help us in these days.
Lord, do have mercy on us. Lord, I do not speak as one who is self-righteous, but as one who needs awakening.
Lord, we do not want to be just in our sleepy state. Oh Lord, open our eyes by the Holy Spirit and cause us to be those who are first in line.
Woe is me unless the Lord does a work among us. We will not be ready.
Oh Lord, have mercy upon us, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.