When God is silent - Esther 1-5

Some crazy stuff going on in Susa!  Drunken kings, deposed queens, virgin beauty pageants, murder plots, Jews stuck in foreign lands, plots to murder an entire race of people.  Man!  This is a mess!  Sounds like a great plot for a movie, but not something I'd want to live through.  But, this is what happens when mankind is left to their own devices.  I've often said that our history is full of wars over lines in the dirt.  That's how stupid we are some times.

And, where is God during all this?  That is the great question of this book.  All of these events are unfolding, and get even more exciting as we will see tomorrow, and God isn't even mentioned.  There is absolutely NO reference to God in this entire book.  It has cause some throughout Jewish and Christian history to question whether this book should even be in the Bible.

But, here is where our understanding of providence shines through.  We know that God is ALWAYS involved.  There is never a time that God isn't working.  Jesus even said, "My Father is working until now".  He meant that, even when you can't see it, God is at work.  The situations we read about in the book of Esther unfold that way because God is working through them to bring about a greater weight of glory.

The same is true in your life.  Sometimes it feels like God isn't there.  Like He has left the building.  Well, the book of Esther is here to tell us that God is there.  He hasn't left.  When you are at your lowest point, feeling farthest away from God, and can't see the light in the darkness, He is there!  He is active.  He is working.  He will NEVER leave you or forsake you.  Don't give up on Him because He never walks away from you!

Recounting God's Faithfulness - Nehemiah 12-13

God is faithful.  Never forget that.  No matter what you are dealing with today, remember that God is faithful.  This is the message that comes across in Nehemiah 12-13.  These chapters begin with another list of names, this time of Priests and Levites.  These were the group of people that had been set aside by God to be the mediators of God's covenant with His people.  They were to represent the people before God and God before the people.  And though they failed in their duties throughout their history, God kept a remnant of them faithful to Him.  And, as Ezra and Nehemiah completed the reforms to Jewish society and worship that were needed after they came back from captivity in Babylon, we are given this list of names to show us that God keeps His covenant even when we don't.

The proper response to this is worship...worship which brings about a change in heart and life.  This is exactly what happened in these two chapters.  They have a huge worship service when they complete building the wall around Jerusalem and then they set about finishing up some of the societal reforms - confession of sin and promises to live righteously.

This should feel very familiar to us.  This is like the cycle of the week that God has designed for us.  In some sense, the Christian Sabbath (Sunday) is there for us to be recharged and commissioned to go out the rest of the week and live holy lives.  But in a very real sense, it is also designed by God to be a rest, a shelter of safety, a time when we lay our burdens down and feel and see the grace of God in action.  This is what drives us to worship as we gather.  We are reminded of the faithfulness of our God even though we are often unfaithful.  We are told, over and over, about the grace of our God as displayed in the cross.  We are driven to our knees in confession of sin and told of God's forgiveness.  And we worship Him because of all of this.  All of this is why it is so important that we gather together as the church.  It is because we desperately need it.  And God graciously provides it.

The Faithfulness of God and our Response of Obedience (Nehemiah 10-11)

God is faithful.  Over and over, we read in the Scriptures that God keeps His promises.  That God will never fail.  Though others might leave us high and dry, God never will.  This is part of God's character that we should cling to.  It is one of the things that makes Him worthy of our trust and our dedication.

If you read Nehemiah 10 and 11 with us today, you probably skimmed a lot.  There are a lot of names.  And these Old Testament people sure came up with some strange names!  They are hard to pronounce, even for those who read pretty well.  And there is list after list of them.  Chapter 10 begins with a bunch of names who signed this covenant.  And chapter 11 is almost completely a list of names and the people who re-settled in Jerusalem and the surrounding villages.  Why all the names?  Why should we care?

Well, one of the major promises of God given in the Old Testament was that after He had judged Israel for their sins by deporting them to hostile nations, they would repent and He would bring a remnant back into the land.  It is first found in Deuteronomy 30 and later restated by the prophets.  The generation at the time of Nehemiah clung to this promise.  They WERE that remnant!  And, so they listed their names and the names of their fathers and grandfathers in order to do two things: 1) trace their genealogy in order to verify their place among the people of Israel, and 2) to show the faithfulness of God from generation to generation.

In response to God's faithfulness to them, they pledged (together!) to be faithful to Him.  They signed a covenant as one people.  Verse 29 says they, "join with their brothers, their nobles".  They formed a community and agreed to commit to one another and to their Lord.  They had specific things they agreed to be responsible to one another for.  They agreed to live a specific way and to hold each other accountable.

This is very much like what a church does today.  In our church, we have a church covenant.  We don't talk about it near enough, but anyone who has become a member of our church has agreed to the stipulations of this covenant.  The purpose is for us to commit before God to build one another up in our faith and to live like Christians.  We hold each other accountable (at least we are supposed to).

So, in thinking through this passage this morning, consider the faithfulness of God.  He is STILL faithful.  And consider your commitment to our church, not just the institution, but the people.  For further consideration, our church covenant can be found at http://www.gracebaptistonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Covenant-of-Membership.pdf.

Attention to the Word - Thoughts on Nehemiah 8-9

OK, so I have wanted to do something like this for a while.  I want to invest some time bringing you the Word on a daily basis because it is God's Word that changes us.  Many of you have joined us as we have been reading through the Bible over the last 5 months (on a plan through YouVersion), which is great.  And there is a place in that reading plan to include comments, but it's kind of small.  And, you know me.  I'm wordy!  So, I hope to put some thoughts down daily here in the blog as they come to me.  Hopefully, God will use this, in conjunction with your reading to make an eternal impact.

As I read this passage this morning, I was struck by the devotion that these Jews had to the Word of God.  Ezra brought the Law to everyone who could understand it.  He read it from early in the morning until about midday.  They were all listening and paying attention to what he was reading.

Not only did he read it for hours, but they also spent time teaching it.  And they stood the entire time!!!  Can you imagine the love they must have had for God's Word to dedicate an entire day standing outside to listen to it?  Of course, they had been separated from the Law for 70 years as they were captives in Babylon.  So, this meant something to them.

I wonder sometimes if we take God's Word seriously.  Maybe we get so used to having 15 Bibles in our house and on our phones and hearing sermon after sermon after sermon that we (dare I say it) get bored with it.  But, God's Word is POWERFUL!  It changes us from the inside out.  It reveals to us the God of all the universe and what He has done to bring us to Him.

Now, I don't preach all day, although some of you might think I do.  But, my hope is that we would have a similar response to God's Word that these people had.  They respected God's Word.  They listened to God's Word.  It drove them to worship for the entire next week.  And it caused them in chapter 9 to recognize and confess their sins and to repent (change).  My prayer for all of us as we engage God's Word is that we would respond in a similar way for the sake of His kingdom.