Tag: Esther

Book Plunge: Discerning the Voice of God Chapter 8

Will God’s voice challenge you? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Early on in this chapter, Shirer presents a list of challenges people were given when God spoke to them. One mention is notable and that is that Esther was asked to plead her case before the king.

Really?

Esther is actually my favorite book of the Bible. It reads like an adventure novel which made it so exciting for me the first time I got to it. It’s also a book where you see God behind the scenes. God nowhere shows up explicitly in the narrative. This might sound pedantic, but if Shirer is not even getting basic facts about Scripture right, how can I trust her interpretation on more complex matters?

Shirer then goes on to say that one of the ways she’s learned how to tell God is speaking to her is when she does something that is a challenge to her pushing her beyond her boundaries. Unfortunately, there is no Scripture for this. We are just to trust what the nature of God is like based on Shirer’s personal experience.

Yet she goes on to say this:

I’ve learned, however, not to tell anyone else ahead of time what I’m planning to talk about, because more than once the Lord has decided to change things up on me. Hours before, sometimes minutes before I’m ready to take the platform, He will impress on me the need to address an entirely different topic. Based on what He’s been doing at the event, He leads me in another direction than the one I’d been planning to go.

Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 120). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

She follows this up with saying that that’s scary. She is right, but not for the reasons she thinks she is. It is scary because first off, this means you can’t trust Shirer to speak at your event because you could hire her to speak on X and she will speak on Y instead. Second, what she is saying is that whatever she is speaking on, God has told her to speak on it, and hey, who are we mere mortals to judge?

Oh. She also describes this as “Winging it.”

For some reason, I can’t imagine Moses getting up before Pharaoh and “winging it.”

Then, she goes further and kicks it up a notch and says explicitly so if you think I have misinterpreted her, think again.

But I can testify to you from firsthand experience that every time I’ve responded to that Holy Spirit inclination, every time I’ve thrown myself headlong into His power and anointing, it hasn’t been comfortable, but the words have come. Maybe not as fluently or articulately as I would have preferred, but they’ve come. And instead of just being my well-planned words, they were His words, flowing strongly and supernaturally through a person who could not have done that on her own. God gives me the courage. God gives me the power. And I kick at another little piece of that cocoon until, wouldn’t you know it, I’m flying on the wings of His supernatural strength. (emphasis mine)

Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 120). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

You hear that? Shirer is speaking God’s very words to you? Now in Old Testament times, she would have been putting her very life on the line. In modern times, a lot of Christians will read that and not consider the seriousness of what is being said and encourage other Christians to read Shirer.

We do not live in a culture that takes God seriously if we can speak so flippantly about Him.

So what about the question from the last blog?

Interesting, isn’t it, that the teaching of this chapter comes on the heels of our talking about God’s voice being characterized by “peace.” So which is it? When I’m trying to hear God speak, do I expect a sense of His peace, or do I wait for Him to scare the living daylights out of me?

Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 122). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

So how? Unfortunately, I read the section and I’m still not sure how Shirer reconciles these. She tells us the way of God will work, but it will also not be the easy way. Could it be, and this is just me thinking out loud, that we have a hard time saying what Scripture says on the matter because this is a matter that is foreign to Scripture?

Christians. Avoid people who speak about God flippantly. Do not take people lightly who take the idea of God telling them something lightly.

Next time, we’ll talk about what it means for God’s Word to exude truth.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Hidden in Plain Sight: Esther and a Marginalized Hermeneutic

What do I think of Robert P. Debelak Jr.’s book published by Wipf and Stock? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Nearly everyone who is a Christian has a favorite Bible book. Many point to John or to Romans. I recently had someone surprise me who told me they really like Leviticus. If you ask me, the book that I seem to get very excited about whenever it comes up in my daily Bible reading is Esther.

I still remember sitting at a personal table I had in the living room as a young child going through my Bible and going straight through and coming to this book. Naturally, I had no idea what this ten chapter book was about, but I decided to go through it. That’s exactly what I did. I read all of the book in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down.

The book read like a modern adventure novel and has comedy in the irony that takes place in it. Something I found fascinating that I read about in the intro to the book the first time I read it was that God was not mentioned. In an odd way, this adds to the appeal of the book because you know God is present in the narrative, but here He is behind the scenes. (The king just happens to have insomnia and just happens to read about Mordecai saving him and then Haman just happens to be in the king’s court at the time wanting to ask about hanging Mordecai?) I could go on and on like that, but you get the idea.

In this book, Debelak takes us through and just encourages us to read it through the lens of margnizalization. What is especially noteworthy is the contrast of the women to him in the book and to those deemed less otherwise. Vashti is mentioned briefly in the first chapter and yet disappears as Esther takes her place and Esther has even more control over the narrative. At the start, Vashti is deposed for not following the orders of the king and in the end, it is Esther that is giving out the orders. Vashti is called to come into the king’s presence and refuses. Esther is not asked to come and risks her life and is accepted.

Mordecai is also such a figure. We know nothing of him other than he is Esther’s uncle of the tribe of Benjamin. He is seen as a loner figure who just sits outside the king’s gate and checks on Esther, but he is the one who has the gall to stand up to Haman (In every way as he refuses to bow down to Haman and give him honor) which brings about the events of the book. If Mordecai had just been like everyone else, nothing would have happened and Esther would just have enjoyed a nice royal life and Haman would not have had a plot to kill all the Jews.

