Everyone wants a happy home. But what does God say about it? In Psalm 128, we find practical wisdom for having happy families. God desires families.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for church and family life. And this podcast is going to focus on family life and particularly one word, happy, a happy homes. What's the secret of a happy home? Well, As it turns out, it's not much of a secret.

The secret of a happy home life is found in the most published book in the history of the world, the Bible. And so we're going to focus on one little part of it, Psalm 128. It's right in the midst of the songs of ascent, which were the songs that were sung by the families as they went up the hill to Jerusalem to worship God according to God's regulation. They would make their way up the hill, and these songs were sung. Psalm 128 is one of them.

So we're going to focus on this psalm, which speaks of happy home life. Now, just to frame these songs of a sense, you can just picture families walking down the road, kicking, the kids are kicking rocks, the parents are trying to keep their children close to them on the road, and they're singing. They're singing as they're going down the road. What a blessing that is. So Jason, here we go.

This is one of our favorite Psalms, actually. It's a great Psalm. And I'll just read the first phrase, because we'll try to walk through the things that are here. Blessed or happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His way. So you have this connection of happiness, fear of God, and walking.

Those three things are just loaded in the first verse of this psalm. Yeah. So there's the open secret to a happy home life. And if you think of all the time and energy and books that have been devoted to just discerning what the silver bullet is, what the secret is, here it is, fearing God and walking in His ways. He has the best ways.

They're ignored, they're ridiculed, but they'll actually give you a happy home life. And they shouldn't be ignored or ridiculed. They should be embraced and lived out, and people would find themselves a lot happier. Yeah, and in the verse, you have both an internal and an external focus, the internal is fearing the Lord. To fear the Lord, it really is to fear sinning, to fear to do what's wrong, to want to do what's right, and just to recognize the importance, the seriousness of God's way so you want to do His ways.

The person who fears the Lord is a happy person. A person who fears the Lord is not cowering. That's not the kind of... Because this starts with happiness and fear, they're connected. So that's the internal part.

It's the heart disposition that says, Lord, your ways are so good, I'm afraid of stepping outside of them. And then the walking, that's the external part, the doing, the carrying them out. So you have both of these, this happiness comes from both an internal and an external manner. So the fear of the Lord or a holy reverence for the God of the Bible, who really is a fearful being. To know the God of the Bible is to know a being who's not like anyone else.

He is almighty, He knows everything, including into the motivations of my heart. So to fear this God is actually to shrink back from the home killers. There's a lot of home killers out there that are bound up in selfishness and lusts and, and, and, you can make a long list of them, but the Bible would keep us away from them. To walk in God's ways would be to stay far clear from the home killers. Yeah, And it shows up like in real life.

In verse 2, he mentions the simplest thing, when you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. In other words, this is what happens to this person. That's why they're happy. But even, you know, this is, he's not referring to, you know, eating the finest of foods. He's just talking about eating the labor of your hand, whatever it is.

You know, whatever God gives you to do and the bounty from that, whether it's a little bit or a lot, you shall be happy, and it will be well with you. It creates a satisfaction in your soul that Even the simplest meal can be the sweetest meal because of the Lord. So we have the bookends of blessing here. The first word of the Psalm is blessed or blessed. So it's telling you what needs to be in place in order to live in the blessing of the Lord.

Everyone says they wanna live in the blessing of the Lord, when they were being told how to walk in the pathway of the Lord's blessing. And then the other end of the bookend, I think, is in verse 5, the Lord to bless you out of Zion. And so, we're talking again about blessing at the beginning and the end of the psalm. If you want to know how to be blessed, we're being told. 1.5 Yeah.

And it's kind of like he's saying, hey, even just the labor of your hands is wonderful. And then it's like he says, hey, also, your wife, check it out, check it out, Check out your wife. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house." He's saying this affects just the simplest meal. It'll affect your wife, and it will be like, she'll be like a fruitful vine when you fear the Lord and walk in His ways. You got a happy woman.

It's almost kind of like she's a crossover of the Ephesians five wife who's cherished and nourished and the Proverbs 31 woman who doesn't fear anything. Yeah. So, this is sort of the fleshing out of the blessing that the first verse promises. Then in the second verse, it's happiness. So what does the blessing entail?

It entails happiness. What else does it entail? It entails fruitfulness, the fruitfulness of your wife, which I think includes children, but it's certainly not limited to children. Many wives are fruitful well beyond however many children the Lord be pleased to give them. And then he says, and your children like all of plants all around your table.

