Caffeine . . . need caffeine . . .

“Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber;”
-Proverbs 6:4

So we’re going to get two lessons for the price of one here. In the first, we will see how importance context is to biblical interpretation. I quoted this verse, as usual, without any verses around it. If you take the verse as it stands, you may start believing that to sleep is to sin.

Obviously, that is not what is going on here. But it stands as a good warning in an age when certain preachers will speak on a single verse, ripped out of context, to support what they wanted to say. Does the context support that, or has the loss of context caused the verse to lose its meaning? After all, I could do a whole sermon on this verse, telling people that sleep is evil and you have to stay up all night, and I would seemingly have biblical support.

Except that’s not what the verse means.

So next time I or any other teacher tells you to look at a verse, look at the verses around that verse to test us. It’s very easy to lose the meaning when the verse is not supported by the context.

So what IS this verse talking about? Let’s get to the real meat of this one.

Solomon has been talking about what to do if you make a mistake with your finances or in the way you speak to another. He advises us to go immediately to the person to explain and repent. Don’t even put it off until tomorrow, he continues in this verse, but do it today.

So often we put off things that are critically important. Everyone has good intentions, for example, with his money, but plans to do something about those intentions sometime in the future. That future never seems to come. When we have wronged someone, we try to put off apologizing as long as possible. I suppose we hope the other person will forget what was said. Fairly often, that does happen. I’m not sure it makes it right.

My wife and I had a little skirmish last night. It wasn’t a bad one, but it was bad enough. It was pretty late, which meant I was exhausted, and I really wanted to put off the rest of the discussion until morning. I’m glad we didn’t, because we ended up talking about things we never would have mentioned today. I didn’t get to sleep enough, but it was worth it.

It doesn’t turn out like that all the time. Repentance in this fallen world does not always mean you will be forgiven by the other person. But it just may be worth it anyway. As Paul tells us in Ephesians, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

Repentance is at the heart of the Christian faith. Being a Christian does not mean that we are more moral than everyone else or that we follow a bunch of rules. Hopefully, we are more moral, but that’s not what makes us Christian. We are Christian because we are forgiven. In faith we repent of our sins, and we are forgiven because of the Blood of Christ, who died on the Cross to pay the price for those sins. We have offended God with our thoughts, words, and deeds, but like Solomon bids us go and repent – this very night – God bids us to approach Him in faith to be forgiven.

This is something a lot of people put off, but we don’t know if we’ll have a tomorrow. My advice is to give no sleep to your eyes before going to the Lord for forgiveness.