Also, Debelak does not make any references such as “And here is how we see Jesus in this passage” or at least none that I remember. This is important because we too often do jump to that instead of just seeing what the passage means. Questions of historicity do matter, but Debelak doesn’t focus on those either but rather just looks at what the text means in the setting that it claims to take place in.

I found this an interesting perspective on Esther and I am interested in reading anything I can on the book. It is one I wish we talked about more in the church as I cannot recall one time I have ever heard a sermon on it. Sadly, most people don’t know about this book in the Old Testament. If you don’t, maybe you should dust off that Bible and go through it and see if you read it as I did as a youth back in the day.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

My Favorite Book of Scripture

What book of Scripture do I enjoy reading the most? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I figured I’d write something on my favorite book of the Bible since I don’t think I have done that before. Now some of you are already trying to guess, which is fine. I would do the same thing. Is it one of the Gospels? Maybe it’s the adventure of Acts. Maybe it’s one of the epistles. Perhaps you like the idea of end-times in Revelation?

No to all of those.

Well, maybe you like one of the prophets most like Isaiah. Maybe you like the Exodus account or maybe you like Song of Songs so much or Proverbs. Again, these are all good guesses, but they are still wrong. The one I like most is one most of us don’t think about, but we should.

As a child going through Scripture for the first time from Genesis to Revelation, I came across the book of Esther not knowing anything about it. As I started reading through it, I could not stop. It was like reading an adventure novel and I had to know how the story turned out. I read it all in one sitting.

Today when I get to that book, it is still a great moment of joy for me. This book is full of excitement and I have been going through it at night though using my main method of two verses at a time so I can think even better about it. I have not been disappointed so far.

Something fascinating about the book also is that God is absent in the book. Well, He’s absent in name. Now I know some people say if you go back to the original languages and look a certain way, God is smuggled in. They could be right, but the name of God does not really appear written in a normal way. God is supposedly absent, but He’s also ever-present.

When you go through the book, you see so many little coincidences that take place. What if Vashti had not refused the king’s command? Would Haman have succeeded in his plot? What if Mordecai had not reported to Esther about the officials wanting to assassinate the king? What if the king had not had insomnia and asked the royal records to be read to him?

There is also great irony in that everything is reversed. The villain of the story gets what he has coming to him. The Jews who are the victims at the start turn out to be the victors. Mordecai who refuses to honor Haman is himself given great honor recognizable by all.

Also interesting to me is that Esther is described as a very beautiful woman, which I don’t doubt was essential to her winning the heart of the king. One of the highest compliments the Bible usually gives to a woman is to describe her as beautiful. Beautiful women play a part in influencing the society around them as today for good or for evil.

God’s absence is something I think important to this story. It’s how we will look at our own lives one day. Events that seem random and unrelated at the time will one day turn out to be greatly related. We often don’t know what God is doing going into a situation. It’s coming out that we know what’s going on.

I hope I have encouraged you if you haven’t read this book of Scripture to read it. I think Christians should read all of Scripture. There are parts that we will honestly like more than others. For me, Esther is my favorite one to go through. I wind up wondering about events going on in my own life and how those can be working together for a greater good I cannot fathom.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Esther, An Honor-Shame Paraphrase

What do I think of Jayson Georges’s self-published book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Esther is actually my favorite book of the Bible. As a child, when I was going through the Bible for the first time, I got to Esther not having a clue what was in it and I just could not stop. It read like a modern adventure novel. When I saw that my friend Jayson Georges had a paraphrase of this book from an honor-shame perspective, I asked for a copy which he supplied.

I was not disappointed. I get to see my favorite book of Scripture through new eyes and eyes I have wanted to see the Bible through more and more, those of honor and shame in Jewish Mediterranean culture. Georges has read the best material he can on this and gone through Esther showing how honor and shame play a great part in it.

In our Western context, we only see things from that perspective for the most part. The great tragedy of being in our culture is that we think everyone thinks just like us and when there are missing pieces, as there always are, we fill them in with information from our own culture. After all, why should we think the rest of the world is different?

Looking at Esther shows a whole new world. The feast at the start is not just a feast. It is a way for the king of Susa to show how much honor he has and to receive honor from his associates. Men today might laugh at the idea that Vashti going against the wishes of the king would cause women all across the empire to disrespect their husbands and thus lead to chaos, but it was no joke. It’s not a sitcom being written. It’s maintaining the order of hierarchy that the society thrives on.

The constant back and forth between Mordecai and Haman fit into this as well. In this, you have the reversals of honor and shame. Haman is to be the most honored of all because he’s practically as close to the king as you can get without sitting on the throne yourself. Mordecai meanwhile is a nobody resident in the empire. That’s one more reason Haman is not content with just killing Mordecai. After all, he is the great Haman. He should go for something grander than that, so why not go and kill all of Mordecai’s people which would also fit in with Haman’s own heritage as an enemy of the Jews?

If there was something I didn’t like about the paraphrase, it’s that it talks about God. That sounds odd for a book of the Bible, but the wonder of Esther is that you know God is working behind the scenes, but He is never explicitly mentioned in the text. I was troubled then to see God mentioned in the text as that took away from me one of my favorite aspects of the book in that the reader is the one who has to work to see the hand of God at work and then we ask, could He be at work in our own lives in ways that we don’t know about?

Despite that, this is a wonderful idea Georges has had. So far, two books have been done from an honor-shame perspective. I look forward to the rest of them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters