Listless Preaching

November 14

I’ve decided not to let my preacher know I have a blog so I can critique his preaching without having to deal with him condemning the truth. I’ve been in dozens of churches in the past forty years and just when I get involved, cooking meals, taking care of widows, ministering from morning to evening, it seems the “senior pastor” starts feeling intimidated and begins seeking ways to discredit my ministry. So, I have decided to forsake the truth for gravity. Just kidding of course. I could never do that. However, I have been attacked so many times for trying to help people I have to admit I am a little gun shy. Today’s message revolved around Queen Esther having to go to King Ahasuerus and seek reconciliation for the Jews Haman had condemned.

You have to understand eastern law to realize the kind of faith required for Esther to agree to go to the king and make her request. You’ll have to go to the bible yourself to get the details, but I’ll summarize them here. Haman, the king’s second in command was a slug. He had requested the king kill all Jews because one of his most distained subjects (Mordecai) was a Jew. Of course, he didn’t realize Esther, the queen was also a Jew. Mordecai told his cousin Esther she had to go to the king and get the edict reversed. She was understandingly cautious, since going to the king as Mordecai had suggested could get her killed.

She finally agreed to do it and asked Mordecai to get everyone he knew to pray and promised she would do the same. Long story short, the plan worked. The key point of the entire story hinges
upon one statement, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?” What most don’t know about the sovereignty of God is that things arise to test us to determine if we are going to put Him ahead of all else. For Esther it was an entire nation of people. For you and I it might be one poor lost soul. We should consider every single individual person we meet each day and the people with whom we work and the people with whom we do business daily may be that one person with whom God wants us to share the gospel
message.

Who knows whether God raised us up for the express purpose of sharing the gospel with that one lost soul? In Acts 8:26ff we are told an angel of the Lord told Philip to leave a lucrative ministry in Samaria to go to a desert road (image too good) to share the gospel with one man, the Ethiopian Eunuch. History suggests the possibility that all of Ethiopia got evangelized because of that one Eunuch. Every single one of us should be considering that irritating phone salesman, that checker at the local grocery store, that car salesman, that insurance salesman, that Jehovah’s witness at our door, that repairman, or anyone else with whom we come into contact daily might be the Ethiopian Eunuch.

The message of Esther is indeed profound. But it has a lot more to do with us understanding the responsibility we have in God’s plan to speak out in behalf of the God of creation than it does that we believe our bosses will promote us if we speak out for our faith. Actually Jesus promised the opposite will occur. He promised the world will not love us because we are not of the world. He promises the world hated Him and it will hate us because we are His disciples. Please trust me when I tell you, Jesus was right. I have been fired from several jobs for sharing the gospel with fellow workers. Evil men hate anyone who loves God more than he does his job. That said, I wouldn’t trade one job I have lost, and they have been considerable, for the multitude of times I have had the opportunity to share the gospel with fellow workers, clients, and any who would listen.

Following Jesus is both risky and can be costly, in a monetary sense. Knowing that, I think it behooves us to understand our eternal reward will far outweigh any monetary loss we incur in this life. And that’s God’s word for us today.