Ephesians: Awake, Sleeper, and Arise
Ephesians 5:11-14; John 3:19-21, Isaiah 60:1-2 - Are you asleep, believer, or are you turning towards the light?
“Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says,
“Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.””
Ephesians 5:11-14 NASB1995
Believers are admonished by Paul, again, to not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. Don’t even go there! Our task is to expose these deeds and it is disgraceful to even to speak about the “things that are done by them in secret”. Well, many of these deeds of darkness are done in bright daylight in public these days and are not a secret to anyone within the vicinity.
I wanted to share some excerpts from a lengthy sermon by Vance Havner that was quoted on Precept Austin. He was a Baptist preacher who died in 1986 and was renowned for his pithy, quotable preaching. His words are more relevant today than ever:
Some time ago a friend of mine took me to a restaurant where they must have loved darkness rather than light. I stumbled into the dimly-lit cavern, fumbled for a chair, and mumbled that I needed a flashlight in order to read the menu. When the food came I ate it by faith and not by sight. Gradually, however, I began to make out objects a little more clearly. My host said, “Funny, isn’t it, how we get used to the dark?” “Thank you,” I replied, “You have given me a new sermon subject.”
We are living in the dark. The closing chapter of this age is dominated by the prince and powers of darkness. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. The night is far spent; the blackness is more extensive and more excessive as it deepens just before the dawn. Mammoth Cave is not limited to Kentucky; it is universal!
Strangely enough, man never had more artificial illumination and less true light. Bodily, he walks in unprecedented brilliance, while his soul dwells in unmitigated night. He can release a nuclear glory that out dazzles the sun, and with it he plans his own destruction. He can put satellites in the sky, and left to himself, he is a wandering star to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
The depths of present-day human depravity are too vile for any word in our language to describe. We are seeing not ordinary moral corruption, but evil double-distilled and compounded in weird, uncanny, and demonic combinations and concoctions of iniquity never heard of a generation ago. This putrefaction of the carcass of civilization awaiting the vultures of judgment is not confined to Skid Row; it shows up in the top brackets of society. Plenty of prodigals live morally among swine while garbed in purple and fine linen. A Bishop once said: “There is no difference in reality between the idle rich and the idle poor, between the crowds who loaf in gorgeous hotels and the crowds who tramp the land in rags, save the difference in the cost of their wardrobes and the price of their meals.”
Man lives in the dark and even his nuclear flashlight cannot pierce it. We not only live in the dark, we get used to it. There is a slow, subtle, sinister brainwashing process going on and by it we are gradually being desensitized to evil. Little by little, sin is made to appear less sinful until the light within us becomes darkness—and how great is that darkness! Our magazines are loaded with accounts of sordid crime, our newsstands with concentrated corruption. We are engulfed in a tidal wave of pornographic filth. Television has put us in the dark with Sodom and Gomorrah—right in the living room. We get used to it, acclimated to it. We accept, as a matter of course, its art, its literature, its music, its language. We learn to live with it without an inner protest.
…
The worst of all is that such people get so used to the dark that they think it is growing brighter. Sit long enough in a dark room and you will imagine that more light is breaking in. Men who dwell too long in darkness fancy the day is dawning. We call “broadminded tolerance” what is really peaceful coexistence with evil. It is an effort to establish communion between light and darkness, a concord between Christ and Belial.
…
One may live in a twilight zone, in conditions of low visibility, until he finds the practices of this world less repulsive. He mistakes the stretching of his conscience for the broadening of his mind. He renounces what he calls the "Pharisaism" and "puritanism" of earlier days with a good word for dancing, smoking, and even cocktails now and then. Instead of passing up Vanity Fair, he spends his vacations there..Operators of Vanity Fair would see little difference in the clothes, conversation, and conduct of most professing Christians today. If the proprietors of that Fair beheld the modern church member, especially in the summertime, wearing in public a garb in which he [or she] should never have left the house or even come downstairs, they would not seem barbarians to each other!
…
The world lives in the dark because it rejects Jesus Christ, the Light of the world: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). The word here translated “condemnation” is “crisis” in the original. The coming of Christ precipitated a crisis. It compels men in the very nature of things to come to the light or abide in darkness. This light shines in the Saviour: “I am the light of the world… “ (John 8:12). It shines in the Scriptures: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105). It shines in the saints: “Ye are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). “… every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved” (John 3:20). That explains why some people do not come to church.
I remember a couple in my first pastorate. The husband, an unsaved man, brought his wife to church on Sunday nights, but he sat outside in his car. He was in the dark in more ways than one because he did not like to face the gospel light. His wife enjoyed the service because she loved the light and came to the light that her deeds might be made manifest that they were wrought in God. When you overturn a stone in the field and the sunlight strikes beneath it, all the hidden creeping and crawling things scurry for cover. So do our sinful hearts grow restless under the light of God’s truth. In an unlighted cellar you do not see the spiders and snakes and lizards and toads until the light breaks in. So men do not realize their sinfulness until they face the Light. No wonder some live in the dark all week and then blink their eyes and wince in church on Sunday morning when the preacher turns on the Light! They have photophobia—they fear the Light.
…
We are a city set on a hill, not hidden in a dungeon. We are to shine as lights in the world. This is no time to get used to the dark; it is time to turn on the Light! Too long have the caverns of this world been undisturbed. Of course some cave dwellers will squirm, but others will see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. Light has no communion with darkness. We are not here to commune with it but to conquer it, and “this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (I John 5:4).
