Riding on God's Shoulders-ps.127

Tonight, at family time, we were reading the last verses of Luke 21, where it says that in the last days we should pray for strength to persevere. Today's view of strength is to work out to be another Arnold Schwartzeneger. That is not the kind of strength that we need. We need God's strength to endure. That is what this sermon is all about.

Riding on God’s Shoulders – Ps. 127:1-4 – A Psalm of Solomon

Introduction:

Let me start with a statement Ps.127 “unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.” So many times I have read over this scripture and sensed a literal house but here we see a figurative house, much like the house mentioned in Matthew 7:24,25, where he speaks of building your “life” as that of a house upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the Rock. This scripture implies a question for self examination on our part, “Is the Lord building my house or am I? Let me also use, if I may a statement from Socrates, “the unexamined life is a life not worth living!” Although he was not a Christian, it is a Christian idea, we do ask people to examine their lives before trusting in Christ. Work is such a huge area of our lives that it behooves us to look at how we are spending it. Let’s look at the example of God, after he had worked for 6 days creating everything, he created the Sabbath day. The Sabbath day is not just a time of rest and recuperation, but a time of self examination. On the seventh day of creation, the Lord examined what he had done and said, “it is good, it was worth doing.” Likewise we need to take a look at our lives and ask ourselves “was it worth doing?”

For some of those like I saw at Boeing, men of great intelligence and experience, examining their lives is quite frightening, for they know in their hearts, the very core of their being, that there is a great emptiness. Furthermore, the longer we wait to live for Christ, the more frightening that self-examination becomes. They refused to talk about Christ because when they examine their selves according to God’s word, they fear that they will see an abyss of wasted time.

For others, we may not know how to examine ourselves and we do not know where to start. Psalm 127 provides us with a great tool for doing so. Psalm 127 implies an examination of our lives and was written by Solomon and provides a contrast of the first two verses with the next three verses.

Read Psalm 127.

When reading poetry, we need to ask ourselves, what is the poem alluding to? What is the poet trying to say? Therefore we need to read the psalm carefully, paying attention to the words it uses. Firstly we should pay attention to the word “vain” which is used time and time again. The word seems to tell us that our time and energies should not be used doing what is not important to God. Time and energy is the most important quantity that all of us have. The amount of money we have may vary, but time and energy is given to us all by God and we must ask the question how have we been using it? How are we going to be using it? An illustration is given in ancient literature of “Sisyphus, a character of “the odyssey” written by Homer in the 8th century BC. Sisyphus is seen in hell, rolling a giant rock up a hill and each time, when nearing the top of the hill, it would roll back to the plain below. His fate was for eternity by his own efforts was to groan and sweat in vain. That is the picture of a workaholic, of which I have been very guilty in my life. Is that a picture of your life? If it is, are you going to continue living your life like that? Is that the way you want to continue living? There is another way.

The time and energy of my 8 year old granddaughter is unlimited compared mine at age 66 or the very limited time and energy of my 96 year old mother. She beats me every time we have a WWF wrestling match, jumping off the couch as the “cheetah” to pin me in no time at all. Have we wasted our time an energy building and buying things for our selves or has our focus been on Christ? Are we even concerned with treasures in heaven and building His kingdom? “Peter said to the Lord, we have left all for you” and Jesus’ response was that they would receive great rewards eternally for their service to Him. Matt 19:27-29. We need not fear to see wasted time in our lives, all of us have it, but God will redeem the wasted years and restore the years of the locust (Joel 2:24) if we will but start building our lives on His foundation, faith in Jesus Christ and then put our lives in His hands. We can’t do anything about past sins, or wasted time and energy of the past but we can turn to Christ in the present. Turn to Jesus, His grace gives us the ability to turn to Him and He will redeem our lives. But we must ask Him. He is not only the God of second chances, in my case, He is the God of the 102nd chances. It is better to come into the harvest late than not at all.

