How Much Sleep Is Too Much Sleep?
00:00:00.000 | This episode will launch on the evening of the 4th of July, so many Americans will be
00:00:08.120 | sleep deprived tonight, which is very timely because we have an email from a listener named
00:00:12.380 | Ashley who writes in to ask, "How much sleep is a sign of personal laziness and how little
00:00:16.780 | sleep is a sign of faithless arrogance?"
00:00:19.080 | Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:20.440 | My question for you is about sleep.
00:00:21.880 | I've heard opposing opinions ranging from some saying that sleep is a very necessary
00:00:27.040 | and humbling reminder of our mortality, to others explaining that we must sacrifice everything
00:00:31.840 | including sleep to be able to utilize our time on earth to glorify God.
00:00:36.280 | What are your thoughts on this?
00:00:38.620 | Is it more glorifying to God to utilize His gift of rest through sleep or to capitalize
00:00:43.760 | on the time we have to go sleep deprived in order to more fully serve Him?
00:00:49.560 | Pastor John, what would you say to Ashley?
00:00:51.320 | I wonder if it might be helpful to compare this question to the question about food and
00:00:58.600 | fasting.
00:01:01.160 | Is food good?
00:01:04.120 | Should it be enjoyed?
00:01:06.900 | Should we regularly eat a healthy diet?
00:01:11.000 | But on the other hand, is fasting good?
00:01:15.120 | Not eating.
00:01:16.200 | Are there times when for the kingdom we will skip meals?
00:01:22.120 | And the answer is surely that God does give food as an absolute necessity for life.
00:01:30.400 | You can't live without food, and you can't live without sleep.
00:01:35.960 | And He does approve of our enjoyment of the food.
00:01:42.120 | First Timothy 6.17, First Timothy 4.4, "And He commends the goodness of rest to His disciples.
00:01:52.400 | Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while."
00:01:57.560 | Mark 6.31.
00:01:59.760 | So both are surely true.
00:02:02.720 | Sleep is good.
00:02:04.680 | Sleep is humbling.
00:02:06.360 | Sleep is a parable of our helplessness and of our utter dependence on God.
00:02:10.580 | Sleep is a gift.
00:02:13.280 | But sleep is not the absolute good.
00:02:17.880 | And in a world with desperate need on every hand, the aim is not to maximize our comfort
00:02:26.480 | in this life or even our health in this life, but to love people and do as much good as
00:02:34.640 | we can.
00:02:36.720 | We see this played out in Jesus' life and His teaching.
00:02:42.680 | Rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, He departed and went out to
00:02:49.080 | a desolate place, and there He prayed.
00:02:52.280 | Mark 1.35.
00:02:53.280 | So He got up early in the morning.
00:02:55.080 | That means He did not sleep out or sleep in, like we might say.
00:03:03.800 | Or Luke 6.12, "In these days He went out to the mountain to pray, and all night He
00:03:12.240 | continued in prayer to God."
00:03:14.920 | Now, I don't know what He did about sleep that night, but when ordinary sleep was called
00:03:21.640 | for, He skipped it for kingdom reasons.
00:03:26.120 | And yet Jesus had such peace with God and composure in this world that He fell asleep
00:03:32.280 | in a boat during a storm and could sleep right through the storm, Luke 8.23.
00:03:39.280 | So it seems that if Jesus did lose sleep in one part of the day, He would catch up in
00:03:46.160 | other parts with sleeps in storms.
00:03:49.880 | He describes—this is interesting—He describes the work of the kingdom like this.
00:03:57.520 | The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.
00:04:02.320 | He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows.
00:04:10.480 | He knows not how.
00:04:11.800 | Now, what's the point?
00:04:14.280 | God is the decisive worker.
00:04:16.920 | That's the point.
00:04:18.560 | God is the decisive seed-sprouter and grower of fruit, and the advance of the kingdom is
00:04:25.640 | not finally dependent on us.
00:04:29.880 | God uses us, to be sure, but not in such a way that we should feel indispensable to His
00:04:36.820 | purposes.
00:04:37.820 | He can do it, thank you very much, without us, and so it should relieve us of a God complex
00:04:44.240 | or a Messiah complex.
00:04:47.040 | Take Paul, for example.
00:04:48.760 | He knew that.
00:04:49.920 | He knew that God was decisive.
00:04:52.560 | Nevertheless, there were numerous situations in Paul's life where he had to forego sleep
00:04:59.560 | for the sake of the kingdom.
00:05:01.360 | Second Corinthians 6, 4, and 5, servants of God, as servants of God, we commend ourselves
00:05:08.080 | in every way by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments,
00:05:13.360 | riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.
00:05:18.360 | Or again, Second Corinthians 11, 25, "Three times I was beaten with rods.
00:05:23.640 | Once I was stoned.
00:05:24.640 | Three times I was shipwrecked.
00:05:25.640 | A night and day I was adrift at sea, in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights,
00:05:33.800 | in hunger and thirst."
00:05:36.400 | So Paul didn't quit the ministry because it was exhausting.
00:05:40.760 | He found a way to press on.
00:05:44.000 | And then, of course, lastly, there's the wonderful Psalm 127, 1 and 2, where God again is the
00:05:52.480 | decisive worker in all our work.
00:05:54.720 | Here's what it says.
00:05:55.720 | "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build labor in vain.
00:06:02.200 | Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain."
00:06:07.600 | And here it comes, "It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating
00:06:15.440 | the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep."
00:06:21.960 | You can build a house, you can watch over a city, and you can skip sleep, and all of
00:06:27.400 | it will be in vain, unless the Lord builds the house, the Lord watches over the city,
00:06:35.520 | and the Lord keeps you up by his call and his strength for his purpose.
00:06:41.600 | So the question always will be, "Am I getting less sleep because I am truly being led by
00:06:50.920 | the Lord and sustained by the Lord in humble faith, or am I presumptuously jumping off
00:07:00.720 | the temple and testing the Lord to see if he'll catch me and keep me from getting a
00:07:06.040 | heart attack?"
00:07:07.040 | So good.
00:07:08.040 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:09.160 | And God can do more in five minutes than we can do in a sleep-deprived day.
00:07:14.520 | So it's never just about the sleep, it's about the God who is at work in and through us according
00:07:19.280 | to his sovereign plan.
00:07:20.280 | This is so good.
00:07:21.280 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:22.280 | This episode reminds me of episode 143 in the podcast, where we looked at the phrase
00:07:25.680 | that we sometimes hear tossed around, "Work like an Arminian and sleep like a Calvinist."
00:07:31.080 | You can check out that episode, number 143.
00:07:34.320 | You can find that in the archive of now almost 1,100 episodes on our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:07:43.400 | And as you can hear, we're still working through some of those audio issues on Pastor John's
00:07:46.480 | end, so thank you for your patience as we try to figure this out.
00:07:50.160 | And we're going to close out the week looking at what does it mean to dream big things for
00:07:54.600 | God, having ambitious plans and serving God, and how do we guard ourselves against those
00:07:59.920 | plans really just being an exhibition of our own self-image?
00:08:04.560 | Should I dream big for God if I have a big ego?
00:08:07.640 | That's a good question, and we'll talk about it on Friday.
00:08:10.600 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:11.600 | We'll see you then.
00:08:11.600 | [ends]
00:08:12.100 | [end]
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