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Do you ever ask, ‘Is the LORD really with me?’ It might be because you are in the wilderness, wandering and stumbling, things looking bleak, grey and deserted. It might be because you are in plenty, gazing out on all you have achieved and created and all that you still need to do. And in both circumstances, the question can be asked – in the former, because you feel completely neglected; in the latter, because you feel so ‘god-like’. In both instances, the question is really an exhibition of whether we have come to know the LORD, as he is. And this knowing of the LORD – through his words, which are then displayed in his works – is the whole thrust of these chapters of Exodus – chapters 14-17. As God’s mob begin their walking through the wilderness to the land that he has promised them, he wants them to know him as he is – so that they humbly depend upon him, displayed in their obedience towards him. As Trace reminded us last week, nothing has changed for God’s mob today.

In Deuteronomy chapter 8, Moses recounts the events of Exodus 16 and gives the Israelites insight into God’s intention in marching them through the wilderness with no water or food. He says that God did this deliberately to teach them that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Where the Israelites failed, Jesus took this lesson to heart, trusting in God’s word in the face of hardship and temptation. In doing so, Jesus became for us both the example and means by which God teaches us to trust him daily.

Do you ever sit and look at something you regularly do, and ask, ‘Why do I do things this way? What has caused me to do this in this manner?’ These are questions worth asking about any part of life. And they are questions we should ask of our life as God’s mob, both corporately and individually. These are questions that cut to the root of who we are because this affects what we do, and how we do it. That is just a long-winded way to state the obvious: what we believe shapes what we do. Our theology shapes our practice! The Reformation – the seminal event of the early 1500s – re-shaped the Western world. It helped spur the creation of the nation-stated, paved the way for economic change, revamped the perception of the ‘individual’ and ‘the community’… and, most significantly, returned people to the Bible in their own language so that they could understand God’s good news: that Jesus Christ lived, died and rose for the sins of any human being. This completely transformed the way God’s mob did life – both individually and corporately, both as individual Christians and the community gathered as ‘church’.

We are a singing mob – there are very few mobs like God’s mob, who sing each week, who sing communally, who sing about the eternal and the temporal, who sing about and to the God and Lord of the universe. And that singing nature of God’s mob has always been part of our DNA – Exodus 15 shows this as God’s mob sing the praises of God, as he vanquishes their enemy. The heart of this ‘song by the sea’ is the nature, the work, the plan of the LORD – and the fact that his people can plod towards their home, knowing this great God. But we are also a forgetful mob! In only three days, God’s mob move from song to grumble. And God must remind them that he will never neglect them: they will get home. Jesus’ mother sang a song as his birth came imminent. Jesus spoke of his life and purpose as ‘home-building’. And Jesus walked through life, praising God and practicing this in obedience. So, we as God’s mob now, can continue the practice of being a singing mob, walking home, knowing that nothing will separate us from God and his love, in Jesus.

Sin is THE unattractive unavoidable issue we all have to deal with in life. It affects the high and mighty, and the low and humble. It affects the child, the baby, the teenager, the adult, the parent, the spouse – all of us. And when we deal with it, it is encouraging that we come to it with God’s help. In his word, he not only gives us example after example of his people dealing with sin – he gives us his son to deal with our sin for us. There are many things you will do this week… but make this a necessity: please come before God to deal with your sin, knowing that God has not left you alone to do so.

“Hello, how are you?” “I’m good.” “Sometimes well but never good.” That was what my Nanna always u sed to say. She may have been right in my case, but it is a common misconception for those who are followers of Jesus. I don’t know about you but the older I get the more I am aware of my sin. Why aren’t I done with it by now? Psalm 14 is a good reminder that without Jesus this is what we were. No righteousness, no salvation and no hope. But David, writing 1000 years before Jesus, did have hope. Hope that salvation would come from Zion, that the Lord would restore the fortunes of his people. Jesus is that hope and because of him, even though we are aware of our sin, we can rightly say that we are good. Clothed in his righteousness we are not just well, we are good.

Psalm 120 is the first of the ‘songs of ascent’. It is the first of the fifteen psalms so labelled – the psalms that were probably sung as God’s mob gathered from all the corners of the world, and gathered at the Temple in Jerusalem. Can you imagine it? This psalm expresses the frustration, the lament, of the man (person) of God coming to God, from out of the world opposed to God. Surrounded by lies and deceit and violence, as the man of God comes close to God, we gain glimpses about the nature of God, the nature of the man of God, and the state of the world. In this world, the LORD hears the cries of his people, and he acts justly. This is our song because Jesus is that man that cries out to the LORD, the man of God, the man of peace, who sojourns in a deceitful world, dependent upon God.

