"For Ever, O Lord, Thy Word is Settled in Heaven" (continued)
He Is Lord
Now, let us return to the Book of Esther and see how the Lord of ALL has hidden His Name by using this same powerful Acrostic figure of speech. satan, in his attempt to nullify God's promise of the Messiah, is using his emissary Haman to blot out the whole nation of Israel, but God is "hiding" His power! Hence, the Name of "Jehovah," which is usually written "Lord" in the English, is hidden four times in this book and the Lord's all-inclusive Title, the "I AM," is hidden once. In Esther, the alphabetical Acrostic is different in that it occurs in phrases and words; and this Acrostic does not use the successive order of the alphabet but in the original language it spells individual words, sometimes they are spelled backwards for emphasis.[1] (Esther 1:20) Ahasuerus, the king of a very large empire, made a feast and called all his princes and nobles together and showed them the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesties. Scripture says that they drank and each man did according to his own pleasure for six days (the number of man) and on the seventh day the drunken king called for Queen Vashti to show herself before the rabble, and to her credit, she refused. Hence, Vashti is set aside; and to save face, the heatenish king sent out a decree: "All the wives shall give to their husbands honor, both to great and small." In the Hebrew, the Acrostic is formed by the first letters of the phrase, "All the wives shall give," which in the original Hebrew spells the Name of The Lord. However, The Divine Name is spelled backwards, which speaks of the Lord overruling the prevailing circumstances in order to bring about His Will; and translated from the Hebrew, it would read like this:
Due Respect Our Ladies ... (LORD).
Ahasuerus may have thought that he and his seven princes ruled his great empire, but we know differently. Because the King of kings and Lord of lords was proclaiming His Lordship as He overruled the prevailing circumstances in order that Esther might become queen, a woman whose only Lord was the Living God. Thus, satan's evil plot is defeated because God purposefully hid Esther in the palace.
[2] (Esther 5:4) Under the influence of satan, Haman, the descendant of Amalek, had persuaded the king to decree that all Jews should be killed: But God had made Esther queen "for such a time as this." And, at the risk of her life, she went before the king to intercede for God's people. Minute by minute ... Step by step ... Day by day, Esther allowed herself to be led of the Lord in order to accomplish this Throne Ministry of intercession - while in her heart she cried: "and if I perish, I perish." But the Lord Reigneth! - so the king said, "What is thy request?" And Esther answered, "If it seem good unto the king, Let the King and Haman come this day unto the banquet that I have prepared for him." The underlined phrase is the Acrostic figure of speech, and this time the Name of the Lord is formed by the first letter of each word but the Name is spelled forward which when translated from Hebrew to English reads like this:
Let Our Royal Dinner ... (Lord).
Thus, interwoven in His Eternal Word is the un-annullable decree that He is Lord! He is at all times in control: not the kings of great empires, not the Hamans, and certainly satan, because The Lord's Name is Above Every Name; He is Lord! (Philippians 2:9, 11).
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 21)
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