In the latter half of verse 2 he says that “he gives to his beloved even in his sleep.” Firstly let’s look at the word “beloved.” Do you remember the name that God gave Solomon through Nathan the prophet? In 1 Sam. 12:24,25 we read that “the Lord loved Solomon and named him “Jedadiah,” the Hebrew word Yadid, means the beloved of Yahweh, or the Yadid of Yahweh, the beloved tied together with Himself. If you have trusted Christ as your savior you are the Yadid, the beloved of God. Consider that it was during a dream, while sleeping that God gave Solomon his greatest gift, wisdom. Again, in Deut. 33:12 we see that “the beloved of God rests between His shoulders.” When we look closer at that verse we see a child that is too weak to walk any longer and the Father picks him or her up on His shoulders and he rides piggyback. Several years ago my wife surprised me with an air balloon ride and many of you know that I have spent about 42 years in aviation. I am qualified in both helicopters and fixed wing and retired from Boeing teaching people how to fly the 737. But the balloon has no propulsion, no propellers or jet engines, it simply lifts you up and you are carried along by the wind currents over the ground, you go where the wind currents lead you. Such is the life based on God, having trusted Christ as our savior we are to go where Christ leads us, not where we are leading us. A friend once asked me, how can I know God’s will? How can I know that I am riding on God’s shoulders? In light of my last illustration, as a pilot I am always plotting my own course, figuring in the winds, the ground track, the obstacles, weather, etc. Riding on God’s back leaves your life in Gods Hands (Rom.12:1,2). Every morning we should ask the Lord to fill us with His Holy Spirit and to live through us during the day. We should ask expectantly, where are we going today Lord? What do you have in store for me? Let me praise you in all things that happen to me today. Lord, please give me someone to talk to you about today.

I would like to say that “whatsoever I have done, I have done it to the Lord,” (Col. 3:23,24) but I have been more like Sisyphus, a workaholic, trying to make a name and dollar for myself and went out of business with a $40,000 debt to pay off and with God’s help we did. It has been a long road back, but He has brought me back. Lest women think that we men are the only ones who are workaholics, let me say something about Martha in the scripture, or about many women I have seen who are cruel, indifferent to others around them as they pursue the goal of preparing for the perfect event. We are all infected with workaholic-ism.

So what are some of the greatest things we can do for Christ? The rest of the Psalm talks of raising children. It talks of children as one of the best investments of time and energy. It describes them as arrows in our quiver that are shot into a dark world to carry the word of Christ and to deliver others from that darkness. One father expressed that his job was to introduce his children to their REAL Father, God. He is the one who gave them their personality, their life, their gifts and talents. He is the one who knit them together in their mother’s womb. Are there other things we can do for Christ, for those of us who have no children? Absolutely! The bible does not mention that Paul had biological or adopted children. But did he have children, Yes! A younger man, Sunil from China, whom I met 7 years ago, while working for Boeing as a flight instructor, called me yesterday and thanked me profusely for talking to him about Christ and giving him a bible. I asked him if he had accepted Jesus as His Savior and Lord, He shouted back, “Certainly.” He said that he was eternally grateful and that he considered himself a baby and me his father in the Lord. It brought tears to my eyes. Adopted or biological children are not the only children considered here.

Let me make an important point, that whether you live for the Lord 5 years or 50 years, you will never be any more righteous than the day that you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior. You will however be serving the Lord out of Love, getting to know Him better and letting Him transform you into the person He wants you to be.

If you are building a well built house and it is only for your own gratification it means nothing to Christ. If you are building it for His use, only then does it have value. If you are building a business for your own glorification, success and power it means nothing to Christ in the end. Only when building that business and using it for Christ does it have meaning. As C.S. Lewis stated, “Everything that is not eternal is eternally out of date.” Solomon is even more explicit with this question in this Psalm 127. Will we examine our lives? Will we live like Sisyphus? Or will we live our lives for Christ, with eternity in mind? Will we start riding on God’s shoulders, depending on His Holy Spirit? Will you employ the gifts that God has given you for His work and to his glory?

Outline: Ps. 127

I. The value of Life’s work is only as good as the cause for which it is expended.

A. Ps. 127 helps us to understand how to live our lives.

B. Everything we spend on projects in which God is in, is not wasted.

II. We can spend our lives in eternity by spending them on God’s projects.

A. Children are the prime example of divinely ordained projects.

B. There are many other examples of God’s projects.