By Pastor William Y. K. Brown Ph.D
(Resident Pastor)
Seventh-day Adventist Church
Osu-Bethel.
Tel: 0244165628/0243310773.
wykbrown@gmail.com
SABBATH
THEME: THE INDISPENSABLE GOD“
SCRIPTURE: Psalms 127:1-2
“[1]Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain. [2]It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep.”
REFLECTIONS
A fact of life that eludes most people in every generation is that if God is not in what we do or does not approve of our endeavors, we work in vain. Our best intentions and efforts are in vain, and the outcome will be fruitless, useless, and elusive without God. Look around you and identify people who, in their lifetime, did not respect their fellow human beings and did things with authority without regard to other people. See what has become of them as they age or pass on. If God is not in our lives, we live but in vain. We are curious if anybody, in their true sense, would want to live a wasteful life. Unfortunately, many people live without recourse to God. He is not part of their thinking or considerations.
As an appendix to Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes in Psalms 127:1 – “Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain.” No achievement of human beings is lasting unless God approves of it. Magnificent buildings have collapsed or been pulled down. Strong and professionally astute security personnel have been overpowered, succumbed, or demobilized by attackers – so who really is the one who watches? Is it the watchman who sleeps at the post? Over time, knowledge becomes obsolete except for the word of God, which is the absolute truth. Generally, a science book becomes outdated within five years, replacing theories with new discoveries and understanding. We have no tangible success without cooperating with God – our dependence on Him will give our works strength, meaning, and value.
Unless our works depict the hand of God, all that we can achieve will be “both thorns and thistles,” without value but wearisome (Genesis 3:18). Solomon continues the thought in Psalm 127:2, stressing, “It is vain for you to rise early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep.” What does a human being’s sleeplessness or hard work amount to? The hard fact and absolute truth are that “life without God is meaningless.” Ecclesiastes 1:3 asks, “What profit has a man from all his labor In which he toils under the sun?” It is only as our last breath is taken that the realization may dawn that if we fail to honor God in our lifetime, we have lived a useless, unproductive, and unprofitable life – like a vapor, we disappear and are forgotten. God, in everything we do, guarantees sustainability, success, and eternal results and memory.
MY SONG OF COMMITMENT
“How Can I Say Thanks?” – Andrae Crouch and Shanna Thompson
LET US PRAY
– Praise and thank God for His actions in your life; thank God for what He has enabled you to accomplish; pray to remember God in all you do, for your endeavors to be blessed;
– Pray for your family to recognize God in all their endeavors, young people to put God first in their lives, and those within your sphere of influence to acknowledge God in their lives;
– Pray for people in desperate situations to look up to God for deliverance, the sick and hospitalized, and those who live in despair, fear, and anxiety;
– Pray for peace, prosperity, and a commitment to seeking righteousness in the land; pray for Christians to show dedication to God in all things; and pray for security personnel’s safety and integrity.
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