Presence Weekly 1/29/2024

[The Devo] The Basis for Our Dependence 

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 in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,  
eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep. 

Behold, children are a 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. 
- Psalm 127:1-5

I have struggled with dependence on God most of my Christian life – especially as it relates to work! Sometimes through very humiliating circumstances.  I went to seminary at age 36 after having a long and successful career in industrial sales. During the second semester of my first year, I remember translating Colossians 1:28-29. ^“Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.  For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” I also remember thinking, Paul and I have something in common, we both love working hard – toiling and struggling. The Greek word for struggling is agonidzomai from which we get our word, agonizing. I could relate almost perfectly to what Paul was saying. Except for one thing - I had no idea what he meant when he said, “with all his energy.” I was at a complete loss.

I later came face to face with the implications of not understanding the relationship between work and dependence on God in my final semester. My brother had come to live with us as he tried to get sober after 25 years of alcohol abuse. I was working 30 hours a week, also doing work at the church, and trying to make sure that I raised my GPA .02 so I could graduate magna cum laude. Then, one day in April, while I was at work, I collapsed, ended up in the ER, and left hooked up to a heart monitor.

The next day as I was talking to one of my professors on my plans to overcome this obstacle to my graduation goals he said,  “I don’t think that’s the problem. Your problem is that you think that you have something to prove to everyone here and perhaps even to yourself.” He said that my problem was not just the amount of work that I was doing, but why I was doing it. And he was right. He had put his finger on a sin that I have struggled with much of my adult life. 

As we discussed last week, many of us believe that it’s all up to us and all about us –that we must be dependent on ourselves– and then we work and worry like it is.  But the gospel sets us free from all of that. Through the gospel we can move from dependence on ourselves to dependence upon God.  And Psalm 127 calls us to see just that.

But, what is the basis for dependence on the LORD?

The Psalmist puts lyrics on our lips to remind us of the futility of this approach. “Behold, children are a 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.”

For all of our strivings, ultimately we realize that we are completely dependent upon God for the miracle of conception. The very thing we strive for, leaving a heritage, the Psalmist says, is ultimately from the LORD. And note that he ties this gift directly to the LORD rescuing him from shame. In the culture of the Ancient Near East, children, and yes, in particular sons, were integral to a person’s prosperity and security. Whether it came from production in the workplace, or his ability to defend his city – despite all his human strivings, it was the LORD who provided the children. When we read it this way, and not to say that the more children you have, the more blessing you have gotten from the LORD, it fits together with the earlier portion of the Psalm perfectly. 

But this means the opposite is true as well. For couples experiencing infertility, there is also no shame. Children are a gift from the LORD, but children are not the only gift from the LORD. As a result, we should not attach our significance to our children any more than our work.

Our trouble started in the garden. It started with Adam and Eve abandoning their dependence on God for their significance, convinced that they should not be satisfied with what they had in the garden. The serpent convinced them that their loving Creator must have been holding out on them, there must be something even better. And so, they made their work all about them. The curse then becomes about exposing and reminding them of  their sin, “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; ¹⁸ thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. ¹⁹ By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  

And yet, mankind did not learn their lesson. In Genesis chapter 11, mankind is once again making their work about them. They want to build a tower to the heavens so that their name will be great and those around them will not put them to shame. And again, God judges them for their failure to be dependent upon him for their significance and satisfaction. Which is why chapter 12 starts out with the blessing of Abraham including the words “I will make your name great, I will bless you.”

We even see this in the life of Solomon – to whom this Psalm is credited. Solomon built the house of the Lord. Solomon had accumulated horses and chariots to watch over the city, and Solomon had established a huge and prospering family. But Solomon had also built his own house a little bit larger than the temple. He spent seven years on the temple but 13 years on his own house. In Deut 17:16 Moses warns the people about kings who are not dependent on God. ^{6 “}Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ ¹⁷ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.”  Yet in 1 Kings 10:14 we read a listing of the gold, horses, and foreign wives that Solomon had accumulated. When you are violating the Word of God, you are absolutely not dependent on God! Within a generation, the kingdom fell apart. It had all been in vain.

We have a tendency to see what we have built: careers, family, wealth as a validation of our relationship with God. Washington memorializes efforts to make a name for ourselves by naming buildings and legislation after individuals who made their mark. Our efforts will produce results, perhaps even great accumulations of wealth and a legacy.  But, that is NOT the point. Solomon’s work produced results: a huge home, a huge city, a huge family – but all of them were built on a shaky foundation. It only appeared as though Solomon was building for the LORD. Perhaps he even started off building for the LORD, but somewhere along the way he instead became dependent upon himself for his significance and satisfaction. The point, which should not be lost on us, is that despite his words of wisdom, he labored mostly in vain. It was his toil and the LORD was not in it. And there is no sleep in that!

But the gospel sets us free from that because the heart of the gospel is dependence upon God for our salvation. It is not our work, but the work of Christ that reconciles us to God.  Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” As Christians we are reminded that our salvation is centered on dependence upon God! And as we embrace this, we find true significance, true satisfaction, and true sleep.

And the Psalmist invites us into that better way of life. He calls us to embrace an approach to work that is dependent upon God. This song is giving the traveler something to think about on his journey. He is being taken away from his work to go and worship, and as he does he is asked to think about his approach to work and his approach to God. He is asked to re-center himself on dependence upon God. What is your approach to work? Perhaps the better question is, “What is your approach to God?” Do we work on behalf of him? Do we seek to further his kingdom or our own?  I invite you to step into work that is dependent upon God that you might be set free from believing that it’s all up to us and all about us, and subsequently, move beyond working and worrying like it is and finding rest in Him!

Last Things...

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