Psalm 128
Let’s give our attention to God’s
word. This is Psalm 128, a song of
a sense. And remember, this is the third
Psalm of a set of three, 126, 127 and 128 do go together. Hear the word of the living God.
Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. You shall eat the fruit of the
labor of your hands. You shall be blessed, and it
shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful
vine within your house. Your children will be like olive
shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be
blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion.
May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your
life. May you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel. This is the word of God for us,
his people. May he bless it to our hearts
and minds. I’m pretty sure most of you have
some piece of Christian artwork in your house. Maybe something
somebody gave you when you got married, something maybe you
purchased along the way. But two pieces of artwork that
you see in most people’s houses are first a little sign that
says Home Sweet Home. right? And that’s such a popular
thing. When you watch cartoons as a little kid and you know,
they had the bears house or the house for the little birds. You
look inside the little house or the dollhouse, whatever. And
it said home sweet home in there. That’s so common, right? Home
sweet home. Uh, but a popular piece of artwork in most Christian
houses is something from the book of Joshua as for me and
my house, we shall serve the Lord. And someone 28 I think
is a combination of those two. If you follow, the book of Joshua,
as for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord. You will have
a home sweet home. Makes sense, doesn’t it? And
so those are two important pieces of embroidery or however it is
you’ve got it, calligraphy on the wall of your house. But there’s
a question in our minds as we live in a sin filled world and
we’ve seen what Satan has done to the family, even to the Christian
family. Is it possible to achieve a happy
home? It’s a big question, isn’t it?
Is it possible to achieve a happy home? Well, you could say from
Psalm 128 that hard work pays off. You see the blessings, you
see all the list of benefits of a hardworking family and the
blessings therein. You read Proverbs 31 and you
see how the home is blessed through a hardworking wife. But then
you think to yourself, because you’re smart Christians, oh,
but Psalm 127 last week said, unless the Lord builds the house,
what happens? The laborers labor in vain. So is it possible to achieve
a happy home? Does hard work really pay off? Must God do the
building or the labor in vain? Well, maybe another way to say
it is hard spiritual work pays off. We think in Christian terms
very often of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. God’s
sovereignty over salvation and man’s responsibility to evangelize. Or think about Psalm 128, God’s
sovereignty over the house, God’s sovereignty over the marriage,
God’s sovereignty over children. God’s sovereignty over his church,
but man’s responsibility to build the home based on Christian values. And so does hard spiritual work
pay off? Can you achieve a happy home
sweet home if, as for you and your household, you serve the
Lord? Well, think back through the
whole Bible for just a minute. What did God first say negatively
in the scriptures? He said, it’s not good for man
to be alone. And so he made a helpmate suitable for Adam. He blessed
them, he told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Scoot a couple more chapters in the Bible, God flooded the
earth and destroyed all wickedness on the earth except one family,
Noah and his sons and their wives. And when they opened the door
of the ark, God told them once again, be fruitful, multiply
and fill the earth and let the earth be full of little boys
and girls who love the Lord Jesus because of the hard spiritual
work of the home. You read through the wisdom literature
of the Bible. Take Proverbs, for example, it’s a whole. study,
it’s a whole diatribe of a father to a son. My son, my son, my
son. Live wisely, don’t be foolish. Foolish people die, wise people
live. And it has all the outworkings
of living wisely listed. And then we think about how the
Bible has an emphasis on the generations. Salvation has come
to you and to your household. Salvation is for you and your
offspring. So what does Psalm 128 teach
us. How does a happy home, how is
it achieved? Is it possible? Can God bless
a home? I want to look at this passage
from three perspectives. The first is attitude and action.
I know that’s two words, but that’s the first point. Attitude
and action. And you find it in verses one and then also in verse
four. Notice they’re very similar.
It’s saying the same thing twice, really. Blessed is everyone who
fears the Lord, And then it’s really saying, again, blessed
is everyone who walks in his ways. So there’s attitude and
action, fears and walks. And then skip down to verse four.
Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. In Christianity, we talk historically
about three enemies. The three enemies of the Christian,
the three enemies of the church are the world, the flesh and
what’s the big one the devil or Satan the world the flesh
and the devil and the world has seduced men and women and boys
and girls and families and heads of households and even the church
as we mentioned this morning in our study from Luke we have
been seduced off the straight and narrow path Blessed is the
man who walks, what does it say? Who fears the Lord, who walks
in his ways. We’ve been seduced off of his path into the ways
of the world. We have been seduced into a very
different path. Most of us may have grown up
where our families raised us in the fear of the Lord. They
fed us, they read to us, they disciplined us, they took us
to church, they had us in Sunday school, and they didn’t let us
out past 10 o’clock at night. about church for the most part,
unless you were a hoodlum. That was the way we were raised. Nowadays, you can have fine,
upstanding people, and they don’t know where their kids are. They
don’t know what they’re learning, what they’re getting. They don’t
know what they’re looking at. And the world has seduced them into
a different path. I’ve got someone I knew in another
church ministry who was the headmaster of a Christian school. And he
said, the first question that a set of parents would ask when
they wanted their newborn baby on the waiting list for this
school. And I hear that newborn baby, they don’t get to school
till about age four. Getting them on the wait list,
the number one question wasn’t what’s your salvation rate, right? Send them to Christian school,
get them saved. It’s what college will they get into. What college
are your graduates that I’m signing my kid up for the wait list to
get on? And I’m going to spend this particular school at that
time was about $10,000 a year for Christian education. What
school will my kids get into? And that’s important, right?
We want to raise our children to love God and live well in
the world that he’s made. And we want them to reasonably
succeed as they use their gifts to serve. But people have taken
a different path now with families, their job It seems it’s not to
raise their children and the fear and admonition of the Lord,
but it’s to make sure they get into Carolina or it’s to make
sure they get into a pathway for success. And there is some
need to plan for that. But when it becomes the main
thing. So what about the attitude and action of. the family living
with the struggles of the world, the flesh and the devil. Well,
you’ve got to live on a clear path. Blessed is the man. Verse
one of Psalm 128 says, blessed is everyone who fears the Lord
and who walks in his ways. We’ve got to keep a family on
a biblical clear path. And instead of living by the
world standards, we’ve got to live according to the word. Instead
of following the flesh, we’ve got to live by the Holy Spirit.
And instead of following Satan, we’ve got to keep our eyes on
Christ. We’ve got to be loyal to Yahweh.
And that’s what Psalm 128 is saying, is it caps off the three
Psalm group of 126, 127, and 128. You want to build a house,
you want to build a family, do it in the fear of the Lord. Do
it in the pathway of clear biblical teaching. And there’s two things
to consider. There’s the attitude, which is
to fear God. And then there’s the action,
walk in his ways. And so what does it mean to fear
God? It means we reverence him. It’s not necessarily be afraid
of him, though we should be afraid of God. Hebrews says it is a
terrible thing. to fall into the hands of an
angry God. But we ought to fear God. We
ought to reverence God. When we sit down in church each
Sunday, each Lord’s Day, does it ever cross through our minds,
I am sitting in the presence of the Holy One of Israel? I
mean, that’s how a sanctuary can help us. That’s how a quiet
meditation, a silent prayer before the service can help us. That’s
how an attitude of reverence Um, but church, maybe, maybe
in my lifetime, it’s, it’s changed a little bit. I mean, we were
taught when you go to church, you sit down, you shut up and
you don’t budge. Right. And dad was always up
front and he could, he could see what was going on. And my
mother was sitting usually between two of us and had all the tools
of mothers to pinch and whatever it is y’all mothers do to keep
kids still in church. But this sense of fearing God,
uh, has really become lost. on the Christian home in today’s
world. We’re so self-centered, so self-absorbed. But read through the book of
Ecclesiastes, read through the book of Proverbs, read through
the wisdom literature of the Bible, the family, the person
who fears the Lord will be blessed. And then those who walk in his
ways. There’s one person in the scripture
who did not die, and that was Enoch, a strange little passage
in the book of Genesis, Enoch walked with God and he was not
because God took him. He’s well, Elijah would be the
other who was taken up to heaven without death. But it says Enoch
walked with God and walking with God is a euphemism in the scripture. Paul uses it in Ephesians and
other places. But it’s a euphemism in scripture
to describe you staying on the path, you walking as a pilgrim
to heaven. So how do you live? What do you
do every day? What’s on your calendar? What’s
your priority list? Are you walking with God? Are
you seeking first his kingdom? Are you in his word? Are you
confessing your sins? Are you living like those couple
passages we read earlier from the Beatitudes? Blessed is the
man who, or blessed is the peacemaker. Blessed is the one who mourns
over his sin and on and on. There’s a path and we walk on
it. And so the first thing I think Psalm 128 teaches us is there
is a attitude and action, a set of attitudes. or attitude and
set of actions that show we are loyal to Yahweh and we expect
His blessing on our homes. Now, if you don’t walk on that
straight path and you don’t fear God and you don’t walk in His
ways, what will you bring upon your household? Well, you don’t
want to be the house that, oh, that’s the meth lab on the street,
right? Or this is the house with the
teenagers who the parents don’t control. Or this is the house,
you know, every neighborhood’s got them, right? Every neighborhood,
oh, that’s the so-and-sos. They don’t have it quite together.
