In this audio message, Scott Brown explains that when examining the topic of fatherhood, we must examine it under the shadow of the cross. There are six qualities of happy home life that we can learn. There is a different kind of family life that is displayed in Scripture.

Psalms 1:1-2 (NKJV) - "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."

Okay, let's gather on in. I want to start. I want to bring a reminder here right at the beginning of this. Whenever you speak about fatherhood, you're speaking into an area that there's so much failure in all of our lives. And you've always got to remember a couple of things when you're speaking about fatherhood.

And it's really under this main heading, you've got to see fatherhood under the shadow of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that God has given fathers commands. And He means that His sons would fulfill the commands and obey Him. We know that. And we either obey or disobey.

We either are doing our own thing or we're doing His thing. And secondly, we are by nature sinners and we fall short as fathers. And we end up a lot of times doing our own will. And so we have regrets about our fatherhood. And that's why everything fatherhood, and really everything, has to be spoken of as if it were under the shadow of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What does that mean? I think first of all it means that we recognize our weaknesses as men, that we bring them before the Lord, we repent, we recognize what we have done to violate the commands of God and how we've been indolent or disobedient or worldly or misdirected, whatever it is we've been, to bring ourselves truthfully before the Lord. This is really important, And that is that you come to Him as a Father. Psalm 103 says, He knows our frame. And if you just come as a sinner, then you'll probably just be discouraged.

But if you come as a sinner with a Father and a Savior who sacrificed for your sins, then you find yourself in the hands of a priest, a faithful and merciful high priest. He's the God of all comfort. He, God the Father, shed the blood of His Son so that we could stand before Him even in the broken mess that we've made as fathers and sons. You know I'm confident you know some have sinned through negligence, through worldliness, through just refusal to do their duty. You know, some have neglected their children, some have abused their children, some sons and daughters have dishonored their parents.

There's so many sins you can commit as a father. It's amazing. But as you consider your life as a father, I just want you to remember that you've got to come to Him in two ways. You come to Him as a sinner, but you also come to Him as a son. You come as a son to the Father of mercies.

So, fatherhood, I think, always has to be seen under the shadow of the cross, really just like everything else. Well, I'd like for us to turn to Psalm 128. This final message tonight, the secret of happiness in the home, is unlocked here in this Psalm. Verse 1 reads, A song of assent, blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.

Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house. Your children like olive plants all around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you out of Zion and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life. Yes, may you see your children's children peace be upon Israel." Well this psalm is an extension of the previous psalm which carries on the theme that was established in 127.

What it does is it pictures home life. But what kind of home life? Happy home life. That's what it pictures. It's one of the most beautiful aspects of this psalm is the context out of which it's written.

It is one of the songs of ascents. And the songs of ascents were written for the children of Israel to sing on their way to the temple. And the songs of the saints were sung by families as they made their way down the pathway to go and worship God in the temple. So picture a father walking along, you know, you're in Israel, and his little olive plants, his children are there, you know, the little boys jumping in the puddle and it's a picture of a happy family walking along the way and this Psalm pictures that kind of a life And it also brings in, you know, the elements of home life and what home life was meant to be, the joys of it, the way that happiness works in a home and what it means to experience the blessings of family life. If a Christian father doesn't understand this, and if he doesn't understand these elements, he might likely create a family that just has a whole bunch of rules and a whole bunch of ways about it.

But there's no enjoyment. There's no laughter. There's no just sort of engorging in the blessings of God together as a family. That's what this passage is about. It's to rescue families from a dry, perfunctory kind of a life together that's just grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, but that stops to enjoy life together.

And it's an important song for us, I think particularly in the era that we live in where where the house has sort of become a flophouse. It's a place where people just come and sleep and then they go elsewhere. The home used to be a place of economy. The home used to be a place of family life. In many homes today, family life just doesn't exist there, and even the architectural designs of new homes reflects it.

But this is a different kind of family life that is pictured here. It's not a fractured family. It's not a fragmented family. It's a unified family. And Psalm 128 just is such a beautiful expression of this.

