The Blessed God-fearer

Minister:	Rev. Ronald Van Overloop
Date:	6/25/2017 AM
Text:	Psalm 128:1-4
Psalters:	88, 337, 393, 360
Sacrament of Baptism

The God-fearing.
1. The fear of Jehovah concerns and arises from correctly knowing Jehovah – godliness, the awareness of God.
2. This fear is the greatest awe and reverence arising from the pervasive awareness of the near presence of this great God.
3. The fear of Jehovah is the constraining power of His Spirit to make one to want to walk in God’s ways.
  1. The fear of God is the root which produces the fruit of keeping His ways, i.e., of returning ardent love.
  2. The fear of God in a man’s soul purposes to show true thankfulness to God in his whole life and to walk uprightly before Him
The blessedness refers to objective blessings God gives; it also refers to the joyful experience of knowing that I am the object of God’s love and care (127:5).
1. Faith tells us that we are blessed in Jesus, and the responding reverence and love is the way to experience this blessedness.
2. The first blessing is: “thou shalt eat the labor of thy hands.”
  1. Blessedness (happiness) consisted in being able to eat the fruit of our labor, and not in ease, honor, or wealth.
  2. With the sovereign God as our Father we may know that He will maintain us by means of the labor of our hands (Ps. 34:10).
3. The second blessing is found in “thy wife” and “thy children.”
  1. Not every God-fearing man has a wife, but if he does, she shares in his blessedness and is His means to increase it.
  2. It is God alone who gives a good wife (Prov. 19:14) and who gives many children with compliant hearts (127:3).
The “fear of Jehovah” is the fruit of God’s work in the regenerated believer, who “exercises” himself unto it (I Tim. 4:7).
1. This exercise (gymnasium) consists of great spiritual effort (I Cor. 9:25-27).
2. Men need to be exercising themselves in spiritual discipline (seems that more women do this than men).
3. How do we respond to the explanation of this passage of God’s Word?