You cannot walk in God’s ways and not fear him and bring much
trouble on your house. And instead of being a blessing
to your neighborhood, you can be the curse of the street and
people hope for the day they see the for sale sign get plopped
into the grass. So there’s attitude and action.
The second thing we see in Psalm 128 is the benefits and blessings. So can you achieve a happy home?
As for me and my house, we’ll serve the Lord. Home sweet home. If your attitude, your action,
you fear God, you walk in His ways, what are the benefits and
blessings? That’s sort of the logic of where Psalm 128 is headed. In Israel, there are tons of
olive trees. And I remember as a kid going
to Israel and Jordan and Egypt, we had a group from our church
that went three years in a row, and I was able to go on two of
those trips. And I don’t know if it’s true or not, but we It’s
two years in a row, so maybe it is true. They showed us this
olive tree. I think it was in Jerusalem.
And it had a nice little wall around it. It was all safe and
kept. And they said this olive tree goes all the way back to
the time of Jesus. Maybe, maybe so. But apparently
olive trees are a generational piece of property. Now most of
you have grown up in different houses. I can probably list to
you the number of houses I’ve lived in. It’s been in different
towns. My family can do the same. But in ancient Israel, people
lived in the same house for generations. In fact, we had a tour guide
that was the leader of all the trips we took over there. And
he was an Armenian, not an Armenian like in bad theology, but an
Armenian like from Armenia. And his family had a home in
the Armenian quarters. of Jerusalem and we went to their
house one night to meet his mom and they showed us hospitality
and their house was over a thousand years old and it had been in
their family for that whole time. And so you understand that things
were passed down to them and of great importance. Probably
most of you when you die your kids will rent a dumpster and
they’ll fill it and they’ll put a sign out front and they’ll just be
glad mom and dad aren’t collecting junk anymore and they won’t live
in your house. That’s about it isn’t it? But not so in ancient Israel.
And so an olive tree inherited or passed down was a huge gift. What do olives provide? Well,
they provide garnish for your salad or your martini or whatever
it is you have, if you’re into that sort of thing. But what
else do olives do if they’re pressed? They give oil. And oil is a huge part of the
Mediterranean diet. And so an olive tree that was
old could be tended and it could leave a rich heritage for a family. And so one thing to think about
is you think about the benefits and blessings of Psalm 128. Is it possible? Can hard spiritual
work pay off? Can you have a happy home? It’s
for me and my house. We serve the Lord. Home sweet
home. Can you have that? Well, an olive tree is a picture
of what the home is like. You notice here in 128 it says,
verse 2, you shall eat of the fruit of your labor of your hands.
You shall be blessed and it shall be well with you. Your wife will
be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will
be like what? Olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be
blessed who fears the Lord. And so one of the benefits and
blessings is you may have an olive tree passed down to you.
You may get to live in the family home that’s a thousand years
old, but your children are the greatest spiritual blessing. You know, I don’t, I don’t think
a whole lot about Father’s Day. You know, it’s an American holiday,
right? Mother’s Day is too. And it binds preachers to have
to preach two sermons every year. which I’ve noticed I don’t do.
I don’t give up my Sundays for a national holiday. I’m going
to stick to the scripture. We’ll give a shout out to the
moms and dads. But the word of God is too important to preach
through than to give it up for every American greeting card
national holiday, at least in my opinion. Well, it’s not my
opinion. But anyway, getting off the subject
there a little bit. What was I going to say? Oh,
but you know what’s neat about being a father is if God blesses
your work, you get to see something that will last and last and last. You think about maybe some of
you didn’t grow up in a Christian home, but a church got a hold
of you. And I know that’s true for some
in our congregation. They didn’t grow up in a Christian
home, but maybe a bus ministry from a local church or a well-meaning
evangelist or Billy Graham coming through town or whatever broke
into that generational roll down the hill into continued paganism.
