Work: Babel and Buddha

Psalm 127
If you want to be successful in life, you will have to work hard. Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, about the ten thousand hour rule. This rule states that talent is important but not as important as practice and preparation. He points out that the Beatles (amazingly, I need to point out that the Beatles were a rock group that dominated their music field in the 1960s) were talented but what made them stand out so far above their contemporaries was that they played eight hours a day in clubs in Hamburg, Germany, amassing ten thousand hours of practice. By the time they hit the world scene, they had performed live twelve hundred times, more than most bands today perform live in their entire careers. This gave them a musical advantage when they burst onto the British and American rock scene.

Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, had access to early computers in 1968 when he was an eighth grade student and he lived in the computer room after that. By the time he dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year, he had been programming almost non-stop for seven years, far more than ten thousand hours. He had talent, but he also had opportunity to practice that few others had.

In a study done of music students at the prestigious Juilliard, a performing arts conservatory located in New York City, an analysis was done to see what made the difference between the top musicians and the second level musicians. They looked at parenting, socio-economic background, and a number of other factors. The distinguishing factor was that musicians in the top tier had spent twice as much time practicing as the second tier musicians. They had amassed ten thousand hours of practice.

I played a song for Elliot by Pierce Pettis, a beautiful guitar piece, and Elliot immediately said, “He spent a lot of time practicing.”

To be successful in any field takes a lot of time and practice. Hard work is required to be successful. Gladwell wrote, “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” Hard work is what separates the best from the rest and there are no shortcuts.

What does this mean to followers of Jesus? When we choose to follow Jesus we turn our back on what the world values and make Jesus and his eternal kingdom our focus. So does this mean that being successful in the world is no longer of importance or value to us? Should we work hard to be the best we are able to be, in whatever we do in life? Or is it more important that we read the Bible and pray and put less effort in our studies, our job, or our career?

In our series of sermons from the Psalms of Ascent, we arrive today at Psalm 127, a psalm about work. This psalm tells us that work is not enough. We have to rely on God or all our work is in vain. The first half of Psalm 127 teaches us:
Unless the Lord builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
2 In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.

What does verse 2 mean? Does this verse tell us that working hard does not have value? Some have read this verse and concluded that since God does the work and since our work is in vain, we can sit back, relax, and allow God to work.

Those who think this is what the psalm is teaching point to this parable Jesus told: (Mark 4:26–29)
“This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

The point of this parable is that God builds his kingdom. God draws people into his kingdom, but the farmer still had to sow the seed. He still had to work.

Those who think we don’t have to work hard follow what Eugene Peterson calls the Buddha approach to work. He describes the Buddha attitude as:
an enormously fat person sitting cross-legged, looking at his own navel. Motionless, inert, quiet. All trouble comes from doing too much; therefore, do nothing. Step out of the rat race. The world of motion is evil, so quit doing everything. Say as little as possible; do as little as possible; finally, at the point of perfection, you will say nothing and do nothing. The goal is to withdraw absolutely and finally from action, from thought, from passion.

The Buddha approach to life is to focus on spirituality and do as little work as possible.

If the attitude of Buddha is one error to make about work, a second error is to copy the sin of Babel. In Genesis 11 the writer tells us of people who came together to make bricks and build a tower.
they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

The sin of Babel was not that they worked hard and had dreams and aspirations. The sin of Babel was that they thought they could bring God down to a manageable level with their work. They thought they could control God with their work. They wanted to be in control of their lives.

This is something we can certainly identify with. The incredible advances of technology have given us the illusion that we can control life. Just 100 or so years ago people went into the hospital expecting they would die. We go into hospitals expecting we will be healed. We are no longer mystified by the rising and setting of the sun and the movement of stars. We understand planetary motion and can predict when stars will be in a certain position. We can predict solar and lunar eclipses far into the future. We know the mysteries of the atom and have moved into the subatomic world. We have mapped the human genome and are beginning to work with genetic manipulation. We recently identified aging genes and are exploring ways to extend life.

This technology is wonderful, but it leads us to think we are in control of life and death. This is an illusion. We are able to predict the arrival of hurricanes and typhoons but they still cause deaths. Floods overwhelm us. Fires consume us. Earthquakes shatter our technological confidence. Evil in the world arises in contradiction to the belief that as enlightened people we will move steadily toward an earthly utopia. Disease and accidents take away lives and we are stunned to discover we are not in control.

