back to indexBerean Community Church Bible Study 1 Peter Intro Session
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If we can make our way to our seats and just take a minute or two to pray to prepare for worship. 00:20:10.280 |
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for bringing us here tonight. 00:20:15.300 |
We thank you for the privilege that we have to worship you, to sing songs to you, 00:20:20.300 |
and to study your word together. I pray Lord God, as we go into just studying the book of 1 Peter, 00:20:26.300 |
that it would just be a blessed time of just diving into your word and learning new truths, God, 00:20:33.300 |
and rediscovering old truths as well. I pray Lord that as we come here tonight, you give us strength and focus 00:20:40.320 |
to sing these songs to you, that it would be coming from a place of worship in our hearts, 00:20:45.320 |
and that we'd be honored by this time. So we thank you again. In your name we pray, amen. 00:29:09.620 |
Before we get started, I'm actually going to ask Pastor Mark to come up to just share with you some housekeeping, logistical things. 00:29:17.620 |
So if you guys can turn your attention to Pastor Mark, that'd be great. 00:29:26.620 |
>> All right. Good evening, everybody. We had a good short break with Christmas and New Year's and then off to a new study. 00:29:34.620 |
I actually have a good amount to say to you guys in terms of things just so that everything is organized. 00:29:41.620 |
So first and foremost, as a heads up to everyone, the room may actually look a little bit less crowded. 00:29:49.620 |
And part of that is because we have nine to ten tables worshiping with us over in the cafe side. 00:29:56.620 |
That means for their benefit, some of you guys I know love to come together and have some fellowship prior to the Bible study. 00:30:02.620 |
You guys use the cafe area, et cetera, which is totally fine. 00:30:05.620 |
But it just means that, A, you can't be moving around the tables too much. 00:30:09.620 |
And if you do eat food, make it clean as if you were never, ever there. 00:30:16.620 |
Please know, again, that those groups are actually going to be starting off their night there and then finishing there, too. 00:30:21.620 |
So the entirety of the time, they'll be there on the other side, which also means if you finish early over here, 00:30:27.620 |
it doesn't mean that we can go over there to just start doing the fellowship, that kind of stuff. 00:30:31.620 |
Our conversations and visiting with each other will have to take place here, et cetera. 00:30:37.620 |
OK, an important thing is, as you know, our church, we're so thankful because so many of you lend a hand to make sure everything runs. 00:30:46.620 |
Likewise, for this Bible study, we need your helping hands with various things. 00:30:51.620 |
So tonight there was a reminder of a schedule link sent to you. 00:30:56.620 |
On that schedule link, on the second tab, it says Wednesday Volunteer Schedule. 00:31:02.620 |
Please hit that tab, and what you'll see is, number one, child care volunteering. 00:31:07.620 |
Now, you will have to sacrifice one evening to watch the children. 00:31:14.620 |
We do ask that you have to be a member of the church, and so you'd have to have gone through the whole course, 00:31:19.620 |
meeting with the pastor, all that kind of stuff, to be a member, and that you do the safety training. 00:31:24.620 |
If the only thing you haven't done so far is the safety training, 00:31:27.620 |
we're going to be holding a special safety training next week on Wednesday prior to Bible study at 5.30. 00:31:34.620 |
And so look out for announcements on that in terms of safety training for all the volunteers for that. 00:31:39.620 |
But you can put your name down so that you can volunteer. 00:31:43.620 |
Likewise, you'll see volunteer opportunities for parking. 00:31:46.620 |
Kind of self-explanatory, so I'm not going to go through too much, 00:31:49.620 |
but you just show up early and spend the first beginning, about 15 minutes or so, 00:31:53.620 |
helping out, directing traffic and things like that. 00:31:56.620 |
And again, so if we all bear the load of having all those things filled in, 00:32:00.620 |
then we'll all just take a rotation, like one of the weeks, and we'll be able to get all that done. 00:32:06.620 |
The last thing is this sanctuary will be used again for our college Bible study on Friday, 00:32:13.620 |
