My Explanation of the Ten Commandments

My Explanation of the Ten Commandments

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother.
6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
10. Thou shalt not covet

Everyone knows about the Ten Commandments, but the thing is about the Ten Commandments is that people who are not Christians see this as God trying to hold us back. They think God is trying to say that we need to be good to please god. They actually think they need to be good to get into heaven.

One example of that is that couple of weeks at my bible club I run at my school I did a sermon on what it means to be a “Christian” I was basically saying how it is not about pleasing God because that is impossible because we live in an imperfect world and we are hopelessly flawed and hoe God still loves us, he actually loves us because we are his. Okay that is beside the point, at the beginning of the meeting I asked what they think it mans to be a Christian and one of my friends tat is new in his walk with God said it is all about being a good person. I am extremely happy that he was at the Christian club that day because he now knows that it is not about pleasing God but about having a relationship with God.

The Ten Commandments are first mentioned in Exodus 5 when God told Moses what the Ten Commandments where. Now this was back before Jesus had come to Earth and die for our sins so these people where Jews so they had to sacrifice lambs and other animals to take their sins away. The lambs and other animals where way of people of the Old Testament to say that they are willing to give their fine lambs to God. We do not have to sacrifice our lambs (even though I do not have lambs because I live in the suburbs with a code for all the homes. Can you believe they do not allow you to have farm animals in my small backyard?) Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrifice for us so we do not have to be good to please God and we do not need to sacrifice our pets.

The Ten Commandments were written as guidelines for our lives. We do not need to follow these commandments to get in to heaven we can follow these as a way to say God, I thank you for your love. There are two main reasons people do good things the first is as a please, like asking for something; for instance the belief in Karma has people do good things so good things will happen to them, the other reason to do something good is as a thank you; like Christianity, we do not do good deeds as a please like asking for something we do it as a thank you to God for all he has done and will do in my and your life too. Lots of people do good deeds so they look good, so it exalts them. Something that my older brother told me was about something he heard from someone at a Christian summer camp called Mount. Herman said that his youth group did a thing called Jesus Ninjas where they went around at like 3:00 a.m. and did good deeds when no one could see them. So if you are going to do good deeds make sure you are doing it for the glory of God not for the glory of you.

May God bless you!!
Live for Jesus!!

Jake Vanderwell

The Gift of Jesus

The Gift of Jesus

18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[a] because he will save his people from their sins."
22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"[b]—which means, "God with us."
24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Joseph was engaged to Mary and before they were married Mary became pregnant. Joseph was thinking about divorcing Mary because she was pregnant with the Holy Spirit. One night when Joseph was sleeping an angel appeared to him and said not to be afraid of taking Marry as his wife because the child that was going to be born was the Savior, the one who would die for OUR sins so we could be with him in heaven the angel told him that they will call him Immanuel which means “God with us”.

God had planned to give us a GREAT GIFT, his gift to us was Jesus. Jesus was such a great gift, he SAVED US, and he gave us gift of forgiving our sins so we could have eternal life with him. If you ask me I think that is an amazing gift.
As I see Christmas and what it has become I see a Christmas that is all about presents which I guess in some sense of the term it is because Jesus was a Gift , I also see obsession with new bargains to save money it should be about the birth that has greatly changed humanity for the better. Christmas actually means Christ- mass a mass of Christ. So I do not think that you can say Christmas is not about Jesus Christ because that is how it started and the name says Christ-mass – a mass of Christ.
So as you have had Christmas and you are excited about your gifts I really want you to remember the real gift that formed Christmas.
May God bless you!!
- Jake Vanderwell

Live for Jesus!!!!

christmas

When you normally think of Christmas what do you think of? I would guess that you think about presents, Christmas dinner, parties, presents, shopping deals, decorating your house and presents. Now those are not bad thing at all, but that is not really the point of Christmas.

Yes, everyone knows that it is about baby Jesus being born in a manger. Do you know what a manger is? A manger is smelly and discusting and by by no means a good place to have a child. think about this Jesus was put into the world the worst way possible and he was taken out the worst way possible on a cross, tortured and scorned.

Yeah, we all know about Jesus and the christmas story, but do you know that the Christmas story was planned it great detail about 2,000 years before the event actually happened? For example in Micah 5:2 god explained how Jesus would come out of the tribe of Judah (which wasn't even the religious tribe) and it was fullfilled in Luke 3:33. In Jeremiah 23:5-6 it is written that that he will be of the house and line of David and it was fullfilled in Luke 3:31.It is also written that he would be born in Bethlehem in Micah 5:2 and it is fulfilled in Luke 2:4-7. another prophecy was that Jesus would be born of a virgin this was written in Isaiah 7:14 and it was fulfilled in Matthew 1:18. There are many other prophecies about Christmas and Jesus for example the bible said that Jesus would be worshipped by shepherds, be worshipped and given gifts by kings, and that he and his parents would flee to Egypt in fear of king Herod who was trying to kill Jesus because he did not want Jesus to be king.

All of these verses are in extreme detail. Last thursday at my School's bible club that I run I used this as the topic and one of the girls asked me why we need to read all of these names it was Matthew 1:1 which goes like this

¹A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
²Abraham was the father of Isaac,
Isaac the father of Jacob,
Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
³Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
Perez the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
⁴Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
⁵Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
⁶and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife,
⁷Solomon the father of Rehoboam,
Rehoboam the father of Abijah,
Abijah the father of Asa,
⁸Asa the father of Jehoshaphat,
Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram,
Jehoram the father of Uzziah,
⁹Uzziah the father of Jotham,
Jotham the father of Ahaz,
Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,
¹⁰Hezekiah the father of Manasseh,
Manasseh the father of Amon,
Amon the father of Josiah,
¹¹and Josiah the father of Jeconiah^[a] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.
¹²After the exile to Babylon:
Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel,
Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,
¹³Zerubbabel the father of Abiud,
Abiud the father of Eliakim,
Eliakim the father of Azor,
¹⁴Azor the father of Zadok,
Zadok the father of Akim,
Akim the father of Eliud,
¹⁵Eliud the father of Eleazar,
Eleazar the father of Matthan,
Matthan the father of Jacob,
¹⁶and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

¹⁷Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.

As you can see this is A LOT of detail. what i told that girl is that we read this because i am demonstrating how not vague it is and how if god can plan all of this in exact detail thousands of years before it actually happened then god has a plan for your life and you can definitely trust in him.

As Christmas day comes around and you open your presents, go to parties and eat christmas dinner i want you to remember what Christmas is really about and that it was planned long before it actually happen.

Jesus loves you so live for him!

Gods' love for you

Gods' love

Jesus loves you! He loves all of you even if you are not Christian, he still loves you! He loves everything you do, even the bad things you do. You are hopelessly flawed but he is not and Jesus loves you for it. He is crazy about you; he loves you so much that he died for you so you can have eternal life with him in Heaven. He wants you to be with him in paradise that is better than anything we can ever imagine on Earth. Seriously he had himself NAILED to the cross on his hand and through his Achilles tendon; he was stripped naked in front of people he had to wear a crown of thorns to FORGIVE YOUR SINS so YOU would be forgiven of your sins. I really think that if you have not already accept Jesus’' gift I would recommend you do, but you are firm in your religion you do not have to it is your choice about what you believe. You do might not believe that the Christian God is the only true god, you do not have to believe that was the son of God but what you can't argue with is that Jesus loves you, that he died for YOU and that he suffered so you could be with him.