Well mothers, I think you know already how appreciated you are and certainly we want to continue in that theme this morning. I came across a tribute that was written by Fred Cruz that does a pretty good job of describing the complexity and the beautiful tightrope balance that a mother is able to pull off and seemingly almost effortlessly. Here's part of an article that he wrote about motherhood. He says, a mother is a curious mixture of patience, kindness, understanding, discipline, industriousness, purity, and love. A mother can sew the tiniest stitch in the material for that dainty prom dress, and she's equally experienced in threading through the heaviest traffic with a station wagon. A mother is the only creature on earth who can cry when she's happy, Laugh when she's heartbroken, and work till she's feeling ill. I know that guys aren't able to do that, only the ladies. A mother is a picture of helplessness when dad is near, and a marvel of resourcefulness when she's all alone. A mother has the angelic voice of the celestial choir as she sings to a babe held tight in her arms, and yet the same voice can dwarf the sound of an amplifier when she calls her boys in for supper. A mother has the fascinating ability to be almost everywhere at once, and she alone can somehow squeeze an enormous amount of living into an average day. There's no greater thrill in life than to point to that wonderful woman and be able to say to all the world, that's my mother. So mothers, you are incredibly a blessing to us. There's no way us dads could do a fraction of what we do were it not for your sacrifice and your love. And along those lines, I want to turn your attention to a passage in scripture this morning that talks about motherhood and fatherhood and the relationship between parents and children and the blessing that a family is when they choose to fear the Lord. So, you're probably already in Psalm 128. If you look at the very beginning of this psalm, you'll notice that there's a title at the top, and it says this, it's a Song of Ascents. a song of ascents, and this is part of a grouping of Psalms that are all in this section of the Hebrew Songbook. The Book of Psalms is a Hebrew Songbook, is a hymnal of sorts, that has 150 different songs that the ancient Hebrews would sing. And these particular songs in this section of the book of Psalms were sung at a unique occasion when the people would be going on pilgrimage from wherever their towns and their villages and their farms were and they would all be converging on the city of Jerusalem. And the mindset of the Hebrew was, as you moved closer toward Jerusalem, you were ascending. Now it wasn't technically an issue of altitude or elevation. Jerusalem is not particularly high. It's a couple thousand feet in elevation, between two and three thousand feet if I'm not mistaken. So it is somewhat of the hill country, but it wasn't particularly just because it was the highest You know, I think that the highest peak in California is Mount McKinley, but in spite of that, the highest, that's not right, is it? Whitney, thank you, Mount Whitney. So thank you for correcting me. So it's not so much just like going to the highest point in the state, but there's a sense of as we come to church, as we come to worship, we're converging on the highest point in our lives, the pinnacle spiritually. We're ascending to this place to meet a holy God upon the spiritual mountain. Does that make sense? So these people are ascending on the place of Jerusalem, and as they're doing that, they would sing. They would sing to the Lord to prepare their hearts to gather together in corporate worship. And this song was sung many, many times by the people of Israel as they would travel. So, let's read the song together. Psalm 128. I'm not going to sing it for you. I don't even know what the notes were that were played. So we don't know what this sounded like. But we're going to read it together and imagine how this was sung by God's people as they would gather to worship. It says, a song of a sense. 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 the 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. Notice with me three features of God's blessing that are found here in our text this morning. First of all, we see the pronouncement of blessing, and this is particularly in verse one, and that's repeated again in verse four. We see the pronouncement of blessing when it begins by simply saying, is everyone who fears the Lord and walks in His ways. And then down in verse 4, Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. So we see this language of fearing the Lord that's mentioned here in both of those verses. And the fear of the Lord was a common expression in biblical literature. In fact, even in the New Testament, we see the idea of a God-fearer of being somebody who is willing to follow the God of Israel. And even non-Jews, even Gentile people are sometimes classified as God-fearers Even like, for example, a Roman centurion might be called in the gospel a God-fearer because he noticed something unique and distinct about the God of the Bible, the God of the Jews, that he chose to rid himself of any pagan idolatry and focus exclusively on the worship of the one true God in knowing his character, knowing his ways, his laws, and following after him in faith. Here in Psalms we're in a section of the Old Testament called wisdom literature or the poetry of the Bible and oftentimes a fear of God was a simple way of talking about somebody who was a follower of the true God of the Bible. Fear might seem like a strange way to describe our relationship with God, but we need to understand we're not simply talking about a terror of God or a fright of God. It's not as though God wants us to go run into a dark corner and huddle in the fetal position because we're so scared of God. That's not the idea here. I think that it might be easier for us to understand this concept of the fear of