The Story of God: Esther

Listen along as we cover the book of Esther.

Notes/Quotes:

Esther 4:13-17 - Crystal

“The providence of God is the way in which He governs everything wisely, first for the glory of His own Name, and second for the ultimate blessing of His children.” - Sinclair Ferguson

When I use the word "providence"…I mean that wonderful, strange, mysterious, unguessable way Yahweh has of ruling His world and sustaining His people, and His doing it, frequently, over, under, around, through, or in spite of the most common stuff of our lives or even the bias of our wills. - Dale Ralph Davis

Esther Chiasm Image 

Es. 2:16-18

Es. 3:13.

6:1-14

9:1

9:23-28

“God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.” - Spurgeon 

Gospel Chiasm Image

“Providence is wiser than you, and you may be confident it has suited all things better to your eternal good than you could do had you been left to your own option.” - John Flavel

Of course misfortunes have opened the way to blessings you would never have thought to hope for, that you would not have been ready to understand as blessings if they had come to you in your youth, when you were uninjured, innocent. The future always finds us changed. So then it is part of the providence of God, as I see it, that blessing or happiness can have very different meanings from one time to another. This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. Sorrow is very real, and loss feels very final to us. Life on earth is difficult and grave, and marvelous. Our experience is fragmentary. Its parts don’t add up. They don’t even belong in the same calculation. Sometimes it is hard to believe they are all parts of one thing. Nothing makes sense until we understand that experience does not accumulate like money, or memory, or like years and frailties. Instead, it is presented to us by a God who is not under any obligation to the past except in His eternal, freely given constancy. Marilynne Robinson, Lila

Romans 11:33-36