And I'll start referring to commentaries to try to see if there's some good nuggets that I can utilize. And 10 times out of 10, there are, because I'm just one person. And it was almost without fail that every single time I opened up to a preface to Psalm 128, it said, this is a continuation of the conversation from Psalm 127. So I suppose what I'm supposed to tell you is just refer back to David's sermon last week, and you'll be fine. But it's interesting that the text does follow the same trajectory, in a lot of ways, as the previous psalm. The Lord likes to repeat Himself to us, doesn't He? We don't have one gospel, we have four. And even in, for example, 1st or 2nd Corinthians, or a lot of those letters that are a secondary conversation, it's almost without fail that the apostles are going to refer back to things they've already said in their first letter, because we are people who are prone to wonder, and it's slow for us to really take into account all that's said. So it's really a blessing to us when the Lord does repeat himself with the same ideas, the same concepts. as we see in a previous psalm, especially in this case, Psalm 128 and the relationship to Psalm 127. But to give a little bit of a flavor of this psalm, I suppose we could fast forward multiple generations to the time of Jesus. And this is actually a fast forward, even from where we're at in John's gospel, because we're actually looking at the very end of Jesus' life where he gives the most profound prophecy of his entire earthly ministry, and that was in the Olivet Discourse, where he begins to describe the coming destruction of Jerusalem. And as he does that, he paints a picture of what the scene is going to look like in the city and around the temple. And one of the warnings that he gives to his hearers is that whenever you see the temple desolated, whenever you see this siege begin to take place, flee to the mountains. That's his advice to them. Well, in our culture, it seems that we've kind of taken that sentiment that Jesus gives, and we've appropriated it, we've kind of distorted it a little bit to this kind of modern day idiom that says, head for the hills. In other words, all is lost, All is vanity. At least keep your life. Run to the hills and flee to safety. Well, it turns out that even though many Christians have taken this approach to culture and the world at large, it turns out that this is not the way that God wants his people to live. In fact, he gives us a very different trajectory to follow. And rather than being megaphones in the street or crying voices on a rooftop, God wants us instead to be a spectacle in his theater. Or you might say a city shining on a hill. Not a bunch of people scared for their lives cowering in darkness on a hill. And I think this psalm really does demonstrate to us the way that that takes place in the here and now and in the everyday course of life. So there's a lot of ways that we could really break up this Psalm. So it's certainly not the only way that we could do it, but I thought looking at this and kind of outlining it, if you're somebody that takes notes, we didn't include this outline in the bulletin, but you can write it down if you, if it would be helpful to you. And with the way that I want to look at this Psalm tonight is the blessing in verse one, the benefits of the blessing in verse number two and three, the summary statement of the blessing in verse number four, And then the benediction in verses five and six, that's going to be kind of the loose trajectory we're going to take as we work our way through this psalm. Let's start with verse one, the blessing itself. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. It really is interesting that this idea of blessing really follows that last verse in Psalm 127, blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. And he moves on now in this same kind of idea of blessing, the same theme of blessing, and now it expands. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. You know, many of us do know in our denomination that the Westminster Confession of Faith as well as the Shorter and Larger Catechisms are those doctrinal standards that really demonstrate what this denomination believes officially. And even if you aren't part of the PCA or haven't grown up in a Presbyterian context, my idea is that you are very well familiar with that first Shorter Catechism question. What is the chief end of man? And I know that David even alluded to this last week. But I don't know how many of you are familiar as you move to question number two and three and so on and so forth. But I do think it's always helpful to find some kind of correlation to a passage you're reading to really help amplify what's being said. And you can look no further than the third Shorter Catechism question, which asks this, what do the scriptures principally teach? Of course, the answer, if you're familiar with it, is the scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. So it's a twofold answer to that. And I think it's interesting that you could really ask that question and find the answer to it in the very first verse of this psalm. You could ask it this way, what do the scriptures principally teach? You could say what man is to believe concerning God, or you could summarize that by saying, fear