the Lord if you had a godly mother or father. or if you had a good teacher or coach. Because there's this unique blend when somebody is a leader of character that you have an awe toward them and a respect toward them. You listen to what they say, you want to please them, and you're fearful of what? Disappointing them or letting them down. So they're fun to be with, you enjoy them and have an incredible amount of respect for them, but at the same time, you don't want to make them angry, right? Because there are consequences that are involved in that. So if we think about that relationship, and it might be a little harder if you grew up in a broken home, and your mom and your dad were not pleasant to be around, and they were very ungodly in their behavior. If you don't have those kinds of leadership and role models, it can be more difficult to understand when God describes himself in places as a father. But he uses that language because God intended for a father to be somebody that was both loving and yet firm. Faithful to the Lord, fearing God, and then instilling that fear of the Lord in his children as well. And he says here that blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. So we should have this kind of awe and respect and joy, and fear of disappointing, or letting him down, or failing to keep his commands, recognizing there are consequences involved in that. But at the same time, not just a simple terror of God, but an awe at the awesomeness, using awesomeness in the proper sense of the word. God is awesome. We are awestruck. We are amazed at who he is. And one of the ways in the New Testament that describes this is that our God is a consuming fire, right? Think about fire for a moment. Is fire good or is fire bad? Well, it's both, right? We can't survive without fire. Fire provides heat. The sun provides light. Fire has this interesting ability to set a mood to where we use candlelight or firelight to create a sense of romance and intimacy. So fire has all these different ways that it can provide life and yet fire also has the same ability to consume life. Fire can destroy. It can burn. It can injure. It can kill. And God chooses to use fire as a metaphor that we would both be grateful for Him and see Him as a life giver and yet at the same time be in fear and awe and trepidation at His holiness because He consumes that which is evil and wicked. We see this even, for example, in the Old Testament that God expressed himself in the form of a pillar of fire. And the pillar of fire was actually a source of good for God's people because they could see that fire at night and this massive pillar would move around and it would give directions. It was like a GPS that would tell the people of Israel where they were to go. And it also served as a source of protection. So it came between the Israelites and the Egyptians. And when the Egyptians were in pursuit of the Israelites, that pillar of fire by night and cloud by day stood in the way and provided a barrier to protect Israel against their enemies. But that same Shekinah glory cloud and pillar of fire also would show itself to where if somebody disrespected God and disobeyed God and were frivolous toward God, they could be consumed and destroyed because of His holiness. We have a story in the Bible of where the people of Israel are carrying the Ark of the Covenant and they're carrying it in an improper way, which God had said not to do, instead of the priests preparing and cleansing themselves and holding the poles and marching that Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, they put it on a what? They put it on a cart. They put it on a cart and it's on this cart and it gets to a bumpy point and it begins to slide off and this guy reaches out to steady it. You think, well, that's a good thing. He doesn't want it to fall over. But the problem is they weren't obeying the commands of God and they weren't respecting God in the way he had said he wanted to be treated. And as he reaches out to touch the Ark of the Covenant, he's consumed. He's destroyed. He's killed there in the moment. God was saying, I will not be mocked. I will not be trifled with. You will show the proper respect toward me. So we have this awe and intimacy, this respect and this love that we recognize both the life-giving power of God and yet also that he can take our lives if we dishonor him. We even use the expression, don't play with fire. And that certainly applies to our treatment toward God himself. What else does this passage tell us about a fear of the Lord, this awe and respect? Well, you'll notice at the end of verse one that it says, who walks in all his ways. So those are in parallel there. What does it mean to fear the Lord? It means to have an awe and respect and a wonder at him and yet at the same time to walk in all of his ways. In other words, to not stray off of the path of instruction and guidance that he has given to us. Here in verse 1 it says, blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. So certainly that applies to the dads, to the moms, to the children, to the grandchildren. It applies to every corner of the nation of Israel and to everybody in the church as well. Blessed are you if you walk in the ways of God and have an awe and a respect and a love and obedience toward God. But then we even see here in this passage and in other places in Scripture that different categories of people are to fear the Lord. So in verse 4, it says, And certainly, guys, we have a responsibility to be the spiritual thermostat in the home. So as we fear the Lord as men, that is then going to help the rest of the family to fear the Lord as well. It's much more difficult for a family if the man is not setting the tone, and setting the temperature, and fearing the Lord, and now all of a sudden the mom has to step up and become the spiritual leader in the home. Or sometimes even the children are the ones that say, Mommy, Daddy, can we go to