PSALM 128 [NLTse]
A song for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem.
1 How joyful are those who fear the Lord—all who follow His ways! 2 You will enjoy the fruit of your labor. How joyful and prosperous you will be! 3 Your wife will be like a fruitful grapevine, flourishing within your home. Your children will be like vigorous young olive trees as they sit around your table. 4 That is the Lord’s blessing for those who fear Him.
5 May the Lord continually bless you from Zion. May you see Jerusalem prosper as long as you live. 6 May you live to enjoy your grandchildren. May Israel have peace!

SERMON
I want to talk to the men here in the Sanctuary this morning. All the rest of you, please stay and listen in, be encouraged, and keep your ears and hearts open to what the Lord may be saying to you. But, primarily, I want to speak to you, men; to us, men…

I’m not saying what I’m about to say because it’s all on you, men. Nor am I saying what I’m about to say because without you – without us – all would be lost. No. The Lord is the Lord, and the Lord is the Savior. And women and wives are key, and are so gifted and equipped by the Lord, and bear so much of the burdens of life and kids and healthy living and spirituality across our nation and the nations.

No, I want to talk to you, men, because we need to be talked to about God’s things more regularly and more directly than we often do. We need to hear about and feel the weight of the responsibility that Almighty God has placed on our shoulders, even as we need to hear more about the sacrifice the Lord has offered on the cross to make a Way for us, and about the Helper and the Comforter Whom the Lord has given us so that we can succeed in everything He’s called us to.
That being said, have you noticed that there’s a shortage of real men out there? (And I’m going to define “real men” today as men who say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”) I read a story once about someone who, while visiting a little village, asked one of the folks living there, “Have you ever had anyone famous born here?” And the villager replied, “No, we’ve only had babies born here.”

Men: The good news is that real men – men who love God, and who love their wife and kids, and who enjoy life and living it – aren’t born; it’s a process. We can all grow and become – more and more – the men, husbands, and fathers we want to be and were made by God to be! And Psalm 128, shortly and concisely, tells us how we men can – by God’s grace – grow to – more and more – become such men!

First, can you see with me that everything flows from the first verse? Verse 1 says, “How joyful are those who fear the Lord—all who follow His ways!” And then everything else is the result of that: Enjoying the fruit of our labors; being joyful and successful; our wives flourishing and fruitful; our kids vigorous and growing ready for life in the world… And the psalm then ends pointing us back to verse 1, saying, “That is the Lord’s blessing for those who fear Him.”

So, let me start at the end and then move back to the beginning. That is, what are we being promised here (and across all the pages of Scripture, since this short psalm is in reality just a wonderful summary of so many different passages and promises)?

First, let me paint you a picture. Did you know that the planet Jupiter is Earth’s “first line of defense” against galactic destruction? Yeah. Jupiter is something like 99.9 percent efficient at throwing all the dangerous space junk, asteroids, and meteorites that head towards Earth back out to interstellar space!

Because Jupiter is 318 times heavier than Earth, Jupiter’s mass creates a huge gravitational field that acts as a giant vacuum. Almost all of the space “junk” that gets soaring towards Earth gets drawn into Jupiter’s gravitational field and drawn away from us to be drawn towards Jupiter.

This was lived-out in a spectacular way about fifteen years ago when a monster-comet that was headed towards Earth broke into fragments with more destructive power than all the atomic bombs humans have ever made combined. But the fragments were drawn away from us as they passed through Jupiter’s gravitational field and hit Jupiter instead (without leaving a trace).

I know the ancient Romans didn’t know these things about Jupiter, but with its protective role in mind, it seems to me that they named the biggest planet well: Because in Old Latin, Jupiter means “Sky-Father.”

I share this, men – husbands, dads – because we are called by God to protect and provide for our families. But somehow we’ve lost the true sense of such protection and provision over the years. Somehow, someway, we’ve come to think that we can just give our kids “stuff”, “things” and lay-down rules for them to live by in “our homes” and think we’ve met our obligation as protectors and providers! Somehow, someway we’ve come to think that protecting and providing for our families means putting our wives and kids in a beautiful home and then yelling at them – or hiding away from them in front of ESPN or C-SPAN – after we get home. But if we think that in doing that we’ve done all that God has for us to do, we’re wrong!

Our wives (often) have the need to be assured that they are loved and attractive to us. They (often) have the need to feel secure in the midst of this topsy-turvy, ever-threatening, ever-changing world. Our ladies want to know that they matter to us and that their lives matter and make a difference to us, and to the kids, and to our neighbors and the world around them and to the Lord! God’s calling us to help protect them from these kinds of anxieties, fears, and insecurities – the “junk” that would batter and pummel and destroy them. The Lord is calling us to help provide the emotional and spiritual stability needed in our marriages and in our homes.

