I rarely ask people what they do for work when I’m first introduced. I don’t want people to have to categorize themselves to me by what they do. I ask them instead how they spend their time, and let them tell me. Some people are quick to tell what they do. Others blink at the question and then answer it more creatively; saying that they spend their time working doing such and such, but if they had their druthers they’d be doing…whatever. Work can become our identity. Sometimes it may seem as though all we ever do is work; we think about it when we’re at home with our families, we obsess over it on the rides to and from our work.
Scripture has some interesting things to say about work, as you might know. Work has been at the center of almost every human’s life since God created humans. Once Adam and Eve sinned, and we were cast out of the garden, one of our main curses was that we had to work, work hard to provide for ourselves and our families, and for our futures. Work is necessary, and it has the potential to be good. But it is the nature of the Devil to take something that can be good and twist it into something not good. Having a job that we like is good, having a job that pays the rent is good, but it can easily become an obsession-and the real trouble is that our society rewards that twisting. The person who gets the promotion is likely to be the person who neglects their family for the job; who places the job they do at the center of their lives and moves everything else to the side. If I’m wrong about that, I apologize, but that is what I have seen in my life and in the lives of my friends.
There is the temptation to make work more than it should be. Or less than it should be. But that doesn’t mean we should be reduced, as many people in our society are, to defining ourselves as workers of one particular sort or another. Psalm 127 is about work, and a proper perspective.
Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
2 In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.
3 Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.
4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
Let’s pray.
We are working our way through a series of psalms called the “Psalms of the Ascent”. They are called this because they were sung for generations of Jewish pilgrims traveling upwards toward God. They traveled upwards both literally and figuratively. In going to Jerusalem, they were literally traveling uphill. Jerusalem sits on top of Mount Zion, and at the top of the city is where the Temple stood. In the Temple God specially dwelled depp in an inner sanctum called the Holy of Holies. Pilgrims would go to perform the rituals of worship of Yahweh; to observe the feasts, to offer the necessary sacrifices. No one ever went physically down to Jerusalem or God. You always went up. In the same way, the pilgrims were making their way upward to God. As followers of God, they sought to discipline themselves into become better followers of God. This discipline, combined with the rituals, were intended to move them closer to God, more in knowledge and love of Him.
In the same way, we disciples of Jesus are heading upwards. We aren’t doing it physically anymore, since Jesus sacrifice on Golgotha, the Hill of the Skull, and the Holy Spirit was released from the Temple and is now all over the world; not just focused at the Temple Mount. But we still journey upwards. We should be getting more out of our devotions each year. We should be more desirous to read Scripture, not less. We should desire more and more to spend time on our knees before God in prayer, rather than less. We should delight and look forward to times of worship more and more as we grow in our faith, in our relationship with God through His Son Jesus. We should more and more be attuned to the desire of God for our lives; for our actions each and every day. Moses was telling me about the faith of one of his friends at Fuller that Moses really admires. The guy is an amazing fellow. Spends a lot of time in prayer with God. He trained as a pharmacist, but felt God’s call to go into ministry. His car was so broken down that his brother, a wealthy doctor, gave him a pretty new one, like a Camry. But he felt God telling him to give the car away to a specific family, so he did. His car was still quite bad, so bad that the local kids gave him his keys when they fell out of his pants. He asked them if they had thought about joy riding in it, and they said they didn’t want to be seen in it.
In any situation, someone gave him their old, second car, a pretty new Mercedes. God rewards obedience, God rewards those who listen and obey. Does that mean the rest of his life is blessed and he will never suffer for the kingdom of God? Of course not. But he is journeying upwards in his relationship with Jesus, with the Father. Just like we all should be, can be. That is our goal. Now I’ve wandered far afield from our text, so let’s get back to it.
Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
2 In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.
I think we can clearly see in society two different views of work. There was a fairly recent movie that my brother loves and forced me to watch over Christmas called Office Space. The hero, the protagonist, is a young man who is lost at work. Doesn’t know why he is doing it, would rather be doing nothing all day long. That’s his dream, to do nothing all day long. His buddies, on the other hand, are desperate to climb the corporate ladder. They are full of themselves and pride themselves on the good job they do. Quite the opposite of the hero, who manages to impress some bigwigs who want to hire him and hilarity ensues, as it always does. We can see in society those who avoid work at all costs, including losing their houses and self respect, and those who are ready to work themselves to death because they care not for the consequences. Can there not be a middle way, or a different way for us to live?
Some people have taken Psalm 127, pointed to these very verses and used them as an excuse not to do anything. God will make it happen. There is no need to work, there is no need to put out any effort at all. Fortunately, this was the lifestyle of some of the folks at the new church in Thessalonica. They were just kicking back, waiting for Jesus to come for the last time. They were living ‘by faith’ off their less spiritual brothers and sisters in the church who actually had jobs. Paul took a very dim view of their style of life. 2 Thes 3:11-13. “We hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own living. Brothers, do not be weary in doing good.”
How they got this attitude from Paul, who made tents in his spare time while planting churches is a bit of a mystery. You’d think his work ethic would have rubbed off. It seems to be a little of the fatalism of their previous religions left over. There is an Eastern-ness to this point of view. Take Bhudda for example; a fat seated little guy who spend all day contemplating the sound of one hand clapping. All human effort is tainted with selfishness and pride, and the solution is to withdraw into themselves. To remain quiet, motionless is the goal. The rat race is for rats so just leave it. Perfection is doing nothing and saying nothing. The goal is to withdraw from action, thought and from passion.
