PSALM 127 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE 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 of .” 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.

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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. And I don’t know what the last third is going to look like. But I know my name is on it. Have you ever been there? Your name is on something and you need it to go well because you know it will be a reflection on you and on how good of a worker you are.

So I am just lying there at 1:30 Tuesday morning thinking about why this person hadn’t called me back, and how I needed to fix this, and how I needed to write some emails. The wheels in my head were just spinning around and around. And the Holy Spirit is whispering to me, ‘It is in vain to stay up late.’ Listen, it is in vain to do that. We need to trust in God and give it over to Him. There are things that we worry about that we have no control over. So how does this affect you? How much sleep have you lost in the last week, or the last month, because of things going on with your work that is really out of your hands?

So how do we learn to enjoy our work? I think there are three things that we can get side tracked on and miss out on enjoying work. It is anxious toil or stressful toil. The word ‘toil’ is a Hebrew word and it is used about six times in Scripture. The first time toil is used in Scripture is in Genesis Chapter 3 where it describes the pain of labor

Page 3 of 12 pages 7/29/2018 PSALM 127 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS SERIES that women have with childbirth. So what Solomon was saying is our work should not feel like that. Our work should not feel like labor. We should enjoy the work that God has given us, the calling that He has given us in our lives.

But I think we get side tracked and the first way we get side tracked is in the issue of control. We think that we are in control of something when we really are not. I don’t care how big your corporation is, you could lose your job tomorrow. I don’t care how good your resume is, or how much experience you have had in your past, things can fall apart tomorrow. We really don’t control it, do we?

I love talking to business leaders and to entrepreneurs. I have planted a number of churches so I think like an entrepreneur many times. And when you talk to entrepreneurs who have started businesses, it is always fascinating to me to hear their stories, because here is what I have learned. If they are going to be completely honest with you some will say something like this: ‘Listen, I had this idea. We did this and boom the whole thing exploded and it has just been great.’ But then you talk to some other people that are entrepreneurs and they say something like this: ‘This is what we did. We had our business plan and everything looked good. We had the backing, it was smart, it was reasonable, but the thing just fell apart.’

And I have listened to several of these guys at different times and I am thinking that some guys didn’t do anything different than some other guys, but God just decided to let some things work and some things didn’t work. So what do you do when you have done all that you can do? You have worked as hard as you can and the thing falls apart? That is where our faith comes in. That is where we find out if we can rest, because if we have a false sense of control, we are not going to enjoy our work.

The second thing I think may be why we are anxious and stressful is because we have a lifestyle that we have to maintain. Let’s be honest, there are times that we take on more debt, there are things that we try to do that our beyond our capacity, and we don’t live within our means; rather we live outside of our means. And the materialism that has captivated so many hearts and minds, even within the church, is all around us in Lake Norman. And we have to fight against it every single day to make sure that we are not trying to compare ourselves with others, and keep up with everyone around us. The person with the most toys does not win. Sometimes we have this stress knowing we need to pay for these bills and we are not enjoying work because of all the bills to pay.

The other thing I think I see is how people find their identity in their work. That is where they find their identity. And here is what we have to fight against, and I see this a lot in America, we are not what we produce. Let me say that again. You and I are not what we produce. And what I mean by that is our value as human beings is not equal to the output of our labours. That is very hard in America, because most of us in our jobs

Page 4 of 12 pages 7/29/2018 PSALM 127 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS SERIES our value is based on what we produce. Is there a value in what you produce? Absolutely.

Let me tell you that every single one of us in this room has value. We have inherent value. Why? Because you and I bear the image of God. And when you walk into that work place and you are only honored by what you produce that is not of the kingdom of God. We need to show people that all people have inherent value because they reflect the image of our Creator. But we can’t do that. We can get so caught up in the nature of work and if our identity flows into our work, what happens when we lose our job, or something falls apart, is our identity as well as our faith will suffer.

So we need to ask ourselves how we respond in those moments when it is not going well. Do I trust God? And even when things are going well do we know who is behind the one building it? Who do we trust in those moments? Look what Solomon says in verse 2, “Eating the bread of anxious toil, for He gives to His beloved sleep.”

There are two things I believe are some of the most worshipful things that God gives to us. And that is God gives to us food and sleep. And I think God enjoys it when He sees us enjoying a meal and getting a good night’s rest. Can I get an ‘Amen’ for that? ‘Amen.’ I think one of the most worshipful things that we can do is get a full night’s sleep tonight. And I think it is because we are supposed to enjoy those things. “Eating the bread of anxious toil.”

Have you ever had really good bread? I mean really good bread? I just have to be honest with you and say that we don’t do good bread in America. The first time I went to Germany I went to one of their bakeries. I had some of their bread and I thought, ‘Where has this been my entire life? What are they feeding us in America?’ We just eat packaged bread that has sat on the shelves for weeks. And in Germany they have bread that is fresh every single day. And bread can be comforting, it can be awesome.

