Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Psalm 127, emphasizing the importance of God's role in building a family. He highlights that unless the Lord is at the center, all efforts to create a home are in vain. The sermon encourages fathers and all believers to depend on God for guidance, provision, and protection in family life, illustrating that true success comes from aligning with God's blueprint. Practical applications include fostering a godly home and recognizing children as blessings from the Lord.
Welcome and Church Information
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It's always a blessing to have you a part of that and be a part of what we got to experience this week at Bible School and looking at the worship of Jesus. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Psalms chapter 127, and it's just five verses.
I can't promise you that I'm going to be shorter this morning because this has been a message on my heart for a little bit, and I want to preach on what it means to be a father in fatherhood.
And believe it or not, it applies to everyone, not just the dads in the room, but it talks about how we can have a wonderful home.
And so Psalms 127 is where we're going to be at.
And so if you'll find your place there, I'm not going to ask you to stand because we were just standing and some of you were dancing, which is a good thing. David danced before the Lord as we looked at this morning in Sunday school and as we look at often throughout scripture.
So the Bible says in Psalms 127, as you can see, I've already taken my coat off because I'm a little warm as well. Psalms 127 says, unless the Lord builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over a city, the watchman stays alert in vain. In vain, you get up early and stay up late, working hard to have enough food. Yes, he gives sleep to those ones that he loves. Sons are indeed an heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons born in one's youth. Happy is the man who has filled his quiver with them. They are never to be put to shame when they speak with their enemies at the city gate. Let us pray.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done for us. Thank you for the men in this room as we honor the fathers this morning. We thank you for the heritage that you've given us.
The father that I have and the stepdad that I have and the father-in-law that I have, the two father-in-laws that I get to honor on today's day. I'm thankful that they're all still alive and they're all still here for me to love and cherish and care for.
And I pray God that you would help us to be faithful men as we look at the day as father's day, but faithful as Christians, as we look at how we can live for you this morning.
The Panama Canal Example
We love you. In your name we pray. Amen. One of the most ambitious construction projects of all time was building of this little bitty narrow way called the Panama Canal.
If you've never done the research of the Panama Canal, I've been able to see it twice. We went down and did two mission trips in the Panama Canal area and I got to see the old canal and also they built a new canal. It's a very narrow way of water,
but it saved millions and millions, probably billions and trillions of dollars of boats not having to go all the way down around the South America and come up. They could just pass straight through.
In the building of this project, in the building of the Panama Canal, thousands of workers spent years cutting through the mountain, battling diseases,
enduring setbacks, and investing enormous resources in what seemed to be an impossible task to connect these two waterways.
This required many planning, labor, sacrifice, perseverance, and the sacrifice of even individuals who got sick and died on this journey. Even then, the project could succeed without the factors beyond human control. The weather that came in, the terrain, the conditions that they were going to go through.
No engineer could have sat down and said, this is what we're going to go through when we begin to build this project. And yet, they began to go through this project and now hundreds of thousands of boats every year cross through the Panama Canal. Building anything in life is worthwhile.
It is difficult to do, but yet it is worthwhile. Wow, building a house, some of you in here, like myself, have built a house before. It is very difficult. But at the end, you sit back and you say, wow, this is something that I have worked on,
but yet it's difficult. Some of you in here are business owners and you have built a business. And building a business is difficult. For me, building a church is difficult. It is a difficult process to say,
God, I want to do these things and I want you to come and I want you to bless what we're trying to do and I want to do some things. And there are long days and long nights, difficult times.
I mean, we finished Bible school, as I've told many people. Today, we leave for camp. My gas gauge of my life is running down a little bit.
And so I am looking forward to just some rest on the weekends because things that we go through are difficult.
And all those three things that I just mentioned, the house, the business, the church, they're all difficult. I believe that one of the most difficult things in life and maybe the most challenging construction project of all is a family.
And when we begin to say, God, I want to do family the proper way. I want to raise children the proper way. We go upon headaches and headaches.
You have, you, there are many people in here who have faced teenagers before as teenagers going through the hardheadedness where they think they know everything. We're slowly starting to go through this preteen stage. It's a difficult time. Yes, you can testify.
