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My sermon this morning is he giveth his beloved sleep. He giveth his beloved sleep. The Bible reads there in verse 1, except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he giveth his beloved sleep. And I want to preach about sleep this morning. Now typically when you hear a sermon about sleep, it's usually negative about sleep. And the reason why is that there are so many scriptures in the Bible that use sleep as a negative illustration for someone who just doesn't really know what's going on. They're ignorant, they're not paying attention, they're sloppy. And today we talk about being awake and unfortunately it's been perverted into this thing called being woke, which means just be a liberal idiot, but that I digress, sorry wrong sermon, let me get my notes here. But basically the point is that in the Bible being awake is a sign of knowing the word of God, knowing the will of God, being sober, being vigilant, and just paying attention. So often sleep is used negatively as a metaphor in that way. So the Bible obviously talks about people who are being lazy and so they're oversleeping, they're sleeping when they should be working, they're sleeping in super late in the mornings, and so forth. But we don't want to let that mislead us that somehow sleep is a bad thing in general. Obviously those are illustrations about being awake, but obviously we can't be awake all the time. And God has designed our bodies to need sleep and sleeping is something that we're supposed to do every single day, it's good for us, it's healthy, and God has a lot of positive things to say about sleep in the Bible as well. So in Psalm 127 here it says in verse 2, it's vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he giveth his beloved sleep. The first thing I want to point out about this verse is that sleep is a blessing from God. Sleep is a blessing, okay? Not being able to sleep is horrible, it's torture. And so if you are able to go to bed and sleep well every night, you should be thankful for that because that is a blessing from God. In fact, if I'm ever laying in bed having trouble going to sleep, I quote this entire Psalm from memory because to me I quote this as a promise, I say, okay God, you said that you give your beloved sleep, you love me, right? Give me some sleep, let's do this. So I pray this frequently when I have trouble sleeping, but the thing I want to point out here when he says he gives his beloved sleep is that the context here is worrying because if you look at it, right before that he says it's vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows. This seems like somebody who's got a lot on their mind, right? They're eating the bread of sorrows, they're sad, they're staying up late, they're getting up early, it seems like they're really worried or stressed about something. And I believe what the Bible is saying here is that we should rest in the Lord and have trust in him so that we can have the peace to go to bed and sleep well at night because we're not stressing and worried about things that God has under control. See it says in verse number one, except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain to build it, except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. You know at the end of the day, our destiny is in God's hands. Either he's going to bless us and build us up or he's going to tear us down and he has the ultimate power over our destiny to either bless or curse our lives. And so the Bible says that if God is watching the city, it's going to be safe, but if the Lord does not keep the city, it doesn't matter how good of a security guard they've got, the watchman waketh but in vain because if God has ordained for that city to be wiped out, it's going to be wiped out. It doesn't matter how good the defenses are. So ultimately we need to trust God for our safety. You know I'm all for locking the doors, setting the alarm, having a watchdog or cameras or whatever you do at your house in order to protect it, but at the end of the day, we ultimately rely on God to protect us, right? The Bible says the horse is prepared against the day of battle, but safety is of the Lord. So yeah, the horse is prepared against the day of battle. Yeah, lock the door, have the watchdog, the normal precautions depending on what area you live in, but at the end of the day, you have to trust the Lord to protect you because no matter how secure you are, if God's not protecting you, you're vulnerable. Whereas no matter how open things are, God can still protect you even if you don't have a great security system in place because it's God ultimately that controls these things. And so that's why he's saying don't worry, it's vain to just stress and worry. Go to sleep, relax and trust God to protect and take care of things. Then what's interesting is that he rolls into having children. And sometimes when you're reading the Bible, you wonder about some of these like shifts in subject that seem a little bit abrupt, right? Because we've got this tiny little chapter and it is a self-contained song. It's not even really a chapter, it's a psalm that's intended to be sung on its own by itself so it's a hard break here, just these five verses. So what in the world do verses one and two have to do with verses three, four and five? Well it makes sense to anybody who actually has kids, okay? Because obviously having kids is gonna make you worried and stressed out and then you're gonna have trouble sleeping at night because of your kids and so therefore, you know, you need God to give you sleep, you need God to give you peace about that. So that actually does make perfect sense because having children is stressful just because children can be stressful but also just paying for children can be stressful and there's just a lot involved there. I don't need to explain that to you that have children and those who don't, well, you know, you'll find out someday. All right, so go back if you would to Psalm 3. Go back to Psalm 3 if you would. Sleep is a blessing from God. If we are able to sleep well at night, we should be thankful and praise God for that and thank God for that and not only that but it's the peace of God that allows us in many cases to sleep well at night. God gives us that peace. The Bible says, thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee. The Bible says, be careful for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God and the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. So if you find yourself worried and stressed out and you're tossing and turning at night and you can't sleep because you're worried, you know, pray and cast those cares upon the Lord. Pray to the Lord and ask him for help. Tell him what the problem is but do it in faith and if you actually pray to the Lord in faith knowing that you have the petitions that you desired of him, then you should be able to at that point let it go and stop worrying about it and say, you know what, it's in God's hands. I prayed about it. It's in God's hands. I'm just not going to stress and worry about it. You know, we can't worry our way out of our problems anyway. Prayer can actually fix things and do something but worrying doesn't do anything, right? And so we need to sometimes also just be able to just have the serenity to accept the things that we can't change and just go to sleep and relax, do our best and not worry about it. But you know, God's word, the promises of God, praying to God, give us peace so that we can sleep at night. So the Bible says in Psalm 3 verse 3, but thou, O Lord, art a shield for me. My glory in the lifter up of my head. I cried unto the Lord with my voice and he heard me out of his holy hills, Selah. I laid me down and slept. I awake for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about. So again, you can see that sleep is associated with not worrying about what's going to happen but trusting God to take care of us and protect us. Go to Psalm 4, just write the next Psalm there. Verse number 1, hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness. Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress. Have mercy upon me and hear my prayer. O ye sons of men, how long will you turn my glory into shame? How long will you love vanity and seek after leesing? But know that the Lord has set apart him that is godly for himself. The Lord will hear when I call unto him. Sin in awe and sin not, commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still. Notice that, commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still. Offer Selah, offer the sacrifices of righteousness and put your trust in the Lord. There be many that say, verse 6, who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased. I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety. So one of the reasons why God gives us sleep is because of the fact that he gives us the peace and the security to know that he's got everything under control. We don't need to stress and worry and be anxious. If something's bothering us, we need to just pray about it and then have the faith to believe that God's got it under control, close our eyes and go to sleep no matter what's going on in our lives. And obviously this is easier said than done, but this is what we should be doing according to the Bible. We need to trust the Lord and go to sleep at night. Now go if you would to Matthew chapter number 8 in the New Testament. Matthew chapter number 8 in the New Testament. So sleep is a blessing from God. Sleep is not just this bad thing, this necessary evil that we should do as little of as possible. I heard this bozo several years ago preach this sermon and it was one of the dumbest sermons I've ever heard. And the sermon was called Love Not Sleep. And you know, I'm sure there have been a lot of godly good preachers that have preached sermons by that name. So don't go looking for it and claim that I'm criticizing a good sermon or a good man of God. This guy was a complete bozo, okay, and he's not even saved. And he preached this sermon called Love Not Sleep, and in this sermon he was bragging and boasting about how little he sleeps personally, and he's like, I sleep only like five hours a night and that's all you need, and nobody needs to be sleeping more than that, and you guys are sleeping too much, and you need to sleep less. The Bible says love not sleep, and so we need to sleep as little as possible. And in the same sermon, he had this mentality, and this guy had had this mentality a lot in other sermons too, of constantly basically saying statements to the effect of, I don't care how much you're reading your Bible, you need to read it more. I don't care how much you're going soul-winding, go more. I don't care how much you pray, pray more. Folks, that's stupid, okay, because you could overdo things. Even a good thing could be overdone. You can't just say, I don't care how much you're reading your Bible. It's like, well, do you know how much I'm reading my Bible because I don't think I need to read it more, or you need to go soul-winding more. There's only so much that you can do as a human being, and he's basically just trying to exalt himself, lift up himself, talk about what a great worker he is, talk about what a hard worker he is, and how he sleeps so little, and he reads his Bible so much, and he just does so much, and you just need to do more, and you're not good enough. You know what you'll frequently hear Pastor Anderson saying from the pulpit is, hey, everybody, keep up the great work on soul-winding. How many times have I said that? A thousand, every single time. Have I ever said like, all right, guys, this soul-winding needs some work. We got to get these numbers up. Have I ever said that? Is that how I act? Do I get up and say, man, you guys aren't reading your Bible enough. You don't pray enough. You bunch of sorry church members, I'm going to whip you into shape, get you out there doing something, you lazy bunch. No, because here's the thing about that is that I'm trying to encourage and exhort and whatever. Obviously, if somebody's not reading their Bible at all, I'm going to preach and say, hey, if you're not reading your Bible, you're not right with God. If you're not praying, you're not right with God. If you're not winning souls, you're not right with God. But I'm not going to get up here and lord over you and start telling you exactly how much you have to read your Bible and then that's not enough and oh, you're reading it once a year? Well, you need to be reading it twice a year. Oh, twice a year? Yeah. Give me a break. How about four times a year? How about 10 times a year? You know, just basically just trying to just slave drive you and get you to do more and more and more. That's not the right way to lead and that's not what the Bible even teaches because yeah, God wants us to read our Bibles every day. God wants us to pray every day. God wants us to evangelize but God never tells us to just run ourselves into the ground and burn the candle at both ends and just destroy ourselves because there's a time to work hard and then there's a time to rest. There's a time to read our Bible. There's a time to eat. There's a time to drink. There's a time to sleep. There's a time to go to work. There's a time to win souls. There's a time to spend time with family. There's times of recreation. But the holier than thou's and the hypocrites will, you know, lay these grievous burdens upon you and these heavy burdens upon you and grievous to be born and they don't touch them with one of their little fingers in reality because I know this bozo in his life and guess what? He's one of the most lazy and effective workers ever and then he gets up and preaches this sermon that says, oh man, I sleep five hours a night and I'm working so hard and whatever. You know, guilt tripping people for sleeping eight hours at night. Let me just get up and just be frank with you right now. I sleep eight hours virtually every night and if I have trouble sleeping, I lay there for eight hours every night. I sleep eight hours a night, okay? And guess what? I still get things done. I'm still busy. I'm still effective. I believe in getting a good night's sleep and I'm not going to get up here and try to guilt you and you'd be sleeping three, four hours a night and reading Bible until you fall over. It's just, it's stupid, my friend. It's not what the Bible teaches and it's a classic example of taking the Bible out of context. You know, when the Bible says love, not sleep and just taking that and just say, well, you know, I'm just going to hate sleep then. Are you a toddler? Because the only people I know who hate sleep are two years old, okay, and every two year old hates sleep. Every three year old hates sleep, okay, but let's be adults here, all right? Sleep can be sweet unto us as God's people. That's what the Bible teaches. We got to get the whole picture of what the Bible says and not just take one verse out of context about not loving sleep and then just, of course, turning it into a breakfast about how you don't sleep and you work so hard. Now look, I do believe that there are some people that could probably get by and thrive