I wanna start with a single word this morning
that will probably create some interesting thoughts
in your mind.
The word is control.
Control.
We all like to think that we are mostly in control
of our lives until we realize that we're not.
Maybe you've had an experience like this.
You look at your calendar and it says,
well, I have an appointment tomorrow at 8 a.m.
So you do the math in your head, you plan ahead.
You think, okay, well, I know where I'm going.
It takes 20 minutes to get there.
So I know I'll leave it like 7.35,
give myself just a little bit of margin.
And you think I've done this a million times before.
It's always worked out just fine.
So you don't even really give it a second thought.
You just plan and you go.
But then things get in the way of your plan.
And people make choices that throw you off.
Stuff happens, as they say.
Traffic is heavier than it should be.
Somebody had the audacity to let their car stall
in the fast lane on the path to your appointment.
Hard to believe, right?
And then you're like, I didn't check my traffic app
before I left because I've done this a million times.
You know, what's there to worry about?
What could go wrong?
Well, it turns out everything could go wrong.
Now the freeway isn't moving.
People are honking their horns.
Some hooligan is now passing you on the shoulder,
breaking the law and somehow beckoning you to follow suit.
And after great frustration and wild swings of emotion,
you finally make it to your appointment.
You're 15 minutes late.
And of course, your friend is not there.
And so you double check your calendar
and you look everywhere.
And you're like, what's happening?
And then you look at your notifications
and the text came in 10 minutes ago,
and it's your friend and they've canceled on you
at the very last minute.
Again, frustration and wild swings of emotion
ensue and overwhelm you.
You've now realized that you've wasted your time,
your energies, and it turns out all of that venting
and all of that stress was completely in vain.
Completely unnecessary.
Here's the point.
It's really easy for us to come to believe
that we are in control.
That we're in control of all the outcomes
of our daily lives.
And then even in bigger things,
in things like the building of our homes and work
and the raising of children,
that we can begin to think that if we just strive hard enough,
if we just plan precisely enough,
that we can control those outcomes too.
And we seem capable of believing that we can do that.
We seem capable of believing this,
even though we're Christians and we love God's word,
and we know that the word says otherwise.
We know it, right?
James, for example, tells us, James chapter four,
come now, you who say, today or tomorrow,
we will travel to such and such a city
and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.
And then listen to the rebuke.
Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
What your life will be.
For you are like a vapor that appears for a little while
and then vanishes.
Instead, you should say, if the Lord wills,
we will live and do this or that.
I once read somebody say that we can go to sleep at night
as professing Christians and wake up in the morning
as functional atheists.
Going about our day thinking that
we've got everything figured out
and we've got it all planned out
and that we are the masters of our outcomes.
And so we wake up and even though we're not atheists,
we function that way and if we're not careful
to think about it.
We do all of it without remembering
who's really in control.
So that's our theme for this morning.
Let's grab our Bibles, let's go to Psalm 127.
Psalm 127, we have finished our four plus weeks
in Psalm 119 and guess what?
We're now heading into the final stretch
of our sermon series in the Psalms.
Can you believe we've been at it for a while?
We've been at it for 14 months now.
Right now the plan, Lord willing,
is to cover seven more Psalms after today
and to wrap up the series before we get to Reformation Sunday
and the holiday season that will soon be upon us.
Happens fast, doesn't it?
But today we're in 127 and this is one of a set
of 15 of Psalms that are called the Songs of Ascent.
It runs from Psalm 120 to Psalm 134
and the reason why they're called Songs of Ascent
is because at some point in Jewish history,
these 15 Psalms were compiled together
and used by the worshipers who were traveling
to Jerusalem for the three great pilgrimage festivals
of the Jewish calendar.
What are they?
They're Passover, Shavuot, also known as Pentecost
or the Feast of Weeks, and Sukkot, right?
Also known as the Feast of Tabernacles
or the Feast of Booths.
Travelers would recite and sing these songs
as they traveled to Jerusalem every year,
three times a year.
Now why are they called Songs of Ascent?
Because as many of you know,
some of you who have been to Jerusalem,
you know that it's located up on a hill.
So as you're traveling to Jerusalem,
you're always ascending, you're always going up.