I remember when my wife started making bread about two years ago when she bought a bread recipe book. She started making some of that bread and I am telling you when that bread comes out of the oven you can smell that fresh baked bread and you can’t wait to tear off a little chunk and eat it. It has the crunch on the outside and it is soft on the inside. You put a little bit of butter on it and it is absolutely delicious. And I know right now my wife is pulling bread out of the oven and I can’t wait to try it.

Bread is supposed to be good and it is supposed to be comforting. I am sorry for you gluten people that you have to eat that rice stuff. But I am talking about real bread here and it can be both comforting and good tasting. And what Solomon is saying is if you think it is all up to you, if you forget that it God who builds and God who protects, you will not enjoy the very basic things of life that He has given to you. You won’t be

Page 5 of 12 pages 7/29/2018 PSALM 127 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS SERIES able to enjoy your food at night because you are going to be worried about answering emails and other things.

I think one of the things that I see over and over again is these devices that bring so much convenience but that also disrupts so much of the boundaries that God wants us to have in our lives. Listen, put your phone away and enjoy your family when you come home from work. I think that honors God. I don’t think it is just about making peace with your family; I just think it is one of the ways that we show honor when we decide that the world doesn’t need me tonight and we put our phones away. And when you take a day off, one of the most spiritual things you can do is not letting your phone control you, because you are showing God the world doesn’t need you like you need Him. We have to learn how to shift from stressful work to restful work. Are you resting after you work? Are you resting in your work, or are you stressed out?

Let’s look at the second shift we need to make and that is from perception parenting to preparation parenting. Verse 3 says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” Listen, this is one of the most important verses in all of Scripture because this is what he is saying, ‘Children are a blessing.’ One of the things that we are losing today in our culture, our Judean Christian western civilization is the belief that children are a blessing, and that children should be valued.

We are losing that. I see that sometimes even in the younger generation. I hear some of them say, ‘I just can’t wait to get a dog.’ It is like they can’t wait to have a dog, and then when they talk about kids it is, ‘Yuck, kids, that is gross.’ They think that kids are this burden and they are too much work. But one of the things that we need to understand is that the Bible teaches that children are a blessing. That is one of the things that we see in church history because the early church believed this and practiced this.

One of the ways that the church set itself apart from the world early in the beginning days of was that Christians would search within the Roman Empire at night looking for abandoned children on the streets, and for abandoned babies with deformities. And they would bring them into their homes. After a while people would begin dropping unwanted children off on the doorsteps of Christians.

Maybe you wonder why we should care so much for children. But if you look at societies across the history of the world children were looked at as nuisances, or as labor, but they were not valued. It is the Christian worldview that looks at children believing they are special. Jesus even modelled this. When some of the people were saying that Jesus was too important for kids to come around Him and waste His time, it is one of the only times it is mentioned in Scripture that Jesus got angry. He wanted the children to come to Him. We need to ask ourselves if we value children the way that the Bible does.

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Parenting is based on the idea that children are valuable and important. And Solomon says here in verses 3 through 5: “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.” What he was saying was the reason why we parent, the reason why we have children, the reason why God gives us children is to prepare them to be sent out of our homes into the world to represent God. That is the reason why we have children.

One of the things that I see creeping into the minds of most parents is they care more about the perception of others than we really do parenting on principle and parenting on what is best for the children and not on what other people are thinking. I am a parent so I know this. I have three children, ages 17, 15 and 13. I get the struggle and what it is about. But here is what I know. We have these voices in our mind that we hear all the time. Maybe it is the voice of our own parents. ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done that. I cannot believe you discipline that way.’ We always hear the voices of our mom and dad and many people try to parent to please them.

Or you may come into an environment like church, and you have ‘that talk’ with your kids because you are worried about what other people might think. ‘Don’t embarrass me today. Act right, because this is church.’ We care about what church people may think about us as parents more than being the parents God wants us to be.

Or sometimes it can be social media. ‘Oh, my goodness, I have to post this perfect picture of my family so I can get a hundred ‘likes’ on my page. Everyone has to know that my family is special.’ But you look at your kids and they are all snotty, and they are messed up, so you decide you won’t take any pictures of them today. And you scroll through Facebook looking at every one else and think, ‘Oh, their life is great. Their life is wonderful. What is wrong with my life?’

And maybe you constantly think about how much you want that kind of life when the reality is if you only knew it the parents have probably snapped a photo, posted it, while right after the nice pretty picture was taken they are losing it at those perfect children. But that one moment it was posted on Facebook everyone is liking it and wanting that same thing for their families. It is not real. It is fake. Stop parenting with the idea of having everyone out there thinking you are a perfect parent with perfect kids.

