I invite you to stand with our choir and we'll be reading together the scripture this morning from Psalm 127. That is on page 518 in your pew bulletin if you're following along. Psalm 127, this is God's Word. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it, labor and vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, where he gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb, a reward. 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. This is the Word of the Lord. Maybe seated. How well do you sleep at night? As I think back on my third anniversary at First Presbyterian Church, which is this month, I can say that I haven't always slept that well. I came to this church really for three things and I think they're fitting because they're the three things that the Psalmist is talking about today. And they're the three things that many of us are seeking above all else in life. I came for security. I came for safety. And I came for family. Now, security seems like a no-brainer. First Presbyterian Church is the oldest church in the city. It's the oldest organization of any kind in the city. It is a place that has had many pastors here for many, many years, previous pastors have been here for 30-plus years, 50-plus years. They paint pictures of them and hang them in the hallway. When I arrived, there were pastors who had been here for a number of years already. They seemed well-established, firmly in place. I was counting on them to teach me the ropes. In my three years, I've worked with eight different pastors. Eight. You know that feeling you get when you look through an old year book, and you find somebody and go, oh, hey, you remember that guy? Or somebody from your elementary school sends you a friend request on Facebook. And you say, oh, yeah, that guy. I get that feeling every time I go through the contact list of my cell phone. Hey, I remember that guy. We used to be pastors together. People came, people left, and I was worried. The next thing that I was thinking about when I came here was safety. Now, safety seemed like a natural too. I've always generally gotten along with people. People like me, I like them, I don't like conflict. I suspected that when I came here, things would be smooth sailing. Everyone would get along. I wasn't sure initially whether people would take to my unique way of seeing things. But after initially preaching a sermon with a rather lengthy top-gun illustration, nobody seemed to mind, they kept asking me back. So everybody loves Kate. What could go wrong? Very quickly, I learned as I started meeting with people who were making it very clear to me, they did not like me at all. Now, I wasn't sure why they didn't like me. And looking back, I'm not sure that they exactly understood why they didn't like me. They tried to explain it to me, but there were a lot of charts and numbers, and I'm really bad at math, so I really missed a lot of what they were getting at. And yet, even though it seems kind of silly looking back, I think that I lost a lot of sleep during that period of time. I also came here for family. We bought a house right down the street from my mom and dad. We came here with a two-and-a-half-month-old daughter named Lily, who's now three. We have a brand new since we've arrived, almost two-year-old son Jack. We live in a great family neighborhood, great schools, great parks, great place to just be with your family. I've learned one thing. Children under four years old can give you a lot of things, but sleep isn't one of them. I can't tell you how many times I've been awake at night staring up at the ceiling, thinking, am I too hard on them? Am I too easy on them? Should I be letting them watch back-to-back episodes of Veggie Tales? Is that good for their brain? Should I be teaching them algebra and sign language and Latin? I've got seven different parenting books swirling around in my head, and they're all getting confused, and I can't sleep. I sleep a lot better these days. Not just because Tim has come here, and things feel a lot more stable now, though that helps. I sleep a lot better, not just because I've become much more selective with whom I take meetings with these days. I've actually installed a little button on my desk that just admits a red flashing light, and if I sense it's going wrong, I'll just lean over and say, that's how the aliens know you're here. I can usually tell if they laugh, we have a good meeting, if they run away, terrified, that's God's will. Everybody's a winner. I sleep a lot better at night, not because my children are answering algebra questions in sign language while simultaneously parsing Latin verbs. They're not. I sleep a lot better at night because I finally realized that the reason why I wasn't sleeping at night, the reason why I was so anxious was because I was trusting in myself and not in the Lord. I was trusting in myself to gather up all my gifts and all my abilities and all my thoughts and to think this through and solve it on my own. I hadn't yet gotten a message from Psalm 127 unless the Lord built the house, those who build it, labor and vain, unless the Lord watches over the city. The watchmen stay awake and vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go to late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil for the Lord gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb are reward. You see Solomon knew the secret to good sleep. He had built a house for the Lord, a massive, glorious temple. He had secured the city with watchmen on all sides, and yet he realized that without the Lord it's all meaningless. How well do you sleep? Do you trust the Lord to provide for you? Do you trust the Lord to protect you? Do you trust the Lord to protect and provide for your family? I think the answer that the Psalmist gives us in this passage, though he gives us a number of alternatives and things that we may trust in or maybe tempted to trust in, at the end Solomon reveals to us that there's really only one answer to our restlessness. And it's an answer that Solomon himself knew is less about knowing than about being known. Let's go to the text, and if you get this, I think you're going to get the best night of