SPEAKER_00: Let me invite you to grab your Bibles and open them to Psalm 128.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 128 is where we will be this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Mother's Day is a day that we have set aside to honor moms, both those who are moms and those who have moms.
SPEAKER_00: It's a day of uh, I know, celebration for the the ladies that are in our life.
SPEAKER_00: It's also a day of loss for many and a day of sadness for many, for many who remember their moms who are no longer with us, a day of sadness for those who perhaps long to be moms.
SPEAKER_00: And so I chose Psalm 128 today because it talks about the blessings of family and the blessings of godly motherhood.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, we live in a fallen world where not all blessings are distributed equitably.
SPEAKER_00: Think of other examples of blessings.
SPEAKER_00: Job is a blessing, having a job.
SPEAKER_00: Um, having health is a blessing, and having a godly family is described in Psalm 128 is a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Living in a country with freedom, those are all blessings.
SPEAKER_00: And not everybody in the world has all of those blessings, or perhaps any of those blessings.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, we receive them all as blessings from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to encourage you this morning as we look at the blessings of having a godly family.
SPEAKER_00: I know there are going to be many who are listening to this sermon who don't have that godly family, who perhaps long for it or want it, those who are missing their own godly parents, or whatever your situation may be.
SPEAKER_00: I hope Psalm 128 encourages you.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're absent in this kind of godly family, let it encourage you in this way.
SPEAKER_00: Think of those other blessings I described, money and jobs and freedoms and whatnot.
SPEAKER_00: The lack of them in our life just increases our desire for the kingdom of God, our desire to be with our Lord Jesus Christ when he reigns over this world from his kingdom, where there will be no hunger, there will be no lack, there will be no tears, there will be just the Lord Jesus Christ and will be under his lordship, and what a day that will be.
SPEAKER_00: And so, with that said, if Psalm 128 describes an absence in your life, I hope it fans the flame of desire in your heart for heaven and the kingdom of God even more.
SPEAKER_00: But for those who are from a godly family, or those who are from a family right now, you're raising kids.
SPEAKER_00: I know it can be hard under lockdown with everybody cooped up together.
SPEAKER_00: You know, your the governor said not to leave the house, the city of Alexandria Alexandria's closed the parks, and you have five kids and you're in an apartment building.
SPEAKER_00: You might be wondering how, again, is family a blessing?
SPEAKER_00: But I hope Psalm 128 this morning encourages you to receive family as the blessing God designed it.
SPEAKER_00: It's the blessing that God means to give to the world.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, all families are a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh ungodly families, even in a more limited sense, are a blessing as they bring life and care for children who are most vulnerable into the world.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a particular blessing that this psalm describes for believing families, a blessing that begins with the foundation of the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I want to focus on this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So as I read the Psalm in a second, which I'll do, and you can make your way there to it now, as I read it, just give thanks as I'm reading it for your parents who gave you life.
SPEAKER_00: Give thanks perhaps for your adopted parents who brought you into their family and raised you.
SPEAKER_00: Give thanks for your grandparents, perhaps, who cared for you.
SPEAKER_00: Give thanks for the children you have, or give thanks for the children that those in your church or your friends have.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what circumstances you're in, as I read this psalm, channel it into blessings and be thankful for the way you've experienced those blessings, even if in a secondary or tangenti.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord, Psalm 128.
SPEAKER_00: It's a song of ascent.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh, who walks in his ways.
SPEAKER_00: You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands, you shall be blessed, and it will be well with you.
SPEAKER_00: Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house.
SPEAKER_00: Your children will be like olive shoots around your table.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh blesses you from Zion.
SPEAKER_00: May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.
SPEAKER_00: May you see your children's children.
SPEAKER_00: Peace be upon Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The blessings in the Psalm start vertically and they move in a circle through the family, and they move horizontally out into the world.
SPEAKER_00: This blessing in this psalm is so multifaceted.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've never studied this psalm before, I hope you find it very intricately woven this morning, very beautiful in how it describes the blessing of God to the world to the family, because it is going in different directions.
