Sermon

Psalm 127 —Children: Burden, Bric-a-brac, or Blessing?

May 8, 2005

On this Mother’s Day 2005 I want us to think together about a Biblical theology of children and parenting. I want to present three ideas about children. Are they a burden, bric-a-brac (decoration or adornment), or a blessing? I want to suggest that the first two of these options are false alternatives, though they do have a bit of truth in them. The third, that children are a blessing from the Lord, is the Biblical view.

Let me address for a second those who may think this message is not for you.

For the young single. You may not need this now but you may later.

For the older single who has never married, widows, or widowers. You may not be thinking about children but you know young people who will. They may be your children. They may be your fellow church members.

For the couple who has struggled with infertility. Look at Psalm 113:9: “He grants the barren woman a home, Like a joyful mother of children.”

The March 24th edition of the New York Times featured an intriguing article by Timothy Egan titled, “Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children.”

The article begins by describing the thriving downtown Pearl District of Portland with revitalized, upscale buildings. Crime is down. New homes and thriving businesses are sprouting everywhere. They have everything, the article says, except children. Between 1990 and 2000 the census revealed an increase in school-age children in Portland of three. That’s not 3% but the number three.

San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children (those under 18) of any city in the US (14.5 % compared to the national average of 25.7%). Seattle which now has more dogs than children is in second place. Close behind are Boston, Honolulu, Portland, Miami, Denver, Minneapolis, Austin, and Atlanta. The only reason NY and LA are not in a similar predicament is immigration.

The article cites the fact that between 2003 and 2004, only six states in the US had an increase in their elementary school population.

It draws the following conclusion: “…the United States is following Europe and the rest of the industrial world where birthrates now rarely exceed the rate needed to replace the population.”

Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the Washington DC based new America Foundation and author of “Empty Cradle: How Falling Birth Rates Threaten World Prosperity and What To Do About It,” is quoted as saying, “If you took immigrants out of the equation, the United States would be like the rest of Europe.”

Longman is further quoted as saying that a decline in birthrate takes away “human capital” needed to sustain an aging population and “having fewer children really diminishes the quality of life in a city.”

The New York Times article makes the argument that the reason for the low number of children in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle is the high cost of housing. Indeed, the median home price in San Francisco is $700,000!

The Christian reader of that article wonders, however, at some other unexamined causes why those cities in particular are showing a decline in the number of children. Does it have something to do with the fact that those cities have sizeable homosexual communities? You see aside from our central Biblical reasons for opposing homosexuality, there are also the logical ones. If everyone adopted that lifestyle there would be no more children. Or the fact that those communities have spurned traditional understandings of marriage and family, or that they have welcomed the free and easy access to abortion? One in four babies are never given the opportunity to be born.

This is not to downplay the factor that the article focuses on: The economics of having children. Having children is financially costly. All those cities are expensive to live in. Having children means a need for a space in which to raise those children. It means medical bills, diapers, formula, food, clothing, child-care, music lessons, Happy Meals, insurance, and, eventually, perhaps, college tuition.

I want to suggest that the prime problem is that we have seen children merely as a burden.

A second false alternative is to see children as bric-a-brac (as adornments or as decorations). Some parents are tempted to shape “trophy” children. We see this in the parent who vicariously tries to live his life through his children in sports or in academic achievement.

I recently read a news article that was saying one of the biggest status symbols in some large Northeastern cities was to be able to list your child’s wedding announcement in the newspaper along with all the academic pedigrees of the bride and groom. I dare say that trend has made it to Charlottesville.

We should encourage our children to achieve excellence in all things. But we should do that so that they bring glory not to us but to Christ (1 Cor 10:31). Can we truly say that the first priority for us in raising our children is that they have a godly outlook, that they love the Lord and they want to serve him to the utmost of their capacity, whatever that capacity may be?

The third outlook is that of children as a blessing. This is the Biblical view. I want to look primarily at Psalm 127.

Psalms 120-134 are called Psalms of Ascent. They are pilgrim songs, sung by worshippers as they would journey to Jerusalem to the temple to observe the various festivals and times of worship. They celebrate God’s goodness to his people and his provision to them. The heading also tells us that this psalm comes to us from king Solomon, the son of David and the man entrusted with building the temple.

The Psalm falls into two parts (vv. 1-2; vv. 3-5).

The key word in part one is “vanity.” Here Solomon traces the vanity of a life lived apart from the Lord.

