There's Nothing New Under the Sun

 

“The sacrifice God desires is a humble spirit – O God, a humble and repentant heart you will not reject.”  Psalm 51:17

 Imagine with me that the leader of a powerful country had a friend, and he decided to make this friend an important person in the running of the government, outside of any traditional channels of promotion. He gave this friend power over agencies and decisions that should have been only run by people who had been trained and hired into those positions (Esther 3:1).

 Now this friend was not just any old Joe off the street, he was a very wealthy and influential person. In fact, it may have been his wealth that originally drew the king to him. The friend was not at all opposed to sharing his wealth, when it benefitted him. He would donate to this or that cause of the king in order to attain his favor. Once his position with the king was secured, however, his personal agenda began to manifest (Esther 3:6).

 You see, this friend had an issue, a history, with a people group that lived, scattered, within the kingdom. It seemed that you could find members of this people group in every province, maybe even in every city. No one knew exactly why the friend hated these people so much. Perhaps it had to do with an ancient feud between their peoples. Perhaps someone had done him wrong in his youth. Regardless of the cause, the hatred was there pure and simple. He wanted these people wiped off the face of the earth, but he would settle for wiped out of the kingdom if he had to (Esther 3:6).

 But how does one go about getting the king on board with your hatred? Let’s start by poisoning his thoughts against these people. “They are law-breakers!” “They aren’t worthy of you allowing them to live amongst us!” (Esther 3:8) That gets the ball rolling, but how do you finish it off? Well, you bought his affection with money, perhaps money will buy his hatred to! But this is going to take a lot of money, maybe even more money than the friend has. How to come up with a lot of money … Take it from the people you’re getting rid of! All the friend had to do was show the king how getting rid of the people would result in a huge boon in profit (Esther 3:9). And so, the king agreed to the friend’s plan, and they sat back and had drinks together, laughing about all the money they were going to make (Esther 3:15).

 Meanwhile, the kingdom is in an uproar (Esther 3:15)! How can they do this? This is so unlike the history of this country and how it deals with people groups it has brought together. The people from the targeted group are in mourning (Esther 4:1). What are they to do? They begin getting letters warning of the coming expulsion (Esther 4:3), but there seems to be no recourse for them. The systems that were previously in place to protect them are swiftly being broken down and dismantled. Everyone is afraid of the friend and how his influence might affect them.

 But one of these people has a friend in high places, someone who just might have influence over the king that wouldn’t be usurped by his friend. He reaches out to her in hopes that maybe, maybe, she can do something (Esther 4:7-8)…

To be continued

 The king in today’s story was bought with wealth and influence, but God is far above all that. No donation, no bribe, can sway Him. It is all His to begin with, so our meager offering is silly really. So how can we give God something He wants? Today’s verse tells us that the sacrifice God desires from us is not a monetary or physical gift but that of a humble spirit, one that is fully submitted to Him. And He knows the difference between real submission and lip service. We talk a lot in the church about tithe and often people think of it as being 10%, maybe even the first 10% of their income. My uncle challenged me on this thinking a couple of decades ago and suggested that a New Testament tithe is not 10%, but 100%. No, I’m not suggesting that you have to go empty your bank account into the offering plate, but I am saying that in humble submission we have to acknowledge that all we have belongs to God and not us. We cannot buy God, even by giving him every last penny we have. But we can join God, be united with Him in full and humble submission, when we acknowledge that He is Lord over everything we steward. And beyond that, He is Lord over our hearts, our spirits that are humbled toward Him, recognizing that He directs our paths and accepts us as His own.

Here’s the Thing: Today I told the story of the Jews in Persia during Esther’s time, but as it says in Ecclesiastes 1:9, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Perhaps you, like me, can see this story paralleled in modern times. But today, who will be our Esther?