Satisfied in the Lord

Psalm 128 and the Blessing of Fearing the Lord

Now, please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 128, and when you have that, please stand for the reading of God's word. Psalm 128, a song of ascents. 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.

Now bless the reading, and now if it be His will, the proclamation of His word, so please be seated. Charles Spurgeon wrote that a man's heart will be seen in his walk, and the blessing will come where heart and walk are both with God.

Your heart will be seen in your walk. Your heart will be seen in the way that you order and arrange and live out your life, and the blessing of God's promise will come when heart, that inner man, that faith we have in Christ, that desire we have to follow His ways, when heart and walk, that ordering of our lives, that organizing principle, when those two come together, then we see the blessing.

Of God.

The Danger of Overemphasizing the Future or the Here and Now

You know, I think there's a disservice that is done to the gospel of Jesus Christ when we have denominations or even cults that so overemphasize the future, the eschatology, the resurrection, and to be with the Lord forever.

What a glorious thing we look ahead to, but so overemphasizing that that they forget the importance of here and now. Pastor Brian proclaimed to us this morning some of that importance where Jesus says, when you put your hand to the plow, do not look back.

It matters to Jesus what we do in this life for Him, and because of eternity that lays ahead of us, yes, but we can't so overemphasize our ultimate destiny to be with Jesus. We forget the importance of here and now, and I think it's a disservice when certain sects or certain denominations or ways of framing things look so much to the future, we forget that we're alive now and serving Jesus Christ now.

And then there are those who so overemphasize the here and now, prosperity gospel type of preaching, that they don't have a view of the future. It's all here. It's all now. It's all material. It's all what we get in this life, and this is what matters, and this is what God wants you to have.

Both are a disservice because the whole existence of mankind matters to God. The fact that Jesus Christ secured our eternity with Him is, of course, paramount to us, and yet what we read in the New Testament and the Old Testament alike, that what we do now matters.

As Paul tells the Thessalonians in several places, to live lives pleasing to God just as you are doing, this was so important. The psalm here begins with this idea of a man who is blessed in what he does because he fears the Lord, he's walking in the ways of the Lord, and he has this inner, deep satisfaction in his life, not because of what he has done, not because of his own brilliance or intellect or organizing principles, but because he's done all those things, he set his intellect and his organizing principles against the Word of God, and so directed his own life.

And so this blessing that he has, this blessing I hope that we all have, or will have even more of after this message, is just that, a deep, abiding, unshakable satisfaction in the Lord God, satisfaction in something that's tried and true.

Do you know that this morning? Do you have that organizing principle, that confidence in God and His Word, that sureness of His Spirit working within you that drives you along that path, that keeps you on that path, that picks you up when you fall down on either side of it?

And yet knowing that as we maintain that trajectory, well not perfectly, none of us walk perfectly straight along it, but maintaining that general trajectory towards the image of Christ, that satisfaction we have, however things go in this life, it's all in God's sovereign hands, it's all meant for our good, and we're on the right track.

We have before us wisdom literature, really, so we don't have absolute rules, we don't have a contract here we can lift up to God and say, look, this is what you promised me if I do this, therefore you owed me this, and I shouldn't have had this or that hard province come in my life.

This is wisdom literature, which is, to give you the quickest definition of it, just so we can understand and frame this message from these six verses, wisdom literature is observations. They're observations made in life, as most of Proverbs that Solomon wrote most of, is things that he saw, general guiding principles, raise up a child in the way he should go and he shall not depart from it.

And yet, many children depart from having been raised even though they're raised in the way they should go according to Scripture, but in general, if you raise your children in the way they should go, they won't depart from it, in general.

In general, if you work hard, you will have food on your table, but it's not a perfect.

Law.

It's wisdom literature, it's a guiding principle, it's an aphorism, a truism, a short accessible statement that puts forth a general truth that we can all sort of nod our head and go, yes, that works, that makes sense, that is right, I will work that way.

Finally, the reminder that reverberates throughout all these psalms that I've been preaching on, Psalms 120 to 134, the songs of ascents, is just this, that this people who first sang this psalm is going to do well to vacate the deeds of their fathers and keep their hope firmly fixed upon the Lord.

Again, as I preached last week, this people was determined to follow the ways of the Lord, to not repeat the errors that got them into trouble in the first place and sent off to.

Babylon.

Fear of the Lord as the Beginning of Wisdom

They're on their way back from Babylon, having been released from that exile, and so they're coming and they're reminding themselves to do that which their fathers did not do, to order their lives around the principles, around the strictures, around the laws that God has given them.

