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JANUARY 28 — Genesis 29; Matthew 28; Esther 5; Acts 28 􏰀

THREE OBSERVATIONS THAT SPRING from Esther 5:

First, the pace of the story prompts a cultural observation. There is much in

our culture that demands instantaneous decision. That is as true in the ecclesiastical arena as in the political. We observe what we judge to be an injustice and immediately we get on the phone, fire off E-mails, or huddle in small groups at the local coffee shop to talk over the situation. Of course, some situations require speed. Endemic procrastination is not a virtue. But a great many situations, especially those that involve people relations, could benefit from extra time, a slower pace, a period to reflect. We have already seen that the news of Haman’s plot has been disseminated throughout the empire. Considerable time therefore elapsed before Mordecai approached Esther and challenged her to act. Even then, she did not barge into the king’s presence. She allowed three days for preparation and prayer. Now she is in the presence of the king. Her unauthorized entrance has been accepted. But instead of laying out the problem immediately, she calmly invites the king and Haman to a private banquet. When they get there, she slows the pace even more and builds anticipation by proposing a further banquet, when she will tell all.

Second, Haman represents a man lusting for power. He is in high spirits because only the king and he have been invited to Esther’s banquet (5:9, 12). His boast is his wealth and his public elevation above the other nobles (5:11). It is not enough for him to be rich and powerful; he must be richer and more powerful than others. Doubtless some readers suppose that such temptations do not really afflict them, because they do not have access to the measures of wealth and power that might make them vulnerable. This is naive. Watch how often people, Christian people, become unprincipled, silly, easily manipulated, when they are in the presence of what they judge to be greatness. One of the great virtues of genuine holiness, a virtue immaculately reflected in the Lord Jesus, is the ability to interact the same way with rich and poor alike, with strong and weak alike. Beware of those who fawn over wealth and power and boast about the powerful people they know. Their spiritual mentor is Haman.

Third, Haman represents a man sold out to hatred. All of his strengths and advantages, by his own admission, mean nothing to him when he thinks of Mordecai, “that Jew” (5:13). The only thing that can restore his delight is the prospect of Mordecai’s death (5:14). Here is self-love, the heart of all sin, at its social worst: unrestrained, it vows that it will be first and wants the death of all who stand in the way of fulfilling that vow.

JANUARY 27 — Genesis 28; Matthew 27; Esther 4; Acts 27

FOR NARRATIVE SIMPLICITY AND POWER, the book of Esther readily captures the imagination. Though by now we are three chapters into it, we can pick up something of both its flavor and its message by reflecting on selected elements of Esther 4.

(1) The book makes its profound theological points by the shape of its restrained narrative. Commentators never fail to observe that not once does the book explicitly mention God. Nevertheless, it says a great deal about God and his providence, about his protection of his covenant people (even when they are far from the land, learning to survive during the exile and throughout the Diaspora), and about their faith in him, even when they are horribly threatened.

(2) The book thus gradually leads us to reflect on the strange circumstances that bring Esther to succeed Vashti as queen, as the consort of the Emperor Xerxes. If the point is overlooked by the careless reader, the chapter before us makes it pretty obvious to all but the most obtuse. “And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (4:14), Mordecai asks Esther by the hand of Hathach. Mordecai is not appealing to impersonal fate; he is a devout and pious Jew. But the form of his utterance emphasizes God’s sovereign providence even while implicitly acknowledging that providence is hard to read. God’s people must act responsibly, wisely, strategically in light of the circumstances that play out around them, knowing that God is in control.

(3) Even while Mordecai mourns and wails deeply when he discovers Haman’s plot (4:1-3), he neither descends into fatalism nor loses his faith. Having had time to mull over the wretched threat to his people, he reaches the conclusion (as he puts it to Esther) that, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish” (4:14). Granted that God is faithful to his covenant promises, Mordecai cannot conceive that he would permit the people of God to be destroyed.

(4) True to her upbringing by Mordecai, Esther simultaneously expresses con- fidence in the living God and avoids the presumption that God’s purposes for her life are easy to infer. She knows that God is there and that he hears and answers importunate prayer. “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa [the capital city], and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. . . . And if I perish, I perish” (4:16). While she resolves to do what is right, she acknowledges that she cannot see her own future and commits herself to the grace of God.

 

This reading is from For the Love of God, vol 2 by D.A. Carson. You can download the entire book as a free PDF here: For the Love of God, Vol 2. Alternatively, you can pick up a hard copy at the church or at your favorite book retailer.

JANUARY 26 — Genesis 27; Matthew 26; Esther 3; Acts 26

IN ACTS 26, LUKE PROVIDES THE third account in this book of Paul’s conversion (compare Acts 9 and 22). Each has a different aim, of course. Here Paul is defending himself before the Roman Governor Porcius Festus and Herod Agrippa II of Galilee. Important highlights include the following:

(1) As in earlier defenses, Paul stresses his continuity with his past in conser- vative Judaism: he shares with unconverted Jews a “hope” for what God promised to their fathers and an anticipation of the final resurrection (e.g., 24:15; 26:6-7).

(2) Paul’s remarkable rhetorical question in 26:8 therefore accomplishes several things at once. He asks: “Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?” To Jews who are in the court, the question establishes Paul’s agreement at this point with the Pharisaic strand of Jewish tradition. Implicitly, it also hints that if they have a category for God raising the dead at the end, why should it be thought so impossible that God raised Jesus from the dead in anticipation of the end? To a man like King Agrippa, well acquainted with Jewish beliefs, the question was reinforcing categories with which he was already familiar. To a man like Festus, the question aimed at lessening the skepticism of his sophisticated pagan background. To people with naturalistic outlooks today, the same question remains a challenge: dismissal of the category of resurrection stems from an earlier dismissal of the God of the Bible. Granted the God of the Bible, why is the category of resurrection so difficult?

