Worship God, man!
A REAL MAN WILL HAVE A FAMILY THAT WORSHIPS
Psalm 128
A song of ascents.
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.
4 Yes, this will be the blessing
for the man who fears the Lord.
5 May the Lord bless you from Zion;
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
He’s a man that seeks God’s blessing and therefore becomes God’s blessing. The blessing goes beyond his own family. The blessing goes to the nation. America will never be right until our homes are right. Our homes will never be right till the daddies get right.
God’s plan is for man to say: “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” In verse 3, the picture is of a wife like a tender vine and the children like olive plants. Do you know one thing that they both have in common? They need to be cared for. They need to be cultivated.
A vine is very fruitful, but it needs support. It needs something to lean upon. So you’re wife is like a vine by the side of the house. And the olive trees, you’re children. In the middle east, if you had olive trees, you would have a source of productivity, a source of wealth. These olive trees, green, productive, beautiful and stable. But they need to be cultivated.
Fathers, how are you to cultivate your olive trees? Look at Ephesians 6:4. “And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Don’t provoke them. That means to exasperate them, to frustrate them, to badger them, to wound them, to humiliate them. Josh McDowell said something I will never forget. He said that “rules without relationships make rebellion”. Now if you don’t get anything else out of the message that’s not mine, that’s Josh’s.
The word for nurture here is the idea of tending a garden. Just like you would cultivate your olive trees. Weeding, watering, fertilizing. It takes discipline, instruction. It takes demonstration. It takes time. I read that the average father spends 7 ½ minutes per week with his teenagers. You say, well I can’t be there. That really means you just don’t care. Psychologists tell us that if a father does not spend time with his daughter, her chances of becoming frigid or promiscuous are greatly increased.
These are your olive plants. You say, I don’t have time. Do you know your chief assignment from God concerning your wife? It is to make her a more radiantly beautiful Christian. You are the pastor in the home. The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. Some say, well, we just believe in mutual submission. That’s a contradiction in terms. Christians in general are to mutually submit, but in the home there’s headship. Anything with no head is dead and anything with two heads is a freak. I’m telling you. There’s headship in the home.
The great problem in America is not primarily rebellious women. The great problem in America is failing men. Now there are some rebellious women. I hope you’re not married to one of them. But the great problem is primarily men failing to be the men that they ought to be.
I want to wrap this up talking about a real man and his future wealth. Look in verse 6,
6 May you live to see your children’s children—
The Pelican from Cabo
© 2016 MANLY TRAINING
peace be on Israel.
Where is real wealth? What is wealth? Is it a BMW? Is it five bedrooms, four baths, a patio, and a pool? What is wealth? I’ll tell you what wealth is. It is children that love their family and are saved. Children don’t make a rich man poor, they make a poor man rich. The rich man can’t take his money to heaven, but I’m taking my kids to heaven. I’m planning on taking my grand-kids too. We’re going to heaven This is our wealth.
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