For a long time I knew that the Christian life was a matter of having a relationship with God, but I also often thought of it as a list of rules to be kept. I wasn’t sure how to maintain a relationship with God, but it was clear to me what it meant to keep the rules. If I did well, I was in God’s good graces. If I messed up, I felt a huge load of guilt. As I look back, I now see that I even preached as though being a Christian was about managing our sin, rather than living in the freedom of a child of God. I thought and taught that the Christian life was about not sinning rather than living a life empowered by the Spirit. I defined the Christian life by a list of things that you do not do, rather than a list of things you get to do. It took me a long time to get over the rigid way I had learned and adapted to. And I am still learning. It has been a long process of waking up to the life Christ is offering me.
This morning I want to explore what it means to come alive in Christ. I want us to investigate what it means to spiritually wake up. And to do that, I want to use three stories from the Bible as metaphors. The first story is the one we read together in the Scripture today. It is the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. And the first message I want get from this story is about: Waking from spiritual death. The raising of Lazarus is a great biblical story. Jesus heard that Lazarus was seriously ill and delayed going to him. He later told his disciples: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up” (John 11:11). When they questioned him, he told them plainly: “Lazarus is dead.” By the time he arrived, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. When Jesus arrived in Bethany, he told the people to roll away the stone that sealed the tomb of Lazarus. Then he called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out ” I love what the Gospel of John says next: “The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face” (John 11:44). This is the New Testament account of a dead man walking Then Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
I see that as a metaphor of what Jesus Christ does for each of us when we first come to him. This is the first great awakening. It is the awakening from spiritual death to spiritual life. The Bible talks about the time when we were “dead in transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). The apostle Paul says: “When you were dead in your sins. . . God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins” (Colossians 2:13). At one time we were all asleep in the coma of spiritual death, but I trust that Christ has awakened you through his Spirit and given you life. If that is not the case, you are still spiritually dead and remain in your sins. That is why the Bible says with some urgency: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Ephesians 5:14).
I am so grateful for the day that Jesus Christ rolled the stone away from my spiritual grave and called me out. He took away all the things that were binding me and set me free to live. He loosed me from the things that had wrapped themselves around me and were squeezing the life out of me. He called me out of darkness into his marvelous light. He helped me to know what it was to be fully alive.
It was Saint Irenaeus who said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” If I had been able at one time in my life to crawl inside my brain to see what was really driving me, it was the lie that God really did not want me fully alive. The thought was buried somewhere in there that when God comes into your life he takes the life away. If it is fun, delicious or pleasurable it is bad and sinful. I unconsciously believed that when God comes, he asks me to give up being really alive. He wants me to give up things and stop having fun. Those were the controlling thoughts that inhabited my mind, even though I may have denied believing them at the time. Emotions are often stronger than rational thoughts. So even though I knew better, my fearful emotions were delivering the message that the Christian life was restrictive and even oppressive. But I have been slowly walking out of the tomb and experiencing the reality that God does not want me to experience less of life, he wants me to experience more of it. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). He wants me to have more fun, not less. He said, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). What he is saying is that it is the devil, our spiritual enemy, who wants to rob us of life. The devil promises freedom, but brings bondage and grinding oppression. He promises pleasure, but creates depression. He promises life, but delivers dysfunction. But Jesus gives life, and he is never more happy than when I am enjoying the life he has given me to the full. That is what he has promised. And either I believe that and live, or I reject it and miss what he has come to give.
Perhaps there are some here today who have never risen from the dead. You are still in your grave. You are still bound. You have never seen the light of day and experienced real joy. You have avoided God, and in the process you have avoided life. You have never been awakened spiritually. What will it take? He is calling you out of your tomb. He is the One who will bring you back to life, but you have to be willing to come out of your grace and walk toward him.
