Sermon Tone Analysis

Exegetical point: God is the builder and protector - and he does both through families.

Homiletic point: Unless you build you life and family on Christ - you’re wasting everything.

Intro

We recently renovated a house.

It took heaps of effort and time!

It’s something that we have sunk a bunch of money into - to beautify our home and to build up an investment for our family for the future.

To make a comfortable place to live.

It has taken blood, sweat and tears too.

We’ve sunk many hours into waving a paint brush and nailing architrave.

But you know what?

It could all be for nothing.

All our work, all our effort, all our money - it could all be for nothing.

It could be that it gets destroyed by fire.

It could be that before we can sell the house the bottom falls out of the market and we’re left with a house worth nothing and all our efforts are wasted.

It could be that we loose our jobs and the bank forecloses on our house and we get nothing.

It could be that we three die in a car crash on the way home and someone else enjoys the fruits of our labour.

It could be that before Laura finally gets to enjoy living in a completed house - I get a job halfway across the country and we have to move.

We like to think that we have life in control.

That we are makers of our own destinies!!

That we can choose a life path that is full of prosperity and has no pain.

We like to think that if things are going astray, we only need to try harder or think more positively to get things back on track.

We just take control and shape our own destinies!

We say to our kids - you can be anything you want to be!

You can go wherever you want to go! Do whatever you want to do in life!

LIES!

It’s untrue!

If you believe this, I’m sorry, but you’ve been tricked!

Sure, we live in an age of unprecedented freedom (COVID restrictions excepting),

unprecedented choice,

unprecedented prosperity and wealth,

unprecedented health and medicine,

unprecedented technological assistance,

But,

...don’t be fooled into thinking that you’re the boss of your life.

And even worse, don’t be fooled into thinking that you know better than God - that somehow we people, who lets face it, most of us can’t stick to our fitness or diet, or bible reading plan past about January 31, that we, who are all corrupted by sin, would somehow be able to improve on God’s plan for life.

The arrogance!

It is absolutely outlandish that we could try to improve on God’s design for the good life, for marriage and families, or, that we’re really in control of outcomes in life.

Sure, we can influence some outcomes in life - God has made us moral agents, who live and work in his creation, and we can rely on his created order to act in an orderly way - but we can’t control it.

For instance, an example of lack our of control over life - as a farmer, I can plant a crop of grain - but I can’t control the rain.

I can expect that it usually rains about the same time every year, but I can’t control it.

Maybe I have access to a river to irrigate my crop, but I can’t control the flows in the river from rain upstream - and I can’t control whether or not the government will outlaw irrigation farming next week leaving me high and dry with a dead crop.

Or an example of trying to improve on God’s plan for life would be to say - I’ve got a silo full of seed, and seeds grow, but I’m not going to plant them in soil because that just doesn’t work for me.

I don’t like spending too much time in the tractor, it’s a bit of a drag cultivating the soil and planting and all that, so I’m just going to leave my seeds in the silo and hope that they grow there.

Maybe I’ll plant a few rows in soil, just to make me feel like I’ve done something - but that whole planting paddocks full of seeds is just not how I want to grow seed you know.

I don’t care about the historical reasons why this is a bad idea, My seed - my choice.

Now - fair warning: I might sound a little bit biting this morning.

You might feel like I’m being a little rough with your soul.

But there’s good reason for it, firstly because that how the passage is in part - I like to try and adopt the tone of the Bible text we’re looking at to help bring it home in your hearts.

Secondly I may be a bit incisive because this text fights against the prevailing wisdom of the world - many of us need to wake up to the absolute pile of rubbish that the world wants us to believe.

This is going to be a hard sermon for some - God’s word is going to cut strait into your heart.

Ether because you are being a fool and you need to be set straight, or, because perhaps you yearn for the things this psalm speaks about - but God has kept that back from you.

Either way, whether it reveals the stupidity in our hearts or reveals the longing of our hearts - remember that it is God who speaks through his word, and we must humble ourselves before our everlasting GOOD Lord.

If I say something that rubs you up the wrong way this morning, come and talk to me.

Lets hash it out over the scriptures and we can see if I made a mistake, or whether God’s word is doing it’s work.

He sometimes chastises, and sometimes leads us through heartache, but he is always Good, and loving, and merciful.

So let’s come to the details of the text and submit ourselves to what God has to say.

Not preparing to defend our life choices, not preparing to find loopholes, not looking for mistakes the preacher might make so we can dismiss it all out of hand.

Let’s humble ourselves with a short prayer adapted from Psalm 119:

Deal bountifully with your servants,

that we may live and keep your word.

Open our eyes, that we may behold

wondrous things out of your law.

We are sojourners on the earth;

hide not your commandments from us!

Our soul is consumed with longing

for your rules at all times.

You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones,

who wander from your commandments.

Take away from us scorn and contempt,

As we try to keep your testimonies.

Even though your enemies sit plotting against us,

your servants will meditate on your statutes.

Your testimonies are our delight;

they are our counselors.

We’ll look at this psalm in two sections - v1-2 and v3-5, but we will see that while they look independent on the surface, the two parts are intrinsically linked.

1. Vanity of building & protection (v1-2)

As we look into this short psalm, you notice a few things straight away - It’s one of a collection of Psalms called “Songs of Ascents” and that it belonged to Solomon.

Now there’s not too much to say on this, but it hints at both the origin and use of this song.

It has been suggested that these collection of songs were used when people were travailing to Jerusalem to meet God in worship there.

Thus this and the other songs would be sung as the travelers climbed up to Jerusalem and as they climbed up from the city to the temple itself perched on Mount Zion.

It’s a good a guess as any.

What we do know it that this psalm was part of the hymnbook of ancient Israel - it was a way to teach people about God and to worship him.

Now, the other thing in that little title is that it belonged to Solomon.

This could either mean that King Solomon wrote it, or that it was written for Solomon by someone else, such as his father King David.

But it’s interesting to note as we get into the song, it feels distinctively like wisdom literature - you would not be surprised if you found this psalm in Proverbs - which was written by Solomon.

So it’s not a stretch at all to see this as the words of Solomon teaching Israel God’s divine wisdom thousands of years ago.

But - it is also words used by the Holy Spirit to teach us God’s divine wisdom in modern Australia.

Just because it is old, doesn’t mean it is out of date.

The very fact that it has stood the test of time should cause us to sit up and take notice!

God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

His character does not change, and his Word does not fade.

So what’s God’s wisdom to us through these words?

Let’s kick-on into v1-2

So, we’re getting to some metaphors for life.

Building houses and protecting cities.

These are things that we do now, they’re not that foreign to us - people build houses for themselves, or renovate them in my case.

And there are people who protect cities - Police protect from internal threats and the defence force protects from external threats.

These are normal everyday life things.

Good things.

Things that we need.