People whose hearts are not fretful or anxious
or in a kind of resentful frenzy, but
instead are full of tranquility and peace, and
are taken up as much with the affairs
of others as with their own little world,
the world sits up and notices such people.
And rightly so, because in all likelihood, where
there are such people, something out of this
world is at work.
The world is full of anxious people.
I'm most aware of students at this point,
having spent six years with students, anxious about
what other students are going to think of
their new pair of shoes.
Anxious about an oral book report and having
to stand up in front of a group.
Anxious about whether they can make the grade
that will get them the GPA to get
out of here.
And on and on the anxiety goes.
And there are anxious adults.
It is not something that only students have.
I made a list here of things.
Anxiety about pleasing the boss, not losing a
client, finishing a report on time, it's due
tomorrow morning.
Getting out of this foolish investment I got
into before it breaks me.
This strange pain in the chest that keeps
coming back.
From time to time there settles over every
one of us what Roland was talking about,
I think.
That dark, gray, heavy blanket of depressing anxiety.
Sometimes you can't even put your finger on
what it is that's making you just feel
crummy and afraid about tomorrow.
The experience is so common that when there
are a few people around who live in
the joy and the peace and the freedom
of Christ, they stand out like stars in
the night.
The few people who have learned how to
obey Jesus' command, be anxious for nothing.
They're the salt of the earth and the
light of the world.
You know, for most of us, when that
blanket settles down, life becomes tasteless and dark.
And we need the savor and the light
of some people who have learned not to
be anxious for anything.
Now, in the past year, say from January
on, the last semester I taught at Bethel,
one text has functioned repeatedly more than any
other text to blow away more fog of
anxiety than any other.
I can remember time after time, a big
pile of books under my office, opening the
door, and as I go out, saying to
myself, Father, unless you teach the class, those
who teach it labor in vain.
And comforting my heart that in the final
analysis, whether anything of value happens in this
class is not owing to me, but owing
to God.
And sometimes that truth would come home to
me so strong that I would feel as
light as a butterfly walking into class.
The text is Psalm 127, verses one and
two.
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 vain for you to rise up
early and go late to rest, eating the
bread of anxious toil, because he gives to
his beloved in his sleep.
The main point of this text, I think,
is don't eat the bread of anxious toil,
or like Jesus put it, don't be anxious
for what you shall eat.
When we grow up, we all have to
work for our bread.
You cannot escape work unless you just want
to be a moocher off other people.
But you can work in two different ways.
You can work anxiously, worrying about how people
are going to think of your work and
worrying what's going to happen if you don't
do it just right.
Or you can work with serenity in your
heart as serving Christ and not men and
eat the bread of peace and not anxious
toil.
God's will for his children is that they
do the latter, that they not work and
eat the bread of anxious toil, but that
they eat the bread of peace.
God doesn't lay down, does he, specific rules
in the Bible for how early you should
get up and how late you should knock
off from your work.
But he does lay down this principle.
Don't let the motive for your rising early
and your knocking off late be anxiety.
If for the joy of fruitful labor you
feel like working twelve hours a day, so
be it.
But watch out lest you deceive yourself and
really be driven by anxiety or by its
twin sister, selfish ambition.
Christians will work hard.
Nobody's going to go away tonight, I hope,
saying, the pastor thinks God does all the
work and we just loaf around.
Christians work hard.
We are an industrious people.
We always have been, ever since the New
Testament got a hold of people.
We've been an industrious people.
But we work hard for the joy of
all the good that can come to others
through our work, not out of fear at
what people might think if we fail.
Those are two different ways of working hard.
Be diligent as God may lead and eat
the bread you earn.
Fret not over what you need and let
not worry burn.
That's the main point, I think, of Psalm
127, 1 and 2.
God's beloved, that's us, I think, who are
in Christ.
God's beloved ought not to undertake his labors
fretfully from day to day.
Now, as I analyze verses 1 and 2,
it seems to me that there are two
reasons given here for why we ought not
to eat the bread of anxious toil.
The first one is verse 1.
Unless the Lord build the house, those who
build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city, the
watchman stays awake in vain.
Now, before I ask the question, how is
it that that verse is an incentive not
to be anxious?
Let me ask another question, namely, what would
it mean if we were to leave God
out of account and go about building a
house and that be in vain?
What would this vanity look like?
I think there are four possible ways that
we might labor in vain building a house.
And the same thing could be applied, I
think, to guarding a city.
Number one, if God isn't with us in
the building, building himself, we may not finish.
The Tower of Babel that I talked about
this morning is a beautiful example.
They were building and they had great goals,
but God was not building and they could
not finish.
And the tower was left undone as the
people were dispersed.
That's number one.
Number two.
The vanity of building without God might be
that the building gets built.
But the foundation is so poor that it
collapses.
The foolish man built his house upon the
sand and the rain fell and the floods
came and the winds blew and beat against
that house and it fell.
