God's Alarm Clock — Bill McLeod

We've already had a great message tonight, both in word and song, and it's just a blessing to my heart. You know, up in Canada, I don't know how it is here, too, as well as it is in Canada, but a lot of the churches, you know, they're singing new songs, and I'm not totally opposed to all new songs, but, you know, in Spurgeon they apparently had this problem, too, and he said, a lot of these new songs are something like Jonah's gore that came up in the night and perished in the night.

And he called some of it what he, he called it mermaid poetry. He said, fair enough where it breaks the surface, but totally fishy in the lower parts. And he also, he also had another way of describing it as being wax nose hymnology made to fit the face of any creed, you know, like Beautiful Isle of Somewhere.

The Limits of Unbelief and the Call to Serve God

Anyway, it's so good to hear the old songs, it's really blessed me greatly tonight. In Judges 5, there's a verse, that's not my text tonight, I won't even be speaking on it, I'm just going to mention it relative to something else, but there's a verse there that says that there's a curse pronounced upon those people who do not come up to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

Does God need any help? Looks like he does. I mean, how is he going to get the job done unless we do it? He's got to work through us. And many times God could do much more than he is, but he doesn't because of our wicked unbelief.

Psalm 78, remember that verse? They turned back and tempted God and limited the Holy One of Israel. They limited what God could do. Then the same thing in the New Testament at Nazareth, he could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief.

So God is crippled and hampered by our unbelief and our failure to come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty. I mention that because I want to ask some prayer. I've just finished a book, it's called A Baker's Dozen.

A Baker's Dozen is 13, and it's 13 lies on which the homosexual movement is based. It was hard to find a printer that would print it, but I found a Christian printer in Ontario. They're glad to do it, and so it'll be out probably in a month or a month and a half.

And I'll probably get a lot of flack over this, and at my age it doesn't really matter. They can even shoot me. It's a little late, you know. In any case, I would appreciate prayer relative to that particular matter, because there are certain people who won't be very happy.

Awakening to Salvation Through the Word of God

Okay. Ephesians chapter 5, if you want to look up the word of God there, Ephesians 5, beginning verse 14, wherefore he said, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be you not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is, and be not drunk with wine in his excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Tonight I want to talk about God's alarm clock.

You know, in the Old Testament there are, I think in the Psalms, five references to men calling on God to wake up. Now, we know God doesn't sleep, but it appears sometimes if God was asleep, and so people address God in this way, Awake, why sleepest thou, arise, cast us not off forever.

Well, God isn't sleeping, but it appears sometimes as if he was. In the New Testament we have numbers of texts where God is calling on us to wake up. There are no texts in the New Testament that call on God to wake up, so he's calling on us to wake up, first of all, to salvation.

In 2 Timothy chapter 2 it says, The servant of the Lord must not strive. Don't get involved in foolish arguments, don't go around looking for trouble. The servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men.

In meekness, it says, instructing and showing them the right way. So you must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach patience, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God perhaps will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and that they may recover.

The Greek word there means awake, that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. The man that wanders out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.

There is such a thing as a dead congregation. I was talking with a preacher one time, and he told me he became pastor of this church, he had 900 members, and not one of them was born again, not even one.

He began preaching the gospel and he lost about 300 people right away, but finally when we were talking together, he told me he had 60 couples that had found Christ as their personal Savior. There is such a thing as a dead congregation.

I was raised in one as a kid, never ever heard the gospel, we heard a lot of things and some things we heard that were good, but we never heard a thing about salvation. We had a Sunday school superintendent who was born again, and he was trying to get this through, and finally they fired him and got somebody who didn't have these stupid notions and gospel songs and so on, and so he was out of it.

I would never have found Christ in that particular church, and certainly never did. But here, sometimes people are in living churches, but they're dead, dead in sin, and they don't know that. My father was a very good living man, I mean, he depounded the life out of the kind of stealing or lying or doing bad things.

His dad was a born again believer, my dad wasn't. And so my dad and mother didn't get along and they split, and then mother got saved through a car accident, a wheel came off a car which wasn't too infrequent in those days, and she got saved as a result.

One day dad said, your mother's coming back, you don't have to listen to her religious talk. We didn't know what that meant, but mother became a Christian and eventually all of us got saved, my dad when he was 74.

You know, these statistics say that if you're not saved by the time you're 19, your chance of being saved are very small. Well, I guess my mother never read the book, you know, because none of us were saved in our teenage years.

And my youngest brother, Keith, when he got married, he was so opposed to the gospel, when he and his wife were alone, they shook hands and promised each other they would never ever become Christians.

