In far off Midian the God of the burning bush called Moses, and there bound a forty years’ service upon his shoulders; this was the divinely conditioned emancipation of His Israel. In every place, in every circumstance, and in every day God resided in that call, and required of Moses a daily rendering of his stewardship. Through the residing of God in His own call such a call is deathless; duties and services can never change nor age, but are always the living things God makes them. Now in Pisgah, God relieves Moses of his burden. How good to enter the good land above under the benediction of Him who dwelt in the bush. “Get thee up and die in the mount.” By these words Moses was relieved of all further duty, his burden was untied by God alone, who had bound it upon him, and he passed out of time under the benediction and good will of Him who dwelt in the bush. “Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take thy crown.” There is a crown for the servant who has completed service, and the perseverance behind such completion is often found in a right and sober recognition of what constitutes our call. “Who knoweth whether Thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this. If I perish, I perish. Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.”
God’s plan for Esther.
A comparison between God’s plan for Esther and Esther’s plan for herself might prove instructive, and, briefly, we shall consider them. We all have the ability to plan; to seek security for the present with our eye upon the future, and it is probable that in this Esther was no exception. She found herself on a throne, with all the power, comfort and security associated with such a position. Quite naturally she might have expected to plan the retention of these good things. At a distance and only occasionally did God come into her view, and although her people’s sad condition might have affected her she does not appear to have given herself over to their deliverance. She might have dropped a discreet word on their behalf at a time, but no unbroken service, calling for her all, was entered upon. The question—”Who knows . . .,” along with her agonising reply changed all this, however. Her answer brought her into line with all true heroes and heroines in Israel, and the pattern of her life immediately took on the pattern of theirs. God, his people, affliction, prayer, painful effort, deliverance was now, not only the pattern of her life, but the pattern of God’s plan for her.
The grace of God reveals itself to His child in a series of surprises, and this planning of God is one of them. How we stand in utter amazement when in all its grace and beauty God’s plan in our lot, for the first time, flashes across our view. Our shortsightedness up to this point humbles us in the dust, and when we learn something of the Lord’s grand plan for us we are ready to say with David, “What can David say more.” We are struck dumb before such love, grace and wisdom. For the Lord not only plans our sure salvation in Christ but within that plan he includes one of the most honourable services; service for His coming kingdom. “A seed shall service do to him.” A single humble service, by the humblest, made in the humblest way, on behalf of one of the King’s most humble daughters raises the servant high above the highest queenship. God’s way for Esther was so loaded with heavenly honour and immortal fame that in comparison her own earth-bound plan must have appeared as rottenness itself.
Her plan, which for a moment might have secured a doubtful good, was now exchanged for that of the Ancient of days, whose goings are from everlasting. He whose ways are above our ways as the heavens are above the earth, stooped down and brought heaven and the fame of it, into the groans, fears and puny efforts of this daughter of His people. Unseen to human eyes, Esther’s true path now followed in the trail of the bright and morning star. Death threatened but her body must die in any case; but Esther, her acts, her fellowship with God, her love for His people, and her self-denial for them were deathless things. He who was the centre of her plan was the Lord of life and in Him her all was immortal.
Let us pause to ask how this glorious plan reached Esther. It came to her through the usual channel—through great affliction. It came to her through a heart filled with love to God, through a heart awakened by God to a sense of sore duty, a heart broken and humbled through a sense of its own limitations and unworthiness, a heart melted down through consuming conviction. These pangs which made her fear death, were the attendants of Esther’s enrichment.
From time to time the cause of Christ calls for the sacrifice of all we hold dear. There may be death of plans, prospects and hopes. There may be death through obscurity, ignominy, loneliness, forgetfulness, death by misunderstanding or worse, death through misrepresentation. There are deaths within a healthy body which make physical death welcome. But all this is of the weaving of Christ, and a glorious weaving it is. In every thread of it, the weaving is of His hands, the pattern is of His heart. Surely this should make every Christian think seriously of his place, position, work, and service under duty to God. “Is this place, position, work, service, or duty which I shun and refuse to consider, is it the Lord’s plan for my enrichment?” The pattern of the cross on earth is the pattern of the crown in heaven. Let us seek a sanctified view of “the path of duty” and we shall soon see that it is a path made glorious through the Lord’s reward in it.