church? You know, praise God for that because sometimes children have this heart of wanting to be close to God and wanting to listen to Bible stories and sing those songs. And God can even use the heart of a child to draw a family back to the Lord. But isn't it wonderful when that husband, when that dad are the ones that are saying, let's go to church tomorrow. Let's read our Bibles. Let's pray. Let's honor God with our decisions as a family. And God wants the men to be the ones that give the example and who set the tone for the rest of the family. But men are not the only ones that are to fear the Lord. Oftentimes the Bible says that women are to fear the Lord as well. And so mothers are to fear the Lord. In fact, we see this described for us over in the book of Proverbs. And it talks about in Proverbs 31, verse 30, charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. So the author of Proverbs is saying that makeup is okay, and looking in a mirror is okay, and making yourself look nice is okay, but far more important than external beauty, which is so quickly passing, is an internal beauty which actually grows with time. Charm is deceitful. Be careful of what you see on the outside. But he says that a deep and full beauty is one of the person who fears the Lord and is to be praised. Psalm 34 also even says that this fear of the Lord is to be passed on to our children. Psalm 34 verse 11, Come, O children, listen to me. I will teach you. The fear of the Lord. And then I love what it says in Ecclesiastes 12 verse 1. It says, And if you go on and read that passage in Ecclesiastes 12, it starts to talk about how the body breaks down over time. You know, and just like your car, you got to go in for your 30, 60, 90,000 mile tune up. And it's like these bodies over time, you get that 100,000 mark, 200, 300,000. It's like things start to break down, right? And the point of the author of Ecclesiastes is saying, yeah, maybe your body can't keep up with the pace that it used to. That's okay. That's normal and natural. But when you're young, Don't miss that opportunity to remember and honor and serve and fear the Lord in your youth. Use your youthful strength to fear and remember and honor God. It is a gift from the Lord and we don't want to look back in our 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and have regret of, oh I wasted so much of my life when I could have remembered and honored God and I had more strength and capacity to serve Him. We never stop. This side of heaven, God has a purpose and a plan for you. And even in old age, God can tremendously use you for His glory. But young age and strength and vitality is a unique time in your life to be able to serve the Lord. To walk in God's ways means to develop a lifestyle or a way of life of fearing the Lord. And a quick scan of the phrase, fear of the Lord, reveals what marks a person who fears the Lord. So, for example, in 2 Chronicles 19, verse 7, it says that the fear of the Lord involves integrity or speaking the truth. It says, Now then, let the fear of the Lord be upon you. Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the Lord our God or partiality or taking bribes. The fear of the Lord also involves being committed to God's Word and reading it, listening to it, studying it. It says in Psalm 99, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. The fear of the Lord involves not only integrity, devotion to God's Word, it involves humility and a sort of intolerance or allergic reaction to sin and evil, even a hatred toward what is evil and sinful. Proverbs 8 verse 13 says, the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. It's like if you have a certain unwanted food, maybe there's a food that's just absolutely disgusting to you. As our kids were growing up, Natalie and I tried to, as much as possible, hide from our kids what foods we didn't like. Because we didn't want them to be biased, we wanted them to be open-minded and willing to try all things. And I love cucumbers, Natalie can't really stand them. She really likes olives, to me they just spoil the entire dish of whatever the food is that you're having. So there's these different things and so we'd maybe like discreetly not have that part on our plate but we wouldn't say anything. or maybe we'd set it to the side, or just kind of gulp it down, and then our kids develop their own appetites and tastes as well. But imagine you're having a dish, and there's one particular food that has a strong flavor, you absolutely can't stand it, you're digging along, you're eating, and then you see that particular food right there, and you're like, ew, that's so gross! Why is this here? I don't like this, I don't want to eat this, it spoiled the dish for me. That's what God wants us to do towards sin. There's this repulsion, this visceral reaction, that is disgusting. Why would I want to get closer to that? Why would I want to eat that or consume that or let that sort of inflict pain and to cause me to become sinful in my own thinking and activity? So the Bible says to hate or have an intolerance toward evil and that is part of our fear of the Lord. Everyone should fear the Lord. Husbands, wives, passing it on to the next generation of children, grandchildren. This fear leads to integrity, to humility, to obedience, to a growing lifestyle. And certainly none of us have fully arrived at this perfect fear of the Lord and awe and reverence toward Him. We're a work in progress, right? And so we should be growing in our knowledge of God and thoughts toward him, but this side of heaven we will not perfectly fear the Lord. The fear of the Lord is really the embodiment of Christlikeness and we are to be emulating Christ, to be growing to think like Jesus and speak like Jesus and act like Jesus, but we will not fully be like Jesus until he returns and glorifies us and remakes us in his image. In the meantime, we will continue to be in this process of sanctification and we