Like some of the other Psalms, people have observed that Psalm 127 and Psalm 128 are best read and understood together. And we see this in the images, in themes that they share. As Christians, we are temporary residents of this world. and we are permanent citizens of Christ's kingdom. And as such, we are surrounded by false ideas about life in this fallen world. We are surrounded by false ideas about what should motivate us to do what we do. We are surrounded by false ideas about what our priorities should be and what it means to be successful, and what it means to be secure. And therefore, we are surrounded by false ideas about what the ideal life is, or what it means to be blessed in life. And at times in this life, we will be tempted to believe these different false ideas about what the ideal life is or what it means to be truly blessed. As Christians, we need to be reminded often that God has spoken to us by his son. It is through Christ, His apostles, and all of Scripture that God communicates to us the knowledge about what is true and what is false. Because His Word is truth. Psalm 128 teaches us that there is a God-defined ideal life. And because the Lord Jesus Christ has perfectly lived the ideal life for us, we can begin to experience that blessed life now. While we wait for His return. And while we wait for the fullness of that blessed life forevermore. Psalm 128 opens similarly to other psalms of the same kind. These psalms are often called wisdom or Torah psalms. These wisdom psalms often speak of a happy and blessed existence. Wisdom psalms and thus Psalm 128 speak about a happy and properly aligned life consistent with God's good intention for creation. Psalm 128 describes what I'm calling the ideal or blessed life. This is what others refer to as the good life. Wisdom Psalms often speak of the blessings of fertility and material prosperity. In wisdom psalms, when they speak of these blessings, they often speak of them in certitudes that come from obeying God. These psalms often speak of the way things are supposed to be. Not how they are always experienced. And this is why many have described these Psalms as having a kind of end of this age or new creation tone to them. In other words, Psalm 128 and other Psalms like it anticipate the fullness of the new creation. At the second coming of Christ, God's intention at the beginning of this creation will be finally and fully realized in an eternal state of perfect righteousness, happiness, prosperity, and peace. These Psalms, in more ways than one, they speak of God's ideal for His creation. They speak of God's ideal for His creatures. And the most well-known among the Wisdom Psalms is Psalm 1. Similar to Psalm 128, Psalm 1 describes the ideal of the blessed man. It describes what God expects from the righteous in contrast to the wicked. And Psalm 1 promises blessing and prosperity. And as Psalm 128 describes the ideal life devoted to God in obedience to His moral law, Psalm 128, like Psalm 1, describes the promise of blessing and prosperity. Verse 1. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walk in His ways. What does it mean to fear the Lord? The one who fears the Lord walks in His ways. The person who fears the Lord recognizes that He is the creator of all that exists and we are His creatures. The one who fears the Lord acknowledges the Lord's supremacy as the only true in living and creating God. The one who fears the Lord recognizes their duty to God and thus subjects his or her entire life to obeying His law. He walks in His ways. And the person who obeys receives, as one author says, the blessing of fruitful labor, guaranteed sustenance, prosperity, in a happy home. And in verse 2 and 3, for the person who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways, these blessings are to be expected with an emphasis, with an emphatic sense of absolute certainty. The blessings described in verses 2 and 3 are expected blessings. for the person who obeys. The person who fears the Lord, who is devoted to His ways, certainly you will enjoy fruitful labor. Certainly you will enjoy guaranteed sustenance. The person who fears the Lord, who is devoted to His ways, Certainly you will be blessed with prosperity. Certainly you will be blessed with a happy home. Behold, for thus will the man be blessed who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. Verse 4. This was the nature of the covenantal context in which Israel lived, the Mosaic Covenant. God created Adam to be his vice regent over his creation. Adam was to image God to creation. And as the representative of his people, the human race, Adam was to personally and perfectly obey God. But we know how that all went. Like Adam, Israel was created by God, a new humanity through whom the world was to know the one true creator, God. Israel was supposed to represent the wisdom and the knowledge of God to the nations. And ultimately, through the prophets, The prophet, Israel was supposed to be the source of true religious knowledge from God. God, as a greater divine king, enters into covenant with the nation of Israel. And He promises them national security. And He promises them material prosperity. And as long as they obeyed God, He promised them the good life, a blessed life in the land which He was giving them. On the other hand, disobedience would bring the opposite consequence. The nation's disobedience would bring expulsion from the land and the loss of prosperity. And as we read throughout Deuteronomy, The promised blessings and oppositely the curses correspond to the blessings of Psalm 128. In Deuteronomy 28 we read, if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments that I command you today, the Lord will make you abound in prosperity. In the fruit of your womb, and in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground within the land. Deuteronomy 28 verses 1 and 11. In verses 15 and 33. And if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to do all his commandments, The nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors. And