Building a house here refers to building a family. It is not about a habitation, but about a heritage. God builds families. He makes the husband and wife one flesh, telling us that what He has joined together no man can separate. He also actively creates life in the womb and brings children into our homes. The truth is that unless God builds our family we will have no family. We will work in vain to build it ourselves because only God can build a family - giving us the covenant of marriage and blessing that covenantal relationship with offspring.

Further we see that there is no protection unless the Lord guards us. What good is a watchman if God is not watching over us? God is sovereign. Life without Him is vain and all attempts to keep ourselves safe from harm will fail unless He watches over us.
Do we then trust God to build our families and to keep us safe? Do we walk by faith in these matters, for we know that the Bible tells us that whatever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23). Do we take God at His Word and trust that He knows what is best for us? In order to understand God's purpose for children we must first confess and admit that it is God who alone is capable of building the family and keeping us safe from harm. This puts the focus then on the growth and well being of our family specifically on God. He is in charge. He does as He wills for His own good pleasure. And He tells us to trust Him.

This verse reveals for us another vanity, something else that is useless. Just as it is useless to try and build a family without God and useless to try and stay safe without God's care and protection, so to it is useless to try and get a good night’s sleep without the blessing of God! The focus here is restful sleep. The goal is to be rested, refreshed, and ready to go the next day.

Some tell us that if we just get up and get going then we will surely come home and get a good night’s sleep. An early start is supposed to ensure that we are sufficiently tired when bed time rolls around. Others tell us that if we work hard and exhaust ourselves through labor then we will sleep good at night. This is to "eat the bread of sorrows" for we know that part of the curse for sin was that God told Adam that it would be through the sweat of his work that he would eat bread. And even others tell us that if we put things off until later in the day and then stay up late, we will eventually tire out and be ready for bed.

But the Bible tells us here that all of these things are vain. We could probably all give testimony to the fact that there are times when we get up early and still cannot sleep later that night. Likewise, we have all worked through a hard day and come home with such energy in our system that we simply cannot sleep. And surely you have suffered with me, staying up late only to stay up so late that it is actually early!

Why are these things useless when it comes to sleep? Because the Bible teaches us that sleep is a blessing from God. Often lack of sleep is shown to be from God in order to cause us to reflect on the day or deal with our sin. At other times God would take sleep away from us so that we might spend the time praying or praising, or ministering to those in need. Whatever the case, we can affirm that sleep is a blessing from God and unless He gives us restful sleep nothing that we do can bring us rest.

The underlying truth here in the context of this Psalm is that it is vain and useless to think that there is anything we can do to bless ourselves with the blessings that only God can give. His blessings listed thus far include a family, safety, and a restful sleep. We cannot do anything on our own to bring these about if God would will otherwise. And we are foolish to think that we should stop Him from blessing us with these things. Who in their right mind would reject God's blessing as if His blessing was ill-timed, inappropriate, or unappreciated?

Interestingly we see in these verses God's definition of prosperity! In God's eyes for us to prosper means that we have a godly family, safety, and restful sleep. And this is all a blessing from God. We cannot manufacture it, we cannot counterfeit it, and sadly we often settle for a substitute - the world's prosperity, those things which rob us from the prosperity God gives us.

Now it gets interesting! Now we see how God views children. He has already told us that a family is a blessing that He gives as He chooses and now we see how specific this is - He gives children as a blessing! There are two things we need to understand here, first, what it means that children are a heritage, and secondly, what it means that they are a reward.

Children we are told in this verse are our heritage from the Lord. We first note that the heritage comes from the Lord. There is no other place to get it or find it. God gives children as a heritage and a reward. The word heritage refers to a number of things. It can mean:

1. Something passed down through generations
2. A Possession or Inheritance – Property, Share, Portion
3. What you leave when you leave

To understand the term we must look past our immediate family. This has at its core a generational view. We must look far past ourselves! How sad it is that the things that influence us the most about our view of children all revolve around self. We give little thought for the long term impact we can make through the generations of our family and our church and instead we think only of ourselves. God views children through the lens of generations and wisdom is seeing these things from His perspective.

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