Arise from the Dead

I'd like to read from Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 14. Just one verse, very likely lifted out of a hymn that they sang in their worship in the apostolic age. Therefore, it is said, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

Whenever we hit a dry season in our life with God, we are often inclined to put the burden of our revival from that dry season on him. Never mind how I got into it. I can't revive myself.

If I'm going to come back to life, God's going to have to do this. But there's at least one kind of dry season, which is experienced by the believer, where the first step for coming out of it has to be taken by us. And it's to this dry season that that little verse from Ephesians 5 is addressed.

Awake, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. First, you have to wake up, and you have to rise from the dead, he says to us. Then you can be sure that the Lord will give you all the light you need.

Now, this particular dry season that is being talked about here is the one that we bring upon ourselves by running away from our call. Most of us first began to know the Lord in the same way that the disciples did. Andrew, Peter, James, and John, that day, they left everything to follow Jesus.

Were not conscious of being saved or being born again. The only thing that was clear in their minds at that moment was that they had received a call. Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.

Don't worry. Don't be afraid. From now on, you'll be catching men to believe in Jesus Christ, to open our hearts, to receive him in such a way that he enters and that we are born, have the power now to be born, not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God, always involves a call to service, to a spent life.

In the beginning, that call is always vivid, but with the passing of time, it often happens that it fades. And the reason this call, which has come personally to us, begins to fade is because we allow ourselves to become distracted and taken up with other things. In fact, we're changing our direction in the same way that Jonah did.

May take us a little bit longer, and we may be a little bit more subtle about it, but we do the same thing. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare and went on board to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. And from this point, the driving force of Jonah's life is not to fulfill God's call, but to escape it. And this goes on in more of our living than we like to admit.

It's quite possible for us to go through the outward motions of saying, yes, Lord, I'll go to Nineveh, and we head for Nineveh outwardly, while at the very same time, inwardly, we're on the ship to Tarshish. And when we're in our hearts, on the ship to Tarshish, we may be asleep down there, away from everything else, but every time that ship rolls or pitches, every time the shutter goes through it as another wave hits it, we're reminded that we're at a point where we really don't belong, and we know it. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up.

Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his God. And they threw the wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep.

So the captain came and said to him, what do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call upon your God. Perhaps the God will give us a thought that we do not perish. And even when they haul us up on the deck and ask us who we are and where we're going, we know that a mark is on our lives from God that we have already come under a call and that we really aren't gonna have any peace until we come to grips with this.

Then they said to him, what shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea grew more and more compestuous. He said to them, take me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.

Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more compestuous against them. Therefore, they cried to the Lord. We beseech thee, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life.

Lay not on us innocent blood, for thou, O Lord, has done as it has pleased thee. So they took up Jonah and threw him into the sea and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Thus, the ultimate destination of every person who having heard a call from God, turns from it and runs is the belly of a fish. The belly of a fish is a form of death.

It is like a twilight zone, almost like a place of quarantine, prepared for those who are saved and who consider themselves separate from the world as Christians, but who are not fulfilling their call. Now, we may not look like we're in the belly of the fish. Life may be apparently treating us very well.

Things are going fine. Nobody would have any conception of what's going on down inside our hearts. But we know, and God knows, that down in there, we're numb.

We feel a strange isolation from everything. In his mercy, God brought us into the belly of the fish, holds us there so that we can't go to Tarshish and really for a while, at least, we can't go anywhere. And there we're held in suspension, given a chance to face reality, to think and to consider what we're gonna do about that call.

When Jesus says in John five, the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the son of God and those who hear him will live. He's not talking about us at that point. He's talking about the sons and daughters of Adam who have never yet heard the call of God.

And when they hear that call, they come to life. But when the spirit of Jesus speaking through Paul in Romans 13 says, besides this, you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. Here, he's talking to us.

At least to those of us who admit that we have heard the call and we're turning from it. Or we're at least have to admit that we're not fully answering it. Awake, O sleeper and arise from the dead and Christ shall give you life.

This is being addressed not to the sons and daughters of Adam who never heard the call, but to born again Jonahs, people like ourselves. We're in the ship and then we're thrown into the sea. Now we're in the fish.

We know that we just know it. For some of us, it may be vague, but we all of us know those of us who have in any way known Jesus in any way at all, that there has been a call put on our lives, that we have a life to live, a work to perform, something to accomplish. And here we are suspended, hanging in this twilight zone.

