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N Cooke2022-02-17 14:55:552022-02-17 15:08:25Reaching the Hard-to-ReachThe Bible records a day when the future Gospel hung in the balance, when it looked as if it were hanging by a thread. The ruler of the Persian empire, which at that time stretched from India to Cush, had issued an irreversible decree ordering an event that was to occur in a single day. The entire Jewish race, men, women and children, were to be destroyed. Not scattered or enslaved but erased. Had this event occurred, had this plan succeeded, the promises, the prophecies of Scripture would have been proven false. There would have been:-
- No line of Abraham, no Abrahamic Covenant.
- No house of David, no Messianic lineage, no millennial reign.
- No Bethlehem.
- No Messiah.
And while the Book of Esther doesn’t mention the Name of God, He is there. Beneath this story of political intrigue and banquets, and murderous plots or even in the story of our heroine’s journey towards faith-inspired courage, there is something of far greater significance than the drama that occurred within the palace walls. Purim is at its heart the story of an assault on God’s covenant, and it reveals the God who refuses to let His promises die or fail.
When Haman signed his edict, entailing the death warrant of the Jewish people in Persia, he wasn’t just targeting a ‘minority people’ living in his territory, a people that he wanted to get rid of; he was targeting God’s covenant promises. He was unwittingly waging war on Genesis 12, and God’s promise was one the world could not afford to lose. One that humanity could ill afford to lose.
The Covenant Under Threat
God’s promise to Abraham was and remains God’s commitment not only to the world He created but to humanity itself. The Lord placed this promise within the history of a people, making it specific and generational, yet it was also universal in its hope. God’s promise was to one man, Abraham and yet was universal in its scope:
“I will make of you a great nation …. and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:2-2-3)
The Scriptures trace the promise through the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, until we see the messianic promises come into sharper focus as David becomes king and is promised a throne that will last forever (2 Sam 7:12-16). The prophets spoke of a coming king who would reign forever, but by the time we read about in the Book of Esther, things had changed.
Jerusalem has been sacked, the people are in exile and scattered throughout the Persian empire, living under a pagan rule instead of a descendant of David. To the exiles, the ancient promises must have seemed distant, and perhaps they even doubted their reality. The story reveals that even Esther took some convincing before she found the courage to take her stand.
Then came Haman’s edict.
This was no mere antisemitic antipathy towards Jewish people: it was the bureaucratic, systematic, and planned annihilation of the Jewish people; chilling in its scope, legitimised by the state. Hitler didn’t conceive of this level of death and destruction first; Haman did. In spiritual terms, this was Satan’s attempt to stop God’s redemptive plan by stopping the Jewish people. If God’s covenant people are annihilated, the covenant promises perish with them. But the Scriptures show us that what looks fragile in human hands becomes invincible in divine ones.
Haman’s plan progresses, and at first God seems content to allow it to play out at least to Haman, that is. God’s Name may be absent from the Book of Esther, but divine providence is not. God positioned Mordecai to present his niece to the king, and she was chosen to be his queen. God then puts Mordechai in a position where he overhears a plot to kill the king, and his timely warning, passed through his niece, saves the king’s life. Mordecai knew the value of this had never been repaid and quietly waited for his day to come.
Haman, about to achieve all his heart desired, primarily power and recognition, found he had a fly in the ointment, the Jews and one in particular, Mordecai. So, at his wife’s suggestion, a set of gallows was built on which he intended to hang Mordecai. But again, we see God’s Hand of providence: a sleepless night led the king, unable to sleep, to read the royal chronicles, which contained the history of his nation; in them he discovered who had revealed the plot to kill him and, as a result, decided to reward him. In a beautiful piece of irony, the king asks Haman how to honour someone and is given Haman’s personal wish list, which, to his horror, is all given to the fly in his ointment.
The Hand of God in Providence
The absence of God’s Name in the Book of Esther does not signal the absence of God’s Hand at work through people in acts of providence. A Jewish orphan became a Persian princess whose faith and courage gave her the strength to risk her life by coming before the king and inviting both him and Haman to a private banquet when she asked for the life of her people and revealed that the architect of their planned destruction was, in fact, Haman. And in a final twist of fate and irony, as Haman falls at the queen’s feet begging for his life, the king returns and assumes Haman wanted to assault the queen, and so has him hanged on the very gallows prepared by his wife for Mordecai.
God did not raise up a Moses or send plagues as he did for the Israelites in Egypt, nor did He raise up a Joshua or Gideon to lead an army; there were no miracles, only the faithful obedience of Mordecai and Esther and the providential Hand of God at work behind the scenes.
Heaven was silent, but God’s covenants still spoke.
God’s faithfulness to His covenants matters, and God who preserved the Jewish people in Persia is the God who would one day preserve Jesus, the Messiah, as an infant in Bethlehem through dreams, flight and the quiet obedience of a carpenter. Redemption sometimes moves through history quietly unnoticed by empires and unseen by kings.
Purim establishes a pattern that we see beyond the intrigues of the courts of Persia, the Jewish people marked for destruction will endure. History will show that they have stood on the brink of annihilation. Edicts and decrees against them have been made, and expulsions and violence have been unleashed. And yet they remain. God is not finished with them.
The Faithfulness of God in History
Their continued existence is based not in sociology but in theology. The Apostle Paul explains this reality in Romans 9-11. Paul does not speak of Israel as a preface to the Church’s story. He speaks of their irrevocable gifts and calling (Rom. 11:29). He teaches the Christian Church that they are grafted into the ancient people of God and gives the picture of the olive tree to illustrate this ongoing relationship. (Rom. 11:17–18).
The survival of Israel is not an accident of history. It is evidence of God’s covenant fidelity. If God is not faithful to the Jewish people, how can we trust Him to be faithful to His Church?
Purim is just one chapter of a much larger testimony: God keeps His promises, even when nations rage, and laws are passed to the contrary.
That endurance can feel scandalous. But God’s covenant people will not disappear because the covenant-keeping God does not, in fact, cannot break His word. One of the things that Purim has to teach us about God is that it reminds us to anchor our trust in the character of God: to trust in God who, despite what things may look like in the moment, will never forget and will always be faithful to His promises, to His Word and ultimately to us.
Jesus entered history as a son of Abraham, a son of David (Matt. 1:1). The incarnation required God’s faithful commitment to His covenant with Abraham and, therefore, to the Jewish people to maintain them as His covenant people.
The genealogies at the beginning of the Gospels are the testimony of God’s faithfulness to His promises
If Haman’s decree had succeeded, there would have been no preserved Jewish people from whom the Messiah would come. The line leading to Bethlehem would have been severed in Persia.
- Without Purim, there would be no Christmas.
- Without the preservation of Israel, there would be no cross.
- Without the cross, no resurrection, and there would be no hope for the nations.
- The Church’s salvation story is inseparable from God’s faithfulness to His covenant with Israel.
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N Cooke2022-02-17 14:55:552022-02-17 15:08:25Reaching the Hard-to-Reach
Israel Defense Forces takes possession of David's Sling air defense system. (Photo: Defense Ministry)