and they're going to be going over the same passage and stuff like that, so it's real sweet. 00:32:17.620 |
But in order to just help them out, when the Bible study is all done, 00:32:20.620 |
we're going to ask the last row, just across from the left to the right, 00:32:25.620 |
to go ahead and put your tables away at the end of the Bible study, 00:32:29.620 |
including the last two tables on the far left. 00:32:31.620 |
So that would be Anthony's group and Peter Lee's group. 00:32:34.620 |
Your chairs you can leave there because we're going to use it for the sanctuary on Sunday, 00:32:38.620 |
but you'll be putting away your tables after the Bible study is done. 00:32:45.620 |
Café is being used. Make sure you just make it nice and tidy after you use it, 00:32:49.620 |
and then make sure you sign up for the volunteer opportunities via the link that's been sent to you. 00:32:53.620 |
Okay, everyone? All right, thank you so much. 00:33:00.620 |
All right, so this is our first Peter Bible study, 00:33:03.620 |
and so especially for those of you who are doing Bible study with us for the first time, 00:33:13.620 |
So for each week's Bible study, I will be posting up either Wednesday night or Thursday morning, 00:33:20.620 |
the following day, with some very similar preparatory questions for the following week. 00:33:27.620 |
And by Wednesday, all the slides and the notes and things are already sent to the AV team and the media team. 00:33:38.620 |
And so there's sometimes there's going to be a lot of text on the slide, 00:33:43.620 |
and you're thinking like, "I don't have time to copy it all down. The print is too small." 00:33:48.620 |
You can go back and reference that and just download it. 00:33:52.620 |
Okay, so the slides will be made available to you. 00:33:58.620 |
The structure of each week, it looks like this. 00:34:05.620 |
Some of you guys enjoy walking in like 7.15 and stuff like that, but that can be disruptive. 00:34:11.620 |
And one thing that we do encourage you guys to do is get here early, help set up, talk to people, pray. 00:34:21.620 |
And then after about like a 10-minute time of praise, we will pray. 00:34:27.620 |
We will usually just go right into like about an hour as worth of small group discussion time. 00:34:34.620 |
And then after that, I'll be coming up to doing like a 20- to 30-minute like a wrap-up, 00:34:41.620 |
things that you might not have covered, perhaps some things that are a little bit of a challenge. 00:34:49.620 |
Like how do we begin to think through the passage? 00:34:52.620 |
So I'll do a little bit of a teaching, and then after that is done, we redismiss into the small groups. 00:34:58.620 |
A lot of that is applicational and small group time and a prayer time, and then you finish when you finish. 00:35:04.620 |
So for you guys who've been with us, you guys know how the structure of the Wednesday is run. 00:35:10.620 |
It's pretty lengthy, just in terms of the totality of the number of minutes you're sitting there. 00:35:16.620 |
But that's pretty much--we don't have too many programs and things at our church. 00:35:22.620 |
And so hopefully that's something that does serve as an encouragement to you. 00:35:31.620 |
The primary purpose of you coming on Wednesday is to share what you've learned at home, and that you guys know, right? 00:35:39.620 |
So the more you invest into your own preparation, the more you'll get out of it. 00:35:47.620 |
And my encouragement is never touch a commentary unless you really, really are stuck at like a certain question. 00:35:56.620 |
For the most part, if you look at all the different translations, and you ask good questions, and you make good observations, 00:36:05.620 |
and you look at other parts of Scripture, it really--you'll be surprised at how accurate your conclusion may be. 00:36:17.620 |
I'm not going to point you to commentaries when we're doing the teaching part, 00:36:20.620 |
but just how through the passage, through the context of the text, we're landing on a conclusion. 00:36:26.620 |
And so we ask you guys to spend a lot of time just preparing for that, okay? 00:36:32.620 |
And I'll walk with you through the preliminaries tonight. 00:36:36.620 |
Before we break off into our groups, I'm going to just do a little bit of a geography study, 00:36:42.620 |
because if you guys have noticed, the first verse talks about like five regions, right? 00:36:52.620 |
So if you look here, you're going to see pretty much the New Testament world. 00:37:01.620 |
