Is God Calling You to his Banquet?

January 7, 2007

In today’s Old Testament lesson, from Ester 1:1-20, we learn the story of how the opportunity came about that Ester a Benjamite from the land Judea was able to be crowned the queen of the Persian Empire.  In this account we learn how the queen of Persia decided to refuse to listen to the commandment of the king.  She had decided that whatever it she was doing was more important then appearing before the king as he ordered.  Now in our modern sophisticated world, we may think good for her.  Who is he to boss around a woman?  But in those days society and peaceful civilization revolved around the king totally and completely.  In order for a peaceful existence to continue there was and could be nothing that was more important then the king.  The concepts of republican governments like the United States and the similar democracy type of government had not yet been established in this world.  So what was so wrong with what queen Astin had done by refusing to come?  What would this have to do with us today?

Let’s address the question of what the queen did wrong.  Queen Astin was the 1^st queen of the land.  She set the tone for what was socially correct for all other woman to follow.  At the time people literally lived by the sword as their defense.  Every day was a challenge to get through and men had to defend their wives and families against foreign and domestic enemies.  Not doing what you were told to do by the leader of your family usually resulted in death to you and others around you.  Coming when you were called was more often for your safety then to satisfy the whim of the head of the family.  What if mothers refused to grab their children and come to their husbands’ commands in a time of danger?  Not only would they be at risk of being killed by attackers, but in trying to save them the men would also be exposed and not at their post to defend the whole populations.  Whole cities could literally fall because one wife had failed to follow her instructions.  Women were not alone in this requirement to respond on demand.  Every man was subject to lords, governors, and kings also and he had to respond instantly or face punishment or defeat at the hands of an enemy invader.  In a world were machines and technology has become the great equalizer between men and women in everyday work and social activities it is really had to appreciate the demands on individuals when the bulk of the basic survival activities such as fighting and bring home food were only accomplishable by the men, while the woman were to provide living enhancements that were often considered desirable luxuries by society. Yet an ever-larger question poised to us today asks, what this story mean to us as Christians today.  The description of king Artaxerxes’ palace with all its gold and silver couches and emerald stone pavements brings to our minds visions of paradise.  Yet this vision is paled by the vision of the grander of heaven that Yahweh promises us when we return to him after this life.  And just as queen Astin rejected all the splendor of king Artazerxes’ palace because she was so busy with her own life, so do we so often reject Yahweh’s call to us for the busyness of our self-centered lives here on earth.

This account of an ancient event doesn’t appear in the Bible by chance at all.  God saw that this account was preserved through thousands of years of retelling, editing, and translating to reach out to us today and warn us, that just as queen Astin was sent away by king Artazerxes, so are we subject to being banished from Yahweh’s glory by rejecting his daily calls to us.  How often do you put our trivial worldly issues in front of God’s plan for you?  How often do you hear him calling you, as he did Samuel, only to turn a deaf ear and walk away?   Don’t let the blinders of modern society withal its so-called splendors; block you from seeing your salvation with your eyes wide open.  We, the true believers in our Lord and God, you and I, as his people are his bride.  And, I am sad to say that we are not pure.  We are not pure of heart, we are not pure of mind and body, and we are not pure of soul.  We, yes you and I, are corrupted because we have chosen to be so.  We have chosen to waive off God and all his gifts of glory he has for us in his paradise for the insignificant material wealth of this world.  How often do you put money and possession before your families and neighbors?  How often do you look to those who are in leadership positions and challenge them to answer to God’s laws and rules as he gave them to us?  Are you afraid to give up the simple pleasure of this life in exchange for the true grander of Yahweh’s eternal court?

From our second lesson reading today, from 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, we see the outcome of following the path of society and social righteousness over the path of God. Why did Paul write this message to Corinth of all cities?  One must look to the history of Corinth to see the parallel in principal, which can be drawn between the Old Testament message and the spreading of the “Good News” given by Yeshua.  Corinth was an old well-established Greek city, which had been founded around 1000 B.C. before it was destroyed and leveled to the ground by the Roman army in 146 B.C..  Corinth was a precious jewel of the ancient world; it was a beauty without compare, just as Queen Astin was.  And found within the city was the temple of Aphrodite, where the many religious sexual rites were performed to foreign gods.  In 146 Corinth was a bustling city in the Roman Province Achaia and when its leaders refused to comply with the commands of its Roman governor, Lucius Mummius, he was left with no choice but to destroy the city.  After killing off most of the males, the woman and children were sold into slavery.  Sound similar to the banishment of queen Astin.  Like queen Astin Corinth was replaced with another city.  By the time of Paul’s writing sometime shortly after his visit there in 50 A.D., Corinth was again a bustling city, even though it had only been reestablished a few years earlier in 44 A.D.  And even though the old temple Aphrodite was gone, the first sentence of Paul’s letter speaks to the return of the whoredoms or sexual acts performed in the temple as part of the worship to foreign gods a form of idol worship.  Paul calls out to his brothers and sister in Corinth to change their ways to respond to God’s call to them.  See Paul visited these people and had given them the “Good News’ already.  Yet they were ignoring Yahweh’s call to them, for the fun of their newly founded harem.  How far away had these people gone in their idol worship?  It was to the point that men were having sex with their own stepmothers in these worship ceremonies.  Yet it wasn’t the Romans or the Greeks that Paul was writing to in Corinth, it wasn’t the Pharisees/Jews that slew the Messiah that Paul was writing to in Corinth.  No it was to God’s chosen people the Israelites, the decedents of Jacob who had been exiled from the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea by the Assyrians centuries before, even before the carrying off the Judean royal family and aristocrats to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.  Paul was writing to God chosen people those who Yahweh called to set an example for the rest of the world, just as King Artaxerxes had called on queen Astin to show off her perfection to his court.

