Psalms 127 "Calm Down, He's Got This!

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service. This is a sermon series on the Psalms of Ascent by Pastor Don Filsack. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here. We're going to go ahead and get started, so if you can find your seats, that would be excellent. Be sure to fill out the connection card that you received when you walked in.

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We do send out a weekly email called the eCast. It has all the details and information that we want you to have, and so that's the primary mode of communication here is through that. I don't get up and give a long list of announcements every Sunday morning, and so we want you to know where you can get that information, and it's through that email that we send out each week, so we need to have your email address in order to send that to you.

The Psalms of Ascent and Reorienting Everyday Life

This morning, we're going to dive into the eighth psalm, really the eighth song in a playlist called the Psalms of Ascents. The word ascents in the Hebrew word is the exact identical same word in Hebrew for stairs or steps, like this set of stairs going up is ascents.

It is the word that is used for these particular 15 psalms that stretch from Psalm 120 through 134, and that's exactly what we're covering. They all have that title in their original, and so when we look at the psalms, we're looking at 150 songs that were sung by the Jews in ancient times and all throughout their history written by a smattering of different authors, just like somebody might pull out a hymnal or just like you might have a huge body of songs in your iPhone that you can listen to and shuffle and things like that.

It would be kind of like that, but these particular 15 were set aside as a specific group labeled the Psalms of Ascent. These psalms all have the picture of a journey towards Jerusalem, ultimately a journey towards God, and they were sung to help reorient the pilgrim on their way to visiting the house of God in worship each year, and so they were a specific set of songs with a specific intention.

But I think the thing that strikes us at first glance, well, in this psalm this morning, it's been used frequently, the thing that strikes us first is the notion of children. I've even used this psalm a couple of years ago during a family dedication service, a child dedication service, and as we dig in, we will certainly find ourselves by the end of the psalm talking about family, talking about children, talking about blessings from God, but I think the things that strike us at first glance in this psalm are not the main point of the psalm.

So sometimes the illustrations stick out to you, but the illustration isn't the point, there's a point that the illustration is seeking to drive home. The features that stand out to us are the illustrations, and I think particularly because the main point is a blind spot for many Americans, and that's one of the reasons it doesn't stick with us.

As I mentioned, these psalms are intended to reorient our hearts and our thoughts and our minds toward God, and this psalm is going to challenge us to consider our work life and our home life in light of God Almighty.

It's going to help us to reorient and think about the remainder of our time, it's going to challenge us to think about the way we think in terms of our non-spiritual time throughout the week. Now even just to call it that, I kind of blanch at the thought of calling it non-spiritual time, but I think I use that phrase to help us to think about the way that we think about our time in relationship to God as Christians.

We spend a couple of hours, well you're here, so you spend a couple of hours at church on Sunday morning, you probably spend some time praying before meals, if you're a good Christian of course you pray before every meal.

We read our Bibles and hopefully pray from time to time, some of you when you're tucking your kids into bed you read a Bible story with them or you pray with them or something.

Like that.

But let's be honest, the bulk of your time and my time is taken up in some other activity that is not overtly spiritual. Some of you are delivering packages, some of you are performing surgeries, some of you are crunching numbers, some of you are engineering and working to develop things, some of you are working in HR and are processing things for individuals that work for the company.

There's all different kinds of things that you do during the week, and of course I miss some of you in there, but you know what you do all week and so as you think through that, is that non-spiritual time, does that time matter, does that time count, is it like well it only matters and so if you were to take a balance and say this is my time spent doing spiritual things and put it on one side, and we talk about balance right, don't we often talk about balance in our life?

So if you were to take your spiritual time and put it on one side of the scale and your work time on the other, wow, right, like anybody feel guilty when you, if that's the standard, if that's the measure, if that's the way we're going to roll with this, then uh-oh, right, because I mean the reality of it is how much, I mean you go well, I mean I've got the benefit of being a pastor, right, so my employment is spiritual, right, and so that's what people think about missionaries or pastors or whatever, boy, you know your work is spiritual.

So how are we going to think about this? This psalm is going to help us to think about that, that balanced time and I think it's a big challenge in our modern world, it's a big challenge in our modern world to synthesize our work life, our family life, and our spiritual life.

Notice that I said synthesize and not balance. Even the word balance betrays the way that we set these different areas of our lives into different trays, as if we would then take the tray marked spiritual life and then the tray marked family life and put those on opposite ends of the scale and hope that they balance.

Or the one marked work life and then spiritual life and hope that they somehow balance. But I'm convinced that God desires us to be more integrated than that. He wants to have more than just a piece of the pie.