But yet, as we go through this life, as we go through working on our family, as fathers know, as you can attest in here this morning, building a strong family does not happen by accident. It must be done intentionally and it must be done through sacrifice,
time, wisdom, patience, prayer, correction, encouragement, all these things are what we're going to look at. And this Psalm here this morning, as we look at Psalms 127, is what is called a song of ascent.
If you have a study Bible, this may say that above there. And what is simply meant is it was written by Solomon. And if anyone knows anything about Solomon, Solomon was not only the richest man that ever lived. He wasn't only the most wise man that ever lived.
But he went and undertook the building of God's temple, the second temple that was built.
And when he built this project, if you look through scripture, you can see that they overlaid the walls with gold. They overlaid the ceilings with gold.
Everything that you can imagine was perfectly done for this tabernacle, for this temple, for the Lord to come down and meet with them. Solomon was the general contractor for this project.
So he knew how to build things and he knew how to do it in God's hand.
And as we look through this, I want you to understand that a successful family is not merely built by human effort, but it's built on the dependence that God, I am trusting in you to help build my family,
to work through my life, and to begin to work in and through my family as I lead.
Throughout this message, I want to encourage you to think of this one thought, and I'm going to have to go fast, but I want you to think of a builder that's got everything that he can ever imagine. He's got every tool. He's got the blueprints.
He's got everything that can be done to build a successful family. God has given us these tools. God has given us the blueprints. He's given us the nails. He's given us the lumber.
It is our choice of whether we're going to take the most crucial thing in building a family and adding it to that.
God lays out, this is how you build a family. This is how you do things. These are the tools that you need. But the thing that we have to add to that is God's blessing.
And we have to say, God, I need you to work in my family in order for all this to come together. I need you to begin to work in my life so that when it's completed, it's not just that I build a family.
Anyone can build a family, but I build a family that is honoring to God.
And God's going to look down and say, this is what a true home should look like.
And so I've broken this psalm into two separate passages, verses one and two and verses three through five. The first is this, we must be dependent upon God in our life.
Before Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, before he wrote anything down about the blessings that it means to be a father or to have a family, he reminds us this one simple fact that the builder behind every successful home is the Lord.
Dependence on God
The very first three words, unless the Lord builds a house.
And he understands if I am going to be a builder of people and a builder of homes, I must be dependent upon God in everything that I do. And Solomon understood this more than any of us in here.
I mean, he had wives upon wives and kids upon kids, more than we could ever even imagine if we went through the history of his life. And yet he knew and he understand,
I must depend upon God. How does he depend upon God? Three things that he depends upon God. The first is God's working or works in our lives. He says this, unless the Lord builds a house, the builders labors over it in vain.
He uses this word vain, which simply means this, empty, futile, or without lasting success. Now, Solomon is not saying sit around and do absolutely nothing.
You shouldn't work, you shouldn't plan, you shouldn't prepare. What he's saying is, is if we don't do these things without the Lord in our lives, then it's in vain.
I mean, Solomon, if you read and you look through his life, he's probably one of the hardest working men that the scripture has ever talked about. Man, the man Solomon, he built things, he built,
you can go to Israel right now, and the things that Solomon built are still standing there today. Two, three thousand years later, four thousand years later, they're still there.
The man knew how to build things, he knew how to do things. So he's not saying sit around and do nothing, but what he's saying is, is if we don't do something without the Lord, and it doesn't have any eternal value,
then you're really not doing anything at all. The Father, this morning, you can provide a house.
You can get up and you can work and you can do everything you can to provide a house, but you cannot create a home outside of God. A father this morning, a parent this morning can enforce rules,
but you cannot change a heart without God working in and through that person's life, and God changing that heart.
I can put rules and stipulations of what my kids need to do every single morning, and they can get up and they can do all the checklists, but without me applying God into their life, they are just simply
checking off the boxes of saying, okay, I did what you told me to do, Dad. Can I get my allowance now?
