Unless the Lord Builds the House

When I was growing up I was fascinated by ancient Egypt.  It all seemed so old to me.  So imagine my surprise, when reading about the Pharaoh Tutankhamen, I discovered that by the time he was on the throne the great pyramids at Giza would have been seen as objects of man’s folly.  Poets would have compose poetry pointing out the folly of the Pharaoh who had built them as he was practically forgotten and they had long since fallen into ruin!

When we come to Psalm 127 the subject of folly takes up the first part of the psalm.  The psalm is attributed to Solomon and if, as I believe, he was the author of Ecclesiastes the psalm has some parallels with its themes of wisdom and folly. The psalm is in two parts, the first deals with folly of leaving God out of one’s life, the second to the benefits of including him.

The folly of the situation is very apparent in the first verse.  ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.’   What emerges in verse 2 is the waste of time and effort that is put into such a project as: ‘It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.’  The picture is clear; if we leave the Lord out of our endeavours they will amount to nothing in the long run!  What Solomon is highlighting is the danger of putting our faith in things or activity, rather than involving the Lord in all we say and do!  When we had the local school children come to the church one of the questions they asked me was what was the most important part of the church?  I told them it was the pulpit because that’s where ‘the Word of God’ was read and taught.  But I added the proviso that it was only the most important part of the church if those things were done as if they weren’t then it might as well chop it up for firewood.  God would not be involved and anything said would be a waste of time and effort!

But now we come to the second part of the psalm which shows the blessing of having God involved.  At first it looks like the psalm goes off at a tangent with its emphasis on children! But the word: ‘house’ in verse 1 can be rendered ‘household’ in the Hebrew which provides us with a connection to verse 1.  Solomon highlights the difference of including the Lord at the end of verse 2 with the words: ‘for he (God) gives to his beloved sleep.’  It’s possible Solomon is putting his mark on the psalm here as in 2 Samuel 12:24 we read that the Lord named Solomon: ‘Jedidiah’ which means: ‘beloved of the Lord’.  But the key thing is this verse leads us into the second part of the psalm.  Children were seen as important in the Ancient Near East as they were their parent’s security, in the absence of social services, in their old age.  Hence they are used to illustrate blessing.  The phrase: ‘He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate’ possibly refers to a false accusation being made and the father being dragged before the Elders of the town at the town gate where all the business was done in those days.  He has the blessing of having children who would defend him in his old age.

Jesus’ hearers would have been reminded of this psalm when he preached the parable of the ‘Wise and Foolish Builders’ (Matthew 7:24-27).  The parable gives a simple comparison; we can either ignore Jesus’ words which would be like building a house on sand which will eventually fall down, or we can take his words to heart and have the security of a person who lives in a house built on a firm foundation.  That’s the security of trusting in the Lord and involving him in everything we say and do!

Would you like to hear a sermon on this Psalm? Unless the Lord Builds the House.