Blessed Are the Obedient – 12/15/24

We’re currently in a Christmas series on the Beatitudes in the Psalms. Now, most of us know about the Beatitudes of Jesus, which we looked at this past year, but right now we’re looking at the Beatitudes in the Psalms. These are the “blessed” statements, the “bless-ed” statements in the Psalms. To be blessed is to be happy, fortunate, favorable.

December 1, a couple of weeks ago, Ryan launched this with “Happy is the Lord.”

Psalm 89:52, “Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.”

Our Father is blessed and is the source of all blessings. That’s where we began.

Last week, “Happy are the Forgiven,”

Psalm 32:1, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,”

There is nothing like putting your head on your pillow at night with a clean conscience before God because of Jesus.

Today we’re going to talk about “Blessed are the Obedient.” That just flopped. And we’re going to talk about that. I want to do four things.

1. Survey some of the verses in Psalms that link blessing with obedience.
2. Wrestle with why this blessing doesn’t seem like a blessing to many of us (talking to you).
3. Drill down into Psalm 128 as kind of a case study of this kind of blessing.
4. Respond.

So first, let’s survey a couple examples in the Psalms that highlight “Happy are the obedient.” Well, the Psalms begins this way. Look at Psalm 1:1.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does he prospers.”

He’s describing there a deep-rooted happiness.

Psalm 89:15, “Blessed are the people who know the festal shout,

What’s the festal shout? I didn’t get that code. The festal shout is the invitation to worship. So people who hear the invitation to worship.

“who walk, O Lord, in the light of your face,”

Notice the call to worship leads to a different kind of walk, different kind of life, “in the light of his face.”

Psalm 112:1, “Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments!”

And then I’m going to skip a bunch. There are many more. Psalm 128:1 is the one we want to focus on.

“Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways!”

Let’s pray. Father, we’re asking for your Spirit to teach us what deep-rooted happiness looks like in ways that we don’t naturally see or think of. Especially this idea of obedience and blessedness can be very confusing to us. So we’re asking for your help that we might rightly understand what you are saying to us today. We pray in Jesus’s name, amen.

Psalm 128:1 is saying there is a kind of deep-rooted happiness for everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. That is, there is a kind of happiness for the person whose life is shaped not by his own heart, or her own instincts or culture, but by the smile of God’s face shining on his or her way that leads to a different kind of life.

Blessed are the obedient.

Now I’m guessing that most of us feel drawn toward that blessing but also a little hesitant, right? Kind of like showing up at a party you weren’t invited to. Not quite sure what to do with this. And so I want to spend a good deal of time on the question,

“Why do we tend to divorce obedience and blessing?”

Two main reasons — there are many more — I want to focus on,

1. Cultural reason

And that is, in our culture obedience is often portrayed as a negative, not a positive. Obedience stifles your autonomy, doesn’t lead to abundance.

And this is not new. You can go all the way back to the 60s, Frank Sinatra, “I Did It My Way.” Or 70s, Billy Joel, “Only the Good Die Young,” — classic — “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun.”

And I could keep going with many other examples. But you get the point. If you want to live a dead, dull, boring life, go the obedience route. If you want to really have a good time, go with the disobedience life.

We actually disciple our kids in this. It is hard to find a Disney movie today that does not have a main character who is being suffocated by social expectations until she — normally, sometimes he, rarely — breaks free from those social expectations. Okay, we have to mention Elsa in Frozen, “Let It Go.” Do you know “Let It Go” has been translated into over 44 languages? This is America’s greatest export. Elsa sings,

“It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through.
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I’m free.”

Obviously the point is, if you have rules, you have bondage. If you break free, you have abundance.

My wife and I first saw “Wicked” in London many years ago, and while we were watching it, it came to the song “Defying Gravity.” And I’m elbowing her, “Do you notice the postmodern assumptions?” And she’s saying, “Shhh, just watch it.” Don’t you hate watching something with someone like me?

It’s now a movie. Elphaba breaking free from social constraints.

“Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It’s time to trust my instincts, close my eyes and leap.”

Now Christians, of all people, understand you cannot follow Jesus if you don’t break free from social expectations. So we’re all about that. But what our culture is saying is something different. It’s not just breaking free from social expectations; it’s breaking free from divine expectations. And it’s turning to yourself because you notice your instincts are your only true standard of truth and morality, according to most of what is sung.

In 2009, Dr. Jean Twenge, with Keith Campbell, published “The Narcissism Epidemic.”

