SMBC Principal's Hour

Jacob, the promise-bearer is fleeing for his life from the Promised Land. Have God’s promises failed? How can we pursue the promise when it seems to have failed? God has something incredible for Jacob in this story. And it is something incredible for us too – something which strengthens us to pursue the promise, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

All of us fear missing out on things. The fear of missing out on God’s promises led Isaac, Jacob and Rebekah, and Esau to respond badly. What does it mean for us to live well in the light of God’s gospel promises?

This is a story about Isaac and his family who, as migrants, lived subject to the vagaries of circumstances and foreign authorities. But Genesis 26 is also a reminder that God appeared to Isaac to reiterate covenant promises, call for obedience, and, against all the odds, to secure his blessing and peace.

If God is sovereign, what does that mean for how we live? If God can declare while someone is still in the womb what their fate will be, as he does in Genesis 25 with Jacob and Esau, does it even matter how we live? The answer in Genesis 25 is ‘yes, it really does matter!’ In fact, the sovereign God is so invested in how we live that he has given us this text to train us in how to live under his sovereign rule.

“Should I marry?” This is a question we all ask at some point, and which can have a lot of emotion and pressure attached to it. In 1 Corinthians 7:25-40, Paul equips us to answer this question in a cross-shaped way. In doing so, he helps us to understand the nature of the times we live in, and gives us a framework for decision-making that helps us in all of life’s decisions.

What does Paul mean by exhorting us to ‘remain as we were when called by God’? Far from a call to never change our situation, it is a rebuke to any believer saved by grace who returns to following worldly wisdom as an advance to their spiritual condition. The gospel is all sufficient for salvation, and all sufficient for producing a cross shaped life. This sufficiency delivers freedom for the believer to consider change not for their own spiritual condition, but in service to the spiritual needs of others.

Acts 14 records part of Paul’s first missionary journey, depicting how God opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Luke recorded these events, not only so that we might know what happened, but also so we might know what to expect when we participate in God’s mission by preaching the gospel. In this text, we are encouraged by what God does, and equipped to play our part.

As disciples of Christ, we want to have a cross-shaped theology of sex, singleness and marriage. Our beliefs about these topics are important, because they will shape our expectations and our actions. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul addresses these topics, equipping the Corinthians and us to live out God’s plan for relationships in our particular circumstances.

How did Christian disciples at Corinth end up visiting brothels? The Corinthian church had misunderstood the value God places on our bodies. Instead of seeing bodies as “for the Lord” they saw bodies as just a bundle of temporary desires needing immediate satisfaction. Finding sex was about as significant as finding lunch. But our bodies are precious to God, destined for eternity with our resurrected Lord. And if that is true, then everything changes, including our sexual faithfulness.

Disputes will always surface in our Christian communities. But how should we respond when they do? In 1 Corinthians 6, we learn how to (and how not to!) deal with disputes. The good news is that God has resourced us to settle disputes in the church, that we might live at peace with one another, and display the gospel’s power to the world.