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. This will be framed by verse 4, which says, Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. So that's kind of an inclusio there, blessed and blessed, God's ways, God's ways, just framed a little bit differently.

We need to see how these two are intertwined. This idea of blessedness in the Lord and fearing the Lord. So the first and the fourth verses, actually if you think about them, they leave no one out, blessed is everyone, and then blessed is the man, blessed is everyone who fears and so is the man blessed who fears.

So it's from the greater, from everyone, to the lesser, which is the man, the individual, the woman, the person who follows Christ. So what is it to fear the Lord? What does it mean to fear the Lord? Don't we want that blessing?

Don't you want to know the blessing that is spoken of here, this deep satisfaction, this knowledge, this confidence that you're on the right path because it's not a path that you laid out, pardon me, it's a path that God has laid out for you.

First thing we have to know is what is entrance onto it? It's fear of the Lord. What is it to fear the Lord? Well, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom, we know this from the Psalms. In this immediate context, what is fear?

It is respect for God, it is high regard for his person, it is that demeanor of heart that holds the one feared in the highest of regard, the highest regard we can imagine. Some very quick examples of what it is to fear God, Abraham feared God, says scripture, when he obeyed God and offered up Isaac, Genesis chapter 22 and verse 12.

And by that act, by that God-fearing act, he proved his faith. James 2 .21 says that. Job's fear, Job 1 .1 says, kept him from evil. The unjust judge in Jesus' parable in Luke 18, he was unjust, why?

Because he had no fear of God. He had no respect for God, he had no regard for his word. He gave no honor to God's person. So fear, in this context, is to respect and trust someone to the point that the entire course of life is molded after the pattern that he has set.

It's to trust that his ways are not just the best, they're right. Not just better than other options that you can lay out and say, okay, here's one religion, say Buddhism, and I can lay it out and this will get me there, but Christianity will get me here and this looks like it's going to be a little bit more positive.

No, not that kind of analysis at all. These are the right ways to go simply because God, who can never lie, it's impossible for him to lie, has laid this out. Because our maker has given us a way of living consistent with how we were made.

That God, who's made us in the image of himself, says this is the way you need to live, consistent with the way you were created, the purpose for which you were created, and everything.

About you.

Fear also has an element of trepidation. Trepidation that we usually associate with the word in our English as we use it today, as when Jesus said what? He said to fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell forever.

Be afraid of him because his power is limitless and his determinations are final. So blessed is he who fears the Lord. Blessed is he who respects and has high regard and gives great honor to the Lord and at the same time remembers his unimaginable power and his determinations are final.

Remember that he can put a soul in hell forever and that's a real kind of fear mixed with that proper kind of fear, that unshaking kind of fear, not like we go in quivering before.

God.

And why?

Because Jesus Christ took that kind of judgment upon himself. Therefore, that trembling kind of fear, that scared kind of fear is no more for the believer in Christ. But the high regard for God, I would argue if you know Jesus Christ, he is the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the father but by me, said Jesus. Does that not expand our fear of God in terms of the honor and respect he is due for having sent his son to die for us? This is what it is to fear God, to have this kind of regard for God that whatever he says is right, we don't hold him as if to a contract that we can say you must give me this because this is what it says point for point.

No, no.

Just knowing he's right, fearing him and respecting him so we order our life around that. That's the man in Psalm 128. So what is it to be blessed? If you fear God and are blessed because of that fear or by way of that fear, what is it to be blessed?

Well, the word in verses two and four in the Hebrew is the Hebrew word ashre, sometimes translated even as happy. That's where I got the idea for the title of this sermon, which is satisfied in the Lord because ashre could also have this idea of being satisfied.

It also has the idea of being straight, going in a straight direction. Again, that confidence that comes from fear of the Lord, that sureness of what he says is right. Therefore, I will be blessed. I will be ashre.

I will go straight on this path and he will keep me straight on it because it's not a path that deceives me. It's not a path that fails to give or produce what it promises. It's much like what Paul says in Romans 116, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel for the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

What does he mean I'm not ashamed of the gospel? Well, if I can sort of borrow from Psalm 128, it means it's a straight path. It accomplishes what God sent it to accomplish. The gospel truly does save.

And if you put your faith in Jesus Christ in accord with the gospel, you will not be put to shame for having put your confidence in a wrong place. You will not be made a fool. The world may think you're a fool.

I'm sure they do, but you will not be made a fool in God's eyes. Matter of fact, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. So blessed ashre is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked is how the whole Psalter even starts.

The same word is put in the negative there.

He's blessed.

