Again, after the flood, the people on the earth began to sin
and do what was right in their own eyes.
Yet, again, one man named Abraham and his wife Sarah, were found to be
faithful to God. God promised great
things to Abraham as he was obedient to God – including the fact that Abraham
would be the father of a great nation.
This would seem impossible because Abraham and Sarah were very old
without any children. God fulfilled that
promise in the birth of Isaac. When
Isaac was young, as a test of Abraham’s faith, God told Abraham to sacrifice
his own son. This seemed so improbable
to Abraham, because after all, he was old and God promised him to be a great
nation. Out of great faith and
obedience to God, though, Abraham obeyed.
He believed God’s promise to him even though the situation seemed
improbable. He took his son to the place
God commanded and began to prepare Isaac as a sacrifice. How puzzling it must have been to Isaac, but
Isaac trusted his father and was obedient – obedient to the point of
understanding his own father would sacrifice him. He did not struggle, but obeyed even unto the
point of death. When God saw Abraham’s
obedience, God halted the sacrifice and provided a substitute for Isaac. A ram
was caught in the thicket and Abraham sacrificed the ram in place of Isaac, a
substitute – so Isaac wouldn’t have to die.
God provides us today the substitute for our own eternal death – that in
his own Son Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ
willingly laid down His life as a sacrifice for our sins. The Bible states, like Isaac, He didn’t
struggle – He willingly layed down His life.
Jesus Christ was also like the ram who died in Isaac’s place. Jesus Christ died for our sins so we wouldn’t
have to. He didn’t stay dead, as the ram
stayed dead, because He conquered the power of death when He rose from the
grave. In order to enjoy that freedom
from eternal death, we must have faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our
sins and be obedient to God, trying to live for Him by being repentant of our
sins and turning away from them. This
can be found recorded in Genesis 17-21. You
are welcome to join us anytime at Sparks!
You can also check out the AWANA
program at www.fbc.littletonil.org
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Sparks Highlights 9.17.14
After Adam and Eve’s disobedience, and thus the first sin,
things to continued to get much, much worse. In fact, their own son Cain
murdered his brother Abel and sin continued to be passed down through all the
generations thereafter. Genesis 6:5 says
“then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth…” That sounds a lot like our world today. Genesis goes on to say that God was sorry
that he made man on the earth and that He was grieved in His heart. Sin grieves God’s heart – it did then and
does today. God purposed in His heart to
destroy all creation – with a flood, but Genesis says that Noah found grace in
the eyes of the Lord. God made a way to
save Noah and his family from that destruction and death. He instructed him to build an ark for his
family, two of every kind of animal and for any man that would turn from his
sin and have faith by stepping in the ark for salvation from the flood. No other man made that repentance and so
every living creature outside of the ark when the flood waters came was
destroyed. Noah and his family were
saved from death because of their faith and obedience to God. You see, the ark and the salvation that it
gave to the living creatures inside is a picture of Jesus Christ and the
salvation He provides us from the destruction and death from our sins. Turning to Jesus and turning from your sinful
ways and putting full faith in Him will save you from the destruction and death
of your sins. After the flood, God made
a promise – covenant – with Noah that He would never again destroy the earth
with flood waters. He did that with the
sign of a rainbow which we can still see in these days. Let your Sparkie tell you all about
this. You can read of this in Genesis
chapters 5-9. You are welcome to join us
anytime at Sparks. You can also check
out the AWANA program at www.fbc.littletonil.org
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Sparks Highlights 9.10.14
Last week we marveled about God’s creation – the world. He created it in six literal, remarkable
days. Everything God made was perfect – because everything about Him is
perfect. In fact, after each thing he
created he noted and saw that it was good. God created man in His own image, and
Adam and Eve lived in the perfect Garden of Eden and had communion with
God. They did not know sin until Satan
himself in the form of a serpent came into the garden and deceived Eve. Satan
is called “the great deceiver” and still deceives us today. Adam and Eve had been given a command to move
freely about the Garden of Eden and that they could eat from every tree –
except that of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Satan deceived them so that, with their own free will, they took of the
fruit and ate. This was the first sin
and their communion with God was broken forever. God’s penalty of sin - as we are told in the
Bible – is death and it was at that point they began to die. That sin has been
passed down through all the many generations of humans. But, God in His mercy, provided a promise to
Adam and Eve that their sin could be forgiven and the relationship with Him
restored with a substitute for their death penalty. They needed to be saved from that death. The penalty of sin for a perfect, holy God
still needed to be paid, but He provided salvation from that by substituting
someone else. That substitute was and is
Jesus Christ and we are going to spend the rest of the Sparkie year learning
more about that promise. You can read of
this in Genesis chapters 2 & 3.
You are welcome to join us anytime at Sparks. You can also check out the AWANA program at www.fbc.littletonil.org.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Sparks Highlights 9.3.14
Welcome back
old Sparkies and welcome new Sparkies!!
We are going to have a great year as we have many new shining faces for
Jesus! This year we are going to do as
last year working our way through the Bible – The Old and New Testaments - from
Creation to the time of Jesus on this earth.
We will learn how the Old Testament gives us glimpses of Jesus and then
in the New Testament learning about Jesus – Who He is and how He can be our
Savior. Sure, many of these accounts in
the Bible are referred to as stories – but they are more than that. These accounts are true life biographies –
each of these biographies sheds some light of why we need Jesus Christ as our
Savior and who He really was and is today.
Besides our study time together, each child works independently in their
books memorizing Bibles verses, so please work with your child to help him/her
– and you can commit them in your memory too.
The Bible tells us that we are to hide God’s Word in our hearts that we
might not sin against Him.
Tonight we
have studied one of the most amazing feats of time – God creating the world in
6 literal, remarkable days. Everything
God created was perfect – even the first man and woman. But something very bad happened – sin- with
that first man and woman that caused the perfectness to die. These two needed something to save them from
death, which was the penalty of their sin.
– We, a few thousand years later, have inherited that sin and that need
for salvation from the penalty of our sin.
We are going to spend the rest of year discussing that sin and that need
for salvation – from our Savior Jesus.
You are welcome to join us anytime at Sparks.
You can also check out the AWANA program at www.fbc.littletonil.org. The Sparks do have homework by working
through their books. Your child will
earn “sparks jewels” and other adornments for their Sparks uniform as they work
through their books and also with attendance.
To earn an attendance award, a child can only miss one unexcused absence
per quarter. (Excused absences
include: sickness, deaths, inclement weather, attendance at another church’s
AWANA.)
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