Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
The One Year Bible TLB (176 page)
Lord, how long will you stand there, doing nothing? Act now and rescue me, for I have but one life and these young lions are out to get it.
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Save me, and I will thank you publicly before the entire congregation, before the largest crowd I can find.
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Don’t give victory to those who fight me without any reason! Don’t let them rejoice
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at my fall—let them die.
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They don’t talk of peace and doing good, but of plots against innocent men who are minding their own business.
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They shout that they have seen
me
doing wrong! “Aha!” they say. “With our own eyes we saw him do it.”
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Lord, you know all about it. Don’t stay silent! Don’t desert me now!
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Rise up, O Lord my God; vindicate me.
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Declare me “not guilty,” for you are just.
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Don’t let my enemies rejoice over me in my troubles.
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Don’t let them say, “Aha! Our dearest wish against him will soon be fulfilled!” and, “At last we have him!”
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Shame them; let these who boast against me and who rejoice at my troubles be themselves overcome by misfortune that strips them bare of everything they own. Bare them to dishonor.
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But give great joy to all who wish me well. Let them shout with delight, “Great is the Lord who enjoys helping his child!”
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And I will tell everyone how great and good you are; I will praise you all day long.
Better to live in the desert than with a quarrelsome, complaining woman.
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The wise man saves for the future,
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but the foolish man spends whatever he gets.
August 19When Mordecai learned what had been done, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the city, crying with a loud and bitter wail.
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Then he stood outside the gate of the palace, for no one was permitted to enter in mourning clothes.
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And throughout all the provinces there was great mourning among the Jews, fasting, weeping, and despair at the king’s decree; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.
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When Esther’s maids and eunuchs came and told her about Mordecai, she was deeply distressed and sent clothing to him to replace the sackcloth, but he refused it.
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Then Esther sent for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs who had been appointed as her attendant, and told him to go out to Mordecai and find out what the trouble was and why he was acting like that.
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So Hathach went out to the city square and found Mordecai just outside the palace gates,
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and heard the whole story from him, and about the $20,000,000 Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasury for the destruction of the Jews.
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Mordecai also gave Hathach a copy of the king’s decree dooming all Jews, and told him to show it to Esther and to tell her what was happening and that she should go to the king to plead for her people.
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So Hathach returned to Esther with Mordecai’s message.
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Esther told Hathach to go back and say to Mordecai,
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“All the world knows that anyone, whether man or woman, who goes into the king’s inner court without his summons is doomed to die unless the king holds out his gold scepter; and the king has not called for me to come to him in more than a month.”
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So Hathach gave Esther’s message to Mordecai.
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This was Mordecai’s reply to Esther: “Do you think you will escape there in the palace when all other Jews are killed?
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If you keep quiet at a time like this, God will deliver the Jews from some other source, but you and your relatives will die; what’s more, who can say but that God has brought you into the palace for just such a time as this?”
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Then Esther sent this message to Mordecai:
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“Go and gather together all the Jews of Shushan and fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day; and I and my maids will do the same; and then, though it is strictly forbidden, I will go in to see the king; and if I perish, I perish.”
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So Mordecai did as Esther told him to.
5:
1
Three days later Esther put on her royal robes and entered the inner court just beyond the royal hall of the palace, where the king was sitting upon his royal throne.
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And when he saw Queen Esther standing there in the inner court, he welcomed her, holding out the golden scepter to her. So Esther approached and touched its tip.
3
Then the king asked her, “What do you wish, Queen Esther? What is your request? I will give it to you, even if it is half the kingdom!”
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And Esther replied, “If it please Your Majesty, I want you and Haman to come to a banquet I have prepared for you today.”
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The king turned to his aides. “Tell Haman to hurry!” he said. So the king and Haman came to Esther’s banquet.
6
During the wine course the king said to Esther, “Now tell me what you really want, and I will give it to you, even if it is half of the kingdom!”
7-8
Esther replied, “My request, my deepest wish, is that if Your Majesty loves me and wants to grant my request, that you come again with Haman tomorrow to the banquet I shall prepare for you. And tomorrow I will explain what this is all about.”
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What a happy man was Haman as he left the banquet! But when he saw Mordecai there at the gate, not standing up or trembling before him, he was furious.
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However, he restrained himself, went on home, and gathered together his friends and Zeresh, his wife,
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and boasted to them about his wealth, his many children, and promotions the king had given him, and how he had become the greatest man in the kingdom next to the king himself.
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Then he delivered his punch line: “Yes, and Esther the queen invited only me and the king himself to the banquet she prepared for us; and tomorrow we are invited again!
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But yet,” he added, “all this is nothing when I see Mordecai the Jew just sitting there in front of the king’s gate, refusing to bow to me.”
14
“Well,” suggested Zeresh, his wife, and all his friends, “get ready a 75-foot-high gallows, and in the morning ask the king to let you hang Mordecai on it; and when this is done you can go on your merry way with the king to the banquet.” This pleased Haman immensely, and he ordered the gallows built.
6:
1-2
That night the king had trouble sleeping and decided to read awhile. He ordered the historical records of his kingdom from the library, and in them he came across the item telling how Mordecai had exposed the plot of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs, watchmen at the palace gates, who had plotted to assassinate him.
3
“What reward did we ever give Mordecai for this?” the king asked.
His courtiers replied, “Nothing!”