The sin of Babel is that we push God away and put our trust in what we are able to accomplish. Work becomes our god and we have the illusion that work has ultimate importance in our lives. Many Christians say that they have priorities: God first, then family, then work. But the reality of many of our lives is that work gets pushed up into the top position. We want to be successful and we see our colleagues sacrificing to get ahead, so we push ourselves to work harder so we too can be successful.

When we push our work to the top priority of our lives, our relationship with God suffers. We are so busy we barely have time to look at the Bible, let alone open it up and read what is inside. If we do read the Bible, we speed through and don’t take time to reflect on what we have read.

Our family suffers as well. We push our family to the side. We have meetings and take business trips that cause us to miss our children’s activities and performances. We say we are doing this so we can provide for them, but we lose what we can never recover. Our children are children for such a little time and our precious moments with them are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

We sacrifice our family and our relationship with God for the sake of our accomplishments in work, but regardless of how much we accomplish, these achievements can never be satisfying by themselves. The meaninglessness of this was expressed in the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, writing about the accomplishments of Solomon. (Ecclesiastes 2:4–11 – The Message)
4–8 Oh, I did great things:
built houses,
planted vineyards,
designed gardens and parks
and planted a variety of fruit trees in them,
made pools of water
to irrigate the groves of trees.
I bought slaves, male and female,
who had children, giving me even more slaves;
then I acquired large herds and flocks,
larger than any before me in Jerusalem.
I piled up silver and gold,
loot from kings and kingdoms.
I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song,
and—most exquisite of all pleasures—
voluptuous maidens for my bed.
9–10 Oh, how I prospered! I left all my predecessors in Jerusalem far behind, left them behind in the dust. What’s more, I kept a clear head through it all. Everything I wanted I took—I never said no to myself. I gave in to every impulse, held back nothing. I sucked the marrow of pleasure out of every task—my reward to myself for a hard day’s work!
11 Then I took a good look at everything I’d done, looked at all the sweat and hard work. But when I looked, I saw nothing but smoke. Smoke and spitting into the wind. There was nothing to any of it. Nothing.

Neither the attitude of Buddha nor the sin of Babel is the Biblical view of work. Work is not evil, it is good. Work is what God does. Notice in Psalm 127 the phrases “unless the Lord builds” and “unless the Lord watches”. These imply that the Lord builds and the Lord watches.

The Creation poem in Genesis 1 makes the point that God created the world we inhabit. He worked six days and then rested on the seventh. As God has revealed himself to us, he is constantly at work, intervening in history to accomplish his purposes. God led Israel out of Egypt.  God met with Moses to give him the Ten Commandments. God led Joshua to victory after victory in the Promised Land of Canaan. God spoke through his prophets. God was continually shaping Israel to be his people. Page after page of the Scriptures reveal a God who is at work.

Jesus said in John 5:17, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” Jesus came to do his work, to establish his church, and die to overcome the power of death over us. Jesus set an example for us and he continues to work to bring men and women from each generation into his kingdom. Until he returns, at the end of time, we are given the privilege of working with him.

The Father works, Jesus works, the Holy Spirit works to make us more holy, and we are also expected to work. So in the early church when some of the Thessalonians got the idea that they did not need to work and would just sit around and wait for Jesus to return, Paul set them straight in no uncertain terms. (II Thessalonians 3:6-12)
In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.  7 For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you,  8 nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you.  9 We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow.  10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”
11 We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies.  12 Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.

Work is a part of our life and it is an important part of our life. When we work, we are following the example of God.

We are supposed to work and we are encouraged to excel in what we do. When God gave Moses instructions for the building of the tabernacle, the clothing for the priests, and all the other elements used for worship, he insisted on having skilled workers. Not just workers, but skilled workers, and God told Moses he had given these workers the skills they were to use. Paul told the church in Corinth he was an expert builder.

It is important that we work hard to excel at what we do. We are not called to mediocrity but to excellence, whether that is in the arts, in business, in teaching, in studies, in any job that we have.  Our effort to excel is not wasted. The excellence we bring to any task, whether sweeping the street or running a meeting, is part of our witness for Jesus.

I have observed Christians who work in the US Embassy over the years and I have noticed that some Christians come and are outspoken about their faith, but their work is below standard. The witness of these Christians in the US Embassy was diminished by the low quality of their work. On the other hand, Christians who have worked hard and performed well have had an enhanced witness. Non-Christians always pay attention to those who profess faith in Jesus and look to see if their actions match their words. When the work is substandard, the view of Christian faith suffers. When Christians work hard and do well, this too is observed and perhaps shatters some preconceived notions about Christians.

