First Christian Church of Hematite

Due to inclement weather and hazardous road conditions, the February 14th service was canceleld.  Following are the prayers and service that Pastor Aaron had prepared.  

Pastoral Prayer & communion medidation

Loving and Gracious God as we worship you, we pray that you will teach us to cherish every moment - to see the beauty surrounding us - to drink in the wonder that life brings. We offer simple words of gratitude for life's most precious gifts - for the bluest of blue skies, for the delight of a meandering walk around a lake, for the easy banter of long friendships or the anticipation of discovering new ones. For we have learned that complaint comes easily but gratitude is a daily choice. Help us to remember that every gift of this day overflows from the goodness of your heart.

Our prayers this morning reach out to each one who needs you. O Comforting God, we pray for those who have been bruised by painful relationships, emptied by suffering, or caught in the cycle of hopelessness. O Lord, let peace dwell not only in the deepest parts of our souls, but may your peace take root and grow in the most unsettled spots of our world. So we pause and lift our deepest concerns to you now. Trusting that you will intercede in each situation, showing us glimpses 

of your kingdom breaking through here on earth. God of all hope you hear our needs, you welcome our passion and 
persistence in prayer, and you offer your presence. Gift us with spirits humble enough to accept your work in our inner lives. We pray this morning Lord God for so many whom we love and care about.     

Oh Lord, in this Lenten season, we are reminded that you call us to seek you in Christ Jesus - it was He who invited us to come to you, to abide in you, to follow you. So, we come knowing that you are the One who means our weary souls. You come and fill our emptiness with a sense of belonging. You restore our wholeness as we come to you honestly, seeking your forgiveness and the grace of new beginnings. Holy God, help us to be open as you reach out to both comfort us and to challenge us to become the persons you have always envisioned we could be.  May your blessings of peace and joy and 
hope flow through each one of us today as we pray together the words that Jesus gave us...Our Father... 

communion meditation

We are all guilty of hurting someone. WE can each hurt each other emotionally, we can do it mentally or spiritually and of course we can do it physically. Sometimes the hurt is unintentional or sadly it is with intent to harm. Think about a moment how much we hurt God when we do something wrong and most of the time the wrong we commit is toward our fellow human being. recall the time before the worldwide flood when human wickedness became so great that every inclination of the thoughts of the people’s hearts was evil all the time.  Then the Bible says, “The Lord was grieved that He had made 
man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain” 

In other words, when evil fills our hearts, pain fills God’s heart! With our sin we have jabbed at God’s heart far too many times. Come to think of it, we have hammered his hands with spikes, too, just like the “wicked men” who were confronted by the apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost. The Lord’s table of remembrance calls us to contemplate the pain our sin brought upon Jesus. That recollection should stir us to strive for a pure heart that will fill God’s heart with joy. Jesus’ sacrificial death and glorious resurrection makes that transformation possible. 

Sermon

Scripture reading: Luke 4: 1-13
Sermon Title: The Devil Made Me Do It
Heavenly father we are people who are made imperfect. Beginning with Adam and Eve, sin entered into our lives putting the challenge of temptation before us. We pray that with your strength we may be able to resist the desire to sin before you. May we honor and glorify you in the living of our lives. This morning may the Word of my mouth and the meditations 
of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God our Rock and Our Redeemer. Amen. 

I don’t care how old you are we are all tempted by something that might do us harm  whether we are eight years old or eighty. When you are eight years old it may be chocolate chip cookies or candy. As adults often times the temptations turn out to be even more disastrous, things like marital infidelity or the sin of pornography. As we get older the consequences usually are a little more dire as well when we give in to the sins that are alluring to us. The very concept of temptation goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. We are taught as children what happens when we choose wrong over right and the consequences of that choice. 