The second great awakening that must take place is: Waking from spiritual dullness. There is no better story here than the story of the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. You are familiar with it. Jesus is nearing the most important time of his life. He is about to be sacrificed for the sins of the whole world. His spirit is in agony. And he asks his closest friends to be with him, watch with him and pray for him. But they do not understand the importance of the moment. Their eyes are heavy after a long day. They are spiritually dull. They are shallow and do not understand the importance of doing something even when it is hard. They do not put forth the necessary effort to be what they need to be. They could not stay awake with him even for one hour. When they do finally awake, it is too late, and all they want to do is fight or run. And so, they are totally unprepared for what they are about to face. Jesus told them what they needed to do to prepare, and they were too dull spiritually to do what he said.
Think of what you miss when you are asleep. Another time that the apostles were asleep was when Jesus was transfigured. The Bible says, “Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory. . . .” (Luke 9:32). And when you awake, you will see it too.
I have been at the place where the apostles were so many times. Sleep took over when I needed to be awake spiritually. I was dull when I needed to be sharp and take seriously what I knew I needed to do. I was lazy when I should have put forth the necessary effort.
There was another time when the opposite happened. The apostles were awake and Jesus was sleeping. In the fourth chapter of Mark we are told the story of when Jesus and his men were out on the Sea of Galilee as a storm arose. Jesus was sleeping in the boat, but the disciples were wide awake because they were in terror of the storm. They woke him and said, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” (Mark 4:3). But Jesus replied: “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” I think the point of the story is that if you don’t sleep at the right time, you will fall asleep at the wrong time. This was not the time to be awake, it was a time to rest — even though there was a storm. Jesus was with them and there was no reason to fear. If they had rested at the right times, instead of letting fear keep them awake, they would have been able to stay awake at the right time when vigilance was called for.
Larry Crabb wrote: “The core problem is not that we are too passionate about bad things, but that we are not passionate enough about good things.” How easy it is to get into a rut. Maybe we are afraid to really come alive. Perhaps we have settled for a false security. Is it possible we have sunken into a life of apathy and indifference? One day we realize that we are not living, we are just existing, running from one thing to another. We are always doing and never being. Life is running us instead of us running our lives. God is not in control, our activities are in control. We have lost a sense of proportion and priorities. We are under the tyranny of the urgent, rather than the priority of the important. We are so busy with the temporary that we have no time for the eternal. This hyperactivity leads to shallowness and spiritual dullness. It is not that you are still spiritually dead, but you have sunk into spiritual dullness. The heart for God and the passion for spiritual things has been dulled, and you find yourself pursuing material things. You wonder why you feel like the fire has gone out. In the book of Revelation, Jesus tells the church at Ephesus: “You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen Repent and do the things you did at first” (Revelation 2:4-5).
Many of us feel that dullness. The life is being sucked out of us by little things and an overcrowded calendar. Annie Dillard, in her wonderful book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, tells this sobering story about a lesson from nature: “A couple’ Summers ago I was walking along the edge of the island to see what I could see in the water, and mainly to scare frogs. . . . At the end of the island I noticed a small green frog. He was exactly half in and half out of the water. He didn’t jump; I crept closer. At last I knelt on the island’s winter killed grass, lost, dumbstruck, staring at the frog in the creek just four feet away. He was a very small frog with wide, dull eyes. And just as I looked at him, he slowly crumpled and began to sag. The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed. His skin emptied and drooped; his very skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent. He was shrinking before my very eyes like a deflating football. I watched the taut, glistening skin on his shoulders ruck, rumple, and fall. Soon, part of his skin, formless as a pricked balloon, lay in floating folds like bright scum on top of the water: it was a monstrous and terrible thing. . . . An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drained frog: then the shadow glided away. The frog skin bag started to sink. I had read about the water bug, but never seen one. ‘Giant water bug’ is really the name of the creature, which is an enormous, heavy-bodied brown beetle. It eats insects, tadpoles, fish, and frogs. Its grasping forelegs are mighty and hooked inward. It seizes a victim with these legs, hugs it tight, and paralyzes it with enzymes injected during a vicious bite. That one bite is the only bite it ever takes. Through the puncture shoots the poison that dissolves the victim’s muscles and bones and organs — all but the skin — and through it the giant water bug sucks out the victim’s body, reduced to a juice.”
