Men are called by God to labor. Yet the uncertainty of financial markets, as well as the idolization of wealth, can prod men to fretfully toil beyond what is wise. What’s the answer to the problem? In this podcast, hosts Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by Carlton McLeod, turn to Psalm 127 for direction: Don’t fear the economy, but trust God, work with purpose, and sleep well. View your children, not your bank account, as your greatest asset. Instead of laboring in vain, look to God to build your house. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Today, we're going to talk about the man who fears not the economy. And we've written a lot about family life. Psalm 127 is where we're going to focus, recommend to you theology of the family, 500 years of biblical wisdom on family life. And we're going to pick out Psalm 127, which is part of this theology for you.

Hope you enjoy the discussion. Jason, let's talk about the man who fears not the economy. Yeah, so right now we have the potential for a boom and bust. You have all these things going on globally that could make things really rough economically, but you also have some economic policies that are going in that could make us really boom economically. And what we don't want to do is to tether ourselves to one or the other psychologically in a way that paralyzes us or even makes us feel self-sufficient.

Yeah, or maybe a different way to say it is, hey, don't freak out because this has happened before. There have been warning clouds in the economy all my life. You know, things are just going to completely fall apart. The national debt is such and such. We can't survive, we can't go on.

This is the narrative that I've heard ever since I was a kid. So it's happening again. And We have our friend, our dear friend, Carlton McLeod to talk with us about this. Hey, Carlton. Good to see you, Scott.

Good to see you, Jason. Man, it's always a joy. Always a joy to have you with us. Psalm 127, a song of assents. So the Lord's people would be singing this together, headed up to Jerusalem to worship God of Solomon.

Unless the Lord builds the house, the labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he gives his beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies in the gate." So the great thing about this Psalm is it mentions three spheres of life, and these are the things that dogmen every day of their life. He highlights the building of a house and he's proclaiming the sovereignty of God over that. He's talking about protecting a city and He's proclaiming the sovereignty of God over that.

He's talking about protecting a city, and he's proclaiming the sovereignty of God over civic life, and he's proclaiming the reality of having to earn a living, and that's the sovereignty of God over economic life. He says, it's a vein for you to rise up early and stay up late. So let's talk about that. What does that really mean? Well, he seems to be talking about getting up early and staying late just for the purpose or missing the purpose of God and what he's doing just for the purpose of money.

Based on verse number one, it's the Lord that builds the house. And I don't think the text is saying that you shouldn't get up early or there won't be times that you can stay up later, should stay up later, put in extra hours or go the extra mile to take care of your family. But if it's just for money, you know, someone said sometimes that, you know, money is a Wonderful slave and a horrible master. And if it's just for money, you'll find yourself pretty unfulfilled. You get it, and then what?

I mean, it's just pretty fleeting when you think about it. That's my take on it. So, my text for Sunday is Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel. And they were making this tower, there's nothing wrong with building buildings. Psalm 127 talks about the building of a house and the Lord doing it.

But they were doing it to make a name for themselves. It was an autonomous, independent from God endeavor. And I'd be willing to bet you that there were a multitude of people getting up early and staying up late. But God wasn't building the house, God wasn't building that tower, and it ends in disaster. So there's two.

This is not anti-building, this is not anti-abundance. This is where is God in the equation? If He's nowhere in the equation, why were you asking for trouble? We start with God and then these things come out of relationship with God. He's being driven by fear.

And so he sits up later than he should or needs to. He gets up early because he's afraid. But then you have this promise, but no, God gives his beloved sleep. In other words, he doesn't need to do that out of fear. Yeah, we teach our guys at the church to, you know, make as much as you can, save as much as you can, give as much as you can.

Just keep the right perspective. You know, your life's a stewardship. You're designed to take dominion, do everything you possibly can keeping the Lord first. Just beware, check yourself for idolatry, check yourself for pride, keep those things, keep that conversation going. But I don't think that's the prosperity gospel.

I think that's just Christian living. That's a great way to frame that. Make as much as you can, save as much as you can, give as much as you can. And you have to have step one of that three-step process or the other two. There is no saving.