the Lord, as a command, fear the Lord. That's the first part of verse number one in Psalm 128. And then that second part of the answer, what duty God requires of man, could be answered this way, walking in his ways. So the scriptures principally teach who God is, And by consequence of that, we should fear him, we should have a reverence towards him, and what God requires of us, that we walk in his ways. There's a very neat and orderly idea of the Bible. The Bible is God's revelation to us, first and foremost of himself. Because people, it turns out, are really interested in creating their own gods. I don't know if you know this of yourself, or if you know this of other people, or if you're just somebody that reads history. But again and again, man wants to create God. Man wants to have this idea of God, but left to ourselves, we come up with very poor counterfeits, don't we? We come up with gods who, first of all, have a beginning, gods who are created, which automatically rules out the possibility of them being a god because they have a beginning. And it just gets worse and worse as you move on, look at other religions, look at all of the polytheism that you see, especially out in the East. It's very much a distorted view of even the concept of God. But the Bible is special because it is God revealing himself to us, God stooping down, God condescending to our level and speaking to us very clearly of who he is. That's what the Bible describes from Genesis 1-1 all the way to the end. God is revealing himself to us. Of course we see that in our Sunday morning studies of the Gospel of John. Before we start talking about Jesus as an earthly figure, as just a rabbi, as just a teacher, as just a prophet, as many people like to compliment him even if they don't believe he's the Messiah, you remember the very first chapter of John starts with the character and attributes of God, who God is. And of course it speaks to The Trinity speaks to Christ's divinity. God cares very much that we have a right view of who he is, and that's how he reveals himself to us. But he also wants us to know what does that mean for me in light of who God is. Of course, the whole idea of the gospel, the whole idea of sin and our rebellion against God, the fact that we can't commune with him, all of these things are covered. And you could really summarize the duty that God requires of us is to embrace Christ, right? And we talked about that a lot in our Sunday school lesson this morning about the difference between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. We thought about Christ and his finished work. It's what the Bible describes to us from beginning to end. But there's also another way besides going to documents and statements of faith, catechism questions, there's also another way that you can try to make correlations to a text and I always find it helpful. If you're in the Old Testament, look to the New Testament for some kind of correlation and then vice versa. If you're in the New, look back to the Old and you're always going to find some kind of relationship because first of all God doesn't contradict himself, second of all All of this is God's truth. So you're always able to find those. And I found it helpful to really think about Jesus' statement in the upper room discourse, as you find at the very end of John's gospel, which we'll get to in months or years from now, however long it takes. And Jesus says many things to them, but one of the most important ones to really describe the character of his disciples is by saying this, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So love is commandment keeping in this context, or at least the demonstration of love, we might say, is keeping his commandments. We could also do this correlation here. The idea of loving the Lord is also represented in Psalm 128, blesses everyone who fears the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And then the second part of it, who walks in his ways, you could say, keeps his commandments. So again, it's this focus on who God is and what our life looks like, what we look like as his people in light of the revelation of God. That's what the psalm is really trying to capture. But of course, when you really want to capitalize on a word such as fear, you're met with a lot of Should we say combativeness from our culture or especially even the Christian community that wants to focus to a distorted sense, the idea of God's grace and God's love, where you use words like wrath or judgment or especially fear. And somebody will come up and say, well, hang on, because in first John, we're told there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. So what do we do with that? How do we understand this? Well, of course, the Bible does tell us, as I mentioned just a moment ago, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Nobody would argue that the Bible tells us to throw wisdom to the wayside when you get to the New Testament. The Bible also doesn't tell us that the only way that you can love God is to be afraid of Him all the time, because that's not this mutual relationship and acceptance that God's word gives to us. But still, the concept of fear is qualified by blessing in Psalm 128. Those who fear the Lord are blessed. They're not slow on the uptake. They're not