Video Transcript: As You Lie Down

Video Transcript: As You Lie Down

Let's look at Deuteronomy six verses six to nine. "These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." Well, that's been 14 weeks that those seven things two weeks for each of those things, looking at habits and routines. I'm sure the Bible has plenty to say about each one of those things. I don't know what else to say. But I must say a lot of things. You know, I'm sure it does.

So anyway, we looked at when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, and this week, it's when you lie down. So I looked at the Bible. And you know, the problem is, we don't have nice little stories of Jacob, and his 12 sons, and, you know, time for bad. You know, Jacob, and Rachel and Leah, sit down and they open up the Bible, and they all have their own Bible, Sidney in those in our Hurry, because he's got a date. You know, come on, Dad, let's get going. And, you know, Jacob says, Well, look, we got to read the chapter, because it's halfway, we're trying to read one chapter a day and has to Stephens following this series, we have to do this because I'm trying to get my 21 days in a row. Because if I do 21 days in a row, I'll get whatever is in this box. Okay, I gave that challenge 21 days ago, to read the verse of the day or whatever you're trying to do, in your personal devotions, maybe or in your marriage devotion, or family devotions, whatever it might be that you're trying to do. It's been 21 days, Has anyone been able to do it for 21 days? Whatever you're trying to do? Yeah, you get one of the things that are in this box. So see me afterwards. Really cool. Anyway, we don't have a nice story of Jacob and his twelve sons. And you know what they did? We don't have the story of Peters home and how they, you know, just before they went to bed, they did this and they did that. We just don't have a lot of stuff there. So, this past week, I searched the Bible over and over and I didn't find a whole lot of stuff. What are we going to do here this morning? For the next 10 minutes.

So I thought, well, I don't know. Maybe we can just talk a little bit about bedtime. So just to get us warmed up for the subject. As I stall for what we're talking about. I'd ask you about what you did last night, in terms of going to bed. For most of you, how long does it take to go to bed? A- your sleep when you hit the pillow? You're already asleep or B- five to 10 minutes? Or C- 30 minutes? Or D- an hour or more? Okay, how many A you sleep? Really? I hate all of you. Really? Five minutes to 10 minutes? 30 minutes. 30 minutes? How about an hour or more? Okay, dream. A- dream last night? Or no? How many dream last night remember it? How many bad dream? How many wish they dream? How many came up with a really cool name of a city that I forget what it was again. Look at Naval. Look at Naval. Naval. Alright. Okay. Last night, how much sleep did you get? A- eight to seven, B- six, C- five, D- four or less? How many A? How many B? How many C? How many D? Really. We're gonna keep an eye on the D. Remember my first church, my first church was the country church and are a third of them have farms. And they got up at five o'clock. In the winter, they did the chores, and they're up there and it's cold, they're working in the barn, and they're busy. And then they come back in and they eat a big breakfast. And then they get to church by 930 10 o'clock, and they sit down and sing a few songs and the heater kicks in. And about the middle of the sermon, you can see some of these old farmers going (head going down). That'd be watching. They just want to fall. They should go and just taken a nap.

Anyway, sleep, sleep is one of these things that God gives us. But what does it have to do with? Why do we need sleep? You know, if you Google that? Why do we need sleep? You'll find out that, that people don't know that there's a lot of theories about why we need sleep, some scientists think they need sleep, because we need to rest. But you know, sitting there watching television rests. So why do we need to sleep? Other say, Well, you know, our bodies are resting while we're sitting there on the couch, but our minds are still going but you think about it. You know? I don't know what what what point does the heart start beating two months something like that from conception? 

