Why is sleep/sleeping necessary? Why did God create us with the need to sleep?

People may not realize the vanity of their existence until its end is seen. But rather than making us slaves to hard labor, the Lord delights to give His beloved sleep. Such rest is necessary if we are to find strength and direction for any proper spiritual occupation.

Bodily health is impossible unless we work. Solomon observed this and said, "The sleep of a labouring man is sweet … but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep" (Ecc. 5:12).

How simple! How intelligible, again I say, on the principles of our common humanity! There had been no woman of Samaria in Mark 4, no sinner sent away in the joy of salvation. He therefore needed sleep to restore Him. But in John 4 His Spirit is refreshed by the fruit of His labour, and He can do without food or sleep. "I have meat to eat that ye know not of," is His word here, in the stead of His using the pillow which they had provided.

So, in Mark 4, He is teaching by the seaside. He begins this day's work there, on the banks of the lake of Galilee. It proves to be a toilsome day, and in the evening of it He would fain retire. Accordingly, His disciples take Him as He was, a wearied Working-man, in the ship, and, in the care of their love for Him, they provide Him a pillow, and He falls asleep. Was it ever said with such emphasis as now, "For so He giveth His beloved sleep"? They put off from the shore; and the wind shortly rises to a storm, and the waves beat into the ship. The interruption again comes, for the fears of the disciples awake Him, and awake Him rudely. But He would know no measure of His sleep and refreshment but such as the need of others would prescribe; and therefore He at once rises to quiet the winds and the waves and the fears of His people.

The Lord slept in the storm, and that sleep was the evidence that He was indeed a man, knowing weariness through labour and the rest that sleep gives and it is remarkable that the only time that we read of Him sleeping was in the storm. What was the secret of that wonderful repose? Upon what pillow did He put down His head? The secret was His perfect confidence in God, and His pillow was His Father’s changeless love. We know that He was more than man, His command of the elements proved that and He guided and controlled the boat even while He slept; but He was man, and never used His divine power for His own advantage or comfort. He lived in absolute dependence upon His Father whose word He obeyed day by day. His Father’s will was His will and He knew that His Father’s will for Him was always right; He laid Him down to sleep in the knowledge that God would keep His beloved in all His ways; the ever-blessed and absolutely dependent Jesus rested there.

Christian, He gives that pillow to us, and we may find sweet repose in the midst of trouble. He says, “My peace I give unto you … not as the world gives give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27), and He also said “My Father and your Father, My God and your God” (John 20:17). Knowing this we may say, “I will both lay me down in peace and sleep: for Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety” (Ps. 4:8). And if fear arises in the heart and the cry breaks forth, “Master, carest Thou not that we perish?” the answer is “Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

Birth and growth, eating and drinking, hunger and thirst, weariness and sleep, are essentially connected with the human body and, being presented in connection with the body of the Lord, prove how real was the body He took, and how truly marked by all that is characteristic of the human body, sin apart.

It should be pointed out that sleep is connected with the body, and not with the soul or spirit.

Now this last fact, namely, his sleeping, is the time when the blessed God acts, for sleep is the type of nature's inactivity and expressed helplessness. I say expressed, because though nature is always a weak helpless thing, yet sleep is in the fullest way its expression; when nature is thus silenced, as it were in type, and subdued, the power of the man being in abeyance, God speaks and acts.

So many of God's people become weary in well-doing because they find themselves overburdened with the cares and anxieties of this present life. In the home, the office and the workshop, in private and in public life, there is an incessant drain upon the vital energies of mind and body. Every nerve cries aloud for relief, for rest.

Recovery comes from the revival of the powers of life within the members of the body.