living in the Old Testament and not, you know, following the times and getting with the times. They're blessed. So how do we understand this? Well, of course, we have to be careful to always not make too much of an English word if there's some kind of a stipulation made in the Hebrew or the Greek, but that's not even what's happening here. What's really happening here is this idea of fearing the Lord really comes down to this. It's not being afraid of Him in the sense that we're never going to be accepted by Him, but it's respecting The idea and the truth of what it takes for we as sinful creatures, as rebels, as those who prefer our own ways, what it takes to bridge that gap, to undo that chasm between sinful man and holy God, when we understand this holy majestic God, perfect, uncreated, without beginning or end, never even an idea of sin in his mind, that we are accepted by him and brought into his presence. God doesn't cease to be holy. He doesn't cease to be majestic. He doesn't cease to be divine. But yet, we still struggle with sin, don't we? We still have thoughts, perhaps even as we sit in here this evening, that would be unpleasing to God. but still he accepts us. And it's probably the best image that we can really look at is in our call to worship this evening. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who was side by side, who is even in his bosom at the last supper, looks at the exalted Christ when he's no longer in a state of humiliation, when he's no longer under a veil, as it were, from his glory, that John takes one look at him and he falls down as though he were dead. The best friend of Jesus, if you want to put it that way, But it's the same imagery that you see in Isaiah 6, isn't it? That we say if it were left up to us, if it were based on our own qualifications, we'd have reason to be afraid day in and day out. In fact, we'd have reason to just die right there on the scene. You think of the Israelites. Go speak to God, Moses. Speak to him up on the mountain and tell us how we're supposed to live. But please tell God, don't speak audibly anymore because we'll die if that happens again. But yet Jesus comes just as he does to John. He comes and takes us by the side and he puts his arm around us and he says, fear no more. Now that doesn't mean no longer have a fear of the Lord. But what it does mean is that God's love, God's affection towards us comes through and it qualifies us. The work of Jesus Christ qualifies us into fellowship and into relationship with God. And you can't think about that unless you think about God's character, unless you think about God's attributes, unless God ceases to be this abstract idea and really becomes the revelation of who he is in scripture. And when you think about that, you realize that it is truly all of grace, that he desires even to meet with us, that he accepts our prayers. That's what it means to fear the Lord, a respect and awareness of his attributes, of his character, who he is and all of his perfections. And that we are accepted in him through Christ. But there's even more here in this very first verse. Blessed is not just men, not just Jews. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. Anybody that tells you that the Old Testament is purely a Jewish testament is simply mistaken. When you get to the prophets, when you get to the Psalms, in fact, even in Genesis, the language of expansion, the language of universal inclusion is all over the place. Even here, blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. The blessing is to everyone. It excludes all ethnicities. It excludes all genealogies. And it's a matter of fearing the Lord and walking in his ways. That's the blessing in a nutshell. But God wants to describe to us now what this blessing looks like. OK, blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. What does that mean tangibly? What does that look like? How would that express itself in the life of a Christian? Well, we see that in the benefits of it. Verses two and three. 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. This blessing is expressed in verse number two as a twofold fulfillment of promises we've seen earlier in the Old Testament. You think about Jesus and that wonderful Bible study that he does on the Emmaus Road with the disciples and he gives them a biblical theology or a Christology of the Old Testament that it all points to him, that it all finds its fulfillment and centrality on him. I would have loved to have been there. But at least we know he said it. So when we look at the Old Testament and find ways that Jesus is the fulfillment of things, we're not simply spiritualizing or allegorizing the text, but we're having a Christ-centered interpretation, which is what we should have because that's the point of it all. But you see this expressed in two ways. It's really an undoing. of curse. That's what blessing is for people who once were enslaved to sin and now find themselves in a state of blessing. It's the undoing of the state of curse, the state of being enemies to the Lord. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. There's the first half. You think about what God says to Adam after sin enters into the world. What does he say to him as the gardener? He says the earth is going to produce thorns and thistles. you're going to toil, it's going to be rough. And that's just a very small description of the fact that many of us, when we take out a hammer to hit the nail, we can't hit it right on the nail, but we can get our thumb every time. The thorns and thistles of life, even in something as small as trying to hit a nail with a hammer, or trying to make it here to church without getting mad at the people driving on the road in front of you and behind you. But even in a more extreme way, right, the entire earth itself is under a state of curse. I mean, we live in humid Florida. I just got back from humid South Florida. It's even more humid than humid North Florida. And it is the case that in this life we're subjected to these things. We're subjected to the state of this earth outside of making all things new in a new heavens and new earth. But yet, even though that is true, Even though we are subjected to these things, notice the surety of it. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. You shall be blessed and it shall be well with you. We know that Jesus is the second Adam, the greater Adam. And even in that wonderful imagery in John's gospel, Jesus is found and is supposed by Mary that he must be the gardener, right? This new gardener, the one who in him we enjoy the fruit of the labor of our hands. And even more than that, the second part of verse two, you shall be blessed and it shall be well with you. No doubt what the psalmist is thinking of here is that Abrahamic blessing. You think about what God says, to Abraham, in you all the nations will be blessed. Again, there's that universal inclusion. All nations shall be blessed. And then here in verse two, you shall be blessed and it shall be well with you. In all of life, if you were to summarize it in one word for the Christian, it would be blessed that God's special care and love towards us is extended day in and day out. And we enjoy that. day in and day out. And it's interesting, too, that the hope of this doesn't fall to the wayside, even though we're in a sinful and fallen world. I mean, you look no further than the book of Ecclesiastes to see what it means to toil for nothing. Solomon surveys the earth and he says, you know, I see a lot of rich people. They've worked very hard to accumulate all of their possessions, all of their riches, all of their wealth. And you know what? One day they're going to die and it's going to be left to a fool. The entire empire that they built is going to come crashing down. What about world systems? What should we say about nations that were seen or even empires that were seen as indestructible? Nowhere to be found anymore. Nobody's talking about pharaohs anymore. Those were a thing of the past. Nobody's talking about the Roman Empire anymore. That was a thing of the past. All of the effort sewn into those things, and yet they vanish. But Paul tells us that our hope of blessing isn't even in jeopardy if we die. In fact, he says to die is gain. That's because ultimately, as James tells us, every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights in whom there is no shadow due to change. That as great as every blessing is, it's really just an extension of the blessing of receiving the Lord himself, of being welcomed into his presence. And if that's where our ultimate blessing is, Well, it doesn't matter if we die. It doesn't matter if our house gets burned down. It may be sad, but Jesus told us we're going to inherit the entire earth. So don't worry about that. There's a certainty of eating the fruit of the labor of our hands. There's a certainty of blessing. There's a certainty of it going well with us. And again, this is in stark contrast to the world. And we see that especially Verse number three, your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house, your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Well, this verse is out of sorts with our culture. You could say that carpe diem. is the phrase of our day, right? Seize the day is really kind of what it means, but I think a better expression of our culture is not only seize the day, and I had to look this up, so I don't think I'm an expert in Latin, but carpe obcasio, which means seize the occasion or the opportunity. Even the day is too broad. Living in the day is too broad for our culture. It's really living in the minuscule moment, even the second. Well, how do we see that in our culture in light of verse number three, especially? Well, it's expressed in abortion on demand. It's expressed in a continual delay and even refraining from marriage. No longer is marriage viewed as this enterprise between man and woman to come together in marriage and to figure and experience life out together. Instead, now it's I'll get married after I do everything that I'm going to do in my course of life. Marriage is like the last step instead of the first step. We even see it in a rejection of the past, a rejection or a rewriting of history. And you see it ultimately and little thought of future consequences of our actions and the trajectories that we're following in the present. That's our culture in a nutshell. No respect for the past, no eye towards the future, only tunnel vision in the present and remove anything that could ever be a hindrance to that, i.e. children and spouses. It's a rejection