“For all those that be righteous sown is a joyful light.” An olive is sown, hidden, lost to view, ploughed under. A period of slow growth then the fruit bearing, followed by fruit gathering. Now are the olives bruised, and beaten, and so the best oil is expressed. The next step is there in the temple. There are the seven golden pipes, and we see the seven well trimmed lamps with their one full light. Yes, and a joyful light it is, for is it not closely identified with Him who is the light of the New Jerusalem. In its clear, mellow, and friendly light all of the new creation is filled with joy. “If I perish I perish.” Is not this a ploughing under? Yet it is light sown. “The Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day.” Is this not a joyful light? We cannot separate the “light and gladness” from the “If I perish, I perish,” both are of one hand, one heart, one plan. Esther’s plan called first for suffering, as the only way by which the remainder of her plan should be worked out in joy, pondering own paths for herself and her people. How wonderful, how glorious, how loving, how like Him who directs them through the vale of Baca and on until we appear in Zion. Around the hidden purpose of His plan for us as we turn it over, “our hands drop with myrrh, our fingers with sweet smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock.” Surely He has been a long time standing there before our tardy, sordid, brutish natures became aware of His presence or of His plan. “I was in Thy sight a beast.”
Esther’s encouragement.
To every duty laid on His child God adds this blessing, power to call on Him for help. Such a cry is of the weak and the undone and the near-to-perish. His children are encouraged to cry unto Him for help in matters purely personal, but the encouragement to cry to Him under His cross is still greater. Esther’s cross rose directly from her relationship to God and His people. It was entirely of God and for God, and consequently her encouragement in prayer was very great.
In prayer, as in all things, there are rules and conditions to be observed, but it does not appear that Esther undertook any deep study of these. Nor was there any need. The conditions of true prayer were fulfilled in her. In her special circumstances she could pray only a true prayer, and pray only in an acceptable way. Under the weight of a true cross the soul that remains true to the cross and its Lord, can pray only a true prayer. He learns that since the burden laid on him is more God’s concern than his own he cannot be wrong in bringing it back to the Lord. By a sanctified and spiritual intuition the Holy Spirit teaches him this, and he finds no more reason to argue about it than a little child requires a reason to show why he should cry to his father for help.
True and successful prayer centres round two words—”Abiding and asking.” In abiding and asking, “it shall be done unto you.” “If ye abide on Me and My word abides in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Was it not from her abiding on Him, and the abiding of His word in her, that Esther’s greatest trials rose? Abiding is not the simple and easy thing which we so often imagine it to be. Abiding is not merely a case of remaining without effort and conflict. Were it so, the Lord would not have prefaced His conditions with an “if.” “If ye abide.” Abiding then is a thing of test and trial, and if we are to abide, we must expect conflict with forces which will seek to break our union with and disrupt our abiding in Christ. Surely this is true to experience.
Hell will spare no effort to terminate our abiding in Christ and our appointed place under His cross. Oh, the wrenching, the twisting, the pressure and the straining which an abiding branch will feel, under the weight of every foul wind from hell with the soul, by grace determined to abide by Christ and His cross, this is commonplace. To Esther, the cost of her abiding was the threat of death—”If I perish, I perish.” The temptation not to abide, along with the consideration making her abiding necessary, gave rise to great labour in the deep places of her soul and brought forth groanings which cannot be uttered. “Hold me and I shall be held to thee and duty, abide Thou in me and I shall abide in Thee and Thy paths.”
