Fri Jan 9

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the words LORD and clothes.

Reading

Zechariah 4:3-10—I (God) am Giving You Fine New Clothes

Keys for kids

Also for the littles. Young households might choose, after Keys for Kids, to go directly to praise and prayer.

God promised to give Joshua clean clothes.
God also promised to remove Joshua’s sin.
God laid the penalty for all the sin of his people onto Jesus.

Questions

(Some read the ?s before the notes/ ask them after.)

How did Joshua get clean?
Who is the Righteous Branch?
How did God remove the sin of all His people?

Notes

(See Saturday for authors. )

How will Joshua get clean? Having rebuked Satan for his accusing of God’s chosen people, God orders Joshua’s filthy clothes be taken off. In commanding to take off filthy clothes God announces that the clothes are indeed filthy—that Joshua is indeed guilty. But Joshua is not left there shivering and naked.

Where will Joshua get beautiful, splendid clothes? Where will we? God alone can provide cleanness. God gives Joshua clean new clothes. But lest we think this is just about clothes, the Lord announces that He has taken away Joshua’s sin. How can we get rid of our filthy, dirty sin? Try really hard? Then try harder? And harder? No! God alone can take away our sin.

And God makes here two needed and glorious promises. First, He promises that His servant, the Branch, will come. Isaiah (11:1) and Jeremiah (23:5) had promised a righteous Branch. Rummage points out that the Messiah is called “the Branch” four significant times in the Old Testament, and each mention connects to an aspect of Jesus revealed in the four Gospels. … In talking about the Messiah as the Branch then, God is unveiling the fullness of who the Messiah will be as revealed in the Gospels.

Second, God promises to remove all of the sin of the land in a single day. Surely this points to that day when Christ died to pay for all the sins of all His people! Now he has appeared one time, at the end of the ages, for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:26b CSB).

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday notes for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 96b, 119u

Prayer

Rejoice that you have been made clean in Jesus.
Pray for the hearing of God’s word preached this Lord's Day.
Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.