of the idea of heritage altogether. It's a living for the very minuscule moment. But you know what's true about living for the moment? There's nothing more fleeting. There's nothing that could be described more so as vanity than the present moment. Because even when you take the time to try to conceive of the present moment, it's already a past moment. It's already gone. But yet our culture has placed their bets all on the present. You could say it's a singular devotion to vanity. But we Christians are a spectacle to the world because God calls us to do anything but place all our bets towards vanity. Instead, God tells us that we have the copyright to marriage, to family. Because as God is the creator and the establisher of those things, we as his people demonstrate and exemplify the most pure expression of those things. Sure, nonbelievers can get married and have children, but they don't know how to communicate or demonstrate the reality to which those things point to. They don't know how to have a marriage. that shows the relationship between Christ and his bride. They don't know how to raise up children that shows the care of God as a heavenly father towards his children. There's only a here and now expression of those things. And most of the time they're only done because, well, that's the next thing you do in life. You get married eventually and you have kids eventually. But we have a very important task. And it's not given to us as marching orders as much as it's given to us in the framework of blessing, just as you saw in Psalm 127. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. A flourishing, a nourishment. That's what the family life is supposed to be. And in a desert land culture, how much would a flourishing garden stand out in the midst of a dry desert? All you got to do is have it there and it'll stand out like a sore thumb or maybe a breath of fresh air. And that's what the Lord has called us to do as his people, to demonstrate by way of earthly analogy who he is. The greatest demonstrations of those things being husband and wife and being children. But notice especially as an exhortation that the marriage is supposed to be like a fruitful vine and the children are supposed to be like olive shoots which expresses the idea of health, of wellness. And you know in the New Testament God calls men to live with their wives in an understanding way because failing to do that will actually hinder your prayers. We saw that earlier in 1 Peter. And in the midst of giving the command to honor your father and mother, Paul qualifies that by saying fathers don't provoke your children to wrath. It's supposed to be a flourishing relationship. And surely this means we need grace, we need God's help. We're still sinful people, but we have an excellent opportunity in this culture to live countercultural, but to live biblical among all else by demonstrating this fruitfulness, by demonstrating this health, this nourishment in our family lives, the same way that God cares for us. We move to verse four, behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. Now, we just have to say that we've got to be careful to be balanced. I want to make it sound like the only people that are blessed are married people and those with children. Especially when you look at verse four, behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. Well, of course, women and children are not excluded. It's not just men that are blessed. You even saw that as early on as the very first words of the psalm, blessed is everyone. We know that the psalmist isn't just talking about family life, but what he's done is he's given us the blessing, verse one, and then he says, here's an example of that. Here's a demonstration of that. And he looks to the family life. But of course, we have relationships, we have a church family right here in which we all have the responsibility to care for one another the same way that a family life would. But behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. It's this wonderful conversation piece, but we go back again and again to the assurance of it, thus shall. the man be blessed. There's no question of it. God's people are a blessed people and we are described as those who fear the Lord in all things. That Abrahamic language, by the way, of being blessed and being well with us, Genesis 17, 7, I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you. God has this idea of heritage, whereas our culture is in the here and now with no thought to the past, no thought to the future. Eliminate anything that gets in the way of the best enjoyment of here and now. God tells us, no, it's about heritage. It's about receiving from those who went before us, and it's about extending and teaching to those who will come after us. That's the idea. That's what the Christian life is supposed to be is a thought towards way more than the present moment. Okay, so we've seen really the entire blessing. It really serves as a bookend in verse one and verse four, and then just a brief example, verses two and three. And then as a result of that, there's this beautiful benediction in the closing two verses five and six, So here's the blessing. Here's an example of it. Remember, God's people will be blessed. And now a benediction to extend this blessing to the hearers. 