Just one missionary invests his full life in a remote area, and a whole clan is at last evangelized. Just one legislator stands for right, and a country is saved. Only 1 strong-willed and determined voter announces, “I stand against this evil,” and a community ramps up morally and changes its direction. And only 1 girl decided it was worth the chance to smash with custom and talk her mind, and a country was saved.

The Jews have been threatened with extermination. Evil Haman has influenced King Ahasuerus with his guarantees : “Because of this plan I have set up, it is possible for me to pour cash into your treasuries and for us to rid the land of these folks who won’t bow down and worship you as the king.” Though it pandered to the king’s pride, that plan had the makings of the worst sort of holocaust. In case you wonder what impact it had on the community, return to the last phrase in chapter three : “the town of Susa was in confusion.” That needed to be a major understatement.

While Haman and Ahasuerus sat over their drinks in the palace, the public rambled in confusion and puzzlement, particularly the Jews, not unlike those in the ghetto at Warsaw and other Western european scenes of horror in the latter ’30s and early ’40s. “What’s going on here?” “Why have those in authority ordered this?” “How much worse can things get?”.

What apprehension this struck in their hearts, what fear in their minds. “How are we able to continue?” “How are we able to fight this?” This was the law of the Medes and the Persians. When an edict was issued in that time, it was final.

No-one could change this plan, even the king, but definitely no Jew. Yet, in the middle of all this, God wasn’t sleeping.

In His sovereign plan, He determined that one individual would make the difference.

So deep, so extreme must be this respect for God’s holy presence that nobody was even to touch the mountain. The people were to attend on God to chat to Moses and hear the Lord’s words thru the Lord’s servant.

This story makes it clear that we reside in a day of pitifully shallow concepts of the Lord God. Some of today’s recent Christian music leaves the idea that God is our buddy—a great pal to have in a pinch. A movie star once announced of the Lord God, “He’s my enormous Father upstairs.” One pop song asks, “What if God were simply a slob like us?” That isn’t the biblical view of the Lord God. The Puritans, that thorough folk of old, possessed a solidly biblical idea of God.

Did you know why it’s so critical for us to recover such a deferential understanding? Because a shallow view of God leads to a shallow life. But hold God in profoundest respect, and it is remarkable how deep the roots of your non secular life grow. He’s the sole smart God, the Creator, the Maker, the sovereign Lord. He informs me what to do, and I haven’t any safe option but to do it.

We have but one directive, and that’s to do His will. We confirm that truth in our times with Him. He doesn’t bow to our hurried pace, but silently He waits for us to meet His demands. And after we slow down enough to meet Him, He is happy to add amazing non secular depth to our otherwise shallow lives. What’s been your idea of the Lord? Who is your God? Be truthful, now. Does He look anything like the God of Mount Sinai?

He did not see himself killing a wicked slave driver as much as courageously striking a blow for God’s folk. His problem? He dedicated himself to the will of Almighty God, but not to the God whose will it was. You and I will become so devoted to the will of Our Lord God, we will be able to be so driven by a blind sense of purpose, that we would coincidentally take matters into our own hands and leave God totally out of the loop. Was it not right to beat that Hebrew as he did? Actually .

But when Moses stepped in and started his very own Operation Deliverance, he was energised by the flesh, not the Spirit. How simply this will occur to good folk, to males and females with the highest motives and the best intentions. In your heart, you ache to be in front of a lecture room again. With all of your soul, you need to feel that lectern underneath your hands and the minds of those keen scholars soaking up your understanding.

And all of a sudden, allegedly out of the blue, a chance presents itself. But all of the while, God waits for you to find His counsel. If you act without discerning His timing, you’ll lose the grin of divine favor. You’ll actually sense that God has something for you to do in a certain area. But if you are not vigilant, if you are not daily humbling yourself before Him, looking for His face, discerning His timing, operating under the Spirit’s control, you will push and force your way prematurely into that place where God wanted you, but you won’t have arrived in his very own time.

God led the writer of Genesis to bare the truth about every area of Joseph’s colorful life. He permits us to see what the person was actually like within, even what he was thinking. We will sum it up in one sentence : his heart was humble before God. Why does the writer add these details? First, I believe he would like us to know that Joseph was monogamous. He did not fall into the mistake of polygamy, like so many surrounding him—even his very own family. He had one wife, and she bore him 2 boys.

2nd , and more important, the writer would like us to realize the importance found in the names of Joseph’s boys. In naming his boys as he did, Joseph announced brazenly that God had made him forget all his difficulties, even those in his pa’s household. Above and beyond that, God had made him successful in a place and in circumstances that had brought him nothing apart from difficulty.

It is really tantalizing to try and get vengeance on the Reubens and the Judahs and the Dans and the Mrs Potiphars from our past. To get back at people who have stung us and stripped us and hurt us with noxious deeds and foul words. Instead, we must give birth to a Manasseh.

Could it be that it is time to ask the Lord God to erase the stings in your memory? Only he will be able to do that. Then it’ll be time to go on to give birth to an Ephraim. To recollect how God has extravagantly sanctified us. Talk about a positive, attesting name : “God has made me fruitful.” But it does not stop there. With the plural ending, this word conveys the idea of double benefit—multiple blessings. It’s what we might call “superabundance.” And it was God who did it all.

Take time next weekend to read again, slowly and scrupulously, through Sat.’s Scripture reading2 Corinthians 11-13. List the issues the apostle Paul endured. I’ve been in work and difficulty, through many restless nights, in hunger and thirst, frequently without food, in cold and exposure. If I need to boast, I can boast of what applies to my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is sanctified forever, knows that I’m really not lying.