Esther 2

Esther 2 quietly installs the two figures the whole deliverance will turn on — a hidden Jewish queen and a faithful watcher in the gate — and neither knows yet why they are placed. The search for a new queen gathers the fair young virgins of the empire, and Esther, the orphan cousin raised by Mordecai, obtained favour in the sight of all them that looked upon her. Her two names are the chapter. She is Hadassah — myrtle, the tree of the restoration, the one Isaiah sets in the wilderness in place of the brier and Zechariah puts the horseman among in the bottom; the fragrant, unshowy tree of a people coming home. And she is Esther — a Persian name, from the star, and not far from Ishtar. The myrtle goes into the palace under the name of a star, and no one there knows the tree is Jewish. She is made queen in Vashti’s place, and on Mordecai’s instruction she conceals her people. The hidden bride is set on the throne — a daughter of the captivity raised to the queen’s seat of a pagan empire, her identity veiled, her purpose not yet revealed.

Mordecai sits in the king’s gate, and there overhears the plot of two chamberlains, Bigthan and Teresh, to lay hands on the king. He tells Esther, she tells the king in Mordecai’s name, the men are hanged, and it was written in the book of the chronicles before the king. The faithful deed is recorded and, for now, unrewarded — Mordecai saves the king’s life and receives nothing; the record simply waits in the chronicles. The reader feels the loose thread; the providence has tied it on purpose, to be pulled at exactly the right hour.

Nothing in the chapter is overtly religious — a beauty contest, a court intrigue, a name written in a register — and yet every piece is being set. The unnamed hand arranges the pieces in plain daylight — a queen who can reach the king, a debt the king owes and has forgotten; the two facts that will, in time, undo Haman and save a nation. The hidden providence does its work through ordinary favor and an overheard conversation.

The pattern is the providence the saint lives in still. The hidden one raised to a place of access, the faithful one whose unrewarded service is not forgotten — these are the materials the unnamed hand works with. Placed before you know the purpose — Esther is queen and Mordecai is remembered in the book long before either understands what it is for; faithfulness in the unexplained moment is what the deliverance is later built from.

The hidden bride is enthroned and the faithful deed recorded, neither knowing why — the unnamed hand sets every piece in plain daylight, and faithfulness in the unexplained moment is what deliverance is built from.

Amos 7

Amos 7 shows the prophet pleading for a people who will not plead for themselves, and then sets a plumbline in their midst that ends the pleading. The five visions run from chapter 7 to chapter 9, and they are a closing door. Locusts — forgive, and it is stayed. Fire — cease, and it is stayed. Then the plumbline, and Amos says nothing. Then the summer fruit, and he says nothing. Then Yahweh on the altar, and there is nothing left to say. The prophet’s intercession works twice and then stops working — not because Amos lost his nerve but because a plumbline is not a plague. You can beg off a judgment; you cannot beg off a measurement.

Yahweh shows Amos a plague of locusts and a devouring fire, and twice the prophet intercedes: O Lord Yahweh, forgive, I beseech thee: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small. And twice Yahweh repented — the judgment is stayed at the prophet’s cry. The prophet stands in the gap and the blow is held — Amos pleads Israel’s smallness, and mercy relents, not because Israel deserves it but because a man intercedes.

Then comes the third vision, and there is no pleading against it. Behold, the Lord stood upon a wall… with a plumbline in his hand… Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more. The plumbline measures the wall and finds it leaning — the standard is set against the people, and the verdict is exact: a wall out of true must come down. Where Amos could plead against locusts and fire, he cannot plead against the measuring line; the standard simply shows what is so.

The chapter then turns to the cost of speaking truth. Amaziah, priest of Bethel, reports Amos to the king and orders him to flee back to Judah: prophesy not again any more at Bethel. The establishment priest silences the inconvenient prophet — the official religion cannot bear the plumbline, and tries to expel the man who carries it. The measure threatens the comfortable shrine, so the shrine attacks the measurer.

Amos’s answer is the dignity of the called nobody. I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: and Yahweh took me as I followed the flock, and Yahweh said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel. The trade explains itself, and it is better than a metaphor. The sycomore fig is inedible unless each fruit is slit or bruised by hand before it ripens; the gatherer’s whole job is to go through the tree wounding the fruit so that it can become sweet. Yahweh took a man whose living was piercing green figs to make them fit to eat, and sent him to Bethel with a plumbline. He had been doing the same work all along. The herdman speaks because Yahweh took him from the flock — no pedigree, no school, only a call; and the call is enough. The plumbline is not Amos’s; he merely holds it where Yahweh told him to, and no priest’s threat can make him drop it.

The prophet pleads and the blow is held — but the plumbline measures the leaning wall and ends the pleading; the called nobody holds the standard where Yahweh set him, whatever the shrine threatens.

Titus 1–3

Paul’s letter to Titus holds together sound doctrine and sober living, and lifts both into the light of two appearings: the grace that has appeared, and the glory that will appear. The man is named for the errand: Titus is to nurse, to rear — and rearing is precisely what he is sent to do, on an island of a hundred cities with no order in any of them. Where Timothy had to be told let no man despise thy youth, Titus needs no such propping; he has something of Paul’s own drive, and Paul sets the three letters as a set — the charge to Timothy, the challenge to Timothy, and now the caution to Titus. Titus is to set elders in order on Crete — men blameless, holding fast the faithful word, able to convince the gainsayers — for unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure. Doctrine and conduct stand or fall together — the sound word produces sober lives, and the defiled mind defiles everything it touches; you cannot divorce what a man believes from how he lives.

The heart of the letter is the grace that trains — and it comes in one of the two most compressed statements of the gospel in the New Testament, the second of which closes chapter 3. Both are in this one short letter, and between them they hold past, present, and future: grace appeared, grace teaches, glory will appear. The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world. Grace is a teacher, not a license — the grace that appeared does not excuse loose living but schools the saint to deny ungodliness; salvation appears in order to make a peculiar people sober and righteous now.

And the horizon is the blessed hope. Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people. The glory of the great God will appear in our Savior — the blessed hope is the appearing, when the glory of the one great God is revealed in the returning Christ who gave himself to redeem and purify a people for his own. The grace appeared at the first coming; the glory appears at the second; between them the peculiar people is being purified.

The means of the making is named without a trace of human merit. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit… that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Saved by mercy, made heirs of the hope — the washing and the renewing are his work, not ours; the eternal life is a hope inherited, not a wage earned, and the saved are to maintain good works as those already remade by mercy.

Grace appeared to school a peculiar people in sober living, looking for the glory that will appear in our Savior — saved not by works but by mercy, made heirs of the hope of eternal life.