Author: Ryan Hale

The Magi, the wise men coming from east of Jerusalem, saw the star that would mark the place where the Messiah would be born. They were expecting the star. They were looking forward to the time when the Messiah would come into the world, the one that would be the king of the Jews.

In this particular case, there was a physical star, a marker for the Messiah. He was specifically called out by light, a light shining through the darkness of night to show that the Messiah had come. He would bring light, spiritual light, and would even call himself the light. But he was also marked by the light.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

Matthew 2:1-2

This corresponds with other passages in the Old Testament that talk about the Messiah who would come. At some points, the Messiah is referred to as a star himself, the one producing the light. For example, here is a prophecy from the book of Numbers that speaks specifically of the Messiah as a star:

I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near.
A star will come out of Jacob;
a scepter will rise out of Israel.
He will crush the foreheads of Moab,
the skulls of all the people of Sheth.

Numbers 24:17

Interestingly, this prophecy came from Balaam, a wicked prophet who spoke true prophecies, yet was condemned for giving advice to Balak how Israel could be cursed through leading them to idolatry and sexual immorality. We continue to see that God can even use evil for his glory or for the good of his people.

In this scripture, we see that the star rises out of Jacob, holding the scepter of a king, coming out of Israel. This prophecy, spoken thousands of years before Christ, would speak of Jesus. From the nation of Israel would come the star, would come the king of kings. He would be the ruler over all of the earth. He would be the star that, in the midst of darkness, would give light to all mankind.

It is difficult to even begin to imagine the position that Joseph was in. He is engaged to Mary, and suddenly, she shows up to be pregnant. He knew that the two of them hadn’t been together yet. There is just one explanation that remains… There has been another guy.

Joseph wanted to call it off, to divorce her, although for some reason he decided to go about it quietly. Matthew says that he didn’t want to expose Mary to public disgrace. That seems strange, given that public disgrace was sure to come to her one way or another at this point!

An angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him not to worry. No man had been with Mary. It had been the Holy Spirit who had placed this baby within her. He should take her as his wife and they should call the baby Jesus, meaning God with us.

Matthew, as he is writing this account, points out that:

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

Matthew 1:22-23

But what does that mean? God with us?

I think most people, if you were to ask them, where is God? They might point up into the sky. He is up there…far from us. Away from us. He is not here. He is there.

And, in some fashion, in some way of speaking, that may be true. God is in heaven on his throne. We don’t know precisely, geographically speaking, where heaven is, and we probably can’t even assign a geography to it. It is in the spiritual, heavenly realms, which we don’t precisely even know where that is located, or if you can even assign a location to it.

However, this is different. Even if our idea is that God is there… actually, the news is quite different. Instead of, or maybe better said, in addition to there, God is here. He is here, with us.

God made the decision to come to earth. The Father was still there in the heavenly realms, yet he also came to earth to become a man. The Holy Spirit placed God within Mary and that baby, that was himself God, became a man.

How does that work? I don’t know. I’m not sure that I can explain it precisely, how it could be that God could also become a man. But this is exactly what the scripture said, that Jesus would be given the name Immanuel, meaning God with us. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and without a man, a baby was formed. This is God with us.

And yet, that isn’t the end. Even though Jesus returned to be with the Father, God is still with us! As we believe, the Holy Spirit comes to give us a new birth, and the Holy Spirit continues to live within us even today! God is with us even now. God remains with us as we go from one step to the next. He is with us at all times and in every way. God is Immanuel. He is with us.

Now that Haman had been hung on the pole, Xerxes turns back to Esther to ask her if there is anything further that she wants to do, anything further that needed to be done. She tells him, in fact, there was more to do. There in the city of Susa, they would need to continue to pursue the rest of the enemies until they were completely destroyed. There wouldn’t be any rest until this was done.

And so there in Susa, this went on for two days while, outside of that city, the fighting against their enemies only last one day. Following that fighting, though, Mordecai called upon the Jews to rest and to celebrate. They would give thanks to God and give gifts to one another in a celebration that would be called Purim, a celebration that even continues today.