Here's Matthew Henry on this psalm. He says, a psalm for families, in that we were taught that the prosperity of our families depends upon the blessing of God. In this we are taught that the only way to obtain that blessing which will make our families comfortable is to live in the fear of God and in the obedience of Him. That's the secret of happy family life. So here it is, this wonderful psalm.

I'm going to give you six qualities of happy home life out of this psalm. The first one is the blessings of happy home life spring from the fear of the Lord. Verse 1. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. Two things to notice.

Blessings. Outpourings of goodness. And to everyone, everyone who fears Him. Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord can experience the blessings that God has for His people. Whether you're high or low among men, it doesn't really matter.

A man's station in life does not determine his ability to be blessed supernaturally. The poorest family can be the happiest family and the richest in spirit. And it all comes from the fear of the Lord. This is the secret of a happy home. And a family can be deprived of earthly comforts and be the happiest family.

Hey, maybe you know what that was like. Maybe you're a little bit like me. When I got married, Deborah and I had nothing. And she lived on air. I made nothing and we could almost spend nothing.

And I just marveled at how we survived. But I look back in those days and they were such happy days. We were so poor but we were so happy. But it was because of this right here. This is the promise of blessing for family life, and it's just critical that we understand that blessing is promised, but there's a catch, and that is the blessings from the Lord are conditional.

They only come when there's true fear of God. Isn't it strange that fear is the trip cord for blessing? It doesn't seem like it should be that way, but that's the way it is. And it is the foundation for happy home life. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and it unleashes blessing on family life.

And homes are truly happy for one reason, And that is because the fear of the Lord resides in them. Doesn't matter if you live in a mansion or a shack. I can tell whether it's a happy home if this one thing exists there. That's what he's saying. And so It's established by this psalmist that the happy home is based on a humble exaltation of God, living in true reliance upon Him.

These blessings are promised to us. It's such a wonderful thing. Secondly, blessings of enjoying the fruit of your hands. The blessings of enjoying the fruit of your hands. Again, We are back to a vision of vigorous, productive life in a family where things are being made.

There is then things are being produced. In this case it's called the fruit of your hands. Verse 2 says it, when you eat the labor of your hands, and get this, you shall be happy and it shall be well with you." The psalmist is talking about the the blessing of eating as a result of working. Now in our society somehow people are allowed to eat even though they don't work. Now that's very sinful and we should not allow it, but we do in our nation.

We allow people to eat when they don't work. But in the kingdom of heaven when you eat the labor of your hands, you will be happy, and it will be well with you because you have labored for it. Here's a picture of a whole family eating together after their labors. The family has come back together, they've been laboring, and now they're eating together. It's amazing to me the way that God has constructed family life, where the family would labor and then there would be this scene around the table.

You know, it wasn't Ozzie and Harriet that invented the family table. It was God. God is the one who established this pattern. You know, people say, well, you know, people don't eat anymore together, you know, everybody eats in fast food restaurants. I wish we could go back to the 50s.

Well, this is not something out of the 50s. This is something from the throne of God. God desires happy home life around the table. One of my friends who's a pastor, his name is Craig Houston, He lives in this really small house, maybe about as big as this room, and he has 10 children. And he's one of my heroes.

I love this guy. But his church that he's pastored for about a decade hired a really high-end craftsman to build him a big family table. And they built them this exquisite table out of this rare African wood. One tree, it's 32 feet long, weighs about 600 or 700 pounds. It's his kingly palace table with the little olive plants around the table.

He's so happy to use the table because he's constantly using his table and he could never figure out how to get everybody around the table. Now he can. He had to knock out a wall and everything just to make the table fit in the house. But this is a picture of a whole family eating together after their labors. And they're eating it together in happiness.

You know, just picture your family around the table with all the members of the family arranged with the trappings of happiness. The laughter, the squealing, the stories, the food, you know, all those kinds of things. And there they are. It's not dependent on a luxurious surrounding. It's not dependent on a lavish lifestyle.

All one needs to be happy is to fear the Lord and to be there eating the labor of His hands. Something so simple like that. We don't need mansions or estates to have blessed family life. And it's so contradictory to the world's definitions of happiness, but this is happiness that endures. Psalm 34 speaks of this kind of happiness.

I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together." That's the picture of this kind of family life here.

