Proverbs 3:24-25: “When you lie down, you shall not be afraid; yea, you shall lie down, and your sleep shall be sweet. Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the night of the desolation of the wicked, when it comes. For the Lord shall be you confidence, he will keep your foot from being taken”
“If there are ten problems walking down the road, you can be sure nine of them will fall into a ditch before they reach you.” Calvin Coolidge
Sometimes I believe the enemy does not destroy a Christian by one mighty frontal attack, but he carries on a sort of guerrilla warfare. At least with me it seems to be a war of attrition. He uses small, little daily sniper attacks to wear you down. The war in Vietnam was considered a war of attrition. The enemy knew they could not defeat the United States such they could walk into WashingtonD.C. and take over. But they knew if they could sustain the war long enough people in the United States would grow tired of the war, tired of their losses and just pull out and leave. Satan realizes the same thing. As we are in Christ Jesus, he can not defeat us, he can move into our hearts and take the place Jesus now possesses, but he can wear us down with his little sniper attacks until finally we are ready to just give up, pull in our forces and crawl under yon rock from whence we came and let the hour glass of life run itself out, accomplishing nothing for the kingdom of God.
As a king, Solomon realized this. He was the king of the most powerful and richest nation in the world. He should not have worried for anything, but those little nagging problems that seem to always come up every day, were just wearing him down. He tried to drown it in pleasure, sex, building great palaces and a temple, but every day as he lay down to sleep he was afraid, even being surrounded by sixty Navy Seal equivalents of his day and sleep was not sweet.
The word afraid here is an unusual word for fear. It is not your common word yarah but it is pachad. This is a sort of dread, a Charlie Brown type black cloud that just hangs over your head. It is those little things. The word is spelled Pei which represents gossip, Cheth which shows suffering, rudeness and pushiness and Daleth which stresses the insincerity of others that drive you to defeat. None of these things are life threatening and yet they are. This constant wearing you down causes you to loose hope. I will come back to that word. Your sleep is not sweet. Good old politically correct King James did not want to use the real English word for this Hebrew word so they translated it as the more acceptable word sweet. This Hebrew word is arav which really means sexual intercourse. Actually, the word expresses more of the feelings one receives during sexual intercourse which is a warm comfortable feeling, a feeling of oneness, where all life’s problems are distant. Every so often you get one of those good nights sleeps where you wake up feeling great. That is the idea behind the sweet or arav sleep. It seems that the time when the struggles of the day really hit you is at night, they seem to be manifested more at night than during the day. Yet Solomon found that he could put aside all those trials of being a king and have a sweet sleep because the Lord was a confidence in him. The word confidence is kasal which is a word for loins, to be firm, or inward parts. I will let your imagination work with that one since it seems to be joined with the word arav. Again the reference is not to any action but to the emotion behind this. The word is spelled Kap which indicates possession, Samek representing joy and Lamed which speaks of receiving. The numerical value of kasal is 110. The word for abiding is also 110 as is also the word for foundation.
Ok, leave it Solomon to give us a sexual motif which culturally, even in today’s modern Western society, is difficult to address in our translations or even in our sermons without becoming religiously, politically incorrect. But we all know Solomon was up to his ears in wives and concubines, I mean he was the Hugh Hefner of his day. You can’t blame the old boy for throwing out a sexual motif. Yet, the picture that is being shown is not really a reference to a perverted, pornographic sexual expression so much as it is the expression of the companionship, the joys, and the security that is found in sexual activity within the confines of a secure and loving marriage relationship.
It is that sense of joy a husband and wife feels when awakening in the middle of the night and reaching over and feeling their mate next them. The sense of security knowing that that person is there, that that person will embrace you when you need a hug, will stand with you when you go through those numerous little pachad’s or dreads that you feel. When that soulmate embraces you, suddenly everything is ok. That is what Solomon found God to be.
When the enemy carries on his war of attrition and you are ready to just give up, you simply need to reach out and touch Jesus who is one with you. He will respond with an embrace. He will give you that hug to remind you that you are not fighting this war alone.
Yesterday was such a day for me and I really just wanted to reach out and touch Jesus. You know God gave us an imagination. In fact Paul says in Hebrews 11:1 that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of the things not seen. The word hope in the Aramaic is a word used for a positive imagination. So I just imagined Jesus was right there with me and I just imagined receiving a hug from Him. The Bible says in James 4:8 to draw near to God and He will draw near to you. As I used the imagination He gave me, I began to imagine that hug and I imagined receiving it. You know what, I really felt that hug such that I began to weep for joy. In those moments of intimacy with Him in that praise, worship and hope (positive imagination) I found that sweetness or ‘arav and together with Jesus I watch all those problems walking down the road toward me and as Calvin Coolidge said I watched 90% of them fall into the ditch. If one of them did happen to reach me, well, I knew that Jesus was there to take it on and keep my foot from being taken or, as we say today, to trip me up.
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