Scott Schutte: This is Psalm 128. How joyful are those who fear the Lord, all who follow his ways. You will enjoy the fruit of your labor. How joyful and prosperous you will be. 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. That is the Lord's blessing for those who fear him. May the Lord continually bless you from Zion. May you see Jerusalem prosper as long as you live. May you live to enjoy your grandchildren.
May Israel have peace. This Psalm, really makes me reflect on the fear of the Lord and the blessing that comes with that. And I think that's something that often we can misunderstand what it really means. It's not that I'm fearful of, necessarily what he's, how powerful he is or, what he's going to do to me. But I kind of think of it like this.
I'm someone who's more into the finance world. And I think of it as the idea of opportunity cost. We often weigh things, against like, what can I gain from this and what do I lose out on by investing in this one thing? And really when I think of the fear of the Lord, I think about what is my opportunity cost to follow my own flesh. If I follow my own flesh, yeah, I gain whatever those things are potentially, but I miss out on all the things that the Lord has for me.
And more than I want those things, that my flesh desires, I want the things that God wants for my life. And so my fear of the Lord is not only about fearful of being in sin and not being in a right relationship with him, but blessings, fear of missing out on his love and being in a relationship with him. And so, it's amazing what this Psalm indicates to us that as we fear the Lord and, we turn to him and build that relationship, that he blesses us generationally. We have kids and and grandchildren that continue to be blessed because of our relationship with him. And so let's pray together.
God, I pray that you would teach us what it means to fear you, and to love you well, to, respect you and build that relationship with you. God, I pray for a blessing on all of the people that are watching this or listening to this right now. I ask that your hand of favor would be over them and that we would turn to you in our times of trouble and that you in those moments would meet us where we're at and you would bless us and our children and our children's children for generations on end. And all this we lift up in the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.