Sovereignty in the Big Matters
Yesterday, I made some comments about God's sovereignty being shown in small matters such as finding a wife for Isaac (in Genesis 24). I realize of course large and small are two measures that need to be considered in context, and so I thought that today, as I begin reading Esther, I would put how "small" the matter of finding a wife for Isaac (as I would suspect that most would disagree with my considering it "small") into perspective. Esther is a problematic book for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the term "God" or "Yahweh" does not appear in the story. It seems a book that has nothing at all to do with God, and yet it has everything to do with Him. God's sovereignty is seen throughout the book, with Esther 1 standing as the introduction to the situation in which God's sovereignty will be seen in a huge way. To be sure, it is a pretty horrible thing that happened. A patriarchal society would have no problems at all with what happened to Queen Vashti, while ours would question what right the King had to demand so much from her. Nonetheless, whatever way you view their dispute and the results, God's sovereignty was at work to bring about his divine purpose.