From the very beginning God made evil real, first of all in the mention of it in the ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil tree’ in the Garden of Eden, and then in the manifestation of evil in the crafty serpent, and again, later on, in the Amalekites, and even more specifically in Haman the Amalekite in the book of Esther. 

Haman represents all that is worst in our society, and how difficult it is to dislodge it. Haman is like those in our world today who are so rich and powerful they can do whatever they like, destroy people’s lives along the way without caring, and there’s nothing us poor plebs can do about it. 

Like the rich today, Haman got what evil loves too. The king of the land, King Xerxes of Persia, “elevated Haman and gave him a seat of honour higher than that of all the other nobles,” Esther 3:1, so that “all the royal officials knelt down and honoured him” (2). Except one: Mordecai. 

Haman “was enraged” (5), much like leaders today who fume and arrest anyone who dares to even think an opposing thought. Which makes what Haman did next a little worrying, because in his rage he “scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai; he looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people” (6). 

He convinced the king that “it wasn’t in the king’s best interest to tolerate” Mordecai’s people (8), so out went the royal order to kill them. And what could anyone do? They were living in a police state, which makes one wonder, “What does it take to destroy such evil?”  

The answer was the willingness of Esther to put her life on the line. The only way she could stop Haman’s evil plan and save her people was to approach the king and beg for mercy (4:8), but to approach him without his invitation meant she’d die (11). That was the price she was willing to pay, however, “And if I perish, I perish” (16).

And the same with Jesus. God had made it possible that in his physical body dying, or perishing, Hebrews 10:5, Jesus could destroy the power of evil. And his response to that? “Here I am, I have come to do your will, O God” (7). As with Esther, what it took to destroy evil was the willingness to put his bodily life on the line too.

And Esther fasting, as well as her willingness to approach the king, was symbolic of that, so did God destroy the evil? Oh yes, but first: “Setting the trap”….(next blog)

The story of Esther wouldn’t have existed if King Saul had wiped out the Amalekites 500 years earlier as God had instructed (1 Samuel 15:1-3). But the Amalekites lived to see another day, and the chance again to eradicate the Jews, which Haman the Amalekite in the days of Esther leapt at when that chance came (Esther 3:6).

If only King Saul, Esther’s Benjamite ancestor, had been the “ravenous  wolf devouring and plundering” that his tribe was meant to be in Jacob’s prophecy for Benjamin in Genesis 49:27. But in Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, God had another brave Benjamite who would complete what Saul had failed to do, and it would also settle an old score in “God’s personal war against the Amalekites from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16). 

But it would also put Esther’s life in mortal danger, because to stop Haman’s plan to destroy every Jew in Persia (Esther 3:9, 13), Mordecai “urged Esther to go into the king’s presence and plead with him for her people” (4:8). But no one dared do that if not summoned by the king first, because the penalty by law for those who did dare was death (4:11). And for the last thirty days the king hadn’t asked to see Esther, so for her to just turn up uninvited was a death wish.

But to Mordecai if Esther did nothing she and her family would be killed along with all the other Jews (13). And what if her position in the royal household was actually God’s way of rescuing the Jews? (14). Mordecai the Benjamite was not backing down. 

At which point Esther’s Benjamite ancestry kicked in too. She sent a message to Mordecai to “gather all the Jews in Susa (her home city), and fast for me” – meaning no food or drink for three days and three nights, and she and her staff would join them. And “When this is done,” she said, “I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish” (15-16). Esther the Benjamite wasn’t backing down either.

God had chosen well in his weapons for settling his score with the Amalekites. And this time, unlike King Saul, the Benjamites would be true to his purpose for their tribe. But if God felt this deeply about destroying the Amalekites for their cruelty against his people, why didn’t he simply wipe them out himself, and kill Haman too, rather than drag Esther into it and put her life on the line as well? Or is Esther’s willingness to put her life on the line a picture of “What it takes to destroy evil”?….(next blog)

In the reign of the Persian king Xerxes in the mid-5th century BC, the call went out nationwide for a queen consort to replace Xerxes’ disgraced Queen Vashti, Esther 1:10-21. 

It was Esther, the adopted daughter of Mordecai, “a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin” (2:5) who caught the king’s eye (9) and he crowned Esther “Queen instead of Vashti” (17). Esther was also Mordecai’s cousin (7), but had been taken in by Mordecai “as his own daughter when her father and mother died” (7). So – by both birth and adoption – Esther was related to Mordecai making her a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin too. 

And what makes that significant is that Mordecai was a descendant of Kish (2:5), and so was King Saul (1 Samuel 9:1-2). So Esther being related to Mordecai meant that both of them could trace their ancestry back to the Benjamite King Saul – the same Saul who’d spared the life of the Amalekite King Agag (1 Samuel 15:9). 

