God’s Work or Our Vanity

God’s Work or Our Vanity

Psalm 127
Pastor Terry Wilcox

One of the greatest tensions in Christian theology is the sovereign grace of God versus the freedom and responsibility of people. 

“Pray like it all depends on God and work like it all depends on you.”  Clever, but unsatisfying and unbiblical.

It is always better to magnify God than ourselves.

Psalm 127 shows us the right way and the wrong way to work.

It is wrong living to let your work consume you.

The same wrong applies to our right standing with God. 

Even though we are saved and filled with his Holy Spirit, we continue to depend on the grace of God to take us home to heaven.  Pilgrims on the road of faith toward God are not causal about knowing that their entire journey is more dependent on God’s grace than their own efforts. 

Philippians 2:12b-13

Philippians 2:13 

John Wesley taught four parts to grace:
prevenient, saving, sanctifying, and dying. 

The defining difference between working rightly and wrongly is our focus.

The main difference between Christians and others is that we take God seriously and they do not.  We really do believe that He is the central reality of all existence.  We really do pay attention to what He is and what He does.    -Eugene Peterson

Genesis 1 is a journal of God at work.

Work is good.  It has dignity and purpose.

The problem is Satan’s trap of not seeing our work as part of our faith, our journey.

Psalm 127:3-5 includes an example of God’s idea of easy work.

God encourages us to work with Him by focusing on Him and developing loving relationships.

People are at the center of Christian work.
John 5:17

Jesus did not procreate any children, however, consider John 1:12.

NIV  “a song of ascents”  -VS-  TPT  “a song of the stairway”

Christian worship gathers the energy and focuses the motivation that transforms us from consumers who use work to get things, into people who are intimate, and in whom work is a way of being in creative relationship with another.

Only two things on earth that God calls eternal:

1. His Word
2. People

Today is the time to change your focus.

Personal Notes