Someone who sleeps in a natural sense does not see or perceive any of the things that are here on earth. He lies prostrate like a dead man, pays no attention to anything, all the while involved with utterly useless images and forms, dreams and visions, instead of real things. And when he wakes, these dreams and images vanish entirely.
So too, in the spiritual sense, when a man lives in ungodliness, he is sleeping and dead in the sight of God, and does not see or perceive the spiritual goods offered him by the Gospel. Meanwhile, he is involved in the temporal, perishable goods of this world, and occupied with utterly worldly desires and delights, which are no more like eternal joy than dreamed images are like natural, living creatures. But when the man wakes up, either by receiving faith or by dying, he will finally see and recognize that what he loved here on earth was utter fantasy.
Johann Spangenberg, “Epistle on the First Sunday in Advent,” in The Christian Year of Grace: The Chief Parts of Scripture Explained in Questions and Answers
Locus Communis 