Psalms 127+128

Psalm 127

Once again I’m going to take two short psalms together. And once again they’re both songs of ascents. So, they’re for God’s people as they made their way to Jerusalem either for one of the annual festivals or else when they were returning from exile in Babylon.

On one level, Psalm 127 is about divine providence in the ordinary areas of life. And so, the psalmist writes about building a house and protecting a city and working and having children. These are ordinary, everyday events. And unless we look to the Lord for his help and his blessing, all our efforts in these areas of life will be in vain. All our efforts will be futile or worthless unless the Lord helps us.

So, without the Lord’s help to build a house, the builders labour in vain. Their efforts to build the house will be frustrated. Everything will go wrong. It will all be a struggle. And without the Lord’s help to protect a city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. Why did Jericho fall despite the strong wall around it? Jericho fell because the Lord was not protecting it. In fact, the Lord was on the side of the Israelites and he enabled them to destroy Jericho. On the other hand, when the Assyrians laid siege to Jerusalem in the days of King Hezekiah, Jerusalem did not fall to them, even though the Assyrians were a mighty and powerful army who had conquered many other cities. And the reason it did not fall was because the Lord was with his people to protect them and to deliver them.

And without the Lord’s help when we go out to work, all our hard work will be in vain. The psalmist imagines someone getting up early and staying up late, and working hard all day long, burning both ends of the candle, toiling for food to eat. But without the help of the Lord and without his blessing on our work, it will come to nothing. On the other hand, the Lord grants sleep to those he loves. So, he gives another person success so that they have enough to eat without having to work long hours and they’re able to get a good night’s sleep.

And then the psalmist writes about having children. We know from Old Testament stories of Abraham and Sarah and Jacob and Rachel and Samuel’s mother Hannah that it was regarded as a disgrace in Bible times to be childless. And so, when the Lord enabled his people to have children, it was a reason to rejoice and to be thankful. Without the help of the Lord, women remained barren. But with the help of the Lord, women had many children. And so, sons are a heritage or a gift from God. He graciously and freely rewards his people with children. And sons are like arrows in the hands of a warrior, so that fathers will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate. The psalmist perhaps means that adult sons are able to defend their father when he’s surrounded by enemies.

So, on one level Psalm 127 is about divine providence in the ordinary areas of life. And unless we look to the Lord for his help and his blessing, all our effort in the ordinary things of life will be in vain. And so, every day we should pray to him for his help. As the Lord Jesus taught us in the Lord’s prayer, we should look to him for daily food and for daily protection from evil.

However, the fact that this psalm is ascribed to Solomon in its title suggests it might mean something else as well. The word for house in verse 1 can refer to an ordinary house or it can also refer to the temple, which was God’s house among his people. And, of course, Solomon is famous for building a temple or house for the Lord in Jerusalem.

And so, we can imagine King Solomon writing these words as he set about building a temple for the Lord and thinking about how his effort to build it will be in vain without the Lord’s help and blessing. If he was going to succeed and build a house suitable for the Lord, then he needed the Lord’s help. The Lord needed to provide all the materials: the stones and the timber and the silver and all the gold — lots and lots and lots of gold. And the Lord needed to provide the workers to build the temple. And they needed the Lord to bless their efforts and to enable them to build a house which was just right for the Lord. And Solomon needed to rely on the Lord’s help to keep Jerusalem safe. And we’ve seen from the book of Ecclesiastes that Solomon learned that working hard can be meaningless and pointless and it won’t bring joy and satisfaction without the help of the Lord.

So, we can imagine King Solomon writing these words and thinking about his own life and about building the temple and protecting Jerusalem and working hard and trying to find joy and satisfaction. We can also think of the exiles who returned to Jerusalem and who set about rebuilding the temple and rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Think of the efforts of Nehemiah to organise the people to rebuild the walls of the city. So, we can imagine the returning exiles reading this psalm and applying it to their own situation, acknowledging their dependence on the Lord and how all their hard work and effort will be futile without the help of the Lord and his blessing on them.