And so the picture is quite beautiful
that ancient Jews were able to enjoy
this blessed experience of not just being in Jerusalem
for the festival, but the anticipation of it,
of walking up to the city of God
and knowing what lie ahead of them in the temple courts
to be able to worship and sacrifice
and to recite and sing these beautiful Psalms as they went.
So let's read the entire Psalm.
It's not long, just five verses.
And it's titled, and this is built into the manuscripts,
A Song of Ascent of who?
Of Solomon.
Oh boy, important to note the author.
We'll come back to him later.
Verse one, unless the Lord builds the house,
labor and vain who build it.
Unless the Lord guards the city,
the watchman keeps awake in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early,
to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors,
for he gives to his beloved even in his sleep.
Behold, children are a gift of the Lord.
The fruit of the womb is a reward,
like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
so are the children of one's youth.
Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them,
they will not be ashamed when they speak
with their enemies in the gate.
So this is very clearly a wisdom Psalm,
and in my opinion, one of the most practical
of the entire collection of Psalms.
As you see in the text here,
it deals with several very important areas of our lives
that interestingly often compete for our attention.
Number one, the home.
Number two, security.
Number three, work.
And number four, the raising of our kids.
And overall, what Psalm 127 does
is it speaks to our lack of control
in all of those areas and more.
And it speaks of God's sovereign control
over every aspect of our human effort.
So let's start by looking at the first two examples
that Solomon brings to us.
Look at verse one, and right out of the gate,
we see two conditional clauses.
Twice you see the psalmist using the word unless,
and then at the end using the word vanity.
And the message is obvious,
unless there is one key thing in place,
any effort that we put out,
anything we do to strive here on the earth
is ultimately, without this one key thing,
is ultimately not gonna be fruitful or lasting.
And so it seems to me that this has got to be
one of the most important things
for any human being to grasp, right?
Because we're all searching for meaning in things, right?
It's been hardwired into us by our creator.
We want to know that we're living for more
than just the next moment,
that there's a greater purpose
and a greater goal to our lives.
So we've got to know what this one thing is.
So let's pay attention as we look again at verse one.
Unless the Lord builds the house,
the builders labor in vain.
And unless the Lord guards the city,
those who watch over it stay awake in vain.
So what's the one key thing?
Unless what?
Unless the Lord is the one doing the work.
Unless the Lord is the one working through his servants,
it's all vanity.
And apart from our trusting in him and depending on him
and depending on the outcomes that he alone ordains,
all of our work is in vain.
Now, I don't think there's anybody here who would say,
I really hope that all the effort
I'm putting out of my life is in vain.
So we need to get this right, right?
Now it's important to understand,
there is a slight distinction
between what Adam has been teaching
in our series in Ecclesiastes
and what Solomon is saying here
when he uses that word in vain.
In Ecclesiastes, right?
We've heard this in all of Adam's sermons,
this idea of the vanity of life,
all of our labors under the sun.
And in that book,
Solomon uses a particular Hebrew word, havel.
And as Adam has been showing us,
that word havel refers to a breath or a vapor.
I love the way he's put it, soap bubbles.
All of life is like soap bubbles.
You blow them out and they go up
and before you can grab them, they're what?
They're gone.
That's what he's talking about.
But here in Psalm 127,
Solomon uses a different Hebrew word.
He uses shav.
And that word carries the idea of emptiness.
It carries the idea of nothingness.
It implies what you might call
a longer term sense of futility to all of our effort.
So it means that you can throw yourself
into a long series of tasks in life.
And in the end, wake up one morning
and look in the mirror and say,
what was the point of all that?
Imagine living that type of a life
where you just, you strive and you work and you labor.
And one morning you wake up and you look in the mirror
and you go, what have I been doing?
What is the point of all of it?
At the end of the day, my striving has been fruitless.
Ultimately it's been meaningless
because it lacks eternal value.
So in his great wisdom, Solomon is saying to you and I,
anything that we set out to do,
building a house or guarding a city, for example,
it is worthless unless it is the Lord
who is doing the work through us.
And when he's doing the work,
then everything has great meaning
and everything has transformational power
and everything we do has eternal value to it.
Now you might ask,
what's the big deal about building a house?
That seems pretty mundane, pretty basic,
but let's flush this out just a little bit
because I think this is actually very timely
for the day that we live in.
First of all, let's acknowledge
that God does not make a distinction
between secular things and sacred things.
