Our Church Family

Dear church,

At some point we reach the end of ourselves – our wisdom, our strength, our energy, our knowledge. Sitting helplessly at home during a pandemic, we understand this. Watching the riots and looting on television makes this clear. There’s nothing we can do.

I had a conversation with a good friend the other day. He’s an “at-risk” senior citizen. But he likes to be active – to ski and to work and to go on long walks. And he had a bandana around his neck when talked to me. And he just couldn’t figure out how to think about all of the things going on in the world today.

The things going on are so contrary to how he’d been raised. Normally, he would have a say in these things. He would have a choice. Isn’t America a democracy, after all? But he felt helpless, stuck at home – stuck between some ideal of “freedom” and a government edict. A rock and a hard place, I guess. Some said it would be immoral to leave his house – to endanger lives. And he just felt frustrated about it all.

And my friend was perplexed. It seemed like, for the first time, he was looking to me for answers. All I could do was shrug and say, “We don’t have control.”

But oh, how we want control!

I’ve been cutting firewood for next winter, and I’m only partially competent at felling dead trees. First, I make sure no one is around! Then I figure out which direction I want the tree to fall – considering its natural lean, of course. And then I try to craft my cuts to make the tree fall that way. Again, I’m only partially competent. Anna was with me the other day when I dropped a big dead tree. She estimated my aim was “only” off by 30 degrees!

We want control. Some things are out of our control – even when we think we should be able to control them. I will get better at cutting down dead trees. But I’m not in control. That much I know. So be careful. Respect the tree.

Nebuchadnezzar got a lesson in lack of control. So did the wisest of his wise men. But Daniel understood. Only God had the power to give the interpretation of dreams – and the knowledge of another man’s dreams themselves. “There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.”

This was beyond the king’s power. This was beyond the power of the wise men, enchanters, magicians, and astrologers. This was beyond Babylonia’s power. This was only something that could be done by an exiled Judean – from a far way province of Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom – and even that exiled Judean couldn’t do it. Only his God could reveal the mystery.

The dream was about a statue representing four kingdoms – one symbolized in gold, another in silver, another in bronze, and another in iron and clay. There’s a lot to pull out of this image, but it marks out the fact that the world made up of a succession of kingdoms – one after another. Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome – and on and on it goes.

Who controls who rises next? When the kingdom of “gold” declines, who says there will be a kingdom of “silver”? Nebuchadnezzar had no control. Neither did the diviners. Neither did Daniel. Someone else was in charge.

Whoever it was who carved out that rock, “cut out by no human hand” – that’s the one.

You’ll notice the destruction of those kingdoms – their end – came from outside of them. It came from somewhere else. There is a God who is in control. Nebuchadnezzar would come to the end of himself – indeed, he already had. The other kings and emperors would do the same. And so will we.

And sometimes we sit and we stress about how little control in life that we really have. Things seem to move along at a breakneck pace. Does anyone, really, have control? Where do we look?

There is an unbreakable kingdom. There’s a rock of stumbling for the nations who reject the notion of God (1 Peter 2:7). There’s a spiritual Rock that pours out living water on those who come thirsty (1 Corinthians 10:4). And there’s a rock on which the wise can build their lives (Matthew 7:24).

All of this comes from outside of ourselves. This comes by “no human hand.”

And so Daniel 2 reveals to us something about the human condition. And it reveals to us something about God. He is in control, and we are not. His wisdom is incomparably better than ours. The ultimate answers come from him and not from within ourselves.

Do you seek a wisdom that is from beyond yourself – especially in these days of coronavirus and chaos? Every time we pick up our bibles, we interact with something that’s from beyond ourselves, something not carved out with human hands. We have in our hands a wisdom that is from above.

Every time we contemplate Jesus, we contemplate something that is from beyond ourselves – indeed, that is beyond this world – something not carved with human hands. He’s the Rock that does not disappoint and that cannot be broken.

At some point in every life, we have to decide whether we are willing to accept anything that comes from outside of ourselves. We have to decide whether we have all the answers and whether we need true help.

Think on these things today.

Chris

Dear church,

Don’t get too comfortable. I wonder whether that might be a main theme of Daniel 1. This is a book about the Israelites living in exile. God put them in exile. And Daniel and his friends had to figure out how to live in exile.

King Nebuchadnezzar had a plan for the best and brightest among the people whom the he conquered. He wanted to assimilate them into the Babylonian culture. He wanted to give them high positions and an education. He wanted to give them good food and drink. He wanted make them indebted to him. He wanted to make them, firmly, Babylonians first.

