'A Good Night's Sleep" Sunday, April 15, 2018 - 9 AM

A Good Night’s Sleep – Psalm 4:1-8 Bascomb UMC / April 15, 2018 / 9AM & 11AM Focus: A faithful God that is with us in good times and in bad. Function: To pray and praise God while we increase our resources – our people! 5 Purpose Outcomes of the Church: Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship, Evangelism, Service Psalm 4 (CEB) - For the music leader. With stringed instruments. A psalm of David. 1 Answer me when I cry out, my righteous God! Set me free from my troubles! Have mercy on me! Listen to my prayer! 2 How long, you people, will my reputation be insulted? How long will you continue to love what is worthless and go after lies? Selah 3 Know this: the LORD takes personal care of the faithful. The LORD will hear me when I cry out to him. 4 So be afraid, and don’t sin! Think hard about it in your bed and weep over it! Selah 5 Bring righteous offerings, and trust the LORD! 6 Many people say, “We can’t find goodness anywhere. The light of your face has left us, LORD!” 7 But you have filled my heart with more joy than when their wheat and wine are everywhere! 8 I will lie down and fall asleep in peace because you alone, LORD, let me live in safety. Tony Campolo is a preacher, activist, professor, and author. This is one of my favorite stories he tells: “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.” When you were a kid, did you do bedtime prayers like the one Tony fell into? He was still sleepy, and it came to him like an old habit. Maybe your mother taught you this prayer or something similar? At bedtime, this moment in every day of our lives, the day bends into night and we give up the idea that there’s any more work (or play) to be done. It’s time to sleep. We surrender what we wanted to happen but didn’t. We should come clean about our mistakes and celebrate what we enjoyed (read the front page: The Examin). And as we drift off, we begin anew our hope for what might happen tomorrow when we open our eyes & wake up (if we wake up- if I should die before I wake-remember?). Think about it, every night around the same time, most everyone in our time zone just falls unconscious for 5, 6 or more hours (7-9?). Then we open our eyes and start a new day like nothing happened. Isn’t sleep fascinating? It restores us, it’s necessary for sanity and strength, and it’s the most intimate time we have with (duh, duh, duhh!) our own unconscious mind. Plus, we have dreams— these movies that play with music and special effects and staging (I actually flew onetime! WOW). Somehow, we invent characters, conversations, plot twists; sleep is incredible. The refrain in my college days was “you can sleep when you’re dead!” But that’s not true. If you don’t sleep, you WILL die. It’s God’s way of making us take sabbath – you know, rest, renewal, to just BE and not DO all the time. If you’ve ever struggled with insomnia or are close to someone who does, you know. It's miserable when you deeply need rest, but your body, mind, or spirit can’t seem to get it together. The first thing to check? Well, did you pray? I know there are human sleep abnormalities. Some people struggle at all times in their life with chronic or temporary sleep disorders, Psalm 4 speaks more to our spirit than our mind and body (although they ARE related). At its best, a bedtime prayer is about closing the day with trust. Psalm 4 frames bedtime as the possibility of a moment of trust - a lullaby, if you like; a soothing song to hum along to before you fall asleep. 8 I will lie down and fall asleep in peace because you alone, LORD, let me live in safety. Psalm 4:8 (CEB) The theme is worry vs. trust. Martin Luther (the German reformer) said: “pray, and let God Vorry.” Now the key to a good night’s sleep, according to our psalmist, (and barring any medical complications), is to be assured about what God thinks. Yeah, how are you standing in your relationship with God? It seems our Psalmist has had some trouble (some say King David was being pursued by forces led by his son Absalom). The text doesn’t tell us exactly, but we can guess there’s some gossip - and reputations are at risk. We can hear the frustration in the text with the “us” vs. “them” language. Verse 1 starts UPWARD with a plea for the "righteous" God to listen. 