SPIRITUAL SLEEP
‘Simon, sleepest thou?’
There is a strange pathos in these words. They were spoken by a Friend to His friend; by a Friend in trouble such as man never knew, to a friend for whom (amongst others) that trouble was being endured. The sleep described was bodily sleep. But it is no fancy which sees in that slumber a type as well as a fact. The Word of God has consecrated the figures of sleep and waking to certain opposite states of the soul and spirit. Sleep and waking, in the things of the soul; we have all known one of those—God grant that we may all have experience also of the other!
I. What is sleep, when transferred from a bodily sense to a spiritual?
(a) Sleep is inactivity. The soul’s activity is intercourse with its God: a soul that cannot speak to God, and commune with God, and rest upon God, and ask blessings and receive answers from God, and do work for God—work of which the part that is seen is the least part—such a soul is inactive, such a soul is sleeping. So judged, what soul is awake?
(b) Sleep is unconsciousness. But that which is a blessing in regard to things of this life is an evil as concerns the soul. If the soul sleeps the sleep of unconsciousness, it sleeps the sleep not of soothing, but of death.
II. ‘Simon, sleepest thou?’—The words are words of remonstrance. Canst thou be sleeping? Thou sleeping? There are three things in the question.
(a) Thou, so favoured?
(b) Thou, in the very sight of a Saviour suffering?
(c) Thou, in the very crisis of temptation.
III. Learn three lessons.
(a) Some are asleep and know it not. How shall we know it? By this sign. What is God to us? Do we love to have Him with us?
(b) Jesus Christ cares whether we sleep or wake. We are not left unnoticed, we are not overlooked, not put aside, in this great world of busy, bustling, suffering men!
(c) The punishment of sleeping is sleeping on. Simon, sleepest thou? and again the second time, Simon, sleepest thou? and yet again the third time, Simon, sleepest thou? Then sleep on now, and take thy rest. The opportunity of watching is gone: ‘Lo, he is at hand that doth betray Me!’
—Dean Vaughan.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
SLEEPEST THOU!
I. A well-merited rebuke.—Take this sleeping in connection with the manifold previous warnings and teachings, and is it not well merited? ‘Simon sleepest thou?’ Let us beware of over-confidence in ourselves.
II. A timely warning.—‘Watch ye and pray.’ How timely let the speedy result show. But warnings are unheeded.
III. A merciful limitation.—‘The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ He who made this limitation (a) ‘knoweth our frame’; (b) will hereafter be our just but merciful Judge.
Illustrations
‘The night is dark—behold, the shade was deeper
In the still garden of Gethsemane,
When that calm Voice awoke the weary sleeper,
“Couldst not thou watch one hour alone with Me?” ’