God provides the blessing, not us

Psalm 127

Prayer

You’ll notice a couple new things stacked on top of each other today. I am always looking for ways to get the congregation participating on Sunday mornings instead of just observing. So instead of you listening to me read the passage each week, I’m going to invite a member of the church to read it for us.

But you’ll also notice that we’re not in Mark this morning. Beginning today and going through the summer we’re going to be looking at the Psalms together. Specifically, we’re going to look at my favorite portion of the psalms, a collection known as the Songs of Ascents. If you look just above verse 1 in Psalm 127, you’ll see that little phrase “A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon.” That’s not added in by the translators or the editors. That’s a part of the original Hebrew text of this psalm. It is a God-breathed title for this psalm. There are 15 psalms labeled as “A Song of Ascents” and they are from Psalm 120- Psalm 134. They are relatively short with all but one of them being 9 verses or less. But they derive their name from the ascent that Jews would take on annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem for various festivals. There were at least three feasts each year that would see Jews travel from their homes all over Israel up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem being built at a higher elevation than almost all other cities in Israel, everyone who traveled there was going up or “ascending”. Songs of Ascents, therefore, were songs sung during this upward journey.

I read one commentator who described how he likes teaching through these songs that are written about pilgrimage to the city of God because for the Christian, they parallel our own pilgrimage on our way to the city of God. We’ll be looking at them generally in order with two exceptions. First, I jumped to the middle of the group by doing Psalm 127 today. That’s because it’s Mother’s Day and I thought this psalm would be appropriate. Second, we’ll be skipping Psalm 121 because I actually already preached that psalm here when I candidated in September. But the rest of them we’ll proceed through in order.

Today we are in Psalm 127, hopefully you already have that open before you and since Wendy already read for us, I’ll state my big point first.

Main Point – God provides the blessing, not us

In Psalm 127, I want us to consider whether or not we can force God’s hand. Are there things you can do that can guarantee certain outcomes from the Lord? When I phrase the question so crudely, most of us would quickly respond by saying “Of course not!”. But the way we live our lives sometimes we suggest otherwise. We think that if we work hard enough, God must  give us a certain outcome. Or if we are good Christians, then we deserve to receive better gifts from God than people who don’t follow him. And as we’ll see this morning, often at the root of our thoughts and behavior is the belief that we are able to obtain God’s blessing by our own hands. The psalm we’ll read today intends to obliterate that argument.

So again, God provides the blessing, not us. Let’s look at the first place he does this.

Point #1 – God provides the blessing in our work (vs. 1-2)

READ VS 1-2a

Let me state this psalm’s cases in the absolute strongest terms. If you are attempting to build a house, every bit of work you attempt is in vain. All of it. If you’re purchasing wood, that’s useless. If you’re installing carpet, it’s completely worthless. If you’re framing walls or tiling a roof, none of that matters at all. If you’re watching over your home to keep it safe, this is also in vain. If you lock your doors and install a security system it is utterly futile. Buying a gun, meaningless. In fact every single endeavor you have ever engaged in fits the same category. You’re trying to earn good grades or advance in your career, that’s worthless. You’re trying to save up money to buy a car or a house, that will never happen. If you put forth your best effort, your strongest attempt, if you work tirelessly night and day, sun up to sun down exhausting every possible effort to accomplish something, it all has zero, I repeat, zero influence on the outcome.

Unless. And this is the key word here - unless God does the work, unless he builds the house, unless he watches over the city, then the work will be blessed. Then your efforts will mean something.

Imagine the second example in our text. “Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” If God has determined that your city will be destroyed, if God is against you, it doesn’t matter how many watchmen you put on your city walls. And there are an abundance of examples of this throughout the scriptures where someone like Assyria or Babylon sees themselves as an unstoppable force that no one can rival and yet they are overthrown in an instant because God was against them. In another psalm we read it stated very clearly this way:

“Our God is in the heavens;

he does all that he pleases.” - Psalm 115:3

If God is determined to accomplish something, it doesn’t much matter if you are for it or against it. But if you are determined to accomplish something, the only thing that matters is whether or not God is for it or against it. If God is against it, then you’ll try to build a house, but it will just keep falling apart regardless of how much effort you put into it, like building a house of cards outside on a windy day.