1 Answer me when I cry out, my righteous God! Set me free from my troubles! Have mercy on me! Listen to my prayer! Does the Holy One have our back? Well, God has been helpful to believers in the past, but now, now what? First, we should remember God’s past faithfulness and be thankful. Now imagine King David or King Jesus speaking OUTWARD in verse 2. Whoever “these people” are, there’s been some sort of betrayal; people have told lies: 2 How long, you people, will my reputation be insulted? How long will you continue to love what is worthless and go after lies? Psalm 4:2 (CEB) Is Jesus referring to us? Are we the “them” in the “us” vs. “them” language? Do we make God’s mission difficult? Ooooo, we better take a “Selah,” pause for a breath to take in the words and let the musicians play on. Now verse 3 (the LORD takes personal care of the faithful) is an encouragement. If the church is indeed the New Israel, God’s faithful believers, then God does indeed have our back. Yes, we may stumble in messes and mistakes, but there is grace and forgiveness. Listen! in the very 1st Psalm 1 these people are described: 2…these persons love the Lord’s Instruction, and they recite God’s Instruction day and night (see that – Day & Night)! 3 They are like a tree replanted by streams of water, which bears fruit at just the right time! Psalm 1:2-3 CEB Now that’s a comforting thought. Moving on, we hear another – from upward and outward to INWARD - maybe into a mirror. And verses 4-5 resonate with trust. “Hey, you in the mirror, show respect for a righteous God!” We are in AWE over knowing God so well! and it brings us to tremble before our Creator. Then we are compelled to come before God with offerings – WOW – here we are back together in worship! Verse 6 admits that we are a struggling family of faith-- the "many people" who struggle to trust their covenant God. 6 Many people say, “We can’t find goodness anywhere. The light of your face has left us, LORD!” Psalm 4:6 (CEB). They hope to receive Aaron’s blessing: 25 The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. 26 The Lord lift up his face to you and grant you peace. Numbers 6:25-26 (CEB) Therefore, consider this! Is verse 7 a reality? or a hope? 7 But you have filled my heart with more joy than when their wheat and wine are everywhere! Psalm 4:7 (CEB). Maybe the complaining psalmist has been restored to a rightful place in the community – maybe not! Let me discuss building trust from two perspectives: FEAR & CONFIDENCE. When we're stressed or daunted, we know what trust is because we are not feeling it. Fear takes the front seat. Trust or assurance is not what's happening here. The psalms assure us this is an honest human experience and many psalms are centered on this moment. If you ever feel freaked out - you are in good, holy company. When we feel confident, we are also clear what trust is, but from a different angle. In these moments or seasons, we are stepping across a bridge into a new thing and we've measured out something like faith and decided to go for it. There may very well be fear and doubt, but somehow there's a readiness for change and the sense that things will work out alright one way or another. Faith could be described as a feeling of confidence mixed with a desire for action that comes from the conviction that we are dependent on something beyond ourselves. The battle belongs to the LORD! Doesn’t that take the pressure off? We have God’s permission to change our minds, adjust our hair and wardrobe from time to time, change jobs, take relationships to new levels, redefine our vocations as they evolve and…AND join a new community of faith. At our best, humans adapt, learn and grow all the time. Which means lots of opportunity to practice trust. So verse 8 is the proper finish: 8 I will lie down and fall asleep in peace because you alone, LORD, let me live in safety. Psalm 4:8 (CEB). The Griffin Confirmation class visited us last week at 11AM. In Griffin, I had a lot of experience working with the homeless and working poor. Yes, they were resource poor, but that was more than money. They had no family or friends left. So many, due to substance abuse or mental illness (usually both) had lost their communities. The Branch was trying to reconnect them, but the church (on one side) was afraid to open up their campus and relationships (there was, many times, a race issue as well) and the mission section of our community would tend to see us as something to exploit, to use. So, the dance continues. But I liked their way of doing something better than most community’s ways of doing nothing. (Thrift Store, Kids Bible Club, & 7 Bridges?) There are people here passionate about local mission work. What I realized is how rich, how resourced I am. The network of family and friends I have that extends back into my high school days. If I am in trouble---I’ve got you! We are well into the Great 50 Days of Easter: Last week – worship of the body of Christ! This week – the growth of the church – increase of God’s resources here on Earth for the kingdom. Look what God is doing! Now tonight when it's time for bed “lie down and fall asleep in peace” because all is rightly entrusted into God's hands. Get a good night’s sleep. Let us pray…………………. Page 6 of 6