UNLESS THE LORD BUILDS THE HOUSE
We all build ‘houses’ of different sorts.
As an example, you pour all your effort into making yourself the best free throw shooter. It’s a championship game. With two seconds on the clock, you’re standing on the free throw line, and your team is one point behind. Make the two free throws, and your team wins. Miss and you spend the rest of your life punishing yourself by drinking buttermilk.
You sink both, and you’re paraded around the court on the shoulders of people. Cheers fill the gym. You’re given the trophy because you deserve it.
The trophy sits on a shelf in your bedroom year after year. At age 80, you’re wheeled into a nursing home, and you hug the trophy tightly.
Two years later, you pass away, and you’re laid to rest with the trophy tucked under your arm. People walk by your casket and pat the trophy. They say, “Remember those last two seconds. What a show.”
Your whole life has been reduced to the last two seconds of a basketball game.
“Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” (Psalm 127:1) The Hebrew word for house is ‘bayith.’ The meaning of the word isn’t reserved to literal houses. It’s used for glorious temples and simple dwellings. It’s used to describe a grave, and it’s used to describe a perfume bottle. In short, it can be used to identify any kind of container.
In the full context of Psalm 127, we know ‘house’ is not referring to a literal house, but to a life. The verse could be interpreted as such: Unless the Lord builds the ‘life,’ they labor in vain who build it.
The opposite would be truth as well: If the Lord builds the ‘life,’ it will not be in vain. Therefore, we’re all left with two possibilities: We build a life of uselessness because the Lord hasn’t been involved, or we build a life of usefulness because the Lord has been involved.
It would be vital to know, therefore, how best to build our lives. What does it look like when God is involved as the builder?
Of course, it begins with salvation. What a life of vanity if you grow a billion-dollar business only to die and spend eternity in Hell. That must be the most worthless life possible. You might argue you built an empire and left it to your children.
But you still dwell in Hell for all of eternity. What good has your empire on earth done you? If your child eventually joins you in Hell, your empire has disintegrated into utter grief. How sad you didn’t realize the vanity of your life until it was too late to walk a different path. Double the grief when your children join you.
It is God who brings salvation into a person’s life through His Son, Jesus. That’s the only possible foundation of a ‘house’ that provides results which are massively good, even carrying into the next life. Now, it’s not just your ‘house’ but God’s as well. Truly an excellent thing!
From foundational salvation, the Lord begins the work of building a person’s life. It’s dualistic in the construction, being both spiritual and physical.
The spiritual side begins with John 6:63: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”
A life of the flesh (Godlessness) yields nothing. Only a life entwined with the Spirit is truly a life. After our salvation, how does the Spirit work at building us spiritually?
That’s found in Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
The most positive, powerful life comes from living immersed in those nine qualities of God. Living in those qualities grows us into people who are Christlike. We can love selflessly; we can exhibit joy and enjoy peace; we can practice kindness and goodness; we can be faithful and gentle (humility); we can exercise self-control.
What a joyous ‘house’ to live in! What a wondrous ‘house’ to be. Why then do people build other foundations for their houses? Because they’re fools. Those aren’t my words. Jesus owns them: “But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.” (Luke 6:49)