Pretty early, like two months in the heart starts beating, and your heart keeps beating until the day you die. Every second, your muscle of the heart is beating. It never takes like a week off. And I've been doing this for 10 years. I'm tired. I'm just gonna take a week off. It doesn't take a day off. It doesn't take 10 seconds off. Have you ever had your heart stopped for like skip a beat just one beat? It's like you feel like you're having a heart attack? It's like well, I mean, that's just one second. So if your heart can keep going every second, why can't our brains do? What's the big deal? You're watching television? Why can't we just for eight hours as I watch television, what was the big deal a couple of neurons firing here and there. There's not like we're working hard. So we don't really know why we need sleep. It's interesting that some people have experimented with sleep. Some folks have suggested that Thomas Edison experimented with trying to be up for two hours, then he took a 15 minute nap, then he'd be up for two hours. And he sort of did it that way. I don't think he ever really succeeded at making that his lifestyle. Maybe he did that for a while. It seems that most people all around the world for all of human history have sort of done this, you know, a big chunk of time, in almost a third of the day. 

They spend sleeping, and then the other two thirds they spent awake. And then there's, there's of course, the part in the southern hemisphere where they take a little siesta. You know, they get to eat lunch. And then because it's hot, hard to do anything in the middle of the day. They take a little nap, which I think you know why we're running for the presidency by Obama and Mitt Romney, if I if I was in the campaign thing, I would rather have a nap platform. That we should have naptime at noon. Everything should just shut down. Right at noon, we eat our lunch. And then we just stop everything. I think. I think our economy would be solved. I think we end the whole national debt thing.

We probably solved world wars and problems. Everything would be solved with we'd have a better attitude. I mean, think about your own experience at work. You know, you eat lunch, and then and then right after lunch or you get ready. I mean, the whole the whole time you're thinking I could just crawl under the desk, or I could just, you know, sit back in the truck. Maybe some of you do. I know that some people do because they aren't right here today. They know their boss won't see them. They park right by our building that they take a little siesta. Yes, I think it's a great idea. But it's not only for the southern hemisphere. When I was in Romania, some years back, we went to the church. And then after the church, we were at the pastor's house, there were like, 30 of us in his little family room, and people were sitting everywhere, and we eat lunch. And without a word, no one explained anything. No one said anything. But everyone, wherever they were just sort of kick back, and they just took a nap. No one said to me, this is what we do. This is just what they did. And I thought, this is cool. This is the way life should be should artist take a nap. But basically, human beings sleep for maybe a third of the day, and then they're up for two thirds of the day. And it seems that human beings sort of follow the pattern of the sun.

When the sun is up, people are up. And when the sun goes down, people go to sleep. Now, it seems like this is a learned pattern. When we don't come into the world this way. I've seen a lot of young young couples, you know, when you have that first child, you bring that first child home, and you have your first issue, probably the first habit, or the first thing that you try to train your child is the habit of sleep. A lot of blue bleary eyed young parents have the problem because this child doesn't know what night is and what day is. And so for three, four months, that's the big struggle. That's the problem. But after three, four months, the infant figures it out, night time is when we sleep in the daytime is when we're awake. It's the first habit that we learn. We're following something that is sort of rooted in creation, Genesis one. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And he separated the light from the darkness God called the light Day. And the darkness he called Night, and there was evening, and there was morning, the first day. So there's this creational pattern that God started, I think it's kind of interesting, that God created this thing called day and night. And then he created what we now explain, use to explain the you know, how we explain day and night. We have the earth, and the earth spins on its axis. And then we have the sun which is stationary relative to the earth. 

So here's the sun appears the earth, here I am sitting on the earth. And the Earth spin I can feel the sun light and then I wake up. So one time around, is a day. Since you think God created today, it was four days later, that He created the sun. It's almost as if God is saying, You know what, I create what I want, and then I create the explanation, I can create any explanation, it's up to me. So God creates this pattern, this pattern of night, and day, and what does that do for us? So one thing it does for us is it marks our way. Day and night sort of marks our way and it does it in a couple of ways. One way it does it, it does it in a spatial way. Psalm 113, verse three reads: "from the rising of the sun to the place its sets." The name of the Lord, is to be praised. A couple days, that was beautiful sunset. But it was one of those orange ball things came up and then orange line was right across the whole horizon. So you look at the sun, you're looking to the east, and as far as you can see that is where the sun is. That it comes up all day and travels across the whole sky. And then finally it sets in the West, Sorry I am spatially oriented people.

