Vain Labor

We are in Psalm 127.

And so this whole summer we've been kind of going through the Psalms and we've been looking at different ones to understand our emotions in the Psalms.

And sometimes, just to kind of be candid with you, when you're trying to put together a sermon series on the front end, it can sound amazing.

You can get really excited, and then you get like halfway through, and you're like, man, this is challenging, right?

It's challenging to try and stick to kind of the theme you're trying to hope to do and so forth.

And honestly, the psalms are just kind of difficult in ways, anyway.

Sometimes, if you've read them personally for your devotion, there's beautiful, eloquent language.

They're poetic, they're liturgical at times, but then sometimes you're just wondering, like, what in the world are they even talking about?

Right?

Well, welcome to Psalm 127.

What in the world is going on here?

That's kind of what you can kind of look at as you start to approach this psalm because it seems so disjointed that there are actually many scholars who believe that this is actually two different poems that they kind of just stuck together as they were making the Psalter or the book, a collection of book of Psalms in ancient times.

Many people though contend that no, this really is one psalm and it's congruent.

You have to understand and you have to really search it out to understand what is the author trying to say.

Ultimately, what is the Holy Spirit trying to say through the author who's writing it?

And so as we look at this, you can see where it seems, wait a second, this seems like two completely different trains of thought.

My hope for you this morning is that we see the beauty of what the Holy Spirit has intended for us in Psalm 127, and we're challenging each other on what it means to labor.

What it means to labor.

So let's start and just dive right in.

Psalm 127.

If you're there, we're gonna read.

If you don't have a Bible or so forth, we're gonna have the words on the screen as well, but it says this Psalm 127.

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 inherited from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.

He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

This is the word of the Lord.

May God bless the reading and the proclamation of his promises.

So, like I said, when we first read this psalm, it kind of seems disjointed.

He's talking about building in vain, watching in vain, anxious labor, all of this working to vanity, and then out of left field he goes, Behold, children.

And you're thinking, now that's vanity, right?

Children, that has to, he can't be saying that this is somehow a response, or somehow children are the answer or the right heart posture toward these previous texts, because that's how the Psalms kind of work.

The Psalms are known inside of this category of kind of wisdom literature, at least some of the Psalms are.

In wisdom literature, like the book of Proverbs, if you're familiar with that at all, it tends to kind of play off of itself in each different section.

So it'll give a passage and then it'll kind of stop that thought and respond to that thought with the correct heart.

So uh we might have this kind of rhythm that we see throughout it.

And here in the Psalms, and especially in this psalm, we can see some of those same rhythms where the first portion of the psalm will be addressing one thing, and then the second portion uh responds to it or addresses it in a way that is a right posture of how we should live.

We've kind of seen that all throughout this series, where the psalmist might start with agony and despair.

He might start with his own sin and how it's damaging his life and his enemies are after him, but then he responds to that kind of anxiousness or fear or despair with the hope of the Lord.

No, but the Lord is faithful.

So we see that actual same rhythm here.

In fact, we see that labor is vain, watching is vain, working, anxiousness is vain, and then out of almost seeming left field, the psalmist says, Behold children.

So what does he mean?

If we look at verses one and two, I think the way we can summarize these two verses that without the Lord in our pursuits, our accomplishments are vanity.

Without the Lord in our pursuits, our accomplishments are vanity.

As we look at this passage, we can see a theme here, right?

When we look at the those who are working to build a house, those who watch over the city, those who labor in anxious toil.

I think the theme that we can draw from these three types of actions or pursuits is security.

Building a home, watching over a city, laboring extensively, all point to a desire for security.

It's not that these things alone are bad or wicked pursuits.

We have to understand that the psalmist is not saying to do these things inherently or intrinsically is wicked.

No, he's saying that without the Lord in them, if we strive toward them without the Lord, then they are vain.

So what exactly does that look like, though?

To seek security apart from the Lord, I would argue that it's to fail to trust in his sovereign care for his children.

When we try to build our own sense of security.

And we all fall into this pit.

We all try to find like the right house, the right school district, we try to find the right career, the right retirement plan, the right this, the right that, and we all can kind of fall into trying to build this sense of security because at our core we are terrified.

We want to be secure.

And the Lord is not against us being secure, but he's against us being secure if our security is not found in him.

We can see this even in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is addressing, why do you worry about what you will eat?

Why do you worry about what you will wear?

Why do you worry about your security?

Does not God give food to the bird?

Does he not clothe the flower of the field?

