What Do You Mean, O Sleeper?

Spurgeon uses Jonah's deep sleep in the storm-tossed ship as a portrait of the spiritual numbness that sin, worldliness, and the flesh produce in both believers and unbelievers alike — noting grimly that the very person who most needed to be awake (the only man aboard who worshipped the true God) was the one who slept most soundly — and then adopts the shipmaster's role himself, walking the aisles of his congregation to rouse two kinds of sleepers: professing Christians who are idly watching while souls perish, enjoying the ship's benefits without doing any of the rowing, and whose sluggishness dishonors God before a watching world far more than open persecution ever could. His sharpest words go to the sleeping sinner, whom he charges with a guilt that has no rational defense — you are mortal and can point to no guarantee of another day; you are immortal and will therefore face an eternity in either Heaven or Hell; you know in your conscience that these things are real even if your lips deny it; and you have no honest reason for the confidence of a man asleep on the edge of a cliff — and he traces the sinner's probable end with aching grief: unreached, unconvicted, buried without a sign of grace, having heard every warning and slept through them all. He closes with an urgent commission to every truly awakened Christian: do not be deterred by politeness or the fear of seeming impertinent, but take every occasion — in season and out — to thrust your sleeping neighbors awake, since it is better to wound feelings now than to stand over a lost soul in eternity having been too delicate to sound the alarm.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on September 14, 1862.