So how did he wind up? He wound up as an evangelist. I mean, God knows what he's about, it doesn't matter how old they are, they can be saved, you know, at any age. We have to believe God for his working in the hearts of the people of the land.

It's an awful situation as we've heard already tonight. All right, so people need to wake up. You know, my dad, the one night, he had a dream, he told us about it, and we knew exactly because we were Christians then what this dream was all about.

He was standing on a highway at night with no light or anything, waiting for a bus. And finally he saw the lights of a bus coming, and this bus came, but it was very strange because there was no sound of the motor, no sound of the tires on the road, no sound of the brakes when the bus came to a stop, it just glided in like a shadow, not a sound, and the door opened without a sound, and he climbed in and got up and began looking up and down the aisle, and there was only one seat left, an aisle seat, and he sat in the seat, and he thought, it's funny, nobody's moving, nobody's talking, so he went to talk to the guy next to him and saw the guy was asleep, but then he looked more closely and saw the guy was dead.

He shook him, and the guy was stiff, and he was dead, so he got up out of his seat and went up and down the aisle, shaking other people, all of them were stiff and dead, so he ran up to tell the driver, and he was dead, and then the dream ended, and of course the message was quite clear, Bob, that's my dad's name, Bob, you're riding with a busload of dead people, you'd better get off, man, and my dad got saved.

So just in case there should be in this crowd tonight somebody that's not born again, you're not positive about it, you'd like to be, take this verse, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Right where you sit, you can be saved. Look unto him. You know how Spurgeon got saved? He was walking to church one morning, and the snowstorm was on in London, he didn't get to the church, he dropped into a primitive Methodist Wesleyan chapel.

The preacher didn't show up, so one of the elders took over, and he preached. He didn't know how to preach, but he did his best, and he got on that text, look unto me and thee who saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there's none else, and he saw this stranger sitting there, Spurgeon, this young man, 15 years of age, and he looked at him and said, young man, you look miserable, look to Christ and be saved, and Spurgeon said, I looked, and I was saved.

He said, I could have looked my eyes away, and that was the favorite text of them until he died. Look unto me, that they may recover themselves awake out of the snare of the devil, for we're taken captive by him and his will.

In 1932, there was a great revival in China, and it spread all over the country, and thousands were saved, and one of the remarkable features of that revival was this, that there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of professing Christians, of Christian workers of every shape and kind, that got saved, who had never been saved, who knew the evangelical language, but didn't know the Lord, and that happened in the Canadian revival.

A professor from a Bible college came to me one night and he said, Bill, do you mind being late on the platform? I said, no, what's on your mind? He said, I'd like to get saved. I said, what? He said, I'd like to get saved.

I said, you're not saved? No, he said, I've known the language, I got it from my mom and dad, but I've never known the Lord. And he knelt, and he called on God with such intensity, and he got saved. He was so happy afterwards, and we had people in my church who got saved who were baptized members of the church, and some of them, I thought, were really good Christians, you know.

Awakening to Righteousness and Holiness

Anyway, that's the first thought. In 1 Corinthians 15, there's a text that says, Awake to righteousness, and sin not, for some do not have the knowledge of God, I speak this to your shame. So the second thought is this.

If I've awakened to the call of the gospel and I've been saved, now the next step is to awake to righteousness. It's written of Jesus Christ that he loved righteousness and he hated iniquity, therefore God anointed him with the oil of gladness above his salutes.

And if you love righteousness and hate iniquity, you'll be anointed with joy too. It can't be otherwise. The Bible says righteousness and peace have kissed each other. It's poetic language, but it's a tremendous truth.

You don't have peace until you're right. If you're wrong with somebody, wrong with some people, wrong with God, you won't have any peace. The work of righteousness is peace, it says in Isaiah. And the effect of righteousness is quietness and assurance forever.

What joy comes when you're right with God? What joy comes when you're right with men? I know what that's like because even as a Christian worker, there was a time when I was not right with certain people, and I had to make it right.

And it's humbling to do that. But I say again, the work of righteousness is peace. And often in the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament alike, righteousness and peace are joined together. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.

I mean mountains and hills don't bring peace to anybody. It's again a kind of poetic phrase there. But it's by righteousness that peace comes, is what that text is saying. So God is saying to us as Christian believers, awake to righteousness and don't sin.

I just heard the other day of a certain Christian, I happen to know him well, and it was a Christian, a lawyer, who told me this. He said, you know what he did one time? He borrowed a machine from a neighbor, and he used it, he had it a long while, he didn't bring it back for six months or more, and during that period of time, he rented it out to other people, and made money on it, and kept the money himself.