When we excel in what we do, this gives us a platform from which we can speak about our faith in Christ. I have a friend whose success in the financial world of Wall Street in New York City gives him many speaking opportunities where he is asked about his faith in Jesus. People come to hear him share about his faith who would not come if he was not so successful.

Whether your success is on the sports field, the classroom, at home, or in the workplace, you will have opportunities to share your faith. People will want to hear what you have to say.

The second half of Psalm 127 seems to be disconnected, as if two short psalms were stuck together. It begins with:
Unless the Lord builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
And then moves to:
3 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

We cannot really understand what Psalm 127 is telling us unless we see the connection between these two halves of the psalm. The Hebrew word for buildings is bonim and the Hebrew word for sons is banim. So this psalm is a Hebrew play on words between buildings and sons and it becomes apparent that the metaphor of building a house is illustrated by raising children.

So if you take the metaphor of building and apply it to parenting, the opening verse reads this way: “Unless the Lord raises a child, the parents labor in vain.” And this makes sense. I talked about this at the end of our Parenting Children course. The session had focused on implanting values in our children and I said that what we cannot do with our children is make them followers of Jesus. We can model faith for our children, teach our children, train our children, but if we want our child to become a follower of Jesus, the most important thing we can do is to pray.

Some parents are so concerned that their child become a follower of Jesus that they pressure their child to accept Christ. If parents do this, they may succeed in making their child a church goer, but they will work against their child becoming God’s child.

Unless the Lord builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.

Parents have to work hard to be good parents. The Parenting Children course was helpful in showing some ways to be better parents and I am so grateful that the parents who took this course wanted to work to be better parents. Parenting is hard work, but as parents we have to trust that God is at work in our children. Only God can take our child and make her or him his child.

This is the balance of Psalm 127. We work hard and we rely on God. Let me take you to an Old Testament example and then a New Testament example of this.

David was a shepherd boy when he came to bring his older brothers food at the front line of the battle with the Philistines. When he saw that the soldiers were too fearful to engage Goliath in combat, he volunteered. King Saul was so desperate that he allowed David to go face this giant warrior.

King Saul saw David as a small shepherd boy but he did not see the skills David had gained with all his hours of practice as he watched the sheep. David was highly skilled with his slingshot. I read an article in Scientific American that measured the velocity of a stone coming out of a sling and it said that it traveled at such a high speed it could penetrate armor.

In addition to David’s skill, he came toward Goliath with confidence that God would make him victorious. He responded to the sneering taunts of Goliath with this confident statement: (1 Samuel 17:45–47)
“You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

With David’s skill and confidence in God that kept his hand from shaking, Goliath did not have a chance.

A New Testament example of the balance between skill and reliance on God is Paul and his church planting.

Paul wrote to the church in Corinth and told them: (1 Corinthians 3:10)
By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder,

Paul knew what he was doing. He had developed skills over the years and knew how to approach a city and how to approach people. He knew how to argue from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah. He knew how to take this message to Gentiles where he proclaimed Jesus was Lord. Paul truly was an expert church planter. But Paul also had learned how to rely on God. He wrote to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:1–5)
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

This is the balance in our work. We need to work hard, become experts in what we do, develop skills. And then we need to use the skills we have developed in complete reliance on God.

Let me make a few applications. Students, you need to work hard. Study hard. This is why you are in Morocco. Your faith in Jesus is obviously more important than anything you learn or accomplish in university, but there will be times when you have to back away from your involvement in church so you can concentrate on your studies. If you decide you will work hard in church ministry and neglect your studies, don’t expect God to give you special help in your exams as compensation for your work in church.

I have said that the most important part of my university years was what I learned in church and Bible studies. That is true. But don’t forget that God has called you to be a student and he wants you to excel in your studies.

I will say the same to those who are not students. You need to work hard to be successful and God wants you to do well, to excel. But here is the other side of the coin. Some people never have time for church because they are always busy. There is always a project that needs to be completed, a paper to be written, a trip to make. It is OK to make excuses for a brief period of time, but if you never have time for Bible study or family you are out of balance. If you continually come home late, have a quick bite with the family, and then retreat to work on your computer, you are out of balance.

The good news is that God wants you to be successful. God wants you to use the gifts and talents he gave you for his glory. He wants you to stand on the platform of your success and be salt and light to all those around you.

So keep a good balance. Work hard, develop your skills, and trust that God will use you in your work and in the lives of those around you. Grow in faith and in your reliance on God for all things.