1 Corinthians 15:34 - Homiletics

Moral resurrection.

"Awake to righteousness, etc. Observe—

I. THE CONDITION FROM WHICH MAN IS SUMMONED . It is represented by a "sleep." What is this moral sleep? There are three points of resemblance in this condition that warrant the figure.

1. Insensibility. How insensible is man in sleep! He has lost all consciousness. The great world of life is shut out from him. So it is with the moral sleeper. There is a world of realities round the sinner, of the most grand and solemn description. Yet he is dead to all. He is not conscious of his spiritual being. He does not feel that he has a soul.

2. Fictitiousness. If the mind of the natural sleeper act, it is in a world of pictures. Objects flit before it that have no real existence. The life of the moral sleeper is highly fictitious; it is a life of dreams; it is a great lie.

3. Transitoriness. Sleep is not a permanent state. It has its seasons. And so it is in relation to the soul. There is a dark spiritual night brooding over the moral sleeper, but there is a spiritual morning forevery moral sleeper to awake in.

II. THE STATE INTO WHICH WE ARE SUMMONED . "Awake to righteousness," or "wake up righteously."

III. THE VOICE BY WHICH WE ARE SUMMONED . This may be regarded as God's voice to man in all times and in all lands. Wake up to the right. To the right in politics, commerce, religion, and in all departments of life. Realize the right, embody the right. The crime and curse of humanity is that it is gone from the right.