All of life matters to him,
including very mundane, very ordinary things,
because God is interested in our hearts,
in the condition of our hearts as we go through our days.
So God is interested in all things.
Paul says this in Colossians 3,
whatever you do, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.
So God's interested in all of it.
That's the first thing.
Second, this is a timely issue because building a house
or just owning a house is something that is on the mind
of most young families.
And it's on the minds and hearts
of many of our O'Kill couples.
And I know you wanna afford a house in Southern California.
I get it.
It's hard to build a house.
It won't make you feel good.
I get it.
It's hard.
But prices are so inflated right now
that it feels like an unreachable goal.
And what does that lead to in our lives?
Frustration.
And perhaps as you're sitting here this morning,
you've been dealing with feelings of discontentment
because you're having to live in a place that you don't love,
or you're having to live in an apartment
that isn't as big as you wish
because it really doesn't fit all of the needs
and perhaps it's becoming a consuming issue in your heart.
And if it is, that's a very serious concern
that deserves your attention and your prayer
and maybe biblical counseling.
For others here this morning, you do own a home
and you spend an enormous amount of time
and effort and money striving to make it
as nice as you possibly can, but even then,
there's a sense of dissatisfaction.
Well, my home isn't this or that.
My home isn't as large as I want
or it's not furnished as well as I'd like.
It certainly doesn't look like this person's home
or that person's home.
Or when you step back and you look at what you've built
over the years and you realize this isn't the godly home
that it should be, that it's missing peace and joy
in spiritual life.
And so building a home actually has a lot of application
for us because it speaks to our hearts.
And here's the thing, a home is intended
to be a very important place.
And it doesn't matter if it's large
or if it's small, if it's a house or an apartment,
if it's beautifully furnished or it's very, very sparse.
Home is important.
Home is a place where we gather as a family.
Home is a place where we pray together
and we sing together.
It's a place where we play and where we rest.
Home is a place where we welcome others
into our lives and hospitality towards the body of Christ.
But the key to that kind of a home,
that godly home is right there in verse one,
unless the Lord is at the center of your house
or your apartment, unless He is the very heartbeat
of your home, then all of your frustration
and all of your striving is nothing but vanity.
If we build a home with wrong heart motives
or we rely on our own wisdom as we build
and we don't give God the glory and the thanks
that He deserves, then what we produce at the end
is just a monument to futility.
So why do you labor to build a home?
It's a question to ask yourself.
Why do you labor to build a home?
Again, it doesn't matter if it's a one bedroom apartment
or a five bedroom house, why do you do it?
What motivates you?
Are you building a home for status?
Are you building as a way to feed the idols of your heart?
Are you building for the sake of appearances
so that others see what you have?
There are all kinds of reasons out there,
but if they're working counter to biblical principles,
then it's all vanity.
For example, if you're building occupies your mind
and your time and your resources to the point
that you exclude other more important priorities.
Your hyper focus on it is actually getting in the way
of other things that are more important.
If you're building tears at the fabric of your family
because you're obsessed with it rather than building
your family up, then you're building
for the sake of the Lord.
If you're building prevents you from bringing an offering
to the Lord or keeps you from worship,
keeps you from fellowship or it prevents you
from being able to care for other people in need.
Here's the temptation, without even realizing it,
we can find ourselves diverting our energies
and rather than building the kingdom of God,
we find ourselves building our own little kingdoms,
trading what is eternal for what is temporal.
Essentially Solomon is relaying to us the same principle
in Matthew chapter six.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasure upon earth
where moth and rust destroy
and where thieves break in and steal,
but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
And then there's this amazing final summary phrase
for where your treasure is there your heart will be also.
So unless the Lord is at the center of your heart
and at the center of your home and working through you
as you trust in him for the outcome,
then it's all in vain, make sense?
Now the same principle applies to guarding a city
and I know this is kind of a strange example
because none of us, I don't think any of us here
really maybe one, I know one gentleman here
who guards a city, but most of us don't do that.
But safety and security have always been a high priority
for human beings, safety and security.
In the ancient world being attacked by a foreign enemy
was a constant worry.
And so ancient cities had to have big walls,
big strong walls or else they stood absolutely
no chance of surviving.
And still even with really good defensive fortifications,
if you lived in the ancient world,
the population that you lived in was constantly nervous
because at any time a foreign invader could come your way.
And this is why watchmen were necessary.
