Love Children More

Amen.

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission.

My name is Justin, and I'm one of the pastors here.

It's my privilege and honor to be able to bring God's word to you.

We are in Psalm 127, as we just read, and we're looking at loving children more.

Now, here I want to kind of set this up.

Last uh service, I have more content than one sermon, right?

This should be like a three, four-part sermon.

So I'm just going to give what the Lord's given me.

I'm going to give to you.

I hope you're blessed by it.

I hope that you're encouraged by it.

But here's something that I want to start us off with thinking.

When we look at loving children more, I believe, and what I want to try to work through with us together as a church family is that the idea of loving children more is actually tethered, inseparable, to our understanding of God's design for man.

When I speak about man, I'm not speaking general about mankind.

I'm speaking about men.

God's design for men, when we live that out, facilitates this beautiful understanding and working out of a deep desire to love children more.

And I think that this text helps us understand that.

It helps us unpack it in very beautiful and profound ways.

Psalm 127 is called the Builder's Psalm.

And this is one of the Psalms of Ascent.

What these are, these Psalms of Ascent, are these collections of Psalms that are believed to have been read or prayed through or sang as God's people were going up to worship him in the temple.

That's this song of ascent.

You've all probably heard of Psalm language, but who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, right?

So these songs were ones that were kind of preparatory in God's people coming to worship him.

And this is one of those songs, and this is the only one written by Solomon.

Maybe you've heard of King Solomon before.

He was known as the wise king.

He was a son of King David, and he wrote a lot of our wisdom literature that we see in the scriptures.

Things like the book of Proverbs, that is wisdom, or Song of Solomon, that is, which is about relationship and marriage.

And we also wrote some of the songs.

This one is called the Builder's Song.

And here's what I think we have to realize.

As men, we are called to build.

We are designed and created by God to build.

In our very nature, as we are purposed to reflect his image, men are designed and have a holy calling upon them to build.

We look at this in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

So as we enter the scene of Genesis chapter 2, what we have to kind of understand is that in the first few chapters of Genesis, it doesn't follow a succinct chronological order.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

There are times where they kind of fast forward and go back and they kind of unpack some things, specifically when it comes to the creation of man and mankind, right?

Which is an inclusion of woman.

So we see part of this in Genesis 1 as they're telling kind of the higher story of creation in the seven-day period.

But then in Genesis 2, it's almost as if they rewound and dove deep into the reality of what took place when man was created.

And in Genesis 2, we enter the scene of the garden with man, the Adam.

There is no woman yet.

There is just, in the Hebrew, the Adam.

When man is put to sleep and resting, and God takes the writ out of him and makes the woman, for the first time in the language of the Hebrew Bible, do we see the Isha and the Esha, the two genders or sexes that complete the image of God that we as humans bear.

But here in Genesis 2, we have the Adam.

And here's what it says.

Genesis 2, 15 through 17.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

Here's what I want us to understand.

What did God do with Adam?

He placed him in the garden to work and keep, to build and to guard.

The garden was never supposed to remain contained in its original created state.

It was the role of Adam to both see the garden flourish and expand under his dominion.

And so God gave man mission before he ever gave him a helper.

Let me say that really clearly.

God gave man a mission before he ever gave him a helper.

Because a man without mission means no help.

And there's a lot of times that we see in our society and culture women who are frustrated in their marriage because they've tendered themselves to a man with no mission.

And they can't facilitate and operate in and walk out the design that God has given to them uniquely and distinctly complementary to man.

Because they're there to be a helper on a bigger mission than just pleasing that man or making him satisfied.

That's not a part of God's beautiful and intricate design of woman.

It comes from God placing a man in a place in a garden to work, to keep.

So this command of building, of working and keeping was given to man ever before there was a woman.

And we see parallel themes in Psalm 127 in Genesis 2.

Let's kind of look at these things together, right?

We see in Psalm 127, those who, unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor build it in vain.

What's Genesis 2?

God placed Adam in the garden to work it.

We see this parallel theme of building, laboring, right?

And working.

Psalm 127 says, unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stay awake in vain.

What was the second part of Adam's calling from God?

