Stay Awake

“Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober.”

– 1Th 5:6

If we will look around us today, we can’t help but be frustrated to see what man’s sinfulness brought. This fair world of ours was once a glorious temple, every pillar reflected the goodness of God, and every part of it was a symbol of good, but sin has spoiled and marred all the beauty and glory that might be drawn from earth. It has so deranged the divine economy of nature, that those things which were inimitable pictures of virtue, goodness, and divine plenitude of blessing, have now become the figures and representatives of sin. It is strange to say, but it is strangely true, that the very best gifts of God have by the sin of man become the worst pictures of man’s guilt.

Look at the waters breaking forth from its fountains, it rushes across the fields, bearing plenty on its bosom; it covers them awhile, and leaves upon the plain a fertile deposit, into which the farmer shall cast his seed and reap an abundant harvest. One would have called the breaking forth of water a fine picture of providence, the magnificence of God’s goodness to the human race; but we find that sin has appropriated that figure to itself. The beginning of sin is like the breaking forth of waters. See the fire! How kindly God hath bestowed upon us that element, to cheer us in the midst of winter’s frosts. Fresh from the snow and from the cold we rush to our household fire, and there by our hearth we warm our hands, and glad are we. Fire is a rich picture of the divine influences of the Spirit, a holy emblem of the zeal of the Christian; but, sin hath touched this, and the tongue called “a fire;” “it is set on fire of hell,” we are told, and it is so evidently full often, when it utters blasphemy and slanders; and Jude lifts up his hand and exclaims, when he looks upon the evils caused by sin, “Behold how great a matter a little fire kindles.” And then there is sleep, one of the sweetest of God’s gifts, fair sleep.

God has selected sleep as the very figure for the repose of the blessed. “They that sleep in Jesus,” saith the Scripture. David puts it amongst the peculiar gifts of grace: “So he gives his beloved sleep.” But alas! sin could not let even this alone. Sin did over-ride even this celestial metaphor; and though God himself had employed sleep to express the excellence of the state of the blessed, yet sin must have even this profaned, ere itself can be expressed. Sleep is employed in the verse above as a picture of a sinful condition. “Therefore let us not sleep as do others; but let us watch and be sober.”

The “sleep” of this verse is an evil to be avoided. In the second place, the word “therefore” is employed to show us that there are certain reasons for the avoiding of this sleep. And since the apostle speaks of this sleep with sorrow, it is to teach us that there are some, whom he calls “others,” over whom it is our business to lament, because they sleep, and do not watch, and are not sober.

We know that God loves us and has a wonderful plan for us.  We also know that this plan was shattered by sin and continually being destroyed by sinfulness.  Let us stay awake and fall not into that deep sleep – forgetting who we are before the Lord our creator.