October 17, 2024: Thursday Old Testament Bible Study - Esther 6:1-11
May the Goodness of God be with you this morning, blessing you with joy in God's creation, and in the gift of His Son so that you and I might have His forgiveness for the brokenness in our lives.
I am going to make today's study kind of short this morning.
I hope that you have noticed throughout the book of Esther, that even though the LORD is never mentioned that He continues to be a part of Mordecai's and Esther's lives. Today's reading, if you have been able to read all of these long passages, brings home to us the irony of Haman, Mordecai, and King Xerxes. Their relationships, though at times seeming like they were not tied together, are found to be intertwined. We now know that it was Esther’s responsibility to tell Xerxes that his servants were plotting against him, and when she told the king she said that the person who had told her was Mordecai. We might think that the king should have given Mordecai some reward at the time, but instead Mordecai's help lost its way in the journals of the day-to-day life of the king. He received no reward. It was not far from the same time in which Haman led the king to believe that the Jews and others were plotting against him. Xerxes even signed a document which would give Haman authority to carry out this obliteration of the Jews. Somehow, (Here read God caused) the king to have a restless night with little sleep, so he asked to have the record of his life read to help him get back to sleep. But instead of falling to sleep Xerxes discovered his mistake in rewarding the person who had let him know about the danger he was in. If we truly believe in God's care for our lives, there must be some of these times when, like Mordecai, we must wonder if God is really around us at all. If we think about the way God has so often worked His miracles of salvation for His children, we quickly understand that things don't often happen in the way that we would like them to. Poor Mordecai has sat at the gate of the palace, probably shading himself from being identified as a Jew. There is a saying, “No good deed goes unpunished. The irony in this passage is that Haman is so full of himself that he is overconfident about the person who the king is going to reward. Haman even encourages the king to do the very best for this person who is to be rewarded. Please remember that Haman, in the first place, was angry with the Jews because of the lack of respect that Mordecai had shown toward him. So now, some long time after Mordecai's saving of the king, there is finally going to be an acknowledgement of his help for the throne. So, Haman encourages the king to be extravagant in his reward, and indeed the king is. But now, Mordecai will indeed receive the honor that has been his all along. He will process on horseback, royal clothes, and even a crown, led by the man who handles the proclamation to destroy Mordecai's people. This must have been extraordinarily difficult for Haman. I am confident that God is working in this whole situation, though not named. I also think that very often our lives are like this too. We all need to be confident that God does not at any times forget us, or that the faithful in Christ are ever deserted by our Father in Heaven.
In our lives the reward will definitely come at the end of our physical lives, but that doesn't mean that during our lives we will not be blessed, but probably not when we expect it, or what we expect it to be. I will be what I will be and will do what I want to do in the time I consider most appropriate. Thankfully, we can know that God will act, and that it will be our faith which carries in the intervening time. God bless you today.
In Christ's love, Pastor Kim
We will watch the movie named Luther on Saturday at 2PM. Snacks provided, or you may bring your own.
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