Lets look at what Yeshua instructs his Apostles to do in Mat 10:5-7  “Jesus sent these twelve out with the following instructions: "These twelve Jesus sent forth, and charged them, saying, Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”   Yeshua had commanded his Apostles to preach the “Good News” to God’s chosen people the blood descendents of Jacob (Israel), not the Pharisees/Jews of Jerusalem and the roman province of Judea and other nations.  So we know that Paul was ministering to God’s lost sheep, his chosen people, the real children of Israel (Jacob) who were his descendents by blood.  Why them?  Because God had driven them away from him centuries earlier when they failed to answer his call to them.  Yet because Yahweh is the Almighty God his mercy is great and he never forgot his promise to Israel and so he sent the Messiah to call unto them.  See what Yeshua says in Matthew 15:24  “But he answered and said, I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  Paul knew where to find these lost sheep because he had been one himself.  Paul was a descendent of Israel through his son Benjamin, he was a citizen of Tarsus in Cilicia, and had been a Pharisee/Jew, until Yeshua called him away from that religion.  So here in the new city of Corinth Paul had found other lost sheep from the house of Israel and who like he had been they were being lead astray.  These descendents of Israel were associating with the children of Satan, and were starting to take on their ways.  This is why Paul says to distant themselves from these people, just as Yeshua had warned of the Pharisees; even one of them among you is bad he tells them.  Now look at what Paul says in verse 6 “…even a little leaven leaveneth the whole mass…”  Who and what is he talking about?  Yeshua tells us in Matthew 16:11-12  “How is it that ye do not perceive that I spake not to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.  Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”  It is our job to judge those within the body of the believers, we are God’s chosen people, it is our birth right by blood and it is our obligation to Yahweh to keep ourselves pure for him and to reject those who would turn us away from him and his ways and lead us down the path of idolatry, which is really the worship of Satan.  

Our Gospel reading today from Luke 3:15-22, ties this message all together, quite nicely for us.  It was a time when the ruler of Judea was Herod the Tetrarch and he was living with and carrying on a sexual affair with another man’s wife, his own brothers at that.  Sounds pretty close to the activity going on in Corinth, where men where having sex with their stepmothers, doesn’t.  Herod was also working on having an affair with this same woman’s daughter, who some believe may have been his own daughter as well.  John the Baptist, like Paul, was calling Herod on the carpet for these outlandish rejections of God’s law, these idolatries, and whoredoms he was committing. And just when all of this was taking place, here comes Yeshua the Messiah and just as Ester would reform the kingship of Artaxerxes, Yeshua was here to reform the kingdom of God.  Yeshua answered God’s call to him that day, when he appeared in front of John the Baptist to be baptized in front of all those people.  Yeshua was committing social and political suicide as far as the leadership of Judea, the Pharisees and King Herod, would be concerned.  But unlike queen Astin, he put aside his desire to be popular amongst his earthly contemporaries and instead chose to be different to reject the leaven of the Pharisees/Jews and the Roman government and to be true to his King, Yahweh his and our true God.  His reward was swift and sure, as the Holy Spirit descended upon him and possessed him as he came out of the water.  “Thou art my son, dearly loved; in thee is my delight.”  The voice from the heaven proclaimed.  Oh had only queen Astin answered the king’s call, might have similar words been said over her.   

God, Yahweh is calling to you as you read this, as you go about your work and leisure each day.  He is calling you when you are in trouble, when you see family and neighbors in trouble, and even more so when you see strangers in trouble.  He is calling you when Satan sends his false prophets to you to snare you into their many forms of surreptitious idol worship found in our modern society.  Yahweh is calling you because you are his and special to him.  Will you answer and come running or will you be remembered like queen Astin?