But when I began to pour God over that, and I began to allow God to work in their heart, they began to wake up with a desire to honor their father and mother, as God says in Exodus 20 that we should honor our father and mother.
A family can have schedules, a family can have vacations, a family can have activities, and all these things can be a part of our family, and yet we can miss God completely. I want to illustrate it like this is the best way I can. I can have the best builder of all time,
the greatest builder. You name the building company, Cedric Homes or Madison Home Builders, whatever you decide to build, and they can come in and they can build the greatest, most amazing looking home that you've ever seen from the outside. And if I were to walk into that home and say, hey guys, I think you missed, the walls are awesome.
The lighting that you've done here is some of the best lighting I've ever seen. The electrical behind the walls, it's awesome. The sheetrock is the cleanest sheetrock I've ever seen in my life.
But guys, I think you missed one thing. Guys, why would I miss something? The builder would look at me and say, why would I have missed? And I said, well, there's no foundation here. You forgot to put the foundation down.
And they would look at me and say, no, no, James, listen, we built the best walls that you can ever imagine. We spent more money on these walls and this ceiling and this roof and this lighting that you've ever imagined.
It's going to take care of itself. And I would step back and say, no, if you don't have the foundation right, nothing else matters.
And this is what Solomon is saying here. The foundation of our life cannot be replaced by anything else. It doesn't matter how beautiful the walls are. It doesn't matter how amazing everything is. Without the foundation, everything else collapses. And in our life, we have to say, God is our foundation.
Everything that I'm going to build my house on, everything that I'm going to build my life upon, must be upon God. God is the architect. He's the master builder.
It is not our responsibility to replace him, but yet it is our job and our opportunity to cooperate with him as fathers and builders of our houses.
The question I want to ask you this morning is, are you building your family with the blueprint from the master architect, Jesus Christ himself, God the Father?
And are you saying, God, I want to work with you in building this family and building my home and building my relationship with my wife and building my relationship with my children? Am I doing all of these things so that you can begin to work through my life? As a father myself,
I can relate to this and I can understand that many fathers try to provide everything for themselves and for their family and they can feel this pressure of the weight of the world of saying, I must do these
things. I'm here to tell you this morning, you were never meant to do this alone and you were never meant to be the savior of your family. Christ came and he died for the church and he died for our sins so that he could be the savior of our families.
He could be the savior of our lives and we get to come and say, God, I can't do this without you. I can't get to heaven without you. I can't live my life without you. And I can't raise this family without you.
Then I am not going to be the savior of my family.
You're going to have to be the one that comes into my life and comes into my family and be the savior of my family just like you were the savior of my life. And this is what God is calling us to do when he begins to work in our life.
God's Protection and Sovereignty
The second thing he continues on, he says that God watches over our lives. God watches. He not only works, but he watches.
And this is this idea of ancient cities were surrounded and they would hire people to stand guard on the walls. And they would stand and they would announce if a foreigner was coming, they would announce if a dignitary was coming, they would be the watchers on the walls.
And Solomon says this, the watchman's efforts are useless. I mean, think about this is what their job is. Their job is to watch the city. And it says, unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman's alert are in vain. They are of none effect. There's nothing here that they are doing absolutely nothing because they are not watching with the Lord on their side. This is what it tells me. It tells me that we are not in control.
God is sovereign over everything. And every father, I am here.
I am one of the ones up here saying that I am a father who wants to protect my children. I want to protect them from evil. I want to protect them from badness.
I want to protect them from people who are going to influence them in the wrong way. I want to protect them. But yet I cannot protect them the way God can protect them.
I can put locks on their door. I can put protection on their screens. If they have little iPads, I can buy insurance. I can teach them safety habits. I can even establish well-thought-out boundaries in my children's life.
But unless I take a step back and say, God, my children are only safest in your hands.
And they're not safe in my hands because I'm futile. I'm sinful. I'm just as bad as everyone else in the room.
But God, if I put them in your hands, I can only imagine how safe you're going to keep them. See, a builder can construct walls and he can have the perfect foundation, but the builder cannot control the storms on the outside.
As Logan and Kim just said, they couldn't control the rain that was coming in. They built the walls.
