Utumishi Blog

Into the heart of the week, into the heart of 1 Peter, into the real hard work of labouring on passages. What came out clearly today through various sessions is that there really are no short cuts, no substitute for actually reading the whole letter, reading it again, working hard at the themes and the structure and starting to get a feel for how it ‘works’.

From 1 Corinthians 2 we saw that the deep things of God, the secret, hidden wisdom taught by the Spirit himself, is in fact the gospel of Christ crucified.

From Philippians we saw that humility is not a renouncing of leadership or a loss of identity. As Tim Keller puts it, it is not so much thinking less of myself as thinking of myself less and thinking of others more (Phil. 2:4). What is the solution where humility is lacking? A deep experience of the gospel (Phil. 2:1) and the extraordinary pattern of the humble God (Phil. 2:6-8).

Sammy warned us of the dangers of ‘lucky dip’ verse picking, not bothering to read the context, of assembling a ‘hodge podge’ of verses, of ignoring the historical situation of the letter and jumping straight to us, and of reading our culture or framework (F) into the text (T).

In 1 Peter we found some tremendously rich themes: suffering now, glory later; Christ crucified as our substitute, example and shepherd; the glorious nature of the Church; holiness, submission and sober-mindedness under pressure; the Word of God and the Grace of God… We’re starting to get a feel for the ‘melodic line’. Now we need to make sure our preaching of the individual passages is in tune with that.

Please pray:

• For Philip, Andy and Mercy as they teach tomorrow.
• Give thanks for real hunger for the Word and pray that we would all keep working hard through to the end of the week.
• That hearts would be fired up, thinking sharpened and ministries shaped by the Word.