The root word for this festival is the word “pur”, which is the word “lot” in English. Purim is the plural, or “lots” in English. It was said that Haman and the enemies of the Jews had cast the pur for the destruction of the Jews:

So the Jews agreed to continue the celebration they had begun, doing what Mordecai had written to them. For Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them and had cast the pur (that is, the lot ) for their ruin and destruction. But when the plot came to the king’s attention, he issued written orders that the evil scheme Haman had devised against the Jews should come back onto his own head, and that he and his sons should be impaled on poles. (Therefore these days were called Purim, from the word pur. ) Because of everything written in this letter and because of what they had seen and what had happened to them, the Jews took it on themselves to establish the custom that they and their descendants and all who join them should without fail observe these two days every year, in the way prescribed and at the time appointed. These days should be remembered and observed in every generation by every family, and in every province and in every city. And these days of Purim should never fail to be celebrated by the Jews—nor should the memory of these days die out among their descendants.

Esther 9:23-28

The Jews continue to celebrate this day even today, on the 14th for the Jews outside of Jerusalem, and on the 15th in Jerusalem and some other similar cities because they are a walled cities, like that of Susa because of the additional day that they fought against the enemies of the Jews.

A couple of observations and applications:

First, it is interesting that the Jews chose and used the word Purim for the establishment of this holiday. They are using a word that suggested that they would be destroyed. Instead of a word like “independence” or “salvation” or something that focuses on the positive, they instead chose the word that focused on their destruction as the word that they used to remember and celebrate that day.

For us, regardless of how we do it, we must remember God’s faithfulness. Except in the time of prayer and fasting, we don’t see a direct interaction with God in this particular story of Esther, but we do see that God remained faithful to the Jews, saving them from the complete destruction that was planned for them by Haman.

We also must look back, remembering what God has done for us and how he has been faithful to us throughout our days.

But even further, we must remember that we also have been saved from destruction. Just like the Jews, we also were marked for destruction, in fact an eternal destruction by the justice and wrath of God. But Jesus came and gave us salvation, rescuing us from the punishment of God for our sins. So in the same way that the Jews celebrate their rescue from destruction at the hand of Haman and the rest of their enemies, we also must celebrate and remember our salvation from destruction as a result of our sin.

The difference between friend and enemy struck me in the story of Esther. Clearly, Haman is a man who desired power, who desired fame and authority, and probably ever-greater riches to accompany those desires. Haman, therefore, required that others give him honor, akin even to worship, something that Mordecai was not willing to give him, so Haman set out to destroy both Mordecai and all of the Jewish people in the kingdom.

Obviously, Haman is a foe, an enemy, and Esther clearly calls him out in front of the king as he asks her what request she would make of him:

Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have found favor with you, Your Majesty, and if it pleases you, grant me my life—this is my petition. And spare my people—this is my request. For I and my people have been sold to be destroyed, killed and annihilated. If we had merely been sold as male and female slaves, I would have kept quiet, because no such distress would justify disturbing the king.”

King Xerxes asked Queen Esther, “Who is he? Where is he—the man who has dared to do such a thing?”

Esther said, “An adversary and enemy! This vile Haman!”

Esther 7:3-6

On the other hand, we have Xerxes. He is the ruling king. So far, he doesn’t seem to have a specific desire to destroy the Jews, except to the extent that he agreed to allow Haman to make the declaration to kill the Jews in his name. It isn’t even clear to me that Xerxes knew which people that Haman was referring to. Haman even identified these people as those that don’t follow the king’s laws, conveniently leaving out the fact that the law that was being disobeyed was the one in which they must bow down to him, to Haman.

So Xerxes is a bit of a strange case because you could make the case, I think, that he is a friend. But at the same time, we have to recognize that he is the head of the kingdom that is ruling over the Israelites, over the people of God. So, in the same way that the Jews would have seen the Romans as their clear enemy in the time of Jesus, we might also see the Persian kingdom as the clear enemy of the Jews in that time.

Yet at the same time, we also see that, in the end, Xerxes relents to Esther, and also honors Mordecai. The Jews are allowed to not only live, but to defend themselves against enemies that come against them and gather together as a people.

So is Xerxes an enemy? That is a little less clear.

In our work, we connect regularly with people who are working against the kingdom that we serve. We routinely meet with adherents to Islam, those that belong to Mormonism, and many others. It is tempting, in the midst of those conversations, to consider ourselves enemies to these people. Their aims are not our aims. They may even be working against us specifically, attempting to ruin what we are trying to do, attempting to make us fail, if not worse.