To keep it.

What does that mean?

It means actually to guard it.

Adam was called to guard over God's creation, to exercise the dominion of which God had given him as man.

So not only was Adam to work it or to build and labor within it, but he was to watch over it and guard it also.

In Genesis 1, or in Psalm 127, we see, why do you rise up early and stay awake late to eat the bread of anxious toil?

Right?

What's that talking about?

It's talking about trusting God to be your provider, to be your sustenance, to be all that you need.

In Genesis 2, we see, I've given you every fruit that you can behold with your eye.

I've given you all of this for your provision.

But this one tree, don't eat it.

What's God calling Adam to do?

Trust me.

Trust me that I'm good, that I know what I have called for you to live out and walk out for your ultimate flourishing.

Trust me.

There's a parallel of both of these eatings that it comes rooted in do we trust that God is good?

The language for work in Genesis 2 is to serve or to minister, to execute the purposes of our Lord.

To keep means to guard or protect, to defend against the attack of enemies and to keep the land pure.

You see, this was Adam's responsibility.

The sin of mankind falls on the head of Adam.

Because he was entrusted with guarding that which God had made.

Adam not only permitted the servant, he invited the servant.

He exercised wickedness.

What should have Adam done?

Adam should have cut the head off the snake.

That's why we need a second Adam, who is greater than the first, who ultimately what?

Cuts the dragon's head from his torso, that we might have victory over sin, death, hell, and grave.

Adam was supposed to work.

Adam was supposed to guard.

Adam was supposed to fill.

He fruitfully multiplied.

Came the blessing of God after he had his command.

But when Adam did not take his responsibility, design, and calling seriously, what did God do?

God removed him from the garden.

God kicked him out.

And he promised them in Genesis 3, 15, that there would be a Savior who would come and make everything right, who would be the better Adam for us.

So as we look into this Psalm 127, I want us as men to look for and try to understand the parallels that we see in Psalm 127 and Genesis 2.

I want us to see the grand design that God has for you as a man.

One that no one else can take the place of.

One that we are uniquely designed and called to fulfill because it actually reflects the very nature and heart of the God that we serve.

A God that builds.

A God that watches over and guards.

A God that fills with his own image.

As we look at Psalm 127, let us look at verses 1 and 2 and see this truth.

We are people who are building and resting beneath the sovereign and loving Lord.

Building and resting beneath the sovereign and loving Lord.

The psalmist's emphasis in this text is that we would not labor or wash in vain, that we would not work in vain.

What he's not doing is saying that we should not pursue building and laboring, but that in our pursuits we should work to not do them in vanity.

He's not fostering idleness or laziness, right?

He's fostering a heart that's reflected upon our deep need for God and his sovereignty to bless that which he's called us to, to labor and to watch, to build and to guard.

And in this Psalm, I love this because we see the working construct for man.

And we say this a lot at Sacred Mission.

What is men's divine calling?

To pastor, protect, and to provide.

To build, to pastor, to foster some type of home.

To protect, to watch and guard over, to provide, to give sustenance to those we love.

This is the call of man because it actually reflects the very nature and heart of the God we serve.

And while this is man's responsibility, it's vanity without the blessing of a sovereign and loving Lord.

The psalmist says, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Men must labor to fulfill God's design and command for them to build.

I want to say this clearly.

A man who refuses to build, to labor, is a man who is living contrary to the purposes of God.

The Bible calls men who are lazy, who foster idleness in their life, wicked men.

In fact, the New Testament will unpack how wicked these men are.

That a man who refuses to provide for his family in laboring is worse than an unbeliever, the New Testament says.

There is only judgment and condemnation over unproductive men.

Because we are called to build.

We are called to labor.

But that labor becomes vain.

If not even futile.

If the Lord is not the sovereign architect.

Proverbs 19.21, written by King Solomon, also, says this: many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it's the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

We have to be cautious of not laboring to build in our own strength as men.

And oftentimes that's our propensity, right?

That's what we're tempted toward.

But the psalmist is saying, don't do that.

That pursuit is a vain pursuit.

Because unless we have the sovereign blessing of God over that which our hand is put to, it will not stand, it will not last.