and do well on five hours of sleep. I've known people like that who sleep five hours, but the problem is when you start imposing that on other people and saying, oh, well, because I sleep five hours a night, you're going to do the same thing. It's like, come on. You can't expect everybody to do that. Some people might do that. You know, who here sleeps five hours a night max? That's what you, you're one of those, okay, amen. I'm for you. I'm not against you. That's what you do. If you can make it work, if you're healthy and happy that way, then more power to you. The problem is just saying, well, these eight hour sleepers, they're just being lazy. No folks, eight hours, a normal amount of time to sleep. That's pretty much what everybody agrees. Okay. It's not, I don't think that's controversial to get, to get up and say, Hey, it's healthy and normal to sleep for like eight hours, seven and a half, eight hours a night. Look at the Bible say, or where did I have you turn? Matthew eight. Look at Matthew eight verse 23 and when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him and behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea in so much that the ship was covered with the waves. But he, Jesus, he was asleep. Jesus was asleep. Okay. So the disciples are working hard while Jesus is asleep. Okay. But here's the thing, working hard doesn't always mean that you're working smart or that you're doing the right work or that you're in the right. Okay. So the Bible says here, Jesus is asleep. His disciples came to him, verse 25 and awoke him saying, uh, Lord, save us. We perish and he says unto them, why are you fearful? You have little faith. Then he arose and rebuke the winds and the sea and there was a great calm. Now why is it that Jesus was asleep in the bottom of the ship? What does this mean? The picture is that Jesus was relaxed because Jesus Christ wasn't stressed out or worried or scared. Jesus had already assured them that they were going to go across to the other side and talked about the fact that they would go to the other side. And so Jesus knows that to be true. He goes to sleep. The disciples are afraid they're going to die and they're stressed out because they don't trust the promise of God. That's, that's the symbolism of the story here. And so Jesus is able to sleep because he trusts the Lord. He's got peace. That's what we were just talking about in Psalms, right? Look at Matthew chapter 11, Matthew chapter, I'm just wanting to show you some positive examples of sleep and rest in the Bible. Matthew 11, 28 come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest under your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Does that sound like the kind of a master or a boss that gets up and says, I don't care how much you're doing. It needs to be more. I don't care if you're reading your Bible an hour a day. Read it more. I don't care how much you're praying. Pray more. I don't care how much your soul winning. Do it more. I don't care how much you go to church. Find some other church that has more services and go there. Yeah. Look, is that what that sounds like? Does this sound like a boss that is a slave driver? The answer is no. Jesus said, my yoke is easy. My burden is light. I'll give you rest. Now does Jesus want us to work hard? Absolutely. Yes. The Christian life is hard work, but he wants us to work hard and then rest and then work hard again and then rest again. But we need rest in our lives. You can't just work, work, work and no rest. I'm not too sure about this Pastor Anderson. I just feel like God wants us to just work our butts off all the way to the bitter end. Well, really, because that's funny because isn't the God of the New Testament the same God of the Old Testament and wasn't there this big gigantic subject in the Old Testament that I don't know there are like whole chapters about and literally hundreds of verses about called the Sabbath? This whole concept of the Sabbath, we're talking about the God that makes a huge part of his Mosaic law for Israel, Sabbaths of, you know, one day in seven to rest, resting one day out of seven and then, you know, having these other Sabbaths throughout the year and then giving the land arrest and every seventh year and every forty nine years and, you know, you have all of these Sabbath rules. Sabbath means rest. Only God thinks that rest is important. So to sit there and say, forget rest, I'll rest when I'm dead, you know, it's all about just work, work and go, go, go. Folks, that is not a biblical teaching and that's just taking a few verses out of Proverbs and just taking them out of context instead of getting the whole picture of what God wants us to have in the Word. Look at Mark chapter six. Mark chapter six. Yes, we as Christians should work hard. Yes, the Christian life is hard work. I'm not telling you to be like these lazy Christians who are not reading their Bibles, they're not soul winning, they barely show up to church, they slack off in their Christian life. No, I want you to be sober, I want you to be vigilant, I want you to work hard, but you know what? I want you to do it at a sustainable pace so that you can be here five years from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now, still thriving in your Christian life, still thriving in your personal life and not crashing and burning because you're just pushed too hard or run into the ground. And sometimes you run yourself into the ground and you need someone else to tell you, hey buddy, you know, you can relax a little, you can rest a little, slow down a little. Now obviously there are people who are way too slowed down, I get that, but I'm talking about the other side of the coin this morning because we want to make sure that we don't go too far to either extreme. You don't want to be lazy on the one hand, but you also don't want to be somebody who doesn't know how to rest on the other hand, doesn't know how to sleep and take it easy. I don't know about you, but typically when I have trouble sleeping at night, one of the reasons that I'll have trouble sleeping at night is I'll get into bed and my mind starts racing about all the things I should be doing. And sometimes it's like you just, you turn on the light, you get out of bed, you're just like, I just need to get that done, you know, and you're just like trying to get something else done. And you know, there's always one more thing to do, isn't there? And especially, you know, you think of the proverbial saying, a mother's work is never done. And so you housewives and mothers out there, you know that the mother's work is never done, the work around the house is never done, but at some point you just have to call it a day and go to bed and not just say, well I'll go to bed when it's done. You know, you're going to basically just never go to bed and then you're going to die, okay? All right, Mark chapter 6 verse 30, the Bible reads, and the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus and told him all things, both what they had done and what they had taught. Now these guys have been working hard. They've been traveling on foot throughout all the cities of Israel, miles and miles and miles of travel on foot, combined with soul winning, preaching, and so forth. And they get back and give a report unto Jesus and he said unto them, verse 31, come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest awhile. So here's Jesus prescribing rest for his servants. Hey, they went out and they did the work. They did the soul winning. They preached the word of God. They did the traveling and now it's time for them to