Deep Sleep

We lack discernment partly because we are asleep. Jesus prophesied that in the last generation the church would be asleep (Matt.25:5). As you know, three things characterize sleep: (1) we don’t know we were asleep until we wake up; (2) we do things in our dreams we would not do when awake; (3) we hate the sound of an alarm.

Jesus also forecast a midnight cry (Matt.25:6) meaning ‘middle of the night’, which is: (1) the darkest time; (2) when we are the deepest in sleep; and (3) when we are least expectant. Could not this wake-up call come in stages, 9/11 being the first stage? Yes. If the recent economic melt-down is not a further wake-up call I don’t know what is. But the ultimate and final wake-up call will categorically cause the church to discern their true condition, except that for some it will be too late (Matt.25:8-13).

We are in the middle of the night. Right now. It is dark. The church is in a deep, deep sleep. We do things we would not do when awake. Lord, grant us discernment before it is too late!

R.T. Kendall

Lama Sabachthani

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"— Mat 27:46

Our Lord was then in the darkest part of his way. He had trodden the winepress now for hours, and the work was almost finished. He had reached the culminating point of his anguish. This is his dolorous lament from the lowest pit of misery—"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I do not think that the records of time or even of eternity, contain a sentence more full of anguish. Here the wormwood and the gall, and all the other bitternesses, are outdone. Here you may look as into a vast abyss; and though you strain your eyes, and gaze till sight fails you, yet you perceive no bottom; it is measureless, unfathomable, inconceivable. This anguish of the Saviour on your behalf and mine is no more to be measured and weighed than the sin which needed it, or the love which endured it. We will adore where we cannot comprehend.

Our Lord's heart, and all his nature were, morally and spiritually, so delicately formed, so sensitive, so tender, that to be without God, was to him a grief which could not be weighed. I see him in the text bearing desertion, and yet I perceive that he cannot bear it. I know not how to express my meaning except by such a paradox. He cannot endure to be without God. He had surrendered himself to be left of God, as the representative of sinners must be, but his pure and holy nature, after three hours of silence, finds the position unendurable to love and purity; and breaking forth from it, now that the hour was over, he exclaims, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" He quarrels not with the suffering, but he cannot abide in the position which caused it. He seems as if he must end the ordeal, not because of the pain, but because of the moral shock. We have here the repetition after his passion of that loathing which he felt before it, when he cried, "If it be possible let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is the holiness of Christ amazed at the position of substitute for guilty men.

C. H. SPURGEON
March 2nd, 1890