Psalm 128

A song of ascents. Of Solomon. 1 Unless the Lord builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain; unless the Lord watches over a city, the watchman stays alert in vain. 2 In vain you get up early and stay up late, working hard to have enough food— yes, he gives sleep to the one he loves. 3 Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, offspring, a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons born in one’s youth. 5 Happy is the man who has filled his quiver with them. They will never be put to shame when they speak with their enemies at the city gate.

Psalm of Solomon

· Son of David

· King of Israel

· Wisest Man who ever lived besides Jesus

· Wasn’t as wise as Jesus because he didn’t end wisely.

· Wrote Ecclesiastes

[Let’s read it: 1-5]

Bottom line: God has to build your “house” and He loves you enough to want to.

What do we mean by “house?”

I tend to look at this most broadly as a LIFE.

Only two options: either God is the master architect of your LIFE (designs and constructs) or you are. The other valid way to look at it is broken down to INDIVIDUAL THINGS you pursue within your life.

Both are valid because to take the first approach is to look at your life as a whole:

· who is really leading your life?

· Who calls the shots?

· Do you live every day as one who actively submits to the lordship of Christ or do you throw up a quick prayer that God will rubber stamp and bless what you already chose to do without genuinely consulting him?

That’s speaks of a general posture before God on how you live life as a whole.

You might be one today who doesn’t think that’s important at all.

You may or may not even really believe in God but either way, He doesn’t have much authority in your life — it’s your life and you call the shots.

If that’s you, I’d ask you to please take an honest look at yourself to see if you’re really experiencing peace and contentment in you life.

That’s on the subjective level of how you feel about your life.

Lack of those things in your life are is an important indicator of something wrong, but there is an objective truth that overrides even what you’re experiencing say-to-day I’ll get to in a minute.

If you do want to honor God, do you take time every day to prioritize God in your life to make sure He determines which building projects He has chosen for you to work on that day; which job sites of your life He will serve as foreman on?

Then there is the second way of looking at this and the question of what things/projects/dreams/ goals do you set about to build.

- Students:

o do you ask God what kind of friends you should be spending time with?

o Are you asking God what He wants you to do when you grow up?

o Are you asking God what HE thinks about you instead of leaving that up to others or even yourself?

- Adults:

o have you taken on a career path that you never really considered what God thinks of it?

o Started a business or established an investment portfolio or made large purchases without His blessing?

o Have you completely placed it in His hands to do with it what he wills

o Are you single or married without ever having sought the Lord to know which He has designed for you to be?

§ If married, that question is answered but have you asked what kind of husband/wife God wants you to be?

- Have you decided children aren’t for you but aren’t even open to what God has for you?

- Are you pursuing a family in the way youthink is best?

I literally could go on and on with examples, which is why I tend to prefer to take the “all of life approach” and leave the illustration to Solomon. We’ll get there in a minute.

Let’s back up and take a 30ft view on your life at general approaches:

1. You spend your life trying to build a house that’s not yours to build.

ILLUS: David really wanted to build God a temple. God had other plans.

2. You spend your life building a house that doesn’t even honor God

Illus: Tower of Babel Gen 11

“Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.”

3. You spend your life building a house you are supposed to build but do it on your own. (Applies to life generally and specifics within)

4. You have generally committed your life to the Lord building the house of your life but have one isolated area you’re building on your own. You’ve gone “rogue”.

OR, the opposite:

5. you generally lead your life your own but when really big decisions or opportunities come your way, you diligently seek the Lord. You feel comfortable running most of your life, but God gets “special building projects.

This is practical atheism: you believe in God but that doesn’t make a difference in your life.

All are the equivalent of building your house in the sand. Another word picture often used to describe such is “house of cards”.

Success or failure depends on you. It’s all on your shoulders.

Results: - anxiety, worry - Sleepless nights with long hours because you not only have to build it, you have to GUARD IT - it’s your “baby”. - Everything and everyone else is neglected as if this one area is the totality of what you should be building. Other area of life are neglected.

You’re not made to carry that and eventually the house of cards will come crashing down. And EVEN IF you’re able to keep it standing, in the end, it won’t last.

Any area of life (even good things) that God does not build and maintain has the potential of wrecking your entire life and certainly will not last.

Am I overstating? A couple of movies that illustrate what can happen in real life:

The firm by John Grisham - lawyer takes a job at what looked like the best firm for the best young lawyer — but it was actually crooked. Almost cost him his career, wife (and future family) and his freedom.