have some rest. So Jesus is not just pushing them to their absolute limits, running them into the ground. They're not collapsing here. He's telling them, hey, take a break. You guys have earned it. Have some rest. And they departed into a desert place by ship privately. So number one, we said that sleep is a blessing from God. And the peace of God that he gives us allows us to rest and relax and not worry too much because we know God's got things under control. But number two is that sleep is a reward for hard work. You know, that's what we see in this passage. They come back from hard work. Okay, now it's time to rest for a while. Go through Ecclesiastes chapter number five. Ecclesiastes chapter number five. Rest is a reward for working hard. And again, what about when the Bible says, love not sleep lest thou come to poverty, open thine eyes and thou shalt be satisfied with bread. He's clearly talking about sleeping when you should be working. Don't just love sleeping in the daytime when you're supposed to be out working because you're partying at night. Now here's the thing, if you actually have a job where you work at night, that's a different situation. Obviously, if you're working second shift, third shift, well then you're going to have to do some day sleeping, right? And you know, when I'm out soul winning, knocking doors and I see a sign that says no soliciting, I just knock that door and preach the gospel anyway, sorry. If I see a sign that says day sleeper, I don't knock on that door because that would be like going to somebody's house at two in the morning and knocking on their door and say, hey, I want to give you the gospel. Obviously, if the person is a day sleeper, that's kind of their nighttime, they need to sleep. I'm not going to rip someone out of bed to invite them to church because that's probably going to be counterproductive. So I always respect those signs that say day sleeper, don't knock, don't ring the doorbell. That makes perfect sense to me. I get that, but I'm not talking to you if you have a night job, I'm talking about those of you that have a day job that work in the daytime, you're supposed to be sleeping at night so that you're not sleeping on the job. And we've all seen people literally fall, who's actually seen somebody fall asleep on the job. You've been at your job and you've seen someone literally unconscious asleep. And hopefully you weren't looking in a mirror when you did that. But anyway, yeah, you know, we've seen it. We've seen people who have fallen asleep on the job. And it's ridiculous, right? I mean, I've never fallen asleep when I was supposed to be working. I have fallen asleep on a job site when I worked at this one job where it was like a tradition where we napped every day at a certain time. And no, I didn't work at Google or anything, you know, it was actually a, it was just a construction job. And on our lunch break, we would all eat our lunch and then we would lay down on stacks of sheetrock. That was the bed, literally just sheetrock. And we would all just lay on the sheetrock and just take a 20-minute power nap. And then the foreman would be like, all right, back to work, guys. And it was, it was a, an allowed move, you know, it was something that we were supposed to be doing. It wasn't, you know, hey, wake up, you're supposed to be working kind of garbage. Now why would somebody fall asleep on the job when they're supposed to be working? Unless they have a medical condition, some kind of a narcolepsy or something. It's probably because they were out partying too much, am I right? They're partying. They're out having fun with the video games and, or they're out at the bar or they're out doing drugs or drinking or, or whatever they're doing instead of work. That's what the Bible is warning us about when it talks about the foolish son sleeping through the harvest and you know, your poverty is going to come cause you're sleeping too much. This is talking about sleep in mornings when you should be out working. It's not talking about legitimate sleep at night when the body is designed to go to sleep. Okay. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter number five verse 10. He that loveth silver should not be satisfied with silver nor he that loveth abundance with increase. This is also vanity. When goods increase, they're increased that eat them. And I can testify to that. And what good is there to the owners thereof save the beholding of them with their eyes. The sleep of a laboring man is sweet. You see, sleep is a reward for hard work. You go out, you work hard and the sleep of a laboring man is sweet whether he little or much, but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. What the Bible is saying here is that, you know, the rich man has a lot of benefits because he could probably better food than the poor man. I mean, the rich man's got all of the finest foods at his fingertips. He's probably got somebody preparing them for him and giving him nutritious, tasty meals, all that. Wait, that's my life. But anyway, you know, uh, you know, nutritious, tasty meals being prepared and, and given to him and he's eating high quality food. The poor man, you know, he might not be able to get the best foods. He's eating a lot of rice and beans, which that's great as far as I'm concerned anyway, but he's eating a lot of rice and beans and whatever and maybe he doesn't even get to eat as much as he wants. Sometimes he eats little, sometimes he eats much. Maybe he's too busy sometimes. But you know what? He's sleeping better than the rich man. Now stop and think about this and I believe this is what the Bible is getting at. You know, if you had the choice between eating well and sleeping well, which would you choose? I would choose sleeping well any day of the week. If I could eat all the best foods and then toss and turn all night, that's not worth it because I'd be, cause there's, there's nothing more miserable than not sleeping. Insomnia is miserable. It's horrible. It's torture. And part of the reason why this sermon's on my mind is that I wasn't feeling well earlier this week. You remember on Wednesday I was kind of run down. So I was having a, I wasn't feeling well, I was having a lot of like body aches and just like headaches and just, and you know what? There were a few nights this week where I only slept like less than four hours a night and it's just torture, just, just tossing and turning. And then, you know, you're tired but you can't sleep. It's a bummer. Folks, I'd rather eat humble meals of just rice and beans and have to eat a whole bunch of vegetarian meals but get a good night's sleep than to be eating all the fancy foods and having trouble sleeping. And so that's what the Bible is saying. You know, it's easy to envy the rich and not realize how good you've got it because, you know, the rich man, he can't sleep at night because he's too stressed about his portfolio. He's too worried about his investments, his stocks, his bonds, his business interests. He's all stressed out and worried about that. Whereas the laboring man, he works hard, yeah, he gets paid little, yeah, he doesn't make a lot of money, yeah, but he clocks out and he goes to bed at night and he's not worried about getting robbed or sued or anything because if he gets robbed, it's like not a big deal because he didn't have much to lose. If I get sued, I'm not worried about it because I don't own anything. You know, some people are like, Pastor Anderson, you might get sued. But I'm just like, okay, what would that even mean for someone like me? You know, if somebody sued me, they'd