will fail sometimes and not fear the Lord like we ought to and yet we ask forgiveness and we do it again. We get back up on our feet and we begin to try and honor and obey God and to walk consistently in His ways. the basic pronouncement of blessing upon a person who fears the Lord, but let's look more specifically, what does that mean practically? What are some of the blessings, you may ask, of a person who fears the Lord and has an awe and reverence and humility toward him? This brings us to our second point, which we can call the promise of blessing. The promise of blessing, particularly in verses two through four. So there's three different promises or outworkings of these blessings that the author focuses on here in our passage. The first one would be what we could call productivity. What does blessing look like in a God-fearer? Well, it looks like productivity. This is in verse two. It says, you shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. You shall be blessed and it shall be well with you. So he's saying that the person who fears the Lord is promised that when they work hard and do their jobs well, they're going to reap the blessings of what they've sown. They'll enjoy the fruit of their labor. This was probably a little bit easier to understand in an agrarian society where many people were actually either farmers or shepherds. So you raised a crop or you raised a flock and you ate from what you worked at. They are in the field, right? So it was a literal kind of hand-to-mouth subsistence living where a person was working hard and literally eating the fruit of their labor. And if you're a gardening hobbyist, then you and I enjoy like growing something and eating whatever we put effort into. When we moved here to West Hills we brought a few fruit trees with us and I planted those last fall and they were out in the hot sun all last summer and I wasn't 100% sure if they were even going to actually survive the transplant. But I was overjoyed when on Saturday I looked out my window and I saw one of those apple trees and it had new leaves and new blossoms on it. And it's like, yes, the roots have taken. It's starting to grow and settle down. And I'll give it a couple more years and just help that thing to survive and to thrive and develop a healthy root system, prune it back a little bit. I'm not going to worry about getting apples on it this year, maybe not even next year. It's okay. I'll wait a while, but I'm excited to reap the fruit of my labors, right? Of planting that and tilling the soil and weeding it and watering it. And all that work is for a delayed gratification. And the Bible says that if you fear the Lord, eventually you will reap the fruit of your labors. If you work hard, if you're patient, if you're diligent, if you're honest and you're hardworking and you're walking in the ways of God, then you may not today reap the reward, you may not tomorrow, but eventually God is going to bless you. And in faith you continue to do the right thing even if you're not seeing the immediate response of that. Now the very opposite is true of somebody who doesn't fear the Lord. What I mean by that is they're not going to ultimately be blessed. Now what is true is they're also going to reap what they have sown. So that principle is universal. We will all reap what we sow, either toward righteousness or toward wickedness. Sort of kind of like the boomerang effect of what goes around, comes around, and comes back to us. So the Bible does say you will reap what you will sow, but for the unbeliever or the non-God-fearer, okay, so the person that just ignores God, rejects Him, doesn't walk in His ways, pretends as though He doesn't exist, doesn't pray toward Him, doesn't make time for the Lord, doesn't care about His rules. The person who does that, they are not going to receive a long-term productivity in their work. And this is talked about a number of times in the prophets. In fact, in particular, Haggai chapter 1 is telling the story of how the people of Israel had come back into the land after they had suffered in captivity in Babylon. They come back to the land. God said, I've got a job for you to do. You need to rebuild the temple. and they laid a foundation, and then they never finished the job, they decided it was more important for them to make nice houses, and to get comfortable in life, and to work on their farming, and to earn some money, and they just kind of left God and His house and worship unattended. And what they discovered over time is that they were incredibly unproductive. They were like the hamster on the wheel that was putting out all of this effort, and they were getting hardly anything in return. So listen to how the prophet Haggai describes this in chapter 1, verses 5 and 6. He says, Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways. You have sown much, and you've harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one's warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them, get this, in a bag with holes. You know, you work so hard, you earn that paycheck, you get the money, you put it in your wallet, and the wallet slips right out the hole in the back of your pants. That's what they were doing. He says you're unproductive. Have you ever asked why you're unproductive, he says? It's because you haven't been fearing the Lord. You neglected the worship of God and the house of God. Focus on God, put Him first, and all these other things will be taken care of. In fact, that's exactly what Jesus says in the New Testament, isn't it? He says people are worried about what they're going to wear, what they're going to eat, what they're going to drink, where they're going to live, all these things that naturally and rightfully concern us. We should care about our basic needs and taking care of our family. But Jesus says this, and I love this. He says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added unto you. He says, I've got this. I'll