We need to be men who labor, but we labor under a sovereign God.

We need to be men who watch and guard what they have built.

But we need to be men who watch and guard over a sovereign God.

That watching becomes vain, futile.

The Lord is not the supreme watchman.

But a man who permits or even invites the enemy in, that's a wicked man.

If we look at the rhythms of the Old Testament narrative, here's what we're going to continually see over and over again.

It's like a cycle that is unending throughout the Old Testament.

And it really is true for a lot of us even today.

It's not something that's just isolated and held or pinned into the Old Testament.

Here's the cycle.

God establishes a people for his own worship.

And he gives them all that is good.

Those people don't trust him.

And what do they do?

They stop watching and guarding, and they not only permit, but they begin inviting in sin, idolatry, wickedness.

What does God do?

God judges them.

In his loving correction, he reestablishes those people for his worship and glory and then just kick off the exact same cycle over and over and over again.

One of the greatest downfalls of God's people is when men stop watching and guarding over that which their hands built.

How then do we live?

As one who doesn't build?

Or as one who doesn't keep watch?

No?

As men who rely on the sovereignty of God with every swing of the hammer and every waking hour.

That's how we live.

Trusting and resting in a sovereign God.

To work or watch without the blessed presence of the Lord is utter vanity.

The psalmist gives us this reality with the third and final vanity in regards to provision.

To live in a way where, if you are going to be cared for, it's going to have to utterly depend on you.

Gives us a life of no rest.

Look at the end of that.

Why do you wake up early?

Why do you go to bed so late, eating the prediction story?

What are we communicating with our heart and life when we live in such a way?

We're communicating that we really don't believe God is good or loving, that he's the Father that's going to provide for his children in the way that he's promised.

And if we're going to be taken care of, it is going to have to be done by our own hand.

There's no rest in life.

And some of you are exhausted.

You are exhausted because you can't trust God is good.

One of my friends, his family practices a Sabbath every Saturday night to Sunday night.

And as a family, they go through this Sabbath liturgy.

And I want to read for us this call and response that he does with his family.

I just find so much beauty.

The father will stand up and say this.

Have we finished all our work for this week?

And the family will respond, no.

The father will say, Is there still more for us to do?

The family will say, Yes.

The father will say, Should we worry about the work that is still to be done?

The family will say, no.

And they'll gently respond, why?

And they say, because Jesus declared it is finished.

And we rest in all that he has accomplished for us.

Man, isn't that good news?

Some of you need to rest in that.

Like, you really need to rest in that.

Because you're exhausting yourself, you're exhausting your loved ones, you're eating the bread of anxious toil, and you're wondering why your life is a mess.

What's the promise of God?

That he gives his beloved rest.

What does that mean, that beloved?

The agape love of God is placed upon you.

A love that is set at the intentional will for your highest good is placed upon you by the Maker of the universe.

Do you understand the love of the Father?

When He says, I give to my beloved, what's packed into that statement is one who He has chosen by His own divine and sovereign will, that your highest good will be seen and known and experienced by the power and might of His own hand.

Can you rest in that?

So for us as God's people, for us as men, we build and we rest.

Not in our own strivings and endless toil, but beneath a sovereign and loving God.

Verse 3 we see children are a blessing, not a burden.

Children are a blessing, not a burden.

The psalmist comes into this text with this behold.

Behold, right?

It's this purposeful drawing of your attention to what he's about to say.

And here's what we have to kind of work through and start to navigate.

Is he just talked about, unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor build in vain, unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stay awake in vain.

Why do you eat the bread that anxious toil in vanity, right?

And then all of a sudden the psalmist is going to say, Behold, get your attention.

Because here's what he's doing.

He's finally getting to his main point.

And he wants to make sure that you don't miss this.

And what is his main point?

That children are a heritage from the Lord.

Now, why might Psalm be working to draw our attention to this here in a psalm around building and watching?

Right?

Does it not seem almost inserted?

Does it not seem almost out of place that he would be talking about this building and watching, but then all of a sudden he comes in to behold children of our heritage?

Let me ask you this.

What good is an empty city?

What good is a shell of a home?