sleep of your life tonight. Let's take a look. Now, as we begin, I want to set the scene. Imagine the scene. The sun is setting on Jerusalem, and Solomon is out taking a walk as the sun goes down. In my mind, Solomon is played by Patrick Stewart, a record from Star Trek, but really could be anybody. Just imagine it in your brain. Solomon walking around the city, the sun is going down. He finds himself walking in the shadow of this great temple that he has built. A massive ornate, beautiful temple, one of the wonders of the ancient world. He continues walking. He passes out of that shadow, and he sees the walls of the city and the watchmen on top of the city. He's restless. He's anxious. He's like Alexander the Great who wept, because there were no worlds left to conquer. He's accomplished everything that he set out to accomplish in life. And yet, what does it all mean? Having seemingly provided for his people, having seemingly protected his people, has he really given them the rest that he seeks? Has he really given them the rest that all of us seek? Where will we find that rest? Many people in the city assuredly look to Solomon, the great builder of the house. And speaking from a purely materialist sense, it makes a lot of sense that one would look and trust in Solomon. Solomon was, by all accounts, a great builder. The temple that he had built was one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was a masterpiece. The best stone masons, the best architects, the best artisans had all come together and given their part to make this glorious, massive temple. But even more than that, Solomon didn't just build the temple. In many ways, Solomon built the whole city. Solomon's wisdom was the heartbeat of the city. He had built the culture of the city. He came from far and wide to hear the great king Solomon, to get an audience with him, to hear what he had to say about life. He was wealthy beyond his wildest imaginations, beyond our wildest imaginations. He was a philanthropist, he was a great military leader. Believe me, we place our trust in a lot of people with a lot less going on for them than Solomon. And yet Solomon steadfastly refused to take the credit for what the Lord had done. He acknowledged that unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor and vain. Perhaps he remembered the words that God had himself had graciously spoken to his father, David, where he says in 2 Samuel 7, The Lord declares to you, to you David, I will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up from you and offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom forever. He shall build a house from my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. See, Solomon, in his God-given wisdom, realized what all of us should realize that we are footnotes in history. Now, if that insults your sensibilities, if that makes you a bit indignant, I'm not a footnote. I'm not a footnote. I'm somebody. That's just spoken from someone who's never been a footnote. I'm a footnote. If you come to my study, and I'll take a commentary off my shelf, a commentary on the book of numbers, a real commentary, and I'm going to turn to the back of that book, and I'm going to show you, I'm a footnote in that book. Chapter 22, footnote number 13. You will see my name Joel Trike written in that book, and for generations, for hundreds of years, people will read a commentary on the book of numbers, turn to the back, find my name, and say, it was an okay illustration. I guess he contributed something to this. But I have value, and I have meaning because my name is written in the book. And when our name is written in the book, that the Lord God writes, we have meaning and significance that's much beyond any book that will ever be written. We have meaning and purpose when the Lord builds the city. There is depth and strength when we build the city. We have houses with paint that begins to chip and fade. We have door knobs that will eventually rust and fall off. We have windows that will one day need to be replaced. But when the Lord God builds the house, He doesn't merely build a place for us to live. He builds a city, a kingdom for his son, Jesus Christ, who will reign forever and ever. It's a place of God's grace and God's mercy, a place filled not only with architects and builders, but from people with every walk of life, moms, dads, pastors, lawyers, architects, athletes, doctors, everyone gathering together from every nation and every land to come to this great city that the Lord God has built, a city filled with living temples to his son, Jesus Christ, reigns forever and ever. That is something that's worth trusting. That is a city that will allow you to sleep well at night. Next, Solomon's eyes move to the walls of the city where he sees the Watchmen diligently guarding the city. In the ancient world, they would have cities surrounded by walls and every 90 feet or so they would station a guard. And the guards one job was to stare off into the distance to see if anything was happening, any enemy was approaching the city, any sort of lone straggler or caravan was approaching the city, then they would sound the alarm and go and notify the king. They would warn him against the enemies that would be attacking the city. Now doubtless many in the city trusted the Watchmen. They were part of an elite force, always alert, always ready. They were roughly the ancient equivalent of today's police force or fire engines or EMTs, those that guard the city, military forces. Living in New York City in the days after 9-11, I remember those times I worked very close to the Port Authority bus terminal. And every day when I would go out and take a walk for lunch, I would see these soldiers with EM16s patrolling the city. Now in any other circumstances, I would have been terrified out of my mind. It would have been like martial law, it would have been terrifying. I don't like standing that close to EM16s, I don't know about you, it makes me nervous. But somehow during that time, I felt safe and secure. I sort of felt like everything was going to be okay because these men were here. I still remember the feeling of giving standing ovation and rounds of applause