Psalm 128:1-6

This psalm is actually similar to a beatitude, it is an extended beatitude. You know, Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. And it has a great deal in common with the previous psalm, 127. They share keywords and they share themes, like God's centrality in life being very important, honest labor, the family and the house being another essential part of a person's life, the blessing of children is in both, and also the idea of blessedness, or happiness, or contentedness that living God's way brings.

Now, the overall message of Psalm 128 is that abundant life, a stable family, and peace—the idea of shalom, which is in the last line there, you will find in verse 6, the idea of wholeness and well-being—these things rest on the foundation of the proper fear of God. Fear of God is the central theme here, central idea. The psalmist here wants us to know that God comes first in everything. He is the foundation of your life, your abundant life. He is the foundation of a stable family. He is the foundation of peace and well-being. And if you take God out of the picture in any way, your chances of having any of those things disappear. Maybe not completely, but the chances really plummet at that point if God is not involved. So his advice is that we should always please Him and not disappoint Him at all.

Now, getting back to Psalm 128, we see that that is how the psalm begins: "Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, who walks in His ways." So a proper fear of the Lord will surely bring blessing. And when he says this, he decides in the next line, in a parallel line, that he better define what he means by the fear of the Lord.

He does not necessarily define it in a dictionary way; that is not what he is thinking about. He is thinking about advice that he is going to give you that is going to help you live, do things. And so he defines the fear of the Lord as a person walking in God's ways. "Blessed is one who fears the LORD, who walks in His ways." You show that you have fear of the Lord by walking in His ways. He is not talking about intellectual agreement with the theology of God, of His covenant, or any of those things. He is not talking about some sort of emotion, that you feel this great devotion or zeal for God. I mean, those are fine things, but he is bringing it down to our everyday life, everyday doings.

So to him, fearing God means living out God's instruction, keeping His law, putting His principles into action in the everyday circumstances of life. Every time he has a decision to make about one thing or another, he harkens back to God's instruction, and he does what God says, and so he shows that he fears the Lord. He reverences God. He wants to please God. He does not want to displease God, and so, in the proper fear of God, he does what God says. And so it is not necessarily a definition of what it means intellectually. It is a definition of what it means practically, in actions.

Back to Psalm 128. Let us read 2 through 4 again.

He repeats this. Verses 2 through 4 contains two examples of the blessed life of the God-fearing man, or God-fearing family, and then it does restate the blessing of fearing the Lord. Now, notice here that the psalmist speaks directly to you, as the reader: "When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you," your wife, your children. And then he goes back to more general in verse 4. But he is making sure that he is talking directly to you, that it is applicable to you right now, in your house, in your family, with your children, in what you do, out in the field, at work, doing these things. You can apply God's instruction and show the fear of the Lord by how you do these things.

And if you do them right, if you do them well, you do what God says, then you are going to reap blessings. They will come automatically. It says if you do these things, you are going to eat the labor of your hands. It means there is a reward for the … . . .

Psalm 128:5-6

So the psalmist prays for God's blessing to extend. He says, out of Zion. That is where God dwells; that God would send a blessing to you from where He is. And so, immediately, as he says, may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life, the blessing that he asked for—the God-fearing house—extends to a God-fearing nation. And this blessing that he asks for is not just now, but all the days of your life.

Now, this is important, because this again shows a generational thing, that God's blessing never is just for now. There are always intimations of future blessings, that this blessing will increase into other blessings, greater blessings down the road. And not just for you, but your family and the people in your community, all the way out to the whole nation. And we know, with God, ultimately out into the whole world. But he is trying to show you here that if you practice the fear of the Lord and do the things of God, you are starting something big.