1. Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save
Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.
Prize winner – Jill W did guess words last week
To really understand this verse we need to read it in context so we are going to study the whole book of Zephaniah today!
Colouring exercise on table

2. Creation – sin - fall
Abraham – God calls 1 man & family
Go to Egypt and end up in bondage
Moses out of Egypt and back to promised land
Judges then Kings
Kingdom divides – Israel north, Judah south
Prophets speak: shape up or ship out
Assyria scatters Israel
Prophets – shape up or ship out
Babylon takes Judah into exile
Restoration rebuild temple and walls
400 year silence
Jesus
Where in this time line is Zephaniah?

3. Group work 1 – bible reading and discussion
You have only 5 minutes to complete your tasks
Open the envelope marked “group work 1”
The envelope also tells you your group number
Try to include everyone on your table in the tasks
Each table has a different passage to read and different questions
You will not need to feedback to the whole congregation, your answers are background for the second group yask
Go around and give out second envelope to each group -

4. Group work 2 - presentations
You have a message to present to the rest of the congregation based on the passage you read earlier
Discuss in your group different ways you could present the message – ask everyone
Written headline
Picture
Word mime
Freeze frame (with voice over ?)
Act out as TV news
Choose one method of presentation and practice it – include as many of group as possible
You have 10 minutes in total to prepare
Your presentation should be no longer than 2 minutes

5. Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save
Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.
Just a reminder this is the verse we are focusing on but we haven't got there yet!

6. What we see in early part of Zephaniah is God is very angry about sin
Because God is holy he has to punish sin, he cannot just let us off, there has to be a price paid.

7. Punishment
in the old testament this was done by sacrificing animals which people literally had to buy and take to the temple
but another sin required another sacrifice
Then Jesus died on the cross to be the complete payment for sin for all of us for ever, but it wasn't cheap it cost him dear

8. Discipline What was the message of all the prophets?
Shape up or ship out
This was Zephaniah's message to Judah
Did they shape up? What happened next in the time line?
The exile was God disciplining Judah

9. Repentance
The bible tells us we all sin – even those of us who love Jesus and try to follow him
The bible also tells us what to do when we mess up: basically say sorry to God
We are going to do this now

10. we have wandered from your ways like lost sheep.
Almighty God, merciful Father, maker of all things, judge of all people,
we have wandered from your ways like lost sheep.
We confess the wrong things we have done, said or thought,
and the good things we should have done but did not.
You alone can save us. Have mercy on us: wipe out our sins and teach us to forgive others. Bring forth in us the fruit of the Spirit that we may live as disciples of Christ. This we ask in the name of Jesus our Saviour.
Amen. 
In a few minutes if you feel you want to we are going to say these words together. Read through them quietly to yourself and see if God brings anything to mind that you need to say sorry to him for. If there is anything specific you could write or draw it on a piece of paper and bring it to the front and shred it

11. Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save
Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.
So at last we get to this verse, where God the warrior righting wrongs becomes God the father cooing over a much loved child.
Lets read it together
God sings over us and we can sing back to him