Sometimes the things that are normal for a culture are not really normal for us as parents. We need to ask ourselves if we are parenting because of what is normal, what everyone else is doing around us, or is our parenting based on Biblical values and Biblical principles. I also think parents need to be careful of the perception of our children. It doesn’t matter if our kids like us or not. I am going to say that again.

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Parents, it is okay if your kids don’t like you. That is natural. I see so many parents parenting out of fear. And I think when you parent from perception some of the things that drives your decisions is the fear of what other people think, fear of messing up, fear of doing something that others are not going to like, or fear of your kids not liking you and that will cause problems in your relationship. You even fear your kids will write a book about you. Or what they might decide to post on Facebook about you.

And many parents parent from this fear. I get it. I have a 17, 15 and 13 year old. And there are some decisions we have made as parents that I know they haven’t liked. Now I am now saying you are a bad parent if you do this, but in our home we have decided not to let our kids have social media, because I have never seen anything good come from it.

But it is hard when you have that conversation with your 16 year old and they say, ‘Dad, I feel like we are Amish right now.’ (Laughter.) ‘I am the only kid in my school that isn’t on Facebook.’ And I said: ‘I am sorry, but this is just what we are going to do. You are just going to be Amish for a couple of years. I’ll teach you how to work with wood and we can build some dressers and sell them. It will be a win-win, okay? If you are going to be Amish for a few years, that’s okay, because I don’t want you to lose your soul.‘

As parents we have to make sure that as we make these decisions we are not parenting out of fear, or out of guilt. I don’t have it all figured out, and I don’t think any parent has it all figured out, but what we have to do is parent out of conviction believing that God has called us to prepare our children for life. And we should want our children to be able to go out into the world at 18 with convictions, to know who Jesus and God are, to know what the Word of God says, and to know what we are and what we believe.

I know it is extremely difficult and I have learned that what works for one kid may not work for another kid. So we have to constantly work at making sure that what we are doing for each child is preparing them for their futures. As parents we have two roles - to protect our children from evil and to make sure that they are prepared to walk with Jesus when they leave our homes.

I tell this to my kids all the time: ‘There is going to be a day when I am not in the room and you have to make the call. And I can’t love Jesus for you. No matter how much I want to I can’t touch your heart. The Holy Spirit is the only one who can do that. I can do everything else like put you in a good environment, I can teach you the right things, but at the end of the day how you follow God is completely up to you.’

I got some great advice this week when I was spending some time with another pastor who has been in the ministry for 40 some years. He has four adult children and we were talking about my three teenagers. We both agreed that those were difficult

Page 8 of 12 pages 7/29/2018 PSALM 127 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS SERIES years, but every age of children can be hard. When they are toddlers we are just exhausted continually and just want to sleep. Vacation is just a long nap when you have toddlers. Then when they are teenagers it is more emotionally draining. And this pastor gave me a word of advice that someone gave him when he was a parent of teenagers. This is what he said, “You need to do three things well. You love them unconditionally, you teach them what is right, and you pray your socks off.” What else can you do?

As parents we have to ask ourselves what we are really after for our children. Am I trying to get them to like me? Am I trying to get everyone else to think that we are doing a good job as parents? Or am I preparing them to leave my home so that even if they reject my values and my faith they know what they are rejecting? They know what they are walking away from. So we have some preparing to do.

There is a third shift we have to make and this is one I think is even bigger than the other two. It is the shift from your legacy to Jesus’ legacy. See, if we ended the service now I would just be putting a burden on you that would really just depress all of you, because here is what I know - none of us do this perfectly. All of us have made mistakes. We make mistakes as parents or sometimes we drop the ball when it comes to our jobs, so we fail in multiple ways. And life doesn’t often turn out the way we want it to, maybe external things happen in our careers that give us a bad mark on our resume and we just don’t know how to overcome it. We also can have kids that walk away from Jesus after we had done everything we possibly could.

Maybe you are sitting here today and your spouse has left you and you are carrying the weight of not just being a mom or a dad but trying to be both of them. You are trying to raise up children the best way you know how and you are doing it all by yourself. That is not easy. And then there may be some of you who God has not given you children and that is very hard as well. I have family members who have walked through this, and when they hear a sermon about children they just wish they could have had children.

Life isn’t all pretty and perfect and ideal. But here is what is so beautiful about this passage; there is a greater house that God is building than our house. It is His church. And there are greater children to be sent out that are disciples of Jesus. We have to get beyond how great of a career and family we have. Now I hope you all have great families and great careers, but if things turn sideways there is something greater that Jesus invites us to and that is His church, it is His kingdom. So even if things get messed up we need to understand that there is something greater that we can be a part of and Jesus invites us into His house.