If you've run a family budget, you can't cut to greatness. You can only cut so much. If you're going to save, the income part of that equation is going to have to be addressed. So, hey, we should not have a subsistence mindset, which says, as long as I just barely have enough to keep my nose above the water all as well. We should be thinking about saving and especially about giving too.

In the New Testament, Paul talks about working with your hands so that you have enough to share that there's leftovers out of which you can share with others. Yeah, he's talking about labor that's in vain. Like, you know, men can engage in labor that is in vain or fleeting or fruitless or, you know, something like that. But let's talk about that. What does it look like when a man is laboring in vain?

Well, I think it's helpful always to start with motives. So there's all the things that are happening on the outside, fine, those are all real. But what's happening in the heart? A man who's laboring in vain starts with motives that are not God-centered. They're man-centered, they might be family-centered, they might be fear-centered.

A rich man's tower is his wealth. It is a very imperfect quote of that proverb, but it is in the Proverbs. God is the strong tower of the believer. A rich man's strong tower is his wealth, but the problem is it takes wings and flies away. So it's a bad tower.

And so starting with the motives, these things need to be for the honor of God, God centered things. I agree. I would add to motive mission. I know a lot of guys who work really hard. They work long hours.

They actually make a lot of money, and they don't have a lot of joy out of it. And you ask them, what are you trying to accomplish? And as we said, if it's just money and there's no, you know, big vision, large picture, you know, you know, word from the Lord, from the scriptures, what are we doing here? Where are we going with this? It feels like vanity.

And so they end up, they have a great car, but they have no joy. They make a large income, but they have a lot of debt. And they seem to kind of be purposeless, even though they have some abundance or they have some income that most would call pretty substantial. So having a mission, you know, your heart is right on the motive side and then having a mission, what exactly are we doing? What's this work for?

Why are we doing this? Why do we work at this particular place? Where is God in what we do, and can we see and define God's purpose in what we do? And that makes a lot of difference in terms of feeling like this is vain or feeling like we're doing something productive with the days that we've been given. Yeah, you've got this man, he's laboring.

It's good to labor. I think the Bible makes that so clear. You know, men should labor. It's a calling from God. But there's a way that you labor in vain.

And I think that it's explained in the very first verse, unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain. In other words, a man is building because he's obeying God. He sees his labor as a service to God. Everything that he's doing is for the glory of God. And he is laboring, for sure.

Again, this is not an argument against labor. It's against vain labor where the Lord is out of the picture. Right. That's good. I think it's a useful track to go down also to acknowledge that there are real concerning things that can happen economically, and that a prudent man sees danger and hides himself.

In other words, it's a misapplication of the sovereignty of God to act like there aren't actually really concerning things out there, and we shouldn't try to do things in advance to hedge against those things. So let me just open that up. What are things that men should have their eye on and be doing things proactively to sort of buffer their family against those risks? Yeah, The rich rules over the poor and the borrower is servant or slave of the lender. And every time we see debt mentioned in scripture, there's always a caution.

It's always, you know, we wouldn't go as far as to call it sinful. At least I wouldn't. But it's certainly, you know, you should certainly use wisdom when acquiring it to make sure that you can pay it back unless you be called wicked. So yeah, I would push people towards, push men towards considering removing as much, particularly high interest stuff, user stuff, 20%, 25%. I would push them towards the principle of that proverb, which is get out as much as you can.

Well, I mean, in my experience, it's hard to predict where the economy is gonna go, where housing prices are gonna go, where anything is gonna go. It's hard, it's really hard to predict. And so I think the acknowledgement that God is in control of the economy is critical and you should do whatever you can to insulate yourself from disasters. The truth, I mean, most Americans are living on a very thin edge with just a few hundred dollars left every month. And our consumer society has just driven us to overspend and things like that.

So I think you can watch your budget. We've just seen a doze in our country, and Elon Musk trying to reduce costs. Where there's a guy in our church, he did the family doge. I want to get together with him and just write up what he did, but they went through all their bills, all their subscriptions, and they had the family doge and they cut all kinds of stuff out of their economy. Wow.

