Sermon Series – “Our Summer in Rome”
Romans 13:8-14
“Wake-Up Sleeper”
Someone has said, “You know it’s going to be a bad day when your horoscope starts with…’Are you sitting down?’”
You know it’s going to be a bad day when you turn on the news, and they are displaying emergency routes out of the city. You know it’s going to be a bad day when you wake up in a hospital in traction and your insurance agent tells you that your accident policy covers falling off the roof but not hitting the ground. And we might add one more: You know it’s going to be a bad day when your Pastor says, “Wake up! Wake up!” and you’ve barely gotten settled comfortably in your pew. [It’s hard to sleep in an unfamiliar pew]
But that’s what our travel agent Paul is saying to us in our lesson this morning. He writes, “The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.”
So, no slumbering this morning. It’s time for us to wake up! Our salvation is at hand.
As Paul turns toward the final stretch of Romans, he fires warning shots at the fledging church in Rome. Today’s text is a cannonball shot over the bow. Of course, this is beautifully reminiscent of another of Paul’s favorite statements made to one of his other churches and you’ve heard me say before: “Wake up, sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” [Ephesians 5:14].
You see, Paul’s audience isn’t the unbelieving world. He’s writing to the followers of Jesus. He’s talking to awakened believers who have drifted into the nether land between sleep and wakefulness.
Rome in Paul’s time wasn’t much different than America in our time. People are people. Unless someone is sounding the alarm from time to time, society has a tendency to deteriorate to be pulled down by those forces within our nature; those weaknesses of the flesh with which all of us are familiar. Paul was warning the church at Rome not to hit the snooze button when it came to the pull of destructive pleasures. Isn’t that what we do sometimes? Even with our good intentions, we aren’t quite ready to face the morning with all its demands, and so we hit snooze. As my mentor said this week, “None of us are too good or none of us are too bad for Jesus.” Amen!
According to one source I found, more than a third of American adults hit the snooze button in the morning an average of three times a week. The snooziest group? Fifty seven percent come from the 25 to 34-year-olds. The peppiest risers? It’s the seniors. Only 10 percent of Americans over 65 regularly use their snooze button. Maybe that’s because seniors have finally come to the realization of how precious time is, or maybe they just don’t have anything pressing to get up for. Certainly, it is time for us to wake up and to ask ourselves what can be done to make our society a healthier and more wholesome society. A society where families are healthy and strong. A world where the love of Christ dwells in every heart.
Paul goes on to write, “So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Putting on isn’t necessarily a good thing. We all know people who are never straight with us. They don’t know who they really are. They are constantly “putting us on” trying to be something or someone they’re not. Sometimes it’s seen as “putting on airs.” Sometimes it’s seen as “putting on an act.” Whatever we call it, we usually recognize it right away.
So, what are we to out on? We are to put on Jesus! Paul writes that we must clothe ourselves in Christ. We have to get dressed in Jesus [behold & become]. There’s an old story about a little girl who listened intently to the preacher’s sermon about letting Jesus live in our hearts. After worship she asked him, “Preacher, I’m such a little girl and Jesus is so big, if Jesus lived in my heart, wouldn’t He be sticking out some place?”
That’s the whole point. Some of us actually put on Christ, others simply “put us on” about having put on Christ. They only wear the outer garb. Putting on Christ means dressing from then inside out. We not only have to let Jesus live in our hearts, we have to wrap our hearts in His love and presence. Then Christ will stick out in everything we do.
Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine, was a Christian theologian, philosopher, and the Bishop of Hippo whose writings shaped Western medieval and modern thought. He is recognized as one of the most important Latin fathers of the Church. Formally honored by Roman Catholicism for his vast literary output; he is honored as the patron saint of theologians, printers, and brewers.
He was born in 354 in the Roman province of Numidia, modern day Algeria. His mother was a devout Christian; his father was a pagan who converted to Christianity on his deathbed.
In late August of 386, at the age of 31, Augustine converted to Christianity. As he later told it, his conversion was prompted by hearing a child’s voice say, “take up and read.” He opened the Bible to the Book of Romans and read these verses from our lesson this morning: “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.”
He later wrote an account of his conversion in his Confessions, which has since become a classic of Christian theology and a key text in the history of autobiography.
In conclusion, a mother with two young children put them to bed and went to prepare herself for bed. She put on some old clothes and went to the bathroom. She washed her hair and wrapped a towel around her head to dry her hair. She applied cold cream on her face to remove her makeup. Just as she was about to wipe off the cream, she heard the noise of her children playing in their room. She stormed into the room, hollered and told her two small children to get back into bed, reminded them that it was time to sleep, turned out the light and slammed the door. As she left the room, one of the children, with a trembling voice, asked the other, “Who was that?”
We don’t want others asking, “Who was that5?” when they look at our lives. We want others to know whom it is who lives in our lives. We want Jesus ticking out all over the place.
Eastman First Methodist Church 