I am reminded of a children’s story that illuminates the power of temptation for all of us and it involves a frog and a 
toad.  You see one day Toad baked some cookies. "These cookies smell very good," said Toad. He ate one. "And they taste even better," he said.  Toad ran to Frog's house. "Frog, Frog," cried Toad, "taste these cookies that I have made." Frog ate one of the cookies, "These are the best cookies I have ever eaten!" said Frog. Frog and Toad ate many cookies, one after another. "You know, Toad," said Frog, with his mouth full, "I think we should stop eating. We will soon be sick." "You are right," said Toad. "Let us eat one last cookie, and then we will stop." Frog and Toad ate one last cookie.  There were many cookies left in the bowl. "Frog," said Toad, "let us eat one very last cookie, and then we will stop." Frog and Toad ate one very last cookie. "We must stop eating!" cried Toad as he ate another. "Yes," said Frog, reaching for a cookie, "we need willpower." "What is willpower?" asked Toad. "Willpower is trying hard not to do something you 
really want to do," said Frog. "You mean like trying hard not to eat all these cookies?" asked Toad. "Right," said Frog. Frog put the cookies in a box. "There," he said. "Now we will not eat any more cookies."  "But we can open the box," said Toad. "That is true," said Frog. Frog tied some string around the box. "There," he said. "Now we will not eat any more cookies." "But we can cut the string and open the box." said Toad. "That is true," said Frog. Frog got a ladder. He put the box up on a high shelf. "There," said Frog. "Now we will not eat any more cookies.""But we can climb the ladder and take the box down from the shelf and cut the string and open the box,"said Toad. "That is true," said Frog. Frog climbed the ladder and took the box down from the shelf. He cut the string and opened the box. Frog took the box outside. He shouted in a loud voice. "Hey, birds, here are cookies!" Birds came from everywhere. They picked up all the cookies in their beaks and flew away. "Now we have no more cookies to eat," said Toad sadly. "Not even one.""Yes," said Frog, "but we have lots and lots of willpower."  "You may keep it all, Frog," said Toad. "I am going home now to bake a cake." 

That’s temptation in a nutshell. It’s Satan at work in all of our lives.  I believe with all myheart that when we become Christians Satan works a little bit harder at getting our attention and doing things that may be very ungodly with the intention of moving us a little bit farther away from God and a little bit closer to him. But  know this. God is more powerful than Satan. Always has been and always will be and because we have God on our side we can overcome anything that might do us our relationship with God harm. 
I remember twenty years ago or so when Christian bracelets came with letters on them advertising what God could do for us all. You can get so many different ones with different acronyms on them, words in which each letter stands for something else: so, for instance, FROG stands for Fully Rely On God and PUSH stands for Pray Until Something Happens. And the idea is that whenever you see your bracelet on your wrist, it reminds you to do something that is good, or to 
consider something in a different way, often the Biblical way. And of course there is WWJD which stands for ’What Would Jesus Do?’; you might not know that it is an idea which goes back a very long time ... in fact, right back to 1896 – 107 years ago to a pastor named Charles Sheldon, who led a small church in Topeka Kansas. 
He came home after an evening service one Sunday and, feeling very disappointed that very few people were coming and taking any notice of his sermons, announced to his wife that he was no longer going to preach a sermon in these services, but would instead tell a story. Over a period of 33 weeks, he told his congregation a story, a chapter at a time, about the amazing things that happened to a church when its members stopped to ask themselves the question ’What would Jesus do?’ whenever they were faced with a difficult moral dilemma. The effect of his story-telling on his own 
church was equally exciting: his congregation grew markedly in size week by week and they grew as Christians as they started to ask themselves the same question: "What would Jesus do?" 

So this morning I want to encourage you to ask yourself that very question: "What would Jesus do?" whenever you are faced with a difficult situation; and this morning I want us to think about "What would Jesus do ... about temptation?" At some time in our lives, every one of us has been tempted to do something which we have reservations about, something which doesn’t seem quite right, and every one of us has found it very hard to resist doing it. And once again it does not matter how old you are because God and Satan battle it out within all of us. 

Jesus knew the situation very well – we only have to look at what happened in the desert to see that Jesus can 
sympathize with us: no sooner was Jesus baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan than he was led by the Spirit into the desert, where he was tempted by the Devil. Now, although none of us will face the exact same temptations that Jesus did in the desert, I am sure that, if we consider how Jesus coped with his testing, it will help us know what to do when we are tempted.The first thing that occurs to me is that JESUS KNEW HE WOULD FACE TEMPTATION AND WAS PREPARED FOR IT. When the Devil 
visits Jesus in the desert Jesus is not taken by surprise – the way he answers the Devil without hesitation suggests that he was prepared ... he knew he would be tempted! So, please understand that it is certainly not bad or wrong in itself to be tempted – after all, we see here that even Jesus was tempted – it is giving in to temptation that is wrong. But how should we prepare for it? How can we be ready to resist the  lure of sin when it comes? When the Devil tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread, what happens? Well, Jesus immediately answers him with a verse from the Scriptures: "Man cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that God utters" – you see, Jesus knows God’s word, and it gives him 
help to resist temptation. So, read your Bible, and even memorize important verses – if you know without doubt what God says about something, then you may well find it easier to resist temptation when you face it.  

