Topic: Perpetual Sleep
Text: Jeremiah 51:5-57

Sleep is a phenomenon that has not been understood by people. Regardless of the ever-increasing body of knowledge on human psychology, learned people do not fully understand the mystery of sleep. Today, let us examine what I call perpetual sleep. God uses sleep as a weapon of dealing with the rebellious. What is perpetual sleep? It is spiritual sleep, God’s anaesthesia for dealing with those who shun the call to spiritual aliveness. Whenever God sends this kind of sleep to anybody, it means that the person is already destroyed. Another name for perpetual sleep is the sleep of death. On the day of the rapture, two people will be sleeping on the same bed, the trumpet shall sound and one will go while the other will not. One will hear the sound because he or she is sleeping physically. But awake spiritually. The other will be sleeping both physically and spiritually and, thus, will not hear the trumpet sound. Such a fellow will remain here.

In Psalm 13:3 is a prayer I utter fervently every night: “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.” Make this your nightly prayer so that you will not sleep the kind of sleep that will not let you hear the sound of the trumpet. Several things can lead you to the sleep of death: too much comfort can sentence you to perpetual sleep. When you keep on sinning and you are not punished in time, it can send you to the sleep of death. When you constantly disobey God you may be leading yourself to the sleep of death. If God has been telling you to give your life to Jesus Christ and you refuse, you can sleep of death.
If you are a backslider and God has been calling you to return and you have been refusing, you can sleep the sleep of death. Spiritual slumber is dangerous. The Bible says, “As new-born babies, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 2:2-5). The Lord is coming. Awake, O sleeper!

Memory Verse: Psalms 13:3 - “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.”