In v. 1 he says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” The language here seems to be that of the physical construction of a house. It may be that Solomon was speaking figuratively about the building of the Lord’s house, the temple. So, we could contemporize and say, “Unless the Lord builds the church those who build it labor in vain.” Given what comes in the second part, it seems clear that Solomon is talking about the family. Not just a house, but a home. Unless the Lord builds the home, those who build it labor in vain.

V. 1 continues, “Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” Again, in the most literal sense the psalm is speaking of the physical security of a city, like Jerusalem. We can certainly think of all the interest in our day about the security of our nation in a post-9-11 age. But again, given what follows it seems certain that Solomon is talking about the security of a family. We parents are like watchmen guarding the polis or community of our family. What a difficult task that is. We want to guard them from finding the wrong friends, listening to the wrong lyrics, imbibing the wrong world-view, becoming prey to predators on the internet.

But hear again Solomon’s warning, “Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” All our attempts to protect our marriages and our families are vain, unless the Lord is the guardian of our lives.

He continues in v. 2 that it is vain to rise up early in the morning and vain to stay up late at night to try to insure by the strength of our own hand all these things. It is vain “to eat the bread of sorrows” (that is to face all the struggles and difficulties that life sends our way).

But for the person who ceases to strive in his own power and who trusts in the Lord’s provision, Solomon says, “For so he gives His beloved sleep.” The Lord gives rest to those whom he loves.

The theme of this first part is our utter dependence on the Lord to give us all good things in our families.

The key theme in the second part of this psalm is the blessing of children.

We begin to see this in v. 3: “Behold children (literally “sons”) are a heritage (NASB: “gift”) from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward.”

The image here is of children as a treasured possession that is granted to a man or a woman. They are like a precious heirloom that is handed down to one as a great gift. They are a prize, a reward, coming from the hand of God himself.

In Genesis 33 when Esau meets his brother Jacob after all their years apart and he first encounters all of Jacob’s children and asks who they are, Jacob answers in 33:5 that they are “the children whom God has graciously given your servant.”

One of the great themes throughout Scripture is the miracle of God opening the barren womb and giving the gift of children.

One thinks of Abraham and Sarah, and how God gave them Isaac; of Isaac and Rebecca and how God gave them Esau and Jacob; of Manoah and his wife and how God gave them Samson; of Zechariah and Elizabeth and how God gave them John; and of a little maiden named Mary who miraculously conceived the Lord Jesus himself.

In v. 4 the psalmist presents another great image. He says that children of one’s youth are like arrows in the hand of a warrior. He continues in v. 5: “Happy is the man whose quiver is full of them.”

He goes on to say that a man with a full quiver of children (again the number is not so central as the quality, though a large number is definitely a perceived good!) is a man who will not be ashamed. He can speak with his enemy in the gate. The gate was the market and the court. A man or woman with children who love him or her will not have to fear being taken advantage of because they will be protected by their children who will rise up and give honor to their parents (see Proverbs 31:28-31).

The Bible says that it is a blessing to have children and even to have many children. Look at Genesis 1:27-28:

NKJV Genesis 1:27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Now we should take note of the fact that this dominion commandment appears before the introduction of sin in Genesis 3. There are consequences of sin. Because of sin, man has to work by the sweat of his brow to provide for his family (Gen 3:19). Women have to experience pain in childbirth (Gen 3:16). But the having of children was part of God’s good original design for man.

Now we need to take some care here. There are some traditions (namely Roman Catholics) who have had a tendency to say that sexual relations within a marriage are for procreation only. That is not the Biblical view. God created us as sexual beings to create intimacy between and give pleasure to a man and a woman in a committed marriage. Read Song of Songs and try to tell me God is a sexual kill-joy or that sexuality is for procreation only. And yet we should not downplay the fact that one of the primary purposes God has for sexuality is the making of children as a gift to that man and woman and as a fulfillment of the dominion command of Genesis 1:27-28.

Do we take this command as seriously as we do the Great Commission? Part of the way we fulfill the Great Commission is by having godly families who can be salt and light in this culture.

Let me respond to several objections that might be posed.

First, a big picture objection. Some might say, but the world is overpopulated. There are too many people in the world to clothe and feed. Am I being a good steward if I bring yet another life into this world?