take care of you. I know what your needs are. Even before you ask or discover them, I already know what your needs are, and if you will focus on the Lord, fearing Him, seeking His kingdom, obeying Him, and walking in His ways, I will take care of your needs and make you productive. Amen? That's a great promise to find encouragement in. And here the psalmist says that there is productivity in those who fear the Lord. Secondly, there's the gift of partnership. Another blessing that he's describing here for a God-fearing family is the gift of partnership. the loving relationship of a husband and a wife. Verse 3 says, your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Now, why in the world would a woman be described as a vine? Well, certainly, I think we can understand that a vine produces what? Grapes and grapes are an enjoyable fruit. And the fruit can be either like a table grape or it could be a wine grape. And oftentimes in the Bible, wine, both in the ancient world and in the modern world, is a picture of joy and satisfaction and feasting. And so here it's saying that your wife is going to be fruitful and bountiful and bring joy to the household. Wine was often drunk at a more diluted level than we're accustomed to wine today. So just keep that in mind. When you hear the Bible talk about wine so much, that it's not necessarily the kind of wine that you see at the grocery store today. It was sometimes at half or even less of the same alcohol and toxicity level that it is now. So it was sometimes just simply grape juice. And sometimes it was more of an alcoholic beverage, but it was also just to disinfect the water so that it was safe to drink. And it was, you know, when you go to the restaurant today, especially some of these fast food restaurants, and they've got those automatic soda dispensers, and there's literally like 300 different flavors of soda that you can pick out, right? You can have every imaginable kind with every syrup flavor added to it. Well, you didn't have a whole lot of options in the ancient world. It was either water or maybe milk, which might be borderline curdled, or you could sometimes add a little bit of grape juice or fermented juice to that water and you could have something that was drinkable and flavorful and enjoyable. And so the Bible describes here the wife being like a fruitful vine within the house. This also pictures having children as offspring, that your wife will have an open womb, so to speak. God promised to bless the people of Israel as they feared the Lord and that literally they would have large families. God was helping them to fulfill the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth if they were obedient. I think that it's also referring to the romantic pleasure between a husband and his wife. In fact, if you were to compare this text with the Song of Solomon, you'll discover that much of the romantic love described in the Song of Solomon is using the sights and the sounds and the smells of the vineyard metaphorically to describe romantic love. God says that a home that has God at the center is going to grow into a sweet home and a happy home and a fruitful home. Now maybe this is an appropriate place to say as a side note, this is not an absolute promise or an absolute curse. So a person who is following the Lord, it doesn't mean that you're going to find a spouse. or that you're going to have a child or multiple children. It's not an absolute guarantee, nor is it saying that somebody who is barren, who's been trying to have children is unable to, or you're single and you're looking for a spouse and you've not found them yet. It's not saying necessarily that you're doing something wrong. There could be a whole litany of reasons why God is allowing you to be single or why you don't have children or as many children as you want to. But generally speaking, that's the concept of wisdom literature. It's painting in broad strokes here, okay? So generally speaking, those who fear the Lord will receive bounty and blessing and productivity and joy. And those who disobey the Lord and dishonor Him are going to find that things wither and dry and are empty. And even what you do have, it just never satisfies. Because you're always wanting more and more and more, and it's never enough. There's a whole area of false doctrine called prosperity theology that basically says that if you just have enough faith, you can ask God whatever you want to, and He's basically just a genie that you rub the bottle and He'll give you your wish. If you name it, you can claim it and God will give it to you if you have enough faith, right? You've heard that, you've seen that on TV. That's not what the Bible says. And there were people in the New Testament that had fallen under that prosperity gospel. And so when they saw somebody who was not prosperous, their immediate assumption was, well, they must have sinned, right? So we have in John chapter nine, the story of a blind man and the disciples say to Jesus, Well, who sinned? Did the blind man or did his parents? See, those are the only two options to them. Either he did something wrong. to have this disability or his parents did something wrong and Jesus says no. That's oversimplifying things. It's not just that he or his parents did something wrong. There's a variety of reasons that God permits suffering and disability in our world and God was going to use that for his glory and heal that man and actually not only heal him physically but heal him spiritually if you go on and read the rest of that chapter. So that disability became an opportunity for that man to cry out to Jesus for mercy and then find forgiveness of sin and eternal life. God glorified himself through that man's infirmity. We know the same thing happened in the story of Job, right? What was the response of Job's friends when he had his crops taken away and his herds taken away and his house taken away and his family taken away? What did they