What good is it if we labor with our hands and it's filled with nothing?

The purposeful end to man's design of building and working is that we would fill it.

Fundamentally.

Like the blessing that flowed from the mandate of God to his image bearers.

Be fruitful and multiply.

So we are to fill the labor of our hands with the children of our heritage.

As I was studying this down, I had to kind of correct myself.

Because I had often said that God's first command to his people was be fruitful and multiply.

And I was wrong in that.

God's first command to his people, to Adam, was work and keep, build and guard.

And then here's what actually happens when God says in Genesis 1, be fruitful and multiply.

It's not a command, it's a blessing.

Get that straight.

God is not commanding Adam and Eve, be fruitful multiple.

He's actually pronouncing a blessing over them.

Be fruitful and fill.

What I have Set you in to work and to keep.

Let's read it together.

Genesis 1.28.

And God blessed them.

That's the act of what's happening here in this passage.

And God said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.

And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

God is saying, Adam, I haven't put you here just to build, to construct, to keep and watch and guard over something that was never meant to be fulfilled.

Take my blessing.

Fill this garden.

Fill my creation with my image.

When we look at God actually declaring that in these latter days, that the glory of God will fill the earth like the waters fill the sea.

Literally is trying to help us understand that it is his image-bearers who have so multiplied throughout the earth that we will fill it and we will worship him as God alone.

He will be our God and we will be his people.

How is God's glory filling this earth?

It is filling it this earth by the multiplication of his image-bearers who will worship him forever.

So God said to Adam, work, keep, fill.

These children are a heritage given to us by the hand of the Lord.

Heritage literally means to possess an inheritance.

To possess an inheritance.

Oh the poverty of a childless home.

One who refuses to do what God has called them to do.

They are bankrupt.

Poverty stricken.

And I want to talk about the difference between intent and inability.

Those are two very different things.

And we'll get to that in a moment.

But I'm not talking about inability here.

I'm talking about intent.

Who desire to build something for their own self-pleasure, for their own glory, for their own joy.

Charles Spurgeon says this.

He was a preacher called the Prince of Preachers in Metropolitan London in the 1800s.

He says, These children are a heritage which Jehovah himself must give.

Or a man will die childless, and thus his house will be unbuilt.

His house will be unbuilt.

Literally, all that labor that that man worked for in his dying days will crumble.

Because he had nothing to hand it off to.

He had no one to keep on in the holy labor.

He had no joy-filled legacy.

The psalmist goes on to say the fruit of the womb of reward.

The fruit of a room of reward.

Here's what the psalmist is doing here.

The psalmist is speaking to the nature which we should receive children as a reward, as a treasure, as something to be pursued and chased after because of how beautiful and how much value they add to the life of man or woman.

Children are a reward.

Here's not what the psalmist is saying.

The psalmist is not saying that God blesses women with children or rewards them with children because of some behavior that they themselves exceed in their life.

That's not what's happening.

He's talking about the harposture of which we should receive children into our life.

A prize to be treasured, not a burden to be begrudged.

And to those in our church family who are persevering through infertility, I want to speak to you for a moment.

Don't hear this passage as God rewards people based on their performance with children.

I don't want you to shamefully deduce the absence of children in your life as some type of cruel punishment or discipline for sin or simply for an insufficient performance.

I can't speak to the sovereign why behind the trials you face.

But I can speak to the incomprehensible love that the Father has for you.

And I can also assure you this that the kingdom alone provides a fulfilled and satisfied life for every individual who experiences the heartbreak and infertility.

Your elders love you.

We empathize with the suffering and trials that you face.

We hope that you're able, through God's grace and mercy, see the beauty of the kingdom that you get to joyfully participate in as He has loved you and called you His own.

In light of that, let's not miss this.

Behold, children are truly a blessing.

Children are a blessing.

And the world wants us to believe what?

The world wants us to believe they're a burden.

The world wants us to believe that they get in the way of our pursuit of pleasure.

The world wants us to believe that they drain the bank accounts we labor so hard to fill.

The world wants us to believe that we should go to any length possible to see to it that your dreams are fulfilled, even at the cost of a child's life, for you to obtain it.