SPEAKER_00: The foundation of this is a vertical blessing from the Lord to any individual in the world that fears him.
SPEAKER_00: This is individuals that don't have children, individuals that are in ungodly relationships, any individual in the world has access to the kind of blessing described in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Happiness comes from the Lord, but it's experienced by fear in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It said, Blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: This is the same phrase that begins the book of Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: Happy is the person, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, but walks in the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's the way Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount with Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who are hunger and thirst for righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: The beatitudes.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same concept that happiness begins with a right understanding of your relationship with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to fear Yahweh?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the rest of verse 1 describes it, who walk in his ways.
SPEAKER_00: Fear of the Lord is seen in this conformity of your life to his will.
SPEAKER_00: If a person says they fear the king, what that means is they go before the king, they bow before him, and they do what the king commands them.
SPEAKER_00: Fear of the king is seen in obedience to the king.
SPEAKER_00: And the same can be said in the book of Proverbs, in the book of Psalms, for the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It is seen in this regular and constant conformity to God's will as revealed through God's word.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking about a one-time desire to conform your life to God's word, a one-time decision you make to follow the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The fear of the Lord is described as those who walk in his ways.
SPEAKER_00: Walking is the regular pattern of your life.
SPEAKER_00: The godly person repeatedly drives his behavior into conformity with God's word.
SPEAKER_00: He wrestles with his thoughts, he wrestles with his affections, and he drives his actions repeatedly to correspond to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: So much so that his life can be described as walking down a path.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a path is a place you're going over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: They're walking in his ways.
SPEAKER_00: And your life of fear of the Lord is so much obedience in how you think and feel and believe and act that you see a path worn out through your life.
SPEAKER_00: Your mind is in the Word of God, your heart is in the Word of God, your hands are in the Word of God, you're living out of the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's where blessing comes from.
SPEAKER_00: It's a daily life which finds expression in your conduct conformed to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what that means is that this is a blessing that comes only through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: People are born in sin and born separated from God because of our sin, and God will judge people because of their sin, and they're absent God's blessing when they're living a life of sin.
SPEAKER_00: But when a person believes the gospel that God was not content to let everybody walk away in sin, but that God sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to earth, who robed himself in human flesh, who led a sinless life, and then was eventually betrayed and murdered for our sin as he was being led to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Our sin was taken from us and placed on him.
SPEAKER_00: So that he suffered bearing God's wrath.
SPEAKER_00: God poured out the judgment that our sin deserves.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't pour it out on us, he poured it out on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus suffers and dies on the cross in our place.
SPEAKER_00: So God pours out the wrath for our sin on his son.
SPEAKER_00: And then his son goes into the grave where he remains for three days, resurrects from the grave, and offers forgiveness of sins to any who would believe that message.
SPEAKER_00: What it means to believe that message is to believe that God is angry at your sin, that your sin deserves judgment, it deserves hell, and yet God hasn't given that to you.
SPEAKER_00: He's taken that and given it to Jesus Christ instead.
SPEAKER_00: And because you believe that he died bearing the wrath of God and that he resurrected from the grave, you can have the same eternal life that he has having resurrected from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: That is the only path for blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
SPEAKER_00: So it's a universal application here in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone, this is a universal invitation.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone in the world can believe that message and come to faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the foundation of happiness.
SPEAKER_00: It's the holiness that comes from conformity to God's word through faith in the death and resurrection of God's Son.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's just a general gospel proclamation.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of Psalm 128 is not concerned about anything generally.
SPEAKER_00: It's now taking that fear of the Lord and applying it specifically to the household.
SPEAKER_00: Specifically to the household.
SPEAKER_00: So what I'm saying here, and I want you to hear this, is the main point of Psalm 128.
SPEAKER_00: The happy family, the family that is built by those who have faith in God's word, is built in accordance with God's plan and God's design.
SPEAKER_00: The way you see somebody the most is in the context of their family.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, people can lie about who they are to the world, they can uh you know act like one person and in this situation and differently in that situation, they can put on deceptions, they can put on uh a fake persona and how they dress and how they act and what they talk about, but there is no faking the household.
