Grantsdale Community Church
2026-10-04-Wake Up, O Sleeper
  • INTRODUCTION
    Last week we left the risen Christ standing on Laodicea’s front porch, banging on the door, with dinner waiting. And I told you that this week we’d trade Jesus’s letters for an alarm clock.
    For two Sundays now we’ve been sitting in the doctor’s office. Sardis had a reputation and no pulse. Laodicea had a bank account and no temperature. Sooner or later a patient gets tired of hearing what’s wrong with them and wants to know what to do about it.
    This morning Paul hands us the prescription, and it fits in our title: “Wake Up, O Sleeper.” I have a confession about that title.
    I borrowed it from a more poetic Bible translation, because it sounds like something you’d cross-stitch on a pillow. The CSB just isn’t that gentle. The CSB says, “Get up, sleeper.”
    That’s not a gentle cross-stitch message. That’s a mother standing in a teenager’s bedroom doorway, for the third time, and by the third time she isn’t using her church voice anymore.
    Here’s why these passages belong in “Letters to the Sleepy Church.” Paul isn’t writing to pagans. His letter to the Ephesians went to saints.
    Romans went to believers, whose faith was being reported all over the world (Romans 1:8). Apparently it’s possible to be saved, and sound asleep, snoring, in the same pew.
    Ephesians tells us whose voice is at the door and what happens when we get up. Romans tells us what time it is and what to wear.

    A SONG FOR SLEEPERS

    Paul starts by reminding the Ephesians who they are.
    Ephesians 5:8–10 CSB
    8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light—9 for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth—10 testing what is pleasing to the Lord.
    He doesn’t say we were once in the dark. He says we were darkness. And he doesn’t say we’re now in the light. He says we are light in the Lord. The gospel doesn’t just change our surroundings. It changes what we’re made of.
    Ephesians 5:13–14 CSB
    13 Everything exposed by the light is made visible, 14 for what makes everything visible is light. Therefore it is said: Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
    “Therefore it is said.” Paul’s quoting something, but we can’t find this exact sentence anywhere in the Old Testament. Many scholars believe it’s a line from an early Christian hymn, possibly sung at baptisms.
    Which means the first-century church had a wake-up song. We’ve been in this series since April. But the early church beat us to it by two thousand years, and covered it in one verse.
    I’m trying not to take that personally.
    The hymn didn’t come out of thin air. It’s stitched together from Isaiah.
    Isaiah 60:1 CSB
    1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord shines over you.
    Isaiah 26:19 CSB
    19 Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust! For you will be covered with the morning dew, and the earth will bring out the departed spirits.
    The church took Isaiah’s promise, set it to music, and pointed it at Jesus.
    The song puts sleep and death side by side, and from across the room the two look a lot alike.
    If you’ve ever watched a grandpa nap in his recliner after Sunday dinner, you know there’s a moment when the whole family is quietly watching to see if his chest moves.
    That was Sardis: a reputation for being alive, but was dead. And Paul says every one of us started there. In Ephesians 2:1 he says, we were dead in our trespasses and sins.
    Then come the two best words in the letter.
    Ephesians 2:4–5 CSB
    4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, 5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!
    “But God,” the most powerful statement in the NT. How does a dead man obey the command to get up?
    Well, maybe we should ask Lazarus.
    John 11:43–44 CSB
    43 After he said this, he shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out bound hand and foot with linen strips and with his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unwrap him and let him go.”
    Jesus didn’t hold a seminar on the benefits of leaving the tomb. He didn’t wait for Lazarus to feel ready. But God, made us alive with Christ. The voice that gave the command supplied the power to obey it.
    He’d promised as much in John 5:25: the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.
    So when Paul says “get up,” he isn’t asking us to work up the strength. He’s telling us who is standing at the bedroom door, who is providing the power to “get up.”
    And look at the promise: “Christ will shine on you.” Not “get up and generate some light.” Our part is simply to get up. The shining is Christ’s department.
    2 Corinthians 4:6 CSB
    6 For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
    One caution, from verse 13: “light exposes.” Anyone who thought the living room was clean until the afternoon sun came through the window understands that statement. The dust was always there. The light just stopped being polite about it.
    But Christ doesn’t turn on the light to embarrass us. He turns it on because nobody ever cleaned a room in the dark.

    KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS

    Now turn to Romans, where Paul stops singing and looks at his watch.
    Romans 13:11–12 CSB
    11 Besides this, since you know the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up from sleep, because now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over, and the day is near; so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
    We read those verses on April 12, the first Sunday of our annual theme, twenty-five weeks ago. By Paul’s own math, our salvation is twenty-five weeks nearer than it was the morning we started. I can’t say how many of those weeks we slept through, but I have suspicions about a few of mine.
    “You know the time.” The Greek word translated time, isn’t about a clock on the wall. It’s about the season we’re living in. In four weeks we set the clocks back.
    At least one faithful soul, will arrive an hour early, sit alone in the parking lot, and wonder if the rapture happened. But, Paul’s worried about a far bigger confusion than that.
    Because, Scripture honors people who can tell time.
    1 Chronicles 12:32 CSB
    32 From the Issacharites, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do: 200 chiefs with all their relatives under their command.
    They understood the times and knew what to do. We have plenty of people who can tell us what’s wrong with the times. We’re a little thin on the second half.
    “Our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.” Paul means the day Christ returns and finishes what He started, and every sunset puts us one day closer.
    For a true believer that isn’t a threat. It’s the answer to every kid in the back seat: yes, we’re closer than the last time you asked.
    “The night is nearly over, and the day is near.” The world thinks it’s high noon. Paul says it’s the last cold hour before dawn, and John agrees: “the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:8).
    Every hunter knows that hour. It’s the coldest part of the morning and the worst time to doze off, because everything is about to happen.
    I know men who can’t be roused for a Sunday service, but they’ll sit wide awake in the woods, at 5 a.m. in a freezing drizzle. The flesh is surprisingly willing when antlers are involved.
    Malachi tells us what that sunrise will feel like.
    Malachi 4:2 CSB
    2 But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall.
    If you’ve ever watched calves turned out on the first warm morning of spring, you’ve seen the least dignified joy in all of creation. That’s what is waiting on the other side of this night.
    Which is why drifting back to sleep now is so foolish. In August we met the ant in Proverbs 6.
    Here’s the rest of that paragraph.
    Proverbs 6:9–11 CSB
    9 How long will you stay in bed, you slacker? When will you get up from your sleep? 10 A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the arms to rest, 11 and your poverty will come like a robber, your need, like a bandit.
    “A little.” Nobody plans to sleep through their own life. We just want a little more sleep. Spiritual sleep is almost never a decision. It’s a long series of small fleshly permissions.

    DRESS FOR THE DAY

    Waking up is only half of it. Look again at verse 12:
    Romans 13:12 CSB
    12 The night is nearly over, and the day is near; so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
    “discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” That’s wardrobe language. Night clothes off, day clothes on.
    Isaiah heard God say the same thing to Jerusalem.
    Isaiah 52:1 CSB
    1 “Wake up, wake up; put on your strength, Zion! Put on your beautiful garments, Jerusalem, the holy city! For the uncircumcised and the unclean will no longer enter you.
    In the Bible, waking up and getting dressed belong together. Nobody is truly up until he’s dressed, and I say that as a man who has seen what people wear to the grocery store on a Saturday morning. No, pajama pants aren’t the armor of light.
    Notice what Paul does tell us to put on: armor. Not a bathrobe. The day is near, but there’s enough night left to get hurt in. We’ll give that armor its own Sunday in November.
    For today, notice that to Paul, a Christian getting out of bed is a soldier reporting for duty.
    Then he describes the old pajamas.
    Romans 13:13 CSB
    13 Let us walk with decency, as in the daytime: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy.
    Three pairs. Through the first two, we’re all nodding along. Carousing, drunkenness, impurity, promiscuity. Those are other people’s sins. Those are Friday and Saturday night sins.
    Then Paul finishes with quarreling and jealousy, and he’s gone from preaching to meddling, because those are Sunday morning sins.
    Those can sit in a pew while a casserole’s waiting in the car. Paul puts the barroom and the business meeting on the same list.
    The first pair is why this is a call to sobriety. Paul ties sleep and drunkenness together for the Thessalonians.
    1 Thessalonians 5:6–7 CSB
    6 So then, let us not sleep, like the rest, but let us stay awake and be self-controlled. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night.
    Sleep and drunkenness do the same thing: they make us absent from our own lives. And our culture pours plenty that doesn’t come in a bottle: outrage, entertainment, a screen that never runs dry. Anything that numbs us to God will do.
    In August we read Paul’s alternative in Ephesians 5:18, four verses after the wake-up song: don’t get drunk with wine, but be filled by the Spirit. One puts us to sleep. The other wakes us up.

