Sleeping Trouble
I want you all to turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 20 this morning. And we’re going to begin reading this morning with verse 7. “On the first day of the week, when we had met to break bread, Paul, who was going away the next morning, was preaching to them, and prolonged his discourse till midnight. Now there were a good many lamps in the room upstairs where we all were, and a youth of the name of Eutychus was sitting at the window. This lad, gradually sinking into deep sleep while Paul preached at unusual length, overcome at last by sleep, fell from the second floor and was taken up dead.
Paul, however, went down, threw himself upon him, and folding him in his arms said, “Do not be alarmed; his life is still in him.” Then he went upstairs again, broke bread, and took some food; and after a long conversation, which was continued till daybreak, at last he parted from them. They had taken the lad home alive, and were greatly comforted.”
What we have here is the first time in the Bible where anyone falls asleep in church. But you know what? I don’t for one moment believe that it was going to be the last.
You see what we find in this passage is that Paul is preaching. The people know that it’s going to be Paul’s last day in town and they’ve gathered up in the uppermost room of a house. Some theologians believe that this must have been the house of a rich man and that this room may have even been as high as the third floor. And here is everyone for miles around gathered to listen to Paul speak.
I mean this is Paul after all. This guy is out bringing a new message to people. He’s out telling as many people as he can about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He’s out sharing that there is forgiveness for sins and a way for mankind to be with God. What’s more, when Paul spoke people seemed to want to listen.
And he’d been speaking for a long time this day. The scripture tells us that the lamps had been brought out and that he spoke well past midnight.
Then along comes Eutychus. Here’s a young man that wants to here what Paul has to say. Now in the original language the name Eutychus means fortunate. And he certainly was fortunate. He’d found the perfect spot to hear Paul speak. He’d found an open window, where he could sit peacefully on the windowsill. From here he can see over the people and he can look directly at Paul.
But the day has grown longer and Paul has continued and continued to talk and now it’s the middle of the night. It’s hot. The room is stuffy with all the people that are in it. Maybe every now and then there’s a soft breeze that blows in. And Eutychus begins to fall asleep.
And we don’t know what exactly what happens next. Maybe something startles him. Maybe he’s sitting there and suddenly realizes that he’s asleep and jerks himself awake. You know like some people do when they’re listening to someone drone on and on. But Eutychus sudden falls backwards out the window.
Down. Down.
Down.
Then he’s gone. Everyone in that upper room knows that Eutychus is dead. I mean he’s got to be. He just fell out the window and dropped three stories.
Paul runs down and he holds this man to him and Eutychus comes back to life. He really does live up to his name. He’s fortunate. And Paul goes back upstairs and we’re told that he continues to preach even until the daylight comes the next morning.
But you want to know what strikes me most about this story?
It’s the fact that Eutychus isn’t the last person to fall asleep in church. You see, he’s had thousands and thousands of followers ever since. You would think that the story off a young man falling out a window to his death would deter people from falling asleep in church. But it doesn’t. People still fall asleep in church on a weekly basis.
In fact, one of my very first preaching experiences went south because of people sleeping in church. I had spent hours and hours working on and writing the perfect sermon. (OK. Some of you have heard me preach before and maybe it wasn’t the perfect sermon. But there was a lot of work involved.) This sermon was timed out to about 30 minutes. I had four points that I wanted to get to. I had these great illustrations. I even had a humorous story thrown in and I’m not normally good at telling humorous stories. I mean this was the sermon that I was going to preach and people were going to hear it.
But that Sunday morning came and I was really just getting into my sermon and I looked up from my notes and I saw someone sleeping. They were asleep during my sermon. Then I noticed the second one. And over in the corner was a third. Something in my mind told me that I was going way over the originally planned time. So I started cutting things out of the sermon. I skipped one point all together. (It was probably best that I did.) I started removing illustrations. And that humorous story disappeared awfully fast. I managed to cut that thirty minute sermon into ten minutes.
But what I learned that day was that people still fall asleep in church.
So I’ve got sleeping on my mind this morning. In fact, at the time I started writing this sermon I had sleeping on my mind. The problem was that I wasn’t. I was a long way from home. My wife and kids weren’t there. It was the most uncomfortable bed I ever been in. It was one of those super soft hotel beds with the soft pillows that other people like. There were airplanes roaring overhead. I just couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep.
Then the alarm went off. And what I discovered was that at some point in that long night I had fallen off to sleep and never realized that I was asleep.
So while I’m at it… Have we got any snorers with us this morning?
Thank you for admitting that in front of everyone else. I appreciate it. But what I want to know is have you ever heard yourself snore? I mean sure. People may tell you that you snore like a chainsaw. But have you ever heard yourself snore?
I snore really loud. In fact, I’m told that people in other houses can hear me snoring if my bedroom window is open. But honestly I can’t say that I have ever heard myself snoring.
So I did some research and what I found out is that most people don’t know that they’re even asleep until they wake up. I mean that certainly explains that trip and night in the hotel. I didn’t know I was asleep until the alarm started going off the next morning.
This morning we’re going to do a little bit of talking about sleeping. We’re really going to be talking about three problems that occur with sleeping. Especially when it comes to people sleeping in the church and the problems that can occur in your personal spiritual life when it comes to sleeping in church.
Now I’m not talking about the physical sleep that our bodies need. I’m talking about the spiritual sleep that can cause us to miss out on the things that God has planned for our lives.
And the first place that I think people can be missing out is in knowing God. That’s right being spiritually asleep can cause you to miss out on knowing God. Let me repeat this, for those of you who are not Christians if you get nothing else out of today’s sermon, your being asleep spiritually can cause you to miss out on knowing God.