Our kids, of course, face their own “junk”. They want to feel accepted, and loved. They want to feel safe and secure. They want to enjoy the adventures of life while learning boundaries and how to love and serve others. They want to grow in understanding their place in the world and know that they’ll be ready to take that place when they reach adulthood. And the Lord’s calling us to protect them from pressures and threats and to provide what they need to succeed in it all!
But how can we be such a protector? We have our own fears and anxieties, don’t we, men? How can we be such a provider? We have our own insecurities, don’t we, men? God’s answer for us is to fear Him: “How joyful are those who fear the Lord—all who follow His ways!”

But what does that mean? What does it mean to “fear the Lord“? Okay, so, the Lord can squash us all like bugs, if He liked. Are we supposed to simply grovel and beg and live in the fear of that? No. The truth is that He’s made clear that He doesn’t want to crush us. No, He’s gone to the cross and paid the penalty for our sins and given us Jesus’ Own righteousness and drawn us to Himself in love, instead! So, “fearing the Lord” for us His children by faith in Jesus means giving Him the respect He is due: Honoring Him; taking Him seriously; recognizing that He is holy; placing Him at the center of everything we are, everything we think, everything we say and do and plan to do!

Paul tells us in Colossians 1:18, “In all things Christ should have the preeminence”. He should be “first in everything”! Which connects us with the second part of this first verse, men: We fear God, we respect Him and honor Him and put Him at the center of everything in our lives by “following His ways.”

We live Jesus’ Way by thinking about and behaving in-line with Jesus’ teachings, His easy yoke: We love, and do good to, our enemies… We give to, and comfort, those in need… We forgive those who’ve hurt us and ask forgiveness when we’ve hurt others… Men, the Lord tells us that joy, blessing, and true happiness in life are the by-product – the fruit that grows from – living our lives God’s way. Not just believing He’s our Savior, but living with Him as our Lord. Everything good and perfect thing in this life flows from this!

And yet, don’t we all have friends or know people who are literally killing themselves trying to get ahead in life, to find joy and blessing and happiness for themselves, to make their marriages work, to keep their kids out of trouble? But the Lord shows us that the contentment, peace, wonder-and-awe we’re all looking for doesn’t come from our circumstances or our possessions or our relationships. We won’t find them by changing our jobs, or by getting an “A” on our test, or with a new hairdo, or with a new wife (or a new husband) or a new car or a new outfit… No. Joy, blessing, and happiness – every good thing in life – comes when we live life according to God’s ways; by fearing Him; putting the Lord first and making Him our center and trusting all He’s said and promised.

(Don’t get me wrong: We can strive for the world’s version of success and achieve such goals, but we will live to regret it! The truth is, in whatever we do, without God, we will either fail miserably or succeed miserably!)
Joy, blessing, and happiness come from fearing the Lord – from being afraid of what our lives would be without Him, from fearing missing any of His good things for us; every good things comes from orienting our lives around God as He’s shown Himself to us in Jesus Christ.

Men: Our greatest work is not building a great business. Our greatest work is not building a great church. Our greatest work for the Lord is to love Him, to love our wives, to love our children, and to pass on to them the values and the heritage and the way of life of the Word of God. (Which will, in-turn, cause them to pass the message of Christ down through all their generations, as well!)

If this is all new to you, men, then start simply but radically: Begin reading a chapter of the Bible every day. Start in one of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Read a chapter, highlighting or taking notes of whatever jumps out at you. Then think about what changes you would need to make in your life to live out what you just read. And commit to make those changes. Talk to God, ask for His help and blessing, and pray for your wife, your kids, your grandkids, not just His blessing on their lives but that they, too, like you, would grow in “fearing” Him and building their lives on Him.

If you’re ready for next steps: Start gathering your family together and read the Bible and talk about what you’re reading together; pray together as a family for each other’s struggles and for each other to grow in “the fear of the Lord”; offer yourself to be a part of a ministry here at the church; serve together with your wife or as a family, if you can; look for ways to push yourself in living out and sharing your faith; seek ways to face your fears and cast your anxieties on the Lord; if you’re too busy, then look at things you can cut out of your life to give you room and space to grow and to enjoy letting the Lord grow you…

Why is the father’s role so important? Because the father is intended to be the spiritual representative of God in the home. The husband is supposed to represent the leadership of Christ with his wife and family. The Bible says husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it! Men, we are to love our wives and give ourselves up for them! The reason that we men must live godly lives is so that we can model before our families and the world the love, character, and care of God Himself! We are to be the spiritual leader of our homes. We are to be the spiritual examples in our homes.

May the Lord continually bless you, men. May you see your family and the family of God prosper as long as you live. May you live to enjoy your grandchildren. And may our nation have peace!

Of course, none of us can do all that the Lord has called us to do on our own. Men can’t. Women can’t. Those who are young and those who are old can’t. No, we need Jesus. The Lord Jesus has destroyed the power of sin over us by dying on the cross; He’s destroyed the fear of death for us in His sacrifice! And He’s given us the Holy Spirit so we can grow to be more and more like Him, and to empower us to succeed in everything He might call us to. We are more than conquerors – men, women, guys, gals – through Him Who loved us.

After Sermon Note:
After the sermon Pastor Ben then asked to have everyone in the church move to be near one of the men of the church…]
Have them lay their hands on those men…
Have the church pray for the men of the church…