Psalm 128 takes off where Psalm 127 left off the question is “what amounts to the good life?” This is where King Solomon raised the right question that if God is not the builder in our families, with the walls of security we put around ourselves, or the work we engage in then we labour in vain? This is a good question to ask ourselves as we climb into 2017. Now here in Psalm 128 it’s like climb a mountain top, to a view of domestic bliss. This is an image of ease and comfort that comes with a price tag. Notice with me in verse 1 in the first line 1 Blessed are all who fear the LORD, and then down to verse 4 Thus is the man blessed who fears the LORD. Verses 1-4 of the Psalm act as a kind of book end. So we are meant to notice the repetition of what it is highlighting in between. Listen up we’re told blessing coming from willingly being obedient to God’s way of doing life. It’s what it means to walk in his way, which is what we read at the end of verse 1. Notice also something else in verse 1, is that word blessed. This word is actually the same word for happy. That is our happiness, or being blessed, has something else to it, a something we don’t usually associate together. This is happiness with fear. The psalmist’s points out that our greatest sense of happiness and wellbeing comes from having a healthy fear of God. These are the habits of obedience to living God’s way. Our struggle is we usually associate fear or obedience to God, more with joylessness austerity, going without. This happiness the Psalmist enjoys is the joy of God spiritually forming us into his likeness, becoming more like Jesus, and letting him shape our lives changing us and our values being fully aware of the frailties and fears that come with it.
So what about Psalm 128 have to teach us about happiness?
The way this Psalm is written we can see that it begins with is promise as it ends with a pronouncement “the may you’s”, which are given with an example from everyday life in the middle. We are told to walk faithfully with God. As we read in verse 3-4
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots around your table. 4 Thus is the man blessed who fears the LORD.
Domestic bliss is shown by happy parents that is likened to two domestic plants of the middle east as both the vine and the olive tree were important to Israel’s economy. The vine produced wine and olive tree oil, a Hebrew image of blessing. This is an image of fertile productive agriculture, with tons of kids underfoot, and a faithfulness and joy in marriage. Trusting that God is in this together with us, equal “happy”. Again this Psalm leads us to tenderness and vulnerability, that is just like how an olive shoot is vulnerable and not fully matured, so are children. I was thinking about this the other day about how as a parent, I had to make a conscious decision about what I would tell my children about God. I had grown up with the idea that to put my idea forward on following Jesus, was in a way brainwashing them to make a decision they had no choice in. So when I thought about that I was struck with how silly I was, because how else were my children going to learn anything about God unless I showed and talked with them about him. If I didn’t speak who else would be! And unless I took the time to talk about how my faith in Jesus and how that worked with practical day to day decisions in the little moments of life. It was also around that time when we started to pray daily with our kids at meal time and read the Bible together. That meant also when I played a game with them I would take the opportunities to talk about and what it meant for me to follow Jesus. I wanted to create a way of thinking about life, and what looking to follow Jesus was like doing that. To launch them as adults able to think for themselves. What I knew was if I didn’t do that then their friends or the TV would. So the psalmist writes in verse 5-6
5 May the LORD bless you from Zion all the days of your life; may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem, 6 and may you live to see your children's children. Peace be upon Israel.
The promises of God come to us together. In Jerusalem with God’s people meeting together is where your welfare and future were bound up with, that of Israel’s and Jerusalem’s future. Today we know our future isn’t tied up in the nation of Israel or even in the town of Jerusalem, but we look forward to the new Jerusalem the heavenly one. The reminder is that as those who follow Jesus we stand or fall as a church family. This is our future is actually tied up with God’s plans corporately. This Psalm tells us we are to desire that community and commitment to Christ for our grandchildren as well. That we are also given a poke in the side, to think about how we will share how to lives God’s way with our children, and with the next generation after them and the generation after that will have an influencing hand for godliness.
So what does Psalm 128 mean for me as a pilgrim following Jesus today?
Because God’s way of blessing us isn’t in having an unusual run of luck, or even in just having a good day. It is the purposeful creative power of God, that gives us an inner strength for our souls. A blessing that generates happiness to withstand temptation seduction and pressure from caving into the worlds way of happiness, or to just stand when we’re facing the tough hurdles of life. Just as Jesus told us in that Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:33
33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
As we enter 2017 I’ve heard so much about fear for our world. It has got me thinking about John Calvin who when he was preaching to his congregation in Geneva Switzerland challenged them that as followers of Jesus we must develop better and deeper concepts of happiness than those held by the world which makes a happy life to consist in “ease, honours, and great wealth”[1] The world the flesh and devil Luther once summarised is our greatest threats to pursuing a life of walking in God’s way of life. So much of the world way of achieving happiness is fixed in taking from one to satisfy the other. The way this works is that in order for me to have a higher standard of living, someone has to live in a lesser state of living, and so we obsessively will drive ourselves to debts we can never repay in order to try and make ourselves happy. This is where we find ourselves with the challenge set before us how will we share the delight we have experienced in our week in our walk with God when we get together. The Psalmist challenge is for us do it God’s way, to follow Jesus, who is the way the truth and the life, as Psalm 128 tells us “All you who fear God, how blessed you are! How happily you walk on his smooth straight road!” (The Message translation). How will we show our delight is in Jesus? Let’s pray…
David Hassan @ Tamworth Community Presbyterian Church 1-1-17