you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually. This is the works-based covenantal context of Israel in Psalm 128. The good life in the land had to be earned. The blessed life in its continuance was given by God as a reward, earned through obedience. And in God's plan of salvation to bring about the Savior, the Mosaic covenant between God and the nation of Israel was a conditional, temporal, national covenant. And this covenant served ultimately to point to the greater spiritual realities of the new covenant. The nation, the land, and the temple, in all their associated blessings, pointed to and were fulfilled in Christ, his end time people, the church, and ultimately the new creation. Israel, as seen in Deuteronomy, was meant to be the ideal humanity. One God. One people. One land. One sanctuary. And one law. Like Adam, God made Israel. And like Adam, He took care of them. Israel, like Adam, was chosen by God as a vice regent to be a light to the world. But Israel failed. And their failure is a small scale picture of the large scale fallen humanity. And Israel's failure, therefore, is ultimately a mirror unto us. a reminder of our own failure. Adam failed to achieve the ideal. Israel, as another Adam, failed to achieve the ideal. And we too, like Adam, like Israel, we failed to achieve the ideal. Every one of us here Children and adults all have sinned and fall short of the ideal. Therefore, every one of us here needs Christ. Like the lives of all God's people since the fall, our lives are less than ideal. There is a discrepancy between the ideal life presented in this psalm, and what is often the reality of our life in this fallen and broken world. We experience this discrepancy in our own lives, and we see the reality of this discrepancy in scripture. As I already alluded to in verse 2, The picture of eating the fruit of the labor of your hands is a picture of enjoying the good consequences of your hard work. This is a picture of the rewarding strength and nourishment that comes from your hand, from your hard work, which sustains you with what is necessary to survive. The picture of verse 3, The pictures in verse 3 are pictures of fertility. And as you can read in Psalm 127, fertility brings joy. Fertility brings life. Fertility brings strength and security. In that ancient agricultural society, these pictures describe the ideal everyday life and family. This is the special blessing of God given to the obedient. But what about Job? Job was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. Job had everything any man could ever want in his day. The wife, the children, the land, the future. joy, health, strength, and security. Job was living the good life. Job was living the blessed life. And not because of any personal sin of his own, Job lost every blessing promised in Psalm 128, And he suffered the curses that resemble the curses of Deuteronomy. And in the book of Psalms, you don't have to read very long before you come to this discrepancy between the ideal life and what is often, all too often, the reality of our life in a fallen world. In Psalm 3, verses 1 and 2, the psalmist is troubled and in great distress, crying out to God, saying, O Lord, how many are my enemies? Many are rising against me. Many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God. In Psalm 4 verse 1, Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness. You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. In Psalm 13, verses 1 and 2. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Life in this fallen world can be pretty miserable sometimes. At times we find ourselves in discouraging and even deeply depressing circumstances. Life in this fallen world is not always full of fruitful vines and olive shoots, is it? At times, we don't enjoy our work. At times, our future is unsecured. And rather than experiencing joy and good health, Sometimes we find ourselves in poor health and in seasons of great despair. There might even come a time when we prefer death over life. Sometimes our less than ideal circumstances are not due to any personal sin on our part, Sometimes these circumstances are just part of living in a fallen world. Where often God's hidden reasons and hidden purposes will remain a mystery. Sometimes we suffer because of someone else's sin. And sometimes we suffer because we've responded sinfully. to someone else's sin. The pictures painted in Psalm 128, and other Psalms like this one, are pictures of the ideal work-life success, which represent happiness and prosperity. But life doesn't always look like that. While it is true that we fail to fully and finally achieve the ideal life, while we fully and finally fail to achieve the blessed life, the good news is that we don't fail to obtain it. We can obtain the blessed life because there is one who achieved it for all who take refuge in him. Many have observed the deliberate placement of Psalm 1 in Psalm 2 at the beginning of the Psalter. And many have observed that Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 are also meant to go together. Psalm 1 is like our psalm in that it describes the ideal man and promises blessing and prosperity. But this promise blessing and prosperity does not come apart from Psalm 2. In Psalm 2, God is in control. In Psalm 2, ultimately, the blessed life is mediated through His anointed one, His King, His Son. As God says in Psalm 2 verse 12, blessed are all who take refuge in Him. Psalm 1 opens with the words, blessed is the man. And Psalm 2 closes with the words, blessed are all who take refuge in Him. That man. We also read in Scripture that the ideal man, Jesus, the Son of God, is our wisdom. The Apostle Paul tells us that Jesus has become for us wisdom from God. That is, our righteousness, our holiness, and redemption. Jesus alone is the ideal man. He alone is the God-man. Jesus, being perfectly wise, fulfilled the law. And in his death, he suffered the curses that were due to us, because in our foolishness, we failed to obey God's law. And