As you're being seated, you can turn to Psalm 128, our next psalm in the Psalms of Ascent, ascending to God. So how has your pilgrimage been this last week? It's been one more week since we gathered together as God's people, another week of seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. walking that pathway to the ultimate fulfillment of our lives, which is our face-to-face vision with God. And the Psalms of Ascent are helping us to go there on this pilgrimage. They are songs that guide us, songs that encourage and strengthen us and keep us on that straight and narrow pathway. So I trust you've been enjoying these. And we're adding on one more now today here, Psalm 128. continuing on our journey to the New Jerusalem as we gather another week here on that pilgrimage. What we're gonna hear today is a psalm of wisdom picking up on Psalm 127, very much connected with Psalm 127. And yet here also a psalm that's a song of strong encouragement because it teaches us how to gain wisdom on the true condition of those who fear the Lord and why our life going to the Lord in glory is truly good. And I hope if you come away with nothing else today, you realize once again how good life is when we know the Lord. Let me begin by reading Psalm 128. 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. You can see as we enter into this psalm, Right away, the first stanza in verses one through four, which is very much bracketed by this pronouncement of blessing. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, it says in verse one. And verse four reiterates with an emphatic affirmation, thus shall the man be blessed. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. This first stanza is a pronouncement of blessedness. And if you've been with us through our series in the Psalms, or even if you've just been a reader of the Psalms, or if you've been with us in our series through the Sermon on the Mount, you should see right again, this Psalm is tapping into a major theme that's important for our understanding. The very first verse of the entire Psalter started with this very theme. You can tell this is something God wants us to learn. Psalm 1.1, blessed is the man, right? And now over and over again, as we keep coming back to this throughout the Psalms, it keeps coming up with statements like this. Blessed is the man. We saw this again in the last book of the Psalms in Psalm 112. Blessed is the man. It says in Psalm 119, blessed is the man. And now we come to Psalm 128, picking up on how Psalm 127 verse five ended by this pronouncement of blessing. So now Psalm 128 verse one picks up with this pronouncement of blessing. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. And that's what this is, by the way. This statement of blessing here is not so much God putting a blessing on someone, that's how you get to this, but this is the condition you're in when you are truly blessed. Okay, when God has given his blessing to you, now you are in this condition where you are in the condition of true life. That is, when you are blessed, you are in a life-giving relationship with the Lord. The Lord is the source of all life. He is what it means to be fully alive. And the only way we as creatures get to enjoy that is not from ourselves. We don't have life within us. It's only from God. And so we have to be in a right relationship with Him. When you're in that right relationship with Him, His life-giving goodness is flowing to you. And that's what this term pronounces on. Blessed is everyone who fear. You are in a condition of life-giving relationship to the Lord. Pardon me. You draw on his overflowing life. And so to be blessed in this sense is to be fully alive. It is to be productive, multiplying, increasing, all that it means to be truly alive. That's what it means to be blessed. and the psalm pronounces this blessing here in the first stanza. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. So as we enter into considering what this blessed condition is like, we need to remember that this psalm is building off of the covenant relationship to which God called Israel in Deuteronomy. It says in Deuteronomy 10, verse 12, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways. Does that sound like Psalm 128, right? To love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. That's exactly the covenant relationship that God was calling Israel to in the book of Deuteronomy. And so as Moses charged the people that when they crossed the Jordan River, and entered into the land of promise that God was giving to them, they were to hold a covenant-making ceremony in which they would recite. They would actually go to two separate mountains and recite from Mount Gerizim the blessings of the covenant. And they would answer from Mount Ebal the curses if they were not faithful to the covenant, right? Here's the relationship. God is calling you to love Him, and here's how that loving relationship will work. If you're faithful to that covenant, God has blessings in store for you that you can't even imagine. He is going to make you fully alive in the land. If you are not faithful to that covenant, you're faithless in those covenant relations, then the curses will follow. The reason I bring that up here today, folks, is because you today need to sing