They were the guards, the sentries that were posted
in watch towers along the walls to keep eyes out for threats.
And that meant staying awake, especially late into the night
because most armies attack in the evening, right?
In the dark.
So you had to stay awake.
And if you fell asleep at the wrong time,
disaster for everyone.
But still there's an element to this for us today.
Now, first of all, we should be really grateful
that we live in a really big country
with a powerful military.
We don't have the worries of the ancient world.
We have two giant oceans on either side of our country,
right?
We're not far from being attacked by foreign enemies,
but then shrink it down to a micro level.
We live in a world where at times
random violence can happen.
And for some of us, the fear of crime,
the fear of a break-in is a serious worry,
maybe even sinfully so.
And if that's true, that too requires your attention
and prayer because we can't be carried along
by fear all the time.
So how do we strive for safety and security?
Well, we choose our neighborhoods carefully, right?
And then guess what?
We put our own watchman on the walls.
We get a ring camera, right?
We install a security system
or we put security lights outside and so on.
But the reality is even in our planning,
our watchman cannot possibly keep all harm
from coming at us in the fallen world that we live in.
Bad things can happen.
So where do we place our trust?
That really is what Solomon, Solomon is digging at this.
You trust in the watchman?
When you lay your head on the pillow,
is that what you're trusting in?
Obviously not, right?
Because it's God's sovereign hand of protection
and blessing that are the decisive factor
in our security and our safety.
And when we lay our heads down on the pillow at night,
we trust that God cares for us,
that he cares for our families and that he is good.
That's what gives us the peace for restful sleep.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't post watchman on the walls,
by the way, that is not Solomon's,
he's not saying pull those guys down.
There is a practical thing here.
It just means that ultimately we don't trust
in those guys on the wall.
Unless the Lord watches over our cities and our homes,
all of our striving, all of our planning,
all of our watching is in vain.
So do you trust him?
Do you trust him with your safety
and with your security?
Now in verse two, Solomon then expands on this same lesson,
same thing, trust.
Now he's gonna point to our attitude about work.
And this is one of the things that can really hurt.
This was like in my face all week
as I was prepping for this message.
Because my fellow elders know about how I feel about work.
I like to work, but I have to be careful.
Work is one of the ways that we can strive
to control the world around us.
And it can be very subtle and very deceptive
if we're not careful.
Look at verse two.
It's vain, Solomon writes, for you to rise up early,
to retire or to stay up late,
to eat the bread of painful labors,
or to eat the bread of anxious toil.
Now step back for a second.
Solomon is clearly not anti-work.
He's not.
Because I think a dozen times in Proverbs,
he speaks about the sluggard, right?
That's not a word we use often,
but it's really descriptive, the sluggard.
He scolds people who are lazy,
people who avoid work,
people who make excuses for not working hard.
So he's not anti-work.
And like the previous examples,
what Solomon is not saying,
he's not saying don't build a home.
He's not saying don't put watchmen on the walls.
And he's not saying don't work hard.
The issue is, who are you trusting in as you build?
Who are you trusting in for your protection?
And who are you trusting in as you make work choices?
This is super practical.
Is the Lord at the center of your work?
Even the most, you're like, ah, my job, eh.
No, no, it matters to God.
Like I said, he's involved in all of those mundane,
ordinary things, your heart condition.
He wants to know.
He wants to be there with you.
So is the Lord the heartbeat of your work?
Now God's Word doesn't lay out specific rules
for how early we should get up for work
or how late we should stop working.
We do have freedom in such things,
but he does give us this principle.
Don't go beyond reasonable boundaries for the wrong reasons.
Let me say it again.
Don't go beyond reasonable boundaries for the wrong reasons.
Now we all know also that there are occasions in life
where you have to burn the midnight oil, right?
Students, do you ever cram for an exam?
Do you ever stay up all night finishing a paper?
Don't lie to me.
I mean, for me, you guys know, every Saturday night,
I'm up really late working on my sermon.
So there are times when you have to do that.
And by the way, there's a biblical precedence for this.
I'm gonna shock you here.
The Proverbs 31 woman.
Do you know what Solomon says there
about this virtuous woman?
It says this, she rises while it's still not morning.
While it's still night, meaning really early in the morning,
and gives food to her household,
and her lamp does not go out at night.
She is commended for her hard work.
At times, she stays up late.
