Putting Work and Worship in Their Place

It's grab our bibles and turn to Psalm one twenty seven, Thanks bro one

twenty seven. Psalm one twenty seven. If you don't have a Bible with

you, just raise your hand, because we're passing those out right now.

And if you don't have a bulletin, and if you didn't pick up a

bulletin on your way through those doors, then just raise your hand because that's

gonna be helpful for tracking along and taking notes and all that sort of stuff.

So just raise your hand for a Bible or a bulletin. Passing all

of those out, and turn with me to Psalm one twenty seven. Psalm

one twenty seven. I'm gonna ask our sister to come and read our sermon

text for us while we turn there. Man, was that a crew?

Or what? Oh good work God? Our sermon text for this morning is

Psalm one twenty seven Versus one through five, a song of a sense 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 him. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his

enemies in the gate. This is God's word. Amen. Here's a question.

What role do you think your effort plays in your life's greatest blessings?

What role do you think your effort plays in what makes your life good.

It's easy to think. It's easy to think that all good things come from

our diligent labor. But is that true? Is that what the Bible teachers?

Let's think about it. Anybody enjoy the rain this weekend? Mhm man,

my neighborhood looks like the Emerald City. It's awesome. I didn't put

much into that. Enjoy a sunset this weekend. How much work did you

put into that the stars? How much work did you put into the sleep

that you got over the last few days. And here's the big example,

from our big morning and from our soul, how much did you put into

how much did your effort go into anyone of the children that you just saw.

I think of Think of a child, young or old. Think of

maybe your one of your children, or grandchildren, or a niece or a

nephew, or any child in this congregation, and ask yourself how much effort

went into constructing that child. I don't mean raising, we'll get into that.

I mean making that kid. What the Bible is teaching, what Solomon

is saying here in this soul, is that we have this general perspective,

this general tendency to get this tunnel vision on the things that we're working on,

the labors that we intend to produce good things and blessings in our lives.

But apart from the hand of God, they don't really amount to much.

And in fact, it's him, it's it is our God who gives

us the good things in life. So that does that mean don't work?

Is the Bible teaching us not to work and be diligent or be industrious?

Not at all, Not at all. There's plenty to commend good hard work

in the Bible and in life. Where the Bible is teaching us is that

we need to put work, our effort, our energies. We need to

put what we can do into perspective and worship the one who gives good things

in order to understand this psalm. And you may already be familiar with Psalm

one twenty seven. I've been familiar with one twenty seven for a long long

time. I memorized it, I quote it all the time. I've enjoyed

it more this week than ever before. I was literally like weeping on my

back patio as I explaining this psalm in fresh ways to my wife Wednesday night.

What we have to understand is that this is one song. This is

one poem. It's not a poem about work and then a poem about kids,

which is how I've ordinarily just sort of employed it in my life.

When there was a work concern, I would quote the work part. When

there's a kid concern, I would quote the kid part. But what we

have to realize is that these two stands as are in relationship to one another.

Solomon is saying something about worship by comparing these two things, work and

kids, And that's the other thing that we have to understand. That this

song is from the road Trip Worship playlist. Okay, it's a song of

a sense. In other words, it's a part of a collection of songs

that the people of Israel would sing on their way to worship at Jerusalem.

In other words, they were turning their backs on their homes and on their

cities and on their work, and taking with them only their kids and whatever

they needed to worship at Jerusalem. Their face was towards God, and their

back was towards work, and a hand across their minds. Can I do

this? Is this responsible? I mean, I've got a whole expansion project

going on back there, the mother in law us moving in, I mean,

not to mention the farm, and who did we put in charge of

watching over everything? Can I do this? And Solomon is saying yes,

because the real source of blessing isn't back there with what you're putting your hands

to. Not the real source of blessing. The real source of blessing is

the Lord Almighty, whom you're going to worship. That's the point Solomon's making.

And I know we feel that same tension. Three thousand years later,

we still feel that same tension, and we get that same tunnel vision on

our own efforts. While we feel this tension between should should I spend this

next twenty five minutes and devotional and prayer and the word? Or should I

empty the dishwasher? I've got all kinds of projects that I need to catch

up on. Should should I gather for Sunday worship? My aim this morning

is that we would hear this song, this poem inspired by the Holy Spirit,

written by the wisest man alive, and be awed by the magnificent,

generous blessings of God like children, and put work in its place and worship.