That is what happens to us as these little things begin to drain us of life — our dull eyes telling the story that collapse is not far off.
The third great awakening that must take place is: Waking from spiritual deafness. This is the ability to hear God and do his will. The biblical story that brings this out is the Old Testament story of Samuel and Eli. Samuel is a young boy and he lives with Eli who is an elderly priest. The boy Samuel laid down in the temple to go to sleep. But God called out to him: “Samuel, Samuel.” It was so clear that Samuel assumed it was the old priest calling him. But Eli assured him that he had not called him. This happened a second and a third time. The last time, Eli said, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’” (1 Samuel 3:9). As Samuel laid down again, God once again called to him, and when he invited God to speak, he heard the Word of the Lord who said, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle” (1 Samuel 3:11).
Eli was the priest, and did not hear God speaking. Samuel was an untrained child, and he did hear the Word of the Lord. Eli was sleeping, but Samuel was awake. Part of the problem of being so busy is that we take so little time to listen. We don’t have time to think or pray. Our lives are so filled with self-induced stress that we have no spiritual rest. When we have no spiritual rest, we are awake when we should be asleep, and asleep when we should be awake. When we are spiritually asleep we cannot hear the voice of God, and we become spiritually deaf. Our ears are filled with the noise of the radio, television and people, but never with the voice of God. The cacophony of the world is blaring, and we cannot hear his tender voice calling us or guiding us. Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). But hearing his voice in your inner heart takes time and quiet.
The Bible says, “And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:11-12).
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be sleepwalking through life. I don’t want to be living in a stupor; I want to be awake and aware. I want to see God in the world around me, hear his voice and do his will. I want my life to mean something. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and look back and wonder what I did with my life. My willingness to hear God in this world determines whether or not I will hear him call me in the next world. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live” (John 5:25).
The Baltimore Sun reported that Kenny Carter admits that he has been involved in some unsavory careers. “I used to do drug dealing,” he says. “I used to put women out on the street.” But Carter encountered God who had a message for him. Carter went to church one Sunday and says “Suddenly I heard an audible male voice that said: ‘You will be a vegetable’.” He said, “I looked around, and thought I was going crazy But I heard it again: ‘You will be a vegetable’.” So Carter now has a new career: he dresses in a bell pepper costume as “Peppy the Pepper” and attracts shoppers to the produce section of a local supermarket. Um, Kenny, I don’t think that is what God meant when he said you were going to be a vegetable. Could he have meant that the drugs you were doing were going to fry your brain, or that another dealer was going to smash your head in? Could he have been trying to get you to avoid the lifestyle you were living so that you could live a full life by living for God?
Sometimes God is speaking, but we can misunderstand what he is saying and miss the obvious. We need to wake up and hear what he is really saying. For there is a day when we will all awaken. The Bible says, “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). The Psalmist captured this when he said, “And I — in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness” (Psalm 17:15).
Rodney J. Buchanan
October 10, 2004
Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
Waking Up
(Questions for October 10, 2004)
1. Read John 11:32-43. When you think of this story as a metaphor of waking from spiritual death, how does it relate to your experience?
2. How does a person awaken from spiritual death?
3. Read Matthew 26:33-41. How does the failure of the disciples in spite of their determination affect you?
4. How can we awaken from spiritual dullness? What will it take?
5. Read 1 Samuel 3:1-11. What are the things that cause spiritual deafness? How can we begin to hear what God is saying to us?
6. Read Matthew 25:1-13. How do we awaken from spiritual dryness and
keep ourselves ready for the Lord’s appearing?
7. What are the things in the world that put us to sleep spiritually?
8. How do we keep ourselves from the sleep of spiritual apathy and become awake and alert to the spiritual and eternal realities of life?
9. Read Luke 8:22-25. Are there times when we are awake and God is sleeping? Are we awake when we should be resting?
10. What will you do in a practical way to wake up?