And then she rises early to manage her household well.
Well done, right?
Again, listen, hard work for good things.
Hard work for godly things, for the sake of God's kingdom,
for fulfilling your God ordained role.
These things are commendable.
But having said that,
let's be careful that we don't deceive ourselves.
Because again, this can be very subtle.
The motivations of our heart
are sometimes hidden from ourselves
because they're hidden deep within the heart
and they're not easily recognized.
So do you work long hours for the wrong reasons?
Out of anxiety, out of fear.
How am I gonna pull my next paycheck?
You know, do I have enough?
If I just work harder, I can make more.
Is the fear and anxiety motivating you?
Do you work long hours out of selfish ambition?
Do you work long hours out of a compulsive need
to appear successful to your peers?
Do your work choices cause you to not have enough time
for other important responsibilities?
Do they negatively affect your spouse or your children?
Do your work hours prevent you from engaging in body life?
Do they prevent you from being a good friend?
Prevent you from being a good church member?
Do you get angry or resentful
when other demands are placed on you
because they get in the way of what you truly love,
which is work,
and you take it out on other people?
Because in reality, that's the idol of your heart.
There's a lot here, right?
And listen, let me state the odd of you.
If we're not careful, work can become a slave master.
It can become an idol.
We can end up bowing down as Christians,
functional atheists, right?
We're bowing before this idol every single day
when we go off to work.
And then there's all kinds of bad outcomes
that go with that kind of idolatry.
Spiritual deficiencies.
If you are worshiping work,
if you are burning the candle at both ends
as a pattern of your life
because you've got this wrong motivation, guess what?
There's gonna be a lack of prayer in your life.
There's gonna be a lack of time in the Word in your life.
There's gonna be times when you're choosing
not to be in worship,
when you're choosing not to serve others in the body.
Those things are gonna go together.
And then there's the physical and emotional consequences.
You're gonna find yourself worrying.
You're gonna find yourself anxious and despair.
You're gonna have trouble sleeping.
It's gonna lead to high blood pressure
and a weakened immune system.
There's all kinds of things that God warns us about
to say don't do this.
It's not healthy for you or your family.
These things come about when we choose
to trust in our own efforts.
When we say this, and my wife can tell you
that there were years early in our marriage
when I was guilty of this, I would say,
but you don't understand, I've gotta make this happen.
Anybody else?
I've gotta make this happen.
And we take that control.
And we trust in our own selves and our own resources.
Where does it end?
Solomon says, eating the bread of painful labors
and anxious toil.
Nobody wants that, right?
Nobody wants to do that, but we can find ourselves
in that place if we're not careful.
Remember, toiling in our work was part of the curse
pronounced upon Adam, but from the very beginning,
God also gave us a principle of rest.
And rest is given to us for a number of good reasons.
It's a part of God's grace built into this system,
into this world.
Number one, for our physical and emotional recovery,
we need that.
Number two, for the purpose of spiritual reflection
and time to worship.
This is why we set aside Sunday as a day of worship,
a day of rest, right?
Not in a sabbatarian way, but just recognizing
that God has said, take this time off
so that you can worship.
And then third, it's an opportunity for us to learn
to trust God all the more.
We say, I'm gonna cease from my labors
and trust that God's gonna provide.
So he gave us rest for all of these reasons.
And so take it from me, and I am somebody
who is prone to overwork.
Seek that balance between your job and your family life.
Seek that balance.
Ask a trusted friend for accountability if you need to.
Trust the Lord to provide.
Depend on him, not your own striving,
and release that outcome to the one
who is much more powerful than you
and much more sovereign than you.
Right, that's just logical, that just makes sense.
But then look at the beautiful truth that Solomon adds
at the end of verse two.
I love this, for he gives to his beloved
even in his sleep.
Have you ever wondered why we have to sleep?
It's an interesting, think about that.
Why would God design us to have to sleep
about a third of our life away?
You probably never thought about it before.
He could have done otherwise,
so why did he build sleep into our lives?
Now I can't prove this from scripture,
but it seems to me, he's giving us just another reason,
another reminder that we have to trust in him.
We have to depend on his sovereign rule.
Because sleep is a humbling experience.
You are never weaker than when you're sleeping.
You're never more childlike than when you're sleeping.
You're not even conscious of what's going on around you.
There's no striving you can do while you're sleeping.
