The Lord Must Build the House

Introduction:

If you have ever built a house or have been part of building a house you know that one of the most important people in the process is the architect.

They are responsible for coming up with the blueprints and also the design of the house.

Psalm 127:1–5 “1 Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. 2 In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for he grants sleep to those he loves. 3 Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. 4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. 5 Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.”

Point 1: We must resist the urge to do things our way.

All throughout history humanity has been trying to figure out the answers to life’s hardest questions like:

Where did we all come from?

Why are we here?

What is my purpose for being here?

What is truth?

Apologetic question:

Where do we come from? (origin)

Why are we here? (meaning)

What’s right and wrong? (morality)

Where are we going? (destiny)

In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve were tempted by the serpent to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

They were tempted to eat from the tree that God told them to not eat from, but the deceiver came and they could not resist the temptation.

Genesis 3:6 says that they saw that the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom, so they ate of it.

This one wrong move caused all of humanity to be tempted to think that we can determine what is best.

We know what is best.

We can do things our way.

A great example of this is with the Tower of Babel.

The people said, in Genesis 11, “Let us build a city with a tower that reaches the Heavens so that we can make a name for ourselves.”

Their desire was to build their way to God and basically make themselves gods.

There are many organizations around the world that have that same goal.

To build such a great empire that they can take over the world.

There are today, and have been throughout history, many different people whose desire was to take over the world.

It was said of Hitler that if he would not have lost in WWII he may have taken control of the entire world.

We even see this today with people who are some of the richest people in the world and we hear rumors about their support of things like population control.

Church, no matter what culture says to do, we need to resist the urge to do things our way because God knows best.

There are not only worldly organizations and people that try to build their own empires, but their are churches and pastors that try to build their own way so that they can make a name for the their self.

“We want to be the largest church in town.”

“We want to be the fastest growing church.”

Do you think that this is all done to bring glory and honor to the Lord?

I question that at times.

Point 2: We need to resist the temptation to do things our way and allow the Lord to build the house.

You might be asking, “How do we allow the Lord to build the house?”

I think the first thing is to determine what the house is.

This could be the church:

We allow the Lord to build the house by doing things His way.

First and foremost, He can’t build the house if He is not welcome.

Jesus walks into the temple area and begins to flip over tables and says, “My Father’s house should be a house of prayer but you made it a den of robbers.”

They were going through the motions but did not care at all about the Father’s will.

It was more of a meeting place for business than a house of worship or a place where God could dwell.

Jesus was not welcome there.

Maybe we need to welcome the Lord into our services to flip some tables and step on some toes if that is what it takes for the house to be built on Him.

Everything else is sinking sand!!

There are plenty of churches around where you can attend to make yourself feel good about life.

There is an abundance of churches that are about putting on a show to make a name for them self, God bless them but we will not be like that.

The only one we strive to make a name for is Jesus Christ.

I guarantee you it will not matter a bit when I get to Heaven if this church grew to 500 people in the next few years and we had to add on to the church.

Jesus is not going to say, “Well done my good and faithful servant. You built a great church.”

The only thing that will matter is if the Lord built the house.

When the Lord builds, people are changed, set free, delivered, and transformed into ambassadors sent to represent Heaven.

We will continue to allow God to have His way, and we will always preach the truth because that is the only way anyone will be set free.

We are not looking for a large church to make a name for ourselves.

I like when people come up to me after church and say, “Pastor Tom, that was a great sermon. It was perfect timing and something I needed to hear.”

That makes me feel great and is confirmation to me that the Lord is leading.

What gets me more excited is when people come up to me and say, “Wow Pastor, that was a great service. God really moved and did some amazing things.”

I love to see people around these altars crying out to the Lord in repentance or just for more of Him.

I love that we are okay allowing the Holy Spirit to redirect our services even though it may seem to be out of our comfort zone.

Unless the Lord builds the house, the church, the laborers labor in vain.

When we read our Bibles and we see repetition it should catch our eye.

When we read 2 verses and see a word like “vain” used 3 times in just 2 verses, we should stop and pay attention.

The word “vain” means useless or worthless.

Unless the Lord builds the house, everything that is done is useless and meaningless.

We could look at the house as meaning our country:

I’m here to tell you today, and it might offend some people, if a republican or democrat, or independent, wins the election next year for president that might be the best business man or woman and the smartest person to ever live but they don’t fear the Lord and love Him, everything will be done in vain.

Unless the Lord builds our great country, we that labor do so in vain.

Until we have a leader whose heart is to turn our country back to God instead of making a name for their self, it doesn’t matter if we have the most powerful army on the planet watching over us, their watching will be done in vain.

We had the opportunity to spend this past Thursday at the capital building in Harrisburg and we had such a great time.

We got to pray over our local officials and pray on the Senate floor.

We went on a tour of the capital but it was geared towards all the Biblical references throughout the building.

Share some examples.

It was amazing to see that our state and country was truly founded on Christianity and has Biblical roots.

The reason we are here today in the United States is because of God.

The reason that we are such a great nation is because of Him.

It’s not because we built everything on our own, but because of His amazing grace.

It doesn’t matter how great our military is, if we continue on the path we are on and drive out the Lord, all of our efforts will be done in vain.

Finally, I believe that this could also be our own lives:

In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat.

That word “toil” is interesting and caught my eye as I was studying this.

It means “long, strenuous, fatiguing labor.

According to Genesis 3, this was the penalty for sin.

“Cursed is the ground before you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.”

We will have to work if we want to eat, but if we do so without doing everything for the Lord, guess what?

It is worthless and meaningless.

If this sounds familiar to you it should.

Psalm 127 is believed by most scholars to have been written by Solomon.

It is also believed by most scholars that the book of Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon as well.

If you are familiar with Ecclesiastes, Solomon uses the same wordage.

It consists of 12 chapters that are all very short.

In those 12 short chapters he uses the word “vain” over 40 times and the word “toil” over 20 times.

The main theme of the book of Ecclesiastes is that everything in life is meaningless unless you live your life for the Lord.

Everything in life is meaningless except the Lord.

Wisdom, Pleasures, advancement, riches, it will all be gone.

But the word of the Lord will stand forever.

Conclusion:

Unless the Lord builds the church, everything we do is meaningless.

Unless the Lord builds our country, even though we may have the most powerful army to watch over us we will fall.

Unless we build our lives with Jesus as the foundation, everything we do will be useless and fall apart.

So, who will build the Lord’s house? He must be the one that builds.