I suppose he wanted these best and brightest from the conquered Jews to become influencers among their people – to show them how they, too, could live as Babylonians and how they, too, could cut ties with the old traditions. Nebuchadnezzar was a smart man.

And so Daniel and his friends had to figure out how to live in exile. The first test involved food and wine. I think Daniel’s reluctance might have had something to do with the dietary laws that all Jews were trained to follow from birth. There were some foods, simply, they had been commanded not to eat.

And Daniel’s reluctance also likely had something to do with Nebuchadnezzar’s main goal of assimilating these Jews into Babylonian culture. Something happens to a people when they regularly eat together. Families bond over food. And the founder of the feast carries authority. The subtle message that would come across at each of those meals would have been, “Nebuchadnezzar is king. Do as he says. Thank him. Appreciate him. Learn his ways.” Surely and slowly, meal after meal, the exiled people would become Babylonians.

And Daniel declined. I suppose he saw through Nebuchadnezzar’s strategy. And he asked for vegetables and water. Some of the others must have said, “Just eat the food, Daniel. Drink the wine. This isn’t that hard.” From the outside looking in, Daniel’s reluctance must have seemed silly. But Daniel knew: More was at stake than anyone else could see.

And so he declined.

I think about our own life in exile. Every Christian is living in exile, whether we want to admit it or not. “But our citizenship,” the apostle Paul wrote, “is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior …” (Philippians 3:20). The life we live here is one of exile. Someone else rules the roost. A King David does not sit on the throne. The powers-that-be aren’t Christlike powers.

And those powers push us to assimilate. We’re asked to eat at the king’s table – because the king’s table is where the best food and wine are. Life is easiest at the king’s table. And we have to decide how to respond. Slowly and surely, meal after meal at the king’s table, we will conform. Slowly and surely, we will leave behind our traditions of faith.

And when we resist, it seems to the world, “What’s the big deal? Just do it. It’s not that hard.” But more is at stake than the situation seems to indicate.

It used to bug me that we couldn’t have worship services on Sunday mornings in the church sanctuary. Actually, the fact that no gathering took place there each Sunday – that the lights remained off and no one came – really gnawed at my conscience. I almost couldn’t bear it.

I’m over it now. All it took was two months.

And there were many in the world who looked at those pastors and Christians who were reluctant to comply with the government’s rules – and there were some Christians, too – who said, “What’s the big deal? Just cancel your services. It’s not that hard. It’s best for your church and for you and for society.” And those pastors and Christians were shamed for their reluctance.

Give it a couple of months. A conscience can soften in that short of a time. And pretty soon everybody is sitting at the king’s table eating his food and drinking his wine. We’re in exile learning how to be Babylonians – assimilating.

We may be in exile, as the apostle Paul said, but we still are Christians. Paul would say that, too (Philippians 3:17-19). We still have a Christian DNA that includes certain specific practices – gathering, prayer, singing, breaking bread, sharing our possessions, and hearing the Word. The powers-that-be in our exile want to pull us away from those practices. “What’s the big deal if you don’t gather?” “What’s the big deal if you don’t hear God’s Word?” “What’s the big deal if you don’t pray?”

All it takes is a couple of months, and the press of our conscience can soften.

The call ultimately is to repentance. It’s the continual call of Christ to the people of God (Matthew 4:17). Disciples are the ones who answer that call. They stand and listen and take a hard look at their lives to see how they’ve responded to the exile pressure. They’re like those faithful ones in Israel, listening to Malachi preach (Malachi 3:16).

And they had a meeting.

Chris

Dear church,

I’m still thinking about Malachi 3 today. There are some who question, with ancient Israel, whether God is just. There are some who claim they know how God should act if he really is a God of justice. They look at the world and the bad things that happen in it, and they ask, “Where is the God of justice?”

We live in a country today of rioting and of people demanding justice from their government. The government can provide a form of justice, but it’s nothing like what the Bible says about God’s justice.

The major problem with asking for the “God of justice” to show up is that God is perfectly just and perfectly thorough in handing out his justice. This means the God of all holiness tolerates no unholiness – and he will provide justice to anyone who harbors unholiness in his or her life.

So be careful if you ask for the God of justice to make an appearance! Be prepared for the consequences of God’s justice in your own life. None of us is holy. All of us, when faced with the fullness of God’s justice, would be condemned. If we were to stand under God’s justice on our own, without any help, we would be lost. There would be no hope. We all would fall short. We call this The End.