But there are a few scriptures within the New Testament that these situations remind me of, scriptures that remind me how we should regard friends and enemies, most specifically our enemies. These are some of the more difficult verses in the Bible, in my opinion:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Ephesians 6:12

Clearly, as believers, we are called to look beyond the flesh directly in front of us to the spiritual reality that sits behind that is driving the people to do what they are doing.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:38-48

Jesus goes even further here. He says that we must show love to our enemies. If someone slaps you, you simply turn the other cheek so that they can slap that one too. Or if they force you to do something, you do that and then double the work. Go an extra mile for your enemy.

And one more…

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Romans 5:9-11

We ourselves were God’s enemies, and what did he do? He came for us. He came to die for us…. while we were his enemies! If ever there was a “turn the other cheek” moment, wasn’t that it? Or didn’t Jesus go an extra mile, and then an extra mile, and then an extra mile yet?

So may we learn from Jesus and his example. Our flesh cries out justice! But our king says to let him take care of the justice. We, instead, need to rightly represent our king in the way that he calls us to be and to do.

The Jews had a massive problem. An insolvable problem. Mordecai would not bow down and give honor to Haman, so Haman despised Mordecai and he manipulated King Xerxes to get him to issue an edict that all of the Jews would be killed. Haman had even offered the king a large amount of money to do it, even though the king had not accepted.

So now, it seemed that Esther was their only hope. She was the only one with the access to the king such that she would be able to persuade him to relent and not carry out his plan to exterminate the Jews. Esther and Mordecai exchange messages between them, but in the end, Esther decides that they must move with God’s help. She decides that she will go to the king and she will ask him to relent, but she calls on Mordecai and all of the Jews to fast with her and her attendants for three days. Before she did anything, they would collectively go to God to ask him to save them.

The result of this is that Esther decides on a plan that will not only persuade the king, but ends up humiliating Haman as well. Because Mordecai had helped the king without any recompense previously, the king decided to honor Mordecai and used Haman to do it.

Afterward Mordecai returned to the king’s gate. But Haman rushed home, with his head covered in grief, and told Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had happened to him.

His advisers and his wife Zeresh said to him, “Since Mordecai, before whom your downfall has started, is of Jewish origin, you cannot stand against him—you will surely come to ruin!” While they were still talking with him, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried Haman away to the banquet Esther had prepared.

Esther 6:12-14

Even further, Haman constructed a pole, upon which he had intended to have Mordecai impaled in a public spectacle of his killing, but that ended up being exactly the pole upon which Haman would die.

Who could have possibly foreseen the series of circumstances that played out in this scenario? Yes, Esther acted, and we must act. But first, Esther went to God. She called upon the Lord for him to act, sitting before him in prayer and fasting. It is clear that this series of events happened in such a way that God himself was moving in their midst. We could have imagined many tears and wailing and begging before the king to not carry out his plan, but instead, we see that the very thing that Haman had plotted to do to Mordecai was what happened instead to Haman.

So as we face problems, we must go to God. We must sit and ask him to lead us, to guide us, to teach us, to help us. Only in this way can we see a solution come about that will bring the problem to the resolution that the Lord would like to carry out instead of rushing in to create our own solutions, and likely even creating bigger problems.

I remembered a song that I heard in the middle of a video called Sheep Among Wolves Volume II. It talks about how Satan has, and will, hang himself on his own gallows. Here is the whole video, although I’m embedding it directly at the song that connects to the story of Esther:

I don’t think it was a coincidence that Jesus used the metaphor of finding a treasure in a field or selling a massive pearl when he spoke of the value of the kingdom of God. Jesus knew that, if there was anything that would call to our hearts, it would be the lure of riches. Money brings power, authority, time and freedom, and much more. There isn’t anyone who would say that he doesn’t want money. Everyone does.

And we will be happy to give up everything to get it.

That is exactly what seems to be happening in Jerusalem. Nehemiah had just led the work to put into place once again the walls of Jerusalem. Then he set to work to reset the people as the people of God. The Law was read and the people all agreed to follow it. And finally, Nehemiah repopulated the city with people from all around the various local towns so that they could once again see the city of Jerusalem grow to be both populous and prosperous once again, serving God once again.