The world doesn't align with the word of God.

When we talk about repentance and sacred mission, we consistently use it in the language that repentance fundamentally is lining our thoughts up with God's thoughts.

It's lining ourselves to think the way that God thinks.

We have to submit ourselves to the truth of God's word and repentance, see children as a blessing, not a murder.

Blessed is the man who has a quiver full.

Bankrupt is a man who has a shell of a home.

Children are a heritage.

To be received as a reward, to be treasured.

Verses 4 through 5, we see the children of our youth produce the well-being of our aged.

The children of our youth produce the well-being of our aged.

I want you to hear that, sit on it for a moment.

We're going to revisit it, but let's talk about arrows in the hands of a warrior.

There's three observations I want us to walk away with here.

First is this arrows are not grown, they are made.

Arrows are not grown, they are made.

Sticks that grow out of the ground grow up rugged and crooked and knotty.

It takes a skilled laborer to make that into a weapon of precision, to make that a weapon of impact, to make it into an arrow.

Your children will not just naturally become arrows in the hands of a warrior.

Your children are naturally crooked sticks coming from the ground.

It takes the skilled hand of a warrior to make them into arrows.

Secondly, arrows go where we aim them.

Arrows go where we aim them.

It takes skill.

It takes purpose and intentionality to make an arrow go into the direction of which you desire to shoot.

And all of us should see our children.

We talked about this last week.

We don't own anything, right?

We don't own anything.

Even our children are gifts of grace given to us by God that we are called to steward for his glory and the good of creation.

And so what are we called to do?

We gotta point them outward and send them off for the glory of God.

Some of y'all mothers want to keep the arrow in your quiver.

What is that?

Some type of syndrome is weird.

But don't do that.

Some of y'all men can't shoot an arrow.

And you point that thing in the way, and then it just falls to the ground.

Have you ever seen a person try to shoot a crossroad for the first time?

They look like idiots.

It's so hard to do to pull that thing back to get it to where you want to go.

You'll see them like flip this, and then are they just waiting listening around this way?

And people are going to die.

It takes skill, it takes precision.

That gets to my third point is this arrows are more useful in the hands of the equipped.

Arrows are more useful in the hands of the equipped.

We have to be men who grow, who mature, who are built up in our faith, in our spirituality, so that we can be warriors who have arrows to be able to use to impact culture for the glory of God.

If we're not building ourselves up as men, as warriors, then when that arrow is put enough, we're not going to know what to do with it.

Right?

We're not going to know how to handle it.

We're not going to know how to aim it.

We're not going to know how to effectively use it for its intended purpose.

But I also want us to realize this: these are not arrows in an old man's feeble grasp.

They are arrows in the fist of a young warrior.

The children of one's youth, the psalmist says.

Many of us, we've put off having children because we believe that they diminish our quality of life.

So we want to have a lot of fun, right?

We want to live.

We want to make sure that all of this fun and pleasure and satisfaction happens now because when children come in, it's rocked from us.

What a lie of the world.

What a lie of the enemy that some of us have believed and indulged in.

And so we put off having children and we foster this Peter Pan syndrome.

We don't have boys who grow to be men.

Fundamentally, we exchange the truth of God's word for a lie of the word.

These arrows in the hands of the warrior are the children of one's youth.

And then he goes on to say, Blessed is the man whose river is full of death.

What does the Bible call blessed?

A man with children.

That's what the Bible calls blessed.

What should we call blessed?

A man with children.

A man who purposely and intentionally fills what his hand has built, and what his eyes watch over.

A man who has labored to build, a man who has kept guard over his domain, a man who has filled what his hands have constructed with the image of God.

He is a blessed man.

And this is the primary design of God for him.

This is us reflecting the very nature of the God who made us.

My friend and pastor here in the area, his name's Michael Foster.

He posted something on social media the other week that I thought was good to share.

He called it a recipe for reformation.

Fear God, put down roots, join a church, get productive, get married, make lots of babies, raise them to fear God, repeat.

This is what the Bible has called us to.

This is the design of man from our creator.

This is what we should endure to submit our lives to.