We see this in Malachi 4. Look at how thorough and unyielding God’s justice is. The wicked will burn. There won’t be a single branch left. There won’t even be a root. Imagine a forest fire so hot it scorches not just the trees but also the entire root systems of those trees.

That’s what God’s justice looks like.

Fortunately, those who turn to God in repentance and who fear his name have hope. All we know from Malachi is that these people will experience some sort of healing. They shall be freed into the fields like calves for the first time. Something like this.

That’s a picture of freedom and joy. There’s room to run. There’s so much room to run that it’s tempting to try to run in all of it at the same time. It’s exhilarating.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we know the full story. The “sun of righteousness” is Jesus himself, bringing light to a dark world, freeing those who had been bound by sin and death.

This is what the life of discipleship is like. This is our hope. This is our promise. This is the steadying force that enables us to go on from day to day, regardless of what may happen. We know at the end of the Last Day, we are going to leap out of the barn and into the fullness of freedom.

The reality for us as disciples of Jesus Christ is that we’ve been freed from certain death. We’ve been liberated from the severe justice of God.

Malachi urged ancient Israel – the ones who had returned to the Promised Land but still found themselves living in a sort of exile – to do two things.

First, they were to look backward and gather up the Law of Moses. They were to follow God’s way of living. They were to obey the Ten Commandments and the other rules of living laid out by the One True God.

Second, they were to look forward to the day of Elijah (John the Baptist) and the day when the Lord (Jesus Christ) comes. As disciples, we also look backward and forward. We take the bread and the cup and remember the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. And we proclaim that death until he comes again (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

These are important reminders for our lives of disciples of Jesus Christ in these days of coronavirus and chaos. We live differently. We live with an undying hope. And we live firmly as people of peace.

Chris

Dear church,

I would have liked to have been there. It must have been something to hear. It was a gathering of people who feared God and who esteemed his name. It was a collection of people who were serious about following him – even when the other so-called children of God were full of skepticism and spiritual laziness.

It was a gathering of committed ones.

God was rebuking his people. They had made him weary with all their talking. They were saying God wasn’t a God of righteousness and justice. They were saying God actually favored people who did evil. The people of Israel thought they understood God’s justice and their own goodness. They wanted to see God’s justice.

But they didn’t really want to see it – because God’s justice would come to his own people first. God promised to send a messenger to prepare the way for the Lord. We think here of John the Baptist, preparing the way for Jesus of Nazareth. And this is correct thinking. Jesus confirmed this to be the case (Matthew 11:10).

And Jesus would come into his temple – and judgment would come to the people of God first. There would be a great work of refining and cleansing. And the people of Israel who were living in open rebellion of God – the sorcerers, adulterers, liars, cheaters, and those who mistreated widows, orphans, and foreigners – would face judgment.

But the nation of Israel, God said, would not be “consumed.” God doesn’t change, even though his people were changeless in their disobedience. God encouraged repentance. He asked the people to bring the full tithe into the temple. He told them to test him with their tithes – to see how he would bless them if they obeyed.

This isn’t a proof text for a prosperity gospel. Rather, it was simply a challenge to the people of God to obey his Law and to experience how he promised to bless them according to Deuteronomy 28:1-14.

But again, the people of Israel were skeptics. “It is vain to serve God,” they said.

A lot of God’s chosen people seemed to have given up. It’s not totally clear why. They were back in the Promised Land, and the temple had been rebuilt. All the destruction that had come upon the nation was beginning to be reversed. The kings of Persia had shown favor on Israel.

But the second temple wasn’t as magnificent as the first one. The people still were under the authority of a foreign government. They still had challengers from the neighboring peoples. They likely were struggling to make ends meet during difficult economic times. Some were being influenced by their foreign wives who worshipped false gods.

Those are some of the factors. And the people seemed to have given up.

But not all of them. And as God warned the people that if they wanted to see his justice, they certainly would see it, a group of the faithful had a meeting. I wonder how many showed up. They feared God and they esteemed his name. And they had a meeting about it. They “spoke with one another.”

And God put together a “book of remembrance.” I suppose it had their names in it.

I wonder what that gathering was like. What did they say? How did they say it?

And God promised to bless that group of faithful followers. “They shall be mine,” he said. “I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.” Those faithful ones are spared and given new life. (The cost was the death of a Son who served.)

So I wonder what that meeting was like. They simply did not go along with what their fellow Israelites were doing. These faithful ones were going to stick with God. They were the opposite of the faithless ones, who didn’t fear God and who “despised” his name (Malachi 1:6).