Now, when we talk about narcissism, we could be talking about one of two things: the clinical disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, or the personality trait that is an inflated view of self that is destructive to relationships.  Dr. Twenge defines it helpfully as

“Narcissism is individualism on steroids.”

It’s Elsa with a Red Bull. And it leads to short-term success, long-term failure. Why is that? Well, short-term success, because narcissistic people are extremely optimistic about themselves, so they tend to go fast and then crash because they are oblivious to the needs and the perspectives of other people.

Dr. Twenge, who, by the way, is not writing as a Christian, she’s an atheist, but she noticed a significant cultural shift in how parents view obedience. She writes this:

“When a group of 1920s mothers listed the traits they wanted their children to have, they named strict obedience, loyalty to church, and good manners. In 1988, few mothers named these traits; instead, they chose independence and tolerance.”

A massive study done in 2004 revealed a significant shift like this. The study gave parents five choices. What’s most important to kids?

• To obey
• To be well-liked
• To think for himself or herself
• To work hard
• To help others when they need help

 

Interestingly, there was one constant between 1958 and 2004. Number 1 was to think for himself or herself. But what jumped out to Dr. Twenge was the change in parents’ valuing of obedience in children. It took a plunge. Obedience has come under hard times, which is why the title of my sermon fell so flat.

Now Dr. Twenge highlights the fact that there’s both a positive and a negative. Positive, in her view, is that parents aren’t demanding blind obedience as much as they used to. The negative is, parents are less prone to expect their kids to obey and more prone to obey their kids. And she argues that’s a perfect recipe for raising a generation of narcissists. Now, fortunately, as Dr. Twenge observes in her two more recent books, “iGen” and then just last year, “Generations,” the trend toward narcissism seems to have leveled off — still high — but leveled off.

And I’ve intentionally walked through a few of these random secular examples simply to highlight the fact that when we talk about obedience as related to some kind of life of blessing, that’s a big stretch for us who live in a culture that lives and breathes different air, not valuing obedience. For many to obey is to be psychologically colonized or volitionally violated. That sounds dehumanizing, not blessed. That’s the cultural reason.

2. Theological reason — Obedience leads to legalism, not blessing.

Have you ever wondered why there are very few churches with the name “Obedience” and tons with “Grace?” Like there are thousands of “Grace Church,” “Grace Community Church,” whole denominations, “Grace International.” And by the way, that’s good, not knocking “Grace.” It’s probably way better than “North Hills.” I’m not sure what that is. I’m not slamming Grace, but I was just thinking about it. So I tried to find, and I found a couple very small churches, called “Obedience Church.”

So think about it. How would you feel if the elders said, “Hey, we’ve been praying, and we feel like North Hills has to go”? “We want to recommend we switch to ‘Obedience Church.’ Yeah. I feel like we’re going to dog training? Or you’re picturing a bunch of deacons at the door with clipboards, how’d you do this week? Naughty? Nice? Something seems off. “Obedience Church.”

Why is that? Well, there are many people who grew up in super conservative families or churches where obedience was often tied to merit or love.

“If you obey, Mommy will love you.”
“If you keep quiet and do the right thing, Daddy might just be happy.”
“If you obey, God will be happy with you, and you will go to heaven.”

That’s raw legalism. And many times, parents and churches don’t actually intend to teach that; often kids infer that. We pick up on things whether they’re explicitly taught or not. And the reason this is relevant is when the pastor stands up and says, Hey, today we’re going to talk about the blessing of obedience, for someone who grew up badgered by the shame and the anxiety of feeling I can never do enough to keep people around me happy or God happy, it sounds, not like a blessing, but a curse sermon.

So let’s be clear. The Bible both rejects salvation by obedience and salvation without it. The Bible rejects any kind of salvation by obedience. And the Bible rejects any kind of salvation without obedience.

What does that mean? It means that the same grace that saves is the grace that transforms us and begins to energize obedience. There are many examples. Let me just give you one.

Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works,

You can put in there not a result of your doing enough, obeying enough, earning enough. You can’t do it.

“so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,

So we’re not saved by obedience or good works, but we are saved unto good works. But those aren’t good works that we roll up our sleeves and try to produce. They’re actually the overflow of his workmanship.

“which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Walk in them. Grace is a package deal. It’s not just a ticket to heaven. It is a giant Tesla battery. Never needs to be recharged, OK? And energizes a new way of life.