On your far right, it's cut off, but that's Israel, right? 00:37:07.620 |
Right on the western coast of the Mediterranean Sea, or the--is that the--that's the east, 00:37:16.620 |
you have like--you see Samaria, Judea, Jerusalem, Nazareth. 00:37:25.620 |
And then the rest of it is--are names that should be familiar. 00:37:31.620 |
Colossae, Galatia, Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica. 00:37:46.620 |
So Israel happens all over there, but then the gospel gets spread throughout just the Mediterranean world, okay? 00:37:54.620 |
So if you look at the very top left-hand corner, it says Rome. 00:38:08.620 |
So Peter's there, but he's writing to the exiles scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. 00:38:16.620 |
So if you're like, "I don't know where those are," okay? 00:38:23.620 |
So Peter's writing from Rome, and the five regions that we're looking at are in that circle, 00:38:31.620 |
and that--about the 11 o'clock mark of the circle. 00:38:35.620 |
Do you guys see kind of where the two little--is that an isthmus? 00:38:42.620 |
So I want you to kind of mentally make a note of that little touching point, all right? 00:38:55.620 |
So Bithynia and Pontus are at that top, okay? 00:39:12.620 |
It comes into Bithynia, but it makes its rounds first, and Bithynia is the last point, okay? 00:39:18.620 |
So if you're going clockwise, you go Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Ephesus is in Asia. 00:39:28.620 |
And when we think Asia, and when the Bible times think Asia, they're different Asia, okay? 00:39:33.620 |
So we're not thinking like Korea, China, Vietnam, all right? 00:39:40.620 |
So--and then it makes a big circle, all right? 00:39:44.620 |
So remember, Rome is at the very far corner, and then the letter is being circulated here, okay? 00:39:53.620 |
And if you didn't prep the 105 verses, the five chapters, 00:40:01.620 |
you're going to have a little bit of a hard time doing the discussion tonight, 00:40:08.620 |
So if you guys came in and you weren't able to prepare, here's just text, okay? 00:40:14.620 |
And so until about 820, what I want you guys to do in your small groups--next slide-- 00:40:21.620 |
is to kind of just share with your small group members how you broke down the first epistle. 00:40:28.620 |
And when I like to start, I actually just like to do it without--because the Bible makes it easy to cheat, right? 00:40:35.620 |
It gives you, like, the divisions and stuff, but how would you break it down? 00:40:39.620 |
What are the organizations of thought that you find? 00:40:46.620 |
Two or three very central ones, but there's about five or six repeated themes. 00:40:53.620 |
And then I did ask you guys to come up with, like, a one-sentence summary of the epistle. 00:41:02.620 |
And nine out of ten times you do this, at the end of the study, your sentence is going to change 00:41:07.620 |
because you'll pick up different things as you go more and more in depth for the 17 weeks that we're doing this together. 00:41:13.620 |
But the bulk of your time should be spent on question number four, especially verse two, 00:41:20.620 |
because that is a very theologically meaty one verse, right? 00:41:24.620 |
So all your small group leaders should know how to ask inductive questions. 00:41:30.620 |
And so because today's the first time, just share what you've observed, the questions that you have. 00:41:38.620 |
And then if you do have time, is there a tangible application you can make out of the first two verses, okay? 00:41:44.620 |
So let me pray for us, and at 820 we'll get back together, 00:41:48.620 |
and then I'll walk you through how I would chart through 1 Peter. 00:41:53.620 |
And, oh, Emily, can you hold up that worksheet that I provided? 00:41:59.620 |
Okay, do you guys see that worksheet with the highlights and stuff? 00:42:02.620 |
You're not allowed to use that until 820, okay? 00:42:11.620 |
So small group leaders aren't even allowed to use it, all right? 00:42:15.620 |
I just didn't want to disrupt you in the middle and just say, "Here, come get it," so I gave it to you early. 00:42:20.620 |
So don't look at it. Flip it over, and then you can look at that when I present that. 00:42:26.620 |
And all of that will also be available tonight for download, okay? 00:42:33.620 |
And it's a rough draft, so don't put any credibility in what I printed there. 00:42:39.620 |
But either way, you're not supposed to use it, all right?