Jesus did this so that we might enjoy the blessings pictured in the law and the prophets, which ultimately point to the new creation. One author summarizes this truth with the following words. Christ lived the perfect life of wisdom for us so that as we trust in Him, the Father views us as perfectly wise. Our justification. And He is in the process of making us perfectly wise. Our sanctification. The Lord Jesus Christ has perfectly lived the ideal life for all who take refuge in Him. In the Old Testament prophets, there was a promise of another creation. And the blessed life of this new creation is communicated with images of the successful building of houses, happy and healthy families, dwelling in safety, dwelling with meaningfulness and enjoyment of their work. This end-time blessed life is described with images of fruitful vines and trees in the inheritance of children. And as you can see, these are the very images of Psalm 127 and Psalm 128. At the return of Christ following the final judgment, that which the prophets described with Old Covenant language and imagery, The apostles describe as new covenant realities and fulfillments. The apostles describe the fullness of this new creation as the final eternal state of God's glorified people. And at that time, we will finally and fully experience the blessed life forever and ever. And yet, the scriptures also describe this end time age of eternal life as beginning with the resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And we become partakers of this new creation life by faith in Christ. When the Holy Spirit regenerates us and dwells within us, And although we fail to perfectly or completely obey God, although we fail to live up to the ideal life, because the Lord Jesus Christ has perfectly lived the ideal life for all who take refuge in Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we trust in Christ and obey God's word, Our minds are renewed and He transforms us. And in this way, and in this life, we begin to experience the blessed life. Even though it will be imperfect, we can begin to experience what will come to fulfillment when Christ returns. But where do we begin? The short answer is, we begin with God's moral law. In the Ten Commandments, God gives to us our duties to Him and our duties to others. We can ask ourselves, am I trusting in the Triune God and His Word revealed in the Scriptures? Am I worshiping him and thus am I glorifying him alone? Or am I worshiping something or someone else? Am I using the Lord's day in a way that prioritizes and cares for the needs of my soul and the souls of others as God intended? We can ask ourselves, am I living my life in a way that is consistent with the truth that I have a responsibility to love others? Do I respond to others with patience and kindness? As a parent, I think we should ask ourselves often, Do I respond to my children with patience and kindness? Do I respond to others in love? Or am I irritable? Or am I resentful? Or am I arrogant or rude? Am I always trying to get my own way? Do I rejoice at what is good and true? Or do I rejoice at wrongdoing? We can ask ourselves, is my life characterized by the fruit of the Holy Spirit as the Apostle describes in Galatians chapter 5? Would my family and friends who are closest to me Would they describe me with the following words? But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We can ask ourselves, are there sins that I've committed against God and other people that I need to confess, and that I need to rely on God's grace to help change. These are some of the categories that God has given us in His Word, so that we can confront sin in ourselves, so that we can confront sin in our families, and so that we can confront sin in the church. The culture around us might not use these categories of sin, but God does. And therefore, we ought to use and we ought to confront sin in these categories. The apostle tells us in Romans chapter 7, the law is holy. And the commandment is holy and righteous and good. But because of our own remaining sin, we do not perfectly live up to God's good and righteous expectations. Nevertheless, as God's people, we are to delight in the law of God. And therefore, by God's grace through faith in Christ, And by the power of the Holy Spirit, we ought to walk in God's good and righteous ways. We ought to pursue the blessed life as God defines it. When read together, Psalms 127 and 128 remind us that there is a God-defined ideal life. We are reminded that our motives and our priorities must be informed by God's truth. How we define what it means to be successful and secure in life must be informed by God's truth. We are reminded that apart from the blessing of God in Christ, life has no eternal value and life is ultimately empty. We are reminded that because God alone made the world and takes care of it, it is God who defines what it means to be blessed. If you have turned to God and put your trust in Christ alone to save you from your sins, and if by God's grace, Through the power of His Holy Spirit, you are endeavoring to love and obey God, and love and help those around you. And if by God's grace, through the power of His Holy Spirit, you are endeavoring to devote yourself to Christ's church, then you are presently living the blessed life. This is the life that God intends for us to live at this stage in his plan of salvation until Christ returns. This is the ideal life. And at times, sometimes often, this life we live will look different. than the life of others around us. At times, this life will be less than ideal. And because of our weakness, due to remaining sin, and because of our own fears, we will be tempted to walk in the ways of the world. And so may God grant to us, by His Holy Spirit, the strength and courage we need to fear God and to walk in His ways. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for sending your Son to live and to die for us. Forgive us for our sins. Renew our minds with your truth and transform our souls more and more. We ask in Christ.