When push comes to shove, what kind of commitment am I willing to make for God?

The commitment of these faithful Jews in Israel wasn’t to do a new thing. It was to do an old one – to bring the tithe, to make the sacrifices, to give God their very best, to have pure relationships, to listen and obey the Word.

These were things some of the other Israelites were leaving behind. They were tired of those things. They wanted something new. They seemed to be saying times had changed, and God wasn’t keeping up.

I think of our world today and the flight from the Scriptures that some pastors and some churches are making. Surely, there’s a place where the faithful few are gathering in quiet protest. They would fear the Lord and esteem his name.

And a book of remembrance has their names in it.

And there’s a great lukewarmness in American church life that seems to be bubbling to the top. Christian consumerism reigns supreme. Surely, there’s a gathering of the faithful few somewhere who are saying that they will do the work of studying God’s Word – and obeying his commands to live pure lives, commit to their churches, and share the gospel.

And a book of remembrance has their names in it.

“Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them.”

Chris

Dear church,

I’m posting late on Sunday mornings. I’m doing that because I want you to come to church and talk about Malachi 2, rather than simply read my thoughts about it here. It’s good for us to gather.

The writer of Hebrews said we should not neglect to meet together, “as is the habit of some” (Hebrews 10:24-25). When we meet together, we have the opportunity to stir each other up to love and good works. We can encourage one another. And we all need encouragement these days.

So I am posting late today, until after we’ve had a chance to meet. But I am posting – because some of our church members aren’t yet comfortable gathering and some of them live far away this time of year. I want to give you just a little bit to think about as you follow our daily readings.

Today is Pentecost Sunday. It’s the birthday of the church. On Pentecost, Christians recall the moment from Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit descended on the church and filled it. Like when God’s presence filled the temple of ancient Israel, now his presence fills the church.

It’s a remarkable concept, and much of what we have been reading in the Old Testament points to this day when God would dwell fully with his people. The church is the new temple of God. Each of us is a member of that temple. Christ is the cornerstone. These are all New Testament metaphors that help us understand what God is doing in the world today.

Another way to look at it is through “body” metaphor. Christ’s body is the temple. Remember, he told people if the temple of his body was destroyed, it would be raised again in three days. That statement got Jesus in quite a bit of trouble with the temple leadership! And we know the “temple” was raised!

So as Christ’s body is the temple, we are members of his body. And just as Christ was filled with the Holy Spirit, so is the whole church and so is each member of the church. The apostle Paul said, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Paul said that to remind the believers in Corinth to be mindful of what they did with their bodies – because their bodies were part of the body of Christ.

And so it’s important for us to keep this in our minds as believers. We have the presence of God dwelling in our bodies. What we do with our bodies is what we do with Christ. Paul at one point talked about prostitution. Should we take our bodies, which are members of Christ, and join them to a prostitute? Paul said, “Never!”

To think about being a member of the body of Christ – and to have the very presence of God living in us – is sobering. When we think about our sins and the idea of taking Christ and thrusting him into those sinful acts should make us blush. Where have we been taking Jesus? We are Christians living post-Pentecost lives. Everywhere we go, he goes. What acts do we put him through? What words do we make him party to? What thoughts do we think in his presence?

It is sobering.

All of this takes us into Malachi 2 because Malachi 2 is about breaking faith with God. It’s about being faithless to the covenant. You’ll notice that term is used repeatedly in this chapter.

“Why then are we faithless to one another …”

“Judah has been faithless …”

“The Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless …”

“So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.”

“So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

We are tempted simply to say this passage is about divorce. And then we could argue whether divorce is permissible for one of God’s children and under what circumstances. Read Matthew 19:1-12 and Deuteronomy 24:1-4, and let Jesus be your teacher when it comes to divorce.

This passage does teach about divorce, but an underlying principle exists here. It is about being “faithless” to God.

Malachi upbraids the priests and Levites for failing in their covenant responsibility to offer “true instruction” to the people about God’s law. God had a covenant with Levi, whose descendants were temple workers and teachers of the Torah. Read more in Exodus 32 and Numbers 25. (God’s covenant with the tribe of Levi seems to have been sealed in Phinehas, who had a “covenant of peace” with God.) The Levites had turned aside from the way of this covenant, and they had caused a lot of Israelites to fall into sin.

So God criticized the priests and Levites for failing in their covenant responsibilities. And God criticized the men of Israel for marrying foreign wives, which was against God’s law. “For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves.” The concern of God – which repeatedly proved true for Israel – was God’s people would take spouses who worshipped other gods and that those spouses would draw God’s people away from him (Exodus 34:10-16; Deuteronomy 7:1-5). And the men of Israel were being faithless to God’s covenant with them.

