A massive thank you to Sarah for writing this special devotional for the week during which we remember our Lord’s death and resurrection.
I’ve been reading the book of Zechariah recently. To give you some background, the people of Judah were consistently disloyal to God, and He exiled them to Babylon as punishment. For seventy years they lived there, until King Cyrus allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:1-3). They began rebuilding the city and the Jewish high priest laid the foundation of the temple, but their enemies frustrated them and eventually convinced the current king that rebuilding of Jerusalem should cease (Ezra 4). Zechariah and his contemporary, Haggai, were spokesmen for God. Basically, their purpose was to galvanise the people into getting back to work.
Zechariah had a series of visions. In chapter 3, his vision concerns Joshua the high priest. The devil is shamed when he stands to accuse Joshua. “The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you!” (Zechariah 3:2, NKJV). Joshua’s wearing filthy garments in the vision, but he receives a promise from the LORD: “I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes” (3:4).
God goes on to explain another facet of the vision, because it’s not only about Joshua the high priest; it also points to the future. “Listen, Joshua, you who are the high priest, and listen, you fellow priests seated before him. You are all examples to show what will happen when I bring my special servant. He is called, the Branch” (Zechariah 3:8, ERV). Does that title, ‘The Branch’, sound familiar? “A small tree will begin to grow from the stump of Jesse. That branch will grow from Jesse’s roots” (Isaiah 11:1). It’s talking about Jesus. He’s the One who grew up from the family of Jesse, King David’s father, so Joshua the high priest and his fellow priests are examples to show what will happen when Jesus comes.
And what will happen? God says: “In one day, I will remove the guilt from this land” (Zechariah 3:9). I don’t know about you, but that makes me think of a day when the sun stopped shining for three hours. “Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ’Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which is translated, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” (Mark 15:33-34). Jesus was on the cross, bearing our sin and our forsakenness. You see, our wrongdoing would separate us from God, but Jesus took that upon Himself so we wouldn’t have to. That was the one day God was talking about, when He would “remove the guilt from this land”, and Jesus didn’t die only for Jews. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13, NKJV). Whichever race we are, if we’ll accept Jesus died in our place, we can have our guilt removed. If you like, we would stand before God in filthy clothes (as Joshua did), but when we become Christians, Jesus exchanges them for rich robes. Now we’re dressed in our right standing with God. As Paul puts it: “For all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27). Isn’t that something to celebrate this Easter?
All Sarah’s recorded songs are available to stream on YouTube. You can also buy or stream them on Amazon and ITunes. To find out more about her work, please visit:
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Her first book entitled Christmas: God’s Promise Kept: Short Daily Devotionals For Advent was published at the end of 2020, and can be bought in both printed and kindle form from:
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