So as far as you can see the East as far as you can see to the West. In other words your whole world, everything that you can see is Gods. So in a way the sun, and it's traveling sort of marks out God's territory. And actually, you know, from our human point of view, it seems like the sun goes around the whole thing. The whole world is Gods. The sun sort of marks out what is Gods in spatial way. But it also marks out time. Psalms 92, "we have a song that we think it is good to praise the Lord make music to your name almost high, to proclaim your love in the morning, and your faithfulness at night." So now it's a time thing, not just a spatial thing, but God is sort of worthy of our praise from morning till night. Days sort of mark our time, in a time is this ambiguous thing what it is time, we talk about an hour or two hours, but what is an hour? An hour is just this arbitrary thing. We have watches. And we see this little thing ticking around. All we're doing is comparing one movement with another movement. When our kids were little, they didn't know what an hour was. So we would compare going to grandma's house with sesame street. We're going to grandma's house, for how long is that going to be? It's going to be three Sesame Street. That three hours was an hour? I don't know. That's just ticking clock. They understood what is sesame street was. What is that? It's just a bunch of events. It's this, it's Oscar doing this and then the ground doing that. 

I guess that's one of the same person. So anyway, it's you know, those that you're just comparing two things and getting a rough sense of what time is. Otherwise, we have no, we don't have a sense of where we're at. So if God gives us this thing called day, and then he created in six days, and he took the last day off, we have this thing called a week, we're still operating with this thing called a week. And then we put 52 of those together. And we have this sense of a year. And every year goes by and we get to reflect on what happened this last year. What are we going to do this next year? It sort of marks our way as we go gives us a sense of where we've been and where we are and where we're going. Psalms 90 verse 12, "teach us the number our days are right, that we make gain a heart of wisdom." There's something about these markings, that help us somehow. How does this help? And how does this relate to Deuteronomy Six? This is a tough week. How do you put this stuff together? There's two things, two things I want to say. 

One, is I think God gives us these markings. Especially this night and day to help us with our habits. In some ways, God is giving us a freebie. When we talk about the habit of sitting at home a few weeks ago, when you sit at home. And one of the things we talked about when you sit at home probably the most common thing that people do when they sit at home is they eat. They eat together, sitting together, eating together. Eating is another one of those gifts that God has given us. If you think about the hunger drive is one of the greatest gifts that God has ever given to us. It drives us towards something, Number one, it's incredible. It's an incredible joy, eating. We think about it when you go on vacation. If you took the eating thing out, what would you do? You know, you go somewhere and it's like, okay, there's the beach. 

It was the ocean you know, but after five minutes see what you do what you do is you go you look at it. This is so beautiful. Where are we going to eat? You go to the mall, what is that the mall Anyway, there's shoes and in women's clothing. That's all there is at the mall, and things to eat. That is it, he took that out. What would there be to do? If he had people over and you couldn't eat? Sit down? Ok, so how are you? Great. What would you do? Eating is this is incredible gift that God gives us. Number one is just enjoyable. And number two, it's enjoyable with people. And you know, a lot of things. I mean, if you went to a movie every single night after a couple of weeks would be like, Okay, I'm sick of that. A lot of things. You just get sick. You know, you do something a lot you just get sick of it. But eating, you can go to an all you can eat thing tonight, you can eat until you can't eat anymore. You're just stuff. You walk out of the place and you just, you can't food just nauseates you and then someone says, hey, let's go have ice cream. Okay, so you can, you can always add ice cream. So you have ice cream, okay, now you and your ice cream. And you. I mean, you don't wanna you don't want to eat ever again in your life, that you're done. That's it. 24 hours later, food is all you can think about.