That Psalm says that the young lions lack and suffer hunger, but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good. This is a picture of happy home life, satisfied with the simplest of things. Often what destroys the happiness of family life is a longing for things that God has not given. But that's not this family here. This is a blessed family.

Number three, the blessings of a fruitful wife in the center of the home." Verse 3, your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house. So here the psalmist raises the standard of feminine beauty and industry in the home. And he uses this, it's very attractive imagery to describe a wife by likening her to a fruitful vine. And the vine, of course, you know, is a symbol of prosperity and fruitfulness and rejoicing. And so the psalmist takes this image of the vine and likens that to a wife.

And so to explain this fear of a wife's influence on her in her home life and she is in the very heart of her home. She's like the center of her home. Her life, her labors, her love, you know, is centered right there in the middle of the home. This is the way that God has meant it. A woman is meant to be in the home.

This is a woman's sphere of operation. And the Bible speaks of this in many, many places. We know from the New Testament that that wives are to be workers at home. And here you find it even in this psalm that the wife is in the center of the home. This is the best place for a woman to be.

The whole picture of the vine is is just fantastic. It implies growth, it implies blessing. It really is a picture of a happy wife. One of the saddest things that can happen to a man is to have an unhappy wife. And what's even sadder is a man who would let her stay unhappy somehow.

But here, the picture of this fruitful vine in the heart of the house, It's her domain. You know, I just published a book with Joel Beekie back here called Building a Godly Home. It's a reprint of William Gogue's Domestical Duties. And Gogue speaks at length about this whole matter of a wife being the center of the home. And Gush chastises husbands for pushing their wives around and saying, no, you can't do this, you can't do that.

And he tells them, you're telling her what colors and what to do here? You know, you should set her free. That's Gush. Let her have her domain. She should be in the center of her house.

Let her run. How many times have you criticized your wife and said, I don't like that. And you discouraged her for a week. Well I've done that myself. But this is a picture of a wife in the center of the home.

Number four, the blessings of children as all of plants around the table. Verse three, your children like all of plants all around your table. So here's where the fun begins. Likening children to all of plants, It just confirms everything you've read in the Bible about the blessedness of children and the heart of God toward children, His understanding of them. Olive trees were thought to be blessings in Israel.

It's not an accident that the children are likened to olive plants, because olive plants were a blessing. Children are a blessing. We know that. They weren't cash crops, but they were used for oil. They were used for things that would anoint, improve the taste of things.

Also olive trees lived a long time. Sometimes they lived for centuries. A friend of mine who lives in Turkey, he has a piece of property and he's got 700 year old olive trees. I said no kidding. He said, well down the street there's a place where they've got 2, 000 year old olive trees.

They last a long time and children are likened to this long-lasting kind of tree. It's you, your son, your grandson. It's this multi-generational vision. You pour your life into your children and you live on in them and through them by what you've taught them. So there's this long life.

And also, you know, olive trees take a long time to mature and but when they are mature they're they're valuable assets and the family is able to be sustained by those plants And so here you have this picture of the children adding all this richness to life that nothing else can bring into a home. There's nothing like little children in your home. Here's my confession. You know, all my children are raised, but I so look for, I so look back with fondness to the little years that we had and you know when it was the heavy lifting of child raising. I love those years they were so funny.

Now I have nine grandchildren and there and there are all these circus performers running around me all the time. It's fantastic. I'm just so grateful for it. That's the picture. You know, here a father is providing a context in his home for happy home life, and there they are eating around the table.

And I hope that's true in your family life, that your family is just like this. Because here, you know, at the beginning of the 21st century, it's just not very common. It's something we need to recover. We need to recover that kind of life that's in Psalm 128. Let's be like that and not like them in this world.

And then number five, blessings from the fear of the Lord in the city. Verses 4 and 5, Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you out of Zion and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life." This verse is kind of like a wake-up call. It starts with, Behold. You know, open your eyes.

Check this out. Behold. And the Lord's saying, look, see it? Can you see this? The man will be blessed, but the blessing will extend beyond his table.

It'll go into Jerusalem. It's going into town too. He affects the community. It's not just a family life lived for itself, but it's family life that casts out blessing into the community. Here, a family that fears the Lord has a work to do in a community.