probably have to give me money, you know. So basically, the point is, you know, we need to understand that sleep is a blessing from God. Sleep is a reward for hard work and so there's nothing wrong with working hard and getting a good night's sleep and it's a big blessing and we should be thankful for it. And not envy the Hollywood whores and whoremongers who are probably having trouble sleeping. You remember Michael Jackson? Okay, evil person that he was but he's rich and you know what, you know how he went to bed every night, he would get anesthetized to bed every night. Like have you ever had surgery and you had to receive anesthesia and so you get total intravenous anesthesia and I've done it once, I've one time had to be anesthetized in my life and it was cool because it was just like, they just said like, all right, we'll see you in a half hour and I'm just like, bye. And I was just, it was like the fastest I've ever felt, it was just like falling asleep. But it was the easiest I've ever fallen asleep and then half hour later, it was just like waking up from a nap, just kind of woke up and it was like, whoa, that was easy. Here's the thing, Michael Jackson was such a screwed up evil weirdo that he couldn't sleep at night. So he had a literal doctor in his house anesthetizing him. Is it anesthetize? There we go. All right. Is there a doctor in the house? You know, anesthetizing him every night. What was the drug that was being used? Was it propofol? Propofol is being used to, uh, to give him total intravenous anesthesia every night before bed. Why? Because the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. Probably also a guilty conscience, knowing about all of his guilt and his wickedness and his perversions that he had done and knowing that he's going to hell someday. I mean, that's stressful stuff. And so we as Christians, man, we're going to heaven. We're saved. God loves us. He's watching out for us. He's going to keep us safe. He listens to our prayers and we go to bed at night and we can sleep well. And man, that is worth so much more than what all these so-called celebrities have. I'd much rather have verse 12 of Ecclesiastes five. Give me that and hang all the millions of dollars and all the fame and all that because give me the sleep. Does that mean that I love sleep? No, it just means that I respect sleep and that I understand that sleep is a godly reward for the laboring man. And then he goes on just to talk about people's being stressed out about their riches and all the problems. So go to Proverbs chapter 24 if you would. Proverbs chapter 24. And again, in Proverbs, we have these questions like, how long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou rise out of thy sleep? These are just talking about people oversleeping, sleeping in the daytime when they don't have a night job, OK? That's what we're talking about in verses like that. And there are many of those. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son, but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame, slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep, and an idle soul shall suffer hunger and on and on. Look at Proverbs 24 verse 30, I went by the field of the slothful and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding. And lo, it was all grown over with thorns and nettles that covered the face thereof and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Proverbs chapter 24 verse 32, then I saw and considered it well. I looked upon it and received instruction, yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep, so shall thy poverty come as one that travelth and thy want as an armed man. And again, what the Bible is simply saying here is that sleeping instead of working a little bit of overindulgence in sleep, a little bit of extra sleep, not just a little bit of sleep in general, we all need a little bit of sleep. So don't twist the Bible to the point where it's absurd, okay? We need sleep but we don't want to be sleeping in the daytime. Now here's the key, so we've seen a lot of Bible, haven't we? Just now in the sermon, you know, I've read like three pages of Bible verses to you here. But now let's get a little bit practical, right? So we've seen what the Bible says, sleep is good, it's a reward to the laboring man, it's a reward to those who trust the Lord, when we have peace, it helps us to sleep because we're trusting God. If we can't sleep, we should pray and seek to get peace from God and so forth. But now let's get into the practical part of the sermon here, okay? Is that, you know, part of the problem with people who can't get up in the morning and are having so much trouble with sleeping in the morning or sleeping in the daytime or sleeping when they should be working or sleeping on the job or whatever is because they didn't go to bed early enough. You know, people talk about how hard it is to get up at whatever time. Somebody name some times that you think are hard to get up at. You know, what's a time that's difficult to get up? 4 a.m., that's tough. Somebody want to be a little more honest? 5 a.m. can be tough, right? I mean, what else? 9 a.m. No, that's, I won't accept that answer. I award you no points. Here's the thing, you know, one person could say, oh man, I've got to get up at 6, I've got to get up at 5, oh, I've got to get up at 4, oh, I've got to get up at 3. You know, which of these is the right answer? Like, we know 9 is a wrong answer, okay? But, thank you for giving it to me for illustration purposes. But the thing is, you know, there are lots of answers we could look at, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, you know, which of these are hard? Which of these are easy? And here's the thing about that is that there's really no right answer because what if I told you that getting up at 5 is not harder than getting up at 7? Getting up at 5 is identical to getting up at 7, just depending on when you went to bed, okay? So, seriously, if I went to bed at 11 p.m., getting up at 5 is going to be a lot harder than getting up at 7, am I right? If I went to sleep at 11, 7 is going to be a lot easier than 5. But what if I went to bed at 9 p.m.? If I went to sleep at 9 p.m., is it going to be hard to get up at 5 now? No, 4.30 is going to be a piece of cake, right? Because you went to bed at 9. So this is all relative. It's just a number. What if I told you that the day doesn't really know what time it is? Like that number isn't really an intrinsic value. It's a made up number. You know, you're just kind of carving up the day and just kind of deciding, especially because, you know, you could literally walk across the street and it's a different time. You know, you cross into the Navajo reservation and it's a different time zone half the year. You cross from Arizona into California, all of a sudden time is different. Is it going to now be easier to get up at that exact same time because the clock has a different number on it? It's absurd, right? Folks, the reason why people have trouble getting up in the morning is because they didn't go to bed at night at a reasonable hour. If you go to bed at the right time, you can get up at the right time. So this attitude that says, well, love not sleep, therefore, sleep as little as possible, so bless God, I'm going to stay up as late as I can tonight. Folks, this is not a wise plan, okay? The right thing to do is to be sleeping when you should be sleeping and working when you should be working, relaxing when you should be relaxing. There's a time to every purpose under heaven. Everything has this time and place. And so part of