Psalm 128 is a beautiful example of this. Psalm 128 is nestled within what is often called the Psalms of Ascent, or pilgrim songs. They go from Psalm 120-134, often sung by people journeying to Jerusalem for one of the festivals.

Psalm 128:1, “Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways!”

To fear the Lord is to live life in awe of God. This internal awe, the fear of God, leads to an external obedience. Notice we walk in his ways. As Dane Ortlund says,

“To be blessed is to move through life with a settled depth of happiness that comes from walking with God and enjoying his fatherly favor.”

This is what it means to be blessed. Well then, the psalmist begins by painting a picture of blessing.

And as we look at this picture, I think you’re going to be struck by how banal it is. Mundane. No lottery wins, no cash windfalls. Look where he starts.

1. The blessing of ordinary work.

“You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;”

So the psalmist is painting a picture of the undoing of the curse. Remember back in Genesis 3, when man fell into sin, one of the first things cursed is the work, the labor we do, characterized by pain and thorns, meaningless. And the blessing of walking in the way of God transforms mundane activities like going to work and eating lunch. As Steven Garber writes,

“In the daily rhythms for everyone everywhere, we live our lives in the marketplaces of this world: in homes and neighborhoods, in schools and on farms, in hospitals and businesses, and our vocations are bound up with the ordinary work that ordinary people do. We are not great shots across the bow of history; rather, by simple grace, we are hints of hope.”

That’s just beautiful. We have hundreds of hints of hope: going to school, going to work, living in our neighborhoods. What is the hope? The hope, the curse is melting away. The blessing of ordinary work.

2. The blessing of a fruitful marriage.

Psalm 128, painting a picture of this blessing, moves from work to marriage.

Verse 3, “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house;”

Now, that’s a metaphor most of us are not super familiar with. The vine is, in that context, the source of life and abundance. And it is really quite a stunning metaphor. Jesus calls himself the true Vine. John 15:1

“Apart from me, you can do nothing.” (John 15:5b)

So a marriage that is experiencing the blessing of being in the way of God creates the context for life and abundance. Well, what does that mean?

First, it at least means what Galatians 5:22 is talking about. The fruit of the Spirit. “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Joe Morecraft tells about two characters in a novel who have been married for over 25 years, both writers, both traveling the world, rarely seeing one another. They meet at a bar. They’re both working on their separate projects one day and the husband looks over across the table at his wife, smoking, working. And he notices for the first time her skin color is yellowing. There’s stress all over her face. She seems so sad, anxious. And he says to himself as he’s looking at his wife, “I did that. I did that.”

What Psalm 128 is describing is the opposite. There is a kind of blessing that transforms the way we do ordinary work and actually transforms our relationships, like marriage for example. This is what Paul was getting at in Ephesians 5 … Ephesians 5:25,

“Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, [why?] that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water of the word,”

He goes on to talk about the spotlessness. In other words, there is a kind of love that is experienced in our normal, could we say, mundane relationships that is a transforming love, a blessing.

And this also means not only the fruit that comes out of our lives, but also often, not always, but the fruit that comes out of the marriage. And that is…

The blessing of flourishing children.

“Your children will be like olive shoots around your table.”

Now, the olive tree was a symbol of well-being. Remember when the dove returned to Noah after the flood and had an olive leaf? No one knew the future was bright.

And this word olive shoots is often referring to transplanted shoots, which is a beautiful little picture of the fact that our kids will flourish not by natural means, but by supernatural means. It’s a picture of grace, being transplanted by God’s grace so that they can flourish. Look at verse 4.

“Behold thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.”

Behold! What he’s saying is, do what you’re doing right now, in the middle of a really busy Christmas season, slow down. Pause. Look.

“Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.”

Now, this raises questions like, does this mean that everyone who is blessed will have a job they love to go to, get to marry the woman of their dreams or man of their dreams? Have children who are flourishing like olive shoots?

Well, we know that’s not the case because the most blessed person who ever walked the earth, Jesus Christ, was never married, and never had natural children, and died quite young. But what the psalmist is doing, like all gifted poets, he is describing in very concrete ways the way blessing comes as the curse of sin is removed and begins to transform the most mundane things in our lives, including work and our relationships.

And then it begins to spill out into the future, which is where he goes next. Look as he shifts in this psalm from painting a picture of blessing to praying a prayer of blessing.

Verse 5, “The Lord bless you from Zion!”

What’s Zion? That’s where the temple is, where the people of God gather.