Does that sound right to you? Nobody's saying anything. You see, a lot of Christians say, well, he's a sharp guy, you know, he didn't get caught. Yeah, sharp is right. You wind up among the thorns, too, you know, you're a little sharper.

You have to be right. You've got to be honest. I know some friends of mine, they had a car, and they made a deal for another car, and they had a certain garage selling cars, and the day before they brought the car in, the reverse gear went on them.

So they didn't know how to handle this. They had to outfox this guy at the garage now, you see, so they figured out what to do, you know, how to do this. Now, they were Christians, you see. So they had the one guy walk to the garage ahead, and he talked to the garage guy, and he said, my brother's bringing the car down, and he said, which stall?

Well, this one right here, the guy said. Fine. So his brother came, and he motioned, so he ran into the stall, and he got out of the car, and just then, the garage guy said, would you mind just backing up and running into this stall?

And, of course, then they had to tell the truth, you know. But isn't it crazy that, as Christians, we do things like that, and it's not right. And it grieves God, and our peace goes, and our power goes.

It might seem like a little thing, you know. I know another Christian, and he was a great witness for God, but he had a caterpillar tractor, and the thing, the whole thing went to pieces right after the warranty time was over.

So he was a pretty good mechanic, so he got into the thing and turned the warranty back, and he got away with it. And it bothered him for years, you know. And finally went back to the guy that he bought the thing from, told him what had happened.

He said, the guy stood there, and he cursed me for about five minutes. He said, I felt terrible, but why did I do that? And he was asking the question, why did I go and do that? But like I say, you know, today, you know what the Bible says?

You're not even supposed to fellowship with a fornicator, or a drunkard, or a railer, or a covetous person. Did you know that? A covetous person is put in the same category as a drunkard, or a violent extortioner.

I mean, that's how it is. And so we Christians, we can't be too honest. We just have to be honest, that's all. Awake to righteousness, which means that God sees that many Christians are not awake to righteousness.

They're doing things they shouldn't be doing. I remember the Alliance pastor in Saskatoon, he had the largest evangelical work in the city at the time of the revival. We were good friends. And he said, you know, Bill, if God should take the lid off your church or mine some Sunday morning, I think we might find ourselves looking into hell.

Well, God took the lid off. It wasn't on a Sunday morning, but he took the lid off, beginning on a Wednesday night, actually. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. There was a guy in my church, if you had asked me to point out a patriarch, I'd have pointed him out.

About 65 years of age, snowy white hair, gentle, kind disposition, just a lovely Christian guy. And during the revival, he came to me, he was shaking from head to foot. He said, pastor, I'm an adulterer, I'm an adulterer.

Can I be forgiven? I just about dropped over dead. This man is an adulterer? I had a fellow in my church, he would come to me with a list of blocks, maybe 20 blocks, where he'd visit every home in these blocks, and he'd show me the area he'd visited.

And then he'd say, now I had 35 invitations to come back for a second call, and I led four people to Christ. Wonderful. He was the only guy in the church I had who was doing anything for God. You know what happened during the revival?

A gal came forward, a married woman, and got her life straightened out, and it turned out that this guy was sleeping with her on a regular basis. I couldn't believe it. I called him in, I said, Eddie, the word around the circle is that you're an adulterer, is this true?

He looked at me and he fell on his knees, he put his head on my desk and he started to bawl, and he said, I don't want God to put me on the ash heap. I said, if you'll repent, God won't put you on the ash heap.

But I couldn't believe it. This was the best guy I had. Hadn't I preached? Yes, I preached lots of the Bible. I preach as much Bible as I do now. You never know what's going on, you know, under the surface.

It's not that we should be suspicious of our congregations. But, dear people, we need revival, because in a time of revival, all of this, almost all of it comes to the surface, and it gets swept away in the power of God.

And people who may be living morally, but are doing nothing for God, they come alive and begin to witness and soul win. I know of people who have never even tried, in all the years they were Christians, to win a soul to Christ.

And God touched them in the revival, and they began soul winning. Remember one couple? They led 30 people to Christ in about nine months. They went on to an Indian reserve and won 35 Indians to Christ.

So we need revival. We'll get to that in a moment. But awake to righteousness. Remember we talked this morning about adorning the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. Make it look good by living a godly life.

I remember one time I was to preach just a Sunday morning in a church in Ontario. They'd had a real revival there about a year before. And about a thousand people, they told me, Bill, you're going to be lifted right up off your feet in that church.

And I was. It was just like everybody was saying, sicken preacher. Everybody was just with me a thousand percent. It was a wonderful experience. They were walking with God. The sins were gone. It's not that the church was perfect.