SPEAKER_00: In the household is the real you on display for those who know you the most.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you want to talk about radical Christian living, if you want to talk about sold-out Christian living, that is just the most awesome declaration of the difference of the holy family versus the world, you're going to see it in the household, the way the family is designed.
SPEAKER_00: Radical Christian living is seen first and foremost in the family.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where the psalmist goes next.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna talk, we've talked about the vertical blessing of God to the world through individuals with faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now he goes to the circular blessing, the way the family is built and blesses each other in the household.
SPEAKER_00: And it's all built on faith in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna talk to fathers, then he's gonna talk to mothers, then he's gonna talk to children, and then about grandchildren even.
SPEAKER_00: This is a full package deal we're talking about here as Psalm 128 describes the family.
SPEAKER_00: It begins with the father.
SPEAKER_00: You shall eat, it says in verse 2, the fruit of the labor of your hands.
SPEAKER_00: And this the verb tense is here, switch from verse 1 is just everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2 is speaking specifically to the husbands, to the fathers.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that because verse 3 is speaking to your wife, it says, and then your children.
SPEAKER_00: So we're obviously beginning here with the husbands.
SPEAKER_00: You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands.
SPEAKER_00: You shall be blessed, and it will be well with you.
SPEAKER_00: This is a promise of satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: The husband will be able to provide for the family.
SPEAKER_00: He'll bring in food for the family.
SPEAKER_00: His work, and it doesn't mean that every godly husband's a farmer.
SPEAKER_00: It means he's laboring in the he's laboring in the world, and the result of his labor is he brings in food for the family to eat, and they will be satisfied with it.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be happy.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the word is, it's a different Hebrew word that sees in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed.
SPEAKER_00: There's the word Barak, it means just blessed by the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be blessed and they'll be happy because of what is brought home.
SPEAKER_00: We live in such a materialistic culture that we often see happiness and things we don't have.
SPEAKER_00: If I were to ask you, what would it take to make you happy?
SPEAKER_00: You might quickly rattle off a list of things you don't have, you know, a faster car, a bigger house, more of this, more money, more vacations, more uh these other things that make me happy.
SPEAKER_00: But this is a very radical kind of happiness that is seen in contentment with what the Lord has given you.
SPEAKER_00: And specifically contentment in what the Lord has given the ability for the husband to provide for his family.
SPEAKER_00: That kind of contentment.
SPEAKER_00: They will eat and they will be satisfied, they will be blessed with the labor of their hands.
SPEAKER_00: You know, why do why do husbands, why do people work in the world?
SPEAKER_00: Why do they go get jobs and work?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul tells the Thessalonians that if you don't work, you don't eat.
SPEAKER_00: But it's more than practical.
SPEAKER_00: There's an actual joy that comes from being able to provide for your family.
SPEAKER_00: And I I want you to again appreciate how radical this is when you put it in the overall scope of where the Bible's going with this.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God made Adam and Eve, and he gave them mandates.
SPEAKER_00: They were supposed to subdue the earth, rule on the earth, and they were supposed to be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_00: This is the image of God in them.
SPEAKER_00: This is what God does.
SPEAKER_00: He rules over the earth, and God gives life.
SPEAKER_00: We're made in the image of God, and so we will rule over the earth, and we will give life.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the catch.
SPEAKER_00: When sin entered the world, God uh the allowed the world to be marred by sin, and God then gave curses in those areas.
SPEAKER_00: And God gave curses in the particular areas he commanded Adam and Eve to work.
SPEAKER_00: They were supposed to subdue the earth, and now the curse, Adam, for the for the man, it will be hard for you to work.
SPEAKER_00: The ground will grow thorns, it will be hard for you to get food and bring it home.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be difficult.
SPEAKER_00: The ground will cut you, the ground will hurt you, you will labor, you will sweat, and it will be hard.
SPEAKER_00: Eve.
SPEAKER_00: Supposed to be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_00: Eve's curse will be through childbirth.
