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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 2 of 5
Esther 8:1-14
The course of events is now reversed. It belongs to God alone to change a situation in this way. But the death of Haman is far from being a conclusive settlement. The king, bound by his own seal, has not the power to revoke purely and simply his fateful decree. What he does – and it is God again who inclines him to this wisdom – is to hand over to Esther and Mordecai his authority for the task of undoing Haman’s plans. The enemies will not have their weapons taken away, but the Jews will now be authorised and even encouraged to defend themselves and destroy their foes.
Of what does this remind us? The Christian has enemies who seek to oppose him. Although their leader, Satan, has been conquered by the work of Christ on the cross (in the same way as Haman was hanged on the gibbet he had erected), their power to work against God’s children has not yet been removed. But the child of God now has the means to fight his enemies effectively – how well each of us knows these enemies for what they are! If we spare them, they will not spare us. Let us therefore use the weapons of faith, including (cf. v. 11) the gathering of ourselves together for public prayer, to destroy their powers.