I don't suppose there ever is this side of heaven such a thing as a perfect church. But a church that was renewed by the power of God. And people who were dishonest became honest. And people who had a hard heart became soft hearted.

I remember one time a pastor in the crusade I had in York and Saskatchewan. And he came to a pulpit in one of the meetings before I spoke one night. And he said, you know, many of you people have come to me.

And you've been asking my forgiveness because you have bad feelings against me. He said, I appreciate that. He said, but you know, so many of you have come. It's finally dawned on me that there's got to be something wrong with me.

That you have all these bad feelings. So he said, a couple of days ago, I began asking God to show me what the problems are in my life. And he said, and then he started to weaken people. He wept for ten minutes.

He got a few words out in the meantime. But he said, you know, God, I'm filled, absolutely filled, overflowing with wicked, rotten pride. He said, I've never seen this before. Why didn't somebody tell me?

He wept and wept and begged for forgiveness. And I'll tell you that a real move of God in the church after this happened. So whatever it is, whether it's lust or pride or whatever. Awake to righteousness.

And sin not. My little children, John wrote, God wrote to John. My little children, these things I write unto you that you sin not. And then Peter told us to follow his steps who did no sin. There's a prayer, you know, in Psalm 119.

How does it go? Let not any iniquity have dominion over me. You ever pray that prayer? You know, I try and pray it every day. Lord, don't let any iniquity have dominion over me today. In thought, in word, in deed, or in attitude.

I always add those words. In thought, in deed, in word, or in attitude. Sometimes our attitude is wrong. Let not any iniquity have dominion over me. I'm a child of God. You know, I'm looking forward to being in the kingdom of God where there will be no sin ever.

Ever, ever. So why not get started now? You know, love is the language of heaven. You better learn how to talk it now. Or you're not going to feel at home in heaven. Anyway, awake to righteousness. And sin not.

And he adds this thought. For some have not the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame. And then the next thought would be this. Awake. I may be living a righteous life. But I may not be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Walking Carefully and Being Filled With the Spirit

And the next thought would be this. Awake to the possibility of a spirit-filled life. And that's what we read in Ephesians chapter 5. Awake thou that sleepest not, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

See then, that you walk circumspectly. Circumspectly means carefully or exactly. I join that with a verse in Hebrews chapter 12. It says, make straight paths for your feet. Lest thou which is lame be turned out of the way.

The lame, that's the sinner. But I'd rather be healed. You see, if you're a professing Christian, there's likely some sinners that are following you. They're watching you. They're following you as an example.

And so, it's extremely important that we walk circumspectly. I say, carefully, exactly. Make straight paths for your feet. In Isaiah, there's a verse that says, they've made them crooked paths. Whosoever goes therein shall not know peace.

And you may, sometimes as Christians, we're walking in crooked paths. And sinners give up on us. They see this guy's no different than I am. And where we could be a blessing, we're really a curse. Not a blessing at all.

I had a deacon in one of my churches many years ago. He was 85 years of age when I became pastor of the church. And he was still doing great as a deacon. Some don't deacon well at 25. He was doing great at 85.

And we were talking one day and he said, you know, the greatest thing that ever happened to me happened some years ago. He said, the chief on the local Indian reserve came to see me. And here's what he said, basically.

Mr. McBain, I know that you're a Christian. I've been watching you for 25 years. And I believe you're a real Christian, according to the Bible. I want you to show me how to be a Christian too. And he said, oh, Pastor McCloud, what if?

What if I had failed him? And he'd seen me do something or heard me say something that wasn't right. Make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed.

So it matters a great deal how you live. For the glory of God, for the good of men. You remember Paul said, we are made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. The Greek word spectacle is theatron, from which we get the English word theater.

So whether we like it or not, we're made a theater to the world, to angels and to men. Demons are watching. Angels are watching. God is watching. People are watching. It matters a great deal how you live.

You may not like that. You may not want that. You may reject that, but it's in the Bible. We are a theater to the world, to angels and to men. And it matters a great deal, I say, how we live, what we say, how we react to circumstances and how we conduct business deals and so on.

It's very important that we be right. And you know, the Lord will let you be tried time and time again. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. We must through much tribulation inherit the kingdom of God.

We're told that, so expect it. If you be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are you bastards, you're not sons, you're illegitimate children. You're not a child of God's at all. If you can sin and get away with it, there's no way you can, if you're a born again believer.

God loves you too much. Whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. Every son whom he receives. Thank God for his faithfulness in spanking you. See them if you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time.