He's ashre. He's on a straight path because he doesn't do this. And Psalm 128 says really much the same thing, but on the positive blessed because he does do something. So the idea there is the same. So fear God to be blessed by God, by that fear of God.

Blessed Confidence in the Lord's Path

So what is this blessedness that we have now? Again, sometimes the here and now blessings in this life are so overemphasized that we lose track of the ultimate tomorrow and vice versa. But what is this blessedness that we have in this here and now?

This life that is so important that so many of the commandments in even our New Testament are about how we live now, being on this straight blessed path. It was confidence. It's confidence that the Lord whom you fear will never lead you astray.

It's confidence that however things turn out, that God knew the good that you knew the good to do, and you did it because God said to do it. And come what may, come what may, you're going to do it. We're going to live this way.

You know, the house in Jesus' parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, it didn't avoid the storm. And more than you remember in the previous Psalm, I think it was 126, where they went through the waters, and if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, the waters would have gone over us.

It doesn't say we didn't go through the waters. It says we were rescued from them, but we had to go through them. They just didn't overwhelm. It's like the house in Jesus' parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

It didn't avoid the storm.

It withstood the storm.

It had built, if we can stretch that metaphor just a little bit, on that straight path, on that blessed path of fearing God, putting God's Word to practice. And the Psalm I want to cite was 124, not 126.

124, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side. Let Israel not say if it had not been the Lord who was on our side. So there's fear of the Lord, and there's blessedness from that fear. And the third thing we need to answer is what is to walk in God's ways, in Yahweh's ways.

Simply put, again, is to order your life around his revelation of his will in Scripture. The people of this Psalm, as we've been reminded in each of these messages, in these 15 songs of ascents, were determined to follow God's ways.

Their forefathers had lost their ways because they what? They lost their fear of God. They lost their respect for God. They began to think things like we see in Psalm 94, 7, or Ezekiel 8, 12, or Ezekiel 9, 9.

And where do we go when we start losing our fear of God? We join those three scriptures I just cited and start to say, well, God doesn't hear. God doesn't see what I'm doing. God doesn't know. God will not repay me.

Lose all respect for his person, all confidence in his word, and place ourselves above it. What is it to walk in Yahweh's ways? It's to follow what he says. It's a common thread to the other negative ones that I cited.

They claim God doesn't know. God doesn't see. What goes first? What goes first? What leads to such a blasphemous claim that God can't even repay us for our deeds? He doesn't even know what we're doing.

It's having no fear of God before our eyes. That's Psalm 36, 1, as cited in Romans 3, 18. See, when we lose our fear of God, what other fear do we lose? We lose our fear of God. We lose our fear of sin.

We lose our fear of God. We lose our high regard for how bad sin is, how deep sin can run, and how much it can ruin a life. What sin did to the entire creation. I love what R .C. Sproul said, that there's not a molecule in the furthest reaches of the universe that's not been affected by sin and won't be redeemed when Jesus returns.

You know, this blessedness that's spoken of here, this confidence, this sureness in God, it's a blessedness, it's a confidence, it's an ashray, it's a happiness that cannot be taken away because it's fixed on something immovable, which is God himself, the fear of God, something that won't be shaken.

This happiness, this blessedness, this ashray that we're speaking of here, I want to tell you that it's something that it cannot be taken from you. It's very similar to what Jesus said about joy, my joy I leave you, not as the world gives joy.

Is it a joy that can be taken away from you?

No, of course not.

You can't lose that joy if it's fixed upon Jesus Christ. And whatever the world does around, it doesn't mean that we're happy and dancing and laughing all the time. It's not that kind of joy. It's that deep seated confidence, much like the ashray of Psalm 128, that knows that I'm in the right place because God plucked me out of my place, out of darkness, and put me in his marvelous light, placed me in his son.

And therefore, I have this confidence. I have this sureness. I have this ashray because I'm on the straight and right path. Know this confidence you have in God. Something cannot be taken from you, but it can be surrendered.

It can be given up. We can let the world have incursions upon us, like the weeds in Jesus' parables, which block out our view of him and have us seeing only the world. We can give up this confidence in Christ, but it can't be taken from us.

We have to look at the world and say, greater are those in the world who are placing these pressures upon me than he who is in me? No, it would make no sense. Greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world.

Don't give up your sureness. Don't give up your confidence. Are you walking on the path that Jesus Christ set for you? Are you following the scripture? Be sure in it. Know that this is the blessed path, the happy path, the straight path, the one that God laid out.

