"I love the sense of satisfaction that I get when I’ve done a swimming workout or race, and know that I gave my whole being and heart to God in every moment of the swim. It’s the best worship I can offer him."

Penny Heyns

Introduction

In the present series we will apply the 10 commandments to the world of sport. Our starting point in wanting to apply God’s word to sport is to believe the opening three words of the verse above; God has spoken.

Exodus 20 does not directly address sport. Nor does it directly address issues of 21st century business. The 10 commandments, rather, give us principles about our relationship with God. The challenge for us is to work out how to apply it to sport (or business for that matter) in our society.

We believe that sport – and our ability to play and enjoy sport – is part of God’s creation. Like everything else it has been spoiled by our fall into sin. We believe too that through the life and death of Jesus Christ sport - along with everything else -can be redeemed and restored.

In applying the Bible to sport we are not looking for proof texts or individual verses which seem to say what we would like them to! Rather we want to find universal Biblical principles and see how they can be applied to sport. This will become clearer over the next few weeks.

My thinking in writing this series was helped by Tom Visker’s “Play,Game and Sport in a Reformed, Biblical Worldview (in Christianity and Leisure).

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