I want to suggest that that argument does not work for Christians. It belies a fundamental lack of trust in God as provider. That kind of mind-set leads the communist Chinese to limit families to one child. It is not the thinking of Christians who know the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

In a recent Baptist Press article (Feb 7, 2005) Chicago area Pastor Mark Coppenger told of discussing this question in his church and hearing the objections of some. In one sermon he marked off a square yard with a tape measure and had four young men come and stand comfortably in its limits. Then he asked the congregation, if there are 6.4 billion people in the world, pick a geographical locale where we could fit all of them at four per square foot. Some picked countries and others states, then Coppenger told them that at four persons per square yard you could put the world’s population on the Hawaiian island of Maui and still have room for another billion people. You could also place the whole world within the city limits of Houston, Texas at that rate.

If you spread out and put just one person per square yard you could fit the world into Delaware. If you spread out further and gave everyone ten square yards (or c. 900 square feet, the size of small apartment) you could fit the whole world into Texas.

He concludes, “The point is simple. We’ve got room. Don’t let the fear of overcrowding discourage you. And even if things get tight with unbelieving families, we could always use more Christian parents raising Christian kids.” Coppenger has a great point here. What the world desperately needs is for godly families to have more children to become pastors, missionaries, and godly laymen to preach the gospel and to do this sin-sick world good.

Another objection might be that I don’t have the money. I heard a pastor with a large family say once when you have one child, you spend all your money on that child and when you have ten children you spend all your money on those children. One or ten or anything in between or beyond and God provides the resources you need.

Yet another might be that I want to obey this command, but I want to do so in a way that also allows me to accomplish all the things I want to achieve first. Even we Christians encourage our children to put off the starting of our families. You see God has this incredible design. He made us to have a strong sexual desire in our youth and to be most physically able to bear children in our youth. And what do we tell our children. We tell them to put these things off till after school and after they start their careers. By delaying marriage we ask them to struggle with sexual temptation. And now we see many who follow that plan and who wait to have children and then find they cannot. So what do we have but a burgeoning fertility industry? But look again at Psalm 127:4 that speaks of the children of one’s youth. Do you see the wisdom of God’s plan?

I wish someone had spoken to me of these Biblical principles when I was younger. Please understand me, I am not trying to tell you how to shape your family. That is a matter of Christian liberty. You are to be guided by a Biblically informed conscience. I just ask that we look more to Scriptural advice than to worldly advice. Young people as you make your plans for the future are you planning to fulfill this command of the Lord?

Here are three regrets I have yet to hear anyone utter: I wish I had spent less time with my children. Second, I wish I had taken my children to the Lord’s house less. And third, I wish I had not given birth to and raised so many Christian children.

Let me review the three views of children: burden, bric-a-brac, and blessing. The first two have some truth to them. Children are an incredible burden. But it is like that old Marines commercial: “It’s the toughest job you’ll ever love.” Second, children as bric-a-brac. No, they should not be seen as decorations or adornments that give us glory, but if we raise them right they will be the Lord’s trophies, giving him glory in all things. Finally, they are blessings (see Psalm 128).

Let me now say a word to the mothers who are here today and then to all of us children.

First, moms, there is no more important task on earth than the one you have been giving of raising and nurturing the next generation. In her book The Shaping of a Christian Family, Elisabeth Elliot tells of a talented woman who was asked by a friend why she had never written a book.

“I am writing two,” she quietly replied. “I have been working on one for ten years and the other for five.”

“You surprise me,” said her friends, “what profound works they must be.”

“It does not yet appear what they will be,” said the woman, “but when He makes up his jewels I plan to find them there.”

“Your children?”

“Yes, my two children. They are my life’s work.”

Second, to all the children (of whatever age). Let me share some thoughts from a Pastor named Kelly Boggs writing a first person article on Baptist Press called, “Honoring Mothers” (May 6, 2005). Boggs relays an incident recorded by legendary UCLA coach John Wooden in his book “Wooden on Leadership” about a recruiting trip to visit a talented athlete. In the course of the interview the young man was rude to his mother.

Wooden wrote: “The young man had revealed an aspect of himself that wasn’t fine. In fact, it was unacceptable to me: disrespect for his mother.” He continued, “If he couldn’t respect her, how could he possibly respect me when things got tough? I politely ended the meeting and excused myself. The scholarship was never offered.”

This is why God calls on us to honor our mother and father. If we cannot honor these earthly authorities how can ever expect to honor the Lord?

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

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Sermon

Psalm 127 —Children: Burden, Bric-a-brac, or Blessing?

May 8, 2005

Jeffrey T. Riddle Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church