Blessing in your work completely depends on God. Which means, if you want to have success you’ll have to call on God for it. Now, honestly I don’t think this is that profound of a revelation for most of us. We probably all would have said that before we walked into this room. But how can we know if we’re trusting in God’s blessing or if we’re trusting in our own efforts? I think the key is for us to consider how obsessed we are with results. This results obsession is baked into the formula of the American dream. “If you’re willing to work hard enough, anyone can achieve anything”. The results become an idol we pursue at the expense of trust in the Lord.

You see this in the way many parents raise their children. The only acceptable result is an A on the exam or the only acceptable result is being the starter on a winning team. So we will labor every moment of every day to be certain that this is the outcome. And if we do not get this outcome then we will just toil harder. We idolize a result and say, I will give up anything in order to achieve this specific outcome. And there’s nothing wrong with working hard, but if you’ve pushed aside praying together as a family or reading God’s Word together you can hardly say that you’re teaching them to trust the Lord for results.

And when we become adults we carry this busyness with us. Every white space on the calendar must be filled in with something. And we find ourselves running from one thing to the next without stopping to consider if God will bless any of our efforts so that they have any meaning. Don’t believe the lie that busyness is the same as productivity. Busyness does not equal productivity. Dependence on God alone equals productivity.

But there’s a final line in our second verse that teaches us one more thing about work.

READ VS 2B

Just like we can’t force productivity to happen unless God blesses it. Did you know we can’t force rest on ourselves unless God gives it too? It says that sleep is a gift from God. He’s the only one who can give it.

If you’ve ever had insomnia, you know this to be true. You can set aside 8 hours for sleep, but just laying down doesn’t make it come to you. God has to give it.

This has some interesting implications for how we try to rest. If we don’t recognize it as a gift from God, we’ll think that either A. we can secure it for ourselves or B. other people are responsible for giving it to us. If we think we can secure it for ourselves, we start to imagine the type of situation that will be most “restful” and we pursue it. I need the beach. I need a hammock and sand between my toes. I’m so tired and if I can just get away to the cabin, I’ll finally be refreshed. But, Christians, “Unless the Lord gives the rest, those who vacation vacation in vain.” The other error we make in rest is thinking that other people are responsible for giving it to us. “My boss has to chill out and give me a break” or “My spouse is too needy. He needs to stop asking things of me so I can rest” or - an easy one to be guilty of - “These children have to give me some space. If I’m tired and cranky, it’s because they didn’t give me any rest”

Well the way this psalm explains it, the only place you’ll ever get rest from his God. You may get away on that vacation or get space from your family, but unless God grants you rest you’ll be a rest insomniac with time for rest but the absolute inability to achieve it.

Instead we go to God for rest. We depend on him to give us the peace and energy that rest provides. With that attitude we can labor in the fields all day and yet feel the restoration that rest provides. “God, these kids can’t give me the rest I need. This boss can’t provide for me the peace I need. This vacation is not the thing that will restore my soul. Only you can.”

Jesus said this concerning work and rest.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” - Matthew 11:28-30

It’s not an absence of work. It’s not an obsession with results. It’s work and rest that depends on God alone to provide its blessing.

The second half of our psalm talks about receiving blessings from God, not at work, but in our homes.

Point #2 – God provides the blessing in our family (vs. 3-5a)

READ VS 3

That’s a pretty jarring transition isn’t it? It seems like the psalm has completely switched gears. It used to be about laboring at your job and now it’s about raising children. It’s such a distinct shift that some have proposed that these are two different psalms altogether. But upon further examination, you can see the connections.