to policemen who would come into a cafe or firemen in their uniforms would come to get a cup of coffee. In those days, our city placed it our trust in the watchmen. We placed it our hope and our dreams for protection and safety on them. And it was an emotional load that was too big for them to handle. They couldn't take it, none of us could. They weren't built for that. They weren't built to shoulder the emotions of a city that had been broken. And so Solomon in his wisdom acknowledges a greater watchman. He says in the second half of verse 1, unless the Lord watches over the city. The watchman stays awake in vain. Solomon realized that even if the watchman could spot every enemy outside the walls of the city, there is an enemy who's inside the walls of the city. There's an enemy who's not out there. There's an enemy that's in here. An enemy that creeps into our hearts. An enemy that attacks us when we were vulnerable. A spiritual enemy. It was that enemy that brought Jerusalem to its knees. As idolatry grew in the city. And eventually these walls upon which the watchmen stood, crumbled to the ground as the city was overtaken by the Babylonians.
It's against this backdrop of the spiritual battle that Paul urges the Ephesians in Ephesians 6. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness. Against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. There's an enemy inside the city walls that the watchman can never protect us from. But our watchman, Jesus Christ, has protected us and does protect us, giving us a helmet of salvation, a sword of the spirit which is the word of God. And our watchman, unlike the watchmen who watched over the city in Jerusalem, doesn't simply sound the alarm. He comes down from the wall. He joins the fight and he wins. He defeats the unholy trinity of sin, death, and the devil. Try a thing over them, leading them in a progression and a procession of shame by dying on the cross to neuter them, to take away their power which stands against us. We've been reconciled to God through Him through Jesus' victory on the cross. Our enemies defeated. Our sins forgiven. We now become His beloved. And the Psalmist says the Lord gives to His beloved sleep. It is with this Psalm ringing in our ears that we hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. What does this look like? What does it look like when we stop trusting in ourselves and we trust in our Lord Jesus? Well, the Psalmist gives us a practical example from an area of life where it's often extremely difficult to trust in Jesus. More than ourselves. The family. Verse 3. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb are reward. As parents, trusting in the Lord instead of ourselves means acknowledging that first and foremost our children before they belong to us belong to the Lord. Now, if you don't have children of your own, this makes it applicable to you as well. Because think about it. If children are a gift from the Lord, if they belong primarily to the Lord and they are His and you belong to the Lord and are His, then those children are your children. Now, you may not be sitting in the pilot's seat but you're also not back in coach in the last row drinking a diet coke with a neck pillow on watching the inflight movie. You've got a role to play. You've got something to do. This Psalmist for you too. It's important for us to remember in those moments when my son is outside the bathroom door screaming and inconsolable as my poor wife tries to teach our daughter how to use the potty on her own. That child belongs to the Lord. He's not first and foremost mine. He's not first and foremost my responsibility. And because he belongs to the Lord first and the me second because he's owned by the Lord and I am his caretaker along with his mother and our family and you as part of the church. Because we acknowledge that, we acknowledge that we don't set the agenda. The Lord sets the agenda. My agenda, I would love to have a spill-free, crying-free, peaceful house. That's my agenda. But it's not the Lord's agenda. What's the Lord's agenda? Next verse, verse four. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. God wants our children to be like arrows in the hand of a divine warrior. We are preparing our children to be useful in his service. Whether that means they become a pastor, whether that means they become a missionary, whether they become a lawyer who's useful in his service, a doctor who's useful in his service. I'm a mechanic who's useful in his service, a chef who's useful in his service. We are preparing our children to be useful to the Lord. Our goal is that they have a relationship to God through the Lord Jesus Christ and that by the power of the Holy Spirit living within them they may serve the Lord and be useful to him. I think his parents, we often don't get a lot of rest because our agenda is not this agenda. Our agenda is our own agenda. We, we parent behavior. We see the things that our children are doing and we say, stop it. We see things that they should be doing and we say, do this instead. Look, I do it all the time. I do it all the time. Last week we had a big picnic where a lot of the families from the church all got together to go to a park. You know what I was thinking? The whole time, the whole drive over, the whole time while I was there. Please Lord, don't let my kids push down when you're kids on the playground because they're going to get hurt and you're going to think that I'm a terrible dad. If that's our goal in parenting, we will never have rest. Children push each other over sometimes. There's nothing you can do. If you don't have kids yet, learn this lesson. Your kids will do things and you can't stop them. But what you can do when you're trusting in the Lord, what you can do is you can teach them who the Lord God is. You can teach them who Jesus Christ is and that they are reconciled to God through Jesus and that we live like we live. We do what we do because we are born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And so when someone has a toy and we want it, we don't just take the toy because that's not who God has made us to be. We serve Lord God who was a God who gave, who was