Slogans like, “She’ll be right”, are just part of our everyday speech. But some slogans like “my body my choice” are deeper than just catchphrases, they capture secular creeds, deeply held beliefs in society. When adopted uncritically, such creeds can shape our lives in ways that are inconsistent with our Christian faith. As Paul gets to this part of his letter, he begins to expose some of the secular creeds of the Corinthian society captured in catchy slogans, that Christians there had adopted uncritically and which drove their behaviour, perhaps even unknowingly. Specifically, he challenges them on the secular view of their bodies, showing that for Christians, our bodies belong to Christ because he has bought us at a price and therefore, we must use them to glorify God rather than gratify bodily desires.

This section of 1 Corinthians can be hard to define around a single idea. As Corinth comes back into God’s mob, Paul certainly exposes the prevalence of sexual immorality amongst God’s mob. And underlying this is an exposure of their ‘judgement’ – their faulty judgement (in chapter 5), their swiftness to judgement in today’s passage, and their inability to judge clearly as we finish chapter 6. As Paul writes to them, he wants to confront them with the reality of their eschatological identity: they are God’s mob, grabbed by God, to reflect God to the world, to call the world back to God through the Lord of all things, Jesus. And so, their judgement must reflect this! Their forever identity must be expressed in their today living – and this is critical because it is God’s means to declare to the world the need to return to Jesus.

Paul has described himself as a father to the Corinthians and perhaps to us, given his writings in the New Testament. There are some great things about being a father. There’s fun like playing games, singing, running, holidays, gelato hunting, cooking and enjoying a great meal together. There’s also the part of fatherhood that is rewarding. Seeing children grow and learn. To teach them, to instruct them, to see the lights come on as they learn to love the Lord their God with their whole heart, soul, mind and strength and love their neighbour as themselves. That’s rewarding. But there’s the not-so-fun category. There are times that discipline is necessary and it’s not fun, it’s hard, it’s painful, it tears you up inside. But it is essential. It’s just the same in the church. There’s fun times, there’s rewarding times. Sadly, sometimes there are times where discipline is essential and hard. We’ll see today why Paul says it is essential in removing the old leaven. Praise God that if we are in Christ the old leaven has been thrown out because our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for us.

Talk 3 - 30 Aug 2026

Talk 2 - 29 Aug 2026

Talk 1 - 29 Aug 2026

Arrogance. I don’t know anybody who likes an arrogant person. Two things stand out about arrogance: it is so self-serving and it is so corrosive of unity within a group of people. Adam and Eve were tremendously arrogant toward their creator when they did not listen to his warning, disobeyed and committed that first sin. They put themselves over God and it resulted in broken fellowship. As Paul has responded to the report of division among believers in the Corinthian church, he has reminded them of their humble beginnings. He has reminded them of the contrast between God’s way and the world’s way. He has reminded them of the absolute centrality of Christ crucified for sins. His goal – to unite them in Christ. They are one household built on one foundation and they have let other worldly things, and their own desire for self-promotion, pull them apart. Their arrogance has been a big part of creating this division. Paul knows these folk well and would be greatly grieved by the damage done to their unity and their witness. Today’s passage wraps up Paul’s initial response to this division. He will turn to a different problem in Chapter 5.

Paul’s argument – that the Corinthians have let Corinth back into God’s church, and so undermined the message (‘Christ crucified’) and job (‘proclaim him to the world’) given them by God – is being examined in the context of God’s mob becoming divided by buying back into the culture of personality leadership (‘I follow Apollos…’). His dealing with this first manifestation of ‘Corinth back in’ goes all the way to the end of chapter 4. In this section – 1 Corinthians 3 – Paul wants God’s mob to get a right view of their leadership. Their unwillingness to grow in maturity as God’s mob (vs.1-4) and their self-deception about true wisdom (vs.18-23) bookend his examination of their understanding of leadership in God’s mob: true leadership in God’s mob is not about personality or influence or a power-base or which leader you might like or identify with; true leadership is serving God, with the role God has given, so ‘Christ crucified’ is proclaimed and practiced. Anything else is leadership that poaches from God, empties the proclamation of ‘Christ crucified’, and fails to enable God’s mob to be who he has made them.