Remember that Solomon wrote this passage and he was the son of . There is another passage that I think Solomon wrote this passage off of and it is II Samuel

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Chapter 7, where David is burdened to build the temple, the house for the Lord. And God tells David that he is not to build Him a house but that He is going to build David a house which would be the name and the legacy of his family. The Messiah would come from that. And I think Solomon is talking here about his faith and trust knowing that he was going to have a wonderful king coming from his heritage. There were going to be some bad kings as well before the Messiah, but he knew that there was a king that was coming that would be greater than anyone, and that would be Jesus.

Here is the thing I want to remind you this morning, and that is we are not to be discouraged and we are not to despair. We need to understand that God redeems and God restores. Some of you are missing out and not enjoying life. I talked about joy two weeks ago and I want to talk about it again because so many things can happen in work and in family and they rob us of joy. And God has given us so much to live for.

I was talking to my dad recently about this story of my great grandfather. Dad had shared this story with me several years ago, and I called him yesterday just to remind him of it. The story of my great grandfather is this. He was a grandchild of an immigrant from Germany. His name was Peter Clotzbach and that was a good German name. I have a lot of German blood in me. And Peter Clotzbach was a farmer in western New York. He had 13 children. After he had three children he got very, very sick. They called the doctor because he was unable to work, and if you are a farmer and you don’t work you also don’t eat.

So they called the doctor to the house which was probably sometime between 1913 and 1917. They put the leaves in the dining room table and they laid my great grandfather out on them, and the doctor performed surgery on him there. They hung lanterns around in the dining room to have enough light. The doctor found a growth on his intestines, and he told them he could not touch it because if it burst outside of the intestine whatever was inside would be poisonous. The poison would then leak into his organs, and he would die. But if it broke inside his intestines it would pass through his intestines and he would survive.

This was my great grandfather who needed to work his farm and who had three small children. The doctor sewed him back up, and told him that they just needed to wait and see what happened. And my great grandfather prayed all night. The thing he kept praying was asking God to help him live as he had so much to live for. And I think about what he prayed in that moment with three small children. He had plowed fields with horses and it wasn’t an easy life. He was also an itinerant pastor who would travel on weekends on horseback to four tiny country churches where he would preach sermons, because he loved Jesus and he loved those churches. What was greater than even his family and his farm was his faith. He had so much to live for. And I often think about that prayer that he prayed that night.

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Some of you this morning have lost your joy, you have lost the enjoyment of life, the children that you have, the career God has given you and the work and responsibilities you have. Let me tell you that I believe you have so much to live for this morning. God has given you so much to live for, beyond your work, beyond your kids and that is the church of Jesus Christ. Don’t miss out on enjoying the life that God has given to you.

That night God answered my great grandfather’s prayer and he survived. He had ten more children. My grandmother was number ten. I thank God that He answered that prayer that night. That is the God we serve. I think in these moments we have to ask ourselves some questions to make sure that we are leaving here with the right mind set, so I want to leave you with these three questions to make sure that we are enjoying God and the life that He has given us. And to do so we have to make these shifts.

The first question is - what area of control do you need to release to God? There is something in your life you hold tight in your fist, and God is saying you need to let it go and let Him take care of it, because you don’t really have the authority or power to do anything about it. He is the one who builds, and He is the one who protects, so give it to Him. What is it in your life?

Number two - how are you preparing your children to be sent out for Jesus? There are a lot of things you can do. Maybe you need to teach your kids how to read the Bible for themselves. Maybe it is about praying every single night, talking to them and having conversations with them about what is going on in their hearts. So how are you preparing your children to be sent out for Jesus?

Number three - is He worthy of the struggle? Listen, I get that life is hard. It is difficult and challenging. But I believe we enjoy life a lot more when we understand it is worth the struggle. When we are dealing with a rebellious teenager, or a cranky toddler, we need to ask ourselves over and over - is Jesus worth it? Is Jesus worthy of the struggle you are in right now with work and family? When you can answer that question ‘yes,’ you can walk through anything with Him. Let’s pray.

Jesus, I am always amazed at your love. I am always amazed at the power and the life that you give to us when we give it to you. Lord, I know that all of us have responsibilities and work, and many of us have children, so I just pray right now that you would give every single person here a vision of what you want for their life, that they can begin to enjoy it the way you want them to. If there is anyone here that knows the struggle it is you, Father. I just pray that as we walk through the valleys and even the green pastures, God, we will remember that there is a greater life in Jesus, there is a house that is being built right now that no darkness nor enemy can overcome. Help us to

Page 11 of 12 pages 7/29/2018 PSALM 127 – JOURNEY THROUGH THE PSALMS SERIES find hope and joy for that today and tomorrow. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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The preceding transcript was completed using raw audio recordings. As much as possible, it includes the actual words of the message with minor grammatical changes and editorial clarifications to provide context. Hebrew and Greek words are spelled using Google Translator and the actual spelling may be different in some cases.

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