“May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see your children’s children! Peace be upon Israel!”

Now, this raises a big question, how should Christians pray for the peace and prosperity of Jerusalem or Israel? And I want to suggest two things, one, that we pray big and pray small.

1. Pray big.

And I’m tempted to apologize for what I’m about to do because I can’t figure out, is this the Spirit of God, or is this my A.D.D. coming out? But when I pray for the peace of Jerusalem, I pray past, present, future. In my brain, I’m thinking this huge prayer that has six different parts.

When we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, our minds first go back to where things were originally in Eden – creationally.

Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

The garden was the temple of God. And when we pray for the peace of Jerusalem in light of Eden, we are envisioning the temple of God without sin, enjoying the presence of God when Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the temple, the garden.

We’re also praying historically.

The verbs “to tend and keep,” from Genesis 2:14, repeatedly appear (2:15) repeatedly appear throughout the Old Testament, referring to the priests of Israel and their call to tend and keep the tabernacle, and then the temple, and all of that is signposts, pointing.

We pray in the past.

Secondly, we pray in the present, in light of the present.

We pray Christologically. All that word means is through Jesus Christ. The word Christ means Messiah, anointed one, the coming one.

Ephesians 2:14, “For he himself [Jesus] is our peace,

Who’s “our”? Jew and Gentile, same source of peace.

“who has made us [Jew and Gentile] both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.”

So in Jesus, when I pray Psalm 128, I’m praying these blessings go viral in Jesus. And this is one of the reasons.

Over 1600 years ago, on the other side of the world, North Africa, Augustine was trying to pick what is he going to preach on the birthday of Felix, a martyr, and he preached Psalm 128. Listen to what he says. He said,

“‘Happy’ both in his name

The name Felix in Latin means happy.

“and in his crown, whose birthday this is … All these blessings

He’s talking about Psalm 128 blessings.

“He has perfectly, but in the body of Him [Jesus Christ] who is here described; and, because he understood them in this sense, he [Felix] scorned things present, that he might receive things future.”

Wow. So he’s saying this brother Felix, who was beheaded for following Jesus during the reign of Diocletian, because he received the promises, the blessings, of Psalm 128 in this life as his in Jesus, he is now swept up into all of these blessings. And Jesus told us this would be the case. We’ll see this in a little while when we get back to our study of Matthew. Look at Matthew 19:29.

“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

When we pray for the peace and prosperity of Jerusalem, we are praying to our Father who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. And he is sweeping all the blessed into these blessings. That’s what it means to pray present.

But one other part of present prayer is when I pray for the peace of Jerusalem, I’m also praying politically.

What does that mean? Well, there’s a real country called Israel surrounded by many countries that will do anything to eliminate the existence of this country. And so when we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we’re also praying, I Timothy 2 urged us to pray,

“for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a [there it is] peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

I’m praying for Israel, I’m praying for Jordan, and Syria, Egypt, the Palestinians, all people to experience this peace and prosperity, which ultimately can only be found in Jesus. This is what it means to pray in light of the past and pray in light of the present. One more…

Pray in light of the future.

We are praying for the peace and the prosperity of Jerusalem prophetically. Prophetically. That is, for Israel’s restoration.

Romans 11:26, “And in this way all Israel will be saved,”

All true Israel will be saved. I believe this is referring to a massive turning of Israelites to receive their own Messiah. Praying prophetically.

One more. Praying ultimately for eternal blessing.

Revelation 19:9, “And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’”

That is the supper where we eat the fruit of the labor of his hands together. That is blessing.

Revelation 21:1, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband.

You talk about a fruitful vine.

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

Wiping away all tears, making all things new.

Revelation 22:14, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they might have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.”

So we began in Eden. We end in the garden city, the new, improved Eden. Big prayers for the peace and prosperity of Jerusalem, really wrap our arms around the whole Bible, which is a book, a blessing. That’s what it means to pray big.

If I’ve totally lost you now, I hope you can come back and hear what it means to pray small. By small, I don’t mean insignificant. I mean personal.

When my wife was diagnosed three and a half years ago with a kind of cancer that there is no human cure for and was told she would live about 18 months, in May 2022, she was reading Psalm 128 and she came to verse 6.

“May you see your children’s children!”

And she wrote in the side of her Bible, “May I, please?”

May 9, 2023, just a few weeks after — that’s not right when he was born, but (It’s a miracle!) … but a few weeks after he was born, she wrote, “Thank you. Please, again.” A couple of weeks ago, on November 20, 2024, she wrote, “Thank you. Please, again.” Yes. And our next granddaughter is due in a couple, well, few weeks, January.

