Barnabas ASI in Africa - new website

Barnabas France have opened a new French-language website at http://barnabas-asi.org. It is focussed on mercy ministry in Cote d'Ivoire and other Francophone West African countries. A key project at the moment is the establishment of a Christian school in the town of Duekoué, western Cote d'Ivoire. The motto of the website is "L'amour donne des aides" which means "love gives help".

Vive La France! # 1

God challenged Nally and me last November to come back to the UK and raise up prayer and intercession for the work of God in France. In response, we have started publishing a quarterly newsletter. Its aim is to encourage intercession for a move of God in France and the French-speaking world. Here is edition # 1 December 2008. We welcome ideas and suggestions regarding forthcoming editions.

Our recent visit to Digne-les-Bains

Nally and I had a great time a few weeks ago when we visited our brothers and sisters in Christ at the Barnabas church in Digne-les-Bains, South of France. We accompanied Brian and Caroline Gingles of the Barnabas church in Larne, Northern Ireland. You can read Brian's report on the visit at the Barnabas England website. Here is a photo of Nally, Brian and Caroline at the house where we stayed, which was kindly loaned to us for the visit by a sister in the church.

We left with a renewed commitment to pray for the people of France. This land desperately needs our prayers that God may soften the hard ground, remove the impediments to people coming to know Him, and pour out His Spirit in revival - to bring the kind of outpouring of the Holy Spirit that France has never known in all her history. She really needs to know the truth about who Christ is, and what the church of God really means. None of us is sufficient unto ourselves for this task: only Jesus can bring it together. Let's intercede for the land of France, for a divine move of God that brings many people to know His love and mercy.

10 out of 10

The Ten Commandments. It's the title of a film by Cecille B. de Mille, starring Charlton Heston. The subject is the Law given by God to Moses for the people of Israel, on Mount Sinai. There are many messages that could be preached just on that one-sentence introduction:-

• Who gave the Law (God)
• Who received the Law (Moses, Israel)
• What was given (the Law, engraved on ten stone tablets)
• Where was this gift given (on Mount Sinai)
• etc.

However, I'd like to focus on the laws themselves. There are, apparently, 613 commandments in the Pentateuch (the name given to the first 5 books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). Of these, the ten that God wrote on stone tablets for Moses and Israel, on Mount Sinai, are the most prominent (though maybe not the most important, considering Christ's statement about the greatest commandment). They appear twice in the Bible: in Exodus and again in Deuteronomy (which means the "second statement" of the Law).

Why did God give this Law to Israel? Derek Prince names four reasons, which I can't exactly remember. Not wishing to steal his thunder, here are my recollections of those four reasons: -

1. To show humankind what God is like,
2. To give Israel, the people, a national identity,
3. To show humankind our weakness and inability to meet God's standards (only Messiah can),
4. To prophesy about the coming of the Messiah (Christ).

But the most important reason for the giving of the Law is found in two verses in the book of Romans: Rom. 3:19 and Rom. 8:4.

Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. (Rom. 3:19)

God sent his own Son... that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3-4)

I quote the King James Version simply in order to avoid breaking any copyright agreement (note the influence of law even in that!). However, it remains one of the best Bible versions for study.

The central event of human history was not - I repeat, not - the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. it was the atoning death of the Son of God, Jesus, on the Mount of Calvary. The law had already, implicitly, arrived on the stage of history in the Garden of Eden. God placed the man and the woman in the Garden to tend and cultivate it. He made only one request: that they refrain from eating of the fruit of the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. 2:16-17). By breaking this command at the Serpent's instigation, Adam and Eve earned God's eternal judgement. "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). Therefore, in the Garden, law already had effect. Why, then, did God add the 612 extra commandments beyond the original one? Rom. 7:13 says this was "that it [sin] might appear sin". In other words, God wanted to put beyond any doubt the fact that humans cannot live up to His standard: "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God."

Let's go back to Rom. 8:4 and see that Jesus died so "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us." What a shock this is - the law was not invalidated or abolished by Jesus' advent: on the contrary, the whole point of Jesus' death was to settle the law's demand. This means that - outside of God's grace -we are still under the law. Shock-horror! What are we going to do? 1 Tim. 1:8-10 declares :

But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,
for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine...

This is why we have to trust Jesus, Who has paid the law's legal demand. Col. 2:14 says Jesus blotted out "the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross." Let us not gratuitously cast the law of God aside with the cheap comment, "oh, that's Old Testament stuff". On the contrary, just as you can tell what a person is like by the acts they do, so you can tell what Christ's Cross really meant, by working back from the atonement to the law it was destined to fulfil. In other words, we can understand more about the truth of Christ's sacrifice by studying the law of God.

Apples for Africa

Butoko Yaya, an Ethiopian apple farmer Send a Cow work with

I am a glutton for punishment... volunteered again to coordinate this year's Churches Together in Ely Apple Day presence. Apple Day is an annual event put on by East Cambridgeshire District Council. But speaking seriously, I am really encouraged and blessed by this opportunity. I want the event to communicate to the people of Ely just how great God's work is!

Ethiopian farmers and Dawuro Highland sheep

Our purpose is to promote and fund-raise for the Christian charity, Send a Cow, who work with poor and disadvantaged African farmers. Send a Cow is a wonderful work which aims to give African farmers hope and help to improve their yields. It encourages application of traditional, low-tech approaches to solving problems, combined with innovative methods and ideas.

We are going to be helped at Apple Day by the presence of two of Send a Cow's local ambassadors at our stall. Ely Social Responsibility Forum are hosting a Fair Trade Cafe at the Cathedral Centre which is adjacent to where the Apple Fair is held (on the green in front of Ely Cathedral). All profits will go to Send a Cow. We are also holding a children's craft competition - the Best Dressed Apple. It is really terrific!

Nally and I, with the support of friends at the Olive Tree and the Countess of Huntingdon Church, are also going to attempt to make 200 toffee apples. Same recipe as last year. We hope to sell some of them through the justgiving website.

Tite-ising (studying Titus?)

Here are some slides in Open Office Impress format, of a message I gave last Sunday at the Olive Tree. I have been reading the Book of Titus for the last couple of months and really getting interested in it. The eponymous guy was a co-worker with the apostle Paul. He sounds to have been a great bloke to know. He did a lot to help many people, among them the Corinthian church and the people of Crete. I hope you find it helpful and enjoyable. One thing, however, I didn't touch on was the matter of leadership in the church (see Titus 1:7 for example). That question is so important that it deserves its own sermon.

The Glass Elevated

Here is my hawberry (or hawthornberry) wine, which I bottled this evening. It's a bit sedimentary, if that is a fair application of the word. I got five bottles out of the demi-john. Makes a change after a knackering day at the office. The wine hasn't got a very strong bouquet, but it has plenty of body. It's somewhat like a dry sherry, with flavours of lemon, orange, toffee and raspberry and a rich tan hue. It has good attack, wanders interestingly around the palate, and has a reasonably long finish. However, I wouldn't have guessed, if I been handed a glass of it by someone else, what the main ingredient was.