And after God criticized the priests and the Levites for being faithless teachers, and after he criticized the men of Israel for being faithless in marrying non-Israelite women, God criticized the men of Israel for being faithless in their marriages to the “wives of their youth.” The Israelite men were discarding their wives, treating them as objects, and breaking their covenants with them.

This is a chapter about being faithless.

Our God is a God of covenant. He enters into a relationship with us – indeed the whole book of Malachi is about relationship with God – and he wants us to move toward him as he moves toward us. He wants his people to be faithful in their covenants to God and to each other. There’s an interesting community aspect that can’t be forgotten here (Malachi 2:10).

We still are in a covenant with God. A new covenant has replaced the old and is sealed with the blood of Christ (Matthew 26:28). And the new covenant results in the Holy Spirit’s presence in us (Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 14:15-7, 25-27). Remember Pentecost.

And so Malachi 2 drives us to think about whether we are being faithful to God and his covenant with us. On this Pentecost Sunday, perhaps we should remember the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. And we should remember the covenant.

The apostle Paul would remind us, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). And Malachi would remind us, “So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

Chris

Dear church,

We’ve been living lately in the biblical books of exile – and post-exile. Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Esther, and now Malachi. Next week we’ll begin Daniel. These are fitting books for us now, living in a sort of exile from our normal church gatherings.

Like these ancient Jews, we have to figure out how to make things work. We need to figure out how to co-exist in a land that doesn’t turn to the One True God. And we’ve got to figure out how to proceed when God sometimes seems distant, or silent, or when things just don’t go the way we want them to go.

Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament and the last of the 12 Minor Prophets. Malachi lived at about the same time as Esther and Mordecai, whom we just read about in Persia. Only Malachi was back in Israel, where the returned exiles had come and were trying to resume life as God’s chosen people in their Promised Land.

They were trying – but they had stopped trying very hard. They had rebuilt the temple and were doing some semblance of the required worship there. But their sacrifices were bad ones. They offered blind and lame sacrificial animals to God.

They apparently had begun to feel that God had failed them and that he wasn’t really with them any more. The name Malachi means “my messenger.” God sent his messenger to remind them of the truth.

The truth was that God still was in a relationship with his people. That relationship never went away. Even though God had to discipline his people at times, he still loved them. God reminded them of that fact right off the top – “I have loved you.”

That’s the basis for the whole book of Malachi. God loved his people, and he wanted a righteous relationship with them. Just as God had turned to them, so he wanted his people to turn to Him. But the people were falling away. They almost had given up. They offered bad sacrifices because, well, why offer something good to a God whom you no longer trust?

But God reminded the Israelites of his love. He reminded them of his work on their behalf. Memory is an important thing.

And God asked for obedience. God demanded the best from his people. He sought their devotion. And he sought reverence. What God got in return was, “What a weariness this is.” We get the sense these Israelites were just going through the motions.

God reminded the people of his role as their Father. He reminded them of the greatness of his name. He reminded them of his power over the nations. “From the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations.” Our view of God matters. What we do in worship matters. Pausing in reverence is a good thing.

It is easy to be irreverent. It’s easy to take a relaxed attitude about things. It’s easy, even if we aren’t feeling betrayed by God, to drift off into a shrug-our-shoulders kind of spiritual life with God. To live as Christians is a lifelong journey. Days turn into weeks that turn into months and years. We pray and read and gather, and it can get old and stale sometimes. Ho-hum, we might say.

And there’s a certain reverence that is due to God. He is the Creator and the Redeemer.

Reverence. For some reason, my mind was drawn to Peter after Jesus had directed his fishermen disciples into an eye-popping catch of fish. Boats were sinking under the weight of all the fish they’d caught following the advice of this carpenter rabbi. Peter saw all of this and fell at Jesus’ knees. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8).

I call this reverence. This was Peter recognizing the greatness of God and Peter’s own insignificance apart from God.

How can we bring reverence back into our lives? Is it possible to find moments in our days where we are truly reverent before God? Can we take a moment of simple silence and stillness before a meal, or before our daily prayers, or as we open our bibles, or as we observe God’s creation?

I walked into the woods today. I wonder whether it’s worth a simple moment just to stop and look up through the aspen trees and remember the God’s whose name is great. I wonder whether in that silent moment it would be appropriate just to pause, to quiet the movements of my heart, and remember the glory of God.