this psalm in the context of God's faithfulness to his covenant. That's what sets the whole context for singing this Psalm. God has committed Himself to His people. What does God do? He makes promises, right? He makes free, gracious promises. He commits Himself to this relationship with His people, and He always keeps His promises. Since the time that God gave Israel the land of promise, He has continued to make and to keep promises. As we saw in Psalm 127, the focal point of these promises here is God's promise to David, his covenant relationship with David, where he promised that David would have a seed, a greater son who would rule and reign and who would bring about his kingdom of righteousness and peace. And of course, we know that to be Jesus Christ. Folks, when you see Jesus Christ come, you have to remember God is keeping all of his promises exactly in this way, sending Jesus Christ, his son, the seed of David, the seed of Abraham, the one who is going to bring to fulfillment everything God has ever promised. And so how do you have life in this relationship with God? In Jesus Christ, right? All of this blessedness that this Psalm is going to talk about here, true eternal happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment of everything you were made for is going to come about in Jesus Christ. And in fact, in Jesus Christ, this whole old world is going to be remade into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God is the way Romans 8 describes it. But before we consider here what this blessedness might be like as it talks about it in this psalm, We need to consider a little bit of what a right relationship with the Lord looks like on our side. So far we've talked about, we said being blessed is being in this life-giving condition with God. How does that come about? God's free grace, right? He makes promises and He keeps them. He sends His Son, Jesus Christ. What does that look like on our side of the relationship? Well, it describes it here in verse one. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. There's our part of this relationship. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. The fear of the Lord, pardon me, is such an important biblical theme. And if I could put it as simply as possible, it is a deep, real recognition of who God is, how great he is, all of his character, who he is, and then who we are in comparison. Who are you in relationship to God? Hopefully you're here today and you're honest enough to realize there's an infinite difference between me and God, right? He's great, I'm very small. He's powerful, I'm very weak. He's everything, I'm next to nothing, right? This is that recognition of that relationship. And when that starts to dawn on us, the reality of who God is compared to who we are, that begins to put all the rest of life into perspective. In fact, that's why the Bible says so often that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If you don't get this perspective right, if you think that somehow you know more than God does, If you think that somehow you're more in control than God is, or you think that somehow you're more powerful to accomplish your plans than God is or anything like that, you don't actually have a clue how this world really works. You think way too highly of yourself, for one thing. Just ask your neighbor, by the way. One of the things that helps put our perspective of ourselves as people, we tend to think pretty highly of ourselves, and then lo and behold, other people around us aren't so impressed by me. They don't treat me like I'm God. Well, maybe they're right, you know, just ask your neighbor. It'll help you keep a little bit of humility here, right? Now, when we realize who God is and who we are in relationship to him, that begins to put all of life in perspective. And so we can just run briefly through some of the biblical evidence and teaching about what it means to fear the Lord, because this is so important to this Psalm. Fearing the Lord entails acting justly out of a fear of God's judgment. I mean, when you begin to realize who God is and who you are, his perfection and your sinfulness, you recognize you are liable to his judgment and there's no way you can escape. That begins to put the fear of God in your life. It leads to shunning sin and obeying God because of God's all-seeing justice. But that's just the beginning point. Actually, that's not the whole of the fear of God. It calls for responding in submission to Him and renouncing all false gods. If you truly fear God, if you understand a little bit of who He is, then there's no way you can go after anyone but Him. You can worship anyone but Him, for He alone is worthy. You renounce all false gods. Genesis 22, for another example, shows that the fear of the Lord involves truly believing and obeying the Lord. That is, you believe what He says. If He's God and you're not, When He speaks, you believe it, and then you do what He says. For the believer, then, the one who's come to know God in Christ, the fear of the Lord involves even much more than the fear of judgment. We see His glories and His perfections in such a way that we not only tremble to disobey Him, but we adore Him. And this too is part of the fear of the Lord. If you were wondering a little bit earlier