He wants to be more than number one in a list of priorities on your to-do list. But God's intention is to permeate all aspects of your life, family, work, the way you drive, the way that you file your expense reports, the way you file your taxes, all aspects and areas of your life are to come under the authority of God and are to be done through him, for him, and because of him.

And so let's open our Bibles to 127, if you're not already there. Psalm 127, again, all of these are fairly short psalms. If you need a Bible, you can raise your hand and Mike is back here, or Mark, and they'll bring you a Bible.

But we want everybody to have a copy of the word of God on your lap so you can follow along and see that this is coming from his word. Obviously, many of you have devices you can navigate over. But if you don't have an English standard version of the Bible, we'd like you to just take that one with you.

There's nothing magical about that version, it's just the one that I particularly like and I'd like everybody to have a copy of it. So we give those away. And then if you're looking for an app, if you don't have the ESV Bible app, that's an excellent app.

You can find it on either of the app stores and grab a hold of that. But ESV Bible, look that up, and it's an excellent app. I didn't get paid for that plug, by the way, I just think it's great, so I use it.

Psalm 127, follow along as I read, recast, this is God's word to us this morning. Psalm 127, a song of ascents of Solomon. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. Let's pray.

Sabaan comes to lead us in worship this morning.

Father, I thank you for these Psalms as we've had an opportunity to study through these first eight. Father, it's a refreshing reminder to me of how you are engaged and involved in our everyday lives.

How you are moving us closer to you in this journey of life and how each step, like each stair, each step up a staircase is a movement towards you, Father. Each one of these Psalms is a reminder of how we draw closer to you.

Father, I pray for integration in our hearts and in our lives and in our workplace and in the Monday through Saturday of our lives, Father, that we would not just strictly think of Sunday as your day, but each day and each hour and each moment as your moments, your days, your hours.

And Father, as we do come together, there's something special in the gathering of your.

People.

There's something awesome about the opportunity we have right now to sing songs to you and gather together as your people,. Father, I pray that you would be honored and glorified by our singing and that it would not just be an exercise of our voices, but an exercise of our hearts,.

Father, that we would be delighted and rejoicing with the opportunity to gather together as your people, singing songs in gratitude for what you have done for us and that our hope is based on your work for us on the cross through Jesus Christ and in his.

Name. I pray, amen.

Amen.

Thank you a lot to Josh and the band for leading us this morning. Grateful for the time that they put in and encourage you to get comfortable. Remember you can get up and get more coffee, donuts, or stretch out in the back if you.

Need to.

Whatever it takes to keep your focus on God's word, jumping jacks probably wouldn't even.

Distract me back there if you wanted to do that.

But keep your Bibles open to Psalm 127. Having that text open in front of you is going to help you to be able to see that the things that I am saying are coming from the word of God to us and that's my goal.

You guys know, those of you that have been around here for a while know that it's my way of preaching is to just walk through sections of scripture and dig in and I hope and I really trust that the only good that comes out of any of these messages ever is that you come in contact with God's word and that it has an impact on your heart and on your mind.

I pray every Sunday morning that God would speak through me with clarity and with accuracy from his word but also with a passion that is consistent with what the content is. I mean we are hearing from God when we come together in his word and that's an amazing glorious thing that he has put it down in writing for us to study and to research and to understand him better that we are actually getting to know God and so that's our goal.

God Builds the House and Guards the City

And our text starts off with this phrase, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. How many of you have heard this verse before?

I was going to guess that I would see a lot of hands. I think it's a verse that we're familiar with, there's coffee mugs with it, there's pictures, there's all kinds of motivational posters with it on there or you know it can often be the theme of any parenting type things that come up.

And as you've heard it, I would think that if you're like me then you've often jumped past the metaphor straight to a perceived meaning of the text, straight to the interpretation. So that what we hear often when we hear this phrase, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

What we think we hear is unless the Lord builds the family, they parent in vain. But that's not what the verse just said. The verse is giving us a metaphor, the verse is giving us an illustration and we need to dig into the illustration before we apply it.

We need to dig in and figure out what is he saying to us here, what is the songwriter who happens to be Solomon, it's declared for us here in the text, what is Solomon saying in the vast wisdom that he received from God?

And he uses the illustration, not primarily of a family, that's going to come later in the text. So we end up reading the end of the text and we go back into the beginning and go okay well this is about family too, but he's talking about a construction crew.

He's talking about a construction crew, look at it again. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. And then he's going to talk about watchmen over a city. He's talking about specific work.

He's talking about a group of burly dudes working under a contractor to produce a dwelling. That image needs to be in your mind when you are understanding this text. And he wants us to consider what goes into building a dwelling place, what goes into building a house.

