Esther 4, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

 
Max Lucado Daily: STUNNED BY GOD’S GRACE

I’ve never been surprised by God’s judgment, but I’m still stunned by his grace. David the psalmist becomes David the voyeur, but by God’s grace becomes David the psalmist again. Peter denied Christ before he preached Christ. Zacchaeus the crook: the cleanest part of his life was the money he’d laundered, but Jesus still had time for him. The thief on the cross: hell bent and hung-out-to die one minute, heaven-bound and smiling the next.

Story after story, surprise after surprise. Seems that God is looking more for ways to get us home than for ways to keep us out. I challenge you to find one soul who came to God seeking grace and did not find it. Search the pages, read the stories. Find one person who came seeking a second chance and left with a stern lecture. I dare you! You won’t find it.


Esther 4

When Mordecai learned what had been done, he ripped his clothes to shreds and put on sackcloth and ashes. Then he went out in the streets of the city crying out in loud and bitter cries. He came only as far as the King’s Gate, for no one dressed in sackcloth was allowed to enter the King’s Gate. As the king’s order was posted in every province, there was loud lament among the Jews—fasting, weeping, wailing. And most of them stretched out on sackcloth and ashes.

4-8 Esther’s maids and eunuchs came and told her. The queen was stunned. She sent fresh clothes to Mordecai so he could take off his sackcloth but he wouldn’t accept them. Esther called for Hathach, one of the royal eunuchs whom the king had assigned to wait on her, and told him to go to Mordecai and get the full story of what was happening. So Hathach went to Mordecai in the town square in front of the King’s Gate. Mordecai told him everything that had happened to him. He also told him the exact amount of money that Haman had promised to deposit in the royal bank to finance the massacre of the Jews. Mordecai also gave him a copy of the bulletin that had been posted in Susa ordering the massacre so he could show it to Esther when he reported back with instructions to go to the king and intercede and plead with him for her people.

9-11 Hathach came back and told Esther everything Mordecai had said. Esther talked it over with Hathach and then sent him back to Mordecai with this message: “Everyone who works for the king here, and even the people out in the provinces, knows that there is a single fate for every man or woman who approaches the king without being invited: death. The one exception is if the king extends his gold scepter; then he or she may live. And it’s been thirty days now since I’ve been invited to come to the king.”

12-14 When Hathach told Mordecai what Esther had said, Mordecai sent her this message: “Don’t think that just because you live in the king’s house you’re the one Jew who will get out of this alive. If you persist in staying silent at a time like this, help and deliverance will arrive for the Jews from someplace else; but you and your family will be wiped out. Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for just such a time as this.”

15-16 Esther sent back her answer to Mordecai: “Go and get all the Jews living in Susa together. Fast for me. Don’t eat or drink for three days, either day or night. I and my maids will fast with you. If you will do this, I’ll go to the king, even though it’s forbidden. If I die, I die.”

17 Mordecai left and carried out Esther’s instructions.

* * *

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion    
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Read: Psalm 73:21–28

When my heart was grieved
    and my spirit embittered,
22 I was senseless and ignorant;
    I was a brute beast before you.

23 Yet I am always with you;
    you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
    and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart
    and my portion forever.

27 Those who are far from you will perish;
    you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
28 But as for me, it is good to be near God.
    I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
    I will tell of all your deeds.

INSIGHT
Asaph, whose name means “Jehovah has gathered,” is the author of twelve psalms (Psalms 50, 73–83). He was a Levite and one of David’s three chief musicians (1 Chronicles 6:31, 39–43; 15:16–17; 16:4–5; 25:1–2). He was also a prophet or seer (1 Samuel 9:9; 1 Chronicles 25:2; 2 Chronicles 29:30).

In Psalm 73—a Wisdom psalm that instructs readers on how to deal with life’s challenges and pain—Asaph is bitterly overwhelmed by the injustice of the prosperity of the wicked (vv. 1–14). But when he understands God’s presence in his life, his own glorious destiny, and the destined punishment of the wicked (vv. 23–28), his perspective on this present world changes. Certain that “earth has nothing” he desires (v. 25), Asaph embraces the sovereign God as his strength (literally “rock” in Hebrew), refuge, and permanent and eternal possession (vv. 25–28).

A Strong Heart -By Bill Crowder

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:26

In his book Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, co-authored with Philip Yancey, Dr. Paul Brand observed, “A hummingbird heart weighs a fraction of an ounce and beats eight hundred times a minute; a blue whale’s heart weighs half a ton, beats only ten times per minute, and can be heard two miles away. In contrast to either, the human heart seems dully functional, yet it does its job, beating 100,000 times a day [65–70 times a minute] with no time off for rest, to get most of us through seventy years or more.”

The amazing heart so thoroughly powers us through life that it has become a metaphor for our overall inner well-being. Yet, both our literal and metaphorical hearts are prone to failure. What can we do?

