Chapter 8. Embrace God's Vision for Work and Home (Psalm 127)

In moving through these songs of ascents, one can imagine the pilgrim. He sang various songs, traveled along the path, and has approached Jerusalem. He is starting now to think about going home again. He might be thinking, "This is wonderful. I am hearing the Bible. I am singing to God. We are offering sacrifices to our Lord. I am in prayer to Him. I feel close to God right now!" Perhaps, in all this, he has realized the experience he's having in Jerusalem is a fragment of his everyday existence. Most of his life is spent doing his job or with his family. He begins to think, "I want what is happening here in Jerusalem to impact my work and my family." Our pilgrim wants every day with God, rather than a godless existence. He wants his experience in Jerusalem to be the experience of his everyday life.

The glorious news in Christ is that His gospel makes full redemption of work and marriage and family possible. Work, because we are not destined to overwork or underwork, but work that is done for the glory of God, for He created work for humankind in the first place. Marriage, because we are not destined to the worship of romance nor a belittling of the marital bond. Family, because we know our eternal family is with God and His children, so our earthly families can reflect that glorious future and the priorities connected to His family. The gospel of Jesus Christ redeems work, marriage, and family — which electrifies everyday life. The temple life could go home with the worshipper. The mountaintop can permeate the valleys.

And our pilgrim is beginning to realize all this in his own way. He looks back from Jerusalem, back to his work and home. God's thoughts begin to replace his thoughts. Afresh, or perhaps for the very first time, he begins to see his work and home as God sees them. He wants the house of God to impact his own house. So he begins to look to God.

Every modern pilgrim — single, married, with children, or without children — must do the same. We must crave for the God of all flesh to invade not just our holiest moments, but our most mundane. We must long for Him to help us on Sunday, but also Monday. We must want Him active in our gatherings with our church family, but also when eating and drinking with family and friends. We need Him always. This song provides us with four perspectives helpful to that end.

Perspective #1: We Need God's Help

"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." (Psalm 127:1).

The first necessary perspective is straightforward: we need God's help. The way the singer pens it, unless the Lord helps there is no point.

If Solomon wrote this song, as later copyists asserted, he knew a thing or two about building. His father, David, had longed to build God a permanent house, but God had not permitted him. Instead, David's son would build a house for God. And build he did. Not only God's house, but the King of Israel's house, and beyond. Structure after structure, garden after garden, park after park, Solomon built. He was the building king. After his death the people begged his son, Rehoboam, to cease the years of labor and expansion, for Solomon had so aggressively worked and built during his entire reign. He knew how to build.

Solomon had also discovered the need for God to watch over the city. The watchman could watch, but if the Lord did not watch with him, his efforts were futile. The watchman could stay awake and alert all night long, but unless God watches over the city, the people are unprotected. Watchmen are pointless without God's help and protection.

So the song shows us the need for God to aid the process of building the "house" or home and family. Builders can build, and watchers can watch, but without God's involvement, their efforts are futile. All the attention and energy and sweat in the world gets you nowhere without God's help.

This message must ring true to the modern pilgrim. We've immersed ourselves in the idea that God has His box to live in. That is the "sacred" box, the box He knows a thing or two about. So He can rule over worship songs and Scripture reading and doctrine. But then — we often believe — there is a "secular" box God is clearly out of His depth in. He is not really helpful or pertinent there — in my work or family — for He is limited there. But this false-construct must be broken. God desires no separation between our inner life and outer life. He wants all of us, our entire being. He wants Sunday, but He also wants our Mondays and Tuesdays and beyond (yes, even Saturday!). He wants to be involved in our work, our play, our friendships, and our families.

The wise pilgrim realizes the need for God in his planning, schooling, parenting, and career. The mature believer sees the need for God to involve Himself in her every relationship and effort. As the song goes, "Unless the Lord builds…unless the LORD watches…it is vain." Unless God helps us in our work and relationships and families, it is all for naught, it is all vain.

Unless the Lord is involved in our jobs and homes, we will labor and work to no avail. We need the power of God to rest upon every area of life. Success comes no other way.

But do you believe this? Do you believe you need God's help for the affairs of your everyday life? "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes His steps" (Proverbs 16:9). There is work and strategizing for man to engage in, but God must be the one to establish our steps. God must bring the right opportunities at the right times. God must open the doors. God must give favor and success.

"The horse is made ready for battle," the Proverbs say, "but the victory belongs to the Lord" (Proverbs 21:31). So again, it is not that the soldiers would go out and say, "Well, victory belongs to God, so I will bring an untrained, malnourished horse out into battle." No, they would prepare and train the horse for battle while recognizing the victory belongs to God.

