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06 Oct
[01-02-10] A New Year. A New Decade
At the start of a new year and a new decade Rich Wilson shares something of God's heart for Open Heaven.[04-12-09] Grace for Growth
Growth begins and ends with grace.[02-12-09] God and Dualisms
At the leaders' weekend earlier in the year, we heard quite a lot about how dualistic thinking works in our lives.[01-12-09] A Big Thank You
Over the last few weeks we referred to Nov 22nd 09 as the day we would come together to raise thousands and thousands of pounds.[06-05-09] Stories from Encounter
The Encounter Weekend continues to be one of my highlights in the year.[01-05-09] Imagine a church that...
The unusual thing about the theme for this term is that I knew a couple of years ago (April '07) that we should do this theme in about two years time – which is now! I don’t think that process has ever happened before in the choosing of a term’s theme.[29-04-09] Well Done You’ve Made It!
You’ve made it to the end of lent and gone without whatever it was you chose to give up.[03-04-09] Study War No More
The global arms trade is wreaking havoc around the world.[08-12-08] Chocolate Traffic
Fancy working 80-100 hours a week for little pay? If so the chocolate trade is for you.[11-11-08] Update on our 08-09 Goals
We've been pursuing our strategic goals for 08-09 for over two months now, so I thought it would be good to update everyone on how they're going.
The Ten Commandments
This term we are looking at the Ten Commandments - barely 300 words long in English, yet they form the basis of our legal system, the foundations of our parliament and lie at the core of western civilisation.
In words so brief that they would form just one short column in a newspaper or magazine, these words encompass family rights, property rights, the rights of the individual and even the rights of God! As rational, intelligent human beings we have made over 32 million laws and still haven’t been able to improve on the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments occur in two places in the Bible. In Exodus 20 we have an account of how they were given to Moses on Mount Sinai and in Deuteronomy 5 we have them repeated. They were given to the people of Israel on their way out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land around 1450 BC. More than 2,500 years on from when they were originally given, they still make sense of how a society ought to live. I believe many of us have an instinctive resonance with these ancient rules, because they are woven deep into our conscience, as those who have been made in the image of God.
There are of course some who say that the Ten Commandments are outdated and irrelevant to modern 21st century culture. Why put onto modern humanity the primitive code of a nomadic tribe that lived in tents in the desert? Well, times have changed but some things remain stubbornly the same. The letter has become the email, the abacus has become the computer, the ox cart has become the jet, but fire is still fire, water is still water and humanity is still humanity. You can swap tents for halls and houses, swap the desert for campus and towns and cities, swap animal skins for suits or jeans and trainers, but human nature stays exactly what it has always been.
So, let’s journey together over the coming months and see what treasures unfold as we explore these ancient rules of life. As we do so, my hope and prayer is that we don’t just get to learn the Ten Commandments so we can list them when asked, but we get to know more deeply and love more wholeheartedly the God of the Ten Commandments.
Posted by: Ness Wilson on Monday Oct 6th, 2008
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