So as we sleep, God is more sovereign over our lives
than ever before.
And in those hours, Solomon tells us he's providing for us.
And he's caring for us, because we're his beloved,
his children, until we wake to new mercies the next morning.
Isn't that beautiful?
Okay, what's the last thing then he addresses?
Ooh, this is the big one, the raising of children
in verse three.
Are we ready for this?
It's as if Solomon now gets to this verse,
and I know some people look at it and go,
this seems like a strange break.
It's as if he gets to this verse and he says,
look, if you're unconvinced thus far
that you need to stop trusting in yourself
and start trusting in God, try this one on for size.
Try raising kids.
And every parent said, amen.
And those of you who don't have kids yet,
ooh, your day's coming.
Lord willing, your day is coming.
Verse three, behold, children are a gift to the Lord.
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
So if it's a vain thing to build a house without God,
and if it's a vain thing to watch over a city
without God's protection,
then it's the absolute height of foolishness
to try to raise a child without God at the center of it.
The height of foolishness.
By the way, Hebrew scholars will tell you
that this verse is something of a callback to verse one
because that word house in verse one
really has a double meaning.
It can refer to the physical structure,
but it can also refer to the family within the house.
Right, and the Hebrew language lends itself to that.
Remember, we talk about the house of David.
We're not talking about a physical structure.
We're talking about a dynasty.
We're talking about descendants of David.
Now, one of the many tragic things
that's happening right now in the Western world,
and there are many,
there's a significant change
in the perspective of having children.
It's happening right now.
Maybe you're aware of this, maybe not,
but sadly, many are coming to a place
where they view children as a curse, not as a blessing.
Birth rates are in a death spiral right now
in many Western nations.
Many Western folks today view children as an inconvenience,
as an obstacle to their fulfillment
and their self-gratification.
And so demographers have looked at this.
They've looked at some countries and say
they're having every year in population.
It's a death spiral.
We're not producing enough children
to really sustain many of these countries
for very much longer.
I saw a Pew study this from February this year,
and it shocked me.
It said, get this, only 51% of adults in America
between the ages of 18 and 35
are sure they're gonna have kids.
51%.
Now, some of them are still unsure,
but there was a solid 20% that said, absolutely not.
51%, and then this really shocked me.
More men wanted kids than women.
57% of men said they want kids, 43% of women.
And this is what happens when secularism grabs hold
of a culture and a society for multiple generations.
And this is where we are.
But scripture says otherwise,
according to the wisdom given to Solomon,
by God himself, children are what?
A gift and a reward and a blessing.
And really the best translation of the Hebrew word,
nahala, is more than just a gift.
It carries the idea of children being a heritage,
an inheritance.
So the picture is placing these kids
in a continuous line of blessing
that comes out of a godly home.
It's a beautiful picture.
And I can tell you this,
anybody who's a parent here this morning
knows that this is true.
When you witness the birth of your child,
you recognize it for what it is.
You're like, that is an absolute miracle of God.
No sane person looks at their child right after it's born
and steps back and goes, look what I've done.
You cannot be sane and do that.
You're like, that is a miracle, that is a gift.
That is a gift.
And then when they hand that child to you
all wrapped up in that swaddling blanket,
you know it's true.
This is a gift from the Lord.
That this life came from a good God.
And then secondly, you realize you're gonna have to depend
on that good God to sustain the life of that child
and to provide for that child,
sometimes for the next 25 years.
Or more.
And then you realize number three,
that you have an enormous stewardship responsibility
and you cannot possibly do it on your own.
This is, I believe, one of the great purposes.
You know, why did God give mankind
the privilege of multiplying?
It's so that we can understand more.
First of all, what God goes through with his children,
with us, even the frustration and the joy, right?
But also to recognize I need help.
I can't do this on my own.
We're reminded daily by our kids how finite we are.
How weak we are, how needy we are.
And how we've got to lean into greater dependency
on God and on his grace.
And it causes us to have to pray.
To pray for strength and resolve and faithfulness.
And if you don't do that,
if you don't find yourself putting God in your hands
and putting God at the center of that and asking for help,
the temptation is there that you're gonna grow frustrated
in your parenting.
And the temptation is then to define your children wrongly
as a burden and not as a blessing.
So we need to lean into God's power and sovereignty.
The foundational principle here is the same
in each one of these four examples.