If they are just his creation, you are his image bearers, won't he care for you even more?

Why do we fear?

We try to build our own security because we are terrified people.

It's hard to trust in God.

It's hard to believe that he is for our good because our perception of what is good is often very different than his reality of what is good for us.

Oftentimes, as God moves in our lives and works in his mysterious ways, we question God, are you good?

Because what is happening and what I'm seeing and what my human experience is showing me is that you're not.

But the Bible says very clearly God is good, and he works all things for those who love him for their good.

I love this famous statement about the person of Jesus and talking about his goodness toward his people.

And I'm not gonna say who quoted because I'll misquote it, and I really it's either C.

S.

Lewis or Charles Spurgeon.

That's always the case.

But he says this about Jesus.

I believe it's actually C.

S.

Lewis about Aslan and writing in the Chronicles of Narnia.

He is good, but he is not safe.

You see, the Lord wants us to find our security in him who is good, who watches over us.

To seek security apart from the Lord is to fail to trust him.

We all have aspects of our lives where we can be tempted to do this, right?

We might put our security in a suburban home or in a top-rated school district.

We might put our security in a political party, an economy, or a legislation.

We might put our security in a degree or a career or in climbing the corporate ladder.

Or some of us, we put our security in all of those things.

You see, God's not looking for us to be homeless.

God's not looking for us to be vulnerable to violence.

God's not looking for us to be impoverished.

He's not against us having these things in our lives, but he is against us striving toward them as though they are the means of our security.

You see, God must be our security.

God must be the one we put our trust and hope in.

We do this constantly.

We do this constantly, trying to put our security in the wrong things.

Some of us for our sense of value and worth, we put our security in relationships and they fail us.

Some of us for our identity, we put our security in a career that we get let go of.

Some of us put all of our security in a market that crashes.

God is saying, you can build, but if you build without me, you're building in vanity.

And as we build with the Lord, as we actually strive for some of these things that, again, God is not against us having, but as we strive for them alongside Him with Him, we actually are beginning to have shaped and forged what security even looks like in the first place.

And so the suburban home doesn't mean as much to us anymore.

The amazing grade or the amazing school district or the amazing career or the whatever it is that we might have, it begins to take shape in a different light and a different perspective because we're putting our trust in God.

Again, I want to make clear, God is not calling us to be foolish.

He's calling us not to create idols.

You see, it's when we put our security in God, it's then that we can truly enjoy and have the good gifts that He's given us.

Because we will not be reliant upon them to fulfill something that they're actually unable to do.

I love the end of this passage.

He gives to his beloved rest.

He gives to us rest.

You see, it's when we trust God, we can rest.

When we trust God, we don't have to make sure that those things of which we're building for our own security are holding up and that they're reliant upon our strength.

And we're the one that has to make sure that it comes to completion.

So I've got to put 80 hours in at the office this week.

I've got to make sure that this is getting done.

I have to make sure I'm present at this PTA meeting.

I've got to make sure that I'm here and I'm here.

And we labor in toil and anxiousness, but when we trust in God and his sovereign care for his children, he gives us rest because our security doesn't reside on our shoulders anymore.

Our security relies and resides in his sovereignty.

It is then that we can actually enjoy God's good gifts to us.

Ultimately, God gives to his children rest from building their own feudal securities.

When we rest, we're living out the truth that God is sovereign and that he's working for the good of his children.

And one thing that I need to clarify is that this is not a call to rest from laboring at all.

This is not God saying it's okay for you to be lazy.

That's not what God or the scriptures are showing to us at all.

It's actually this is a call to rest from vain labor.

And sometimes we see things like this in the past as Mystius communicated these things called rest or uh these kind of thought processes of theology of rest, it's actually worked itself out negatively to where people just don't do anything.

And they always say, I'm resting.

No, you're just being lazy.

The scriptures aren't calling us to be lazy.

The scriptures aren't calling us not to work.

If we look at the model of God, he worked six days and then rested one, and then he called for his people Israel to model the same, to labor for six days and then to rest for one.

We're still supposed to get our hands dirty in the work of building.

But we're supposed to labor, resting in his security and provision for his children.

You've ever heard the term work like an Arminian, sleep like a Calvinist?

I love that term.

Work.

Work.

Labor.

Build.

But rest.

Rest that it doesn't rely on you to make it.

Rest that it doesn't rely on you to stay standing.

Rest as though it doesn't rely on you to produce fruit.

Rest.

God is sovereign and he has this.