When we are walking in the way of God, that doesn’t mean we’re going to be without challenges, without suffering. The Bible has actually promised that. But it does mean that we are living in this blessing of God that is unlike any other way of living. And when we walk in this way, the fruit of that is a kind of joy nothing else compares to.

Eugene Peterson, in his classic book, “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction,” writes,

“Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.”

Where do we start?

In one of his lesser-known books, Dallas Willard has a section entitled, “Obedience Where We Are” and in that he writes this, and I know this can be misunderstood, but I want to read it to you and then we’ll explore it. He writes,

“Now, once you have received God into the place where you are at any and all times, you are ready, next, to do what pleases God on every occasion. Without him with you, you could never do that. The ‘with God’ grounds the ‘do God.’ From where we are coming as human beings, obeying Christ is really pretty scary and may cost us dearly, even to the point of losing our lives. But with him with us, we become able to see and do what is best.”

I love that. “With him with us.” Now just think about that. I think what keeps many of us from seeing obedience as a blessing is we have this picture of God doing something good for us and then demanding obedience. Go do that. And obedience feels like a threat, not a promise.

But what if that’s not the way it works? What if it’s with God with us? What Willard is saying is, what if we pause? And I know this is the part that feels weird because it’s not like we’re trying to get God to do what we want him to do.

But what many of us have done is we’ve separated God from what we’re doing on a mundane level, which is why I think Psalm 128 goes mundane on us saying, you want to know what blessing is, it’s not out there, up there, somewhere grand and gigantic; it’s right here in the work you’re doing. It’s right here in your closest relationships and it spills out into the future.

What if we pause — and I’ve been trying, practicing being more intentional about this — going into a difficult meeting or having to do something maybe you don’t really want to do, or something you really want to do.

Father, thank you. You’re with me right now. You’re not pointing a finger demanding obedience. You’re with me, energizing, empowering me to do what you’ve called me to do. You don’t call me to do something you don’t give me the ability and energy and desire to do. That is living a blessed life with him, with us.

Now let’s bring it down. What does that look like tomorrow morning, going to a job you’re not super excited about? What if God is with you not just when you get to what you imagine you need to get to, but right then, now. How does that shape the way you think about things you shouldn’t be doing? Inviting God into that and realizing, I can’t do that. Then why am I doing what I’m doing?

What does that mean if you’re in a troubled marriage and your mind is racing for the day when, “Oh, if I’d only married someone different or could marry someone different.” Or you’re in a difficult season of singleness.

Sam Allberry, who is single, writes very insightfully, how many singles, when they’re in a low point of singleness, tend to look at this imaginary high point of marriage and feel the gap of what they’re missing. And he’s been single for many decades, so he says he also notices many of his married friends. When they’re in a low point of marriage, imagine what it might be like to be single. And wherever we are, we have this tendency to imagine being somewhere where we’re not.

And I think what Willard is getting at, what if we embraced God’s presence right where we are? He’s with us now. And that’s really the blessing of Christmas. Emmanuel, God what? With us.

“The word became flesh, dwelt among us.”

Not in an ideal world, but the muddy, dirty, broken world.

Let’s take a few minutes and imagine something you’re going through right now that you can’t see God’s presence in. Would you invite him in? He’s there. What we’re doing is acknowledging his presence.

And then talk to him about how that changes the way you think and act. Let’s just take a few moments of quiet meditation in the presence of God, as the Spirit moves among us. And then I’ll pray.

Father, many of us do not view obedience as a blessing, maybe as a threat, a curse, or part of the ingredient in a boring life. And yet when we are with you and you are with us, which is the way you’ve designed us to be, obedience is not a threat but a promise, part of the package of grace.

Please, Father, by the power of your Spirit right now, move in our hearts to transform the way we think about some of the most difficult or discouraging parts of our lives. Whether it’s a job or a relationship or lack of one. Any form of suffering or prosperity.

Lord, may we recognize your presence and experience the power of your Spirit to transform the way we think and respond right where we are. Now and near, that’s where you are. You’re with us. Emmanuel. Thank you.

By the power of your Spirit, move among us now as we respond to this word you’ve spoken to us. We ask that all of us would be in this way of blessing, not because we’ve done enough or could earn enough, because none of us could, but because of your generosity. We thank you in Jesus’s name, amen.