This is the blessed life.

The world's idea of the blessed life is completely contrary to the Lord's view of what the blessed life looks like.

In some ways it's unextravagant.

In some ways it's absent of visual glory.

In some ways, it seems as if it's not all that it's promised to be.

Finally, the psalmist ends with, You shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

When he says, when he speaks with his enemies, the language there is better interpreted when he destroys his enemies.

I don't know about you, but I preferred that language.

When he destroys his enemies at the gate, he will not be put.

Right, right, right.

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior in the children's of one's youth, he will not be put to shame when he destroys his enemies at the gate.

What's the gate?

The gate was possibly the weakest point of any city.

When we understand a strategy for war, often they would go for the gate first, because if the gate fell, the city fell.

And what's the psalmist helping us understand?

Children of our youth cover our greatest weakness in our age.

I think many of us are prolonging children or foregoing children in this culture and generation.

And I'm telling you, it's going to lead to generations of people whose weakness is greatly exposed at the end of their life and they have no one to cover them.

I hope that world travel plan that you had in your 20s was worth it.

I hope that all the stuff and toys you bought in your early 20s and 30s was worth it.

I hope the way that you were determined to not grow up and be what God called you to be was worth it in your 20s and 30s because I can guarantee you, in the latter days of your life, it will be a shame to you.

Because your weakness will be exposed and you'll have no one to cover it.

A man is able to cover his weaknesses in numbers rather than alone.

This is the design for God.

This is the design of God for a man to have children in his youth that in his age state they may cover his greatest weakness.

Children born to men in their youth, by God's blessing, become the comfort of their latter years.

Our well-being at the end of our life will be determined by the decisions we make now.

And we're so stuck in making momentary before our face decisions, aren't we?

We make decisions on the here and now, and it's so rare that we look up and try to make decisions based on 25, 50 years from now.

And I get it, as your elders, we really try to fight against this.

It's easy for us to get sucked into the reality of what's happening right before our faces and start making decisions that are right now.

And they affect and they impact the momentary.

But we have to guard and we have to fight for one another to pick up our head and look 25, 50, 100 years from now, are we making decisions that are going to impact that, not this?

Because we're not here today to be gone tomorrow.

Satan mission, and by God's grace, is going to be a church that we hand off to our children's children.

Because in wisdom and not in the pursuit of the satisfaction of the moment, we make decisions that will give us a legacy that we can hand off.

Lift up your head.

Make decisions that are going to impact you 25, 50 years from now.

Stop making decisions that just impact the now because the now is fleeing from it.

I believe those who have embraced the lie of the world about children will eat the bitterness of life as it is in them.

But the Lord has given us a better way.

And he's calling us to repentance this morning.

To this thought.

It is a blessing to have a home filled with children.

It is a blessing to have a home filled with children.

That's what the Bible is telling us this morning.

That's what we're being called to submit ourselves to, to reorient our thinking around.

It is a blessing to have a home filled with children.

This is part of the dominion mandate that God gave to us.

I'm here to tell you, there is no one else who can step into your shoes.

You've got to step up and be the men that God has called you to be, that has He designed you to be.

Say your mission will, by God's grace, be a place where it is uncomfortable for you as a man to not function at what God designed you to be.

We'll have a godly uncomfortability hover over men who prefer idleness and laziness over to which God has designed them to be productive, to build, to watch, and to fill.

And that's good and that's why.

Because iron sharpens iron.

Because men help each other become the men that God has designed us to be.

And there's a masculine mandate put on us that we should be men who build, who guard, and who fill.

Are you going to step into that?

Are you going to continue to believe the lies of culture?

That children are not a blessing, but a burden.

That you should just be idle and lazy and not put your hand to the plow to make something.

That you should just continue to allow the enemy into the life of your family and your home instead of watching and keeping guard.

And this is so vital because it's not just this like kind of mystic calling on man.

This is fundamentally a part of us reflecting his very nature of the God that we serve.

Because not only is there a masculine mandate to build, guard, fulfill, there's a kingdom mandate to build, guard, and fulfill.

This is what God does.

This is what God is doing.