The psalmist Asaph, a worship leader of Israel, acknowledged in Psalm 73 that true strength comes from somewhere—Someone—else. He wrote, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (v. 26). Asaph was right. The living God is our ultimate and eternal strength. As the Maker of heaven and earth, He knows no such limitations to His perfect power.

In our times of difficulty and challenge, may we discover what Asaph learned through his own struggles: God is the true strength of our hearts. We can rest in that strength every day.

How is your metaphorical heart like your spiritual heart? When you feel like you’re “losing heart,” how can you find strength in your loving, caring Father?

Heavenly Father, I thank You that when I’m weak, You’re strong. That when I’m overwhelmed, You’re enough. That when I’m confused, You have perfect clarity.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
The Master Will Judge

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ… —2 Corinthians 5:10

Paul says that we must all, preachers and other people alike, “appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” But if you will learn here and now to live under the scrutiny of Christ’s pure light, your final judgment will bring you only delight in seeing the work God has done in you. Live constantly reminding yourself of the judgment seat of Christ, and walk in the knowledge of the holiness He has given you. Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are. One carnal judgment of another person only serves the purposes of hell in you. Bring it immediately into the light and confess, “Oh, Lord, I have been guilty there.” If you don’t, your heart will become hardened through and through. One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it. It is not only God who punishes for sin, but sin establishes itself in the sinner and takes its toll. No struggling or praying will enable you to stop doing certain things, and the penalty of sin is that you gradually get used to it, until you finally come to the place where you no longer even realize that it is sin. No power, except the power that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit, can change or prevent the inherent consequences of sin.

“If we walk in the light as He is in the light…” (1 John 1:7). For many of us, walking in the light means walking according to the standard we have set up for another person. The deadliest attitude of the Pharisees that we exhibit today is not hypocrisy but that which comes from unconsciously living a lie.

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 664 L

Bible in a Year: Deuteronomy 28-29; Mark 14:54-72

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Why God Sends the Storm - #8917

It was another one of those unforgettable summers with that amazing group of Native American young people. This particular summer, we had traveled to 14 Indian reservations to tell about the hope that these young men and women found in Jesus Christ. One village we were in was typical of so many - so much violence that we were actually advised not to sleep overnight there with the team; a lot of gang activity, a ton of despair. In most places, we're there for multiple nights, but in this particular village we could only do a single night outreach event. Usually, we're outside on a basketball court where the basketball events, the contemporary Christian music and the powerful Hope Stories of the team members convene and hold the attention of a very large crowd. But this night we had to be in a gym, and when team members began to talk about the Savior who had changed their lives, we had an unusual - and very distracting - exodus from the building that was led by several big gang members.

As they gathered outside, a strong wind suddenly roared in, blowing some of their caps into a nearby field. They stayed outside. Then a heavy rain suddenly opened up. A few drenched young people pushed back into the gym, but most of them still chose to stay outside. That's when the little hailstones started. Still, they didn't come in. Then the serious hail began. Big hail; the kind that just pelts your skin! That was it! Everyone pushed inside the gym just in time for an opportunity to begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ; which a number of them chose to do.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why God Sends the Storm."

Just in case someone might have missed who was behind the stormy events that night, God left His signature: a giant rainbow that actually arced from behind the gym and right over our bus. God had done what He has done so many times. He sent a storm to drive people to Him. I wonder if that's what He's doing in your life right now.

Our word for today from the Word of God provides a classic example of what part a storm in your life could play in you finding God's love. Jonah, one of God's prophets, didn't like what God had asked him to do, so according to Jonah 1:3, "Jonah ran away from the Lord." He boarded a ship going the opposite direction from his divine orders. And the Bible says, "The Lord sent a great wind on the sea and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up."

Ultimately, Jonah confesses that God has sent this storm and it was there because of him, and he told them to throw him overboard to save their own lives. Later, inside the great fish the Bible says God sent to rescue Jonah, he says, "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered You, Lord, and my prayer rose to You...salvation comes from the Lord."

Could it be that the storm that's hit you lately - the storm that even threatens to break up your ship - is God's tool to drive you into His arms? Not because He's mad at you, but because He loves you. He loves you enough to send His Son, Jesus, to take all the punishment for all your sin. But maybe you've been running from the man who died for you. Well, see, God loves you too much to lose you. He doesn't want you to keep running from His love until time suddenly runs out - forever.

So He sent this storm; something you can't control or you can't fix, so you'd finally realize how much you need Him. So you'd finally grab the hand of Jesus that's been reaching out to you for a long time.

Don't miss this opportunity to have every sin of your life forgiven, to have the hole in your heart finally filled, to trade hell for heaven. This is the only opportunity you can be sure of. In the midst of your storm, grab Jesus' hand. Not just to save you from the storm, but to save your soul. It happens when you say, "Jesus, I've run my life long enough. I resign. You died on the cross for my sin. I am yours from today on."

If you want this, our website is for you right now. It's ANewStory.com. Please check it out. Because when you finally let Jesus into that stormy heart of yours, He brings something wonderful with Him. It's called peace.