Certainly construction looked different in the time when this text was written. There was a lot less subcontracting when there was no plumbing, no electrical, no HVAC, and probably significantly less building codes.

Any of you ever come up against a building code once in a while? Oh my goodness, that can be really overwhelming, right? But the main concept would have been the same. Constructing a house, constructing a place for humans to live in.

You would pick a site, you need to have some access to water close by somehow. A foundation would need to be laid so that the walls would be stable, then the walls and the roof would be installed to shield from the elements.

But I would suggest to you that the common thread that we can relate to between their time and ours is the concept of labor, work, and probably a difficult, hard kind of labor. Someone has to expend energy and sweat to construct a house.

Now I don't know which would have been harder to build in those ancient times where obviously the structure is going to be more simple, right, but you don't have the benefits of modern equipment, you don't have all the lift trucks and the different things that you can employ in the process.

But also in current building, you've got a lot more construction and a lot more things to put together. I think they're probably both pretty much awash when it comes to how hard it would be to build a house in ancient times versus modern times.

It's hard work.

It's difficult.

So now that we have that illustration in mind, we're talking about labor, we're talking about work, we're talking about intensive work, let's consider the shocking statement that Solomon gives us in verse 1.

Unless the Lord builds the house, that sweaty, hardworking construction crew labors in vain. So we need to make a couple of observations about this statement because it ought to shock us when we realize what we're talking about.

We're talking about a constructed house. We're talking about a building crew who knows how to build houses. They construct houses regularly. But unless the Lord is somehow building that house with them, some mysterious connection between God in the workplace, if there's not some kind of connection there that we're going to talk about throughout this psalm, then they're working in vain.

My first observation when I was reading this is I kind of went back a couple of times and I re-read it and I re-read it again and of course throughout the week I've been studying it and looking at what other people think after I kind of come to my own conclusions, checking to see if this seems accurate.

And the first question that just kind of popped into my mind is, did you know that God is in the construction business? Did you know that God builds houses?

What?

Okay.

God builds houses. Like I'm going, Alan Edwin, TA Scott, Roberts Builders, Powell Construction, step aside. I want God to be the contractor for my house. Like if he's in the business of building houses, I want one from him.

Are you getting what I'm saying? I would love it if he's in the building business, I want one of those, okay? But really all joking aside, this is significant as we come to the realization that our work is God-given and that we have an opportunity to see him work through our labor.

Him working through our work. If we catch what this psalm is saying, it has the power to transform our everyday life to more accurately reflect what God desires for you and me in our everyday work life.

Our everyday work life. All of that balance time that isn't Sunday, isn't the early morning hours, isn't that prayer just before lunch. What about all that other time? Is there value to being a cashier?

Is there value to that? Or is that just me time, or is that just, well, it's just a concession. I have to do it to pay the bills, but man, I wish I could do spiritual things. Can you make being a cashier a spiritual thing?

Can it become something that is done for the glory of our Lord and Savior? Whatever employment you find yourself in, can it be done for God's glory? This is saying you can build a house, and come to find out at the end of you building a house, you will find that God has constructed that house.

What does he use to construct that house? Your hands.

Your mind. Your muscles.

He's used you, but who's built the house?

He has.

Secondly, I think it's important for us to identify what is missing if the Lord doesn't build the house. Unless the Lord builds the house, something is missing. Notice the text doesn't say, unless the Lord builds the house, it's a jankety shack.

Is that what the text says? It's going to be a horrible house. It's going to fall over when the big bad wolf comes and blows on it. It's just going to be terrible. Is that what the text says? Unless the Lord builds the house, the furnace is going to fail, and you're going to get nail pops all over within a year.

It's just going to be terrible. You're going to be patching drywall. You're going to be just doing all kinds of work because it's just going to fail. The plumbing is going to leak. Everything's going to be horrible unless the Lord builds the house.

Is that what the text says? No, it doesn't. The psalm instead reflects back on the heart of the worker and talks about their significance and their meaning in the midst of their work if the Lord isn't in it.

And what does the work of one who isn't recognizing God in their everyday labor, in God in their employment, God in their workplace, God with them, and doing what they do for his glory and for his honor, vanity.

The word vain occurs three times in our text, and it means empty, and it implies that the value of their work is limited, not the quality of their work, but the significance of it. The purpose of it is lacking, empty, or meaningless.

If the Lord isn't involved in the worker's work, they are working without meaning and without purpose. Now to be clear, I think many construction crews out there have very little recognition of God's hand in their work, and yet they can produce a fine dwelling place for a family to live in, right?

