Home - Part A

There are some people who just love to build and organize and work and accomplish, but just slow down long enough to ask, why? Let me give you three questions to ask yourself, three little questions that help in self-evaluation to see if something's of value or if something's vain. Question number one, how has God most gifted me to meet the needs of others? How has God uniquely gifted me to meet the needs of others? Now I'm turning my focus on others by that question. Once I have the answer to that question, how I'm uniquely gifted to meet the needs of others, ask yourself this question, how am I exercising and honing those gifts according to God's plan for my life? There are numerous TV shows and networks that are solely devoted to house design and decorating.

It's nothing new that people want to improve the appearance of their houses. Today on Connect with Skip Heisig, Skip shares practical tips and tools to help you improve the spiritual health of your home. Before we begin, here's a resource that will equip you to live in God's truth. A recent study from the Cultural Research Center found that Christians are almost just as likely to reject the idea of absolute moral truth as they are to accept it. For American adults, belief in absolute moral truth is eroding across all age groups and political ideologies, whether they're churched or unchurched. What that means is that over 75% of Christ followers, or those who purport to be Christ followers, are saying that nothing can be known for certain. There is no absolute truth.

What about you? We want to help you understand the nature of truth so you can pursue God's truth and apply it in your life with two brand new booklets by Pastor Skip, Why Truth Matters and God and Suicide. If you fall into that category, what do you do with the claims of Christ? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. These booklets are our thanks for your gift of $35 or more today to help keep this ministry on the air, connecting more people to God's word.

To give, call 800-922-1888, or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, let's dive into today's teaching. We'll be in Psalm 127 as Skip Heitzig begins the study. For decades, the American dream has included owning your own home. That's for years what was said that you would have your own house, so many cars in a garage, et cetera, et cetera. Today, the American dream is more like being able to keep the home that you're in. And unfortunately, we have seen over the past few years an economic downtrend where people have lost homes in this country.

And they estimated about 5 million foreclosures in the United States of America since that slump began. But though you may lose your house, you never have to lose your home. And there is a difference between those two entities that I want to show you out of Psalm 127. Now, you know, to get back on this page, Psalms, the book of Psalms, is essentially a list of worship songs that was sung in the ancient temple or on the way up to the ancient temple, as is the case of this psalm. So we're dealing with the lyrics of the songs. It's the word of God, but these are song lyrics. And for the most part, usually I would never recommend that a person govern their lives based on the lyrics of songs, if you know what I mean. You can have great songs with happy little melodies, but the advice and songs I would say isn't always the best, to say the least. If I go back to 1970, there was that Stephen Stills song that said, if you can't be with the one, if you can't be with the one you love, then love the one you're with. That's not good advice if you want a long-term relationship with anybody. Or Bob Dylan's song, everybody must get stoned.

Not good advice in general. There's a country western title, a song that says, drop kick me Jesus through the goalposts of life. I don't want to be drop kicked by anybody through the goalposts of life. The worst lyrics of all, that I think that were ever penned, were written by Curtis Mayfield in 1970. And the lyrics go like this, if there's a hell below, we're all going to go, so don't worry. See what I mean by the worst lyrics? If you're going to govern your life, don't listen to that song to do it. But we are in God's playlist. And here are some lyrics that I would recommend you get not only good advice from, but you govern your life according. Because Psalm 127 tells us what is not important and what is important.

That no matter what kind of a house you live in, you can have a great home. So Psalm 127 begins in my Bible by saying a song of ascents. That is, as people would ascend up toward Jerusalem, they would sing this refrain.

And then notice who the author is. It says it was written by Solomon. It's of Solomon. And he writes, unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.

Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he gives his beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth.

Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies in the gate. I don't know if you caught, just the reading of this Psalm shows that there are two different parts.

There's the division, sort of right in the middle, but more lopsided. Verses one and two is different from verse three, four, and five. The first component or the strophe of the Psalm, as it's called lyrically, the first strophe deals with things that are vain. And the next strophe, verse three, four, and five deal with things that are valuable. Vain versus valuable. Vain versus valuable.

Or, let me divide it this way, a house built on vanity versus a home built on value. We notice that the author is Solomon, and Solomon is uniquely qualified to write about these matters for two reasons. The first is that he was very wise, the Bible says in 1 Kings chapter four, that he had great insight and understanding, that God gave him wisdom. In fact, it says in that very same chapter that he was wiser than any other person, so he's uniquely qualified because of his wisdom. The second reason Solomon is qualified is that he failed to heed the wisdom God gave him. And he was himself, though a great builder, he was also a failure relationally. Solomon, I like to think of him as the Donald Trump of the 10th century BC.

That guy was an incredible overachiever. He built the temple in Jerusalem, he built his own house in Jerusalem, he built another palace in the forest of Lebanon just for the summer, he built another wife of his, another palace to live in, that was the daughter of Pharaoh. And besides all of that, he built cities.

The city of Hazor, the city of Megiddo, the city of Gezer, the city of Beth Horon, the city of Tadmor out in the desert, and other towns. This guy built a lot. However, though he did all of that, he failed to take his own advice many times.

