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Spurgeon distinguishes spiritual sleep from spiritual death: believers may become insensitive, inactive, and complacent, yet those truly united to Christ remain secure in final salvation. Nevertheless, spiritual sleep is dangerous because it weakens Christian witness, prayer, discernment, and readiness for Christ’s unexpected return. Prosperity and ease especially tempt the church toward lethargy, while fellowship, conversation about God’s grace, and fixing the eyes on Christ help believers remain awake. Those who are spiritually dead apart from Christ face real and terrifying judgment, so the sermon presses an urgent gospel warning to turn to Christ while there is still hope.
Theological center: The sermon centers on the secure salvation of true believers, the sudden return of Christ, and the fearful reality of final judgment for those outside Christ.
Applications: Awaken from spiritual slumber · Prepare for Christ’s return · Maintain Christian fellowship · Respond to the gospel while there is hope
Primary texts: 1 Thessalonians 5:6 · 1 Thessalonians 5:2-5 · Ephesians 5:14
“Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.” 1 Thessalonians 5:6 AS the spiritual guide of the flock of God along the intricate mazes of experience, it is the duty of the Gospel minister to point out every turning of the road to heaven, to speak concerning its dangers or its privileges, and to warn any whom he may suspect to be in a position peculiarly perilous. Now, there is a portion of the road which leads from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, which has in it, perhaps, more dangers than any other portion of the way. It does not abound with lions. There are no dragons in it, it has no dark woods, and no deep pitfalls, yet more seeming pilgrims have been destroyed in that portion of the road than anywhere else, and not even Doubting Castle with all its host of bones can show so many who have been slain there. It is the part of the road called the Enchanted Ground. The great geographer, John Bunyan, well-pictured it when he said, “I then saw in my dream, that they went on till they came into a certain country, whose air naturally tended to make one drowsy, if he came a stranger into it. And here Hopeful began to be very dull, and heavy of sleep, wherefore he said unto Christian, I do now begin to grow so drowsy, that I can scarcely hold up mine eyes. Let us lie down here and take one nap. “CHR. By no means, said the other, lest sleeping, we never wake more. “HOPE. Why, my brother? sleep is sweet to the laboring man. We may be refreshed if we take a nap.” “CHR. Do you not remember that one of the Shepherds bid us beware of the Enchanted Ground? He meant by that, that we should beware of sleeping. Wherefore ‘let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober.’” There are no doubt, many of us, beloved, who are passing over this plain, and I fear that this is the condition of the majority of churches in the present day. They are lying down on the settles of Lukewarmness in the Arbors of the Enchanted Ground. There is not that activity and zeal we could wish to see among them. They are not perhaps, notably heterodox. They may not be invaded by the lion of persecution, but they are somewhat worse than that—they are lying down to slumber, like Heedless and Too-Bold in the Arbor of Sloth. May God grant that His servants may be the means of arousing the church from its lethargy, and stirring it up from its slumbers, lest haply professors should sleep the sleep of death. This morning I intend to show you what is meant by the state of sleep into which Christians sometimes fall. Secondly, I shall use some consid…