Think today about your own reverent attitude toward God. Has “weariness” taken over? How can you win back your fear of the Lord?

Chris

Dear church,

This chapter is about remembering. Actually, the entire section that starts at Esther 9:20 is about remembering. It’s about things being recorded and written down and sent out in letters. “These days should be remembered,” the book says. The high honor of Mordecai was written about in the annals of the kings of Persia.

There’s something to be said for remembering – for not forgetting.

The Jews each year hold a Purim festival to remember the story of Esther and Mordecai and the salvation of Jews in Persia. They celebrate by feasting, by sending gifts and food to one another, and by reading the Book of Esther. Of course, the Jews are good at remembering. There’s Hanukkah and then Purim and then Passover. In successive seasons, they remember good things about their past.

When it comes to Purim, they remember the way in which they were delivered from the deadly edict of Haman. They were saved from certain death. And that’s something to celebrate.

Although God is not mentioned even once in the Book of Esther, we know his hand was at work in those events. If Esther didn’t work to save the people, salvation would come from somewhere else (by the power of God). Esther was put in her position (by God) for just such a time as that. And even the non-Jews knew there was something special about these people (who had been chosen by God).

God was quiet but not absent. And so this remembrance was of salvation and of God’s quiet movement. God saves.

For the Jews, their sorrow had been turned into gladness and their mourning had been turned into a holiday (Esther 9:22). They celebrated every year. The story was retold. And they savored God’s favor.

And of course Esther was part of that story. So was Mordecai. We also remember the people who did great things for us. We know this well. Our Memorial Day is our way of marking down the names of those people.

Yes, there is something to be said for remembering – for not forgetting.

As Christians, we are people who treasure the stories that were recorded and written down long ago – those stories that were sent out in letters across the land. We think back to first-century Palestine, and we remember. “These are written so that you may believe” (John 20:31). The glory of Jesus Christ has changed the world.

As Christians, we have our celebrations – our moments of remembrance. We recall Bethlehem and a flight to Egypt. We remember a cross and an empty tomb. In a few days, we will recall a special Pentecost in Jerusalem. We remember these stories of salvation and blessing, where God ushered anyone who would believe into his kingdom. As Christians, we must become good at remembering.

The center of our remembering is the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We also faced a deadly edict, cast down upon us by sin and death. We were saved from certain death. And that is something to celebrate.

And in our remembering, we don’t suffer from the quietness of God. No, unlike in the story of Esther, God was quite visible in first-century Israel – plainly so. Long ago, God spoke through prophets. But then he spoke by his Son (Hebrews 1:1-2). God took on flesh. Salvation came to the Jews and Gentiles by the power of Christ. Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin for just such a time as this. And there was something striking about the teaching of this rabbi. Everyone could see it (Matthew 7:28-29).

God was neither quiet nor absent in Christ. And so our remembrance of Jesus Christ recalls a saving act of God that all could see.

For Christians – like the Jews of Esther’s day – our sorrow has been turned into gladness and our mourning has been turned into a holiday. We celebrate every year. The story is retold again and again. And we savor God’s favor.

This made me think of Communion – the bread and the cup. Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24-25). We remember being freed from the decree of death. As we do, do we fully accept the fact that it was a real death sentence? Do we have a Purim-like lightness of heart as we celebrate the truth of Jesus’ work on the cross and the emptying of the tomb?

That’s worth a party.

Chris

Dear church,

I went for a run on the Rio Grande Trail near Carbondale. It’s a great trail. It’s wide and paved, and it sure beats running on the road. People use it to run, walk, and bike – and to walk their dogs and to push their kids in strollers.

As I was running, I came across a sign that notified bicyclists they should use an “audible” signal to inform people when those bicyclists were about to pass them from behind. Just a little warning to avoid a pedestrian getting whacked by someone on a bike. Made sense to me.

So every now and then, I’d hear someone call out – or ring a little bell – as they were getting ready to pass me. “On your left!” they would say. But relatively few bicyclists actually did this. The majority just zoomed on by. I might have heard the whirring of their tires on the pavement just a split second before they zipped past me. In fact, the ones who were going the fastest seemed to give the fewest warnings.

Of course, it’s hard to follow all the rules and regulations we’re faced with. Try driving the speed limit everywhere you go. On some roads, that will drive you crazy. We can say it’s not really any big deal. There’s not really all that much danger there. We’ll follow the really big laws, like not committing homicide or bank robbery. And for the smaller ones, well, we’ll do our best.