the reason why people have trouble staying awake when they're supposed to stay awake is because they stayed up too late at night. And I'm not talking about people who work second shift. If you're supposed to stay up for work, then stay up for work. I'm talking about people who get off work at 3, 4, 5, 6 o'clock and then they just stay up partying until all hours of the night or stay up watching TV, playing a video game, doing whatever on the internet, surfing the net, right, falling down whatever the rabbit hole and cruising the social media, Facebook, Twitter, you know, God forbid, TikTok or something. But you know, whatever you're surfing in the social media, one of the social media is Instagram and that new one from Donald Trump or whatever, you know. The point is, you know, early to bed, early to rise is the way that it's going to give you the best health in your life. You know what I mean? It's like that saying makes sense. Early to bed, early to rise makes men healthy, wealthy and wise, okay. I'm not trying to be wealthy, but you know, maybe we can make it like healthy, godly and wise or something like that. The point and it's getting kind of quiet in here right now, you know, and everybody loves hard preaching, right, amen. We love hard preaching here at Faithful Word. Here's some hard preaching for you. You know why you don't get things done is because you're staying up till all hours of the night on stupid social media and falling down the rabbit hole and watching YouTube videos until the middle of the night and playing video games till the middle of the night and just wasting time and then, not only that, then when you go to bed you have trouble sleeping. Now here's the thing. I'm not going to go into all the science behind it. I don't necessarily understand all the science behind it. I don't really care what the science is behind it. I'll just tell you this. If you're staring at a screen right before bed, it's harder to go to sleep. If you stare at a screen right before you go to bed, that's why a lot of people will give the advice that says, hey, you know, stop looking at screens for X amount of time before bed every night and you'll be able to sleep better. So some of you this morning, you're thinking, oh man, you know, this sermon, Pastor Anderson is talking about how great sleep is and, you know, sounds great but I just, I'm having trouble sleeping at night. Well, you know, I'm sorry to hear that because it's sad and I've had a lot of people come to me over the years and say, Pastor, I'm having trouble sleeping. What do I do? And I've tried to help people. I've prayed for people, give them advice because it's torture, right? And I think we've all been there. We've all had sleepless nights. We've all gone through maybe periods where we had trouble sleeping. And so, you know, one of the big things I would say is if you're having trouble sleeping, get off the screens for a few hours before bed every night because even if you're doing something legitimate on the screen, even if you're doing something educational or, you know, you're even maybe watching preaching or doing something for your job or whatever, you still need to sleep at night. And if you're having trouble sleeping, one of the things you could do is get off the screens for a few hours before bed so that you can get some quality sleep at night. That way you can be working when you're supposed to be working and alert when you're supposed to be alert, spending time with your family or whatever. And so I find that getting off the screens and physically reading a physical, literal book can also be good before bed as opposed to looking at a screen. I didn't say e-book. I didn't say you got the Kindle and you're reading the e-book. Oh, Pastor Anderson said, you know, read before bed because, again, it's something about looking at that screen. And so therefore have an actual physical copy of either the Bible or some other reading that you want to do at that time of day and do some reading before bed as opposed to watching something on a screen or if you're going to – or do neither, you know. But I'm just saying if you really need to unwind with some entertainment, maybe think about reading something physical instead of the screens and so forth. You say, well, what else can I do if I'm having trouble sleeping? Another thing that would cause people to have trouble sleeping is that they didn't get any exercise that day. They didn't do anything physically. You know, the Bible says the sleep of a laboring man is sweet. Those who go to a physical job and work hard all day as a carpenter or an electrician or a plumber, I venture to guess they're probably not the ones struggling with sleep at night. They probably sleep well because they're just so stinking tired. You know, we were all able to do that 20-minute power nap laying on a pile of sheet rock. Part of that was because some of these guys were partying pretty hard. But, you know, I wasn't partying and yet I was able to take that nap because we're physically working. And when you physically work, it makes you tired. If you're idle and sedentary all day, your body is like, what, are we resting now? I thought that's what I've been doing this whole day and your body gets confused. So if you don't have a physical job, maybe get some exercise. How about taking a walk around the neighborhood or something before bed? You know, at least getting out there and you say, well, I'm just not a big exercise guy. You know, I don't even lift. I don't even do that stuff. But here's the thing about that. You know, then get out and walk. Like, doesn't everybody at least walk or do something, right? You can at least – I'm not telling you you have to become some kind of an athlete or something. You can get out there and at least shake your bones a little bit and ride your bike or walk or just do something, for crying out loud, for your health. And you say, well, how dare you – you know, you need to get back to the Bible and preach the Word of God. But, you know, as your pastor, I love you and I want you to be blessed and I want you to be happy and I want you to be healthy so that you can serve God for your whole life. I don't want you to be miserable and ruin your health and ruin your life because of bad decisions. And so I'm trying to help you that, hey, if your job doesn't keep you moving, then get out there and move a little bit and that will help you sleep at night. If you actually get out and move your muscles a little bit and make yourself a little tired, then you can actually go to sleep at night, OK? And sleep is a blessing. Sleep is a good thing. You want to do that. And so obviously you don't want to just eat a bunch of sugar and drink a bunch of caffeine at late at night and then you wonder why you can't go to bed. You're on a video game right before bed, watching stuff on the internet right before bed, wondering why you can't sleep, didn't do any exercise, hmm, not sure why I can't sleep, OK? So work on it because sleep is important. Now what are some of the negative effects of not sleeping? I'm not sleeping enough. Just a super quick Google search. I spent two minutes on this, probably a minute and a half, OK? It isn't hard to find all the negatives and it was already stuff that I already knew because I mean this is kind of common sense stuff, folks. That's why I'm saying you just Google it. It's everywhere. Chronic sleep deprivation can lead to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, heart failure or stroke. That sounds wonderful. Noticeable signs of sleep deprivation include excessive sleepiness, frequent