Here's another dynamic. So first Timothy five says that in the case of financial catastrophe, the first line of defense is immediate family and then your local church. Your local church. So, some people have made relational choices. I'm trying to figure out how to say this.

Some people have made relational choices in their families, and with their cavalier attitude about the local church, that the things that God has designed to be a fallback in case of financial catastrophe are not in place. None of their family members would help them at all because of relational choices that have been made. And they don't really have a local church to speak of. If they went to their local church and said, I need financial help, they would say, have we met? Right?

And so, hey, men should think about that in how they're relating in their families and whether or not they have a devotion to the local church. Is that the central thing in either one of these spheres? No. But just because it's not everything doesn't mean it's not anything at all. Hey, this guy in Psalm 127, right, he's tempted to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows.

You know, God's saying, I'll give you sleep, but in the background is his family. You know, in verse three, behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.

They shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies at the gates." So you have these concerns for economic life, for building your house, but then you have a family. So what's the message here? Because it ends with this picture of family life. And I think there's a prioritization going on here in this text. Let me start coming at it from the other direction.

If you just take human logic, children, and especially an abundance of children, increases financial risk and diminishes financial resources. So, the Bible at this point intervenes and says, no, you're not supposed to think of it that way. God wouldn't have us think of it this way. Well, hey, because bad financial things can happen, I shouldn't bring children into this world. The Bible says the exact opposite of that.

The truth is it's not a zero-sum game, and here's what I mean by that. It's not, if I gain a dollar, it's a dollar that you've lost. Actually, what the Bible teaches is, all the resources are God's, and he can give you a thousand times more tomorrow than you had today without diminishing anyone else. Or he could take it all away from you tomorrow. So really, faithfulness to God is more central than just following human logic out to the end of the argument.

I love the ending section of verse 2 where it talks about the Lord gives His beloved sleep. And just practically speaking, you know, given the beautiful picture of family life that we see here, a lot of the motives for good men to work hard the way that they work and to apply some sleep producing financial principles is wife and children. And a wife will tell you what's important to her right away. Just not being in excess of debt, having living beneath our means, having some savings, having some life insurance in case in the sovereign hand of God, he takes you out of here, husband beforehand, things like that, that bring about peace and sleep, having the kind of margin in your life to make decisions for your children and not so beholden to the state or whatever. Those things produce a lot of peace, if you will, a lot of sleep.

And so if you're gonna toil, toil with purpose, taking into account what Jason just said, but toil with purpose for the sake of your wife and children and get your family off the edge. Amen. So there you have it, the man who fears not the economy. And he's raising his kids, he's trusting God, he's getting his sleep, he's not freaking out about the pressures. He's got arrows, he's a warrior, And he sees his children as weapons for the kingdom of God.

So he's strengthening those weapons. It's very interesting. So are the children of one's youth." He's talking about a young father, right? When you're a young father, the financial threats seem to loom much larger than when they do when you get older. You know, when you're a young father, you're running out of money all the time, often, you know, the first 10 years of your marriage, at least most people I know, they didn't have hardly anything for the first few years of their marriage.

And, but here you got this happy man. He is the happy man who has his quiver full of them. Well, this is the happy life of focusing fearlessly upon the things that really matter and raising a new generation. Scott and Carl, just one parting shot. So, the message of Psalm 127 isn't, don't build, don't guard.

The question is, is God in it? So don't build, God will build it for you. Don't guard, God will guard them for you. That's not the message of the Psalm at all. It's to have God front and center of these things so that your building and your guarding are under the eye of God, under the blessing of God.

God is at the center of these things. That's it. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are safe. Amen, Very good.

Okay, well thank you guys. Appreciate it. Oh, it was a pleasure. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. And don't be that man who fears the economy.

And I hope you can join us at our national conference next year on manhood and womanhood, the glory of God, and the creation order. That's going to be a fantastic conference next year. See you there. Sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchAndFamilyLife.com