Trust The Lord And Work: A Sermon About Parenting (Psalm 127)
In a sermon over Psalm 127, Charles Haddon Spurgeon quoted Oliver Cromwell to make a point about parenthood. And this is just the point that I want us to contemplate today.
Oliver Cromwell was the leader of the Parliamentary Army during the British Civil War. The British were divided between Protestant and Roman Catholic. The King was Roman Catholic. Parliament, which was the elected officials in England was Protestant. In fact, a few of the famous Puritan authors that we still read today served in the Parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell.
Cromwell was fighting a war for the soul of England. He was very successful, and this is in large part why England is not Roman Catholic today. He became famous for uttering this phrase, “Trust in God and keep your powder dry.”
And I believe that a person that does not understand why I would use a war analogy for raising children doesn’t understand parenting or the goal of parenting. The war analogy is not just something that I made up in my mind. It is a metaphor that the Bible itself uses about parenting that helps us to understand the goal and work of being a mother and being a father.
Our church is blessed with an abundance of young families and children. As the pastor of this church, I see this as a heavy obligation for our church. We must be working to help families love and care for their children, to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And that is where this sermon comes from. It comes from seeing this as a tremendous privilege and an obligation.
Parenting, like much of life, is both a blessing and work. Parenting is a privilege and an obligation. Parenting is both work and trusting the Lord.
Trust The Lord With Your Children (Psalm 127:1-2)
Parenting is very difficult. Anyone that has children understands that. Do they cause anxious toil? Do they cause sleepless nights? Of course they do.
And in the same way that a person worrying while watching over a city will be worthless, lest the Lord bless it, your toil will be worthless lest the Lord bless it.
This is not about whether or not you should be at work caring for your household. You absolutely should. Your strength should be spent caring for your household.
We laud the Proverbs 31 woman because she spent so much time working for her family. But we must understand that all of that toil will be nothing without the blessing of the Lord.
You should toil. Toil with all your might. You should work and care deeply for your children. Work with all your might for your children.
With your husband, teach your children the Scriptures. Bathe them regularly in God’s Word.
With your husband, think about how they should best be educated. And make that a principled decision. Don’t do what is easiest. Make a principled decision about the education of your children.
Work to make sure that they are cared for with all your might.
But do not think that this alone will make your children good children.
All of your strength, efforts, and tears will come to nothing if the Lord does not bless your labor. The hardships and trials you undergo will be for nothing if the Lord does not bless the work.
Parents, this is a call for you to do something. It is a call for you to work in reliance upon the Lord. It is a call for you to spend a whole lot of time praying for your children.
As a pastor, I pray for the people in our congregation. Every one of them. And my prayer list is divided up based upon families. So, your family comes up in the app and I pray for the men to lead their homes well. I pray for the mothers to love and care for their families well. And I pray for the children. If they are not believers, then I pray for God the Holy Spirit to one day work in their life to bring them to faith in Christ. If they are believers, then I pray for them to be conformed to the image and likeness of the Son. And I pray for the parents labor in both of these.
Why?
For one, I am commanded to do so.
But second, I know that unless the Lord blesses the labor it will all be done in vain.
Do you worry about your children constantly? Why aren’t you in prayer for them?
Do you have those sleepless nights? Pray for your children.
You can spend every waking hour teaching your children right from wrong and God’s Word.
You can spend countless hours worrying about your children.
You can spend 1,000’s of dollars or give up 1000’s of dollars to give your children the education that you think is best.
And all of it will be for nothing if the Lord does not bless your labor.
And this is also why you can rest your head at the end of the day instead of being anxious about your children’s lives.
What happens when we lay our head on the pillow at night? If you’re at all anxious about what is happening in your life, then you’ll give it thought then. If you’re very anxious then you will lose sleep over it. And I am sure many of the moms here today have lost a lot of sleep over things going on in their children’s lives.
To say that the Lord gives sleep to His beloved, is to say they trust Him. It is to say that He has it covered. And His people trust that He is blessing their labor.
When you entrust your children to the Lord’s care, then you have the ability to sleep at night. When we trust the Lord with our children we can rest our weary and troubled heads upon the pillow of God’s grace and mercy.
Do you trust the Lord? Then rest your head.
It is sinful to so distrust the Lord that all we think about and talk about is our anxieties. I believe that sometimes there are clinical problems with a person that causes need for a doctor’s care. I do not believe that 20% of women have these clinical problems, which is what the CDC says is currently happening.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (Philippians 4:4-6 ESV)
The Greek word for “rejoice” is written in the “Imperative Mood”. That means it is a command. And the world “be anxious” is also written in the “Imperative Mood”. This means that it is also a command that literally says, “Be anxious for nothing”.
This is not advice. This is a command. We are commanded to rejoice and we are commanded not to be anxious. And instead we are to go to the Lord in prayer.
Clinical depression and anxiety, I believe to be real things. So I do believe that there are biological problems that I am not able to discuss in this moment. I also believe trauma can cause changes that likely cause the need for help. Your brain can be sick in much the same way that your body can be sick. But there is a problem with all of this. I believe modern thought to have overreached in a sense. I do not believe that it could be possible that 1 in 4 women are so eaten up with anxiety or depression, which is what the latest numbers say, that they need to be medicated.
I do believe that a lot of people have forgotten what they are supposed to do with their anxieties. And so, they cannot rest their weary heads.
Our society is at war with mothers. I find this to be more obvious every day. And you are not going to find rest and peace in motherhood because you put in enough effort. You are going to find rest and peace in motherhood when you entrust your children to the Lord and rest in His care.
Children Are An Inheritance From The Lord (Psalm 127:3)
Always remember that children are an inheritance from the Lord. They were given to you by the Lord. They are a heritage given to you.