Food is fine, you can think about. Food is this incredible thing that keeps coming, and why is gonna give it to us to drive us together. It gives us this thing that we never get sick of that keeps driving us together. It's like a freebie thing that God says. I'm gonna help you succeed at getting together. And then we kind of wasted it, in our culture, we wasted because we have food and every corner, would never really ever that hungry. Instead of being really hungry. We can just, you know, stop fast food. You know, there's candy everywhere, you know, all around the house and stuff. A couple days ago, I had to get something out of the closet for my wife because she's laid up and as weird as this thing. She said it's under the closet in the lab under some of my stuff. So I go under this stuff. Here's his boots. Here's is that and what did I find?

A box of chocolate candy, things with peanut things come from Hawaii or something? There they've been sitting, hidden. I didn't know they were there. Of course I eat some. Right? No, I hate them until they were gone. That's why she hides them. But still, my point is, it's everywhere.  It's the same thing with this day. This need for sleep. You can be the most undisciplined person in the world. Your personality is procrastination, you put everything off. You know, being disciplined about habits and routines, you're just horrible at it. But you know what, every day you go to bed. It doesn't matter if you're horrible and undiscipline, it doesn't matter because eventually you're going to get tired, and you will go to bed. It's like God says you're gonna succeed at this one's. I will make sure that you see that this you're gonna go to bed and you can put it off, you can fight it. But eventually you're going to cave in and you're going to get out if you can stay in bed for so long. You know, young people think it's an incredibly long time. But even they get up at some point. Some point they got to get up. So it's it's like this habit is routine that God gives us and it's a freebie you will succeed at this. So all we have to do is tie a few other good things along with it. You see, you're gonna you're gonna go to bed anyway. So why not tie some really good things to this thing that you're already going to succeed at. 

So what does the Bible have to say about that? Well, first of all, Deuteronomy six says, talk about these commandments. When you lie down. I tried to find some other verses with me. We don't have these nice little stories of Jacob and his sons, but we do have a few things. Ecclesiastes 5 verse 12, "the sleep the labor is sweat when he eats a little or much. But the abundance of the rich man permits him no sleep," don't you hate versus like that. Because, you know, first of all, it seems to suggest the rich men does not sleep and the poor man does. I don't know you're poor, and you don't know where your next meal is gonna come from, and you have a mortgage to pay, you don't know how to pay, it seems like you lose a lot of sleep to. And I know people with a lot of money have a lot of issues and problems and think that they lose sleep. But people that win the lottery, because they have a lot of problems, but who would like to shout out those problems. But if you read the context of Ecclesiastes 5, what it's talking about is the person who is never satisfied. Talking about the person who will sacrifice their soul to get wealthy, but give up everything to do it. In other words, that's the focus of their mind. They don't have a godly focus, better to have a godly focus then be poor. But a ungodly focus and be rich. 

So I'd like to start off with that first first, because there's no little nightly habit that you can do that concern of undue ungodly codes. Okay, so when we talk about having a nice nighttime ritual that will help you sleep well and help you, with your walk with God and your connection to other people. It's not like you can have this, you know, you can go and do your own thing and your focus is yourself. And then somehow at the end of the day, you're gonna do slow prayer, and then you're done. asleep of the laborer is sleep, that the sleep of the person who is doing their best with God has given them. So one of the suggestions that I make in your little thing here, I'll be following this week's this week's is week number five when you lie down, and they have a challenge options. Number one is before bed. Thank God for three blesses in your day. What if you do that? Before you go to bed each night?

