Sparks highlight 2-15-12

This whole last  Sparks year we have been learning about salvation – our Bible heroes and their lives are pictures of Jesus.  They were saved or were used by God to save someone else.  We learned that Christmas was when Jesus – God’s Son, God in human form – came to earth in human flesh as a baby.  Last week, for Valentine’s Day we talked about God’s love for us that He gave us that gift of Jesus that when we believe on Him, we can have everlasting life.  That gift of love took the punishment of our sin, which was death.   He was and is our salvation from the punishment of our sin.  Tonight, and for the rest of the Sparkie year, we are learning about who Jesus is and why He is the One who is fit to take that punishment and to claim He is God in the flesh.  To claim why He is the One and Only One that can grant us salvation.   Specifically, tonight, we are looking at Jesus’ character of Holiness.  He was tempted to sin, yet did not.  He could not take the punishment for our sin if He Himself was a sinner and He would be no different that you and me.   Indeed, we are not perfect as Jesus to never sin, but we can use His example to help us try not to sin.  Jesus was tempted three times in Matthew Chapter 4, and each of those three times, He used the help of His Father God to resist the temptation.   Those words He quoted were words of His Father, and you know, we have those same words in scripture.   That is why it is so important to learn God’s words, memorize scripture.  These verses your Sparkie works on every week are the words of God!   They can hide those words in their hearts that they might not sin against God.   Ask your Sparkie why he/she made a STOP sign tonight.

You are welcome to join us anytime at Sparks!    You can also check out the AWANA program at           www.fbc.littletonil.org.    

Mrs. Jennifer Schroeder, Mr. Roger Fox, Mrs. Barb Stein.

The Walking Dead - Spiritual Zombies!

Ephesians 2:1–10 (ESV) ¹And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ²in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— ³among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. ⁴But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Paul is making clear here the dire position that man is in before salvation.  Though Hollywood may be thrilled with the ideas of Zombies, spiritually the idea of the living dead is not amusing.   Before salvation man is “dead” in his trespasses and sins.   A trespass is a willful breaking of God’s law, and a sin is “missing the mark of God’s holiness.”  The spirit that works in all who continue to walk in disobedience to Christ leads them to follow their own fleshly desires.  These actions are the trespasses and sins that result from following Satan, the prince of the power of the air.  This life of disobedience puts us under the wrath of God.  John 3:36 says, (ESV) “³⁶Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”   Under God’s wrath as children of obedience is the position of every person until God works in their life to make them alive.  

Dead men don’t do anything.  They just lie there.  The same is true spiritually; a dead man cannot place faith in Christ, but when God in His great mercy imparts life, regenerates a person, He places that person in Christ Jesus.  “For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is a gift of God.”  This gift of faith that allows us to believe in the risen Son comes only by the grace of God.  There is nothing in us as a “child of disobedience” that either earns of deserves this gift of salvation. Therefore, we have nothing about which to boast, simply a gracious God to be thankful to in that he “made us alive” giving us the faith that we might believe.

The video version of this is available at www.youtube.com/churchoflittleton    FW # 54