And he failed relationally. Anybody remember how many wives he had? 700 wives.

Come on! That's messed up. 700 wives plus 300 other women called concubines. He had a thousand women in his life. Socrates used to tell his young students, by all means, get married.

If you find a good wife, you'll be extremely happy. If you find a bad wife, you'll become a philosopher. Interesting how much philosophy Solomon gives out. But God preserves some of it as the very inspired Word of God.

Psalm 127 is one such item. And as we go through these five verses, I want to offer to you four decisions that you should make. Four decisions. Four values that will turn any house into a home. These are values to build your life on. Now, whether you are starting out and just starting to get your own family together, or you're single and you don't yet have your own family, or maybe you've grown up and raised a family, or you've made a mistake relationally, and God will give you a do-over.

I'm not sure. Wherever you're at, these are all values for every one of us to turn a house into a home. Let me give you the first. Reject empty activities.

That's the first. Reject empty activities. Look at verse one and verse two. He says, unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain. Vain means empty or valueless. They labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early to sit up late to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he gives his beloved sleep.

In other words, we need to learn the difference between what is vain and what is valuable. And you'll notice in verse one that two structures are mentioned. A house and a city. A house needs building.

A city, having been already built, needs to be guarded. In writing that, Solomon mentions or realizes the basic drive that all of us have for fulfillment. And that there are many people who strive to attain fulfillment by building things, making things, doing things, and then preserving the things that they have created. Which was Solomon's case. As soon as Solomon got to the throne of Israel, he made a treaty with the king of Tyre whose name was Hiram.

And here was the deal. You give me all the wood that I need to build all the things I want to build, that is the cedars of Lebanon, cypress from Lebanon, and I in exchange will give you oil and wheat and wine from Israel. So he gets all of that wood from Lebanon, and he gets all of that wood from Lebanon, and lots of local stone around the area. And he goes on a 20-year building spree. Takes him seven and a half years to build the house, they called it the temple, the house of the Lord. It took him 13 years to build his own personal house.

Shows you his priorities right there. And he just goes on this 20-year building spree. After building the temple, the house of the Lord, when he dedicates the temple, listen to what God warns him about. The Lord says to Solomon, if you, Solomon, or any of the kings who succeed you, ever turn away from following me, this house, the temple, this house, will become a heap of ruins. I don't know if it was because the Lord said that or not, but there's an interesting archaeological discovery that they have found over in Israel. In all of the cities that Solomon built, there's a special gate they call Solomon's Gate. It shows us that he was not just a builder, but he was a preserver.

He wanted to guard the cities that he built. So there's a gate called Solomon's Gate, and if we were at Megiddo today, I would show you this gate. It's a structure that has four interlocking gates. So if you were an invader and you got through the first gate, you would now be in a corridor facing three more gates. So sort of a stop, go through, stop, go through. And on either side were areas for archers to shoot at you with arrows and to give you a warm welcome. They would pour hot oil on you if you were an invader.

That's a warm welcome. And this gate of Solomon was unique to his building process in the cities that he occupied to trap the enemy. However, one thing we know is for certain, as we look at biblical history, Solomon turned away from following the Lord. And the king's after him turned away from following the Lord.

And all the things he built, all the houses he built, and the cities that he built were all left in ruins. It was all, you might say, vain. You'll notice the threefold repetition of that word in verse one. They labor in vain who build it. Also in verse one, the watchman stays awake in vain. And look at verse two. It's vain for you.

To get up early and to sit up late and eat the bread of sorrows. When you see that word here, it should ring a bell for you. Because it's a very specific Solomonic word.

I don't know if that's an adjective or not. Solomonic word. It's peculiar to Solomon. He wrote a book called Ecclesiastes in which he used that word a lot, right? 22 times he uses the word vanity. Two times he uses the word vain. Two more times in that book he uses the superlative phrase vanity of vanity. All is vanity. He wrote that little book Ecclesiastes when he was at a very dark period of his own life. Everything had lost its luster. He seemed to be going through lots of activity, lots of motions and no accomplishments. The word vain means empty, fruitless, vapid, whatever word you want to assign to it. All of that has the idea of just nothingness. Nothingness.

Let me ask you something. Do you ever slow down long enough or stop long enough to evaluate yourself? Do you slow down enough to evaluate the activities that you are doing and simply ask yourself, are these activities significant? Are they significant? Are these vain activities or valuable activities?

You ever feel like you're in a rat race and the rats are winning the race? I have a lot of hobbies. There's a lot of interests that I have and because of that, I know my tendency to get distracted and off course and I have to evaluate myself regularly because my distraction levels are much higher.

There are some people who just love to build and organize and work and accomplish but just slow down long enough to ask why. Let me give you three questions to ask yourself, three little questions that help in self-evaluation to see if something's of value or if something's vain. Question number one, how has God most gifted me to meet the needs of others? How has God uniquely gifted me to meet the needs of others? Now I'm turning my focus on others by that question.