They had the gutters up. They thought they had everything ready. And yet the storms came in and the storms wrecked some things that were going on in their life. We cannot control the outside things.
We can only control what we can see and what we can hold. And so our responsibility is to say, God, what I can't control, will you take care of? I understand we're going to go through storms. I understand we're going to go through difficulties. But I am leaning and trusting on you.
Think of Job, the wisest, one of the most righteous men of all time. Worked hard to protect his children. And yet the Lord saw fit for him to depend upon him, even in the darkest, deepest times of his life.
The thing that I struggle with the most in this point as I began to study in this past week is as a father, am I teaching my children to depend on God or to depend on me?
Because I want them to come to me. I want them to say, Dad, can I help you? Can I do these things?
But how often am I saying, I want to be in the place of God and you come to me so that I can fix all of your problems instead of saying, there's someone better than me. There's a God who's bigger, that's stronger, that's greater than I am.
And yes, come to me. But have you went to God too? Because we like to be the Savior. Dads, I am with you. I know this.
We like to be the Savior of everything. But God in some aspect is wanting us to be dependent on him and say, have you went to my Savior? Have you went to my Jesus who has conquered everything?
These are the things that I struggle with because I like to be the Savior. I want to be the Savior. It is wired in us to do this. And yet we must depend upon God to control these things in our life.
Not only does God watch us, not only does God work in us and through us, but God also wages or provides for us. My wife gets on to me when I don't alliterate, so I worked really hard this week.
God wages. He provides for us. Look at what it says here. It is in vain. If you get up early and stay up late working hard enough to have food, yes, he gives sleep to the one he loves. The point of this is simply that God is the ultimate provider. Look at what Solomon is describing here.
He's describing a man exhausted. Early mornings, late night. I'm going to add in here too much coffee, not enough caffeine in your life, constantly striving to do what is right. And God reminds him that every blessing comes from God's hand. One commentator said it like this. This verse is not condemning diligence, but ancient field labor that ignores God's provision.
Where you're anxiously toiling because you can't understand how the ends are going to meet and come together. And so you're doing everything you can to try to provide everything.
And yet you've never once turned back to God and say, God, I'm just going to trust in you. I'm going to trust in you for everything in my life. Imagine a builder.
Like I'm going to use this builder illustration the entire time. Greatest builder of all time that is building things. Let's just use Solomon here who's building the temple.
And Solomon says, you know what? I can't trust anyone to carry the lumber from place A to place B. So I'm going to pick up every piece of lumber and I'm going to move that lumber from here to here. And Solomon works and he's working hard.
And all of a sudden he goes, you know, I can't trust coal over here to work a hammer and nails. And so I've got a hammer and nail every single piece of wood in the right place. And I can't trust James's dad to be the right electrician.
So I'm going to be the one that comes in and wires in the tabernacle and wires in the temple to have the right lighting and have everything right. And all of a sudden Solomon, because he can't trust anyone, he decides that he's going to be the one that does everything.
And all of a sudden Solomon has a heart attack and dies.
Because Solomon is trying to work and do everything and he collapses because he is trying to carry this burden alone when he was never intended to carry it alone.
And God is telling us here, he was never intending for us as fathers, as parents to do this alone, but to rely on him because he is the one that comes alongside of us and lifts our weary hands up and begins to help us as we go through life.
One application that I read this week was phenomenal.
Good vs. Godly Fathers
It said, good fathers work hard. Godly fathers work hard while trusting God.
And I really, truly believe this is the difference between just a good father and a godly father. It's still working hard. It's still being diligent. It's not being lazy. It's doing everything that you can. It's trying to provide for your family.
But while doing that, saying, God, I know you are still in control and I am still going to trust in you no matter what. Now, the builder in this moment, in this passage, has secured the most important piece of the project. He's built the foundation for his family. The foundation is in place.
And now, since he is dependent upon God, he begins to shift what God requires to what God provides for our life.
What God begins to give us. The blessings that God gives us. In verses 3 through 5, we see three gifts, and I'll quickly walk through this,
that they walk through us. Solomon walks through, that the master builder gives us. The first is this, a home. God blesses us by giving us a home.