A movie was on tv yesterday where a famous actor let go of a child’s hand for 30 seconds so a photographer could snap his picture and the child walked into a New York street.

Again, I could go on and on but here’s that objective truth I mentioned earlier: Verse 1-2a: Unless the Lord builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain; unless the Lord watches over a city, the watchman stays alert in vain.

There’s only so much power you have and it’s no where near as much as you think you have.

“Vain” means all you try to do, no matter how it makes you feel, good or bad in the moment (how successful, happy or miserable it makes you feel), IN THE END, it’s worthless.

Solomon, the wisest man in the world, warns that if you don’t commit your way to the Lord, you’ll look back on life at then end and realize it was all for nothing.

He writes an entire book on the subject we’re going to go through together starting in a couple of weeks but sadly ironic, not even Solomon heeded the wisdom God had given him, and he ended in ruin.

Now, let’s contrast that with one who does submit to God and builds his house on the solid foundation of Christ: last part of (2) “He gives sleep to those He loves.”

Full of meaning - opposite of imbalance, meaningless toil, weight of the world on your shoulders, bad decisions, anxiety, depression over destructive decisions, worry over the care of your business or the welfare of your family

What’s significant about sleep?

John Piper in his book “Taste and See”:

“Sleep is a daily reminder from God that we are not God. ‘He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep’ (Psalm 121:4). But we will. For we are not God. Once a day, God sends us to bed like patients with a sickness. The sickness is a chronic tendency to think we are in control and that our work is indispensable. To cure us of this disease, God turns us into helpless sacks of sand once a day. How humiliating to the self-made corporate executive that he has to give up all control and become as limp as a suckling infant every day. Sleep is a parable that God is God and we are mere men. God handles the world quite nicely while a hemisphere sleeps. Sleep is like a broken record that comes around with the same message every day: ‘Man is not sovereign. . . . Man is not sovereign. . . . Man is not sovereign.’ Don’t let the lesson be lost on you. God wants to be trusted as the Great Worker who never tires and never sleeps. He is not nearly so impressed with our late nights and early mornings as he is with the peaceful trust that casts all anxieties on him and sleeps.”

Notice what it doesn’t say: “You shouldn’t work hard”.

You’re called to work hard as for the Lord. Never says to not keep watch; to protect. We’re called to protect in many areas of life — but with the understanding and disposition that God is calling the shots, guiding the decisions, and bringing the results.

Illus: church. The Lord builds.

I and other elders are shepherds but we’re UNDERshepherds. God establishes, builds, draws people in, grows them spiritually, protects, etc. We have an important role but that is a secondary role of submission and obedience. At least that’s the role if we want to see the church succeed.

It’s the same with a family. (3-5) Solomon turns here almost as an illustration of these principles:

I think it’s because building a family is the most basic and important thing we as humans can build.

In the garden, we were first told to be fruitful and multiply along with working to manage and develop the world.

I understand that God’s plan is not for everyone to marry and have children and there is often great pain in that process but two things:

1. To those who want to marry and have children but haven’t, the same admonition applies. Don’t force a house God isn’t calling you to build, but know that God loves you and will use you in building many might mansions that will stand for eternity through the lives you touch.

2. To those who don’t like the idea, I would counsel you to first ask why shouldn’t I get married and have children rather than the popular question of why should I get married and have children?

He tells us that children are a blessing and reward and we’re blessed when we feel our quiver with those little arrows. It may not always feel like it, but I assure you they are.

Kidner: It is not untypical of God’s gifts that first they are liabilities, or at least responsibilities, before they become obvious assets. The greater their promise, the more likely that these sons will be a handful before they are a quiverful.

Parents have to have work hard to raise children so that they’re “arrows” in the hands of a warrior.

I believe that refers to the necessity of raising children to grow into godly young men and women who can engage darkness they are confronted with without being overcome by darkness. Only the Lord can do that.

We nurture them (going to bed late and getting up early, watch over and protect them, physically and spiritually, but wise parents understand they aren’t ultimately ours(eg illustrated in child dedication ceremonies), and we can’t protect them fully, so we trust the Lord to build them through our own imperfections, and to protect them in all the ways we’re inadequate to do so, and the Lord who loves us grants us restful sleep, even when they are teenagers and young adults on their own.

(5) I love how Solomon concludes this bringing it to full circle and showing one of the many ways children are a blessing and are themselves warriors.

The protecting, nurturing, and building comes full circle as the children eventually protect and nurture the parents in old age.

Psalm 37:5-6- Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act, 6 making your righteousness shine like the dawn, your justice like the noonday.

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