today of how we sing back-to-back, pardon me, those hymns, about let all mortal flesh keep silence, abject trembling before the presence of a holy God, and then sing in the very next breath, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Why do we do that? Because we're starting to see the breadth of the fear of the Lord. When you come to Him in grace, it was grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved, right? When you come to Him in His grace, you begin to adore Him for all the majesty of His attributes. You see His glories and His perfections. Our hearts are then drawn out in amazement and awe at who He is and what He does. And that's why the fear of the Lord is sometimes spoken of, even in an example like Acts 9.31, as a characteristic Christian attitude and experience. In other words, if you don't know the fear of the Lord, you can't claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ. That's what leads us to witness. The apostle Paul said, knowing the fear of the Lord, we proclaim Christ to bring holiness to completion in the fear of the Lord, to worship with reverence and awe. Hebrews chapter 12 tells us. So a man who graciously fears the Lord is a man who is compelled to trust, obey, love, and worship Him. Without the fear of the Lord, you don't have a vital relationship with God. You haven't seen Him for who He truly is. And again, that's why the fear of the Lord is the beginning, the foundation of wisdom. All wisdom comes from that. Well, this is a wisdom psalm. And so we're back to our psalm here again, right? Blessed is the man who fears the Lord. And you can see then, having understood that, why the psalm sings then of the one who fears the Lord as the one who walks in his ways. When you fear the Lord, what do you do? You believe what he says and you obey him. So let me ask you today, if you want life with God, life with God, you have to be where God is. And where is he? But in his ways, where he has said he is, right? Not in your ways. You turn aside from what you think, what your ways are, and you turn to God's ways as the direction of your life. Now, let me ask you this, where has God revealed himself to be? And the answer to that question is supremely Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, God has revealed himself. In Jesus Christ, God has made himself known in a supreme way. In times past, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets, Hebrews says, but now he has spoken to us in Christ. The very character of God in the flesh, God being revealed among men. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. So you're gonna walk in his ways, you're going to walk in Christ. And so if you want to know God's ways, you have to listen to the instructions that He gives as they are in Christ Jesus, and then keep to those ways. Let me just pause here to ask, brothers and sisters, our fellow pilgrims this morning, do you delight in God's ways? Are you a person that is setting aside your own agenda for life? your own power for how you think you can achieve life and the good life, what it means to be fully fulfilled in this life, and you're setting that aside and delighting in what God says is true, and are you pursuing after that day in and day out because you trust God, right? If you're a person who truly fears the Lord, folks, you're gonna be in his word looking for Jesus Christ. You're gonna be trying to obey that and work that out. You're gonna be seeing Christ's connection with everything about your life, and you're gonna want it to conform to him. Pardon me. When God speaks, do you put more weight on that than in all the worldly experts combined today? It tells you how much you fear the Lord, right? Even more, do you see the truth and the coherence of all of God's words in Jesus Christ? Folks, this is part of what the Bible is talking about when it says that we walk as we walk in God's ways, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. That is, we begin to see life because Christ has come and given us his spirit. We now see life and understand it according to God's truth as it is in Jesus Christ, his own life working in us as a gift by his spirit. So having considered that, I think we're properly prepared now to walk through a little bit of the blessings that this Psalm speaks of. What is the blessed life, right? How does it work? Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. Well, what might those blessings be? What would it be to be in that kind of a life-giving condition with the Lord? Having just considered what we've talked about of how this comes to fulfillment in Jesus Christ, you can understand a little bit more of the relationship between your life right now in this age, and your life in the age to come. This Psalm, I believe, is often twisted by false teachers. We call them sometimes prosperity gospel teachers, who will look at a passage like this, and they will say, see, if you just believe God, you will have lots of money, right? You'll always have all the money you need to buy all the food you want. You'll have a nice big house. You'll have a wonderful wife and children and grandchildren. You won't die before you're 80 years old, guaranteed, if you trust the Lord, because he says you will see your children's children, and this is just