And great was the fall of it.
God might sustain an unbeliever and give him
strength to build a house.
And before he can go in the house,
it gets washed away in the flood.
Right there, just when he's ready to go
in and his buttons are bursting and his
nose is in the air at his great
accomplishment, his feet get washed out from under
him.
That's the second way that our labor may
be in vain if God isn't building.
Third, we might labor on a project.
And here, generalize, because many of you are
not engaged in building houses, but you're engaged
in other sorts of achieving, building a business,
building a family, etc.
You might work hard and God prosper you
by his common grace to succeed and get
the building built and even have the building
on a good foundation, solid, long lasting, beautiful.
And on the day you come to enter
it, you fall dead of a heart because
God wasn't in the building.
Now, somebody might say or argue like this.
The psalm says that our labor is in
vain only if the Lord isn't in our
labor.
But people die for whom the Lord is
working.
They were depending on the Lord in all
they're doing and they die.
Can it be then that they too have
labored in vain?
Are they in that same category?
No.
And the reason is that death does not
mark the end of the life of God's
people.
When they die, to be sure, they don't
take the house, they don't take the business,
and they don't take the family with them.
But they take all the labor done in
reliance upon God with them.
And that labor testifies before the judgment seat
of God to their faith.
And God approves and says, well done, good
and faithful servant.
You remember Revelation 14, 13.
Blessed are the dead who die in the
Lord henceforth.
Blessed indeed, says the spirit, that they may
rest from their labors for their deeds follow
them.
Deeds done in reliance upon the Lord will
follow us into glory and testify before God
of our faith.
And you remember, of course, Paul wrote in
view of the resurrection.
First Corinthians 15, 58, be steadfast, unmovable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing
that in the Lord your work is not
in vain, even if you die before you
move in the house.
Fourth, and lastly on this count, you might
be given the grace to finish the house.
It might be a beautiful house with a
firm foundation, and he might allow you to
enter the house and live there.
But the house might become a house of
tragedy.
The marriage crumbles.
The children grow up and rebel.
Emptiness, futility and vanity, and all around an
abundance of knickknacks on marble shelves.
Meaningless, empty, futility, because God did not build
the house.
So it seems to me that the point
of verse one is this.
No matter how hard you work to achieve
anything, the achievement of it and the joyful,
fulfilling use of it is ultimately dependent on
God and whether he grants that to us.
If we don't trust him, but instead rely
on our own insight, then we might build
a monument.
But it's going to be a monument to
futility if God doesn't build it with us.
Now, I said back at the beginning of
verse one is that this is, I think,
a great incentive not to be anxious.
Here's the way it worked for me.
I walk out of my office on the
way to class.
You'd think that after six years of teaching,
you don't have any anxiety on the way
to class.
Baloney!
You don't have any anxiety.
I've got anxiety.
And I say to myself, walking out of
class now, Lord, if it's true that if
you don't teach this class, all my labor's
been in vain, then the ultimate success of
this next 60 minutes is your responsibility, not
mine.
And the effect that had was to lift
off my back a weight I was never
designed as a creature to bear.
Namely, the final and ultimate responsibility for the
success or failure of any venture.
Ultimately, it lies in God's hands, and that
was a relief.
That's when I felt like a butterfly on
my way to class and could smile and
walk in.
Because the weight otherwise was just too heavy.
I can't bear the weight, Lord, of whether
these kids like me today.
I can't bear the weight of whether they're
open to receiving the teaching about the sovereignty
of God today.
I cannot bear the weight, Lord, of whether
they ask me questions I can't answer today.
They're all too heavy.
They're yours.
I can't take them.
And I've discovered that he is not just
willing, he is eager to take those things
on to himself.
And that makes him more glorious, to show
that he can bear them for me.
That's the great reason from verse 1, why
the beloved ought not to eat the bread
of anxious toil.
The second reason comes in verse 2.
Don't eat the bread of anxious toil because
God gives to his beloved in his sleep.
Now, your translation probably says God gives to
his beloved sleep.
And I can't find one that says in
his sleep, except a bunch of commentaries that
I've read.
But here's why I think that's what it
means.
First of all, the Hebrew, I think, will
allow both meanings.
And if you want to check this out,
you've got to go ask John Sailhammer sitting
over there in the corner who teaches Hebrew
over at the seminary.
John, I think this is an adverbial accusative.
But you can decide this point because all
you need to accept is that the Hebrew
is open to both possibilities and then ask
which one fits the context better.
Listen to this.
The first half of verse 2 says, it's
vain to rise early and go late to
rest.
But how would the simple statement, God gives
sleep to his beloved, help a person not
do that?
I don't care about sleep.
I'm anxious.
I don't want to sleep.
I want to work all night to get
ready for the class tomorrow.
What good to do to tell me God
gives sleep?