Unless the Lord does the work…Western view is a little different. We tend to deify work, it is what defines our lives, it is how we classify ourselves and others. We think others are slackers, not living up to their potential, or are work obsessed. We’re never the problem it seems. We build machines to get more work done faster, with more efficiency. All with the idea that we’ll have all this extra time to spend with our families because of the amount of work our machines are doing. Computers have made us able to produce more work, faster. So are we working more or less? I think people are working more. Time had become compressed. When a letter had to get somewhere, it would take 3 days by mail. Then it moved to overnight, we could ship it, then fax machines, and now email. Work jobs that used to get done in weeks get done in hours. Are we better off? Getting any sort of meeting to happen seems so hard; we’re doing so much, and yet we’re so efficient. Isn’t there another way between completely withdrawing from life and working ourselves to death? I think Psalm 127 points to the answer.
The premise of the psalm is that God works. God builds, God watches. We absolutely believe that God exists, and that God is the sort of God who doesn’t create and then stay away, but is continually working. Our God is a worker just like us. In the beginning God what? God created. God worked. He put in a week of work to fashion something, a fully functioning universe, out of nothing. And not only did God work in creation, not just through Genesis, but God continues to work. We have God interacting with humans year after year, generation after generation God has shown up and worked. He worked getting manna for the Israelites in the desert, in fact He did a considerable amount of work just to get them out of Egypt in the first place. We see God showing up in many other places in Scripture, working to accomplish His purposes for our lives and for the universe.
The curse of some people’s lives is not work, but senseless work, futile work, work that takes place without the presence of God. Unless God builds, unless God builds…Eugene Peterson wrote “Christian discipleship, by orienting us in God’s work and setting us in the mainstream of what God is already doing, frees us from the compulsiveness of work. Hilary of Tours taught that every Christian had to be constantly vigilant against the blasphemous anxiety to do God’s work for Him.” Our work becomes a problem when we don’t work, or when we work without God. There is nothing wrong about work. God works; we work. There can be nothing degrading about work if God Himself does it.
Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.
4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
The first part of the psalm is a warning, unless the Lord builds…but the second part of the psalm is an example. Look, say the psalmist, at the lack of effort it takes to produce children. It is a miraculous process that God moves from beginning through to the end. We are involved in creating children, but mostly the process happens through the way God makes it work. No pregnant woman can by concentrating make her child grow quicker, or even move on out once they’re ready. I’m sure many have tried, especially in the last few monthspregnancy. I think if we tie this image of children being a blessing that comes from God with Christ, how in Him we become adopted children, grafted into God’s family through our acceptance of Jesus sacrificial death, we see that God is still working. The miracle that produces our children, the evidence that God works, is seen when people become God’s children. God is still working to produce children for the kingdom of God. The pilgrimage of the people to Jerusalem was work too. They worked their way toward Jerusalem. But in the larger sense, what they were seeking wasn’t about them working hard enough, or trying really hard. The work of making someone righteous had been done by God for those Jews, and even more in Christ, it has been totally done for us. There is no need to work hard to earn our salvation. Indeed, we cannot work our way to salvation. We can never do enough good things, we can never be nice enough, we can never give away enough money to poor people in order to earn our salvation. That work has been done once, on the cross outside of Jerusalem where our Lord hung and died. He did the work of taking away our sins, and putting them on Himself.
Furthermore, He did the work of resurrection. Our hope is in the resurrection of Christ, that someday we too will be resurrected like Him, to be with Him. What can we do to effect our resurrection? Nothing. There is nothing we can do to make it happen differently, or to make it happen in our timing. That work has been done, and will be done By Jesus Himself. All we have to do is accept Jesus sacrificial death as having been for us, and invite Jesus into our lives to make them new, to make them better, to make them different. But that is not hard work; instead it is joyous work, work that God allows us to participate in.
And we are not only invited to participate in God’s saving work in our lives; we are also invited to work for the salvation of others. Our work of living in God’s grace, of inviting people in to a relationship with God may seem like work to some of us; to others it is quite natural. It is no big deal. But the truth is that unless God does the work, our efforts will be in vain. It is not your fault nor mine if someone does not want to come to church, does not want to hear about Christ. It is no feather in your cap if they do either. Unless God does the work, unless God has been leading your friends and neighbors to the place where they are willing to take the next step of faith, it won’t happen. Unless God does the work, unless God builds the spiritual house within that person, unless God moves, our actions glorify God, and are accepted as an offering of love, but they really don’t move the other person.
You see, in the end it is all about God. Unless God moves, it won’t happen. The pilgrimage we are all on toward God, ever upward in our relationship with Him, is not really about us. The journey is never about us, our relationship with God is not about us, the good work we do is not about us. It is always about God. God gives the growth, God builds the house, God watches over us, God works for our salvation, God is the center of the worship life of His people. We seek not to glorify ourselves and our efforts, but to glorify God, that our feeble efforts to praise and glorify Him might be our response of love to what God has worked out for us since before Time began.
Let’s pray.
The New International Version , (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.