Paul wrote, "He who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only who gives the growth" (1 Corinthians 3:7). We sow and water, we put forth the effort, but ultimately God is the one who brings forth fruit in a person's life. Time and time again this is the pattern of Scripture, for it is the pattern of God. Unless God builds the house, unless God watches the city, unless He helps us in our work or marriage or family, it is all in vain.

Do you think this way? Do you see a need for God's involvement? Do you think success and promotion and favor come from God? Do you believe your work and family will fall apart unless you hold them together? Do you overemphasize your importance in the success of your work or family? Do you believe your children will fall apart if you aren't the perfect parent? Or can you see the need for God's involvement? Do you know that without His help, all our efforts are in vain? He must build. He must watch. Without Him, we have nothing.

Perspective #2: We Must Pursue God's Balance

"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." (Psalm 127:2).

Speaking of vanity, here's something else that is vain — living a life without healthy borders of rest. This next principle serves to help us build out God's vision for our work and home — we must have God's balance in our lives. The watchman had watched in vain. The builder had built in vain. Here, it is vain to rise early in the morning and go to rest late at night. To burn the candle at both ends is pointless.

God gives His people sleep. He wants them to rest. It is vain to be the type of person who never rests, never recharges, never Sabbaths.

As Christians, we understand labor is often difficult. When Adam fell into sin by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a curse was unleashed upon the planet. In that curse, God announced to Adam, "cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life…by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" (Genesis 3:17-19). The curse meant it would be difficult to provide or make ends meet. And the task of work is often made even more difficult due to other pressures. Single parenting, generational poverty, lack of education, illness or tragedy all make work harder than originally intended.

So, because of the sin and imperfection of our broken world, we will often struggle to find rest and balance in our modern lives. Still, it seems to be the heart of God to give His people rest. But we often chafe against it.

In his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson points out two biblical cities that typify two attitudes which are constant in our culture. The first city is Babel. In Babel, there was resistance against God's command to spread out throughout the earth. Instead of spreading out, they said, "Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves" (Genesis 11:4). This spirit is seen in our modern times by those who are workaholics, those who work without any real balance or rhythm in their lives.

Think about it, our time-saving technologies have rarely saved us time. Email shortened the letter writing process, but now our inboxes are full. The vacuum cleaner simplified the house cleaning process, but our homes and lives have expanded to fill the time saved. The cell phone enabled us to make phone calls outside the office, and now we are always making phone calls outside the office. Time and balance are steadily sucked away.

The person with the Babel spirit has been overcome by this brand of life. They have no rhythm. Every day is a workday. Life is a chaotic chain of events. The hamster wheel is spinning. There is no space in their schedule if things go wrong — or even if things go right.

The second city is Thessalonica. When Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church, he taught them to "aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one" (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). But in his second letter to them, he had to actually rebuke specific people in their church who had rejected this teaching. Some were "walking in idleness," "not willing to work," "living as busybodies." Paul rebuked them, telling them he had lived among them as a hardworking man, "an example to imitate" (see 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12).

Both of these cities represent the extremes. People like Babel are addicted to work. They build their own thing without any thought of God. People like Thessalonica, on the other hand, are lazy at their core. There is a third way, however, a life of hard work where we earn our living, but in step with God and the balance, He gives. The balance our psalm holds out here is the balance of sleep.

"He gives His beloved sleep." Humans might choose more sleep (or less) than others, but no one can decide to altogether opt-out of it. No, we must sleep. God has designed our bodies with a need to recharge. Even this reality ought to humble us. Our bodies have limitations — we aren't infinite (as God is), but finite. This limitation should speak volumes to us about God's design of and for us.

God initiated the Sabbath by resting on the seventh day of creation (Genesis 2:1-3). He did not rest because He needed restoration, but because we would always need it. God simply spoke, and the world came into existence. There was no energy loss in the process (as with the winding down of the sun). God's supply of energy is Himself, and He is infinite, so His rest was a model for you and me. He made the seventh day as one where mankind could rest from their labor before God. The sleep we need nightly ought to remind us of that restorative rhythm God has designed us to need.

You might think the command to rest weekly would be celebrated. Of all the Ten Commandments, the command to take a day off each week should have been celebrated. On that day, one could restore strength, eat and drink, sleep, and reset the brain. You would think God would be more praised for this ancient command, but that Sabbath has constantly been chafed against by His people.