Verses 3 through 5, I think that what we can see in summary is that the response to vain security is actually labor and family.

As we are just brought through what it looks like to labor in vain pursuits, the psalmist brings us into what are rewarding pursuits, life-giving pursuits, and honorable pursuits.

Family.

Specifically children.

All three parts of the first half of the psalm are confronted with a singular response.

Those who are building the house and laboring in vain, those who are watching over the city and watching in vain, those who are working with anxious toil and not resting, rising early and going late to bed, all of these diverse actions of the pursuit of feudal security are responded with one answer children.

That amazes me.

Because children are insanely harder work than those three things.

If you're a parent, isn't that true?

Yes.

Some of you go to the office so you don't have to deal with your kids.

I know that.

Giggle at it.

It's not good.

But it's true.

Children are insanely more laborious.

But that's what the Holy Spirit is giving the psalmist as a response to these three things, all three parts, confronted with a singular answer.

You see, where we might have strived to build a home, now we build a heritage.

Where we strive to protect the city, now we fill it with weapons.

And where we work and toil, now we build equity.

While the psalmist isn't to direct our security into children and family, he is bringing us into a better pursuit.

Look at the American dream.

If we can take a minute and just be honest about it, what context of culture that we find ourselves in, the American dream is completely against this.

In fact, the American Dream would affirm the first half and deny the second.

We work more than we've ever worked.

We have bigger houses than we've ever had.

We have more debt than we've ever had.

We have more stress, more anxiety, more depression, fewer children.

Maybe we've got it wrong.

Maybe we actually are pursuing the first half of this as if it's good.

And we're discovering in human experience that it's killing us.

Maybe children truly are a reward.

Maybe children truly are a blessing.

Maybe true children truly are weapons in our artillery.

Maybe they truly are our glory and not our shame.

But we strive for accolades.

We strive for identity and position and culture.

That's what we strive for.

We want the check.

We want the title.

We want the corner office.

We want the right home and the right subdivision.

We want to have all these things.

And even our children we are using as accolades.

Look at my 2.5 children family.

I have one boy and one girl.

I've got the American dream.

But parents and children are more disconnected than they've ever been.

Children are more lonely than they've ever been.

According to statistics, as we research what is happening in a hyper-connected culture through social media and so forth, what we're discovering is that actually the people who feel the most connected and the least lonely, take a guess at how old they are.

They're over 65.

They're the ones who feel the most connected.

The ones who are dealing with the most depression, the most anxiety, and the most isolation are children in their teens.

Something is wrong.

Our labor in vanity, our labor in pursuing this American dream has diminished the value of children.

Children get in the way of our greater pursuits rather than seeing children as the pursuit itself.

Now, one thing that I had to ask as we approach this Psalm 127, is this an isolated incident?

Is this just one obscure text that we're supposed to derive a whole doctrine from, or is this speaking to a greater theme, a greater narrative that sits above this psalm and arches all of Scripture?

And my argument to you is that this is found in the purposes of God from the beginning of creation, and it will extend into the echoes of eternity.

Let's look at this for a second.

In Genesis 1, 27 through 28, we see this.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and 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.

This is what I want to draw our attention to.

As God had worked in his sovereign power, he spoke and all things were created.

And then he intimately gets down with his creation and he forms man out of the dust and he breathes the breath of life into him, and he presents to him his helper, Eve, and he brings them before himself, and the very first thing he tells them is what?

Have children.

Imagine you being the creator of all the universe, the one who puts the very breath of life in the lungs of his image bearers.

What is your first command to them?

How would you have done it?

Praise God, we're not relying upon you or have to speculate your wild imagination.

Because we have seen here, written in the scriptures, for us to understand that when God made his image bearers, his command and sovereign will is that more image bearers would be made through them?

The very first command of God to his image bearers was to multiply that image.

To have the earth filled with his image and to have that image express righteous dominion over his creation.

Let me ask you something, church.

What if to see the earth filled with the glory of God meant seeing the earth filled with his image?

We say this nonchalantly in the Christian world all the time.

And we see it in the scripture that the glory of the Lord shall fill the earth.

What it's it's one of those Christian statements where you say, What does that mean?

You know, when somebody says they're gonna pour into you, please don't.

I don't know what that means.

That's another Christian statement that we make a lot.

I'm gonna pour into you.

No, I've I'm full, I'm filled up.

I'm filled up.

Thank you.

When we say, I'm gonna the glory of the Lord is going to fill the earth, it seems so ambiguous and we can't have understanding around it.

