Esther Lesson 15: When the Lord Is On Your Side, Pt 3 :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: April 20, 2021 by RR7

Chapter 9: 6-17

“And in Shushan the citadel the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred men. ⁷ Also Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, ⁸ Poratha, Adalia, Aridatha, ⁹ Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai, and Vajezatha— ¹⁰ the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews—they killed; but they did not lay a hand on the plunder. ¹¹ On that day the number of those who were killed in Shushan the citadel was brought to the king. ¹² And the king said to Queen Esther, ‘The Jews have killed and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the citadel, and the ten sons of Haman. What have they done in the rest of the king’s provinces? Now what is your petition? It shall be granted to you. Or what is your further request? It shall be done.’

¹³ Then Esther said, ‘If it pleases the king, let it be granted to the Jews who are in Shushan to do again tomorrow according to today’s decree, and let Haman’s ten sons be hanged on the gallows.’ ¹⁴ So the king commanded this to be done; the decree was issued in Shushan, and they hanged Haman’s ten sons. ¹⁵ And the Jews who were in Shushan gathered together again on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and killed three hundred men at Shushan; but they did not lay a hand on the plunder.¹⁶ The remainder of the Jews in the king’s provinces gathered together and protected their lives, had rest from their enemies, and killed seventy-five thousand of their enemies; but they did not lay a hand on the plunder. ¹⁷ This was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. And on the fourteenth of the month, they rested and made it a day of feasting and gladness.

We have been exploring this great story from the Bible over the past few months, and we are fast coming to the end. Today we will look at the final part of ‘When the Lord is on your side.’

As we finished up last month, the battle was just about to get heated up. Esther and Mordecai were able to get the message out to the Jews in the 127 provinces of Persia that they are allowed to defend themselves. They did so quite effectively. But make no mistake that this was the Lord who gained the victory and not mere men. But the Lord does use men and women to do His bidding; Esther, Mordecai and the Jews who stood to fight were used by Him to rescue the Jews from sure destruction. Now, the Lord does not need us men to fight battles; we are privileged to be used by God in His ways and in His plans.

A bloody day in Shushan, verses 6-16

One of the hardest things to learn in life is that you have enemies. We all long to be liked, and many of us spend our whole lives wanting to fit in. But more often than not, especially for God’s people, to fit in requires compromise. Mordecai was not one to compromise his principles, and he, as a good father figure, taught Esther the same. When you stand for what is right, then you will begin to see that you are not very popular among those that hate righteousness.

The Jews worshipped God, Jehovah, the God of Heaven, and in every little town they went to, even as slaves, they would either erect some sort of synagogue or meet on the Sabbath by a place to face Jerusalem and pray. In Psalm 137, we find a song that they would sing while they were slaves in Babylon. They passed on their faith and trust in God to their children. Like all Jewish men, Mordecai would have worn the blue fringe on his clothing, identifying him as a Jewish man (see Numbers 15: 37-41). This was how one was able to identify a Jewish man in any city anywhere in the world; Mordecai would have stood out.

The people in the Persian kingdom would have been constantly reminded that they were not worshipping the true God by the Jews. These weirdos refused pork and shrimp. They won’t eat stuff offered to idols; they are just different, and as we can see, they were hated. Some 75,000 men were killed in the two days that the Jews defended themselves. In the capital city of Shushan alone, they killed 800 men who attacked them, along with the 10 sons of Haman. Imagine that; Mordecai walked among 800 enemies each day as he stood in the gate and conducted the business of the kingdom. These men hated the Jews, and even though they knew the Jews were going to defend themselves, they still attacked.

In the same manner, as we stand for the Lord, we will see the enemies of the Lord come out. In our time right now, we are seeing the enemies of the Lord really show themselves. There is a real hatred for the things of God. We are surrounded by politicians and some of the public in general that hate the people of God. They hate that we won’t fall in line with the ‘woke’ mentality of the masses. We refuse to accept a myriad of genders, and we refuse to accept marriage between anyone but one man and one woman.

Just this week, I read where there are people in the state of New York who are suing for the right to marry their adult children. Yes, you read that right; research it yourself. The hatred for truth will grow and grow as sin takes an open stand in our society. Make no mistake; the world around us hates us. They hate our stand, and they hate our truths. We are the enemy of those that hate the truth. The truth may set you free in Jesus, but it will make you a target to those that hate absolutes.

The sons of Haman, verses 10 and 14

If you go back and take a look at 1 Samuel 15:1-3, we find that God commanded Saul the King to kill ALL of the Amalekites.

“Samuel also said unto Saul, The Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now, therefore, hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

These events in the life of Esther were never supposed to happen. God told Saul to kill ALL of the Amalekites, but he did not. About 400 men escaped, and over the years, Haman was the offspring of the survivors. They had passed on the hatred for the Jews for generation after generation, and Haman’s actions were the culmination of Saul’s disobedience. God knew the future, and He was cutting the head off the snake before the snake ever existed. But disobedience always has consequences; for Saul, it cost him his life, the life of his sons, and the kingdom of Israel. For Esther and Mordecai, hundreds of years later, they had to go through these harrowing events.