Both work and rest are gifts from the Lord, and verse 3 opens by telling us that children likewise are a gift from the Lord. These verses are an example of the verses we just read. No amount of effort can force children to come into existence. And for many people who have desired children and yet are not able to have them, this is painfully true. There are those here who are single and wish they weren’t. There are those here who do not have children and wished they did. But again, just like with our work, we aren’t called to achieve a specific set of results. We are called to be faithful to the task God has given to us and to trust him for the outcome.

While this isn’t the point of the sermon, let me take a minute to say something to those who don’t have children and yet desire them. It’s mother’s day and this may be a day you dread because it reminds you that God hasn’t given you the blessed gift of children. And you may look at others with jealousy wishing you had what they had or even with guilt thinking that there is something wrong with you which is why you don’t have children, but let me remind you that the ultimate prize you’re seeking in this life, the one that will satisfy your soul, isn’t a family. It’s Jesus Christ. And God has freely given him to you. Ephesians says that he has lavished upon you the riches of his grace. He isn’t a God who withholds blessings. If he gave us his son, it means he’s good and he loves to bless the undeserving. Take joy in the knowledge that this gracious God loves to bless his children with himself.

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” - Romans 8:32

And as we look back in our psalm, we’ll see that even for those who have children, they were never given as a gift that we keep forever. Look at verse 4.

READ VS 4-5a

Children are arrows. What do you do with arrows? You launch them. You send them out to do the work they’re prepared to do. And some of you might be thinking, “Yes, my children are arrows. If I sent them out, they would definitely kill somebody.” But if your responsibility is to be the archer, you don’t want your arrows to fail you when the time of need arrives. If you’re shooting arrows for hunting or if you’re shooting arrows in war, the consequences of faulty arrows are dire.

So what are you supposed to do? You prepare the arrows for the time of their departure. It may be sooner or it may be later. But the day will come when you are to send these arrows out. Will they fly straight and true? Will they hit the mark? When you send your children out, what will happen? Will they love Christ? Will they follow God? These are heavy and hard questions.

But here’s where we again see the connection between these verses and the previous ones. We are called to work hard to build our house and yet at the same time we are to completely leave the results in God’s hands. There are things that God has called you to do as a parent which are required for being faithful, and yet no amount of effort can guarantee the result of your child following Christ.

I’m sure every parent here recognizes the frustration that this causes. We all wish we could just reach down into that dead spiritual heart and revive it ourselves. But raising someone from the dead is only something that God can do. We trust him with the outcome.

But as long as the arrow is still in our hands, we are called to shape it and to prepare it to the best of our ability. I heard one author put it this way, “raising children in the fear and nurture of the Lord is most fundamentally about evangelism.” Have you considered that? Imagine if a foreign exchange student came to live in your home. She’s from a country where she has never before heard the gospel. I bet you and your family would kick evangelism into high gear. You would be sure to take her to church. You would read the Bible with her. You would look for opportunities to answer her questions about who God is. You’d bring up the topic of salvation as often as was appropriate. If you simply helped her with her math homework, helped her join the basketball team, then sent her back home the next year, what a missed opportunity!

Yet, isn’t this exactly what God does for us when he gives us children? He’s putting a lost soul in your home. He’s saying this person’s greatest need isn’t an education, but it’s the saving message of Jesus Christ. It’s the hope of the gospel. Parents, do you recognize this calling?

Church, do you recognize this calling we have as well? It’s easy for us to talk about wanting to see lost souls saved in our town and wanting to grow in evangelistic efforts, but are we evangelizing our own children here in our midst? Do we see them as lost souls dropped on our doorstep in need of Christ-like examples and gospel proclamation? This isn’t a responsibility that we can outsource to someone else. Our church will be sending these arrows out one day soon. And we want them to be effective. We want to send out gospel saturated, Bible soaked, arrows who will carry out the mission of the church and of Christ long after they are released from here.

There’s one last line in our psalm that is a bit confusing.