See, it just didn't make sense in the
logic of the psalm to say, stop getting
up early and going to bed late anxiously
because God gives sleep.
I don't care if he gives sleep.
I got to work to get ready.
But if you translate it, don't rise up
early and go to bed late, eating the
bread of anxious toil because God gives to
his beloved while he's asleep.
Then it makes sense.
Then you've got an incentive, a tremendous incentive,
and the incentive is this.
God can perform more good for his beloved
while they're asleep than they can perform for
themselves while they're awake through anxious toil.
So for goodness sakes, go to bed and
rest in the Lord.
Why should I sure need to hear that?
You know, people who set their own schedules
and are workaholics have an awful time knowing
when to get to bed and when to
get up in the morning.
And a word like this comes as a
very good reminder to us.
Have you ever asked yourself the question, why
did God create man so that he needed
sleep to spend one third of my life
unconscious?
Why?
I mean, God could have invented and created
a person who was always alert and rested.
Does that ever bother you?
I mean, I see my little Abraham.
He sleeps two thirds of the time.
I wish he slept a little more these
days.
But when I say you sleep a third
of your life, you might say, oh no,
I get by on six.
You didn't before you were five and you
won't later on either.
You add it all together, you've slept a
third of your life.
Why?
Well, the Bible doesn't tell us why, but
I've got an idea.
I think God invented us with the need
of sleep as a parable.
A universal testimony to the human race that
we are but children and we better own
up to it or we'll kill ourselves.
Every time you lay yourself down at night,
you've got to own up to the fact
that you are so frail that you have
to become helpless and unconscious and blind every
day or you can't live.
Isn't that humiliating and humbling?
And rightly so.
I don't think there's a time when we
are more childlike and more weak than when
we sleep in faith.
And didn't Jesus say, my grace is made
perfect or my power is made perfect in
your weakness?
And didn't he say, unless you turn and
become like little children, you can't enter the
kingdom.
And if God's power is made perfect in
our weakness, then surely we can believe this
psalm when it says that we ought not
to rise early and knock off so late,
eating the bread of anxious toil, because when
we sleep in faith, God is at work
with all his might all night on our
behalf, changing people's attitudes, doing things that you
can't imagine that he might do to make
things go the way they should the next
day.
The great test of faith is, can we
believe that when we lay our head down
to sleep and look at the problem, how
in the world is the problem going to
get solved the next day?
Yet believe that God can bring, as it
were, out of nothing a solution that we
hadn't imagined or give us grace to profit
tremendously from going through the trial.
William Cooper wrote a hymn.
We sang it, I think, last Sunday that
has helped me so much since I ran
across it.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but
trust him for his grace behind a frowning
providence.
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour.
The bud may have a bitter taste, but
sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err and trace
his works in vain.
God is his own interpreter and he will
make it plain.
Let me close with a personal illustration.
About, I can't remember how many years ago,
three, four years ago, while I was teaching,
I went through a period in which I
could not get to sleep at night.
And I lay there reasoning with myself.
You ought not be anxious.
There is no reason to be anxious.
And all the reasonings keep you awake.
You know how it goes.
Counts sleep, the sheep keep you awake, and
so on.
What finally worked was this.
I put before my eyes a scene and
recalled it night after night.
And the scene was this.
I'm on a boat.
And the sea is beginning to rise.
And the crew is in a frenzied way
trying to keep the bow into the wind
and get the cargo fastened down.
And I go down into this small hole
of the ship and there's Jesus asleep on
the cot in the hole of this ship.
Not a line of tension on his face
at all.
And I walk over to him and I
pat him on the shoulder.
Jesus, I can't sleep.
Would you help me?
And he sits up, moves to the end
of the cot and says, you lie down
here.
And I lay down and I put my
head in his lap.
And he puts his hand on my shoulder
and he says, now, I'll take care of
you tonight.
And don't worry, you'll be ready for the
class tomorrow.
I can't tell you how many times I
went to sleep in that position.
And I still go back to that position
sometimes when sleep won't come.
And I commend it to you.
Or if you have your own sweet position
that helps.
He gives to his beloved sleep and he
gives him sleep because he gives to him
in his sleep.
So in summary, don't eat the bread of
anxious toil for two reasons.
No matter how hard you work at your
job, ultimately it's God who determines its success
or failure.
So the weight is lifted off your back.
Relax.
And number two, he gives to his beloved
in his sleep.
He can do more for you when you're
asleep.
If you trust him, then you can do
for yourself through anxious toil.
Words, words, words, father, unless you come in
and make them powerful.
So that this very night, that person who
is perplexed about tomorrow will be able to
believe you that you give to your beloved
in his sleep.
So that we can rest and be a
kind of people then who are not anxious
or troubled or running about in a frenzied
way.
But tranquil with a kind of peaceful abandon
and very much taken up, not just with
our own affairs, but with the affairs of
others.
And in that way, men will see our
good deeds and give glory to you.
In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.