@ReadingSpurgeon: Psalm 127:2 – The Peculiar Sleep of the Beloved (NPSP1S12)
Sleep is a gift from God. It is a great physician. There are some who deny themselves of it for gain or ambition. But this sleep is not C. H. Spurgeon’s focus in his sermon on Psalm 127:2 – “For so he gives his beloved sleep.”
Under 6 headings, he preaches about the sleep that God gives to His beloved.
I. The miraculous sleep
This is the sleep that “God has sometimes given to His beloved – which He does not NOW grant.” The kind experienced by men like Adam, Abram, Joseph, David, Daniel, and Joseph the earthly father of Jesus, where God makes His plans and purposes known.
God does not act in this way now, though it is true that He does warn us in dream and visions. “But we never trust dreams.”
II. The sleep of a quiet conscience
“If you have sinned but once, you shall be dammed for it, unless you have something to take away that one sin. You do not know this sleep, but the Christian does.”
III. The sleep of contentment
“How few people in this world are satisfied.” But the Christian can sleep because they are satisfied with what they have.
IV. The sleep of quietness of soul as to the future
“All persons have need to dread the future, except the Christian. God gives to His beloved a happy sleep with regard to the events of coming time.”
V. The sleep of security
“To know that if I died I should enter heaven” and “to be as sure as I am of my existence that God, having loved me with an everlasting love, and He being immutable, will never hate me if He has once loved me.”
VI. The sleep of happy dismission
When you die, “Your soul sleeps not, for you are in heaven, but your body sleeps. Death has laid you in your last couch. It may be cold, but it is sanctified. It may be damp, but it is safe. And on the resurrection morning, when the archangel shall set his trumpet to his mouth, you shall rise… Sleep on in your grave, for you shall rise to glory.”
But, “If, sirs, you were to die unprepared, and unconverted, and unsaved, “There remains nothing but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.”
Spurgeon concludes with a question, he wants all his listeners to answer. “Do you seriously and solemnly believe that you belong to the “beloved” here mentioned?”