And yet, once Nehemiah returns back to his post in Susa with Artaxerxes, the king of Babylon, Jerusalem begins to fall apart.

Rooms from the house of God are given for storage purposes.

The Levites are no longer provided for as they do their work, so they leave and return back to their homes in the countryside so that they can work and eat.

Work and trading go forward on the Sabbath.

The men were once again marrying foreign women.

I also learned that the portions assigned to the Levites had not been given to them, and that all the Levites and musicians responsible for the service had gone back to their own fields. So I rebuked the officials and asked them, “Why is the house of God neglected?” Then I called them together and stationed them at their posts.

Nehemiah 13:10

Trade took over. The desire for wealth and riches took over. The people left the ways of God. They left the kingdom of God so that they could build their own kingdoms. They desired to give themselves more instead of desiring to give God more.

This is what Nehemiah found as he returned back to Jerusalem and so he set to work to return the city of God back to the ways of God. He knew, and told the people, that these compromises were precisely the path that led God to destroy the city of Jerusalem in the first place. They had repented, but now they had returned back to their old ways.

May we learn the lessons from the story of Nehemiah. May we return back to serve God once again so that we will not come to destruction. May we rebuild the walls, rebuild the people, and sacrificially move to do the same both amongst our own people as well as with others. May this be the point and purpose of our lives. Not trade, not building our own kingdoms, but building the kingdom of God.

Now that the walls were rebuilt and the people reestablished, Nehemiah needed to repopulate the city. After most of the people of Jerusalem had been carried into exile, the city was in ruins, Jerusalem left as a ghost town, a very unpopulated city for its size.

To repopulate the city, lots were cast to bring the people back and begin to fill the city. 1 in 10 of the people from the surrounding towns, from the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and the Levites and priests that were living within the tribes, were brought into the city. They were honored, along with the leaders who were obligated to move, for the sacrifice.

Now the leaders of the people settled in Jerusalem. The rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of every ten of them to live in Jerusalem, the holy city, while the remaining nine were to stay in their own towns. The people commended all who volunteered to live in Jerusalem.

Nehemiah 11:1-2

Why would it be a sacrifice? Because everything must change. They are going on a mission for the good of the Jewish people, for the good of God’s people, for the glorification of God himself through the rebuilding of the city of God. Their sacrifice would ultimately mean:

Changing a lifestyle. Now instead of living in a smaller town, they live in the city.

Economic changes. They would need to find a new way to earn a living.

Social changes. Only 1 in 10 would come to live in Jerusalem. How likely would it be that one of their friends would be coming as well? Not highly likely.

Sometimes, to serve God means that we need to move to a new location. Doing so may look glamorous, and maybe even glorious, but frequently it means that we need to make sacrifices from the things that we would prefer to do that which God has asked us to do. And so we have a choice whether or not to do that which is comfortable for us or to do that which glorifies God.

Reading about the movement of these people this morning reminded me of two different stories from the time of Christ.

First, I remembered Jesus teaching the Pharisees and the teachers of the law that the unoccupied house – the person who has had a demon driven out of them – would be filled with even more evil spirits than before because the original evil spirit would return, bringing along his friends as well, if the “house” was left unoccupied:

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

Matthew 12:43-45

In Nehemiah’s case, he had to fill the city or else those that wanted evil for Jerusalem would come to take it over. Filling the city with those who are like-minded and who wish to serve Yahweh, the one true God, Nehemiah would complete the rebuilding of Jerusalem and set the city on a sustaining path for success.

For us, we must look to continually seek to fill our lives with the good things of the Spirit of God. The evil has been driven out and we have been born again by the Spirit, yet evil still desires to return, to steal, to kill, and to destroy. We must not allow it, but instead “populate” our lives through the good things of the Spirit of God.

Second, when the rich, young ruler came to ask Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus responded that he must sell everything that he owns and come and follow him. He wanted the man to know that he needed to leave his old life and join this new life, a life in Christ. He had an invitation to eternal life there in front of him, but he chose to stay just as he was. He chose his old life. The life of riches. The life without God.