Awake, O sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ shall give you life. Two commands and a promise. First, wake up.

When the captain went down into the bottom of the ship and began shaking Jonah, telling him, wake up and call on your God, Jonah didn't really wake up. He only half woke up. He never did call on his God.

But when Jonah found himself in the belly of a fish, then he woke up. Took him three days and three nights, but he woke up. And then he began to call on his God.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish saying, I call to the Lord out of my distress. And he answered me out of the belly of shale. I cried and now just hear my voice.

And we have to come to a point where we finally choose, really choose to wake up. And we say, this is ridiculous. What am I doing here? And we suddenly realize that half the things we're telling everybody else to do, we're not doing.

And that we're sliding by and that our union with the Lord is just shot through with mediocrity. There's really nothing going on. And we finally decide this can't go on.

This road that I'm on is nothing but death and surely it's gonna lead to some kind of hell. I have to get out of here. And now we begin to shake things off our lives, to put aside the things that are holding us back and to shake off the power of darkness and put on the armor of light.

And we begin to make the changes that need to be made. There has to come a point where we choose to do that and where we consciously make a beginning. Besides this, you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep.

For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone. The day is at hand.

Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us conduct ourselves becomingly, honestly as in the day, not in reveling in drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts.

Awake, O sleeper. And arise from the dead. Now, the place where Jonah rose from the dead was not when he was finally out on the seashore after the fish got sick.

The place where he rose from the dead was in the belly of the fish when he decided to start crying out. And exactly the same thing has to happen with us. There has to come a point when we're still in the fish's belly where we decide to make some positive move.

You know, I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do, Lord, but I'm gonna make a start. You know, Glenn keeps saying, you can't have guidance, you can't guide a bicycle if you're not moving with it. If you sit on the bicycle and just remain stationary, you're gonna fall over.

And this is equally true for getting any kind of light from God, we have to begin to move, make some positive move. And the first positive step that we can make in the belly of the fish is to really begin to pray. Always one of the symptoms, the major symptom that we're in the fish's belly is that there is a quality of unreality at least to our prayer life.

It's dead. You know, it's superficial. And we know it.

So now, even though that's been the case, we begin to pray and we cry out, Lord, get me out of this thing. I'm tired of rolling around in here. Help me to do something.

And the minute we begin to make just that much of a move, we come to life. And before long, we're no longer crying out from inside the fish's belly, but we'll find ourselves alive, standing on the shore and scraping off some of the stuff that still came with us from the inside. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish.

And the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead and Christ shall give you life. The very next verse here.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city and proclaim to it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. The minute we, in a serious way, choose to wake up and become alive, the Lord will be there with light.

He will be there with a clear word. If we don't have any light and if no clear word is coming, it's only because we're asleep. There's no such thing as finding ourselves in the belly of the fish, crying out to God for help and getting nothing.

Those of us who are in any way at all at this moment rolling around inside the belly of the fish can be sure that we are not in the belly of the fish. That if we will cry out with any kind of will, with any genuine meaning, that before we leave the assembly today, today, we will have life. Christ shall give you life.

Go to Nineveh, be reconciled with your mate. Go ask forgiveness. Give your cousin some money.

Whatever it is he wants us to do, he'll make that clear. And in the doing of it, our light will increase. Just as surely as we need to learn every day how to die with Christ to ourselves and to our flesh, we also need to learn how to rise with Christ.

We need to learn to get out of the belly of the fish. 1981 is bound to have some surprises for us as individuals and as a body, and no doubt in many other ways too. And it may well be that in order to handle the things that we're gonna have to deal with in the coming year, it will be necessary for us to be out of that fish's belly, that no man's land, that stagnation, and alive in God to an extent we've never been alive before.

May God help us today. If in any way at all, we're still inside the fish, may he help us to admit this. And then may he bring us to the point where the inside of the fish becomes for us an intolerable place, so intolerable that we will take these words of the Spirit personally to ourselves and act on them.

Awake, O sleeper. And arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life. Let's pray.

We're asking, Heavenly Father, at this moment that you would help us to know the difference between the times when we need to do nothing but wait and sit still for you to undertake and to raise us from the dead, and the times when we have to act. And if there is anything at all that needs to be done on our side today to get us out of whatever lethargy or bondage or paralysis we may be in, help us now, Lord God, to get moving.