The most important commodity you have is time. Use it well. Life goes so quickly by. And I say that as a person who is, you know, heading for his 81st birthday. When I look back, where have the years gone?

I don't know. I see now how precious time is and was. And I can think of times when I wasted time, that is making the most of every opportunity you have to live for God, to serve God, to help somebody else.

By love, serve one another. Look not every man in his own things, but every man also in the things of others. This is what the Bible says. Let each receive mother better than themselves. And people say, how in the world can I do that when I know he isn't better than me?

Oh, wait a minute. That's how you feel. You know what the problem is? You've never seen yourself. You know, Job, Job was really a proud person and he had eye trouble. You know, in chapters 29 to 31, I think there's something like, now don't quote me on this, I think it's something like 95 verses, but there are about 185 references in those three chapters to I, me, mine, mine.

I was eyes to the blind. I was see to the lame. I was see to the poor. I broke the jaws of the wicked and plucked the spoil out of their teeth. My righteousness, I hold it fast. I will not let it go. And on and on it goes.

When God was through with him, the same man who said, my righteousness, I hold it fast. I will not let it go. The same man said, behold, I am vile. I abhor myself and repent in dastardness. He wasn't repenting for sin, dear people.

He was repenting for himself. How wicked he'd been, how self-centered, how proud he had been. I mean, God really did a work in his life that we call a revival. God spoke to him out of the whirlwind. The Lord has his way in the whirlwind, the Bible says, and I think it's in the book of Nahum and in a storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

What a God we serve. Wherefore, be you not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is Acts 13, 52 says, and the disciples, not the 12, but just the disciples, just the Christians in the churches and the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost.

In Romans 14, it says the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace, there it is again, and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things is filled with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.

That's New Testament Christianity, dear people. What we have in North America is a North American brand of Christianity. It's not the real thing. Just because some people have overemphasized the Holy Spirit is no reason why we should just kind of clip it out of the Bible entirely.

So be filled. It's not an option, but I'm going to tell you that in the last few years I have to be emptied of self. That's where it starts. That's the hard part. I remember once after revival, and the Lord, I didn't hear a voice.

You know how you communicate with the Lord and you understand what he's saying, he understands what you're saying, and it went like this. He was saying, would you mind if somebody else in the family that I led to the Lord and somebody said, wasn't it wonderful how the Murphys led that family to Christ?

Well, you know, before I'd been touched by God, I would have found some Christian way, some sanctified way of streaking the record so they would know it wasn't the Murphys, it was me. You know, I sat there and I looked up to him and said, I knew what the Lord was doing.

He was taking to the possibility of the spiritual life. You know, in Isaiah 60, it ends by saying, a little one could become a thousand and a small one, a strong nation. I, the Lord, will hasten it in its time.

And that's the introduction to chapter 61. Remember, these chapter divisions are an arbitrary arrangement. They're not inspired. The verses and the chapter divisions originally, all of these writings, they had no chapters and no verses.

Anyway, I say that because what we just quoted from Isaiah chapter 60, it runs on in chapter 61, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me. And it's when God's spirit is on a person that one can become a thousand and a small one can become a strong nation.

There's no limit to what God can do to a person that's anointed by him, has found the will of God and is staying in the will of God until God blesses. You know, the early missionaries who went to the South Sea Islands, they were there 14 years before they saw a single convert.

14 years. And they stayed with it because they believed God. And you know what happened? The sending society in Scotland, they sent a message which came on a boat to these people, eventually got to them.

And the message was, God has begun to work. But before that boat got to them, they'd had a revival and they had taken a bunch of idols and put them in a box and shipped them back to the sending society in Scotland and say, God has begun to work.

And what happened? Listen people, thousands were saved. These people were cannibals. They'd often seen people roasting over a fire. Just a miracle of God that never happened to them. I guess they didn't like them because they had a white skin.

I don't know what it was. But anyway, the revival was so great that at one place they built a church and received a thousand in this end, a thousand in that end and a pulpit at both ends. They had two services going at the same time.

They were exactly the same as what they were doing at the moment. What they were doing was the same as what they were doing at the point of the day. Two thousand in that end and a pulpit at both ends.

And it was a miracle that they got to hear the two thousand and they hadhabitude. Well, there is a difference, I think, a great difference, I'll try and explain it. In Romans chapter 8 it says this, you're not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.

Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. If you're born again, you then have the Holy Spirit living within you. And from that moment, from the time you received Christ, you're now living in the Spirit.

But you may be living in the Spirit, but not walking in the Spirit. That's what he's saying. And in the same chapter 5, the 16th verse, this I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.