Early Christianity set the world aglow because absolute Light was pitched against absolute darkness. The early Christians believed that the gospel was the only hope of the world, that without it all men were lost and all religions false. The day came when the church and the world mixed light and darkness. The church got used to the dark and lived in it for several centuries, with only occasional flashes of light. Today too many Christians think there is some darkness in our light and some light in the world’s darkness. We half-doubt our own gospel andl half-believe the religion of this age. We are creeping around in the dark when we should be flooding the world with light. We need to get our candles out from under bushels and beds, take off the shades of compromise and let them shine in our hearts, our homes, our businesses, our churches, and our communities with that light that shines in the Saviour and in the Scriptures and in the saints. (Why Not Just Be Christians).
Belial is a name for a demon that means wicked or worthless. I don’t think there’s anything else I can add to this, but it’s worth reading a couple of times. The link goes to a book that contains the complete write-up. Vance Havner thought that he had seen every darkness known to humanity 40+ years ago, but he probably never imagined the added grim and lightless labyrinths of Pride month, transgenderism, social media battlefields, on-line and on-demand pornography (check your Netflix and HBO listings), and mainstream churches that embrace every weird and wacky sinful idea and call it “love”. Darkness becomes overwhelming when you think too much about it, like this totally creepy hallway that has a meager little light that does nothing to dispel the gloom.
So how are we to expose these dark deeds if we are not even to speak about them? Some scholars have difficulty with this seeming contradiction by Paul. But the late John MacArthur has a good answer to this in Precept Austin:
Some things are so vile that they should be discussed in as little detail as possible, because even describing them is morally and spiritually dangerous. Some diseases, chemicals, and nuclear by–products are so extremely deadly that even the most highly trained and best–protected technicians and scientists who work with them are in constant danger. No sensible person would work around such things carelessly or haphazardly. In the same way, some things are so spiritually disgraceful and dangerous that they should be sealed off not only from direct contact but even from conversation. They should be exposed only to the extent necessary to be rid of them. Some books and articles written by Christians on various moral issues are so explicit that they almost do as much to spread as to cure the problem. We can give God’s diagnosis and solution for sins without portraying every sordid detail. Our resource for exposing evil is Scripture, which is the light (Ps 119:105, Ps 119:130; Pr 6:23; He 4:12, 13) and is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2Ti 3:16).(MacArthur, J: Ephesians. Chicago: Moody Press) (Bolding added by Precept Austin).
I think I get his drift - turn toward the light and tell others what is good and profitable for teaching from Scripture without falling into the gutter to try and explain the horrors of some of these things. You might inadvertently attract people (who naturally like darkness) to that vileness by describing it too well.
By the say, Jesus said it best about darkness and light:
“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.””
John 3:19-21 NASB1995
In the final part of this passage, Paul is paraphrasing Isaiah 60:
““Arise, shine; for your light has come,
And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For behold, darkness will cover the earth
And deep darkness the peoples;
But the Lord will rise upon you
And His glory will appear upon you.”
Isaiah 60:1-2 NASB1995
The AI image at the top today had this description from ChatGPT:
It combines all three major themes of the passage:
spiritual sleep,
awakening,
Christ’s light shining on the believer.
And visually, a sleeping figure awakening in the first light of dawn could make for a beautiful, powerful landscape-oriented image that feels both realistic and deeply symbolic.
The scholars are divided on whether or not this is addressing all people or just believers. I like what Enduring Word says about this:
a. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light: Even the things done in secret will be exposed. They will be made manifest by the light of God’s searching judgment.
i. This is a reason for avoiding and exposing the unfruitful works of darkness as described in Ephesians 5:8-12. Since those unfruitful works are destined for exposure and their day will be over, it makes sense for Christians to avoid such unfruitful works.
b. Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead: Our participation in the light is shown by our resurrection with Jesus (He made us alive together with Christ, Ephesians 2:5). Paul quoted what was probably a worship chorus from the early church to illustrate this truth.
i. Remember that this exhortation to awake comes to Christians. A Christian may be asleep and not know it. If you are asleep, you probably do not know it. As soon as you become aware of your sleep, it is evidence that you are now awake.
ii. “This sleepiness in the Christian is exceedingly dangerous, too, because he can do a great deal while he is asleep that will make him look as if he were quite awake.” (Spurgeon)
· We can speak when we are asleep.
· We can hear when we are asleep.
· We can walk when we are asleep.
· We can sing when we are asleep.
· We can think when we are asleep.
iii. “The man who is asleep does not care what becomes of his neighbors; how can he while he is asleep? And oh! Some of you Christians do not care whether souls are saved or damned… It is enough for them if they are comfortable. If they can attend a respectable place of worship and go with others to heaven, they are indifferent about everything else.” (Spurgeon)
Are you comfortable and asleep in your pew, or are you wary and awake and anxiously looking to shine the light of God on an incredibly evil world? That evil is also in those same pews with you, as the enemy works relentlessly to put his words and doubt in people’s minds and lure them to sleep: Did God really say…?
My next devotional examines Ephesians 5:15-16 - Be careful how you walk.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - Please help me to shine a light of Your word on the darkness in this world and to be awake and sober in anticipation of Your return. Amen.
Citations and Credits:
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.Lockman.org.
Precept Austin was accessed on 06/03/2026 to commentary for Ephesians 5:11-14. Links to the source documents are provided where appropriate.
Commentary from Enduring Word is used with written permission and without any alteration. ©1996-present The Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik – enduringword.com. Within the Enduring Word commentary:
Spurgeon, Charles Haddon The New Park Street Pulpit, Volumes 1-6 and The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volumes 7-63 (Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications, 1990)