And it looks like some of Agag’s people may have survived too, because into Esther’s life 500 years later came “Haman the Agagite,” Esther 3:1. So here was a chap who could trace his ancestry back to Agag, and Agag was king of the Amalekites, the people God had told Saul to wipe out completely back in 1 Samuel 15. 

So in Esther we have a Benjamite tracing her ancestry back to King Saul, and Haman tracing his ancestry back to the Amalekites that Saul should have totally destroyed. And now the reason God wanted the Amalekites destroyed becomes clear again, because Haman the Amalekite has the same vicious, sadistic attitude to Israel that his ancestors had. 

When, for instance, Haman discovered “who Mordecai’s people were, he looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes,” Esther 3:6. He even managed to convince the king “to send out couriers with dispatches to all the king’s provinces with the order to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews – young and old, women and little children on a single day and plunder their goods” (13). No wonder God ordered Saul and the Israelites to totally wipe out the Amalekites, because if they didn’t the Amalekites would want to do the same thing to them. 

And now that time had arrived. But what Haman hadn’t taken into account was Mordecai also being a Benjamite and God’s preference for Benjamites as his weapon of war against the Amalekites. We’re about to see God, then, “Settling an old score”….(next blog)

In Deuteronomy 25:17-19, God issued a strict command to the Israelites: “Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out they cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God.” So, top priority after the Israelites had settled in Canaan, was God’s command: “you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven,” adding for emphasis, “Do not forget.”  

The time to “not forget” then came in 1 Samuel 15:1, when Samuel went to king Saul with a message from God: “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt (2). Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; kill all their men, women and children, and all their cattle, sheep, camels and donkeys too” (3).

You can see why God chose Saul for the job, because without hesitation or questioning why God would command such total destruction, Saul set out with an army of 210,000 men (4), clearly meaning to do what he was told. And true to Jacob’s prophecy, the Benjamite “wolf” wasn’t a tad bit squeamish, and by verse 7 he’d “totally destroyed all the Amalekites with the sword.” 

But against God’s command, verse 9, “Saul and his army spared Agag the king of the Amalekites and the best of the sheep and cattle….and everything that was good. They were unwilling to destroy completely.” So what was Saul’s reason for disobeying God? Verse 24: “I was afraid of the people (wanting the plunder of the cattle and sheep etc., verse 21) so I gave in to them.” 

It was the moment when the Benjamite wolf wasn’t the wolf. He’d cowered in fear instead, betraying what God had given the tribe of Benjamin for the protection of the Israelite people. 

Because protection from Amalek was crucial. The Amalekites had “no fear of God” (Deuteronomy 25:18). They’d hit the Israelites at their weakest moments too – on the weary journey out of Egypt, and again at Rephidim in Exodus 17:8, when the Israelites were struggling again, wondering if “the Lord is among us or not” (7). And that made the Amalekites from then on God’s enemy (15), and he wouldn’t forget what they’d done, as we see in his use of two more Benjamites: “Esther and Mordecai”….(next blog) 

Benjamin, the twelfth son of Jacob, and his second son by Rachel, was off to a rough start. Age had taken its toll on his mother and she died after “great difficulty” in giving birth to him, Genesis 35:17. So Benjamin grew up without his mother. 

Which made Jacob very sensitive about protecting him. So when Joseph wanted Benjamin sent to Egypt, Jacob refused to send him, because “If harm comes to him on the journey it’ll bring my grey head down to the grave in sorrow” (42:38). 

So Benjamin was very much the protected boy. He was especially favoured by Joseph too (43:34, 45:22), and in Deuteronomy 33:12 Moses added yet another blessing on Benjamin, that because God loved Benjamin so much, he and his family could “rest secure” being “shielded by God all day long” and “resting between God’s shoulders,” as if God was always carrying Benjamin in his arms. 

But when it came to Jacob predicting Benjamin’s future in Genesis 49:27, it sounds oddly conflicting, because he said Benjamin would become “a ravenous wolf” of all things. The youngest son and smallest tribe – and the most favoured by God – becoming a ferocious killer. 

But in that violent culture the descendants of Benjamin the ravenous wolf would be the salvation of Israel on several occasions. It was Ehud, for instance, the left-handed Benjamite in Judges 3:12-30, who took it upon himself to rescue the Israelites from eighteen years of tyranny by Eglon, the obese king of Moab, and his Ammonite and Amalekite cronies (12-14). Ehud wasn’t the least bit squeamish either, about sinking his sword into Eglon all the way up to the hilt and beyond (21-22). He then led the Israelites into battle, striking down ten thousand of the strongest Moabite soldiers and bringing peace to Israel for eighty years (27-30).  