And then it’s perhaps significant that the psalmist refers in verses 3 to 5 to sons and not to sons and daughters. And perhaps Solomon had in mind, not so much his own children, but all the male descendants who would come from him and who would reign as king over Jerusalem. And that long line of sons would culminate eventually in the Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his human nature, was a descendant of Solomon. And he came into the world as one of us to conquer all his and our enemies so that all who are united to him by faith are delivered from sin and satan and from death.

And Christ our King is building a temple for himself here on earth, because the church of Jesus Christ is like a temple where God dwells by his Spirit. And Christ our King builds his church through the reading and preaching of his word. But the reading and preaching of his word will not be effective without the help and blessing of the Lord. And so, that’s why we gather here on Wednesdays. It’s to cry out to the Lord for his help and blessing so that through the reading and preaching of his word his church here in Immanuel and his church throughout the world will be built up in faith and in love and in numbers. And we should plead with him for many sons and daughters in the faith, men and women who will come after us and who will believe and who will continue to serve Christ the King.

Psalm 128

Let’s turn our attention now to Psalm 128 where the psalmist declares that those who fear the Lord are blessed. When the psalmist refers to being blessed, he, of course, is thinking about God’s covenant blessings, which we read about in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, where God promised to fill the lives of his obedient people with good things and not with evil.

So, those who feared the Lord and walked in his ways, obeying his laws and commands, were taught to expect good things from the Lord. The Lord will therefore enable them to eat and enjoy the fruit of their labour. Blessing and prosperity will be theirs, because God will give it to them. A faithful and obedient man in those days could expect his wife to be like a fruitful vine and to bear many children. Your sons, he says in verse 3, will be like olive shoots growing up around your table. Thus is the man blessed who fears the Lord. And so, those who fear the Lord, or those who worship the Lord and who walk in his ways can expect good things from the Lord.

In the second part of the psalm, the psalmist prays for the Lord to bless the people from Zion. Zion, of course, was the mountain on which Jerusalem was built and it’s therefore where the Lord dwelt in those days. So, the psalmist is really saying: may the Lord who dwells in Zion bless you. And may he bless you all the days of your life. May you know God’s blessing today and every day.

And may the people see the prosperity of Jerusalem and may they live to see their children’s children. So, he’s asking the Lord in verses 5 and 6 to build up the city and to give the people a long life, both of which are other ways that the Lord promised to bless his people in those days. And the psalm ends with a prayer for peace or shalom on all Israel. So, may the whole nation possess that sense of peace and well-being and that all will be well, which comes from the Lord.

After Adam disobeyed the Lord in the beginning, the Lord pronounced a curse on the land. But the Promised Land of Canaan was to be an Eden-like land that was under the blessing of God, where God’s people would enjoy peace and prosperity. For a time under King Solomon, it was a little like that, because the Lord blessed the king and his people. And do you remember that statement from 1 Kings? It said that every man sat under his own vine and fig tree. It was a picture of contentment and peace. But it did not last, because instead of worshipping the Lord and walking in his ways, they worshipped false gods and they went astray. And so, instead of enjoying his blessing, they suffered his curse, which culminated in the exile to Babylon.

But now Christ has come and he has suffered in our place the curse of God which we all deserve because of Adam and because of our own sinfulness. He suffered the curse of God in our place so that we might receive the blessing of God which Christ deserves for his perfect life of obedience among us. And so, because of Christ, God blesses us by forgiving our sins and by filling us with his Spirit to enable us to worship him and to walk in his ways. And he fills our lives with good things to enjoy, things we do not deserve and cannot earn, but which he graciously and freely gives to us. And by his many gifts, he encourages our obedience. And even when he sends troubles and trials into our lives, he uses these things to bless us, because he’s able to work all things together for our good. And in the end, he will bless us in his presence in the new heavens and earth. In the new heavens and earth, God will bless us all the days of our life; and we’ll see the prosperity of the heavenly Jerusalem; and we’ll live for ever; and we’ll enjoy perfect peace for ever with all of God’s people. And for ever and for ever we’ll bless and praise the Lord for all the ways he has blessed us in Christ Jesus our Saviour.