NATURAL sleep is one of the most essential, wonderful and beneficial blessings provided for in the constitution of man by the Creator for sustaining a balanced health and vigour of mind and body; and is welcomed as vital and sweet at the end of each day in man’s normal experience. As the preacher observes in Ecclesiastes, “The sleep of a labouring man is sweet” (chap v, verse 12). But there is another sleep, other than this, to which the Scriptures refer repeatedly, and that is, the falling asleep of believers in Jesus, even the closing of their eyes at death in the faith of their Redeemer, at the end of their day in the world. Jesus dealt with this blessed matter in connection with the death of Lazarus when He intimated to the disciples, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” But the disciples, not comprehending the meaning of the Master’s words, “Then Jesus said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead,” (John xi, 11-14). And Paul, preaching at Antioch, while handling the glorious truth of the resurrection of Jesus, includes in his argument a reference to David, that “. . . after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers and saw corruption” (Acts xiii, 36). And there the Apostle describes godly David in his death, as one who “fell on sleep,” after a life of service to God’s honour. Then later, Paul, in writing to the Thessalonian Church, employs his pen, as an inspired writer, to comfort the brethren, “. . . concerning them which are asleep.” They were not to sorrow, as others, which had no hope. And why? “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” (I Thess. iv, 13-14). And so the saint’s death is a sleeping in Jesus, inasmuch as the sting of death which is sin, has been extracted from dying and death by the redeeming death and resurrection of our Lord, for them.
Now, such as sleep in Jesus, were in Him vitally and savingly before this most precious and solemn experience. God in His eternal and sovereign grace quickened them to a sense of their transgressions and sins, brought them to recognise that all their righteousnesses were as filthy rags, revealed to them the sufficiency and glory of the righteousness and blood of His Son Jesus Christ, and did beget in their hearts a living faith to believe in the alone Redeemer of the lost—and all this through His Word of truth and by the exceeding greatness of the power of the Holy Ghost. By this faith they entered into a state of salvation from sin and condemnation in Jesus, and were also bound by this faith in a vital and eternal union to Him, as the ever-living and exalted Head of His body the Church, and they as members in that body. This being in Jesus, defies and survives death, which cannot disannul the union between Jesus and believers. Thus where there is no union to Jesus, there can be no sleep in Jesus, irrespective of all the false teaching widespread to-day.
God gives this sleep in Jesus to His people after the toils and trials of their day in the world. They all have their trials in providence, more or less, in the experience of personal afflictions, losses, sorrows and disappointments, and so on. And the unfriendliness, enmity and evils of a carnal and godless world, hurt and vex them, as they did Lot, who was vexed in his righteous soul from day to day by what he saw and heard in the cities of the plain. And for a longer or shorter period, as the case may be, they are burdened and wearied with the pollutions and activities of an evil heart, although by the help of divine grace they are enabled to war against the flesh unto the end. Some of them had and have, more than ordinary, the concerns and cares of the cause of Christ allotted to them by the Lord, in their willing devotion to His Kingdom and service; and as one has said, “They may be weary in His service, but not of it.” But when their allotted time in the world, according to the purpose of God, draws to its close, they enter the valley of the shadow of death and fall asleep in Jesus, and leave behind for ever, in this blessed sleep, all sin, sorrow, suffering, burdens and cares. And we may well accommodate to this part of our subject, the words of the Psalmist, “For so he giveth his beloved sleep” (Ps. cxxvii, 2).
And when they fall asleep in Jesus, they thereupon enter into the rest that remaineth to the people of God (Heb. iv, 9). What a rest this is! They enter into an eternal Sabbath-keeping, as to the soul, in heaven, in the Father’s house of many mansions and in being with Christ which is far better; “Their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection” (Shorter Catechism, Q. 37). They find rest in the full enjoyment of God, in beholding, as He is, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, in singing the praises of the Triune God, the God of their salvation, and in all heavenly and indescribable comforts in the company of the hosts of heaven.
They will be ultimately awakened out of sleep, as far as their bodies are concerned; as we read in Daniel, “and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (chap. xii, verse 2). Those who sleep in Jesus shall awake to everlasting life; and this is the resurrection of the bodies of believers. The Lord Jesus Christ will personally awaken His people when He shall come in His majesty and might at the last day to judge the world in righteousness, and on the morning of the resurrection the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first, soul and body being united together in the perfect likeness of their Saviour, Lord and Judge, to immediately stand on His right hand with a view to being publicly, fully and finally acquitted before the great white throne and invited to inherit the Kingdom prepared for them. As Jesus said regarding Lazarus, “I go, that I may awake him out of sleep,” thus referring to His intention to raise him from the dead. So the Lord will come to awake His people out of sleep, and as we heard one quote an observation by the late Rev. D. Macfarlane, Dingwall, on the resurrection of God’s people, as follows, “Christ will come in the morning of the resurrection and say, ‘Children, it is time to get up.'” And finally the Scriptures declare: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (I Cor. xv, 52).