Psalms 127:2 NIVUK
[2] In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for he grants sleep to those he loves.
I annoy my wife when I go sleep. I know many men do.
But this is not about snoring or stealing the duvet.
This is about falling asleep quickly.
Men tend to do it faster anyway. However, a while back I read a secret about falling asleep quickly and it works for me every time. Apparently soldiers who need to sleep quickly lie still, close their eyes, slow their breathing and consciously relax every muscle in their body.
They fall asleep in minutes.
Try it. It works.
But there are many people who struggle with sleep.
They struggle to control their racing thoughts. They can’t contain their worries. They are condemned by their to-do list.
Or worse: their sense of failure.
To them, and to us, this Psalm was written.
But to some, it might seem like a taunt. ‘What do you mean that God grants sleep to those he loves? But what about me? I can’t sleep! Are you saying he doesn’t love me?’
No, I am not. Let me get that right out there. I am definitely not.
What I am saying is that Solomon teaches us here about three areas that can rob us of our sleep. And here, in this Psalm, he presents the solution.
Now, I am not saying that it’s easy. Practicing what Solomon preaches here is hard.
But when we apply it, sleep will come.
So what are these three things?
The first is our Wealth:
Psalms 127:1 NIVUK
[1] Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.
That is, wealth as demonstrated in both a house and a city.
Builders have quite a reputation in our country. However, there is little doubt that they have a hard, physical, and sometimes dangerous, job. In many countries like ours, there are strict health and safety rules that have to be obeyed, and if they are not then the site should be closed down.
However, even the quickest glance at construction sites outside of our countries will tell you that it isn’t always the case.
In the Bible, there are no health and safety rules to assist with the construction of buildings, except this one:
Deuteronomy 22:8 NIVUK
[8] When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.
So construction work in those days would be hard and dangerous.
Yet Solomon – who himself was no stranger to grand construction projects – says something quite startling:
Without God, they are pointless.
All that hard work. All that danger. But if God is not in them, they are a waste of time.
And then we see watchmen also mentioned here. As we saw earlier, their job was difficult, dangerous and not always respected by the people, even though their job was to keep the city safe.
Yet Solomon – in whose time Israel knew peace – says even their job is pointless, if God is not in it.
Two people whose very job it was to fortify and guard our possessions – even Solomon’s great many possessions – and yet their job is pointless without God.
What a thought!
Jesus also carries this into the New Testament, and he does so in a parable that should be quite alarming:
Luke 12:16-21 NIVUK
[16] And he told them this parable: ‘The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. [17] He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.” [18] ‘Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. [19] And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’ ” [20] ‘But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” [21] ‘This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich towards God.’
In other words, it is possible for things that we value and treasure and are precious to us to reach the state where they take the place of God – where sin and self and satan can manipulate our love of those things to tempt us into doing wrong. In the case of the rich man in the parable, his bank balance became so important that it led him away from God.
Jesus goes on to say this:
Matthew 6:19-21 NIVUK
[19] ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. [20] But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. [21] For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
And again:
Matthew 6:24 NIVUK
[24] ‘No-one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
And again:
Matthew 6:31-34 NIVUK
[31] So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” [32] For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. [33] But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. [34] Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Do you get it? Do you see it? There are possessions that can become so utterly precious to us that we literally lose sleep worrying about them – whether it’s a house or a car or a boat or a device or anything like that.
The cure for that worry is not to install greater security or to lock it away in a vault.
No.
The cure is to invite God into the situation and let Him take first place.
Once we loosen our grip on our stuff and tighten our grip on our Saviour, we will find that our worries will gradually disappear.
Why? Because He will guard them for us?
Yes. But also no.
The worries will fade because we will realise that our stuff is way less more important than our Saviour.
They will matter less. He will matter more.
So we see that our wealth can quickly and easily rob us of our sleep. Anyone who has lived through a sudden stock market crash or a time of rapidly rising interest rates or inflation will testify to that.
But they don’t need to.
The second thing that can rob us of our sleep is our Work:
Psalms 127:2 NIVUK
[2] In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for he grants sleep to those he loves.
I know what this means. I have two jobs. I have a day job and occasionally a night job. There have been times when one of those jobs has kept me up past midnight and had me up early the next day. It’s hard work. Really hard work.
My father was a shift worker. He used to get in after 11pm from a back shift and get a phone call to leave the house at 4am the next day to cover a shift in the signal box on the railway. They used to nickname him ‘FIDO’ – ‘For I’ll Do Overtime’.
It wasn’t healthy. He died of cancer aged just forty-eight.
Establishing a work-life balance that you are comfortable with and sticking to it is a hard thing, especially if you are a home worker.