Now, you may say, "That’s all very well when it comes to stealing, or lying, or being jealous, but the Bible doesn’t say 
anything about a lot of today’s issues, like taking drugs, for instance or drinking alcohol." But that’s not strictly 
true, because, if you look more generally around the Bible, you’ll find that the Apostle Paul tells us we should "honor and hallow" our bodies, and asks us, "Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God." Although not specifically about drug-taking, it’s clear that, if we do not respect our bodies and we abuse them, we displease God. The Bible has a lot to say about all sorts of 21st Century issues, if we will just read it. But it’s more than merely reading the Bible, it’s about enjoying a close relationship with God – recent research has shown that Christians feel better able to resist temptation not only when they study the Bible regularly, but also when they pray. So let us draw close to God, just as Jesus was.

The second point to make is that JESUS WOULD NOT LET HIMSELF BE PRESSSURED INTO GIVING IN TO TEMPTATION. The Devil said 
to Jesus, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread"; and "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself 
down" – the Devil dares Jesus to do something, in order to prove that he is truly the Son of God. And, sometimes, 
particularly when we’re young, we can find ourselves being dared by others to do things which we know are wrong: "Prove you’re not scared by stealing something from convenience store.” 
Jesus didn’t let the Devil bully or blackmail him into doing things which he realized were wrong – he knew he didn’t have to prove anything to the Devil, but he did know he should do what God wanted. It is the same  for us: we have nothing to prove to those who tempt us to do wrong, our responsibility is to do the right thing for God. And, by the way, being scared is never something to be ashamed of because it is often a warning to us to tread carefully; and, anyway, doing what God wants you to do is the brave thing to do.

My final point this morning is that, in resisting temptation, JESUS REFUSED TO TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT. Jesus had been sent on a mission by his Father which would mean that every human being would have the opportunity to be restored to God, but it would mean that he would have to die on a wooden cross. The Devil offered him an easy way out: worship him, instead of God, and be given authority over all the nations of the world. 
What a temptation that must have been: no ridicule and rejection by his fellow human beings; no suffering and death on the cross – it could all have been avoided by simply saying, "Yes" to Satan in the desert. But it would have meant that his mission to save us had failed. God’s way is not always the easiest way, but it is always the right way. And when we haven’t chosen God’s way we can feel it in our hearts. We know we’ve done wrong because the Holy Spirit convicts us. If 
we allow the Holy Spirit to be active and at work in our lives then we are going to choose right from wrong. 
Whats also important for us to remember is this. We know what our temptations looks like no matter what they may do.  

Many years ago, Indian youths would go away in solitude to prepare for manhood.  One such youth hiked into a beautiful valley, green with trees, bright with flowers. There he fasted. But on the third day, as he looked up at the surrounding mountains, he noticed one tall rugged peak, capped with dazzling snow. I will test myself against that mountain, he thought. He put on his buffalo-hide shirt, threw his blanket over his shoulders and set off to climb the peak. When he reached the top he stood on the rim of the world. He could see forever, and his heart swelled with pride. Then he heard a rustle at his feet, and looking down, he saw a snake. Before he could move, the snake spoke.  "I am about to die," 
said the snake. "It is too cold for me up here and I am freezing. There is no food and I am starving. Put me under your shirt and take me down to the valley."  "No," said the youth. "I am forewarned. I know your kind. You are a rattlesnake. If I pick you up, you will bite, and your bite will kill me."  "Not so," said the snake. "I will treat you differently. If you do this for me, you will be special. I will not harm you."  The youth resisted awhile, but this was a very persuasive snake with beautiful markings. At last the youth tucked it under his shirt and carried it down to the valley. There he laid it gently on the grass, when suddenly the snake coiled, rattled, and leapt, biting him on the leg.  "But you promised..." cried the youth. "You knew what I was when you picked me up." said the snake as it slithered away."  

The snake is Satan and we know who he is. We know what he can do. Yet we also know what he cannot do and that is have power over our lives if we have God in it. God is so much stronger, so much greater, so much wiser than Satan will ever be. We know what God is capable of doing for us if we have Him in our lives. Let’s never forget that. But also know this to. Even though we are imperfect and we are sinners through Christ we are forgiven for the things we do and say that 
compromise our relationship with our Lord in Heaven. Being a Christian wasn’t meant to be easy but life is always easier with God in it. He loves us and cares about us and will always walk by our side.  
Praise the Lord and Amen.