And if you fear God, you'll be able to stay on it. And when you can't stay on it, when your own efforts are failing, as they always will, as mine do, as all your pastors do, at times we all need to stop and pray and repent and trust God's spirit to pick us up and put us back on that path.

Covenant Blessings of Children and the Church

Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. What's in between those two? With blessed is the man who fears the Lord. And behold, thus shall he be blessed. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands.

As verse two, you shall be blessed and it shall be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. You recall from Psalm 127 when I preached that last week, that this idea of children, children are wonderful.

Children are a blessing for God. Every good and perfect gift, few of them more good and perfect than children are a blessing.

From God.

In the context of the Psalm, in context of most of the Old Testament, children are God's covenant blessing upon his covenant people when they're true to him, when they're on that ashray straight path.

Children are what he promises those who will follow his ways and do his will. Today, we have also the covenant sign, which is our faith in Jesus Christ. We have the sign of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so this blessing that is spoken of in Psalm 128 translates very nicely into our church age, into the New Testament. That blessed is the one who fears the Lord and believes that he sent his son to die for our sins and raised him from the dead.

You shall be like a fruitful vine. You shall have a family like a church around you. You shall know the presence of God by his indwelling spirit. You shall have the certainty of the resurrection because of Jesus' historical resurrection, which guarantees ours to come, the deposit of the spirit within.

These are also signs of the covenant, the signs of the new covenant under which we now live. Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord and believes in his son, Jesus Christ, in his death, burial, and resurrection.

So it goes on, the Lord bless you from Zion, verse 5, may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you see your children's children. Peace be upon Israel. Well, again, what is being proclaimed there is continuity.

The Lord is going to continue his people. I won't repeat everything from the previous sermons, but remember this, the people was forgiven after the 70 years of exile, and they are trusting God to keep them going, to give them that continuity.

And that's what children meant back in that day, continuity, that God would continue them. Jerusalem was the place where God chose for his name to dwell forever. Jerusalem was a place where he was to be worshipped.

Jerusalem was the place where the temple was, and the place where the temple was had in it the holiest place where the high priest went to atone for the people's sins and to bring them to God as a cleansed people once he had made the sacrifices.

Jerusalem, in these last couple of verses here, the Lord bless you from Zion, just another day from Jerusalem. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. This place where they're going to rebuild, they're going to rebuild the wall, that's Nehemiah.

They're going to restore proper worship, that's the book of Ezra. May you see the prosperity of that place all the days of your life. May you see your children's children, peace be upon Israel. You know, I give you five reasons that this Jerusalem must continue.

Five reasons why it must go on, and we're going to translate Jerusalem and Zion then much as the apostles do in the New Testament, we're going to take it straight to the church. These five reasons came from a 16th century theologian named W .M. Statham, but he was speaking only of Jerusalem.

I'm borrowing from him to get the order of things. I just want to give credit where it is due, but we're going to, without any shame, actually I should say shamelessly, bring these forward to the church.

Why do we need this continuity? This blessing of children throughout these Psalms, especially I would argue in Psalms 120 to 134, these songs of ascent, where this people needs to know and needs to believe that God will continue them.

Why does the church need to continue? Why do we have to keep meeting as we do and proclaiming Christ to our friends and our neighbors around here, our neighbors next to our homes, our co-workers and so forth?

Why does the church need to continue the way Jerusalem was seen to continue in Psalm 128? Well, the first reason, the church is a blessing to the world because the church speaks good of man. The church speaks good of man.

Now, we believe in the depravity of man, so I mean good in a slightly different way than.

That.

Why the Church Must Continue Until Christ Returns

It's only in the Christian worldview where man is accorded the dignity that the rest of the world can only wish for. Only in Christ, the Christ that we proclaim is the image of God restored to his proper glory, which is just a little bit lower than the angels.

Only through our Jesus, by faith in him, by God's creative spirit, can we be made new. Only by our Jesus can anyone say, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. The church must go on because as much as we believe in the depravity of all mankind without Christ, we do believe in that as much as we hold to that unpopular idea.

It's the idea that dignifies man and tells men that they're sinners and warns men of their judgment to come and beckons them to Christ, who by the spirit of God, by faith in him, recreates them and restores them to the image of God and gives them that dignity.

The church must go on because the church really speaks good of man, the good of man that only God can do in man. And by that good of man that we speak, it also means on the flip side, the bad of man that you need to know in order that you understand why to come to Christ.

The church is a blessing, this is the second reason, because it proclaims God's goodness to us in the here and now. This is what I was speaking of at the beginning, that the here and now is so important.