He established in his creation the dominion of man, that he would work and that he would keep out of that command the blessing, that he would fill it and being fruitful and multiplied.

We see the same thing in the kingdom.

What is God doing?

God is building a kingdom for himself.

What has he done?

Through his son, he has kept watch and guard over that kingdom.

That that bride, that kingdom will be presented on the day of his return without spot or blemish or wrinkle.

Why?

Because the enemy has no place amongst God's kingdom and amongst the son's bride.

And not only has he built this kingdom, not only has his son been placed as guard over it so that it will be presented without blemish, but it will be filled with his children.

You are here today.

If you love Jesus, if by God's grace you have been saved by his ransom of blood, if you have faith beating in your heart, you are here today fundamentally because you serve a God that builds, that guards, and that fills.

Is that good news for you?

It should be joyous news for you.

So what's he calling us to do?

He's called us to mimic that.

He's called us to reflect that in the way that we live our life.

And there's a kingdom reality.

Sacred mission is here because we believe God calls us to build something.

God calls us to keep watch and guard over something, but God also calls us to fill it.

Shame on us if we would be a leadership team that sought to build something like Sacred Mission for our own self pleasure, for our own comfort.

For our own pursuit of satisfaction.

That's not why we're here.

That's not why we have men who aspire to the office of elder, that they may watch over your souls in the way that God has commanded us to.

We do it so that we can fill this place for the glory of God.

Because God builds and God watches so that he might fill with his image.

We get to joyfully participate in it.

Start to shut us down.

I'm only halfway through.

I love you all.

Can I say that?

I really love you guys.

And I preach this way and I speak this way because I know what God has called us to be as a people.

And I'm on that same journey of trying to aspire to that.

I don't have this program.

I don't, I'm not like, I'm not building an empire.

You know what I mean?

Sometimes things happen, and I get that.

And my own failings and shortcomings, but man, I hope, I hope our encourages people.

I hope our encourages women.

Here's our hope.

Our hope is not in how hard you labor.

Our hope is not in how many sleepless nights you stay awake.

Our hope is not in trying to eat the bread of anxious toil.

Our hope is in Christ.

Because Jesus builds an eternal home for the children of God.

Jesus builds an eternal home for the children of God.

In John chapter 14, verse 3, Jesus says this to his disciples.

John 14:3

If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am you may be also.

Do you see that?

What's Jesus doing?

Jesus is building.

And what's he building?

A place that can be filled with you and with me.

And with those who have yet to hear the glorious gospel of grace that we are called to herald and proclaim.

We labor in building because Christ is labored in building.

Surely he will build his kingdom.

Surely he will guard over it so that death, hell, and the grave will have no claim on her.

Surely he will build it.

What a beautiful blessing it is to be able to live in that experience as a child of God and to seek to work that out in your own life as you reflect the maker you love and serve.

So my hope for us sacred mission is this: that we would be a people who build, guard, and fill.

We are building something here.

We need men who will step up and get their hands dirty in building something here.

We need men who will step up and guard over what is being built so that the enemy has no place in the life of our people.

And we need men who will go out to proclaim the glorious gospel of Jesus, that this place will be filled for his glory.

You know, it's proven and shown throughout history and even in modern society, where men step up to lead in the way that they are designed to, citizens underneath them flourish.

If we want our women to flourish here at Sacred Mission, it does not start with creating more women's programs or women's educational classes or anything of that nature.

Let me tell you where it starts.

It starts with men stepping up and doing what God's called them to do.

If we want our children to flourish, it doesn't start with better discipleship programs on Sunday mornings or more tools that we utilize with inside mission groups.

It starts with men stepping up and doing what God's called them to do.

If we want our city to flourish, it starts with men stepping up and doing what God's called them to do.

If we win the men, we win the city.

Because God has designed our headship, not for oppressive abuse, but for ultimate flourishing of those who reside with them.

So, yes, we want men to step up and remember, we want men to step up and be healthy, men who love and fear God, men who serve the way that Christ served his church by giving his life forever, men that see the well-being and ultimate good of others before themselves.

We want men who will build, who will guard, and who will fit the glory of God.

Amen.

Let's pray.