“No Weapon That Is Formed Against Thee Shall Prosper"
It has puzzled commentators that the name of God is nowhere found in the book of Esther, which relates how an attempt to slaughter the Jews was first foiled and turned to their favor and the ruin of their enemies. God is very much in Esther, however, because He governed through Providence, as He does in our day. He works His will even when we cannot see or hear Him.
The story of Esther is not primarily about the salvation of God but of His government, particularly as it works through unbelievers. When evil seems to prevail and the people of God appear to be without recourse and facing destruction, God works His will. A Persian emperor pursuing his own self-interest was made to protect His people. There is no rod of Moses because God is manipulating the unrighteous. There is no miracle-working prophet because God did not witness to the emperor. It is an account of God bending the will and way of one heathen to thwart another and serve in the Divine plan.
God is very real in the Persian court, but invisible to them. Isaiah had, generations earlier, said, “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper” (54:17). We are on the Lord’s side, and we are the winners in time and eternity. In Washington, Moscow, and Beijing, God is at work. In courts and in academia God is at work. We may, with the martyrs ask, “How long, O Lord?” (Rev. 6:10; cf. Ps. 79:5; Ps. 89:46) because we desire to see God vindicated, but He is all-present and all powerful.
As James Russell Lowell wrote in “The Present Crisis,”
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, −
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.
Or, as Adoniram Judson said from a Burmese prison cell, “The future is as bright as the promises of God.” That is how he saw it by faith, and how we ought to as well.
Chalcedon’s work presupposes the advance and victory of the Kingdom of God and His Christ.
Topics: Christian Reconstruction, Church, The, Dominion, Major Prophets, Old Testament History