The decisive factor in building a godly home
and raising godly children
is God's sovereign rule over it all.
Amen.
Now you can and you should work hard at building a home.
You can and you should be diligent to guard your kids
from harm and from wicked influence.
You can and you should make sacrifices at work
to provide for what they need.
All of that is true,
but if God is not at the center of your parenting,
Solomon says it's all vanity.
Putting God at the center of your,
not all the books that are being written on how to do it,
not all of the opinions that are out there,
but putting God at the center of your parenting.
And then look at the final two verses of our Psalm.
Verse four, like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
so are the children of one's youth.
Now I've always been fascinated.
As soon as I knew I was gonna be a dad,
I started studying this
because I was fascinated by this analogy.
What is Solomon saying?
Again, he's communicating to us
the enormous responsibility that we have as parents
because arrows have to be handled carefully
and with skill.
Did you know arrows that are shot without aim,
they're shot randomly, are very, very dangerous?
They hurt people.
And so they have to be shaped
and they have to be sharpened for the right reasons.
And that requires diligence on the part of parents.
It requires close attention to detail.
Here's what we know.
Children don't become well-formed arrows by accident.
It's intentional work.
But most of all, the archer has to know what the target is.
The archer has to know what the target is.
Where exactly, if I pull this arrow out of my quiver,
where am I aiming?
What's the target?
And again, the answer comes from the archer.
The answer comes from the one who is at the center
and the heart of your parenting.
Listen, if you're aiming at your desires as a parent,
you're gonna be all off.
It's gonna go awry and your parenting will be in vain.
But if you're depending on the Lord
and that's where you're aiming,
then you'll be blessed like the man
that Solomon talks about in verse five.
The aim is everything, parents.
The aim is everything.
How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of these arrows?
They will not be ashamed when they speak
with their enemies in the gate.
What's being described here?
Well, this is interesting to me.
Solomon gets all the way to the end of life.
This is God's plan for caring for parents as they age.
You might even say that this is God's original
universal healthcare plan.
Later in life, Solomon says,
if you have a quiver full of godly children
who've been raised in a godly and faithful home,
they're gonna turn around and provide for you
when your time of need arrives.
And some of us in this auditorium this morning
are dealing with this right now,
dealing with aging parents.
They were once strong for us
and now we have to be strong for them.
So the city gate in the ancient world
was where business took place.
That's where cases were judged
in the picture that Solomon's drawing is
when a man's enemies came to him with a dispute,
how blessed is a man if he's got a quiver full
of grown sons who step up behind their dad
and testify to his integrity in the midst of that dispute.
Being strong and well established themselves,
this man's children would see to it
that their father was treated with respect and with justice.
That's what Solomon's talking about here.
So there's security in raising a godly family,
a mother and a father who sharpen their arrows,
aim properly and let those arrows go.
Flying toward the right goal.
And that man and that woman are blessed
all the way to the grave
where they get their reward from Jesus.
So it's a beautiful picture from beginning to end
here in Psalm 127.
Amen.
Let me wrap up with a few last thoughts.
Let's come back to where we started, control.
Who's really in control?
How are you gonna face your day?
Are you gonna face your day tomorrow slightly differently?
Who's really in control?
When are we gonna fully submit our plans to God
and acknowledge his rule in our lives?
When are we gonna functionally agree with the apostle Paul?
Paul gave us the key to being content
and trusting in God's rule in Philippians four.
We know this verse.
Paul says, I've learned.
And just that blows my mind.
Paul has learned this.
Oh, good job, Paul.
It means he didn't always understand it,
but now he's learned this.
This is what we need to do, right?
We're growing, we're being sanctified.
Learn this, to be content in whatever circumstances
I find myself in.
I know how to make do with little
and I know how to make do with a lot.
Whatever outcome God ordains, I'm good.
I'm content.
In any and all circumstances,
I've learned the secret of being content,
whether well-fed or hungry,
whether in abundance or in need, in any outcome.
He says, I'm able to do all things
through Christ who strengthens me.
When are we gonna begin to functionally agree with Jesus
when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane
under great pressure and he said to his father,
not my will, but your will be done?
Psalm 127 is a great reminder of those two principles.
We build, we protect, we work, and we parent,
but we do those things knowing that it's God
who is at work in us.
And working all things together towards those outcomes
for his glory and for our good.
