I don’t think there is anybody who likes a ‘do this, don’t do that’ list. Religion is very good at having lists like that. That is probably why most people are turned off to religion. I know I am. Did you know that Christianity does not have any do this, don’t do that lists? That is right. It is because God doesn’t like such lists either. He knows they don’t work and people don’t like them. He is not out to offend us or make us upset with Him. He is not out to make us do something or force us not to do something. If He were He would have just made us robots. Am I making sense?

Like I said, such lists don’t work anyway. Want/need proof? God gave us one such lists. It is called the Ten Commandments. Yes, commandments … not suggesestions. God knew when He created the list that we could not obey them. That is why He gave us His list of do’s and don’ts … to show us … prove to us that we could not obey His commandments. Now there is nothing wrong with His commandments. They are just fine. The problem is with us … not His commandments.

As we grew up we had teachers whose job it was to teach us. It started out at home … taught by our parents. After a few years most of us started going to school where we had other adults teach us. They were trained to be teachers and they were given a curriculum to follow as to what to teach. They followed that curriculum. They used books to teach us. They had the same book only it had the answers in theirs. It was nice to have someone to teach us who knew the material and had the answers.

Back to those Ten Commandments God gave us … as stated God knew we could not obey them so why did He give them to us? Simply to prove it to us … to teach us … yes, to teach us that we are not able to keep His law. The Ten Commandments are our teacher … nothing more, nothing less. They demonstrate and prove to us that do this and don’t do that lists don’t work. As I said before, there is nothing wrong with the Ten Commandments. If we could obey them they would get us to heaven, but since we can’t obey them all they can do is convict us and prove us guilty as charged. They prove that we need further help … that we can’t make it … accomplish it by ourselves. We need God’s help. God offers help. He has a plan. He has always had a plan. When the time was right He set that plan into motion. He Himself left Heaven to come to earth to be born as a man … one of us to demonstrate His love and show us the way … to provide His plan for us and to us. It is called the plan of salvation. It is also called the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Gospel means “good news” and there isn’t any better news that we can receive. No one likes to receive bad news, but we all need to understand that there is bad news and we are all effected by it. Some would tell you that it is because we can’t obey the Ten Commandments that we are doomed to hell, but that is not true. There is only one reason that we are hell bound and that is because we are all sinners. It is our sin that is the problem … not a problem, but the problem … the only problem. God is holy and pure … perfect in every way. He can not and will not allow in His presence. Since we are all sinners He can not will not allow us in His presence with this sin problem. That is where the good news comes in. If we will simply acknowledge our sin and willingly turn not away from it but turn with it unto Jesus He will do the rest. He will take our sin and in exchange for it and our unrighteousness He will give us His forgiveness and His righteousness. Then and only then will we be and have “right standing” with God. He and He alone is able to do that. There is no other way to get to heaven. When we do this we then have an altogether different approach to God’s do’s and don’ts. We will have an altogether different motive … where we will want to obey God instead of being forced to. He gives us power over sin in our lives … power not to sin. Prior to this we were literally a slave to sin. We had no power over sin in our lives. Yes, He gives us the power and ability to say no when we are tempted to sin and obey Him. There is no other Name given among men whereby we must be saved. Religion can’t save you. It can only frustrate you and make you miserable. But if you like dealing with a list of do’s and don’ts that can’t do anything for you … well have at it. There are lots of religions in the world to select from. And without exception the bodies of all of their leaders remain in their graves. You read that right. Christianity is not a religion. It is a personal ongoing relationship with the living God.

And none of them except Jesus left this world … this life … with a good encouraging testimony. None of them could make a recommendation to their religion as they were dying.