Psalm 127:1-5 Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman wakes but in vain.… Man's history upon earth is mainly, alas! the history of a struggle to establish lives, homes, and States on a basis which is not God's foundation, and by a rule which is not God's law. This is the enterprise of man's self-will, his perverted and prostituted freedom, through all the ages; and God from on high has never ceased to confound it, to write on it Babel, and to lay it by the shattering shocks of His providence in the dust. The concord of man's thought and activity with God's is the secret upon earth of all true, real and abiding work. The human builder and workman may be masters of their art and zealous in their craft, but the fundamental question is, are they building by the rule that God has made known to them, and on the lines which He has laid down? And it is equally the test of all lofty and noble art. The poet is a maker, it is the exact meaning of the word; it matters not whether he works in word, in colour, in clay, the principle is the same. Is it a dream of his own vain fancy, or is it a vision of God; is it what the Lord hath said or shown to him that he is interpreting to his fellow-men? Man, of all beings, is made for this lofty fellowship, this high co-operation of thought and will with his Maker. Man, made in God's image, can understand God's plans, meanings, and ends. A Newton can think out after Him the thought by which He made the creation; a Paul can grasp and expound the plan by which tie redeemed and will renew the world. Man is so constituted that God can work in him without marring his freedom; nay, thought, word, and work in the human only rise to their full completeness when they are the fruit of inspiration; that is the effectual in-working of that living Spirit who quickens all that lives in all the worlds. First, let us look at the bearing of this principle on the building of the house of life. By this I mean those principles and habits of moral judgment and action which are the true house of the soul, wherein it dwells, and from which it comes forth to work benignly or malignly for itself and mankind. Of that house man is the architect, not God; that house he is daily building, and that building will abide and be the home or the prison of the soul through eternity. Nature and the world furnish the materials; the form and the substance of the structure you create for yourselves, it is yours, your own, your work, the product of your being, your shame or your crown while that being endures. A nature with certain temperaments and tendencies comes to you, how you know not, whence you know not, save that it is God's gift to you, your endowment, your talent, your capital in life, by wise trading with which your wealth will grow. I speak of this as God's gift; by His various endowment of men, the rich diversity of original gift and faculty, He maintains that splendid variety, that action and reaction of widely diverse agencies and influences which it is His aim to secure both in the physical and human worlds. And thus He keeps the constant pressure of His hand on both. From God, too, comes the will and the power to work upon the original endowment, and to give it the shape and the form in which the inner heart delights. Character grows like a picture or a statue by innumerable light touches on the rough substance of the nature. Moral habits of action are beaten out like a path by the multitude of light footsteps which pass to and fro. There must be the will and the moral judgment to determine the direction, and then it is the daily footsteps which form the habit of the life. And it is a terrible power, this power of framing fixed judgments and habits of action, vast and awful are the issues to which it tends. You may make holy, beautiful, blessed activity as easy and natural as the outflow of light from the sun; you may make them as hard, as impossible as courtesy in a churl, or a generous impulse to a base miser's heart. Daily the house is being built, daily the soul is becoming clothed or cased in its habit, and is settling the form and possibility of its future. And first, if you would build wisely, look to the foundations. And build daily in conscious, blessed dependence on the co-operation of a higher hand. Remember that in this matter you are the fellow-worker, the fellow-helper with God, whose interest in your building transcends your own. Daily, hourly, let there be a guiding of your choice, a strengthening of your hand, a blessing of your work from on high. Let the Divine Spirit dwell in your spirit as in His temple; let Him fill your life with the light of His wisdom, let Him touch your heart with the glow of His love. (J. B. Brown, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: {A Song of degrees for Solomon.} Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. |
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