One of the huge problems that many people face is that they never really get to know God. I was visiting with a friend not that long ago that told me, “Tim, I’m still having a problem getting my mind around this whole religion thing.” You see, this friend went to church with his parents most of his childhood. But somewhere along the way, through all of the tradition and pomp that many churches have, he never got that Christianity is not so much about a religion as it is about a relationship.
In fact, I’d be willing to say that there are a lot of people sitting in pews around the world that still don’t get it. Sure. They show up to church on Sunday. They have a Bible in their homes that has their name in it. But when it comes right down to it they just never really get to know who God really is. They might believe in him. But they honestly don’t have a living relationship with him.
Jesus knew about these kinds of people. In fact, he made it clear that these people existed and that they would find out one day that they never really knew God. Turn over to Matthew 25:41 and we’re going to start reading there.
41“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
44“Then they also will answer £Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
He didn’t know them. And honestly, I think this comes from two places. First, they didn’t know who Christ was. They had never accepted him into their hearts. And secondly, they had never served him with their lives.
That’s a tough situation. Because I’ve actually been asked if I believe that there are people sitting in the pews of he church who won’t be in heaven. The answer is, “Yes. There are going to be people that aren’t there that are here.” In fact a really sad reality is that there are people who may be sitting in this church right now who won’t be going to heaven because you don’t know Christ.
I know. It hurts. But there are some people who are just asleep to knowing God.
Secondly there are people in the church that are asleep to sowing.
Now I already know that with all the farmers in the room that some of you are thinking that I’ve lost my mind. What does planting seeds have to do with being asleep in church.
Well, there’s more to sowing than just planting seeds. Among Jesus last words to his disciples was this awesome commandment that not only applied to his disciples but to us as well. It’s over in Matthew 28:19 – 20. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
But often we’re not even doing that even in our own neighborhood. We don’t go out and tell people about Jesus. We don’t tell the about God. We’re missing the boat on this one.
\ Think about it and be really honest with yourself. When was the last real time that you told anyone about Jesus and what he is doing in your life.
As I added this thought to the sermon I had to really think about this one. I don’t do it often enough.
There was the one guy on the flight to Atlanta. We were talking about what we were doing and why we were flying to Atlanta, as some people do while they’re in flight. Then he glanced at the book I was reading and asked what it was about. At the time, I was reading “The Harmony of the Gospels.” And I had to explain that it was a book the contained the first four books of the New Testament and show how each one lined up with the others or didn’t line up at all. This brought us to a conversation just telling him how God was working in my life and what I believe that God has in store for me. He asked quite a few questions. Finally I asked him if he was a believer in Christ. He replied that he wasn’t interested in going to church but just knowing a little bit more about God.
I honestly don’t know if that conversation will ever make a difference in his life. I can pray that it does. I can hope to see that man in heaven. But there was a seed planted there. That’s the kind off sowing that I’m talking about. Just taking the time to tell someone even a very small thing about God. It could be as simple as saying the words, “God loves you” to someone in passing.
Imagine what the church would be like if we could wake up to sowing. Imagine how many people could be filling the pews in this very church if only we were out sowing the seeds that we’re supposed to be sowing.
As some of you all know I love to listen to two other ministers during course of my week. These two guys have got two of the biggest churches in the country and honestly it doesn’t matter how you feel about mega-churches. These guys have managed to figure out something that few pastors ever get. As I’ve listened to them I’ve come to realize that both of them think that a lot of the old ways of doing church have passed away. They don’t believe that revivals work because God doesn’t work out a revival in our time frame. They don’t think that announcing every week that Sunday School works because people hear it and it just goes out the other ear. The one thing that has caught my attention over and over again is a constant call to their members to be spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. They literally believe that in order to reach people they have to be where the people are. They have to meet the needs of the common man outside the walls of their church, no matter what the costs and no matters what other churches think about it. They want people to come to know Christ because they were shown love. They’re sowing seeds in their communities.
Finally, I think that there are a lot of people in the church who are asleep to growing.
These people have accepted Christ but it’s never really gone much further than that. In fact I just got done reading a book by one of the leading experts on discipleship in our country today. Now as we jump into this one I want you to understand this man. He had been in the ministry for almost thirty years of his life. At one time he led a huge church. But he came to a point in his life that he had to admit something important. He wasn’t growing. In fact, he was struggling with the question of whether he was even a disciple of Christ.
Maybe some of you know what I’m talking about. You get to a point where you’re just going through the motions. You get up in the morning and you read your Bible, you pray, and you go on with life. There’s nothing more there. You’re not changing. You’re still the same person you were when you got up in the morning.
The sad reality of that situation is that it’s happening all over the church. People have fallen asleep to growing. We have this idea that sitting in the pew on a Sunday morning is enough to help us grow.
But we’re wrong.
If you honestly think that showing up on Sunday and listening to me for forty minutes is going to impact your spiritual growth, YOU’RE SADLY MISTAKEN. There is no possible way that I can pour enough into you in that little amount of time for you to grow at all. You’re going to be lucky to get anything out of it at all.
In order for you to be a more mature Christian you have to be growing. The apostle Paul knew this. That’s why over in 1 Corinthians 13:11 he says this, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”
He knew that in order to become more like God we have to grow. We have to quit being baby Christians and grow to b more like Christ. We will never become like Christ if we’re not growing.
So let’s run this through one more time in case I haven’t made it enough of a point already. It’s time for you and me as a church to wake up. The alarm is going off and we need to be awake.
We need to be awake to knowing Jesus Christ, we need to be awake to sowing seeds in our community, and we need to be awake to growing to be more like Christ daily.
The alarm is sounding. It’s going off right next to our heads and we need to be awake.