SPEAKER_00: It will be painful for her.
SPEAKER_00: But now you get to Psalm 128, and it is talking about a joy that comes through those same two areas that through work and through children.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at children in a second, but now on husbands for work, there will be an actual joy that comes in the very area that they immediately experience the curse, the difficulty of work.
SPEAKER_00: In that area, they will find joy.
SPEAKER_00: Even though work produces pain, it brings joy, and it brings joy through your sense of fulfillment, as described in the book of Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_00: It brings joy through your provision to your family.
SPEAKER_00: So notice what happens here.
SPEAKER_00: God's command to people to subdue the earth becomes the avenue of the curse that it'll be hard, it becomes the avenue of blessing through faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That there will be joy, that you'll be blessed through it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how how precious is it of our Lord that he gives us a command that is in his image, we experience sin by violating his word, and that hinders our ability to live in his image.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the nature of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And then he gives us blessings through faith that restore the joy in that exact area.
SPEAKER_00: This is the kindness of our God.
SPEAKER_00: The kindness of our God is seen just in this basic way he gives us joy in what he's commanded us to do.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's speaking of the husbands, and literally, next to verse 3, we go from the husbands to the wives.
SPEAKER_00: Your wife, it says, will be like a fruitful vine within your house.
SPEAKER_00: And that the within your house there, it's literally Hebrew means from the middle of your house, is growing up right in the middle of the house.
SPEAKER_00: There's a vine growing up in the house.
SPEAKER_00: The house, of course, is built around the vine.
SPEAKER_00: It's built around the vine, and the vine is what brings joy and it brings shade, and it brings a sense of just unity to the house.
SPEAKER_00: It ties the house together, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the image here of the wife.
SPEAKER_00: She's like the fruitful vine.
SPEAKER_00: This is an Old Testament idiom, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: It's a common expression in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: For someone who's happy, they get to sit under their own vine, is the image.
SPEAKER_00: You see that in 1 Kings 4 25, Micah 4, verse 4, Zechariah 3, verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: There's other places as well.
SPEAKER_00: We have American expressions like that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they rode off into the sunset together.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't literally mean they're off into the sunset.
SPEAKER_00: It means after their marriage, they built a happy family together.
SPEAKER_00: They lived happily ever after, it would be another one.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews didn't have those kind of expressions.
SPEAKER_00: They had this one, that they will live under their own vine.
SPEAKER_00: And here that vine is the wife.
SPEAKER_00: She's the fruitful vine growing up from the middle of the house, and people derive their enjoyment from her, their delight.
SPEAKER_00: We have the expression in English: if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
SPEAKER_00: And the Jewish expression is kind of reversed that way.
SPEAKER_00: When mama's happy, everybody's happy.
SPEAKER_00: The life that is built according to God's plan has the family that cherishes the mother, that cherishes her role, that delights in who she is and what she brings to the family, and that takes enjoyment from her, and really that builds the home around her.
SPEAKER_00: Their joy comes out from her as it's built around her.
SPEAKER_00: She's bringing joy and happiness and peace to the family.
SPEAKER_00: And again, notice the undoing of the curse in this.
SPEAKER_00: If the husband was cursed at his work and now he receives joy from it, if the wife was cursed in childbearing, now she's receiving and then giving, in a very motherly way, giving joy then to the family.
SPEAKER_00: Your children, it says in verse 3, will be like olive shoots around your table.
SPEAKER_00: Olive shoots around the table.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, the image of the table is everybody's gathered together, eating together.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just pull the car over here for a second and talk about the importance of having meals together and just what a mark of the Christian family is that they like each other.
SPEAKER_00: And I would encourage you to eat together.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very practical way.
SPEAKER_00: You see this all over the Bible when Jesus, you know, he was accused of sinning by eating with the sinners and tax collectors, because eating showed your acceptance of those people.
SPEAKER_00: It showed your fellowship and relationship with those people.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says with the sexually immoral, such a person do not even eat.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this idea that having a meal together is demonstrating this kind of fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: You should see that in the world in different places, but you should especially see it in your family.
SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you to make a point of eating meals together.
SPEAKER_00: I know family schedules vary and it can be difficult, but I would encourage you to strive for this.
SPEAKER_00: In my own family, we have a tradition at dinner.
SPEAKER_00: We have our Christmas cards on a ring and we pray through a card at night, and we look at the family and we see their pictures, we pray for them, and we tell a story about how we first met them, and that kind of branches off into the rest of our conversation around the table.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and if you're in a family where the dinner table is not a happy place, um pray for that and strive for it.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, wherever there's the most people gathered in the smallest space, there'll be the most conflict, and so it's not that the Christian dinner table never has conflict at it, but it's that over the repetition and the being there and the acceptance of one another, you really do find a joy that comes from that kind of eating together.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's even in the mind here.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'm going that far beyond what's written here.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's even in the mind of the author here is the olive shoots are growing up around the vine is in the middle, the table is around, and it's growing up around there.
SPEAKER_00: But there's another point here, the children are compared to olive shoots.
SPEAKER_00: Now, olive shoots can branch out of a tree at any number of locations.
SPEAKER_00: They olive shoots uh can take on their own life.
SPEAKER_00: Even if the tree itself were to die, the olive shoots would then have their own life independent of the tree.
SPEAKER_00: What an image, by the way, of children here.
SPEAKER_00: That is the parents grow up, and as they grow older and they even die, their children will have a life of their own.
SPEAKER_00: Olive shoots, if you want good olive shoots, it takes work.
SPEAKER_00: You have to cultivate them, you have to care for them, you have to trim them and fertilize the tree, and it takes a lot of effort to get these to bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And I read this week that some olive shoots will take 12, 15 years even before they start bearing fruit.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this image here of wild shoots that pop up everywhere, particularly around the table, that take work to care for, work to tend, and don't start bearing fruit for 12 or 15 years.
SPEAKER_00: And they're compared to children, you can make your own conclusions about how that all fits together.
SPEAKER_00: I'll let you do that on your own.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the imagery the psalmist gives here of the children.
SPEAKER_00: They're popping up around the table, and they're giving, of course, joy, olives would give joy and fellowship and nourishment to the family as well.
SPEAKER_00: But it takes a lot of work to get them there in 10, 15 years before you experience it.
SPEAKER_00: So again, if you're under lockdown and you're uh, you know, you have a lot of people around you at all times, and you think, how again is this a blessing?
SPEAKER_00: Know that the blessing is seen long term here.
SPEAKER_00: It's not at one meal you experience the blessing, it's the long-term life that is built with the vine at the center of the house, the husband laboring for the house, and the children shooting up.
SPEAKER_00: It's that long-term, big picture that is describing the blessing in all of this.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the picture of the family that is built on the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so it goes back in verse 4, it kind of regresses.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: This is the picture.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the verse one and verse four are kind of sandwiching this.
SPEAKER_00: And if you look at the whole psalm, by the way, Hebrew poetry puts the main point in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: The psalm begins with everyone in the world, it ends with everyone in the world.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that in a second.
SPEAKER_00: And then the middle there has the husband laboring, and then in verse 4 it has speaking again, thus shall the man be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: The middle of the psalm, the main point of the psalm is the wife, the vine that is growing up from the middle of the house.
SPEAKER_00: What a sign of the Lord's blessing on a man is.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 18 says, He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Well, first we saw the vertical blessing, God to the individuals in the world through faith.
SPEAKER_00: Then we've seen kind of the circular blessing, how the family is a blessing to each other.
SPEAKER_00: Now from that we move horizontally from the family to the world.
SPEAKER_00: It says in verse 5 May Yahweh bless you from Zion.
SPEAKER_00: May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.
SPEAKER_00: This is a Psalm of Ascent, by the way, the inscription says.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 120 through 134 are all psalms of ascent.
SPEAKER_00: They're all designed to be sung on the way to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Worship as the pilgrims gather from all over the ancient Near East, you know, from even up into Eurasia and parts of Africa, they'd all assemble and drawn together through the Middle East at the temple for the festivals.