do? What did they assume? that he'd done something wrong, right? Wow, you must have really ticked God off for him to treat you this way, Job. And yet actually you and I as the reader, we read those couple first chapters of Job and we realize he was a righteous man. He was a God-fearing man. He had done nothing wrong. In fact, there's a sense of where it was because of his righteousness and obedience that he was going through this spiritual warfare. So again, we don't want to oversimplify things. There's a variety of reasons why people may suffer or not in the short run experience material blessing or the relationships that we wish for. It's okay if you're not where you want to be. Ask the Lord. Go to him. Pray for his provision, and in the meantime that he would give you a spirit of contentment. But we certainly wouldn't want to miss the fact that when God has blessed you with a spouse, that you see that as a gift from the Lord. When he's blessed you with children, that those are a gift from the Lord. That those are one of the ways that he blesses a God-fearer. And we want to give him praise for that. So he will bless with productivity, he'll bless with partnership in a marital relationship, and he'll also bless with progeny, with children. The end of verse 3 says that your children would be like olive shoots around your table. And I'm thinking, what in the world does that mean? Why are my kids like olive shoots around the table? Well, again, olive trees, along with the vineyard that was used in the first half of the verse. These are common crops and plants that were grown in Israel. And olive trees were one of the staple crops of Israel. Olive trees just by themselves, you could harvest wood from it. They provided shade in the heat of the summer. You could have the olives themselves. You could also crush the olives and you could make oil. Oil was a source of food. It was a source of, it had medicinal value. It could be flavoring on your food. There were all different kinds of ways that you could harvest and utilize an olive tree. It was one of the most desirable crops to have. And it's saying here that your children are like a multiplication of productivity and olive trees in your midst. In fact, from my understanding... If there was a tree that was not producing particularly well, you could take and you could clip off some of the branches of a healthier olive tree and you could graft those into the trunk of a less healthy and productive olive tree and would actually help that olive tree. When you had a new branch that was grafted in, it would cause that rootstock to now bear more fruit. Another thing that you can do is you can snip off a branch and you can plant that in the ground and that branch will start to bear new roots on it. So you can multiply the original and there's a sense of cloning that's going on of the original crop to now have multiple ones. And I love that metaphor because basically that means mom and dad, you have the opportunity to pass on a legacy to the next generation. You get to multiply your influence. And it's a joy, this is one of the things I love, probably one of my favorite things about having kids that have moved out of like the toddler and the grade school and the middle school age and now to have kids in high school and even in college is I get to watch this process of multiplication going on in discipleship where Natalie and I have poured into our kids and now we're kind of like letting them go and watching them flourish and produce fruit that is far beyond what we would have been able to do ourselves. You know, to have Abby out there as a greeter, and to have Heidi who's helping with our preschool and signing kids in in the morning, to have Dylan serving in evangelism and counseling, and to have our kids being involved in different areas of ministry for us to be able to talk about people in the church and how to help them and how to serve them and to be on the lookout. It's like we're seeing a multiplication of what Natalie and I have been doing for the last almost 20 years. And it's like we're seeing these olive shoots that are popping up And now they're producing fruit on their own, and we get to experience part of the joy of that reward. It's a wonderful thing. It's a blessing that goes far beyond what you could possibly imagine. And, like any tree, it takes time. So if you're still at the stage where you want to have kids or your kids are very young, you're not going to see the long-term fruitfulness for many years, but don't give up. Keep praying, keep being faithful, keep pouring into them, because over time God is going to use them in ways that go beyond what you could even imagine. Are these an absolute promise? I would say no. It's not saying that every single person who fears the Lord will have a wife who is a fruitful vine within the house, will have children, plural, like olive shoots around your table. It's not an absolute, literal, physical promise for every single person. It's more of, in wisdom literature, it's generally speaking these things are true and reliable statements. And I'll give you just a couple examples of that. I've got a friend who's a pastor down in Corona, and I think I maybe even mentioned this a week or two ago. I know I shared it with a couple of people, but he just lost his wife about a month ago. He's deeply grieving the loss of his wife. He could misinterpret this passage and say, God, why did you take my wife away? You promised if I feared you that I would have a wife who is a loving, fruitful vine. That would be misinterpreting what God is saying here. But what I've seen this man do, Pastor Charlie Moulton, is I've seen him trust in the Lord and take his incredibly deep pain to God and the sorrow and the sadness and the gaping hole of loneliness and praise God through that and hurt with other people through that and thank God for the gift that his wife was to him and continues to be in his memories and the legacy