And that fear has implications outside the borders of the family unit. The fear of the Lord in the family has effect on civic life. That's what this is meaning here. The idea here is that as the years pass, a godly generation will go out into the city and there will be an effect on public life and the stream can be cleansed of civic life. This is why God puts families and churches in communities.

It's to clean the well, to live differently, to call others to come and walk after the fear of God. And it has an effect on community life. And so The idea here is that as the generations pass, then the fear of the Lord hits the streets, and it's a blessing. Number six, blessings for grandparents as they see their children's children. Verse six, Yes, may you see your children's children.

Peace be upon Israel. This verse is actually a prayer and It's asking God to enable us to see our children's children. I pray that we'll do that. I pray that we will see our children's children, and that they'll be walking in the fear of the Lord, and that this kind of family life would be so well established in them because we trained them in it and they went out and did the exact same thing. You know individualism is so rampant in our culture today but here you have this picture of one generation blessing another generation.

This is why we read in Proverbs 17, Children's children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children is their father. So here's a whole picture of happy family life. It begins around the table. It's exemplified in this wife who's like a fruitful vine. It's even shown more clearly as these ala plants, these assets, these enduring things that mature and they have an effect, you know, from year after year, and then the blessings of the fear of the Lord going out into the community as those fall plants are sent out into the cities.

That's the purpose of family life that's spoken up here. We're in such an era where we need to recover this kind of family life. I don't think anybody argues with the fact that biblical family life has almost been destroyed in our land. Who are going to be the ones who are going to recover it? We're going to be the ones who are going to recover it, that's who.

We're going to recover the life of a father and a son, the submission, the love, the delight between the father and the son. We're the ones that are going to recover family life where there is a wife who is submissive to her husband. There's a daughter who listens to her father and she makes a vow and her father says, no honey, that's not good for you. And she follows her father instead of her friends. God has placed us here in order to display the glory of God in the world.

And it begins with fathers. And that's why we've called this the Master's Plan for fatherhood. There really is a plan for fatherhood. It's so clear, it's so detailed, there's so many things for us to consider. All the way from our family table to the way that we talk with our daughters and our wives and our sons.

Fatherhood matters. I was going along in this world, I started out life as a pastor. My first employment after I graduated from seminary was I was a pastor of a church, And as a pastor in that church, I continued to have a growing sense of malaise about what was going on in my ministry. I was creating all these programs for these families, and these fathers were trying to juggle, you know, family life and church life and work life. And I was the guy, all I had to do was preach the word of God and pray and meet with these men.

And I realized my life was so different. And there was sort of a voice in my head that kept saying, Scott, until you get on that side of the pulpit, you'll never be able to equip men. And I couldn't leave that idea. And so finally I decided I'm going to leave the ministry for seven years, and my prayer was, Lord, drag me through the dirt. Teach me what I need to know.

And so I did that, and I ended up starting a couple of companies and selling them. I sold my last company in 1998, and ever since then I've turned back toward the ministry. Right about that time in 1998, as I began to look forward and ask, Lord, How do you want me to point my time in my life? There were there were a couple of things that I was that I was that I was very taken by and One one was that fatherhood had been so destroyed in the churches, that our churches were being destroyed. That we had, if there was going to be a revival, there had to be a revival of biblical fatherhood.

Secondly, it seemed to me that the light of the Word of God had gone out in the church, and the Word was not being preached, and it was nothing but pragmatism and one interesting topical message after another everywhere I looked. I ended up believing that not only was a father the greatest leverage point in the culture, but that if we did not recover biblical fatherhood there was no hope for the next generation. I had a Romanian pastor tell me that he believed that if the Romanian church did not understand this principle it would not exist in two generations because they're losing their families just like we are here because they've adopted our practices. So here's the challenge. Recover the biblical vision of fatherhood in your generation and replicate it.

And I'm so grateful that you would come and you've spent an entire day just going through one passage of Scripture after another. We're going to do the same thing tomorrow. There's value in saturating your mind with the biblical language of fatherhood so that you'll know how to walk. And I pray that God will give us a fruitful day in this tomorrow as well. So let's pray.

Al, could you pray for us and send us home? Amen. Okay, see you in the morning.