Psalm 127 – Journey Through the Psalms Series
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PSALM 127 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS SERIES Good morning Life Fellowship. I hope you all are doing well today. Let’s turn in our Bibles to Psalm 127. This is a Psalm that has always been near and dear to my heart because to me it speaks about the two things that I think about the most and that is work and family. And this Psalm is a Psalm that I have gone back to over and over and over again. It is one of those really foundational rocks that I have to adjust my heart and my mind to constantly. I knew of this Psalm years ago when my kids were young. We used to listen to this artist whose name was Jamie Soles, and he had all these CDs for kids. He would sing Bible stories for kids and he had a CD on a lot of the Psalms. And Psalm 127 was one of those Psalms, so I could sing Psalm 127 for you right now if you want me to. Do you want me to sing Psalm 127 for you? “Yes!” Sorry I was just joking. That was a test. But whenever I would think about this Psalm I could sing the tune in my head. And I think this Psalm is so important because it puts in perspective the struggle that all of us have as parents and as laborers, and that is how we worship God in the midst of life that just gets messy and that gets difficult at times. If you look at Psalm 127, usually in your Bible you will have that top line before you read verse 1, and it will say, “A Song of Ascents of Solomon.” And that is very important because the Psalms of Ascent were basically the 15th Psalm and Psalms 120 to 134. They were written over a period of time, and they were combined as a set to be sung by the nation of Israel when they would travel to Jerusalem on one of their annual pilgrimages. And there were three pilgrimages that the children of Israel would take each year. Some of you might be familiar with the Passover. Another one would be known as the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. And another one was called the Feast of Tabernacles, and that is when they would all stay in tents to remind themselves of what it was like to wander in the wilderness. So they would stay in these little make shift tents for about a week. But the whole idea was that was three times a year everyone would go to Jerusalem where they would worship God, they would celebrate who He was and what He had done. And Psalm 127 is one of the songs that they would sing. I think this is very interesting because as we sing this Psalm we are singing about work and we are singing about family. And I think when we go to worship God, when we come into our Sunday morning service, the thing that can rob us of coming into God’s presence and really worshipping Him are our problems at home and our problems at the work place. And so this is a great passage that helps align our hearts. I don’t know what you are going through at your work, and I don’t know what is going on in your family, but chances are in one of those two areas there is some turmoil, there is some issues that you have going on and it is hard to worship God. So let’s look at what Solomon says here about how to really worship God in our work and in our homes. This is what he says. Page 1 of 12 pages 7/29/2018 PSALM 127 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS SERIES Verse 1: “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.” Verse 3: “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 them! He shall not be put to shame, when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” This morning I want to share with you three shifts that will transform your work and your family rhythms, because all of us have rhythms in life. All of us have these things in life that every day, every week, we are walking in work and in family. And the first two verses of Psalm 127 deal with work. The last three verses deal with family. And so we are going to look at the first two verses first, and then the last three verses, and see what these three shifts are. The first shift is from stressful work to restful work. I think this is so important. Listen to what he says again. “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.” Every single one of us today, whether we are getting paid for it or not, we have responsibilities. All of us have responsibilities. And I really like how Solomon talks about building and protecting. I think honestly most of us in our jobs, with the responsibilities that we have, are either going to be thinking about how do we build this thing, or how do we protect this thing. Does that make sense? So some of us are thinking about how do we build this, or grow this. And some of us are thinking about protecting things to keep it from all falling apart. And so I love how Solomon tells us that we need to understand that God is the one who builds and God is the one who protects. See, what is going to shift us from really working in a stressful way and being able to work in a restful way is to understand that God is the one who does it. And if you work and labor like it is all up to you, you will not enjoy your work. Listen, if you believe it is all up to you to make sure this gets done, you will carry stress, you will carry a weight that God never intended you to carry. God wants us to understand that. Does He want us to work hard? Absolutely, He does. But He does not want us to carry the burden and the weight of things that He alone can carry. Think about the mentality of a person who is Jewish in the 11th century BC. This was an agrarian society. They didn’t have paid vacations. They had to trust in God for everything. And God told them to take time off, sometimes it would be at least two weeks in travel time to attend each of the three feast times. God wanted them to come Page 2 of 12 pages 7/29/2018 PSALM 127 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS SERIES and worship Him, and He didn’t want them to worry about their income or what was going to happen to their homes while they were away. This is where faith comes in. So we have to look at ourselves and ask, ‘How does my faith play a part in my work?’ Because here is what can happen. If you believe it is all up to you, if you believe your work is all up to you, your income is all up to you, that everything in your occupational career is all up to you to make sure you get it done, you are not going to enjoy life. Verse 2 says it right here. “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.” This is what he is saying: you can’t enjoy your meal at the end of the day if you think it is all up to you. He said it is vain, it is empty, it is worthless to wake up early and go to bed late working. So you have permission, spouses, to use this verse on your husband or wife this week. Because this is what happens, and I get it, as there are times you have to wake up early and there are times you have to go to bed late because of certain projects. But the reality again is if you think that it is all up to you, and you are getting up early and you are going to bed late, you are carrying this burden and you are not going to enjoy the work that God has given to you. I was struggling with this just this week. I knew I was preaching on this Psalm weeks ago. I know what this passage says. And yet, Tuesday at 1:30 in the morning I wake up and I lay in bed with my eyes wide open because I am thinking about a project that I am working on. It is a project for another ministry that I am working on. And it is one of these things where the first third of the project had gone great, but the second third of the project is not going so well.