of his children. So he's going through a whole range of emotions and pain right now, but it's not saying that everything is always gonna be easy and simple. and productive in the short run. He also knows that his wife is with the Lord in heaven and so he's happy and thankful for her to be there and he longs to be there with her and to enjoy companionship with all believers that go before us. Another example would be that some couples are unable to conceive and have children. And they long for that. And they can pray for that. And they can seek to get medical counsel on that. And it's appropriate to want to have other children if God gives you that desire and the ability to do that. That you want to have kids and you want to have the next generation. But there are cases where that doesn't happen. And it can be confusing and hurtful in the short run. And we continue to ask the Lord to provide. And meanwhile, just keep in mind that all of your children are not necessarily your biological children. There are other options available. There's the option of foster care. There's the option of adoption. There's the option of even pouring more into the children in this church. Like we got to see those beautiful little children this morning as they're passing out the flowers. They need not only a literal biological mom and dad going to church to lead them in the ways of God, but they need spiritual aunts and uncles, if you will. They need a bunch of us to love those kids. and to make this a safe place where they can grow up to fear God and keep his commandments. We want them to love to be at church, and we love to be able to find ways to involve them in our ministry, singing from time to time, giving out flowers. We're doing vacation Bible school this summer. Those are, in a sense, our spiritual olive shoots. that we're going to be pouring into as a church to help pass on the gospel to the next generation. So there's a variety of ways that that can take it. Don't be so simple-minded to think, oh it's only one certain way and if I don't have that God has let me down. No, God promises he will take care of you and bless you and you trust in him and you fear him and you wait upon his time and look for opportunities to see God provide and give joy to you. We can't do any of this without God's help, and so it's appropriate that at the end of this psalm, the psalmist ends with a prayer. And that brings us to our third point, the prayer of blessing. So we've seen the pronouncement of blessing, right? Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord and walk in his ways. We've seen the promise of blessing, which took three forms of productivity, and then partnership, and then progeny. But lastly, we see a prayer of blessing as the focus shifts now from simply talking about this blessing and some of the ways that God might bless us to talking specifically about how we need to pray for God to bless those that are part of his people. In verses five and six, it says, 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. Again, keep in mind that this is a song of ascents. So the people are walking on this long journey that would take multiple days to get to Jerusalem. And as they're doing it, they're praying for God's blessing from Zion. That's another name for the capital city of Jerusalem and a mountain or a hilltop that's there in Jerusalem. Bless you from Zion. May there be prosperity upon Jerusalem. Peace be upon Israel. Verse 6. You know, and by application, may God bless Calvary Church. May He shine His face upon the West Valley. May God be known in our midst. May we experience His blessing as we fear Him. We want to see the good of our community, don't we? We want to see a human flourishing take place, and that should start here within the family of God and within the household of God's people, Christian families that serve and love Him. These people are saying, let's see God bless our families. Let's see him bless his holy people in Jerusalem. There's this prayer blessing that God will give long life and health to his people, prosperity of Jerusalem, all the days of their life, and even the opportunity to see their children's children, which would be their grandchildren. I have not had that joy and I'm okay waiting a few more years. I'm not in any rush to be a grandparent. But I've seen how my parents have treated my kids. And it's a very strange thing when your parents start acting like children when they're playing with your children. And I see the joy in the eyes and in the tone and in the life of my parents as they get to experience the joy of grandparenting. And I've heard from countless grandparents that there's a joy in parenting but there's this like undiscovered layer of love you didn't even know you had when it comes to seeing your children's children. and getting to spend time with them and pouring into them and playing with them and teaching them. So long after you become an empty nester, so to speak, you still have this privilege and responsibility of praying for and caring for and mentoring and loving those next generation of children. And again, that's physical and literal. Many of you who have grandchildren, this is a blessing and a prayer. May you see and enjoy the gift of your children's children, but also spiritually. That's something that happens here in this church, that God wants us to look around and see these kids and see them as spiritual grandchildren that need our prayers and our love. They need our sacrificial giving. It's not cheap to do ministry in 2025 in Southern California. It takes our sacrificial giving and our prayers in order to pour into this next generation what they need in order to thrive in this world. So we give to the Lord. We pray for them. We spend time with them. We serve them because we want to see them walk with God. And there's a great joy that we receive as we do that. That's the prayer of blessing. May the Lord bless you and may you see your