You likely have a job, a task, work that is never fully finished. There is more to do than you have time for. But you must make the decision to set limits for yourself because God certainly has. It might mean more sleep. It might mean you protect a day each week for rest.

Here are some suggestions. Give God an hour of every day and a day of every week. See your work as a way you worship God, rather than something to be worship. Escape into God, not into your career. Let your Sunday be filled, not with only a sixty-minute church service, but with as much service and worship and Christian fellowship as possible. Nature — and sports leagues and school districts — abhors a vacuum, so you might need to be more stingy with your calendar. Let your lifestyle, as much as possible, cultivate balance and rest.

Perspective #3: Children Are God's Heritage

"Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward." (Psalm 127:3).

Speaking of a balance between human effort and God's power, consider baby-making, the song goes. There, you have God's handiwork combined with the willful involvement of a man and a woman. At the end of the day, a baby's birth is the work of God. No one will stop and say, "Good job, you made a baby!" We recognize God's involvement.

In this next portion of the song, we learn we are to appreciate children as a heritage from the Lord. I must give a note of caution: since we live in a fallen world, we know many will not be able to have children (or as many as we'd have liked to have) due to physical limitations, age, lack of a willing spouse, or other factors. We should expect to find solid, Christ-following, God-honoring believers who do not marry, who do not have children, sometimes as a result of the brokenness the fall created. Infertility and miscarriage, for example, will still be found inside the body of Christ.

If a disciple has longed for children but has not been given children, or even if they have, it is crucial to consider the ever-present opportunity to raise spiritual children for God. Our physical family structures are not eternal, but the family of God is eternal, so all of us can bear spiritual children, even if physical children are not possible for us.

That said, the pilgrim mindset sees the parent-child relationship as one of the more rewarding relational dynamics in life. The psalm tells us children are a heritage and reward.

Now, in the psalmist's day, in ancient times, children were partly a blessing because they could lend a helping hand. In an agrarian society, more kids equaled more staff and a better retirement. And in nations plagued with war, disease, and famine, children would replenish the population. Still, these ancient blessings are not all our psalm talks about. Children are a heritage and reward from the Lord.

Seeing children as a blessing is becoming more and more countercultural. Often, children are seen as a hindrance to our own personal experience, that they cannot possibly be a blessing because they only take from us. So how are children a blessing?

For Our Sanctification

First, children are a blessing because they will help you with your sanctification. You don't need children to grow — Paul, John the Baptist, some of the prophets, and Jesus are great examples of single men who were sanctified without ever having children. But, just as married couples learn marriage helps produce holiness, many will discover the same in having children.

God wants to grow you. We often say, "Marriage is for your holiness, not your happiness." This is true, in a sense. I mean, deep joy is possible — intended — in marital union. There is a relational oneness unique to marriage. But God does want to make us holy, and He will use your marriage to do so if you allow Him.

The same can be said for having children. There is no guarantee they will make you holy. In fact, they can drive you to selfishness, anger, sloth — unholiness. But the choice is yours. God wants to use them to help you become holy.

Children can help cure selfishness. I had no idea how self-consumed I was. Then I got married. Then we had babies. All of these relationships have helped me see the amount of attention I put on the self. Christ wants me to be a servant, and with a wife and children in my home, the opportunities for service abound.

Children can help cure laziness. Laziness is an offshoot of selfishness, of course, but children are hard work. You can't clock out. Nor are you salaried. You are on call, on-demand. Without you, they cannot live and thrive. This means we've got to work. Every stage of their lives is work. Diapers might be messy, but they are easier than puberty. Every stage is work — and this is good for the soul.

Children can help cure prayerlessness. Dependence on God is a must in life, and we must cry out to God for our children, asking God to help them. I have always prayed for my kids' eyes to be opened to His glory and love, for their protection and future, for God's will in their lives, and for our relationship together.

Our selfishness, laziness, and prayerlessness are unearthed as we work at the skill of parenting. If you struggle with selfishness, children will help you learn to become more selfless. If you struggle with laziness, children will demand you work on their behalf. If you struggle with prayerlessness, children will give you a long list of things to pray for. In a thousand ways, children can help you with your sanctification, and this is a blessing from God.

As a Ministry

Second, children are a blessing because they are a ministry. We pray and ask God to use our lives. "Open a door for us, O God," we might pray. Children are a way for God to use our lives.

Many Christian couples have caught fire for Christ. They want to serve Him with the entirety of their lives. Perhaps they're far from home and have discovered the community found in the body of Christ. They want to pour into that community, serving their church family. Perhaps they have a heart for a particular pain or need in the community and want to give their lives to remedy it. Maybe they have discovered the joy of serving teens or college students and want to throw themselves completely into it. This is a ministry life — deciding to take up your cross and follow Jesus, losing your life for Him and others.