Maybe as a family, it was an individual? Or maybe it's husband and wife and you said, What three blessing can we thank God for today? In other worlds, we're looking at what you have. Not what you don't have. Psalms four verse eight, "I will lie down and sleep in peace for you alone O Lord made me dwell in safety." If you have kids, that's a big issue, isn't it? kids when they go to bed, when you turn the lights off, you know, everything becomes a monster. The door hit window, the tree outside the window, bugsin the bed. All those things. So kids have a fear in the dark. But you know, as adults we do to. I mean, when is it that you're most depressed? When is it that, you know. Thoughts come in then worries come in at night, sometime. And when things are still in the day, you're busy, things are happening. There's problems to be solved. There's people bothering you, there's someone calling you. There is the faucet that's dripping there's the sound that's broken. You know there's all this stuff in our world that keeps us so busy and then finally you know we get into bed and we close our eyes, and what it is all about. You know some of the depressing thoughts where's all this go. When you lie down and sleep in peace you alone O Lord who makes me dwell in safety, well how do we get that feeling? Proverbs six we sing in the last couple of weeks when you walk, they will guide you when you sleep. They will watch over you. 

What is this Proverb talking about. When you sleep, they will watch over you, who are they? Yeah, these commandments are a lamp and these teaching is a light, the Word of God. The Word of God will watch over you. So when before you go to bed, and you got to go to bed. This is what's always going to happen. So, you know some of you may be struggling with your devotions you know you're gonna do your devotions. You can read the verse you're gonna you're gonna pray you're gonna do this with your family. You're gonna do this with your your spouse, but you know your life is all over the place. You'll never get around to it when you got to go to bed. Why not do just before you go to bed? You know, that's something you'll always do. So you'll succeed at it. So number two as a habit challenge, before bed read the verse of the day one last time. Or number three, before bed do devotions with household. Or number four before bed, pray, be sing a song with each child, little children, they have to put to bed kids love that. Kids love time with their parents. Read them a story. Read a Bible story, sing a song. Ask them what they're thankful for. Sing the blessing song to end your day.

Imagine if you can end is the day with those words of Lord, the creator of heavens and the earth is smiling on you before you go to bed. Sleep at peace. All the worries of the day, all the things, all the struggles, all the problems. They pale in comparison to God. You know it you know when kids too, you know, so you read the verse today and today's verse, does not mean anything, so whatever. You know, sometimes we wonder whether kids are getting anything out of what we read in the Bible, and you're going out there messing around at the table, you're reading the Bible, or you're praying, and you're like, I don't I don't think getting any of this. You ever feel that way? You know, when I grew up, we always ended our dinner with the Lord's Prayer. Our father which art in in heaven. It's the King James Version. I always thought God had some kind of chart that he was dealing with and heaven. You know, he had to go somewhere. And I had no idea what that meant. Okay. So for, you know, 10 12 years of my life, we set that every single day and I had no clue what it meant.

But you know, it didn't matter. What I do is that there was a God, and then he was special. And then he somehow was bigger than us. And then it was very, very important because we kept talking to him every day. And whether he had a chart and have it or whatever it was, it didn't really matter. It's the feeling, it's the sense that kids get about the whole thing. It's not all the details. If they don't get on the doctrine of God, it takes a lifetime to get, what they get is a sense of how important they get a sense of whether you trust Him. Whether this is a fly by night, or whether this is really important, whether you trust in this thing, whether you are doing it or not. Ephesians four verse 25, Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully with is neighbor, for we are all members of one body, in your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.  Do not let the sun go down, while you are still angry. So there's a bedtime habit. How do you not let the sun go down without being angry in the household? So what habits can you do before you go to bed that will make sure you're not angry at one another?

Pray? You know, I've heard of couples, you know, back, a generation or two, couples used to go to bed together. Now a lot of times one goes to bed at one time, one goes at another time. But couples used to go to bed together. And then they would like like little kids get at the end of the bed, get on their hands and knees and have a little one minute prayer together. How can you stay angry at this person, if you're sitting on your knees together praying to a God who loves both of you unconditionally? You know, that's what prayer does. If you're angry at someone and you sit down and pray, what you're doing is inviting God who knows all about both of you to sit down. It's really hard to sit down. You know, if I sit down with you, and I'm angry at you, and then we invite God to sit down with us. It's hard for me to say all kinds of nasty things about you with God sitting there

