Esther 1

Esther opens on the most magnificent court in the world and the emptiness at the heart of it — a king who can rule a hundred and twenty-seven provinces but cannot command his own wife to come. Ahasuerus throws a feast that runs a hundred and eighty days, then seven more, the wealth of Persia on display, the drinking according to the law; none did compel. Count the empire: a hundred and twenty-seven provinces, from India even unto Ethiopia — and it is the only other place in Scripture that number appears. Sarah lived a hundred and twenty-seven years, the one woman whose age at death is recorded, the matriarch through whom the seed of promise came. The number of the covenant mother is the number of the empire the bride is about to be raised over — and a Jewish orphan is four verses away from that throne. At the height of it he summons Queen Vashti to parade her beauty before the princes, and she refuses. The king who rules an empire is defied at his own table — all his power cannot produce one willing heart.

The book of Esther is famous for never naming God, and that silence is the point: this is the story of the hidden hand, providence working unnamed beneath the surface of a pagan empire. The unnamed hand moves the whole story — no miracle, no prophet, no voice from heaven, only a chain of “coincidences” that delivers a doomed people; and it begins here, with a queen’s refusal that empties a throne.

One observation about the timing changes the taste of the whole feast. The third year of Ahasuerus is the year Xerxes gathered his princes and his captains to plan the invasion of Greece. The hundred and eighty days of display are a war council, and the empire on show is an empire about to sail — and be broken at Salamis. The king who cannot fetch his own wife to the table is about to fail to fetch Greece.

Vashti is deposed by the counsel of frightened men who fear their own wives will follow her example, and a decree goes out that every man should bear rule in his own house. The laws of the Medes and Persians alter not — the empire’s word is irrevocable, a detail that will become the hinge of the whole plot when a later decree dooms the Jews and cannot be recalled. The unalterable law is the trap the story will have to escape — Persia’s pride in its own irreversibility becomes the very thing mercy must work around.

But the deposing of Vashti is the opening of a door. The throne stands empty, and the hidden hand is already moving a Jewish orphan toward it. An empty throne is the providence’s first move — what looks like a drunken king’s domestic quarrel is the first link in a chain that will save a nation; the unnamed hand writes its purpose in the margins of a pagan feast.

The mightiest empire cannot command one willing heart — but the unnamed hand moves beneath the feast, and an empty throne is the first step toward a doomed people’s deliverance.

Amos 6

Amos 6 pronounces woe not on the wicked nations but on the comfortable saints — those at ease in Zion, who lie on ivory beds and are not grieved for the ruin around them. Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria. They stretch on beds of ivory, eat the lambs and the fatted calves, chant to the sound of the viol, drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils. The woe falls on ease, not on open sin — the comfortable religion of a people who have everything and feel nothing. And there is a sting in chant to the sound of the viol: the word is to improvise, to idle out songs — and invent to themselves instruments of musick, like David. They are compared to David, and the comparison is the insult. David made instruments to bring the ark home; these men make them to accompany the wine. The same creativity, aimed at the couch instead of the ark — and Amos wants you to feel how close the two look and how far apart they are.

The damning phrase is the last of the list. But they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. They are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph — the ruin of their brethren, the breaking of the nation, troubles them not at all; their luxury has anaesthetised them to the suffering at their door. The sin is not the wine or the ivory in themselves but the deadness — the heart so padded with comfort it cannot feel the wound of its own people.

So the judgment fits the crime: the first to feast will be the first to go. Therefore now shall they go captive with the first that go captive, and the banquet of them that stretched themselves shall be removed. The first at the feast are the first into chains — the revelry that drowned the cry of Joseph’s affliction is silenced, the couches carried off into exile; the ease they trusted in becomes the proof of their unfitness.

And Amos drives home the absurdity of their security with a question. Shall horses run upon the rock? will one plow there with oxen? — yet ye have turned judgment into gall. They have done the unnatural thing — twisted justice into poison as surely as a man might try to plough the bare rock; the ease in Zion is not innocent rest but the comfortable corruption of a people who have made the perversion of justice their normal.

Woe to the comfortable who are not grieved for the affliction of their brethren — the first at the feast are the first into chains, for ease that cannot feel the wound is its own judgment.

2 Timothy 3–4

Paul’s last words to Timothy set the perilous last days against the one thing that holds: the inspired Scripture, and a course fought to the end. In the last days perilous times shall come, and the catalogue is a portrait of self-love — lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud… lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. A form of godliness denying the power — exactly the ease in Zion in another key; religion kept as a shape while its life is gone, the most dangerous condition because it looks like faith. And Paul reaches for an example that tells you exactly what kind of men he means: as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth. The magicians of Egypt did not deny Moses’ rod; they produced one. They matched the sign and opposed the man — which is the whole method of the form that denies the power. The counterfeit does not contradict the truth; it imitates it and stands in its way.

Against the drift Paul sets the Scriptures Timothy has known from a child. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable — the word is the standard that does not bend with the times, able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith; where men deny the power, the inspired word still carries it.

The charge that follows is urgent because the appetite for truth is failing. Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season… For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. Itching ears heap up teachers who flatter them — the people will not bear the sound word but collect voices that tell them what they want; and the answer is not to soften the word but to preach it the harder, in season and out.

And then the most moving passage in the letters — a man at the end, looking back and forward at once. At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me — and the man writing that had once stood in a courtyard himself, watching the disciples of another prisoner scatter into the dark. He is now on the receiving end of the desertion he once saw from the other side; and his word about it is his Master’s word: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Then, out of that abandonment: I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day. The crown is laid up, and given at that day — not now, not at death, but at that day, the day of resurrection and judgment; the reward is future and sure, unto all them also that love his appearing. Paul does not say he has won; he says he has fought, finished, and kept — and waits for the crown.

Hold the God-breathed word against a form of godliness that denies the power; fight the good fight and keep the faith, for the crown of righteousness is laid up and given at that day to all who love his appearing.