yawning, irritability, anyone, daytime fatigue, oh and you're not going to believe this but stimulants such as caffeine are not enough to override your body's profound need for sleep. Well thank you Google. In fact these can make sleep deprivation worse by making it harder to fall asleep at night and so you don't want to be one of these people that just doesn't sleep at night but then just gets all caffeinated to get you going. Now look, if you need to do that in an emergency or something, I get it. Sometimes my wife will have to drive home from somewhere and she hasn't slept enough and she doesn't want to end up in a ditch by the side of the road so she'll basically drink some kind of a caffeinated beverage and I've been known to do the same thing in situations where my flight got delayed and I ended up having to drive through the night or something and I was a guest preacher. I've been known to just slam some caffeine right before the sermon because I didn't end up sleeping the entire night before and those are some of the best sermons, amen? But the point is that you don't want to make that a lifestyle. Sometimes when you have to work all night and push it but you know if it's video games all night you're just being stupid at that point, okay? But if it's work all night, yeah, it happens and maybe you have to hit the caffeine or whatever but if you're just one of these people that's just chronically sleep deprived but then just saying well it works for me because then I drink caffeine and I'm awake, what I'm trying to say is there's underlying damage happening to your body because the purpose of sleep isn't just so that I can be alert and awake in the daytime. That's not the only purpose of sleep. Sleep is a time when your body is repairing itself and processes are happening that need to be happening and so it's not just a matter of well as long as I can stay awake I'll sleep two or three hours of night and be fine. What are you doing to your body in the long term? That's the question. So these stimulants are not going to necessarily fix the fact that you didn't sleep at night so you need to make sure you get enough sleep but the last thing I want to say is that sleep is not just a blessing from God. It's not just the reward to a peaceful and trusting heart. It's not just a reward for hard work especially physical work and not only is it good for our physical health but it's very important for our mental health as well. It's important for us mentally because when we sleep at night it's kind of like a reboot on our brain and you know when you use your computer for a long time especially if you have one of these Windows based PC's it always just crashes and has problems all the time but like this message is brought to you in part by Apple but the point is like these Windows based PC's like have you noticed that if you just don't reset them for a while they just get so junked up that everything is just going so slow and you're like why is everything going so slow and then you just restart it and then it just works fine, right? Whenever your computer is going slow but then you'll realize like I haven't rebooted this thing in like a month. You know you just kind of like the screensaver comes on and it just stays awake all the time. It just never stops and for some reason it just needs a restart like every week or month or year or sometimes you go like a year without restarting and you wonder why it's so slow. Now my Mac I literally go a year without restarting and it doesn't care but you know that's another story. The point is though our brains are the same way. This isn't a Mac. This is a PC, okay? And so you better reboot this thing every day or it's going to get all junked up. And then sometimes you pull up that little window that shows you the processes that are running and it's like a bunch of stuff in Chinese or something like what all you go job. What? What? I don't remember turning on the Google plop plop plop. You know it's just like all these like strings of consonants with no vowels and you're like I didn't turn and you start like ending processes and then and then and then you end the wrong process and it just like dies like oh yeah you know. So then you know the point is like it's easy instead of trying to figure out which process the best way is just to reboot the stupid thing right restart and then it's fine. Well guess what? That's what your brain needs every day when you go to sleep it's a it's a cold reboot on your brain. Not only that but when you sleep at night you're dreaming and when you dream you dream about everything that happened that day and you dream about everything that you heard that day and everything you thought about that day and it's kind of a way for your brain to like process everything that happened that day and stuff like that. And so it's actually good for you mentally to sleep. That's why one of the signs of people not sleeping enough is they're irritable right because their their brains all junked up they're stressed out because they didn't sleep well and kind of process all that. Have you ever gone to bed maybe a little stressed and worried or about something then you go to sleep and you wake up in the morning and it all just kind of makes sense because you've you've processed it and you've had a reboot. And you know God says that his mercies are new every morning and that he gave us the sun moon and stars to provide us with these punctuation marks of days weeks months and years so that we can constantly be restarting refreshing and so sleep does that for us. You know we talked about how chronic sleep depression can get I keep saying depression. Chronic sleep deprivation can lead to like these horrible things like diabetes heart attack heart failure stroke but other potential problems include obesity depression and reduced immune system function. Now if there's if there are three things that are going on in America right now they are obesity depression and reduced immune function. Am I right. Are these three things that are happening in America. You know obesity is is climbing big time. You can see it everywhere. OK. What about depression. You know I've seen a lot of studies showing this is like the most depressed generation of young people ever. Children and teenagers today are more depressed than ever. Why are children and teenagers so depressed today. Couple reasons number one because they're not getting enough sleep because they're fooling around on all their electronics so much that they don't have enough time to sleep. And then when they do go to sleep it's not a quality sleep because they just got off that screen five seconds before they went to bed. But number two is that the constant use of the devices is just constantly flooding them with the dopamine because it's too fun. Playing a video game is just like too much fun all the time watching all these movies and videos and shows and video games. It's just fun fun fun fun fun fun fun. What goes up must come down. And so if you're just constantly getting high high on that video game high on that movie high on that entertainment and you're just having all these highs all day. Well guess what. Now you're headed for some lows to balance those out. It's just like somebody who takes drugs is the same principle. What goes up must come down. And so therefore young people are depressed. Children are depressed at record levels and reduced immune system function. Right. And of course we live in a day now where everybody's obsessed with diseases obsessed with say sickness germophobic crazy even even though they you know it's been years since