Once I have the answer to that question, how I'm uniquely gifted to meet the needs of others, ask yourself this question, how am I exercising and honing those gifts according to God's plan for my life? And then the third question is this, am I trying to build something God doesn't want me to have? Those are good questions for self-evaluation so that your labor and your watching is not, in his words, for nothing, vain. So reject empty activities, number one.

Here's the second decision, avoid unnecessary anxieties. Would you look more carefully at verse two? It is vain, empty, worthless, profitless. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he gives his beloved sleep. What that little verse describes in poetic fashion is the artificial lengthening of the day by adding more hours to your workload, and then on top of that, adding worry to the hours that you're lengthening your day with. That's the idea of eating the bread of sorrows, it's anxiety, it's worry.

The Living Bible translates it, it's senseless for you to work so hard from early morning to late at night, fearing you will starve to death. Some of you have discovered that anxiety is a tireless tyrant. Back in 1851, can you remember that far back?

Good, some of you are laughing, that was a joke, for those of you who weren't. Back in 1851, in London, England, in Hyde Park, there was an exhibition called the Crystal Palace Exhibition, and it was basically people gathering together, showing off their inventions. And in 1851, steam was all the rage, not iPhones. Steam, because that was what powered things. And so they had on display there steam plows, steam locomotives, steam looms, steam organs, and even a steam cannon that shot real cannonballs, all based on steam. But what got everybody's excitement up, was one of the things that got everybody's excitement up, was one of the things that got everybody's attention, and that was steam plows.

Steam plows, steam locomotives, steam looms, steam organs, and even a steam cannon that shot real cannonballs. But what got everybody's excitement up, was one machine, one machine that had 7,000 moving parts. When you switched this machine on, with steam power, all sorts of things began to happen. Pulleys began to pull, whistles began to whine, bells began to ring, gears began to turn 7,000 parts. The ironic thing is that machine did absolutely nothing. It made noise, and it turned around and around inside of itself.

And everybody oohed and ahhed, because listen to that, look at that. But if you were to ask them, what does it actually do? The answer would be, it does nothing. Well, worry is like that. You expend so much mental energy, but you accomplish nothing. Solomon wants to point out that there's a few things about personal anxiety. First, it is unproductive, just like that machine. It is unproductive.

Notice what he says, it is vain, it is vain, it is empty for you to rise up early and to sit up late. I found a little study from the University of Wisconsin about worry, about anxiety. It did a study and it looked at what people worry about in life.

And here were their findings. They found that 40% of the things that most people worry about never will happen. They never actually happen. So that's pretty vain, right? 40% of all that activity are about things that will never happen. 30% of the things most people worry about are things regarding the past that you can't change anyway. That's pretty vain and empty to worry about that, right?

So now you're up to 70%. 12% were worries over the criticisms of others leveled at us. Most of it is untrue, but we worry about it. 10% of the things we worry about is about personal health issues, which last time I checked, doesn't improve when you worry, but it actually gets worse.

They discovered only 8%, about 8% of all the things people worry about are things that will actually occur and are legitimate concerns. So you get his drift. It is vain, it is unproductive. Second thing Solomon wants you to know, it's unhealthy because he says to eat the bread of sorrows. That's a pretty poor diet, isn't it? The bread of sorrows. What are you eating for breakfast? A little bread of sorrows here, toasted, a little butter and jam. Want some?

No, thank you. It's an unhealthy diet to eat the bread of sorrows. Medical science for years over and over again proves the point that anxiety, worry, is bad for your health. I looked up on WebMD the other day and they had this little statement, worry will affect the body. When worry becomes excessive, it can cause you to become physically ill.

Here are some examples. A clinic in Great Britain examined 500 patients and they made the statement that one third of the visual problems exhibited by those in this study were due directly to worry and stress. Another study from Northwestern University said that worry restricts the flow of saliva in the mouth. That's important because saliva neutralizes the acid in the mouth. So when you restrict the flow of saliva in the mouth, tooth decay increases. Another study of 5,000 students from 21 different universities yielded this, worriers get lower grades.

So I suppose if you want to be a flunky with poor vision and no teeth, be a worrier. It's unhealthy. It's unproductive.

It's unhealthy. And here's a third, it's unbecoming of a child of God. That's Skip Heithig with a message from the series playlist. Now here's Skip to tell you about how you can keep encouraging messages like this coming your way as you help connect others to God's word. The Bible teaches how we can be better spouses, parents, friends, and even citizens. It's our guide to a higher, more meaningful life in relationship with God. And we long to share these biblical truths with more listeners like you around the world.

But we can't do it without your help. Your generous gift today means we can keep these encouraging messages coming to you and others. Here's how you can give right now to connect others to God's truths. You can give online at connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you. Tomorrow, Skip Heithig shares the steps you can take to build up your home with the love of Christ.

Be sure to join us. We're not dealing with a house built on vanity but a home built on value. Relationship. If you boil life down to its irreducible minimum, you have at that base layer one thing only and that is relationship. Relationships.

Good ones, bad ones. That's what you have. That's what life is. That's how God created us. Connect with Skip Heithig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.