I would probably guess that the majority of us live in a home that was produced by somebody who was serving some ultimate other purpose, some kind of purpose, other than primarily to honor God in the construction of that home, and they can produce a fine house.

They may even be able to identify some other purpose for their construction. Some can honestly say that their purpose, and if they're just being honest, they'd say it's to, it's the bottom line, it's to produce, certainly to produce a good house that turns an income, right?

If they're being honest, that's part of why many of our houses were built, for the purpose of getting some money. Some would say, maybe out of a more noble cause, I build houses so that I can build a good quality product.

That's what I, my goal is to just make people pleased with the final product, and that's.

Good.

But at this point, it's important to consider what the true purpose of work is, and I think many of us in America have a skewed understanding of what work in general is all about, and that might help us clarify what this psalm is getting at if we get down to the foundation and understand a little bit of the theology of work.

Work was given by God before the fall into sin. He told Adam and Eve to tend the garden. He told them to cultivate before they ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and.

Evil.

Before they sinned and rebelled against him, there was work. It's a perfect garden. And yet there was a creativity that God gave to humanity to develop, to improve, to cultivate that good creation that we still live in today, certainly impacted and affected by the fall in all of its capacities.

Work, one of the curses at the time of the fall was that work would become harder, there would be more hurdles, there would be more obstacles, there would be thorns that grow up in the process of cultivation.

How many of you have started weeding your flowerbeds already? How many of you have been out in your yard going, oh man, this winter was a tough one on it, and there's stuff growing in places that you don't want it to grow, and then the things that you want to grow are dead, and it's like, yeah, there's work, right?

And there's obstacles to the cultivation primarily because of the fall. But work is not an effect of the fall, it's made harder by it. And so all work is intended to reflect a perfect dependence upon God, and it is intended to be seen as an outworking, hear me carefully, work is an outworking of God's purposes in this world through you and me.

If you think about work as God working through me to impact others, that ought to give us pause to think about our work and our employment and the things that we're setting about to accomplish throughout each day of the week.

God's extension towards community, towards human flourishing through you and me. And if you have a hard time connecting your work to human flourishing in the sense of the good of community, then I'd like you to come and talk with me, I'd love to sit down and just help you to make those connections.

Some of you have already thought deeply about your work and how you're helping people. Some of you are going, I don't know how to connect being a business owner in this area to the purposes of God. I thought that the only thing that mattered was Sunday morning, and man, there is so much more to it that God has a plan for through you.

And what a lot of people hear when I say this, by the way, is what we have been programmed to hear in the church is that when a pastor gets up and talks about your workplace, you immediately go to sharing the gospel with your mouth to your coworker.

Should we be doing that? Yes. But what I'm talking about here right now is building the house. I'm not talking about just sharing the gospel with the work crew, with the roofing crew, with the drywallers, with the finish guys.

That's valuable, that's good, but that is not the extent of the value of your work. Building houses is for the purpose of human flourishing and it is encouraging people. It is building houses so that families can grow up in them that we're going to talk about here at the end.

It is for the good of humanity that you do work, whatever you do. And there's value in that in and of itself, doing a good job and working for the Lord.

In whatever area you work in.

What we do to earn a paycheck, what we do in our labor each day can be so much more than just a job. If we begin to see it as connected to God's creative endeavor for this world. Do we see our work in the big picture of God's plan for human flourishing?

Can you connect the dots, connect the lines? It might take you some time to think it through, but I would guess that you can make those connections and again, I'd be willing to help you if you can't. There's a vast difference between building a nice house and building a home for a family to be nurtured together in the ways of God.

Part of it is our motivation, part of it is our understanding. So how does a person build houses so that their labor is not in vain? We must make sure that our labor is dependent upon God. The statement in verse 1 hints at this by suggesting that the Lord is building the house that we build.

Anybody's brain kind of melt down for just a second when I say that. God's building the house that you're building. God is working through you for the betterment of the company that you work for, for the purposes of shining his light out to your bosses and your co-workers and those under.

You and all around you.

The Lord is watching the city, further in verse 1, the Lord is watching the city that the watchmen are watching. We find this more explicit in verse 2, it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.

For he gives to his beloved sleep.

Explicit there.

There is a way of working that assumes all the responsibility for the results. That is the kind of work that is when the Lord is not building the house, when the Lord is not watching the city. There's a type of working that takes all the credit for the successes and owns all of the failures, everything on your shoulders.

There's a way of working ourselves to a nub. The text calls it anxious toil. And many are moved to anxious toil from early in the morning to late into the night. And God here is telling us that's vain, that's empty, that's an empty purpose.