And then there’s the Benjamite king Saul who, after “assuming rule over Israel,” in 1 Samuel 14:47-48, “fought against their enemies on every side and wherever he turned he inflicted punishment on them. He fought valiantly, delivering Israel from the hands of those who’d plundered them.” So it seems God had a purpose in the Benjamites being ravenous wolves that “devoured the prey and divided the plunder” in Genesis 49:27. And especially when we see the repercussions “When the wolf wasn’t the wolf”….(next blog)

The parallel with Joseph and Jesus is captured beautifully in Genesis 39:8, when Joseph fends off Potiphar’s wife by saying, “With me in charge (of managing the Potiphar household) my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am.” He would, therefore, stay faithful to the one who appointed him, which would definitely exclude a sexual relationship with his master’s wife (9). 

In John 16:15 Jesus then said the same of himself too: “All that belongs to the Father is mine.” So God entrusted everything he owned to Jesus, which meant his entire household too, because God looks upon this planet and us humans as his “house,” Hebrews 3:2. And he allotted Jesus as “a son over his house,” because no one was greater than Jesus in God’s own household either. But Jesus was also “a son,” an intimate and utterly trusted member of God’s own family – so, just like Joseph, “Jesus was faithful to the one who appointed him” (2), and nothing would tempt him to break his Father’s faith in him either. 

And temptation there would be, because, like Joseph in Genesis 49:23, Jesus would also be “viciously attacked by people who hated him.” Joseph “remained steady,” however, “because of the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob” (24). And in Hebrews 5:7 it was crying out to God that kept Jesus from caving in too.

But with both Joseph and Jesus there was another reason for them remaining faithful to God, no matter what stress or temptation they faced. There’s a clue in Hebrews 3:6 which says, “Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house,” the Greek word for “house” being oikon, which also means “home” and “family,” which is such a fitting word, because in Hebrews 2:11, family is how Jesus sees us; he and we are members “of the same family.”

And to get a grasp of what that means to him we have Joseph, who, despite his brothers wanting him dead and selling him into slavery, “wept loudly” when making himself known to them in Egypt, Genesis 45:1-2. Despite all they’d done to him, he loved them, because family was the only lens he saw them through. And because of that the nation of Israel was born, and from Israel came Jesus who would look upon all humanity through the same lens. And fortunate that is, when reading about Jacob’s twelfth son “Benjamin, a ravenous wolf”….(next blog) 

Right from the start God made us and this planet his home – because as soon as “the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array” in Genesis 2:1, this is where “he rested” (2) – even setting aside a day on the weekly cycle he’d created for Planet Earth to rest on – to get the point across that on this planet and with us humans is where he delights to be.

He then continued to get that point across by creating the nation of Israel and having the Israelites rest on the same day he rested to take their minds back to the amazing realization that it’s here with us that God chooses to be. This is his resting place, his home, and his greatest wish for the Israelites was for them to “enter his rest” (as it’s phrased in Hebrew 3:18) – meaning join him in his home and experience his delight in it with him.

Unfortunately, Hebrews 3:19, “they were not able to enter (his rest) because of their unbelief” – unbelief, that is, in what God was aiming at for them, and what was needed to get them there. 

Fortunately, however, “the promise of entering his rest still stands” (4:1), and “there remains a Sabbath-rest for the people of God” (9). So the call is still out for us humans to grasp what his sabbath rest at creation pictured. And the key to that is given in Hebrew 3:1, that to those who wish to “share in the heavenly calling” of entering God’s rest and sharing in the delight he experiences in us and this planet being his home – then “fix your thoughts on Jesus.”

For one very important reason, verse 6: that Jesus “is faithful as a son over God’s house.” God has given Jesus full charge of his home, just like Joseph was given full charge over Potiphar’s house (Genesis 39:4), and then over the prison (22), and then over the whole of Egypt (41:39-40), all of which he did incredibly successfully (39:3) as the perfect parallel with Jesus being totally successful in the job God’s given him to do of “bringing many sons to glory,” Hebrews 2:10 – the same glory he and the Father experience together, because this is Jesus’ greatest wish for us too (John 17:24).

To Jesus, then, “we are his house,” Hebrews 3:6, the ones he’s been given full charge of to make sure we successfully “enter God’s rest,” but also because “Family is how Jesus sees us” too….(next blog)

In the Old Testament it was hugely important to the Israelites and Jews that they had a temple, because that was the place in which God dwelt. That was his house, his home, and the visible evidence that he was with them. It was king Solomon who echoed the thoughts of every Israelite, when at the completion of the temple he had built he cried out to God, “I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever,” 1 Kings 8:13. 

And God responded to that, providing marvellous visible proof that he truly was dwelling with them, because at the opening ceremony of the completed temple “fire came down from heaven….and the glory of the Lord filled the temple,” 2 Chronicles 7:1.