I am here to tell you I do not deserve the home that I have, the family that I have, the loving wife that I have. As she put out this wonderful post this morning.
If you didn't see it, go and like it and share it because it's really nice. She did a lot of good work writing that.
It brought me to tears this morning as I was reading it because I don't deserve the family or the home that I have.
Now, lots of people can look at this passage and they can say that this is talking about a physical structure. A physical home, and this can refer to that, but I believe it's referring to a household or a family that God has designed.
Because God is concerned about people. God did not send his son to die on a cross for you and I's sin so that we could have a physical home one day. He died for you and I's life, for our soul to be reunited with him so that he could provide a godly home for us.
A heavenly home one day for us. Many of us spend many years building square footages, and yet we neglect the relationships that God has put in front of our lives. A builder can work on a home day and night and yet never actually create a home for anyone. A home is built through love.
A home is built through leadership. A home is built through laughter, through worship, through presence of being there with their family.
And the greatest gift that a father can give is not a bigger house, not a bigger square footage, but the greatest gift that a father can get his home is a godly home.
By putting God at the center of everything they think, say, and do as our vision statement is for the year. Are we living a life that is Christ-centering in everything that we're thinking and we're saying and we're doing?
And yes, we're going to make mistakes and we're not going to say the right things, but we're going to correct those and we're going to say, you know what, this should be a God-honoring statement. Are we living that way as fathers? What is the atmosphere that fills our home?
Is it an atmosphere that is glorifying to God or is it an atmosphere that if a stranger were looking in,
they would say, I don't know where God is ever even at your home. Where are we at when we're building this home? The second thing he gives us as a blessing of God is our offsprings. The Bible says that sons are indeed an heritage from the Lord,
Understanding Children as Blessings
an offspring and a reward. Now, I know some never have the opportunity.
One of me and Allison's closest friends, her maid of honor, is struggling with infertility right now. And I understand this is a difficult subject and a difficult thing to talk about because children are a heritage that God gives us.
And we desire to have these things and we desire to have a heritage. But the world and the culture often takes the blessings of a child and they turn it into a burden. And they say that, you know what, I got another kid today. Oh my goodness, this is,
no, no, we should be looking at this as a blessing from God, an inheritance from God. All of a sudden, and we use these words, I've used it before that children are an accident sometimes, like we accidentally had Hudson, but it was sort of an accident.
But we can say that, but oftentimes we say that and we don't realize that God truly has blessed us with the children that we have. God truly has given us these children, not as an assignment,
not as an accident, but to belong back to God and to turn them back to the Lord. And say, God, I'm thankful that you gave me these children and I know they're not mine. I am not the owner of these children. I am just a steward.
I am a caretaker of them for you and because of you.
And I'm going to turn them back to you as an arrow begins to work through in my life. I'm going to prepare them to release them to the target that you have designed for them. I tell parents all the time in marriage counseling, because this is how parents work.
Parents, and give me a little bit of time here.
Parents, this is what we like to say. We like to say that when kids do wrong, it's my fault.
When my kid grows up and they make mistakes and they don't do the things they should have done, they take all the blame. It's my fault.
And when a kid grows up and they do well and they establish themselves, they give the glory back to God. They say, God, thank you so much for raising my children and doing well. Why can't both of them be God? Why can't God be the one that's responsible for both?
And this is how I want to explain it. Why can't God be the one that's responsible for both? Because oftentimes we take this scripture and we say, if I raise my child up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, then God's going to protect them on their flight.
And that's not what this verse is saying. The verse is saying that when I pull that arrow back, and I take 18 years, and I put that arrow in the bow, and I begin to pull it back for 18 years, and I aim that target, and
I do everything I can, I bring God into my family, and I aim it back at that target, when I let go of that arrow, it is no longer in my control.
I have put them on the right path, but yet sometimes when I let go of that arrow, a hurricane comes, and a massive wind comes, and blows that arrow off target. And it is the arrow's responsibility,
through God working his life, to get back on target. But I have done everything I can to raise my children right, and godly, and justful, because I am preparing my children to be relaunched into God's glory, and launched into their life.