We live in a society that has forgotten that children are an inheritance and blessing from the Lord.
The reproduction rate of Americans fell below replacement rate just a few years ago. Statistically it takes 2.1 children per household to replace the population. People are beginning to see that this is going to be a major problem in years to come. If the population collapses, it could lead to a societal collapse.
Our lawmakers are currently trying to figure out ways to encourage Americans to have more children. The president recently floated the idea of a $5000 baby bonus that comes in the form of a tax credit.
But I don’t think that the efforts are going to help. And here is my reason for this.
As a society, we have forgotten that children are a blessed inheritance from the Lord. And for many years having a child was seen as more of a burden than a gift. And, over the years, it is a problem that even existed within local churches.
My wife and I were advised to wait at least four years to have children by many people that we thought were godly and wise. Looking back, I now realize that these were godly people that, in this area, had been influenced by a society that viewed children as a burden and not a blessing.
It wasn’t until a few years into our marriage that we even started questioning what we had been told. We viewed children as a burden and not an inheritance from the Lord and we had to repent of that.
Watch what you say and how you think about your children?
Examine your life and consider how much the world has influenced your thinking on children.
Are they a burden to you? Or are they an inheritance given to you?
Parenting is hard. Motherhood is incredibly difficult. But if all you do and think about your children is griping and complaining then you don’t view them rightly.
We should praise God for the children we have and view them as a gift given to us.
Our church is quite young, and there are children running around all over this place. It is beautiful to see. I have never attended a church where there the children outnumber the adults, but this often happens here. And that is a blessing. That is a tremendous gift from the Lord.
As a church we’d better see it that way. As parents that are here today, we’d better not call the gift of God a curse. We’d better not call this inheritance that God has given us something other than a gift we are thankful for.
Why is it that America is struggling to replace its population, but our church is obviously not? I think it is because we understand this. I believe it is because we understand that children are a blessing from God.
Satan is at war with mothers. Last year’s Mother’s Day sermon was all about that very thing. And this is one area in which this is abundantly clear. Mothers have been influenced to put off or not have children, to despise the blessing of God and forego it for other pursuits. And later in life to figure out that they missed out on this incredible blessing.
Send Those Children The Right Direction And They Will Be A Blessing (Psalm 127:4-5)
What are arrows in the hand of a warrior? They are tools for battle. But arrows don’t just show up ready to use.
Arrows must be formed and directed as to where to go.
Children are a blessing. But they are not an automatic blessing. This is obvious enough in the Scriptures that I don’t think my saying it should be a surprise.
“A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish man despises his mother.” (Proverbs 15:20 ESV)
“There are those who curse their fathers and do not bless their mothers. There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.” (Proverbs 30:11-12 ESV)
“He who does violence to his father and chases away his mother is a son who brings shame and reproach.” (Proverbs 19:26 ESV)
“A foolish son is ruin to his father, and a wife’s quarreling is a continual dripping of rain.” (Proverbs 19:13 ESV)
“A foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her who bore him.” (Proverbs 17:25 ESV)
A foolish child is the opposite of a blessing. Left to their own devices, or to the wrong devices, your child will be bitterness to you. And you can probably think through examples that you have witnessed in your own life or the life of others that align with this quite easily.
The city gates were where important legal ordeals took place. And the person that had many children to come alongside him during that is blessed. When a person is old and in need of help, the good child will be there for their family.
How many times have you seen parents and grandparents be taken advantage of by their children when they are in old age? You’d better not raise a fool or they will be the deepest of grief to you.
How do children learn respect? How do they learn to live in society?
They first learn to follow the commandment to honor their father and their mother. And from that specific action, it is generalized out to other authorities.
Why do you think that many of the ills of modern society are caused by parents not being in the home? Is it not because the children didn’t learn to obey their parents? Is it not that they didn’t really learn about authority?
What do you think is going to happen to your children if they don’t obey you?
When your child disrespects you, don’t be surprised when they disrespect other people.
If the behavior of your children is so bad that you don’t want to be around them, then don’t be surprised when no one else does either.
And my point in saying all of this is that you are to be forming the character of your children. By God’s grace they will be children that you love and cherish. They will be children that honor you and bring honor to your family as all of you grow older.
You need to decide that you are going to take up the responsibilities you have for these children left in your care. When they disobey you, it is easier to just let it go. It’s easier in the short term. And in the long run, those decisions will work to create a child that dishonors you and is rottenness in your bones.
Think about the raising of your children in the long term, not the short term. Will they be a blessing to you as you lie on your death bed? Will the thoughts of them bring you peace and joy or turmoil?
And more importantly, God has given to you these children that are also eternal image bearers. They will live forever either in Heaven or in Hell and you have the responsibility of caring for them.
What will you teach them? Obviously the gospel. We want our children to know they salvation that is found only in Christ. We declare to them over and over the grace of God found in Jesus Christ.
We teach them how they are to live a God-honoring life. We teach them to be more Christlike.
Is it worth it to get off the couch and discipline them?
Is it worth it to work to help them understand the gospel?
When you are 80, if by God’s grace you live that long, will you be happy that you sat on the couch and watched tik tok or reels on your phone? Or will you regret having wasted such an opportunity? Or will you be able, by God’s grace, to look back and see the many hardships and labors that you went through and see that God formed your child into a godly image bearer?
Conclusion
Parenting has always been difficult. Bringing children to mature adulthood is a difficult task. It seems to me that things are getting harder for parents today. Society is working to downplay the importance of children and the importance of parenting.
We work with all our might to raise children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We fight against princes and principalities that seek to ruin our children. But we don’t do it on our own. In fact, if it were up to us, we would fail. We trust the Lord as we work. And he blesses our labor.
R. Dwain Minor