So what's that all about? Well, yeah, I think it probably goes back up into Psalm 127. So we're talking about Psalm 128, but Psalm 127 that precedes It is a wonderful companion psalm, and it talks about the blessing of children. You're blessed if you're quiver, is full of children. So I think it's a follow on in that theme.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the children are a sweetness, and because of the fear of God and because of the walking in His ways. That's how children are a blessing, is they really regard the Lord as the best, and they really want to walk in His ways. Parents have such a wonderful duty to teach their children the wonderfulness of God, how good He is, and how good it is to obey Him.

Of course, parents have to correct their children when they don't obey God and when they haven't exalted his ways. But here you've got these children are like olive plants. So children are a heritage from the Lord. That is a connection to Psalm 127. But really, to further connect this with the Psalm that precedes the Psalm we're talking about.

Psalm 127 is about a home that God is building. If you build that home without God, all can be lost, but we build in hope and expectation for the blessing of God on our home. Mm-hmm. And you've got this olive plant. I mean, olive plants were long-term investments and they were for cash flow.

They were marks of wealth to have a well-producing olive plant. And so it's a picture of children actually bearing fruit and bearing fruit year by year and actually adding value to the family. Children adding value to the family. Children adding value to the family. Children are not viewed as a hassle here.

They're really viewed as a beautiful asset. One of my favorite authors, J.C. Ryle, is always saying, the happiest people are the holiest people. So, we might struggle with that if we have a tendency to translate holy into sort of self-righteous, but that's never what holy has meant. Holy just means set apart to God, set apart to be the Lord, to live to His honor.

And so the happiest people are the people who fear God and walk in His ways, they're the people who are set apart to Him. And then, so they construct their home around those principles. So we could draw a straight line from Psalm 128 to Deuteronomy 6, teach your children diligently, talk of the things of God when you sit in your house, when you walk By the way, when you rise up, when you lie down, all the day long, the things of God are on your lips. It's like they're written on the doorposts of your house. Wow, that's great imagery.

Then this imagery here is your table. They're all around your table. In other words, you're gathering them together around your table. Everybody's there. The wife is there.

Everybody's there. This is something that actually is being lost in the busyness of society and the church and people, you know, they don't gather that much together anymore. Now, in our churches, they actually do. They do gather around. You know, we're here to advocate a regular life, a rhythmic life, where there are times when you gather together.

The table is a wonderful place. You know, some people have tried to create this whole doctrine around the table, and I think this is a big part of it. You have this picture of the dinner table, the table where everyone is present in that sense. It needs to be recovered where families gather together and they're all together in the fear of God. Scott, the Psalm, as it's starting to come to an end, says this in verse five, the Lord to bless you out of Zion.

Zion is literally Jerusalem, but it's figurative for the Lord's people. God wants to bless his people, to have families that order themselves around fearing him and walking in his ways. And he wants to bless his people corporately, to have just this happy grouping of people and families ordering their lives around a holy reverence from Him and walking in His ways. Yeah, that's interesting. It really does turn sort of to the corporate people of God, the effect of a family like this in Zion, Jerusalem, all the days of your life.

This whole podcast is to talk about the church and the family. You have both those elements right here in this passage. The implications of a happy family for Zion are very, very significant, and they really are meant to endure all the days of your life. And then he turns back to the family and he says, yes, may you see your children's children. This is the transgenerational view of life that your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren are in your mind.

Most people are not thinking much about their great-grandchildren. We need to recover that. Parents need to understand that there are great-grandchildren and actually conceive of their life as having an effect on their great grandchildren. Yeah. So, Scott, how do we build a home that is founded on the fear of the Lord and walking in His ways?

I think Psalm 1 helps us to understand that. Let me just read Psalm chapter 1 verses 1 through 3. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper." So Psalm 1 sets forth a man who loves God's Word.

And the psalmist tells us what a man who loves God's Word is like. Well, first he saturates him in it. He saturates himself in the Word of God. He meditates in that Word day and night. And then it gives us a word picture of what he's like.

He's like a tree planted on the banks of a mighty river that never runs dry. So it doesn't matter how hot it gets, the leaf doesn't wither, it doesn't matter how long it's been since it's rained, it still keeps bearing fruit. Why is that? Because the roots go down into this mighty river that never runs dry, and so no matter how hot it is or how long it's been since its rain, it continues and flourishes. So there's the secret, right?

The secret of a happy home is the saturation of the Word of God that creates respect for God's ways and causes you to walk in obedience. It's really, really very simple. This is the happy family. So let's have happy families. Amen to that.

Yeah. And so there you have it. There's the secret. You got the secret right there in Psalm 128, Psalm 1, and all over the place, that The happy life, the happy meal, the happy wife, the happy children starts with the disposition of everyone who fears the Lord and walks in His ways. That is the sufficiency of Scripture for Church and Family Life.

Hey, thanks for joining us on the podcast. We'll hope to see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us Go to church and family life calm see you