Point #3 – God provides the blessing in Christ (vs 5b)

READ VS 5B

This last phrase is a bit of a confusing one. Because there’s a lot of cultural references here that are confusing to us. First of all, why would he be speaking with his enemies in the gate? The city gate was essentially where the court was held. The elders of the city would gather in the city gate and people might be accused of crimes or acquitted of them at that place. So if you’re speaking with your enemy in the gate, it probably means that he’s accusing you of some sort of wickedness.

Ok. So that’s helpful. It means that this blessed man will not be put to shame when his enemies attack him. He will not be found guilty when he’s accused of crimes. Rather he will be vindicated and shown to be in the right. Good. That makes sense. But here’s the part that threw me for a loop and required really wrestling with this text to unravel. Why does having children serve as evidence against the prosecution? It says, this man is blessed. He has lots of kids. Therefore whenever his enemies accuse him, they’ll find nothing. I’m not sure how well that would hold up in a court of law today.

“We saw this man leaving the crime scene, his fingerprints were at the scene, and there were witnesses who accused him of committing the crime. What do you have to say in your defense?” “Oh, well, I have a whole bunch of kids” Gavel slams. “Clearly this man is not guilty. He’s got a quiver full of children.” Do you see how that doesn’t make a lot of sense?

But this is again where spending a lot of time in the Old Testament helps you understand the different world that they inhabited and the different cultural assumptions that were being made. This psalm is written by a Jew to be sung by Jews. The Jews in the Old Testament were under a unique set of laws and a unique covenant with God, where God specifically promised that if they kept his laws he would provide material blessings to them. We are not under this same law today nor are we under the same promise. But listen to what the law promised the Jews in Deuteronomy:

“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today… all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God… Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb” - Deuteronomy 28:1-4

God made a direct promise to them that if they kept his laws, one of the ways he would bless them was with a fruitful womb. This wasn’t a hard and fast rule that meant everyone with many children was automatically righteous. But it was a recognizable trend to see children as a blessing associated with God’s favor toward the parents.

This means that when a man walked into the city gate and an accusation was made against him, his children could step in the gap and defend the man. The psalmist is praising the blessing of children, because to the Old Testament Jew, this was the way God’s favor would stand between them and their enemies and it would block any accusations made against them. The man with many children didn’t have to be afraid of what others thought of him. He didn’t have to be afraid of what God thought of him. Because God had shown favor to him, and his sons were evidence of that favor.

But as we consider this today, we do not have that same promise. There is not the same connection today between obeying God’s laws and receiving God’s favor through having children. So again, what are we supposed to make of this last verse? I guess it’s just open season on us when we’re accused by our enemies. We don’t have sons that can stand in that gap for us. We can’t call on our sons as evidence of God’s favor on us to prevent us from being accused.

But don’t you see what’s happening here? The reason the New Testament exists is because God provided for us a greater blessing and a greater promise than was in the Old Testament. The things that occur in the Old Testament are just shadows and symbols of the substance and the reality that is shown in the New Testament. Because we do have someone who stands in the gap for us when we are being accused. It’s someone greater than our son. It’s God’s son, Jesus Christ. And he doesn’t merely defend us against our neighbors, he defends us against the great accuser, Satan. Listen to what Paul says in Romans 8. The same passage that we read from earlier.

“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” - Romans 8:31-34.

Yes, children are a blessing. They are a reward. They show us God’s favor. But children are not the ultimate way God shows us his favor. They are merely a shadow of the beautiful goodness that God shows us fully in Christ. When children become the ultimate blessing we desire they become idols. But when they are blessings that point us to Christ and that remind us of God’s goodness in giving us his favor, when they are blessings that remind us that Christ stands in the gap for us, then we can be truly grateful for them. We can point them to their need for a Savior even as they remind us of our need for a Savior.

We are people desperately in need of God to provide the blessing out of his own generosity and grace.. There is no amount of work we can do to force him to give it to us. We can’t demand blessing from him. We can’t demand blessing from others. We can’t demand rest from our family. We are at the mercy of a good and gracious God who alone can give us these things. We trust in the God who is building our house and who is watching over our city. And he has proved he loves to bless us by giving us the blessing of his own child, Jesus Christ.

Prayer