Esther, Mordecai, and the Jews who stood up and fought finished the job that Saul was supposed to do. They killed the enemies, and in particular, they killed the 10 sons of Haman. There would be no hatred passed on in this time, no constant looking over the shoulder wondering when the next attack would come. No, they decided to end it all here and now.

There comes a time in our lives, our homes, and yes, even in our societies that require the hard decisions. While we are supposed to be meek and lowly, we are not to be doormats. The Apostle Paul stood up for his rights as a citizen of Rome when he was wrongly arrested and was about to be flogged.

Acts 22:25 “And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who stood by, ‘Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman, and uncondemned?'”

It is essential that we know our rights and stand for them, or they will be taken from us and our children. Somewhere along the line, we need to stand up and say enough. Will we be marginalized? Yes, but that is the nature of true Christianity. We are never going to be mainstream; and as the majority of society goes farther and farther away from absolute truth, we will be hated all the more. The people whose eyes have become accustomed to the darkness hate the light. These people, who have built their lives on truth and have bullied society into believing that they are right when everyone knows they are wrong, hate those that tell them they are wrong. We are they who are supposed to stand up and stand out. They will do all they can to silence us.

Not long ago, I was having a conversation with an acquaintance, and she pointed out that a lot of what is happening today is similar to what happened to the Jews in Germany during WW2. Many of the railway tracks transporting the Jews to the gas chambers ran past churches, and she has once asked how they did this without the Lord’s churches standing up. Some had told her that the churches sang louder as the trains passed by so as to drown out what they knew was happening. This is not true Christianity.

I hope that, like Esther and Mordecai, I will stand and fight. As I have told you before, I am actively praying that the Lord will help me to stand and not shrink when the fight comes to us. I pray the Lord will give me the power to stand and not lay down, the power to maybe not kill my enemies as in the case of Haman and his sons, but to silence them with God’s truth; shut up their mouth with godly wisdom as the Holy Spirit gives me speech, and if need be, to die for the truth. I know that my flesh is weak, and I need Him. But what we do learn here is that our enemies are beatable if we would stand. All it takes for evil to prosper is for God’s people to do nothing.

They rested, verse 17

Resting comes after the fighting, not before. For too many of us, we have been at rest for too long, and now the desire to fight is gone.

We have stood by as they allowed gay marriage, but we did nothing. We just let it go. When guys like me told us it was a slippery slope and that this was just the beginning, they called us fearmongers and conspiracy theorists. But now, they are people actively looking to marry animals and even their own kids. They began teaching sex education, not just the mechanics of the body, but pushing agendas like sexuality and diverse sexual deviation. And we sat silently, only to find out that in Ontario, for instance, the man who helped design or oversaw that sex education curriculum was a pedophile. He was not educating; he was grooming our kids. But we stood silent and rested. We had openly gay persons run for public office, and rather than vote no, too many Christians stayed home and did not vote, effectively voting for the enemy. We rested rather than stand.

There is a time for resting, and now is not the time. When we have won the victory, then we can rest. Right now, we have a Gospel-preaching church in Edmonton, Alberta, that is barricaded by the government so that they cannot meet to hold worship, and they are using the COVID restrictions as a means to do this. These are not laws, and they are not even consistent in their message. But that dear pastor led his people to assemble and worship outside at the facility, and they worshipped there. They refused to rest; they stood and obeyed God.

We are not at the time for rest here in Canada and the free world; we are the last bastion of freedom. And if the Lord’s churches rest, we will lose the freedoms we have. The time for rest will come, but now it is the time to stand.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

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Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

The Only Way to Know God :: By Tom Tillman

Published on: April 20, 2021 by RR7

We know that the Lord Jesus will come for us, His true Church, at any moment, but when you suddenly stand before Him… will you know Him intimately, or will He be somewhat a stranger to you? To Jeremiah, God said: “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ says the LORD…” (Jer 29:12-14). He would only be found by the one who sought Him with all their heart.

What does that even mean, to seek God with your whole heart? Most obviously, it means that we are not covering over sin in our heart, holding on to some sin that so easily entangles us:

“Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isa 59:1).

But it means something even deeper: anything that we cherish and hold in our hearts that is more precious to us than having intimacy with God… something that pulls our attention away from God: some favorite idolatry… perhaps a secret attraction to some cherished sin or other… a thing that draws our thoughts and intentions away from God and’ things above.’ Maybe it’s a certain kind of book or movie or TV or medication or wicked websites or things we did before we were saved: lying, gambling, cursing, cheating… but every sin, eventually, has a way of bubbling up to the surface and displaying itself for what it, and we, really are:

“…you have sinned against the LORD; and be sure your sin will find you out” (Num 32:23). “… You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance” (Psa 90:8).

