“Do not love sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will be satisfied with bread” (Proverbs 20:13).
Sleep is essential to your health and well-being. Continuous sleep deprivation which lasts longer than a week soon becomes deadly. Though the Preacher does not say this in Ecclesiastes 3, it is an accurate statement: There is a time to go to bed and sleep, and a time to awake and get up.
Desiring to sleep and stay in bed for hours longer than is physically necessary is very unhealthy for your income. Wanting to turn on your bed like a door on its hinges is what the lazy do (Prov. 26:12). Therefore, open your eyes, get up, and get to work so you can eat the fruit of your labor (2 Thes. 3:10).
Desiring to sleep and be spiritually lazy is even more perilous. On three separate occasions, the apostle Paul sought to rouse Christians from this perilous spiritual condition:
“And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Rom. 13:11-14).
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore, He says: ‘Awake, you who sleep; arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light’” (Eph. 5:8-14).
“But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober” (1 Thes. 5:4-6).