SPEAKER_00: They would sing these psalms.
SPEAKER_00: But this psalm is interesting.
SPEAKER_00: This one appears to be a psalm you would sing as you're leaving the temple.
SPEAKER_00: The priest would sing as a benediction over you.
SPEAKER_00: May Yahweh bless you from Zion.
SPEAKER_00: The priest is blessing the people as they go back from their temple worship back into the world.
SPEAKER_00: And he's blessing them through their families.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming and worshiping.
SPEAKER_00: You're going back home.
SPEAKER_00: I pray the Lord would bless you through your family, and that you would live to return next year, and you would still see Jerusalem standing.
SPEAKER_00: As is written during the days of Ezra, where the temple had just been rebuilt.
SPEAKER_00: They had just come back from exile.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a profound blessing that for generations, notice how it says, may your children's children in verse 6, may generations be able to return here and see and experience the Lord's favor that he's working through Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Zion is the place where God reigns over the world, of course.
SPEAKER_00: The temple was there.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it was built for in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the prayer that as you go back into the world, you would be a blessing to the world through, in particular to God's families, through your own family.
SPEAKER_00: You would be a blessing to the nations through your own family.
SPEAKER_00: This is the image of children as arrows, Psalm 127 says, arrows in the hands of an archer.
SPEAKER_00: They're what you're taking to go to war against the world.
SPEAKER_00: The materialistic world that doesn't know the Lord, the materialistic world that views family as a means to your own personal fulfillment, and that's the way much of the world views family, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Family is helpful as long as it fulfills you.
SPEAKER_00: When it stops fulfilling you, it's a hindrance to what you want to do and what you deserve in life and what you can get out of life.
SPEAKER_00: Family is your obstacle to that.
SPEAKER_00: But for the Christian family, your family is not just a means of God's blessing your own family, it's a means of you going to war against the world.
SPEAKER_00: You bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.
SPEAKER_00: You impacting the world by blessing the nations, by blessing the families on your street, by blessing your coworkers through your family.
SPEAKER_00: They are arrows to go after the devil.
SPEAKER_00: You're weaponizing your children to go to war against worldliness by having a family that is built differently than the world.
SPEAKER_00: And it goes all the way to grandchildren here.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6 May you see your children's children.
SPEAKER_00: What a great promise that is here.
SPEAKER_00: That again, they have shorter life expectancies than this.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the that's where the psalmist prays.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know it's Americans love to find exceptions in things.
SPEAKER_00: Americans love to nitpick things as we're it's our legalistic mentality.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of built into our the way we often view promises of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We think immediately, but I know so-and-so who's godly, who doesn't have grandchildren.
SPEAKER_00: Or so-and-so is godly is not married or doesn't have children, so this psalm can't be that kind of promise because what about these exceptions?
SPEAKER_00: It's just the way, and that kind of thinking, by the way, just erodes the beauty of the wisdom literature of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and proverbs and psalms like this cat are categorized as wisdom literature.
SPEAKER_00: They're not absolute 100% guarantees.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the way wisdom is, or wouldn't be wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: The very nature of wisdom is that you have to apply it in different circumstances differently.
SPEAKER_00: There are principles that the wise person knows how to apply.
SPEAKER_00: And Americans often reject wisdom because we're, you know, we want the footnotes and the things that cover all circumstances at all times.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that really assaults the beauty of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: So we have our own idioms too.
SPEAKER_00: We would say cheaters never prosper, and you can't raise your hand in the back of the classroom and say, Yeah, but I know one guy who cheated one time and he won.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the point.
SPEAKER_00: This kind of wisdom is given to you to show the blessing, the extreme blessing of God that he pours out in the world here in Psalm 128 through families and through this idea that children will be raised to fear the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's Deuteronomy 6 and then 7 that you can train your children to follow the Lord and they will won't depart from it when they grow up.