You're gonna walk through this psalm with these three headings. The first stanza,

well, we'll just use the heading meager results, meager results. And

the second and the second standsa we'll use for the heading mighty rewards. And

then the third point and the conclusion of our time under the heading of work

and worship in their place. So meager results, mighty rewards, and work

and worship in their place. Let's get into it. Meager results, meager

results. So in the first stanza of his poem, Solomon is saying this,

your work in and of itself is not the source of blessing and fruitfulness.

Your work in and of itself is not the source of blessing and fruitfulness.

Look at verses one and two. 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.

Vain, vain, vain. He says, three times, you're working,

you're watching, you're waking. Apart from God, it's all vain at best.

At best, God will use those as a means of some fruitfulness.

But those things are never the source. And as you can put yourself in

the shoes of a family traveling to Jerusalem to go and worship, you might

never say worship is unimportant. You might never say that adoring God is unimportant.

But it sure had to feel like everything that was really productive was in

the rear view mirror. Right, do you ever feel like we all do?

Just answer the question for us. We all feel like that from time

to time, we feel like, what's really paying the bills, what's really

making things happen? Right, what's really making life good? Is this list

of projects, It's this list of clients. In other words, what's making

my life good is my effort, and Solomon is saying that's just not true.

What's making life good is not just you're working and watching and waking.

In fact, apart from God's hand in it, the best that you can

expect from your effort in the long run is eating the bread of anxious toil.

You like that line, eating the bread of anxious toil? I think

it communicates really well. I think we've seen examples in pop culture of this

idea of eating the bread of anxious toil. It's it's it's the grind,

right, remember the Beatles. Day in the life, all right, day

in the life. Woke up, rolled out of bed, dragged a comb

across my head, which doesn't mean much to me, but found my way

downstairs and drank a cup and looking up I noticed I was late. Grabbed

my coat, grabbed my hat, made the bust and seconds flat, and

then you'll do it all over. It's the grind. It's the big house

that doesn't have really much in it. Not really. Is the Bible teaching

laziness? Is the Bible teaching that work is futile? No, the Bible

doesn't teach that. The Bible teaches hard work. I mean, this is

the author of most of our proverbs. Right, if you're familiar with the

proverbs, you know how much the Bible commands diligence and industry. And as

Christians we have from Colossians work heartily is under the Lord. In First Corinthians,

he who will not work should not eat. What Solomon is doing,

though, is putting work and what we can gain from it into perspective,

that our trust would not be rooted in our own ability to make things happen,

and that our eyes would be open to how much greater are the gifts

that God gives compared to what we think we can make happen. And to

highlight this, he gives us the second line. The next line in verse

two, right, it's in vain that you rise up early and go late

to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil. And the last line is

this, for he gives to his beloved sleep. Notice that he doesn't say

for he humiliates his creatures by limiting with them with the need for sleep.

Which is how I felt about sleep a long time. I always felt like

I always like if somebody would have asked me for the for like what superpower

do you want. I would have said, I wish that I didn't have

to sleep, which is a wicked thought really. That I would wave off

God's design in God's blessing for what I think I want that's wiser than God,

and that I think I can accomplish that is actually, in perspective,

way less, way less than I think. Now. Of course, I

have to admit that it wasn't just a wish of mine or a fantasy.

It was actually a research project. For a while, about ten years ago,

I was researching polyphasic sleeping. Don't google it, I'll tell you all

about it right now. Polyphasic sleeping is the idea that instead of getting eight

hours of sleep at night, what you can do instead is get six and

a half hours and then take a twenty minute nap during the day. Or

if you wanted to optimize even further, you could get four and a half

hours and take two twenty minute hour twenty minute naps each day, go down

into three hours and take three evenly spaced twenty minute naps each day, or

if you really wanted to take it to the max, just sleep twenty minutes

at a time every three minutes and forty three hours and forty minutes every three

hours and forty minutes to take a twenty minute nap and then do it again

three hours and forty minutes later. There are people who do this, not

me. I didn't have the willpower to try it, but unfortunately I mentioned

it to a friend who did have the willpower, and he also happened to

be planting a church at the time, and so that's what he did.