Because he knows me. So what am I going to do? I'm going to be more hard on myself. Maybe I was blind. That's what happens. It's hard to stay angry at someone. When you pray to God, it's hard to stay angry at someone when you read the Bible to you. So what can you do before you go to bed so that you won't be angry. My wife about three months ago instituted, let's kiss each other before we go to sleep. So that's what we do for three months. Now, since she hurt her foot, our relationship has been slightly strained, because she's, in my view, and a little demanding and a little bit, you know, a little grumpier than you know, you know, maybe she has every right to be but you know, and I'm not the best nurse in the world caretaker. I don't have to give of mercy. I have the gift of truth telling. In love, yes. Yes. Anyway, so a couple nights ago. She, you know, I like to cuddle before we go to sleep, and she doesn't, so she likes to face the other way. So how do you kiss when you're facing opposite directions? It just doesn't. It doesn't work so well. So we gotta, it's a lot of work to kiss someone and when your faces the other way, so then who's gonna turn and how's this gonna go? My foot hurts. So a couple nights ago, we we did the metaphorical kiss. 

That, you know, I don't know what that is. Here's your kiss, we threw it up at the ceiling, you know. And I think it's eroding away, I don't think you know, I think that's not good. Anyway, that's one thing you could do. And I'm going to another thing, it's not on your challenge thing, but you could write it in. And I'm gonna pass this around. So if you if you're married, if you take one of these, I was going to get candy kisses, but I like the mints better. So anyway, if you take one, that means for the next week, you're going to try for for this week, every night, we're going to give your mate a kiss goodnight. So if you can kiss, kiss kiss, you only get one, and then you just pass it around. So no, you get one together. That's it, you share it. You can't share it then you got other problems. What other things can you do see what the good the bad the angry? You know, the Lawsone show, remember that show? As a family. They actually said Goodnight to each other. You know, people used to do that before they would go to bed, they would actually say goodnight, they would just disappear. My daughter in law, Patti in Ecuador. When you when you visit any family, everyone in the household has to come down and say hello. When you leave everyone on the household doesn't matter if you're on a computer doesn't matter if you're 12 doesn't matter if you're 17 everyone in the household has to come down and say goodbye, cooking together. 

I don't know what it is, you know. And the other thing I asked what kinds of things do you do? I hope you do this together and your household currently is question one. Currently what happens in your household on a typical night? Each one does their own thing, you could do homework, people watch TV. Number two, how you describe your current bedtime ritual? Number three, how well does your current bedtime ritual connect you with your household? How does it connect you with God? Number four, how well does your current bedtime ritual help you end your day, in a positive way? This is a freebie that God has given us this end of the day thing. It's something that we all do. Why don't we use it? Number five, how does your current bedtime ritual prepare you for a great night sleep. So I hope that you try this whether your household with the whole family, whether you're a household of one, household and two, we will have to go to bed we all have a ritual that we do. 

Maybe you're a household of one, you call a friend of you calling your kids what what is it that you do that helps you connect to God and the people that you love.

Let's pray: Lord we're thankful that you that you give us these tokens to our day. The rising of the sun, the morning sun. There is an end to the day. And whether we're disciplined or not, we do it. We're successful at, Lord helps us to connect other positive habits. To connect meaningful things that connect us to You. That connect to your Word, that connect us to the people that we love. Help us to evaluate some of the things that we're doing, put away our sinful habits. Change some of the habits that you're doing or add different things in this next week. Help us to to search the scripture to find other little helpful verses that may relate to this business, ending the day. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.

So this next week, I'm going to email you on Friday, see what you what you've done or how you've done but that's another challenge. I'd like you to look through the Bible and see if you can find other verses that may relate like this verse about anger, you know, don't let the sun go bla bla, bla, without still being angry. There's other verses in the Bible too, that relate to this whole going to bed. End of the day kind of thing see if you find anything else. At this time, we're going to have our offering if you're new visiting with us, there's a little slip in your program and you can fill that up, put that in the offering basket if you like, feel free to do that.