the whole COVID thing. You know can we turn the page. It's I'm ready to just move on with my life. Who's ready to move on. All right let's do it together. Let's move on and you know. But yet there are still people today obsessing and freaked out about it. And part of it is like well you know they're they say well I'm at risk because I have a bad immune system. And you know hey I'm not saying if you have a bad immune system it's your fault because a lot of people have a bad immune system it's not their fault. Some people have a bad immune system and it is their fault because they eat junk and don't sleep right and play a bunch of video games and never exercise. Look eventually that lifestyle is going to hurt you. And one of the ways that it's going to hurt you is your immune system. And so I'm just trying to give you some common sense practical advice. Eat healthy. Get some exercise. Go to sleep at night. And control your entertainment. Keep it under control. Basically what am I saying. I'm saying exercise some restraint. OK don't just over indulge. I mean what if I just sat down right now and just ate a half a half a gallon of ice cream right now. You know I just ate a half gallon of ice cream right now. You'd say hey Pastor Anderson you're overdoing that. Now if I had a little cone with a scoop of ice cream on it no one would begrudge me an ice cream cone would you. No I mean it'd be like yeah you know it's Sunday preach my sermon have some lunch eat a little ice cream cone right have a couple soups of ice cream. Hey that's all fun and games. But what if I just sat down with a half gallon of ice cream and just attacked that thing. You know you'd say you have a problem. You need help. It's like stop get some help. Well you know what. Hey I'm all for a little bit of fun and games. But I'm telling you our generation is overindulging in the fun and games overindulging in recreation overindulging in all this entertainment to the point where it's just dopamine dopamine and just ha ha ha ha ha ha. You know and look what's the difference between you just overindulging in a half gallon of ice cream in one sitting. What's the difference between that and just sitting down and just playing video games for eight hours. You say nobody does that. First of all there were times when I did it as a kid. I'll just say that right now OK. I'm not perfect up here you know I'm not I'm not claiming to be perfect but I'm saying you know I've done it so I know it can be done. I've done way beyond eight hours. I've gone way past that on a on a on an 8 bit Nintendo if you can imagine that. And look if those games were addictive where you little squared off guy is jumping around if I could get addicted to that I'm sure you could probably get addicted to today's games are probably like a hundred times more interesting and addictive and immersive than all right to testify brother. And you know no little girl wants to grow up and marry a video game addict just saying all right. And so we don't want to overindulge. What's the what's the message of the entire sermon is you know you don't want to go to overly extremes when it comes to your health and when it comes to your lifestyle. So I'm not going to get up here and preach at you and say hey don't love sleep sleep four or five hours a night push yourself you know read more pray more preach more so anymore. I don't care how much you do it it's not enough but at the same time you know we don't want to get lazy we need to find balance in our lives. There's a time to everything and God has ordained us to spend our lives working hard punctuated by periods of rest and we need to take advantage of the rest that God has given us. Look we don't live in Alaska thank God okay we don't live in Alaska thank God where it's just like daytime for like weeks or it's just night for weeks. That's messed up man and people that live there they struggle with that. That's why the government like pays you to live there. It's hard to live there. I'm sure there are cool things about Alaska sorry if you love Alaska out there but obviously Arizona is the best state but anyway that's another sermon. The point is you know God didn't really intend the majority of the population of the world to live in like Antarctica and Alaska and stuff like that. The vast majority of mankind is designed to live in a place where it's daytime nighttime daytime nighttime because God is providing us a break. Jesus said I must work while it is day that's what Jesus said the night cometh when no man can work I got to work the works of my father while it is yet day the nights coming when no man can work God turns out the lights at night so that you can't work so that you can go to bed and rest and I'm speaking in generalities of course God bless our you know troops down in Antarctica or whatever but the point is you know most of us we don't work in Antarctica we don't work nights God has provided us a time to be awake and a time to sleep we need to take advantage of it and you know one last point about sleep and rest is that you know there are positive mentions about rest in the Bible and you know the Bible says that the those that are burning in hell will have no rest day or night that's part of the torment and so folks God on the other hand gives his beloved sleep he gives his beloved there's no rest to the wicked but he gives his beloved sleep and so I encourage you and admonish you to make sure that you have a proper respect for sleep that you get enough sleep at night that you go to bed early enough and that if you're having trouble sleeping pray to the Lord you know reach out and get help if you need to but you know don't take drugs to go to sleep you got to figure out what's physically keeping you from going to sleep and you know I will give one last tip you know sometimes if I just can't get my mind to stop racing and and and and you know prayer and whatever and I just can't sleep because I just keep thinking about all the stuff I need to be doing and I just you know sometimes I will turn on an audiobook with a little sleep timer you can set the sleep timer to 15 minutes it'll automatically shut off in 15 minutes or automatically shut off in 30 minutes and sometimes just listening to an audiobook can help me like just focus on one thing instead of my mind going 10 different directions and then I can kind of slip off to sleep that way and so I've given that advice to some people that are struggling so you know I don't want you to go out of here mad at me like well it's easy for Pastor Anderson to say he doesn't know what it's like we're having insomnia look I want to help you okay listen to an audiobook turn off the screens get some exercise you know because I you know what because not sleeping is torture and God gives his beloved sleep let's bow your heads and I've ordered prayer father we thank you so much Lord for creating us and giving us life Lord and allowing us rest in our lives and encouraging us to rest and not just driving us into the ground or or being a slave driver unto us Lord thank you for giving us the night to be a time of sleep help us to use it wisely so that we can be healthy and serve you for the long haul Lord and if Lord if there's anybody here today who is having trouble sleeping at night Lord I want to pray for them right now Lord and I just pray that you would help them to sleep at night and figure out what's causing the problem or just supernaturally heal them if it's something that needs to be healed Lord but I pray that every single person in our church will be able to sleep well every single day and in Jesus name I pray Amen