Introduction to 1 Peter (1 Peter 1:1-2)
Rev. Nathan Barczi
Our Response to Jesus (John 7:40-52)
On Offer (John 7:37-39)
Two Ironies (John 7:25-36)
The Self-Reliant King (1 Samuel 26:6-12)
“So I’ll cherish the old rugged Cross
‘Til my trophies at last I lay down
I will cling to the old rugged Cross
And exchange it some day for a crown.”
—George Bennard
Enter the Wilderness (1 Samuel 23)
Wilderness (noun)
1a - (1): a tract or region uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings
(2): an area essentially undisturbed by human activity together with its naturally developed life community
b: an empty or pathless area or region: “in remote wildernesses of space groups of nebulae are found” — G. W. Gray 1960
c: a part of a garden devoted to wild growth
2 obsolete: wild or uncultivated state
— Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Lament (1 Samuel 22)
“When men say that they miss combat, it’s not that they actually miss getting shot at—you’d have to be deranged—it’s that they miss being in a world where everything is important and nothing is taken for granted.” — Sebastian Junger
“The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness.” — David Whyte
“For serving God concerns the Frame of our Spirits, in the whole Course of our Lives; in every occasion we have, in which we may shew our Love to his Law.” — William Penn
A Table in the Wilderness (1 Samuel 21)
“Those convinced of the fact of divine reconciliation should thereby be convinced that intellectual conviction is not attained in a sort of spiritual vacuum. One must have bared one’s soul, even reckoned oneself as some kind of sinner... talk of such realities as sin and forgiveness may fail to commend itself to us because it cannot
discover in us a disposition to receive it.” — Stephen Williams
“The existential predicament in which one fears condemnation is quite different from the one where one fears, above all, meaninglessness.” — Charles Taylor
Role Models (1 Samuel 17)
“I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe.” — Mary, Queen of Scots
”Live in Christ, die in Christ, and the flesh need not fear death.” — John Knox
Seeing & Provision (1 Samuel 16:1-13)
“The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us - they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.”
— Erich Auerbach
“In the self-assured world of modernity people seek to make sense of the Scriptures, instead of hoping, with the aid of the Scriptures, to make some sense of themselves.”
— Nicholas Lash