Yet seeing this, Peter and the other disciples were having a hard time understanding. If the rich can’t get into the kingdom of God, how could they possibly do it? Similar to the people in the story of Nehemiah, the disciples had left their home towns to follow Christ. Would they be able inherit eternal life? Would they be able to truly enter the kingdom of God?

Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

Matthew 19:27-30

Yes, of course, says Jesus. They, in fact, will be the judges of Israel. They will be the ones, because they have left everything to follow Jesus, who will receive much more and will inherit eternal life.

So we must ask ourselves… is it worth it? It is…or better said, it will be. But it will only be worth it to you if you truly believe it.

Nehemiah didn’t come to just build walls. Once he arrived and saw the condition of the city, saw how much it had been broken down, he set himself to start with the walls, but then there was much more. He called the people back to the city and allowed those who would lay claim to living in Jerusalem to move back and live there. He reestablished the priesthood and designated the people who would carry on the service to the Lord to come back and resume their duties.

But then, he started to do something even greater. He reestablished the people as God’s people before the Lord. He called Ezra as the teacher of the Law to return and read the Law before the people. After the first day, they celebrated because they had started to relearn what it meant to follow God’s laws. They wept and repented from their sins because of what they had been missing, but then they celebrated and they continued – day after day – to follow God and listen to what he would tell them through the reading of the Law. They celebrated the festivals once again, and they did all that the Lord told them to do.

Then arrived the day that they wanted to reestablish themselves as the Lord’s people. They wanted to sustain all that they had done. This wasn’t to be a resurgence, or a revival, for one time, but it was to be a new way of life. They would continue living as they had come to understand, with the walls rebuilt, with Jerusalem rebuilt, and their lives before God rebuilt.

Together, they decided that this would be their way forward, and so they made it plain and clear. They wrote down how they would live. They made a covenant together before God regarding the way they would live. This would be their new way of life. They were returning to the old way, the first way, the right way, the way of God. They were committing themselves to what they now understood that God wanted of them, and they were doing it together:

“In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seals to it.”

Nehemiah 9:38

This is our task. We aren’t just about the business of building walls. We aren’t just about the business of making groups, teaching ways to share the Gospel, or teaching people how to disciple others. Yes, we have to do this. But even greater, we have to call people to new ways of life. We build the walls, yes, but day after day, we build the people. This is the real work. This is the true calling that God has given to us.

Doing the work of rebuilding the walls, Nehemiah found himself facing many different obstacles. Throughout the time that he was working, he faced threats from potential raiders or warring parties from surrounding nations, and as a result they assigned guards to watch over them, and even carried weapons with them while they were building.

In addition, they faced internal obstacles. Several of the Jews were taking advantage of the work, attempting to profit from the fact that the people couldn’t work or receive income from their trade given that they were working on the walls. They were taking the people’s land. They were even taking the people’s children as the parents were forced to give their children as servants or slaves in exchange for eating.

Nehemiah confronted the nobles and the officials of Jerusalem to put a stop to these practices. The people were attempting to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and they were forcing them into debt, taking their land, and taking their children! They couldn’t continue on like this. This had to stop.

And thankfully, Nehemiah was able to convince them, even forcing the nobles and officials to take an oath before God and the Levites that they would put an end to these practices. They would no longer charge interest. They would no longer continue to place the people in debt, but instead they would give back that which belonged to the people and even give them a sum on top of what they returned.

When I heard their outcry and these charges, I was very angry. I pondered them in my mind and then accused the nobles and officials. I told them, “You are charging your own people interest!” So I called together a large meeting to deal with them and said: “As far as possible, we have bought back our fellow Jews who were sold to the Gentiles. Now you are selling your own people, only for them to be sold back to us!” They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say.

So I continued, “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let us stop charging interest! Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the interest you are charging them—one percent of the money, grain, new wine and olive oil.”

Nehemiah 5:6-11

As we do the work that God has given us to do, there is no doubt that we will continue to face obstacles, both from outsiders as well as from people that we would call our own. From other believers. From those who we would have thought would be on our side. No, instead, they will oppose us, whether because they see what we are doing as a threat to their own power and their own influence, or for any number of other reasons, just as we have seen in the case of Nehemiah. Let us not be surprised by the challenges that we face. God is seeing his work through, but we must be aware and be ready to face the obstacles that will most certainly come.