Pastor Brian's message this morning about putting your hand to the plow, what we do now in this world in these few short breaths that we have, is so important. We're a blessing because we proclaim God's goodness in this world.

Not ease of life, but goodness always. Fiery trials according to Peter and to James are just part of that goodness from God, not because they're pleasant at the time, but because they produce the fruit of holiness, of endurance, of greater strides in our walk, it becomes more and more like Jesus Christ.

You know, it's a fallacy, it's one of the weaknesses of the hardcore dispensationalists to delay Christ's blessings to only the world to come and to forget this world where he has us and his eyes upon us.

Third reason, the church must continue because it is God's highest good on earth. God's highest good on earth. Jesus Christ said upon this confession, meaning the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Christ of God, he will build his church.

And so the church is God's highest good on earth, proclaiming the highest good, which is his son, Jesus Christ. And we're to do that until he returns. First Peter 2 .9, you are chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

You know, Paul wrote in Ephesians chapter three, verses nine and 10, that his commission was, quote, to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Now, it's easy to miss. So I'll go back and emphasize it again in a second. But it's easy to miss. But this verse says that God created all things. God created the world in order to what? In order to house the church so the church would exist here and make him known.

God who created all things so that we could say in order that or the purpose behind the creation of all things, the church, in the church, the manifold wisdom of God might be.

Made known.

So we must continue. We must have that continuity as long as Jesus delays his return to us because we proclaim God's highest good, which is his son, Jesus Christ. And we must go on because our message is unique.

We have a unique message. The cults like the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Latter-day Saints, they don't even know God's grace, much less proclaim it or live it. Buddhists pretend to respect Jesus, but then they fall back on their own works and this subjective, unpredictable karmic cycle of reincarnation.

Islam claims it to be a sin to presume to know whether or not you're saved. Now, what a futile way to live. What futility. I just read an illustration of futility. Hopefully, I won't test your patience too much with this.

Know what futility is? It's a man who takes a leaky bucket and fills it with water and walks to water a garden that's planted next to a stream. You ever heard of that? I just read it last night. I just thought that was great.

I had to work this in. A man with a leaky bucket filled with water walking to a garden to water it because he has no water left and it's planted next to a stream anyway. What futility we stand against.

There's no message like what we proclaim, that God has done it all, that God is the sole procurer of your salvation, that Jesus Christ and he alone is the way to God, and that on your own, you can do nothing.

What a message.

What a gospel.

Because as bad as that seems, as unpopular as that is, what's the other side of that? That God, because of the great love with which he loved us, sent us his son. But God, who is rich in mercy, sent his son, Jesus Christ.

Nobody has a message like this. We must go on. We must continue. We must have the kind of continuity that Psalm 128 speaks of because the gospel is entrusted.

To us.

That doesn't mean we get it perfect every time, but if we get it right, most of the time is because of God's grace and the working of his spirit. Therefore, we must go on and on. Martin Luther wrote that our message of grace is found irritating and intolerable because God's grace exposes the natural man's pretentiousness.

Every other message, I would argue, every other cult proclaims the natural man's goodness and abilities and intrinsic worth. And while we proclaim the opposite, why is it good news? Because it's true.

Because we proclaim biblical truth. Fifth and last, the church is a blessing because the good we proclaim is a prospective good. It's a good yet to come. And here, without any arrogance or undue pride, I think in this church we have a good balance between that prospective good, that ultimate good.

Our resurrection, we see Jesus as he is because we will be like him. That's prospective. That is yet to come. And yet we don't overemphasize that to the point that we forget how important this is. If it's wrong to push all our blessings out to the future, it's equally wrong to forget that God's ultimate good for us in Jesus is to be with him forever.

We proclaim a good yet to come, which now is but a glimmer. As seen through a glass darkly to borrow from the Apostle Paul, until that day we are made, finally made to be like Jesus, and we see him as he is.

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways, who fears God because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because of our faith in him. And as long as we hold this message, as long as you hold this gospel, then we must continue.

And as a church, these are the reasons we must continue. As we wait for Jesus to return, we speak of the good of man by telling man how bad he is. We proclaim God's goodness in the here and now because God is good and his ways are straight.

We must continue because we proclaim his highest good, which is Jesus Christ, and we must go on because our message is unique and stands against all the other false messages of man's abilities. And finally, we do proclaim that message, that final goodness yet to come, which is that we'll follow a resurrection like Jesus Christ's.

We will see him as he is, we shall be like him. For these reasons, we must continue and we must keep our hand to the plow as preached this morning, and we must keep in mind the importance of what we do in this life while Jesus tarries.

Amen. Amen.

Thank you.