God's Dice - Audio
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The message this morning is titled, "God's Dice." You know, it looks a lot like when we're living in the day-to-day world it can look, a lot like things make no sense, that it's all just a roll of the dice. I was watching a movie last night, and there was a character who 18 months before had been in a terrible car accident and was paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. And so she, you know, she has a good sense of humor about it, but she says it in a moment of sort of a confession, she says, "The more I live, the longer I think about it, the more it seems as though there's no rhyme or reason to anything." And in the event of modern physics with quantum mechanics, we do believe that at some level, at the subatomic level, there is a certain amount of chaos, of randomness, of quote-unquote indeterminacy that is at the bottom of some of our physical world. So there's even a sense that from the standpoint of modern physics, there is an element of chance of randomness to the world, and it can sometimes seem like, at the macro level, at our level, that it's all just dice. Well last week, we found out that the Jews in SUSE, in Persia, have an enemy. His name is Haman, and we're going to see what he plans for them today. If you wouldn't mind standing, let's read the text together. We're going to start out with just the finished chapter 3, I think it's 3, 7 to 13 or 15, something like that. Let's read it together. In the first month, which is the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of the King Ahasuris, also known as Xerxes, to us, they cast poor. That is dice before Haman to determine the day and the month until it fell on the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar. Then Haman said to King Ahasuris, "There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from all other peoples, and they don't keep your laws, King. Therefore it's not fitting for the King to let them remain." If it pleases the King, let it decree be written that they be destroyed. And I will pay 10,000 ounces of silver into the hands of those who do the work to bring it into the King's Treasuries. So the King took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, the son of Hamadatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. And the King said to Haman, "The people are given to you, and the money is yours anyway, so do with them as seems good to you." Then the King's scribes were called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and decree was written according to all the Haman commanded to the King's satraps, to the governors who were over each province, to the officials of all people, to every province, according to its script, and to every people in their language. In the name of King Ahasuras it was written, and sealed with the King's signet ring, and the letters were sent by couriers into all the King's provinces to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day. From the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their possessions, a copy of the document was to be issued as law in every province, being published for all people, that they should be ready for that day to sharpen their knives. The couriers went out, hastened by the King's command, and the decree was proclaimed on Shushan, that is Sousa, the citadel, so the King and Haman sat down to drink. But the city of Shushan was thrown into confusion, you may be seated. I just want to go through the text just one time, just pull out a few things that are interesting for us that can help give us a sense of the shape of this story.
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In his message on Esther 3:7-4:3, Pastor Tom discusses the godly sorrow that the Jews have experienced, and the many attempts that have been made to annihilate them, underscoring the Lord's sovereign protection of His chosen people.