And so I would merely challenge you to say that, yes, even though you have done right, you can still give God's glory, and you don't have to take the blame for it, because we often try to put everything on our shoulders.
God is telling us that because we have an offspring, we are his stewards, we are his leaders of these families that God has given us.
And then the last one, and it concludes here with the provision that God gives us. Verses four and five, complete the picture of the blessings, not merely of just having children, but having children that have been prepared.
And then he walks through this warrior that has a full quiver, possessed with strength, support, future, and security.
This picture, not of just the children existing to serve the parents, but God providing strength and blessing through generation upon generation upon generation.
And God beginning to work in our life. You've been through, and you've been riding around, and you've maybe went to like the Biltmore Estate, or some of these other massive structures that are built, that were built hundreds of years ago. And you can see that after generation of generation of generation,
these homes and these structures have continued to stand long after the builders were gone.
And the same way happens in our life, long after we're gone, the inheritance and the influence that someone else poured into our life through God's glory begins to overflow in our lives.
A simple question I want to ask you as I wrap up this portion today is what are you investing in that's going to outlive yourself?
What are you going to invest in to say, this is going to be here when I'm gone? My children, a church, a community.
What are you investing in that when you're long and you're gone, and we'd hate to think about that.
We talked about heaven on the last night this past week of Bible school, and Carrie said it was such an encouraging topic, but the kids just didn't like to think about death.
We naturally don't like to think about death, but God is telling us that one day we're not going to be here, and what are we going to provide that's going to be a lasting legacy for those that are around us?
He said, I've provided for you. Are you continuing to provide things that are going to outlast you? As Terry comes, as we conclude this morning,
a builder may have every tool, every worker, every material and every blueprint that's ever been created to create the most perfect project ever created. Yet if one critical piece is missing, the project will never reach completion.
If the guy that was supposed to bring the lumber never brought the lumber,
the project will never get done. If the guy that was supposed to bring the screws to hold the lumber together never showed up, but the lumber showed up, lumber's never going to be put together. Because one crucial piece was missing.
Psalms 127 teaches us that one missing piece in the family can ruin the entire family.
And that one simple piece begins at the very beginning in the third word of Psalms 127, unless the Lord builds a house.
Oftentimes, we try to strive, and we try to work our tails off to do everything we can. And we say, you know what? I've got to put everything on my shoulders, and I've got to do everything that I can do. And we walk through building our families,
and we forget the crucial piece of the Lord.
God's Role in Our Building
We forget that the Lord is the one that allows our building to not be in vain. The Lord is the one watching.
The Lord is the one working with us. The Lord is the one that makes our home strong, that makes our children become a blessing, that makes our labor worth it when we get to the end of our day, and we sit in our recliner, and we go, I'm just exhausted.
I'm so tired. I'm so wore out. I don't know what I can do. I don't know how I'm going to go forward. And then we look up, and we say, God, you're the one that made all this possible. God, you're the one that has allowed me to be exhausted right now.
You're the one that has given me these children to be an inheritance for you. You're the one that has created me to be a husband to a wife to allow me to not be a perfect family, but to be a family that is dependent upon you.
It is up to us to simply raise our house to be dependent upon God. So ask yourself this question this morning. What are you building? Whose blueprint are you following?
And are you dependent upon the master builder for every single step of the way? I'm going to read verse one again before I pray. Unless the Lord builds a house, the builder's labors over it in vain. Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done.
Lord, help us to be so in tune with you that every step we take, every move we make, as the old song says for Bible school, every move I make, I make for you, Lord.
I don't want to make a step that is not the right step, but I want to go the wrong way. I want to move in the way that you're going to be God-honoring, and you're going to be prospering in my life.
Help us this morning to understand who we are, what you've done for us, who you have become for us as you came into this world to live a life for us, to be an example, and died a perfect death for us.
You died and were put in a grave, and you rose again three days later so that we could have eternal life in you if we believe. Help that to be our motto as we raise our families. In your name we pray. Amen.
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