4
“Who is on duty in the outer court?” the king inquired. Now, as it happened, Haman had just arrived in the outer court of the palace to ask the king to hang Mordecai from the gallows he was building.
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So the courtiers replied to the king, “Haman is out there.”
“Bring him in,” the king ordered.
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So Haman came in, and the king said to him, “What should I do to honor a man who truly pleases me?”
Haman thought to himself, “Whom would he want to honor more than me?”
7-8
So he replied, “Bring out some of the royal robes the king himself has worn, and the king’s own horse, and the royal crown,
9
and instruct one of the king’s most noble princes to robe the man and to lead him through the streets on the king’s own horse, shouting before him, ‘This is the way the king honors those who truly please him!’”
10
“Excellent!” the king said to Haman. “Hurry and take these robes and my horse, and do just as you have said—to Mordecai the Jew, who works at the Chancellery. Follow every detail you have suggested.”
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So Haman took the robes and put them on Mordecai, and mounted him on the king’s own steed, and led him through the streets of the city, shouting, “This is the way the king honors those he delights in.”
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Afterwards Mordecai returned to his job, but Haman hurried home utterly humiliated.
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When Haman told Zeresh his wife and all his friends what had happened, they said, “If Mordecai is a Jew, you will never succeed in your plans against him; to continue to oppose him will be fatal.”
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While they were still discussing it with him, the king’s messengers arrived to conduct Haman quickly to the banquet Esther had prepared.
7:
1
So the king and Haman came to Esther’s banquet.
2
Again, during the wine course, the king asked her, “What is your petition, Queen Esther? What do you wish? Whatever it is, I will give it to you, even if it is half of my kingdom!”
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And at last Queen Esther replied, “If I have won your favor, O King, and if it please Your Majesty, save my life and the lives of my people.
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For I and my people have been sold to those who will destroy us. We are doomed to destruction and slaughter. If we were only to be sold as slaves, perhaps I could remain quiet, though even then there would be incalculable damage to the king that no amount of money could begin to cover.”
5
“What are you talking about?” King Ahasuerus demanded. “Who would dare touch you?”
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Esther replied, “This wicked Haman is our enemy.”
Then Haman grew pale with fright before the king and queen.
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The king jumped to his feet and went out into the palace garden as Haman stood up to plead for his life to Queen Esther, for he knew that he was doomed.
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In despair he fell upon the couch where Queen Esther was reclining, just as the king returned from the palace garden.
“Will he even rape the queen right here in the palace, before my very eyes?” the king roared. Instantly the death veil was placed over Haman’s face.
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Then Harbona, one of the king’s aides, said, “Sir, Haman has just ordered a 75-foot gallows constructed, to hang Mordecai, the man who saved the king from assassination! It stands in Haman’s courtyard.”
“Hang Haman on it,” the king ordered.
10
So they did, and the king’s wrath was pacified.
And now, brothers, I want to write about the special abilities the Holy Spirit gives to each of you, for I don’t want any misunderstanding about them.
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You will remember that before you became Christians you went around from one idol to another, not one of which could speak a single word.
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But now you are meeting people who claim to speak messages from the Spirit of God. How can you know whether they are really inspired by God or whether they are fakes? Here is the test: no one speaking by the power of the Spirit of God can curse Jesus, and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” and really mean it, unless the Holy Spirit is helping him.
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Now God gives us many kinds of special abilities, but it is the same Holy Spirit who is the source of them all.
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There are different kinds of service to God, but it is the same Lord we are serving.
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There are many ways in which God works in our lives, but it is the same God who does the work in and through all of us who are his.
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The Holy Spirit displays God’s power through each of us as a means of helping the entire church.
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To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; someone else may be especially good at studying and teaching, and this is his gift from the same Spirit.
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He gives special faith to another, and to someone else the power to heal the sick.
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He gives power for doing miracles to some, and to others power to prophesy and preach. He gives someone else the power to know whether evil spirits are speaking through those who claim to be giving God’s messages—or whether it is really the Spirit of God who is speaking. Still another person is able to speak in languages he never learned; and others, who do not know the language either, are given power to understand what he is saying.
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It is the same and only Holy Spirit who gives all these gifts and powers, deciding which each one of us should have.
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Our bodies have many parts, but the many parts make up only one body when they are all put together. So it is with the “body” of Christ.
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Each of us is a part of the one body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But the Holy Spirit has fitted us all together into one body. We have been baptized into Christ’s body by the one Spirit, and have all been given that same Holy Spirit.
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Yes, the body has many parts, not just one part.
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If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body.
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And what would you think if you heard an ear say, “I am not part of the body because I am only an ear and not an eye”? Would that make it any less a part of the body?
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Suppose the whole body were an eye—then how would you hear? Or if your whole body were just one big ear, how could you smell anything?
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But that isn’t the way God has made us. He has made many parts for our bodies and has put each part just where he wants it.
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What a strange thing a body would be if it had only one part!
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So he has made many parts, but still there is only one body.
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The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”
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And some of the parts that seem weakest and least important are really the most necessary.
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Yes, we are especially glad to have some parts that seem rather odd! And we carefully protect from the eyes of others those parts that should not be seen,
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while of course the parts that may be seen do not require this special care. So God has put the body together in such a way that extra honor and care are given to those parts that might otherwise seem less important.
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This makes for happiness among the parts, so that the parts have the same care for each other that they do for themselves.
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If one part suffers, all parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.