It is empty and meaningless for us to work in a way that rises early to work and stays up late working for the company. Now some of you might be thinking, wait a minute Don, are you giving me a pass into laziness?

Are you giving me a path? Is Solomon here saying, well what's the point of working? What's the point of toil? What's the point of getting up early to go to work or to stay up working on a project? I should never do that.

Is this a list of do's and don'ts? Thou shalt never stay up late working on a job. Thou shalt never rise early in the morning to get to your employer's place. I believe this psalm is, hear me carefully, it's addressing a heart issue.

It's addressing a heart issue that I think all of us in this room are to some degree familiar with. Notice that it is speaking about anxious toil.

Anxiety related to your labor. Anxiety related to your work.

This psalm is not opposed to good old fashioned toil. It's opposed to a certain brand of toil called anxious toil. This is not at all saying that we should be lax in our work because hey, God's going to pour the concrete.

You just sit back and he'll stud the walls, he'll set the rafters, it's all good. If you could just get out of the way, he could just finish this house quick. Is that what it's saying? Now, but can you imagine building a house in anxious toil?

Can you imagine having anxiety over a work project? Anxiety over your interaction with your co-workers or whatever it might be. So we find this balanced at the end of verse 2 with the very notion of Sabbath rest.

It's found there at the end of verse 2 where it says that God grants rest to those he loves. He has portioned out for us times of rest, and particularly it is a good thing for us to rest in him. But before I get too far ahead of myself, I find it excellent that God covers in this text.

It's cool and it's like you can see the wisdom that God granted to Solomon here in the text because he covers the two main areas of economy. Like as anybody's talking about economy, they're going to cover two areas of work, two areas of economic profit and it is goods and services.

The text literally deals with things that economists talk about all the time, in modern days, and Solomon's talking about it thousands of years ago. And it's still the same. Goods, the production of something where many of us work in the goods sector, where you're producing something and at the end of the day you produce so many whatever's.

You've worked on a house and so you're in the production of houses. And some of us are in the service industry like the guy watching the walls. At the end of the day, does he have anything to show for it?

Well, a safe city, but he hasn't produced anything. He's provided a service. Many of us, our culture, by the way, in America is way over on the side of service. I don't even know if you've noticed that, but we are a service culture.

Where does our stuff get produced now? We have pushed all of our production over on other cultures, right? Where does the iPhone in your pocket get made? But we provide the services and do all of the different things and the majority of our lives are in, the majority of us are working in the area of services.

But in case any of this is getting confusing, whether we're in production or in service industries, both are to be seen only ever empty and fruitless without God's intervention. Let me say that the best way to determine whether we have built the house or whether God has built the house is found in these two questions.

If you're taking notes, I want you to write these two questions down. First question that's going to help you to determine whether you are working or God is working through you is to ask how do I handle the pressures of the job?

When push comes to shove, am I moved to anxiousness? Am I moved to toil? Am I anxious toil? Am I moved to the place where I own this all and the weight of it is crushing me and man, I've got to get more hours in to get this accomplished because I've got to do it all and I'm responsible for it all and man, the pressure starts to crush you and you find yourself like it squirts out towards other relationships, right?

Have you ever been in this anxious situation where your wife suffers or your husband suffers for it? Or your kids suffer for it? Or friends suffer for it? Or somebody else in your life is suffering because man, you are in the midst of anxious toil.

How do I handle the pressures of the job? Ask yourself that. That's going to be a key indicator towards whether or not I am working or God is working through me. The second thing, who gets the credit for the finished product or the finished service?

Who gets the credit for what is accomplished? When on security detail, does a security guard end his shift with a chest pounding?

I own that shift.

Like nobody, nobody stole anything while I was in here. And it's going to be the same tomorrow because I'm security. Or is it the Lord provided another night of safety and security for us? I was vigilant.

I did the best at my job, but I recognized that God has protected us.

God has given us security and safety.

Or in the production sector, when the paint is all applied, the carpet is laid, the finished work is done, and the house is on the market, does the builder say, look at what my hands have made? Look at what I have accomplished with my two hands.

Is there credit to God in our work? And equally, we can ask, was the house produced by ceaseless toil without a mind to the rest that God has designed for his people? And if this credit to God applies to simple home construction and security guard duty, consider what it implies for all of us in our various jobs.

It is vain for us to rise up early and to go to bed late, sowing every day in anxious toil. And I want to point out to you that the opposite of vanity, so it's vain unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain.

But if the Lord does build the house, then they labor in full meaning. They labor with purpose. They labor with significance because the Lord is with them working. Once again, the product of a person working in vain could be a really nice house.