children's children. The family that prays together stays together, the old saying goes. Those who put God first will experience unity and blessing. And the blessing here reminds me very much of the Aaronic blessing that's found in Numbers 6, verses 24 through 26. Here it says, the Lord bless you from Zion. May you see prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life and see your grandchildren. Over in Numbers 6.24 it says, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you and lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. In other words, may you have shalom. May you have a deep and abiding peace and satisfaction in Christ and in God and all of his ways. So we've seen the pronouncement of blessing, the promise of blessing, and here lastly, the prayer of blessing. A number of years ago. Natalie and I helped to facilitate a parenting class in our previous church, and we'll do one of those here someday at Calvary as well, okay? So we want to continue to pour into our parents and help equip you. But there's a parenting class called Shepherding a Child's Heart, and one of the principles that really stood out to me when we went through that course together, and Ted Tripp, who taught that material, is he talks about what he calls a circle of blessing, or a sphere of blessing. And this comes straight out of scripture, where the Bible says, what is the responsibility of a child is to honor your father and your mother, obey your parents in the Lord, what? For this is right. And it says, for this is the first law of God with a promise that it will, what? Go well with you. See, that's wisdom thinking. As you fear God, keep his commandments, obey those in authority, it will go well with you. You will experience a wellness or a blessing. And so Tripp in this parenting material talks about how important it is for kids to understand when you honor God and you fear and love him and you obey your parents, you are in a place, a circle where God will bless you. But if you cease to worship and fear God and you move out of that place, you're no longer going to be under his blessing. In fact, it would be tragic if you continue to be blessed because then you're going to think to yourself, oh, I don't really need God. Things are just fine without Him. So often what happens is when a person moves out of that sphere of blessing is they find themselves in a place where there's loneliness, unfulfillment, dissatisfaction, brokenness, pain. They're no longer in a place of blessing, but now they find themselves under a place of discipline and cursing. And what we need to do if we find ourself there is to go back to Psalm 128 and many other places in scripture that say, blessed is the man who fears the Lord. Seek him first, and you will begin to experience his blessing once again, right? So as we trust in the Lord and fear Him, we will experience in many different ways the blessing that He provides. What is wealth? What are riches? I think that our society today often defines that as a big house, maybe on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a nice car, a fast boat, fashionable clothes. There's so much commercialism in our world that's trying to constantly program us of what riches and wealth look like. But I think as we look at this, how striking that when it says, blessed is the man and the woman who fears God, it doesn't say, and they will have a big screen TV. and they will add 5,000 square feet to their house, right? It doesn't simply say they will have more material property and blessing. It says they'll have the gift of a wife. They'll have the gift of children. The hugs and the laughs and the playing and the learning and the influence that you get to have into those kids, and then your kids' kids. Isn't that really the greatest wealth that you could ever ask for in this world? Never take that for granted. And on Mother's Day, I just wanted to take us back to a passage of scripture that says your family is a gift. Thank God for them. Never take it for granted. And pour into them what God has taught you, and even as you're still a work in progress, continue to pass on the fear of the Lord to the next generation. We're gonna close with a final song this morning, and the worship team's gonna come back up here. As they do that, would you bow with me in prayer today? Maybe you're here this morning and you haven't been fearing the Lord and you've even been straying from him outside the sphere of blessing. I want to urge you right now to seek first the kingdom of God. And that begins by crying out to God in repentance. God, I've been a fool. I've been blind. I've been doing this all on my own. Forgive me of my sin. Restore me into a right relationship with you and you can do that as you trust in Jesus and his finished work upon the cross. Ask forgiveness of your sins and he promises that if you confess he'll be faithful and just to forgive your sin and cleanse you by his blood of all your unrighteousness. All of us have room to grow and maybe there's a particular area as a dad, as a mom, as a child. As a grandparent, maybe you're recognizing like, man, I need to improve. I need to grow. I've not been in fellowship with God as I should be. Ask God to help you in that area that you would follow and fear him more fully. Father, we love you and we thank you. You have lavished your love upon us. You've treated us far better than we deserve. the greatest wealth we'll ever enjoy this side of heaven is the wealth of a happy, holy, God-fearing home. Those of us that have that, we are so grateful to you, Lord. May we never take it for granted. Those who aren't where they want to be with their family plans, I pray that you give them a current spirit of contentment and that they would make wise choices in the long term, and that you would bring the people into their lives that would allow them to experience your blessing to an even greater degree, all for your glory, in Jesus' name, amen.