Mon May 12

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the word Word.

Reading

John 1:1-18—In the Beginning was the Word

Optional Reading

Nehemiah 8:1-3

Keys for kids

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

Jesus is the eternal Word of God.
Jesus is God.
Jesus became human so we might be saved.

Questions

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

What does John tell us about the Word?
What does it mean that Jesus is the Word?
Why should we listen to the Word read and preached?

Notes

In Nehemiah 8 we saw God’s people receive God’s Word read and preached. They received it devotedly, eagerly, attentively, reverently, joyfully, obediently, and yearningly. How do you receive the Word read and preached? And why does it matter?

One major reason it matters is that Jesus is the Word. John introduces Jesus as the Word in the beginning, the Word that was with God, the Word that is God, and the Word that became flesh. John also identifies Jesus as the Word in the final book in our Bibles, the Revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev 19:3) when he comes as the conquering King.

Hendriksen notes that a word serves two distinct purposes: a. it gives expression to the inner thought, the soul of the man … and b. it reveals this thought (hence, the soul of the speaker) to others. Christ is the Word of God in both respects: he expresses or reflects the mind of God; also, he reveals God to man.

If we combine John’s descriptions of Jesus as the Word with Jesus’s own testimony that all of the Scriptures are about him (Luke 24:27, 44), then we have the greatest motive we can have to give attention to the reading and preaching of the Bible—in it (all of it) we learn about Jesus.

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday reading for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 119e, 84a

Prayer

Ask God to help you love his word and see Jesus in it.
Pray for a specific application from yesterday's sermons.
Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.

Notes this week are drawn in part from commentaries by John Calvin, William Hendriksen, Kent Hughes, Wallace P. Benn, Knute Larson and Kathy Dahlen, Richard Brooks, the Theological Dictionary of the Old and New Testaments (TDOT, TDNT) and notes from the CSB Study Bible, and the Reformation Study Bible (RSB).