SPEAKER_00: And again, it defeats the point to say, oh, I know so-and-so who he trained his children to follow the Lord, and so-and-so walked away from the faith.
SPEAKER_00: Not the point.
SPEAKER_00: The point is generally speaking, you experience God's blessing when you build your family according to God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a blessing that pours down through generations.
SPEAKER_00: Even when others close their heart to it, or even when sin enters the world and providentially that kind of blessing is taken away from you.
SPEAKER_00: Some men can't provide for their family, some families can't have children, some families with children won't see grandchildren.
SPEAKER_00: It's still a sign of God's blessing when these things come to fruition, and a sign of sin in the world when they don't.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, verse 6 still stands right there.
SPEAKER_00: May you see your children's children.
SPEAKER_00: What a blessed promise.
SPEAKER_00: You see this even in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: You see it through faith, where Timothy's grandmother shared the faith with Timothy's mother, who shared it with him.
SPEAKER_00: It's the gospel being passed down generation to generation.
SPEAKER_00: The ripples of God's blessings spread from you to your family, your family, down to your grandchildren and out into the world.
SPEAKER_00: The psalm ends with peace be upon Israel.
SPEAKER_00: This prayer for the endurance of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: So again, if you put this psalm together, you see the vertical blessing to the circular blessing of the family to the horizontal blessing to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: You see the command to subdue the earth, be fruitful, and multiply, interfered with by sin and the curse, there'll be hard to work and hard to be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_00: Now with blessing that there will be joy and work, blessing in children.
SPEAKER_00: And now it ends with this peace be upon Israel, which the New Testament takes these kind of promises and shifts them into the great commission.
SPEAKER_00: That we're called not to subdue the earth and be fruitful and multiply in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: We're called to go into all the world, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, making disciples of all people, teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded us, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, knowing that He's with us even until the very end of this age.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the New Testament adopts these familial kinds of language.
SPEAKER_00: If you're listening this morning and you don't have your own children, know that the New Testament speaks of spiritual children.
SPEAKER_00: It speaks of those that you can raise in the faith, people in the church that you can disciple.
SPEAKER_00: It speaks of spiritual fathers.
SPEAKER_00: We only have one father, of course, our father in heaven, but we have spiritual fathers, those that teach us the faith.
SPEAKER_00: The New Testament refers to believers as brothers and sisters in the church.
SPEAKER_00: We have this familial environment together as God gives us the joy of this kind of blessing as we take the gospel into the world.
SPEAKER_00: So it goes from the command to subdue the earth, be fruitful, multiply, the curse, where that's going to be hard in both areas, to the joy of you can still drive enjoyment through faith in the Lord in those areas, ultimately to the Great Commission.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel will go into the world through those who are blessed by the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: If you are alone this Mother's Day, please take comfort in the fact that your Heavenly Father is with you.
SPEAKER_00: If you have children who have wandered away from your family, take comfort in the spiritual children God has given you.
SPEAKER_00: If your parents have severed their relationship with you, take comfort from those who have been fathers or mothers to you in the faith.
SPEAKER_00: If your parents are no longer living, rejoice that God has given you the mandate to pass on their blessings to others through your evangelism and your sharing of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: See the family as a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a father or a mother and the Lord has blessed you with children, look at Psalm 128 as a precious picture of the way God blesses the family built on his word.
SPEAKER_00: See the family as a blessing, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: A joy from the Lord when it is built in his way, according to his plan, and for his purposes, it will all work for his glory.
SPEAKER_00: This is generations of grace.
SPEAKER_00: One after another, God pouring his grace to the world through us, through our faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord be with you.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for watching Emmanuel Bible Church today.
SPEAKER_00: You know, today's sermon was filmed in front of an empty worship center because of the coronavirus lockdown.
SPEAKER_00: But it's my prayer that if you live in the DC area, I'll be able to meet you when the church doors open again.
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, if you want more information about Emmanuel Bible Church, you can find us at iBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you want more information about the Master Seminary in their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, I hope today's ministry enables you to seek God through Jesus Christ, to serve him with gladness, and to share him with boldness.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you.