But we must not dismiss children as a gospel-saturated ministry. The world will always need healthy families, and there is always a need to raise up the next generation. Kids are a major ministry God gives a married couple. Parents have incredible access to their children and their children to them. They are an opportunity.

You want to teach the Word? Children need the Word. You want to send a missionary? Children can be sent. You want to make a disciple? Children are in need of discipleship. The Psalmist spoke of them "like arrows in the hand of a warrior." They are weapons to be shot out. Will you embrace the opportunity to make your children weapons for God?

I know this concept has been abused at times. Some have excused themselves from ever helping anyone else because their family is their ministry (code for “I won't do anything else for anyone else”). But God's design is for our service to start with our family and spread out from there. Good pastors are a model of this in that they must first manage their own household well, allowing that good work to flow into the good work of the church (1 Timothy 3:4-5). In this, pastors serve as an example to the whole church.

For Our Fruitfulness

Third, children are a blessing because they make you more fruitful. I believe children can make you more fruitful by giving you focus. Children, in different ways in their different stages, cramp your schedule. You must become more selective about the engagements you will embrace.

I remember life before children. I was a mile wide, but an inch deep in my ministry focus. I would do anything and everything. But as life and family developed, I had to learn to say yes, but also no. This new development forced me to focus on my truest calling, my deepest fruit, my most important focus. I have been able to develop a grid, a rubric, for life and ministry that is sharp and effective, partly because of the time constraints afforded me by family life. To me, this is a gift. We have seven days to work with each week. We aren't limitless and omnipotent. A family helps us realize this, forcing us to focus on our areas of greatest fruit.

I believe children can make you more fruitful by giving you compassion. Life is hard. Life with children draws out this lesson. At their various stages of life, kids take a lot of work. Parents love their children desperately. Often, many of their deepest pains flow from decisions their children have made. When a parent experiences financial pressure, parental fatigue, or anxieties about their children's progress their compassion for others ought to increase.

I was an expert on parenting and family. Then I had children. Now I know how perplexing this whole thing can be. Additionally, raising the next generation can do something good for the human heart, unlocking a different kind of love.

I believe children can make you more fruitful by increasing your wisdom. This is not guaranteed, obviously. There is such a thing as a foolish parent. The foster care system — and other social systems — are designed, at least in part, to help potential good parents raise children in place of parents who got caught up in folly. But children should increase our wisdom.

Once again, we remember the Psalm. Kids are a heritage, a blessing. Of course, because of various obstacles, not everyone will have children. But I believe children are a massive blessing from God. We pray for open doors of opportunity, and children are an incredible ministry opportunity. We pray for growth and sanctification, and children are a great way to get outside ourselves, becoming more Christ-like. We pray for a companion to share life with, and in marriage, God wants to grow that companionship into a relationship with kids. We pray for fruit to come from our lives, and children can help us focus, unlocking parts of our hearts that are important for loving well.

Perspective #4: Children Can Be God's Heroes

"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." (Psalm 127:4–5).

Finally, the song teaches us we must see children as weapons in the hands of God. The weapon the song uses for its metaphor is the arrow. The more arrows, the better. The more children, according to the song, the better.

Arrows are projectile weapons, and so are children. Both are launched out. Both accomplish purposes far from you. Neither is designed to return. And both are prepared and crafted for a strong and straight flight. This imagery informs our parenting style — we are to work hard to prepare our children for flight. We must teach our children of God's grace and the blessing of obedience. We must be weapons for God ourselves, for it takes one to craft one.

The final concept is beautiful: "Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He will not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate." The idea here is that children return to help parents in their later years. The suggestion of the psalm is that the returning sons would be able to protect their father in his declining years, perhaps even in legal matters in the gate. As I mentioned earlier, this was their version of social security. Children led to a protected and healthy retirement. The parent who spent their early years helping their children would — in their later years — be helped by their children.

In our modern societies, we may have lost a bit of this as more responsibility for the latter years falls on the individual or the state. But mature adult children can be a massive blessing to an aging parent, even if only in an emotional way. To shift from the child-raising years to the child-enjoying years is beautiful for this parent.

Stepping back from the psalm, let us consider its potential impact. Are not work and home massive pillars of life? Are they not cause of some of our greatest pains and quandaries? Would not God's perspective help us as we navigate daily life? Let us take what we have gleaned in the temple in Jerusalem, and bring it home into our everyday experience.