But shock upon shock, 400 years later in 586 BC Solomon’s temple was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, leaving the Jews with no place for God to dwell in and no visible proof that he was with them. 

On their return from captivity in Babylon 70 years later, therefore, the Jews set about rebuilding the temple as their top priority, which they completed in 515 BC. And it lasted nearly 500 years too, until 20 BC, at which point King Herod dismantled it and built a new temple for the Jews that was so magnificent it became one of the wonders of the ancient world. It took 46 years to complete (John 2:20), so imagine the massive shock again when just a few years later the Romans destroyed that temple too.

Which seems odd, because even Jesus had called that temple “my Father’s house” in John 2:16. But when challenged to prove his authority in verse 18, Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days,” verse 19. By which he meant the destruction and raising back to life again of his own body (21-22) – but – in comparing the destruction of the temple to his own body, he was also hinting at the temple itself being destroyed and a new temple being raised up – this time in himself, and no longer in a physical building. 

So how did that work exactly? Paul answered that in Ephesians 1:22-23, when he wrote that “the church is his body.” So the visible proof that God is dwelling with us and the house he now lives in, is the people in whom “Jesus lives in all his fullness” (23). Or as Paul put it in Hebrews 3:6, “We are his house”….(next blog)

God himself asked that question in Isaiah 66:1, when he said, “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be?” 

It indicates that God wants a place to dwell in, but it’s also saying, “What kind of house could we ever come up with as mere humans to suitably accommodate the likes of God who built the entire universe?” It’s like asking, “What clever gift can I possibly come up with for someone who already has everything?” 

And this was the dilemma faced by the Israelites because every home they built for God to dwell in didn’t last, including “the tabernacle in the desert” that God himself designed, Acts 7:44. King David wanted to “provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob” too (45-46), but the temple that his son then completed didn’t last either. The message being that “the Most High does not live in houses made by men” (48).

Where God wishes to dwell and set up his home, then, isn’t in anything of our making. It may be nice to think we’ve “built a church to the glory of God,” but “God who made the world and everything in it….does not live in temples built by human hands,” Acts 17:24 – including the superb temple Herod built for the Jews, which only lasted 40 years.

So where is God’s home now? If it’s not in tabernacles, temples, or church buildings of any sort, where on this planet is the “house” and the “resting place” in Isaiah 66:1 that he seeks? 

Jesus’ answer to that in John 2:19 was himself. “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.” He said this while in the temple in Jerusalem, knowing that one day soon it would be destroyed, and comparing it to his own body (21) that would be destroyed as well. But he also knew his body would be raised up again (22) hinting, therefore, that the temple would also be raised up and rebuilt. It was a somewhat cryptic clue connecting the temple with his body, but Jesus was setting the scene for God’s future temple and home on this planet being raised up again and rebuilt in Jesus’ own body. 

But how can that be when Jesus isn’t here on the planet in person? Well, that’s where the story of Joseph comes in again, because from Joseph came Israel, from Israel came Jesus, and from Jesus came “The Church in which he dwells”….(next blog) 

It seems odd that we have to wait until almost the end of the Bible to find out what God’s greatest wish is, but there it is in Revelation 21:3, that he wants his home to be here with us humans forever. 

It shouldn’t seem odd, though, because at the very beginning of the Bible God expressed the same wish back then too – because having “completed the heavens and the earth in all their vast array,” Genesis 2:1, he then “planted a garden” (8) for the sole purpose of having a human take care of it (15). 

So God’s great interest following the creation of this planet and the vast universe beyond was a garden that would concentrate his attention here, and create endless opportunity for direct contact with humans in explaining and revealing what the creation contained and how to make it work. It was all very ‘homey’ stuff, God and humans very much at home together happily going about the business of making the world and its treasures – both beautiful and functional (9, 12) – come to light.

And so would begin the building of God’s home on this planet, based on God always being on hand revealing and guiding, and humans happily cooperating and enjoying endless discovery.

There was, however, a ‘home wrecker’ offering an alternative to this happy scene that would put a rift between humans and God. So for humans and God to happily dwell and work together forever the home wrecker had be faced head on and dealt with. First by a warning from God that such an “evil” existed (2:9, 17), and then by allowing this home wrecking evil to come out of hiding and show itself.  

And for good reason, because the deceptive power of this evil soon became apparent, as Eve first and then Adam, quickly warmed to the idea of running this planet on their own without God. The sad moment came, then, when God had to banish them from the garden (3:23). And with that it looks like God’s great wish to build a home here among and with humans had come to a dismal end. 

The story of Joseph, however, tells us that God set up home with the Israelites next, and dwelt with them. But they too fell victim to the home wrecker. So “Where is God’s home now?”….(next blog)