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. I mentioned the idea of appropriating things from the Old Testament. Of course, we spent time earlier on in Sunday school talking about dispensationalism and covenant theology and really thinking about whether or not we can take things in the Old Testament as our own, as a New Testament church. You saw in the very first verse this universal extension. No genealogy, no ethnicity is excluded from this blessing. Blessed is everyone so long as they fear the Lord. They're in a state of blessing and walk in his ways. But then you get to verses five and six, which are supposed to just be a closing benediction. And suddenly you have exclusive language. In fact, very exclusive language. I mean, how is it that we can appropriate this Psalm as our own? when there is such exclusive verbiage such as Zion in Jerusalem and even Israel. You could say there's a threefold assurance that we're talking about an ethnic people, right? So how do we make sense of this? And is it grasping at straws to try to say that we can really make this our own without distorting the meaning? Well, let me give you just a very quick flavor of how the New Testament treats these ideas of Zion and of blessing in Jerusalem and even of Israel. Here's three verses, three passages to consider. The first one is from Hebrews 12. Ephesians Passage from chapter one and chapter two, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And then in chapter two, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And then in Galatians, for neither circumcision counted for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, even the Israel of God." Regardless of whether you embrace something like covenant theology or dispensationalism, or if you land somewhere in between, I think these verses straight from the Bible make clear of a New Testament theology that Zion is the manifestation of God's kingdom. You hear it very often in especially Reformed circles that when we gather on Sunday mornings, we're doing exactly what the text says in Hebrews 12, that we're gathering before the heavenly throne room. We're gathering before the spirits of just men made perfect. We're gathering before the presence of God in worship. And the author of Hebrews says that when we do this, we have come to Zion itself, the heavenly Jerusalem. So Zion is the manifestation of God's kingdom. It's not tied to a place. It was a place, but it's not tied to a place. Zion is the place of God's people. of all places and all times, not only those who are alive now, but also those who have already departed this earth, the spirits of just men made perfect in the presence of God, all who have died in Christ, both in the Old and New Testament. And the assembling of God's people together is the medium of his blessing. This whole concept of blessing is not this abstract thing, but it's what we're doing right now. The world is in flames, turmoil and division surround us at every corner. You turn on the news channel for five seconds, you want to turn it right back off, but yet we are in peace with one another in the presence of God himself, worshiping him, hearing from his word, a true blessing, a true nourishment as we are pilgrims here in this world, waiting for glory. The Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. This extension is really, we could say it this way, from the verbiage of Psalm 2, that we're to be a people full of joy and trembling. We rejoice in our acceptance of God calling himself our father, of Jesus Christ imputing his righteousness to us, and we tremble Because we have great respect for who God is, because he doesn't cease to be God. He doesn't voluntarily give away all of his characteristics just to be friends with us. But instead, he qualifies us to be in his presence, not only when we leave this earth, but even now. Even now, as he finds our worship and spirit and truth pleasing to him. Scriptures tells us that God is the only sovereign who dwells in unapproachable light. And at the same time, we're told through Christ to draw near with confidence to that very throne. And we find grace there, not rejection. We're not annihilated, but yet we find grace. We find true communion with the Lord. What a glorious thing that is. How often we overlook that. We make it just a theological category that we say on Sundays, then we leave and act like that's not even true. But that's what God tells us for our confidence and for our assurance. Well, I pray as we close that we consider this blessing, even as it is just a nugget of the reality of blessing that we find all throughout the Bible, just one angle to look at it, though there are many. But I do pray that as we seek to exemplify who God is in the life that he's called us to, that it would be evident in our family lives, it would be evident in our marriages, in our relationship with our parents, in our relationship with our children. When the early church committed to God's word, committed to fearing him and walking in his ways, what was said of them is that they were men who were turning the world upside down. Of course, that was the world's take on it, but we know the truth of the matter. But may God be pleased to use us as his people walking in his ways to turn the world right side up again. Amen. Let's pray.