So we have these kind of imaginations of what it means.

But what if we see it right here?

What if we see it in Genesis 1 that to see the glory of the Lord fill the earth is actually to see his image fill it?

You see, when we look at ancient Greek and Roman history, the very first thing when they built and erected a temple, what did they do inside of it?

They put an image of their God in it.

They put something that represented him.

Something that they could come to and have this relationship that they thought they would have with that God.

God Himself has built for him a temple, earth, and he established on it his image.

And then his very first command to those image bearers is reproduce this image.

Fill all of the earth with my image, that my glory might fill this earth.

And so our main idea this morning is this: that to be free of vain labor, we should pursue his glory, not our own.

To be free of vain labor, we should pursue his glory and not our own.

God has a desire to see the earth filled with his glory, to see the earth filled with his image.

And we're going to look at what that means in a New Testament narrative, but from the beginning of creation, that was God's first command to his people.

And we've diminished what it means to do that.

We've diminished the gift of children.

We've seen them as something that either gets in the way of our vain pursuits or something that we tack on as an accolade to our fake accomplishments.

We don't see them as a heritage often.

We don't see them as weapons in our artillery.

We don't see them as our glory.

To be honest, our story is this.

We embrace vain labor because it's easier to work for our own glory.

We embrace vain labor because it's just easier to work for our own glory.

It is.

Broken.

And so sin corrupts every aspect of our lives, both our physical and our spiritual, but Christ came that he might redeem both the physical and spiritual realities of this command.

You see, the gospel declares this that Jesus labored for the glory of the Father to redeem and reproduce his image.

Jesus labored for the glory of the Father to redeem and reproduce his image.

Christ came that the image of God might fill the earth.

Where we had taken it off track because of our sin and rebellion, where we were seeking to place our own image into this world instead of the image of the Father, we had at best a broken and marred, perverted image that was still intact with us.

Christ came to renew it.

Christ came to redeem it, and Christ came to reproduce it.

Because it costs them all of heaven, their prince, to come and bear children for the kingdom and glory of God.

Romans 8 29 says this.

God is still on mission for his first command.

Church, be fruitful and multiply.

Fill the earth with the image of God.

You see, Jesus is the fullness of the image of God, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, that image is filling the earth for the glory of God.

And in the world to come, in the echoes of eternity, it will be filled with fully redeemed image bearers, and his glory will fill the earth like the waters fill the sea.

You see, God will have what he wanted in creation.

When he brought forth his image bearers and he gave them the command to be fruitful and multiply, that was his sovereign will and desire.

However, man and their rebellion went off track.

They fell and they incurred sin and curse upon themselves.

But God did not give up.

God did not stop.

He said, What I set forth to do to have my glory fill this temple of which I created, I will accomplish, but I will not accomplish it through the seed of man, I will accomplish it through the seed of my son.

And in the new heavens and in the new earth, it will be filled with fully redeemed image bearers for his glory.

God will have what he desires.

God will have a new heaven and a new earth filled with his image.

And this is what I want us to pursue, church.

As we look at how this impacts our lives, and the vision that I want to put before us this morning is this that in place of laboring in vain pursuits, we work to see many children brought into the family of God.

In place of laboring in vain pursuits, we worked to see many children brought into the family of God.

I think that this holds two categories, both physical and spiritual.

I don't believe that now in the New Testament perspective, we cease having physical children.

No.

In fact, be fruitful and multiply.

As much as we can be in obedience, in submission to the original commands of God that he gave his image bearers, we should pursue that.

The law of God has not been brought to nothing, it's been fulfilled in Christ.

And we don't have to strive for it to earn God's favor anymore.

Now what we do is enjoy, submit to it.

Enjoy, it becomes our life and it becomes our peace because we delight in obeying the law of God.

We don't have to obey it to earn his favor and love.

Christ has done that for us.

And so now we should seek as renewing image bearers of the original image of God in us, the image of his son, we should seek to be obedient to him.

And so I believe that the original command for his image bearers is still intact.

Be fruitful and multiply.

Us as Christian families, we should physically pursue this.

We should reorient our ideas and thoughts and perceptions about what children mean.

Christianity, statistically, across the earth is declining.

Now you can speculate onto all the reasons of why that might be.

One, that doesn't make me afraid.

That doesn't put at jeopardy that this is true in life for us.

And I can sit down at coffee with you for a couple hours and talk about all the reasons why I think this is true.