For two weeks he went on the polyphasic sleep routine, and he was getting

so much done. I mean, the dishwasher was always empty, that the

laundry was always folded, the emails were always returned, There was no there

was no like email stack, you know, like how your email is just

piles up and piles up and pile up, and eventually you just have to

declare email bankruptcy and delete them all. He was just on top of it

until two weeks in he ended up in the neurologists office with the inability to

lift his arms. True story, He got better because he went to sleep.

He availed himself of God's good gift. Solomon characterize his sleep as a

gift God gives to his beloved, which doesn't mean that if you have insomnia,

God doesn't love you. That's not the point he's making a different point.

The point he's making is that while we work and watch and wake to

concern trucked and protect and gather things for ourselves, we often fail to realize

that the real giver is God of good things. We rarely even like register.

Look at sleep. You don't build it, you don't gather it.

It comes to you. It refreshes you, all on its own, by

God's design, apart from anything you might work at. In fact, you

don't do it at all. While you sleep, your body repairs, your

brain repairs, your crops grow. Sleep is massively important. Sleep is massively

productive, and it's simply given to you. You don't do it, you

don't construct its benefits. That is just one tiny example of the kind of

sweet, powerful, generous blessings that come from the hand of God. So

don't place your trust, don't place all of your focus, don't place your

heart. Don't give yourself to all your working and watching and waking apart from

God. Don't prioritize your working and watching and waking over worship of God.

It'll all be waiting for you when you get back from Jerusalem apart from him.

Ultimately, your efforts will produce, at best, meager results. But

Solomon isn't done. Now. He gets kind of to the other side of

the coin. Compare those meager results with these mighty rewards. Next Stanza mighty

rewards. He points to children. And if you thought sleep was a good

example, say look at children. He says, behold, which is the

old way of saying. Look. Look, children are a heritage from the

Lord. In other words, don't work for them. They're They're given to

you beyond your effort. The fruit of the womb. They just they grow.

They're a reward. They're good. They are given, and they are

good. And this does not mean that if you don't have children, you

aren't rewarded by God. That's not the point that He's saying. That the

good that you could construct from your labor pales into in comparison to the good

that God can produce. Like children, they're good and they're given. You

don't work to build them. I know some mothers may object to that.

I've heard how hard it is, I've heard how tiring it is every time.

I'm not taking anything away from that. I'm just saying you didn't build

that kid, right, You didn't put that kid together. God did.

God gives these good gifts. And I think whenever our discussion touches a topic

like children, we have an opportunity as a community to address some sensitivities.

So I want to do that. I want to speak to four particular sensitivities

this morning. I think it'll be good for us. Pain, frustration,

labor, and misunderstanding. So just for a moment, let me address the

first three and then we'll get to the fourth one later. Number one is

pain. Whenever we're talking about children and celebrating children and motherhood and fatherhood and

family, which is right to do. We just need to recognize, though,

that most of us, maybe maybe maybe even all of us, have

experienced or are close to someone who is experiencing pain. In regard to that

that whole topic, many of us are, most of us have experienced or

are close to someone who's experiencing a family situation. That's just it is not

what you wanted to be who have experienced miscarriages or even the death of a

child. And so as much as it is right for us us and it

is to celebrate children, motherhood. We want to do that not in a

one dimensional way. We want to do that with an awareness and a sensitivity

as a community of faith, that there are streaks of pain that color that

celebration, and those streaks can be broad and deep and fresh, and so

we would be wise to just to be that kind of people that celebrate with

awareness also frustration frustration. As true as it is that children are God's generous

gifts, that they're good and that they're given, we also live in a

time where medical advancements have allowed us to work really hard to put ourselves in

the position of receiving that gift right. And that's a wonderful thing. It

is wonderful that God has allowed those men cool advancements and that, but that

can be a source of frustration. It can be hard work to put yourself

in that kind of position, and so we also want to celebrate with some

sensitivity in that regard. And then, third labor, As much as it's

true that children aren't something that we build, there is a lot of opportunity

for work when it comes to kids, and I mean opportunity like working at

fostering children, working at adopting children, and working at making disciples in your

home, like we just all committed to that, whether we were a family

or we were a church family, we all committed to the labor of making

disciples out of little ones. And one commentator said it's it's just like God

to give his gifts in the form of responsibilities that eventually become obvious assets.

Also said it this way. They're a handful before they're a quiverful. And

that's just true. But they're good. They're good, and they're given,

and they're not just given and good. They're also impactful. And that's the

next point that Solomon makes in verse four and five. It says, 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. In other words, and

this is one of my favorite metaphors in scripture. Children children like arrows,

will reach way beyond what you can reach. You are going to launch your

children into a time and into places and into communities, into churches, into

industries, into offices that you will never see. They're going to impact souls

that you will never know. After you are dead and gone, they'll still

be whistling through the air. It's amazing. It's amazing. Just this weekend,

my eighteen year olds graduating high school, and so as a part of

his program and curriculum, he was a part of a group of kids gave

that gave presentations on Saturday. Seemed like they were about five hundred of them.

But all the parents that were there, and especially their teacher were moved

not because of the presentations per se, some of them were really good.

We were moved by the reality that here is a whole cohort of arrows that

aren't going to get launched out into the world and make an impact beyond what

we will ever see. And the thing is, that's God's doing. It's

God's doing. And so as as we as we wrestle for perspective on the

impact of our efforts, the things we're giving our attention and labor to,

I have to realize that God calls us to lift our face from that from

time to time and look to Him and not fail to worship him, the

one who does things that absolutely put our efforts into the smallest scale. He

does things like children, He does things like sleep and sunsets and rain.

It is right for us to turn our backs on the house in the city

and the farm, and give ourselves to worship the one who gives good gifts.

Well, as we put these together, and we put work and worship

in their place, right, we've seen kind of the meager results and we've

seen the mighty rewards, and we can we consider those things together. My

whole is that we would not just hear this poem from scripture and it makes

an impact on us for thirty five minutes. My aim and my hope and

my prayer is that we would carry this perspective with us, that it would

it would actually alter the way we engage with our lives, with our work,

with our worship. But I think what we have to also recognize is

that as much as there is a continuity between us and the worshipers of three

thousand years ago, there are some distinctions that we have that have been given

to us by Jesus Christ. There's some differences, and I want to highlight

two before we finish. One of them is this Christ and his work and

the new Covenant community that he's established has shifted the focus of familial blessing from

the physical family to the spiritual family. Shifted the focus of familiar blessing from

the physical family, which is still a blessing, it's a beautiful thing worth

celebrating, but the focus has shifted to the spiritual family, which will be

your forever family. As as as they came to Jesus saying, hey,

your mom and your brothers are looking for you. Maybe you should prioritize your

family. You should walk out on this on this Sunday school lesson that you're

teaching here and go deal with your mom and your brothers. He said,

who are who is my mom? Who is my brother? Who is my

sister? Those who do the will of my father? And in the New

Covenant, Isaiah's prophecy has been fulfilled that the eunuch should not consider himself a

dry tree. In other words, those who feel like they're thin in the

familial blessing category need to recognize they're not. You have been incorporated into a

spiritual family of God by the power of the Gospel, and this is your

forever family. You have children to invest in, You have daughters and sons,

mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters to invest in. You are not

thin in the familial blessing category at all. And I can walk you down

the hall to the children's ministry and show you all your gifts, and you

might even be able to take some home with you. But there's also this,

We have to recognize the generosity of God. The generous gifts of God

are they go beyond just sleep and children. What Jesus did on the cross

to welcome you into his family as a son and daughter of the Most High

was not by your efforts. It was not by you cobbling together a spiritual

plan for your life. He welcomed you in by sheer grace, by sheer

grace. And my hope is that that perspective would fill our hearts each time

we're called away from these so called productive endeavors to worship and to prayer and

to adoring the one who is the source of all blessing, where we get

perspective on our efforts and perspective on His generosity.