And your family now, because of your faith, is walking with
the Lord. But otherwise, if that event
had not occurred, the salvation event had not occurred, your
family would just continue being a non-Christian set of generations. And so what a blessing it is
to work hard in the spiritual faith and to see something that
will last not only for years to come in this life, but also
that will last into eternity. That’s a wonderful thing to think
of. And it’s a wonderful thing to
pray for as well. Not all of us have seen our children
come to faith. And so that’s something, even
to our dying day, we can pray for. We can pray that God will
bless us and honor our prayers and give us the benefits. One
of the things we like to say about the covenant blessings
of God is he gives us grapes and grandkids. When God promised
Abraham the promised land, they would live in a land flowing
with milk and honey. They would live in houses they did not build
with walls they did not raise. They drink water from cisterns
they did not dig. And they would enjoy the fruit of the vineyards
they did not plant because they went in and they killed everybody
in the promised land, right? And they took their houses and
God gave them the land and it was their punishment for their
wickedness in previous generations. So the promise is you’ll live
in a land and you’ll have grapes and grandkids. You’ll have olive
trees. And yes, there are real vineyards,
there are real olive trees, but the spiritual idea here is you’ll
have a table full of children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren,
who also fear the Lord, God willing, and walk. The one thing you notice
under this heading of benefits and blessing is it’s a it’s a
fruitful household. We don’t see many farm families
anymore. Back in January, February we sat at a table at one of our
kids sporting end of the year events at dinner and across the
table from us was a husband and wife and their son and they’ve
started a farm out on the southern part of the county and they live
an agrarian life. They get up every day, they work
hard, There’s a full breakfast from the eggs that they raise.
They eat a huge lunch, most of it from the meat they raise and
all the rest. And then they just work and work
and work. And throughout the seasons of the year, they’re
building and making and establishing a farm that had almost died out,
I think, in a previous generation. But with this new farm-to-table
movement in our area, they’re able to get a farm going again. And so they depend on the increase
from their growth. And that’s the picture here is
God blesses families with increase. He blesses them with growth.
There’s a third thing to consider, a final thing to consider in
Psalm 128, and it’s an eternal benediction. So is it possible
to have a happy home? Is it possible for you and your
household to serve the Lord, have a home sweet home Hard spiritual
work pays off when God blesses it. Attitude, action, fear the
Lord, walk in his ways. You see the benefits and blessings.
But there’s also an eternal benediction, and it pops up in verses five
and six. The Lord bless you from Zion.
May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your
life. May you see your children’s children.
Peace be upon Israel. It’s a real blessing to be part
of a good church. It’s a great blessing to be part
of a good church, to have the blessings of Zion at your disposal. It’s a wonderful thing. to be
in Christ Jesus, to be seated with Christ in the heavenly places,
and it’s a wonderful thing to have the Holy Spirit dwell in
our lives. And one of the great blessings that the Bible often
speaks of, in addition to grapes and grandkids, is you will live
to a good old age and get to enjoy or see these things. That was the promise to Abraham
in Genesis. Abraham, God said, you will live to a good old age,
you’ll be full of years, And I will take you after you’ve
seen the blessings that I promised you. And so we get to live a
good old age. We get to see the fruit of our
labor. We get to see the generations after us carry on. But it’s all
because we seek first the kingdom. It’s all because we pray to God,
thy kingdom come. It’s all because we see family.
as part of the church of the living God. We see our family
benefit and bear witness to a wider society that there is a God and
he is worthy to be worshiped and served. He’s worthy to be
feared and his ways walked in. And so at the end of Psalm 128,
there’s a benediction. May the Lord bless you from Zion,
from Jerusalem, or now from heaven. May you see the prosperity of
the church. But may you see the prosperity of your children and
your children’s children. So does hard work pay off? God’s
word says it will. And that’s a good promise for
us to remember. Let’s look to God in prayer.
Lord, we thank you for the word of God that reminds us of what
is true. Lord, our experiences vary as we live life in a sin-filled
world, as we may have had different priorities when we were younger,
as we’ve seen all kinds of sin and hardship and others, blessings
and good things. We pray, Lord, that you would
meet us where we are, that you would keep us on our knees in
prayer, trusting for your grace to see our children and our children’s
children through. We pray that you would let us
fear you and walk in your ways and be a great witness to our
children who know you, but even and especially our children who
do not know you so that they may see our attitude and action
and the benefits and blessings of walking with you. And that
one day we might Have great peace because your eternal benediction
has landed upon our generations. We pray that you’d hear us and
help us in the name of Christ. Amen.