By grace we abide in line with His will and our duty. By grace we abide in line with the throne of grace for necessary strength, and in so abiding we may expect such wrenching and shaking as that we too will experience our own particular version of “If I perish, I perish.” Be it noted for our comfort, however, such abiding in face of such opposition is of the Lord, and in it we already have a sure token of His presence and power. “Abide and it shall be done unto you . . . I will do it.” That is the promise and your so painful abiding will soon see its fulfilment. “I require strength to abide.” It shall be done. “I require wisdom.” It shall be done. “I require a plan.” It shall be done. “I require to know what to say and how to say it. The king’s mind must be changed. Out in the provinces where neither my voice, nor my action can reach, things must be done. An unchangeable law must be countermanded. Enemies must be met. Wrongdoers must be punished. Justice must be vindicated. I shall need grace and forgiveness for my weakness, lack of zeal and disloyalty. All this affecting myself, my people, and a kingdom I shall require, but in all I seek to abide.” “Esther, queen and daughter in Israel, take courage, the word has gone forth; in so abiding, it shall be done.”
Our Lord steps into the breach. In all the glory of His saviourhood, the majesty of His sovereignty, and the tenderness of His sheltering redemption, Christ steps into the breach and it shall be done. The captain of our salvation, mighty to save, closes in with the powers of evil, and soon, yes, very soon, His challenging “It shall be done” will be changed into His triumphant “It is finished.” Yes, it shall be done as He alone can do it, fully, finally, completely and gloriously. And the means of His choice? A weak, trembling, staggering, perishing woman, who by grace fulfils the testing condition—abiding, faint—”If I perish”—yet “I will go unto the king which is not according to law.” Abide and it shall be done.
And so we have this wonderful demonstration of heaven’s way in the affairs of His church on earth. “Out of weakness they are made strong by Him, “who calls those things that are not, as though they were.” Human instruments can never be invested with omnipotence, but the cause of Christ, in the hands of the weakest, is so invested. From His throne in heaven He commands deliverance for Jacob, He speaks the word and done it is without delay. But is His throne in glory His nearest approach to His instruments on earth? No, for “greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world.” He can not be closer than His own indwelling in them. He is on the battlefield, He is in the front rank. The limitations of His instruments only make way for His omnipotence, so that their battles are his, and in His love He honours them by making His battles theirs. And so in that mystical partnership of inexhaustible strength and extreme weakness, of infinite value and profound demerit, and of never failing grace and a soul’s nothingness, there is this unique meeting in the wounds of His body the church. “Fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the church.” No, here is no death. Some time, some way, the body must perish; but a person so united to Christ and His cause can never perish. Real power is the power to persist, and that is seen alone in ultimate things. And so from the threat of perishing, and under the promise that it shall be done, we move forward to sure preservation and success.
Christ with us, doing all for us, guarantees success. Stronger encouragement than that we cannot find, but as we close we should like to taste of encouragement which is sweet as well as strong. Spurgeon has a sermon on the words, “They shall see His face,” and he names it “The Heaven of Heaven,” and surely never in the vale of faith’s feeble light is a soul so near that “face to face,” experience of which, in wonder, it beholds the face of its yoke fellow. Then in Christ’s countenance, most comely, yea in its lines, so tender, encouraging, resolute, faithful and loving, we see Him as altogether lovely. And is it not there in yoke with Him that we hear the sweetest and most engaging accents of His gracious lips? In His voice there is no hesitation, no doubt, no complaint, no fear—nothing but what is tender and reassuring. “If ye shall abide . . . it shall be done.” Yes, in every province, in every city, in every village, and in every household, it shall be done. “The Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day.” “Only thou with thy eyes shalt see, and beholder be, the angel of the Lord did wondrously. They that knew the Lord shall wax strong and do exploits. I will go in strength of the Lord, and Thine own righteousness alone I will record.” Yes, in the strength of that Lord, and in shelter of that righteousness go on to the heaviest duty, and in so going, believe that already you have a sure token that He who sent you is now with you. That in the loving purpose of His heart He intends that, along with all others like you, you too are soon to see that “It shall be done.”—Penuel.