God’s Word for You
Psalm 128:1-2 They are blessed
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, March 5, 2026
A Song of Ascents
1 Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD,
everyone who walks in his ways.
2 You will eat the labor of your hands.
Blessed things and good things are yours.
“Peace be upon Israel”—so this Psalm will conclude in verse 6, and that is the theme of this short and lovely poem. We are brought inside the home of the ancient believer, and we easily compare the scene with our own lives at home. We are blessed, and God’s blessings are not far away. They are here in a home where we worship together, believe together, talk about God’s word together, and support each other in what we do.
The father watches his sons grow up into various versions of himself, how he might have turned out if this or that had been a little different at this or that moment. And they are all good: Custodian, teacher, pastor, painter, farmer, or whatever they choose to do. Watching one’s children make good choices is one of the greatest blessings given to parents, for we want them to be safe, and we want them to be self-sufficient, and we want them to be happy, and we want them to be prosperous, and we want them to be healthy. But more than any of those things, we want our children to believe in God and to trust in Jesus Christ. And if having faith means any child or anyone giving up on being self-sufficient, or prosperous, or even their health, a wise father knows that a son or daughter with faith is all we truly want. For “everyone who walks in his ways, the Lord’s ways, is blessed.” “A righteous man walks in his integrity. How blessed are his children after him!” (Proverbs 20:7).
Just as God wants us to fear, love, and trust in him above all things, so also parents want the same thing of all their children, that they would all fear, love, and trust in God above all things.
Luther calls the work of a godly child “a great, good, and holy work that is assigned” (Large Catechism). And this is simply the part in which children honor and respect their parents as God’s representatives. How right this is! When we honor and respect our parents and recognize that they have been given to us by God as a blessing for our good, then we find ourselves in the second verse of this Psalm, fully understanding the first and clearest example of what it truly means and teaches: “Blessed things and good things are yours.” A child does holy work, a truly good work in God’s sight, when he or she loves and honors mother and father as God’s agents in the home. “Alas,” Luther goes on to say, “it is utterly despised and brushed aside, and no one recognizes it as God’s command or as a holy, divine word and precept. For if we have regarded it as such, it would have been apparent to all that they who lived according to these words, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ must also be holy men and women.”
For this reason, when churches present children’s devotions during the service, they do a good thing for the children and for the congregation especially when they keep the message as simple as possible, focusing on the first four commandments in particular, and the Second Article of the Creed. For when we can teach our little ones to understand loving God, using God’s name well and not to swear and curse, of going to church together to worship, and to honor and respect our parents, we have made a good foundation. And then when we teach them about Jesus, they will begin to understand that their sins under the commandments have been forgiven by their loving Savior. Deeper lessons can wait a few years.
This is also a reminder that it is good to “train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6). But the verse before also teaches: “In the paths of the wicked lie thorns and snares, but he who guards his soul stays far from them” (Proverbs 22:5). What they do will not go to waste. “They will eat the labor of their hands.”
Blessed is the family that learns these things, knows these things, does these things, and loves this word of God!
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.