Well, as I said, we’re getting close to done with the summer and with the summer series on the Ten Commandments – Ten Commitments that describe how covenant partners live and what their lives look like. They are similar to Jesus’ Beatitudes that describe normal Christian life in the broader context, first of the Hebrew tradition which has two branches or tributaries that flow from it, one is Judaism and one is Christianity. I am interested here, mainly and not surprisingly, in the Christian branch. The previous Commitments have all centred on the actions of covenant partners. This one shifts… Continue reading →

It’s good to be back with you and back into our series involving the Ten Commandments, or ten commitments, that people make in accepting life in covenant with God and other partners. We have said that these ten words or sentences are not laws as such, but are Principles that outline broad areas of covenant life that deal with one or another of God’s Primary Policy Statements, summed up in the words:

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. (Dt. 6:5) and…

You shall love your neighbour… Continue reading →

I admit that the title for today’s sermon is, possibly, a little provocative, although it does set out an attitude that is quite prevalent in contemporary society: “Who cares about adultery”? I mean, even the word itself, adultery, has an old-fashioned, narrow-minded, puritanical, stink to it, doesn’t it. The word isn’t used very much outside of some churches. I certainly don’t use it much and I haven’t heard it used much here either.

In 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne published his famous novel The Scarlet Letter. In the work contrasted the “scarlet letter” (an “A” for “adultery”) that Hester Prynne was made… Continue reading →

The Bible’s story of the reception of the Ten Commandments, or, as we’ve called them “the ten commitments,” tells us that Moses received these “words” or “principles” on two stone tablets. With the sixth commitment (“You will not kill”), we move from what is called the “first table” to the “second,” assuming that five words were written on one stone tablet, and five on the other (as in the illustration in your bulletin). The first table deals with relations with God, and transitions into relations with neighbours, which forms the subject matter of the whole second table.

As we’ve gone… Continue reading →