We need to rest in that, you guys.
We need to rest in that.
He brings about every outcome
according to his sovereign degree.
So what if you're not really in control of your day tomorrow?
Are you okay with that?
What if that's the best news you could possibly hear?
That God's actually in control of your day tomorrow.
Would that change the way you walk into it?
Would that change the way you wake up
and stare at your calendar and walk into your day?
Now as I close, I wanna come back to this one last thing.
Remind me again who wrote this Psalm?
Huh.
This is a great warning that comes out of Solomon's life
because all of this wonderful practical wisdom
was completely lost on him.
He was a ruler who knew how to build,
and he knew all about watching over his city
and over his kingdom, and he understood what God
had written about marriage and family,
yet he failed miserably in each one of those areas.
This incredibly wise man made a wreck of his life.
He failed to listen to his own counsel.
By the way, it dawned on me as I was writing last night,
how uncomfortable are you in getting parenting tips
from this guy?
But it goes to show you, depending on the Lord is not easy.
Trusting in the Lord is not an easy thing.
It's easy to talk about, and it flows, as Christians,
it flows from our lips very simply.
Oh, I'm trusting the Lord,
but it's a much harder thing to do it.
Here's the thing though about Solomon's words in this Psalm.
In spite of his personal failures,
we know that he wrote every single word
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
So every word is true.
In spite of his life, it's true.
And the irony and the beauty of it
from a sovereignty perspective is that Solomon's wrecked life
ended up validating everything that he wrote in this.
Think about this, the house that Solomon built for the Lord,
it didn't last, but the Lord built a house through him
that did last, the house of David.
And he graciously included Solomon,
knucklehead that he was.
And though he made a mess of his family from his kingdom,
his kingdom was divided in two,
but from his lineage came the Messiah.
The King, the one who was over the household of God
came from Solomon.
So that's how gracious and how faithful God is.
Even when we stumble, he is at work in us and through us.
So how do we trust the Lord?
How do you do this tomorrow?
In your building, in your protecting,
in your work, in your parenting.
There's really only one way, you guys.
And I wish I had like a magic formula for you,
like here's the step-by-step process,
but there's really no shortcut to it.
We abide with Christ daily, moment by moment.
This is how you learn to be content.
This is how you grow in your trust.
It's abiding with Christ.
We are a people born again by the Spirit and united to him.
So we look to him in every day, in every moment,
and we ask him, Lord, I need to receive from you strength
and ability to depend on you alone,
because I am weak and I am prone to wander.
That is a great prayer.
Everyone, I am weak, I am prone to wander.
I need you to help me depend on you.
And then you live that out.
And then when you're in fellowship with Christ
and in communion with Christ, in prayer with Christ,
in spiritual conversation all day long with Christ,
when you're focused on Christ,
when your eyes are fixed on Christ,
then out of the fullness of Christ,
he is going to respond and he is gonna give you
that ability and that skill to trust in him more.
But you've got to abide with him.
Trust in the Lord with all of your heart
and lean not on your own understanding
and all your ways acknowledge him.
And he will, this is the promise,
he will make your ways straight.
That's a great promise.
But only when we walk out of here this morning
and we walk into our day tomorrow with a different mindset
to abide with our Savior.
Father, this morning we confess to you
that every one of us, me included,
really struggle with trust.
We really like control.
And so Lord, I pray that by studying this Psalm this morning
and by working our way through it,
I pray that we will all begin to release that control
and release the outcomes to you
and trust that you are good and that you care for us.
God, help us not to build in vain.
Anything in our lives, trusting in ourselves,
trusting in our own resources,
ignoring what you've told us in your word,
not abiding with you, not even tapping into the power
that you've given us by your spirit,
but thinking that we have it all figured out
and that we can do it by ourselves.
Help us not to be those types of builders.
Help us not to be those types of workers,
those types of parents,
who go on autopilot thinking we've got everything planned out
so it'll be fine.
And God, if we do that, will you correct us?
Will you show us the vanity of that type of thinking?
I thank you for this morning, Lord,
and I know that you are at work in our hearts.
You will challenge us where we need to be challenged.
You will encourage us where we need to be encouraged.
And so we praise your great name this morning
and we thank you for your love and your grace in our lives.
Let us now sing well to you for you are worthy of our praise.
In Jesus' name, amen.