Inside our hearts are many little rooms and cubby holes into which we insert the many different things we hold dear. When we come to God in prayer, we can only seek Him and find Him when we come with all the many doors of those rooms and cubby holes wide open to the light of His inspection. If we keep any door, at all, closed and reserved only for our engagement, He will hide His face from us. He will not fellowship with sin, deception or darkness. “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.”

When we hold back those secret places in our hearts, they act as a blacklight searchlight shining out rays of darkness which every demon anywhere near us can clearly see, and it acts as an invitation to them to come to us, to come to our homes, to come to those we love… they act as ‘demon bait,’ smelly, sticky demon bait.

Only when we rid ourselves of those things can we know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death… only when we crucify our own flesh and die to those things… being conformed to His death (Philippians 3).

See this picture:

Every unsaved person, as he is trudging along on his race from birth to physical death, or the Rapture, is a shadow of darkness living within a heavy layer of skin that is so cumbersome, even his skin weighs him down.
His feet are covered with weighty boots of his favorite sin, pornography.
His trousers, which feel like 50 pounds, are the result of another favored sin, alcohol.
His belt, which is far too tight, causes him to feel as if he is being cut in two, the result of sorcery, drugs.
He wears a shirt that feels like it was woven from lead thread by another beloved sin, anger.
His tunic and vest are both so heavy that he never removes them so that he will never have to re-lift them, also from more cherished sins, enmity and strife.
He wears a great coat that is so heavy, he can barely move, rebelliousness, and yet he trudges on toward his death.
On his head he wears a hat that is so heavy, it droops to below his shoulders: another sin he believes is hidden, hatred and unforgiveness.
On his hands, his heavy gloves completely impair any dexterity in his hands, some of his most difficult sins, jealousy and envy.

This is the man who wanders through darkness, believing he is headed toward some goal when, in fact, he is simply plodding along from one opportunity to sin to the next, always planning his next recreation in sin; that is his entire life story. One day, God reveals Himself to the man and calls him to Himself. The man falls to his knees in repentance and faith and is suddenly born again. Now, instead of a darkened shadow, he has become a child of light; his inner man glows with the Glory of God. Now he recognizes a goal that has been set before him; now, his deepest desire is to know the One Who so graciously transformed him from darkness to light, but he still wears all the heavy, heavy outerwear of his life of sin. God never promised to remove those things from him but, rather, commanded him to remove them himself:

“Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you’ve been called.” “Walk worthy of the Lord.” “Set your mind on things above, not on things of the Earth!” (Ephesians 4:1; Colossians 1:10; Colossians 3:2).

As he begins his new journey, he begins to understand instinctively that the only real satisfaction in this life that he could ever know is to, in fact, learn to know God intimately, but to do so, he must seek Him Who promised to be found by him if he would seek Him with all his heart, if he would bring his whole heart to God.

He begins his journey weighed down with all his sin, but now, at least, he has God’s Holy Spirit living within him to strengthen and enable him to extricate himself from those sins, one by one. He begins to recognize the weight of his various garments, how they are all making it impossible to know God, to come to God with his whole heart because it is his heart that is weighed down with all these dark, ugly things.

He sees that the first things he must discard are his jealousy and envy; they have kept him ensnared for all his life. Only when he removes them will his hands be free to begin removing so many other sins. As he just begins to be able to move more freely, he sees that he can remove his heavy hat of hatred and unforgiveness that so fills his mind. Now, as he begins to think more clearly, he understands that the next most difficult sin to abandon will be his overcoat of rebelliousness, which is now, to him, so obviously the fruit of his envy, jealousy and hatred. As he picks up speed, he’s never known such freedom, and yet he recognizes that there are still great weights encumbering him.

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…” (Heb 12:1-2).

With his rebelliousness confessed and forsaken, he can now remove his tunic and vest of enmity and strife; as he runs faster, with the wind in his hair, he is able to begin to throw off his heavy shirt of anger. Compared to what his life used to feel like, he feels lighter than air, but now, God is able to dig deeply into his soul and encourage him to leave the things which really have bound him from his youth: his belt and his trousers of alcohol and sorcery, which is drugs, and finally, God is able to dig to the deepest reaches of his heart and reveal the stain of his heavy, heavy boots of pornography. All of those different sins had been kept in the different little closed compartments of his heart.

Now he is able to come to God with his whole heart, opened and laid bare, for which God has waited so long and, as promised, God is revealing Himself to the man; now, instead of sinful things, the man’s deepest longing is to know God more deeply and intimately as he daily watches and waits for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Rapture, when the man will finally know as he has been known, to finally be forever in the presence of His Savior Who died and gave Himself for him, Who had always loved him, even while he was a sinner in darkness.

“…that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me” (Phil 3:12). The thing Paul longs to lay hold of, that for which Jesus Christ laid hold of him, is the Rapture, or death, the moment when Paul’s physical body would finally be transformed into a glorious, eternal body, to finally be forever with his Lord.

Do you want to know God? The only way to know God is to come to Him with your whole heart, keeping nothing back from Him. He will come soon; better to know Him intimately now.

Hearts of Love Ministries

https://heartsoflove.org