generous, who was gracious, when they grow up and they want to know why I act like all the other kids act at the prom and in the party after the prom and in the party before the prom. Our goal is not simply to instill them with the law but it's to remind them of who they have been created to be in Christ. We're teaching them to be arrows in the hands of a divine warrior. That's their destiny. That is their goal. That is what we do. And when we do that, we find unbelievable amounts of rest because the gospel of God's grace will do its work. It's not up to me. It's up to the Holy Spirit who imprints this on their hearts and they will become who God wants them to become and by His grace, by His grace, when we do this, or a remarkable twist happens as well. When we trust in the Lord, when we let go, when we say, Lord, I trust you to protect this child, I trust you to provide for this child. God brings them back to us and they protect us and they provide for us. Verse 5, 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. They come back to us, they contend for us, they protect us and God uses them as an instrument of our transformation remarkable. How will you sleep at night? If you're trusting in yourself, if you're trusting in other people, odds are you're not sleeping very well. Now maybe you can kid yourself for a little while, you could say, hey, I got this, I'm good, I'm strong, I can handle this. Let me tell you, one day, maybe soon, you're going to encounter an enemy that's bigger than you, a situation that's bigger than you, a person who's bigger than you, and you're going to reach the end of your rope very quickly and you're going to discover that unless the Lord builds the house, unless the Lord watches over the city. We labor and we watch in vain. If you're trusting in the Lord, God will give you rest. There's a lot to worry about in this world, a lot to worry about, but if you trust in the Lord God, the biggest thing that any of us will ever have to worry about has already been taken care of. You have a right relationship to God through Jesus Christ, if you've turned away from your sins and turned toward Him and sought forgiveness and grace in Jesus, you have a spirit of His peace, you have rest, you'll sleep better than you ever had in your entire life. Secure that you are His beloved and that He cares for you. Amen. Let's pray. Our Lord God and Heavenly Father, our provider, our protector, our friend, we thank you for the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, Lord I confess how often I seek to provide for myself in my own way, instead of trusting in you. Lord, show me and show us the foolishness of a life lived apart from you and show us the peace and the rest of the Lord Jesus. If there is one here today who is restless, give him your grace, give her your peace. We pray this in Jesus name, amen. We call this portion of our service, the ministry of the table. It's time for the people of God to eat together. It's a wonderful celebration. It's a time when you're served. When the elders of our church will bring this food to you, it's spiritual food. We're not providing the bread so that you have lunch today. We're just little wafers. This is a sacrament. A sacrament is a physical sign of an invisible spiritual reality. While you partake of this little wafer and this little cup of juice, we want you to recognize that something very profound is happening inside of you. The Holy Spirit, as He accompanies this sacrament, is convincing you again that you belong to the Lord, that you're His, that you're united with Him, that He has come into you and you are supping with Him to borrow the words from Revelation. And so, the Lord's table is for the Lord's people. If you are convinced that you don't deserve this table and you're convinced that the Lord Jesus Christ has made you worthy to partake of this table, then this table is for you. If your only hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ, not in what you've done, not in trusting in yourself as Joel so beautifully articulated, but know your trust is in the Lord, then this is your table. This Lord's table becomes for you at your table. He and His kindness has condescended to His people to allow us to taste and to crunch and to swallow. This is His way of affirming us. It's His way of wrapping His nails guard hand around your shoulder and saying, yes, you do belong to me, little lamb of God, and we feed on Him by faith in our heart. And so, it's this beautiful sup, this supper that we share. It's the Lord's idea to strengthen His people. And when we leave here this morning, we have that wonderful opportunity of saying, I did something that only the Lord's people do. We celebrate His death, remembering His resurrection. And so, if you would please stand, I would like to give you the words of institution for the Lord's supper. On the night, which He was betrayed, the Lord took bread and He gave thanks and then He broke it. He gave it. He said, take, eat, do this in remembrance of me. Eat this bread. And likewise after the supper, He took the cup. He said, this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. Drink it. Do this in remembrance of me. For as often you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you shall forth my death until my return. These are the gifts of God for the people of God. And so, if you find yourself to be one who believes in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on your behalf, the officers of this church invite you to partake in this table. For it's not a Presbyterian table, it's the Lord's table. If you belong to Him, we invite you to partake in this supper. It is a great privilege for you. If you've not come to a place of understanding the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on your behalf and believing in Him, then we would ask you to allow the elements to pass by you. But reflect in your heart. Maybe even say a prayer, Lord, I want to believe I don't. Would you convince me, Lord? And leave it at that. We're so thrilled that you're here this morning to celebrate the Lord's table with us. If the congregation would be seated and the elders would come forward, we'll serve the supper.