The Jews were thorough in Esther 9. They were so thorough they asked for another day, at least in the city of Susa, to do their work. Their work was killing their enemies.

This is a hard chapter. Where is the grace here? What we really see are the Jews across the Persian Empire turning on their enemies and killing 75,000 of them. And they memorialized it with an annual festival. It makes us uncomfortable. It probably should make us uncomfortable.

You’ll have to decide in your own heart how much of a moral judgment you want to levy against those Jews. Be careful.

There’s a big backstory that’s worth being told.

The first king of Israel was named Saul. He was from the tribe of Benjamin. This was about 400 years before Israel was conquered and its people carried off into exile. Saul was commanded by God to destroy the Amalekites – and everything they owned. (Again, you can decide in your own heart what you want to make of this command. But the point, I think, is the story.)

King Saul didn’t do it. He didn’t follow God’s command, at least not completely. He captured and spared the life of the Amalekite king, Agag. And Saul kept alive some of the best of the sheep and oxen and fattened calves and lambs. You can read about this in 1 Samuel 15.

In the end, Saul was stripped of his kingship by God. He didn’t follow God’s commands to the letter. Saul kept finding ways to put his own desires and own advancement in front of his devotion to God. And Saul’s legacy was followed by most of the kings of Israel who came after him. It’s a roll call of men who failed to follow God.

Fast forward 500 years – into the Jews’ exile in Persia. A ruler named Haman had convinced the Persian king to issue an edict to destroy all the Jews in the empire – and to plunder everything they owned. Haman was an Agagite. His family name should sound familiar.

Fortunately for the Jews, Esther and Mordecai stepped in to save the day. The Jews were given permission by the king to fight anyone came against them. They were given permission to defend themselves against their enemies. Mordecai and Esther were both from the tribe of Benjamin. Their tribe was the same as that of the disgraced King Saul.

So there is a story here that came full circle in Esther 9. It was a story of past disobedience and a very thorough effort by the Jews to correct those wrongs – even at the risk being judged by us 21st century American Christians.

The Jews did not spare the lives of any of their enemies. At least that’s how the story reads. Haman the Agagite already was dead. But the Jews killed his 10 sons and had them hanged from the gallows.

And you’ll notice three times in the text, the Jews “laid no hand on the plunder.” This time, there was no saving out of the best of their enemies’ material possessions. No sheep or oxen or calves or lambs. There was no overwhelming greed. I think this story was written in a way to make us think back on King Saul and his failure with the Amalekites.

So what are we to make of this story? Yes, it offends our modern, peace-loving sensibilities. But these Jews were living in a world that was much different than ours. They had seen things that we must hope we never have to see. And they had seen how the mistakes of their forefathers – disobedience of and disrespect for God’s law – had resulted in ultimate loss. The loss of life, the loss of homeland, the loss of culture, the loss of freedom, the loss of security. The Jews were living in a precarious and dangerous time and place. Clearly, the Persian King Ahasuerus was unstable and unwise.

And the Jews must have remembered their losses from of old. And they were determined to follow through this time.

I wonder whether we understand the cost of sin – big ones and little ones. And if we really understood the cost of sin – as an innocent and loving man hanging on a cross for us – how would our lives change? Would we always ring that little bell on our bikes?

Chris

Dear church,

In this chapter, we get a very important piece of information about life in the Persian empire: “an edict written in the name of the king and sealed with the king’s ring cannot be revoked.” The law was the law, and it was valid – apparently – forever.

That was no big problem in ancient Persia, apparently. If the king ever encountered a law that he didn’t like, he simply created another law to oppose it. Two laws saying basically the opposite things balance each other out. Sort of.

That’s the story here in Esther 8 – the undoing of King Ahasuerus’ edict to annihilate the Jews. The whole chapter is one that depicts reversal. Mordecai found himself dressed in royal robes instead of sackcloth. The Jews who had been in mourning suddenly were experiencing gladness and joy. The Jews who had fasted for three days suddenly were feasting. The Jews who had feared extermination suddenly were seeing other people claiming to be Jews because the “fear of the Jews had fallen on them.”

Everything was turned upside down in this rescue story.

And the law that called for the extermination of the Jews on the 13th day of the 12th month was counteracted. Mind you, it wasn’t done away with. The king’s laws cannot be revoked. So Mordecai crafted what amounted to an opposite law. It was a balancing act. To put an end to one law, you need another law.

This is how things work in this world. And if there ever was a book of the Bible about the world, this is it. The ridiculousness of the world’s ways shines through in the book of Esther. The pressure on God’s people to conform to the world’s ways also shines through. And in Mordecai’s counter-decree, we see more about the world.

We concoct laws to offset laws. When we want to undo a law that seems prevalent in our lives, we create another law to live by. This made me think about sin.

In my own life, I struggle with particular sins. These sins, or sin patterns, are unique to me. You have your own unique sin patterns that you have to deal with. No one is immune to this. We’ve all fallen short of the glory of God.

And these sin patterns create a kind of “law” in our lives. It’s just how things work for each of us. We want to do the right thing, but the law of our lives pushes us to do the wrong thing. The temptation to do the wrong thing crops up on a regular basis and, sometimes, in some fairly predictable ways.

Just think of your own signature sin pattern. You know what you struggle with, and you know when you struggle with it the most. You may even know what time of year or what time of day or what type of life circumstance brings on your struggles. There’s a law in your life that pushes you into sin.

And so I sometimes concoct new laws to counteract the law that I find at work in my life. Like Mordecai, I realize that the first law can’t be abolished. So I craft an opposing law that runs against the law of sin in my life. You might do this sometimes, too. I’ve heard numerous people tell me about wearing rubber bands on their wrists – snapping themselves every time they said a curse word or had an immoral thought. They’ve created a law for themselves to counteract the “law.”

This is good – although it’s not perfectly effective. We can work to retrain ourselves and have decent success at it. But again, it’s not perfect. Two laws don’t perfectly balance each other out. You’ll see that in tomorrow’s reading of Esther 9!

What we need is for the first law to be eliminated – revoked. And that hasn’t happened.

But as Christians, we do have something else that is beyond this law of sin in our lives. We have Jesus Christ.

What Jesus did through his work on the cross is set each believer free from the old law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). That old law still exists. It cannot be revoked. But we can be set free from it.

Mordecai gave the Jews in Persia the license to defend themselves against their enemies – which it appears they did with gusto. To combat the first law, a second was created. Not every problem, of course, was solved.

But we have Christ.

Think today about your own life of sin. The promise of Jesus is to free us from our bondage to the law of sin and death. We have committed sins that have condemned us to death. Instead of needing to work extra hard to balance out those sins, or to override them, we have a Savior who promises simply to take them away. He makes it right. He enables forgiveness and mercy. This is ultimate grace.

In what areas of your life are you seeking freedom from the law of sin and death? Have you fully accepted what Christ has done for you on the cross? Are there areas where you need to let go rather than work harder?

Chris

Dear church,

Salvation loses its punch if our enemy still is lurking around. Haman was the embodiment of sin and evil. And he met his death on a gallows – or maybe more literally, “a wooden beam.”

The gospel message is embedded in Esther 7. Jesus took our sins, our debts, and our inability to keep God’s law and, “This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). Haman found himself ushered to a wooden beam and executed.

The Jewish people living in exile in the Perisan empire were freed from their enemy – the one who sought to destroy, kill, and annihilate them, as Esther boldly told King Ahasuerus. The danger passed away. And remember, it was the plot of Haman to kill a good Jew on that gallows. But God loves to turn things around and to work great reversals. It was Haman who met his end there.

The cross was supposed to be the end of Jesus Christ. That’s how the world would have had it. And that’s how Satan would have had it. At the end of the day, the cross wasn’t the end of Christ. It is the end of sin and death. The Book of Esther gives us a hint of this. The gospel appears in the Old Testament.

The death of Haman came after the request of Esther. She fully identified with her Jewish heritage. She finally revealed herself to the Persian king and to all who were within earshot that she was a Jew. And she asked for life, both for herself and her people.

Humans cling to life. We look for ways to preserve our lives – to make them last longer. Inherently, we want freedom from death. Esther sought that freedom. She is a Christ figure in the Old Testament, orchestrating salvation for God’s people.

I couldn’t help but think of blind Bartimaeus as I read this chapter. You remember Bartimaeus on the road near Jericho crying out to Jesus for mercy. And Jesus called out to Bartimaeus and asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51). We discussed this story not long ago as a church in the context of prayer – praying to Jesus Christ for the desires of our hearts. It is what Jesus invited us to do (John 15:7).

King Ahasuerus repeatedly asked Esther what she wanted him to do for her. This pagan king, who clearly was driven by pride and sex, was willing to grant his queen virtually anything she asked. We have a much more powerful, gracious, and loving King. And he desires to give good gifts to his children.

And the ultimate gift is life itself – the same kind of life for which Esther asked. She asked for freedom from death and freedom from fear. And the enemy of the people met his end as a result.

Chris