(3) Paul addresses himself primarily to King Agrippa (26:2, 13, 19), that is, to the ruler most familiar with the Jewish heritage and the Bible. For his part, Festus acknowledges he is at sea (25:26-27); and for all that he recognizes Paul’s learning, he judges Paul’s claims so bizarre that they only demonstrate he must be insane (26:24). Had Paul addressed himself most immediately to Festus, perhaps he would have used an approach like that in Acts 17:16-31, the Mars Hill address.

(4) Paul’s direct appeal to King Agrippa (26:25-29) is openly evangelistic and wonderfully direct while remaining perfectly respectful. Paul’s “defense” is not at all defensive; his address reads more like an evangelistic offensive attack than the plea of a frightened or cowed prisoner. Yet just as his “defense” is not defensive, so this “offense” never becomes offensive.

(5) Both Festus and Agrippa perceive that, whatever they make of him, Paul has done nothing worthy of death or imprisonment (26:31). Had this taken place before the events of 25:1-12, Paul would have been released. As it is, appeals to Caesar cannot be undone, so in God’s providence Paul is transported to Rome.

FEBRUARY 1 — Genesis 33; Mark 4; Esther 9—10; Romans 4

HISTORY LOOKS DIFFERENT IN different cultures. I do not simply mean that different cultures interpret the same past differently (though that is often the case), but that the understanding of what history is may vary from culture to culture. Indeed, even within one culture there are often competing notions as to what history is.

This issue has become ever more complex during the past several decades, owing to the advance of postmodernism and its innovative ideas about what history is. As important as that debate is, I do not wish to explore it here. At the moment I am painting on a larger canvas.

Many ancient Greeks thought that history went around in circles. This does not mean that each cycle repeats itself exactly, but that there is an unending repetition of patterns, with no end, no ultimate climax, no telos. A great deal of contemporary naturalism thinks that our sun will finally burn out, and life on earth will come to an end. Some hold that the universe itself will eventually settle into a more or less even distribution of energy, and die; others think that somehow it will rejuvenate itself by collapsing and exploding again to repeat a cycle something like the present one. By contrast, in university history departments events on such a scale are irrelevant. History—whether this refers to what happened, or to our reconstruction of it—covers the period of human writing. Everything before that is “prehistoric.”

The Bible has its own perspectives on history, and some of them are non-negotiable: if we lose sight of them or deny them, we can no longer understand the Bible on its own terms. Certainly the Bible sometimes retells “what happened” in parabolic categories (compare 2 Sam. 11 and 12), or in highly selective condensations (e.g., Acts 7), or in poetic form (Ps. 78). But more importantly, we cannot rightly understand the Bible unless we grasp several key elements of its sequence. On the largest scale, history begins at Creation and ends at the supreme telos, the final judgment and the new heaven and new earth. We are not simply going around in circles. In Galatians 3 (see vol. 1, meditation for September 27), Paul’s argument turns on the fact that the Mosaic Law came after the promises to Abraham. Somewhat similarly here (Romans 4), Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness before he was circumcised, so circumcision cannot be made a condition of righteousness. Under Semitic notions of sonship, Abraham becomes the father of all who believe, circumcised or not (4:1-12). Something similar can be said of Abraham’s relation to the Law of Moses (4:13-17). The sequence of the biblical history is critical.

JANUARY 25— Genesis 26; Matthew 25; Esther 2; Acts 25

THE CHANGE IN GOVERNOR FROM FELIX to Porcius Festus (Acts 24:27) brings no immediate improvement in Paul’s condition. Yet God remains in control, and in this chapter, Acts 25, under God’s providence Paul takes a decisive step. How was this brought about?

(1) New to the area and still relatively ignorant of its political and religious dynamics, Festus is determined to get off on the right foot. A mere three days after arriving at the regional Roman capital of Caesarea, he travels up to Jerusalem to meet the local Jewish authorities. He could have summoned them; he could have delayed his visit. But off he goes, and is promptly informed what a terrible man Paul is. The Jewish authorities see the accession of Festus as an opportunity to do away with Paul. They express their desire to have him brought to Jerusalem for trial, but in reality they plan an ambush that would ensure his demise (25:1-3). Festus replies that Paul is being held in Caesarea and insists that his interlocutors press their case there.

(2) In the next round of legal maneuverings the charges against Paul and his responses to them (25:6-8) provide Festus with no clear idea of what to do. Still trying to make a good impression on the Jewish authorities (and thus far more likely to listen to them than to a solitary man already in jail for two years), Festus asks Paul if he is willing to stand trial before the Roman court, but in Jerusalem.

(3) There is no hint that Paul is tipped off as to the planned ambush. Nevertheless, two years earlier he had been warned of a similar plot (23:16), and it would not take much to figure out that such a plot was likely being hatched again. If he agrees with Festus’s suggestion, he will be murdered; if he declines, he will appear obstreperous and arrogant. So he exercises the right of every Roman citizen in the first century: he appeals to Caesar. That was the judicial equivalent of appealing to the Supreme Court. Humanly speaking, this was a desperate move. Emperor Nero did not take kindly to frivolous suits, and he was already known to be corrupt and intoxicated by his own power.

(4) Yet by that means, as the rest of the book shows, Paul finally arrives in Rome. As Joseph was brought to Egypt’s palaces by way of slavery and prison, so Paul is brought to testify for King Jesus before the mightiest human authorities by way of prison and corrupt justice. Indeed, how did Jesus gain his place at the Father’s right hand?