    PUT ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

    Then Paul tells us what the armor actually is.
    Romans 13:14 CSB
    14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
    The armor of light turns out to be a Person. We don’t put on a better attitude or a firmer resolution. We put on Christ.
    Galatians 3:27 CSB
    27 For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.
    We can follow the thread.
    In Zechariah 3, Joshua’s filthy clothes were taken away. In Sardis, a faithful few walked in white. In Laodicea, Jesus told a naked church to buy white clothes from Him. Now Paul names the garment.
    It was Jesus all along.
    By faith we already wear Him. Paul says to dress like it, every morning, on purpose.
    Then the practical half: “make no provision for the flesh.” Provision is a packing word. It’s what gets loaded in the truck before the trip. We rarely fall into sin. We pack for it.
    I know this because I’ve never once planned to eat a half gallon of ice cream. I only plan to buy it, in case company drops by.
    The company has yet to arrive.
    So stop stocking the pantry for the old life. Whatever keeps putting us back to sleep, quit buying it, quit bookmarking it, and quit leaving the back door unlocked for it.
    These verses have awakened harder cases than us. In AD 386, a brilliant, miserable man named Augustine sat weeping in a garden in Milan.
    As a young man he had prayed what may be the most honest prayer on record: “Lord, make me pure, but not yet.” That’s the snooze button, in Latin.
    From over the wall he heard a child’s voice chanting, “Take up and read.”
    He opened Paul’s letters, and his eyes fell on Romans 13:13–14. He later wrote that he had no need to read further. The sleeper got up, and the church has been reading him for sixteen centuries.
    Same verses. Same voice. And it’s still calling this morning.
    CONCLUSION
    So what do we do with this? Sardis told us to check our pulse. Laodicea told us to check our temperature and open the door. Paul’s blunter than either. Get up.
    First, answer the voice. In July a ship’s captain shook Jonah awake: “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up!” (Jonah 1:6).
    A pagan sailor preached Ephesians 5:14 eight centuries early. If something in this series has been shaking our shoulder since April, today is the day to stop rolling over.
    Second, tell time accurately. Moses prayed for exactly that.
    Psalm 90:12 CSB
    12 Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.
    We’re nearer than we were. Let’s live like people who know that dawn is coming.
    Third, get dressed. Tomorrow morning, before the phone and before the coffee, let’s put on Christ on purpose. Then let’s pick one provision for the flesh and cancel the order.
    Then hold on to the promise that carries all three commands: “Christ will shine on you.” We don’t have to manufacture the sunrise. We only have to get out of bed and face east.
    Next week we close this series with “The Watchman’s Calling,” from Ezekiel 33:1–9. God doesn’t wake people up only for their own benefit. The ones who are awake get handed a trumpet, and they answer for everyone still sleeping.
    Until then, let’s get up, get dressed, and step into the light. The night is nearly over, and the Son is already rising.

      • Ephesians 5:8–10ESV

      • Ephesians 5:13–14ESV

      • Isaiah 60:1ESV

      • Isaiah 26:19ESV

      • Ephesians 2:4–5ESV

      • John 11:43–44ESV

      • 2 Corinthians 4:6ESV

      • Romans 13:11–12ESV

      • 1 Chronicles 12:32ESV

      • Malachi 4:2ESV

      • Proverbs 6:9–11ESV

      • Romans 13:12ESV

      • Isaiah 52:1ESV

      • Romans 13:13ESV

      • 1 Thessalonians 5:6–7ESV

      • Romans 13:14ESV

      • Galatians 3:27ESV

      • Psalm 90:12ESV

Grantsdale Community Church
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https://grantsdaleccmt.org/
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