- Read Psalm 128 from the ESV.
- Read my Psalm 128 poem from A New Song.
Imagine a world where there is no peace. I don’t mean there aren’t places here and there with a peaceful sense about them, but the world as a whole is constantly strained. And it’s not just the countries against one another either, but within each country, people are not at peace either. The federal, state and, local governments don’t get along; neighbors are at each other’s throats and wishing harm upon each other; races are constantly battling over each other’s rights; even the genders have issues with one another. Imagine such a world without peace.
Then, imagine the seat of government — the very center of each nation, state, province, and locality — is full of deceit and duplicity. Leaders have made promises they never intend to keep and they have organized back-room deals with self-promoting individuals and corporations, regardless of the benefit to the citizens. Imagine these governments constantly spend more than they take in, causing them to always increase their taxes on the public, all funding programs filled with graft and greed.
Then imagine that the true center of the nation — the people — give their allegiance and worship to false gods, with each person worshipping their own god. Some worship material wealth, some worship power, some worship sensuality. Some people even worship made up entities they call gods; they worship the sun, the moon, and the stars. Imagine that even after worshipping the gods and idols which they, their ancestors, and their peers have constructed they find that they are still not satisfied. The gods they worship can do nothing for the people, for that is what false gods do: nothing.
Then finally imagine that the people living in this world have chosen to construct a morality from their own whims and desires. No one believes in or follows an absolute morality; they each desire absolute autonomy. Each person does what is right in their own eyes.
It’s a pretty awful picture if you think about it. It’s a world in which none of us would want to live. People doing what they want, forming governments which are eventually doomed to fail, and not always from external forces. These unstable governments then become the substrate of the world wherein there is no peace because everyone is pulling in opposite directions. And each person appeals to their own gods, and they find no help, for their gods can do nothing to save them from the inevitable slide into chaos and depravity.
What I have just described is the path along which Israel tread in the years leading up to their exile. But it is also a very similar path taken by nearly every nation through the course of human history. The only real question for each nation is when they will fail, not if.
Despite all of this, there is another way which was presented to us in a garden a long time ago. It begins when we choose to walk with the creator learning all that he has for us to know. It continues as long as we fear only him — the one who can destroy both soul and body — and it is sustained as we walk in his commandments of love. And when we walk in his ways, fearing and loving him, he blesses us. And, if an entire nation follows him, then he blesses that nation with peace and his form of prosperity flowing from the single and absolute throne of worship.
The psalmist understood this when he penned Psalm 128. As we ascend to the throne of God we find that his blessings on us grow. Those for whom this psalm was originally written, Israel, saw what happens when they didn’t walk in the ways of God, and this psalm encourages them to return to the path God has laid out before them, a path of righteousness and devotion.
All of this sounds very good, almost like a form of the prosperity gospel. But what about those who follow God’s ways and never find a good job, never find someone to marry, and/or never have children? Are the promises of verses 2-7 only for a select lucky few? Are those who don’t have such things out of God’s graces, never to find the blessings of God?
This is a difficult question. But as we learned from Job, the ways of God are beyond our comprehension and our expectations. The lesson of Job is that when we finally realize how unknowable God’s ways are, we still bow before him in silent worship. And in our silence, we know that until this world completely follows God without reserve or until God creates a new heaven and a new earth, we must live in this world filled with sin’s effects and consequences where there is no universal peace.
But even as we live in this fallen world we must fear the Lord and walk in obedience to him. For we are called to continue in his ways despite the opposition of those around us, for it is in the fear of the Lord and in our obedient lives that we put hands and feet to the Lord’s prayer that his kingdom come and