But let me add one very powerful thing: it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much you earn, if God is not in it and you find no satisfaction in your work then it is in vain.
As Solomon wrote elsewhere:
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 NIVUK
[24] A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, [25] for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?
Worrying and fretting over pay packets and bonuses and share plans and health care plans and the like might seem critically important to us, but in the grand scheme of things...
Ecclesiastes 5:10-12 NIVUK
[10] Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless. [11] As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owners except to feast their eyes on them? [12] The sleep of a labourer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep.
Yes, it is absolutely vital that we provide for our family (1 Timothy 5:8). That is a given.
But to lay awake at night stressing about work things which, in the grand scheme of things, are not critical, is absolutely foolish. Why permit these things from stealing your peace?
Take my advice. If you have a work related idea or remember something you have to do, take a note of it and pick it up in the morning.
Work to live, don’t live to work, because sooner or later, work will be taken from you.
How will you live then?
So we see two things that can keep us awake at night and steal our peace – wealth and work.
The last of these is our Wee Ones:
Psalms 127:3-5 NIVUK
[3] Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. [4] Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. [5] Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.
When it comes to children, there are three categories of people.
There are those who don’t want them, don’t have them, and don’t know what all the fuss is about. They may appreciate parental feelings from a distance, but do not know what they feel like in reality.
There are those who want children – really want children – and who obsess through the night because they are afraid they will never have them.
If you are in this category, you are actually in pretty good company. Sarah (Genesis 11:30), Hannah (1 Samuel 1:2) and Elizabeth (Luke 1:7) were all unable to conceive naturally, until God got involved.
There are also those who obsess over the fate of their children. These people tend to fall into three sub-categories: those who can’t trust their children, those who can’t trust their own parenting skills and those who can’t trust either.
This verse is very relevant to such people:
Matthew 6:27 NIVUK
[27] Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
You might believe that you are worrying because you care, but worrying is a fundamentally useless emotion. It achieves nothing positive.
The only thing that does is doing something about it. And often all we can do is pray:
Philippians 4:6-7 NIVUK
[6] Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. [7] And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
I have a daughter. She is in her early twenties. Most of the time I am not worried about her. She’s smart, streetwise and mostly pretty well organised.
But when it’s dark and it’s late, that’s when I start to worry.
We all have GPS tracking on our phones. It helps alleviate some of it. But it can’t alleviate all of it.
Let me tell you: the only thing that helps is prayer. Nothing else.
Maybe you’re reading this and you are childless. Maybe you have no intention of ever having children. I understand that.
In that case, we need to grapple with the meaning of why children were so important to ancient Israelites. Solomon explains it here:
Psalms 127:4-5 NIVUK
[4] Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. [5] Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.
Children in Solomon’s day were a means of fending off enemies during disputes. They were people who took your side, stood beside you, helped you out. Their familial loyalty could get you out of trouble.
They were the means of fending off an accuser. Their standing at the city gate would secure the legacy of any parent.
And here we come to the crux of the matter.
What often concerns us is the mark we leave, our legacy and the relationships we have made to secure it. This can keep us up well into the wee hours to try and make a name for ourselves that will endure, or to build the support network to catapult us to success.
Solomon, a man whose legacy was more than secure and who more than made his mark on the world, says this cannot and will not work without one thing:
God.
If God is not in it, everything you do in your name to build your kingdom will fail.
But if God is in it, it will succeed.
One of my sisters once made a rather foolish mistake when she was at university – one that she very quickly learned from. She went out with her friends to a pub. They were ordering pints of beer. She decided that, since she didn’t drink alcohol, she would drink a pint of Coke for every pint of beer they drunk.
That was a terrible mistake.
She just could not get to sleep that night, no matter how much she tried – and cried. The caffeine in the Coke she’d drunk kept her awake.
She never did that again.
You might think this is a very strange illustration. However, consider this: the people of this world are very worried about their wealth, their work and their wee ones. They stress about them a lot. It keeps them up at night. They shed desperate tears over them.
But do we? Even in the darkest of our nights, do we?
We ought not to. Worrying is a worldly, and ultimately worthless, response. It gets us nowhere. We cannot and should not match them worry for worry.
We have the solution right here in this Psalm: invite God to come into it and give Him control. No matter the mess. No matter the problems. This is His speciality. Let Him take it and let Him fix it.
Psalms 37:3-6 NIVUK
[3] Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. [4] Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. [5] Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: [6] he will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.
You cannot succeed without God.
No matter what you do.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I want the dark night of worry to end. I have had enough. Come into my darkness. Help me. I have no other hope but You. Amen.
Questions
1. What three sources of worry does Solomon mention here? How do they cause us to enter a dark night of the soul?
2. What is the cure for this?
3. What have you learned that could help you with your worries?
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