the blessing that God gives for those who actually trust him. So if you die when you're 30, well, that's because you don't really believe God. Something of that nature. This is what's called a prosperity gospel. God gives good things to those who trust him. And see, this Psalm just says it. So there you go. It's biblical. We took time a moment ago to show you how we see all this in Christ to help us see the both and of life in Christ. Are there true blessings that come to us in this life right now because of our trust in Christ, because of our fear of the Lord? Absolutely. Pardon me. But if you don't see life in Christ, you actually won't understand what those blessings are. You won't get them rightly. You'll take them from a fleshly perspective and you'll misuse them. You'll misunderstand them. Pardon me. It really is true biblically. As we've been reading through the Proverbs, you can see this, that the way of the transgressor is hard. When you live a life that's against the grain of the universe, against the way God made life to work, it really does create problems and you will suffer because of it, right? But so does it mean then if I follow Christ that I won't have problems? Not quite so simple, right? Yes, even in these Psalms of ascents, what have we seen so far? Is there suffering in the life of the believer? Is this pilgrimage to glory difficult, hard, wearying? Does it have enemies and evil opposition? Yeah, it has all those things, right? So in what light can this Psalm be true? Coming to Psalm 128 now, we would say in light of Christ. That is, everything God brings into the life of those who fear Him does work together for good, both now and forever for those who trust Him. So let's think about some of these psalms as this life, as this psalm, excuse me, prepares us for and vests us in the life to come. Or we can put it this way. Because we believe God's promises, we live in such a way as we'll bear fruit in the heavenly Zion. God's promises apply to this life, but they become intelligible in light of His eternal purposes in Christ. The first one I want to bring to your attention here is that in Christ, according to verse two, your labor brings lasting nourishment. In Christ, your labor brings lasting nourishment. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. You shall be blessed and it shall be well with you. There will be good to you. This is the opposite of that futility, that vanity, that worthlessness that we talked about in Psalm 127, right, where it says, unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Our fleshly ability, if we invest our efforts, our intelligence, all on a merely human plane apart from faith in Christ, then ultimately it does end up worthless. It dies with you and there is nothing else worthwhile about your life. But in Christ, as you fear the Lord and trust Him, and look for life in His holy city, the new Jerusalem, it says here, you shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. In other words, you're going to work in this pilgrimage, you're going to labor, and even that word for labor often has connotations of weariness, of working toil, pardon me, getting worn out through working. But you all know this, even in just everyday life, right? When you work hard at something and it wears you out, but you reap the benefit of that, do you mind the work anymore? No, now the work is good, because I got the benefit, I see why this was worthwhile. But if you go through all the labor and the toil and the sweat and the tears and the pain, and then nothing seems to come of it, You're like, why am I doing this, right? It's not worthwhile. The Psalm is saying, here's what it means to be in a truly life-giving relationship with God. It means as you invest for the glory of God and the good of his people, as you labor for God, nothing of your labor will be in vain. It will actually benefit you forever. You will eat of it. You will enjoy this. In Christ, we can see this, not only in the sense that In Christ, we can see how we lay up treasure in heaven. That's the first point. You can, in Christ's death, resurrection with him, he takes all the labor of your hands and he makes it worthwhile forever. That's not something you can do on your own. He takes it and makes it something that is truly good forever by his grace. That's living in union with Christ. That's why the apostle Paul could say that I am crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. He is saying why everything I've achieved in my flesh, I count that as done. It's worthless unless I know Christ, right? Then my life is worthwhile. And that's the beauty of it, folks. You know that as you trust Christ, everything you invest in, everything that's done by faith working through love has eternal rewards. It will benefit you now, yes, and it will benefit you forever. You will never stop being blessed by what God has enabled you to produce. And think, by the way, think of God's goodness in that. What would your life amount to without that? Nothing. You would be a pile of dirt in a cemetery somewhere with a headstone over you that nobody remembers anymore. And that's your life. Everything you slaved for and loved, pile of dirt. That's what your life is without Christ. But for those who fear the Lord, here's the goodness of God, the blessing that he's giving, right? The condition he's bringing you into. You're actually going to work, you're gonna work hard, and you're gonna benefit from it forever. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. It will be good. In Christ, your labor brings lasting nourishment. Christ restores what Adam lost. Christ brings your labor to eternal good. But next here, we see in verse three, that in Christ, your marriage is caught up into the beautiful love of Christ and his bride. In Christ, your marriage is what this focuses on. Caught up into the beautiful love of Christ and his bride, your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house, it says in verse three. Now let's stop right there. It says your wife will be like a fruitful vine. Now I've heard preachers nowadays say, you know, man, you probably shouldn't tell your wife that she's like a vine. But I disagree. If you tell your wife she's like a fruitful vine and she doesn't appreciate it, Men, it's because you haven't taught your wife to think Bible well enough. It's true, right? The point of the imagery is something you have to get from God's perspective. It's not trying to just say, hey, look at the world around you on its own, apart from Christ, apart from God's purposes, apart from all of the history of God's redemption, and you'll understand the image. No, you have to understand the image in light of God. and what he's created and what he's bringing to consummation in Jesus Christ. And then, ladies, it is a very good compliment to be called a fruitful vine. Yes. It means you're flourishing. When you think about a vine, even in scripture, there's so many ways that this is used. God's planting of a vine, his people Israel, that he cared for as a vine dresser, right? And brought forth fruit. And pardon me, of course, it can be used in a context of judgment that when they didn't bring forth the fruit that God called for, then there was judgment. But the point is, God was calling forth fruitful living in them. It's actually used in the Song of Solomon for the joyful marriage relationship. And you can see how it lends itself so much to that. What is the vineyard but the fat of the land, the grape, the fruit of the grape, the wine, right? All of God's goodness in creation coming out into his good purposes. And so when the wife is called a fruitful vine here, he's talking about your wife flourishing. in all dimensions of life. Yes, that will include children, like we just saw in Psalm 127, right? That's a blessing from God. That's a fruitfulness that God gives, an amazing blessing, because he's giving you eternal souls, like no other creaturely thing can be. That's included here, children, definitely. But it's more than just that. It's fruitful in every way. It's flourishing as a person, as a wife, as a mother. Why? because the man fears the Lord. I, by the way, think it's fascinating. This Psalm doesn't really directly talk anything about the man himself, right? If you're a man who fears the Lord, what good is that gonna be for you? It doesn't talk about you, but it does talk about your relationships. And those relationships are going to become rich and fruitful and productive and good, something you will truly enjoy. And as we think about marriage itself, I think one of the reasons God uses this imagery right here is that God designed marriage to be a beautiful creaturely analogy of the love of Christ and his bride, the church. I think when you sing this psalm, you should think about Christ enjoying the fruitfulness of his bride. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. And folks, I think Jesus Christ has claimed that promise. And he says, it's true. My wife, my bride will be fruitful. She will produce everything I have called her to, and it will be wonderful. And folks, when we think about that today in our day, pardon me, We should see this coming out in our churches, right? Christ is purifying his bride. Christ is the ultimate man who fears the Lord. The ultimate seed of David, the King, is purifying a bride and making her abundantly fruitful all over the world throughout history. This is a wonderful thing. And by the way, you can see from this very truth here how this applies just as much to every single one of you who are not married here today as it does to those who are married, or just as much to wives as it does to husbands, right? Because the whole point here is God is bringing life in all of its relationships that reflect His glory to full fruition in Jesus Christ. I would say to you today, if you're single and you invest your life in Christ's church, You are being that wife who is a fruitful vine within the house. You are living in the temple of God, bringing forth fruit day and night. This is a wonderful calling. And God pronounces this blessing on those who fear him. It says here, your children will be like olive shoots. In other words, in Christ, your children become a lasting legacy of productive discipleship. Again, you have to think Bible here when you think about this imagery. Your children, olive shoots around your table. Of course, you think of olive trees in the land that God had provided. Again, the fat of the land, the olive oil bringing forth what was barren into something rich and gloriously good. The wine and the oil, God bringing forth the best of the land here. and your children are gonna be like that. Here's the olive shoots though, they're the next generation. There's production going on and it's passing on to the next generation. And it's going on and on and on. There's hope for the future because your children are like olive shoots and they are around your table. Don't miss that imagery as well. I mean, we don't normally think about olive shoots growing around a table, right? You think of olive shoots growing out in the olive grove over there. No, this is around your table. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, God said, Psalm 23 says. Even the table itself, folks, is an image of God's blessing. When God has provided for life, and you sit down together as a family at a table, and you have food to eat, and you have joyful relationships in harmony with one another, this is a beautiful thing, and it's all pointing to, and it's all participating in, for the one who fears God, life in Christ. You look at these images here, by the way, and I think every man, woman, and child on this planet, Christian or not, can identify with these blessings. That is, everyone wants a home. Everyone wants a place of rest and peace. Everyone wants a place of rich relationships, where we're in harmony with one another, and we enjoy life together, right? All of us want that. I was just looking this last week, at that famous Norman Rockwell painting called Freedom from Want, which if you remember that, where there's a family gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner. There is grandpa standing at the head of the table and just leaning out in front of him, putting a huge turkey down onto the table is grandma. And she's just prepared this feast for the family. And she's setting it there in the middle of the table. And of course the table is all decorated with their best china. And then sitting around the table you see the smiling and laughing faces of the family members. You see a beautiful young woman on the right. You see in the corner a man actually mischievously looking back at the painting as if it's a snapshot instead of a painting. You see young and old all together all around the table. Why did that become an iconic painting in America, when it was painted in the middle of World War II, when people are struggling, and people are like, hey, I love this. Why? Because it's talking about the blessings that we identify, right? We want life. We want goodness. We want family relationships. Okay, good, you were made for that. God creates those things. But how do those things actually come to fulfillment? Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. That's the key thing here, right? God will bring all this, far beyond the natural relationships here, God will bring these to fulfillment in Christ. And the emphatic declaration of verse four closes off his stanza by saying, behold, thus shall the man be blessed. Indeed, this is true. Absolutely, emphatically true. This is how the man will be blessed, who fears the Lord. And so because of that, the psalm closes in verses five and six with a prayer for blessing. We saw a pronouncement of blessing on the pilgrim who fears the Lord in the first stanza, and now we see a prayer for blessing. Because we believe God's pronouncement of blessing, we pray for him to fulfill it, right? And isn't that what prayer is? A response to God's promises? God says, I will do this. And so we call upon him, Lord, do what you have promised. Do what you have said. It says in verse five here, the Lord bless you from Zion. Pardon me. This is what we pray for. May the Lord bless you from Zion, the place of his rule in his Messiah. God accomplishing all of his purposes in Jesus Christ and from his place of rule, may he give all of that to you. And that results then in some of the things we see in this verse. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you see your children's children. In other words, we're praying your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is the good life, trusting and obeying God, seeing him answer his promises to give us eternal life in Christ by the Spirit. It says here, the result of God's blessing is that you will see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life. For us today at our stage in the outworking of God's plan of redemption, that means seeing the church flourishing, seeing the church flourishing in her mission and her relationship with God as she's on her way to the new Jerusalem. You have come to Mount Zion, Hebrews tells us. This is true of you right now in Christ. And how we need this today, I would urge you as a congregation, if you have any sense of what's going on in the world today, that you would say, May the Lord bless you from Zion so that you will see the good of Jerusalem, the good of his people, the good of his church. Folks, we need the church to be strengthened, to be strong today. We need God to be sending out his blessing. Apart from that, what hope do we have? I mean, seriously, look around at this congregation right here. You're all wonderful people, by the way. But I really don't look out at this congregation and think, man, we've got the power. We're gonna change the world. I just hate to break it to us. You know, we're actually not that great. We're not that powerful. We're not that wise. We're not that wealthy, right? So what do we do? No, it's actually true. God hasn't called many of the wise of this world, has he? And He's called you though, because by His blessing, you will be the ones that accomplish His mission in this world. The Lord bless you from Zion, I say today. May the Lord bless all of you from Jesus Christ's throne right now, so that you will see the good of Jerusalem. What will you begin to see? You'll begin to see His church being what He has called it to be. You'll begin to see the relationships that Jesus Christ's Spirit brings about, the love and the joy and the peace and the patience from all the fruit of the Spirit. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples by the love you have for one another." Right? You'll see people laying down their lives for one another. You'll see pilgrims, pardon me, toiling along, but not being conformed to this world, being transformed by the reading of their minds, fighting the good fight. Yes, going against the grain of this world, even though they're going with the grain of the universe. You'll see people's delighting in the Lord. You'll see people wanting to worship Him and invite others to do the same, right? To submit to Him, to fear Him as well. May the Lord bring that about here at High Country Baptist Church. That's what you will see as the Lord sends out His blessing from Zion. You'll also see something else. Children's children, it says here in verse six. Multi-generational spiritual fruitfulness. What would it be for our congregation to see children's children, the sons of your sons going forward. That's something that's near and dear to our hearts as a congregation, as all of you have been around here know, right? A multi-generational vision of God's faithfulness. We're not here as a congregation to just figure out what works right now, and let's do it. You know, hold our finger to the wind and say, oh, the wind's blowing that way right now. I guess we'll go that way too. That's not the way we work as a congregation. Why? Because we wanna see our children's children. We're not here for just what works right now. Folks, and that does mean we're gonna have to go against the flow a little bit here, right? We're gonna have to fear the Lord and trust him. Because so much of, let's just say, we'll limit it to America, is geared toward pragmatism. What works and what works now. And that very easily bleeds into the church a lot of times. What seems to work right now to get a lot of people? And yet, how has that played out for us in our society? Sometimes we ask the question, what would have happened, just say the last four generations of American Christianity, if just Christians had made disciples of their own children? Not anybody else even, right? Just their own children. And they were faithful generation after generation to do that. You know what, you see a church that's a whole lot stronger than it is right now. You see a lot more true Christians in this country than we would right now. We're all about how big and how great our numbers are and how many people, one of the Lord or things like that. Well, why is it the church is declining in America? Not just in terms of numbers, but even in terms of spiritual vitality, right? We say, May the Lord bless you from Zion. When God is blessing, it doesn't always look grand and great right now. Sometimes it looks like a lot of work. But you know what you begin to see? You begin to see generation after generation after generation following Christ, trusting him, seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness, walking the pathways to Zion. In their hearts are the pathways to Zion. This is what we begin to see, and this is what we want as a church. So when we pray, may the Lord bless you from Zion, It's because we want to see multi-generational faithfulness. And that's how we want to work, because we trust God, because we fear Him, because that's where our hope is. Pardon me. And this song closes with this prayer that we've seen already in Psalm 125, peace be upon Israel. And really when we pray that, we're praying for the coming kingdom of God. We're praying for God to fulfill all of his promises through his Messiah. We're praying for Christ to come quickly. We're praying for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We're looking for that kingdom of righteousness and peace. We're very much like Abraham, our spiritual forefather, whose vision was for a city whose builder and maker is God, right? And so he trusted God and he went out. Folks, I hope you're a pilgrim in that same vein. Psalm 128 is designed to encourage you in that way. And let me just sum it up with this. I hope if you see nothing else, that Psalm 128 encourages you how good it will be to fear the Lord and to walk in His ways. Blessed is the man, right? Blessed is everyone. You want God's goodness? Here's the pathway. Life as a pilgrim does involve suffering. We don't fit in with this world system. But life as a pilgrim to the new Jerusalem is deeply and truly and eternally good. I hope you get that today. If that's your confidence and your faith, let's confess our faith that Jesus is Lord together as a congregation. Jesus is Lord.