But one thing that we can tangibly measure and see is this Christian families are having less children.

One of the greatest players to the decline in the Christian faith across the world is we are fundamentally having less children.

Because we've bought into a lie.

Most of the time, as I see Christian families who are choosing to not most of the time, when I see Christian families without children or with few children or so forth, most often than not, it's not because of physical inability.

Most often it's by their own free choice.

That's what they wanted.

It was too hard.

It was too difficult.

It got in the way of things that we really wanted.

We wanted to travel.

We wanted to enjoy this.

We wanted to do that.

And I'm not trying to dismiss the pain and the suffering that many families and women have gone through and their physical inability to produce children.

I'm not dismissing that.

And I don't think God's dismissing that.

And I don't think God's diminishing the value of physical children in light of that hardship and suffering.

In fact, God's given us another way.

And that's a spiritual way.

You see, we can have as many physical children as we can manage, right?

20, something and counting.

But if we don't disciple them in the Lord, if we don't raise them underneath the gospel, if we don't care for them and show them the ways of God and this truth, then all we're doing is reproducing condemned offspring.

They're not saved because they're born by us.

If we don't labor to disciple them, to live on mission for them, so that they might see and savor God, then that pursuit is vain equally.

But us church, we can labor also in spiritual children.

That goes for anybody in this church.

Christ died.

One of the primary purposes for Christ's coming to die for our sin and to stand in our place is so that many brothers might be born from his finished work.

Do we, when we think about the cross, when we think about the sacrifice of Christ, do we think about just ourselves and how it saved us and how it redeemed us and how it stood in our sin?

Or do we think about the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people of whom it was for as well?

Christ died to not make a brother.

Christ died to make many brothers after him.

Christ died to fix what we broke.

Fill the earth with his image.

And we have to labor.

Church, if we're going to labor in anything, let us labor in things that not at the end of our life is counted as vanity and worthless.

Let us labor in the things that matter.

Let us labor in the things of eternity, because what we are spending so much time and so much money and so much energy on, I'm telling you, if it lasts the end of your life, you are blessed.

But even at the end, it will fall to worthlessness.

Most of us won't even be that blessed.

We'll see it crumble in less than 10 years.

What are you putting your time into?

What are you putting your resources into?

What are you putting your strivings into?

If it's not the building of his church, it will not last.

If it is not for his glory, it will not last.

I want my children to love this church, to love Christ's church.

I want them to love laboring in this church.

I want them to love working in this church.

I don't want them growing up to resent it.

I'm trying to bring them in with me as we work together.

Many of you don't know, but an 11 and an eight-year-old made your coffee this morning.

They set up your communion this morning.

They put all the cards in the back of your chairs this morning.

And this isn't some boasting in me.

This is something to try and put on display for you that my children will love the church by God's grace and my strivings and efforts.

And me and my family will commit to see many children brought into the family of God.

Church, it's worth it.

It's worth it because it's eternal.

It's worth it because it's the will of God.

And it's worth it because at the end of time it is the best for us.

And you might not believe me.

You might think and convince yourself that you have got to get all of the joy that you can in now, right?

That's really this terror, that's really the terror that we kind of live with, or the fear that we live with.

I've got to get all my joy in now.

I've got to get all my joy in of traveling and seeing the world now.

I've got to get all my joy of having toys and stuff now.

I've got to have all the joy of all these things now because you only live one life and then it's over.

Praise God, we live at most 80 years according to the scriptures.

Praise God that that vain and futile 80 years is not the sum total of our existence and experience.

Praise God that there is an eternity of a new heavens and new earth that you can't even fathom its glory and splendor that we will get to enjoy for all of eternity.

Don't be so narrow-minded that you focus on the things that will burn away.

Be so heavenly minded and open to the truth of God's word that we await in eager patience to see the coming of the glory of the King where his new heavens and new earth is established for us to enjoy forever.

Work to that end, not to your next cruise.

Work for the glory of the Lord.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you.

Thank you for your word that corrects us.

Thank you for your word that steers us when we have gone astray.

I pray, Lord, that we walk out of here over time producing a deeper love and value for children.

I pray that they're not burdensome to us.

They are a delight to us.

I pray that they are not laborious for us, but they are worth the work.

And I pray that we as a church are people who get our hands dirty in the work of seeing many children be born.

Whether it be in the physical or in the spiritual.

All culminating for your glory.

Father, let us be laborers in your work, to see your image fill this earth, that the glory of the Lord might be seen by all.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.