Esther - Week 4: For Such a Time as This

Erin Davis: Welcome back to the Women of the Bible podcast. You’re listening to Season 2: Esther, and this is Episode 4. We’re working our way through the book of Esther, and I’m joined by some sweet friends of mine. Betsy’s been a friend of mine for a long time; Dr. Venessa and I are new friends, and we have something in common: we all love hot tea!

So, ladies, I’m going to let you introduce yourselves to the women who are listening and tell us your favorite hot tea, what you like in your hot tea. Have you got a favorite mug? Everything we need to know about your hot tea habit I want you to share with us. So, Dr. Venessa, we’ll start with you while I take a sip of my . . . I’m drinking Earl Gray this morning.

Dr. Venessa Ellen: Okay. My name is Venessa Ellen, and I’m out of Houston Texas, and I’m a pastor’s wife. My husband pastors a church down there, Community of Faith Bible Church. I have many hats. I teach at a Bible college. But in terms of tea . . . I like good old-fashioned mango tea, any kind of fruity tea with lots and lots of raw honey. 

Erin: What’s raw honey versus regular honey?

Dr. Venessa: Meaning it hasn’t been filtered and processed and messed with; straight out of the comb, that’s right! Yeah!

Erin: Straight from the bees! Alright, that sounds pretty good! How about you Betsy?

Betsy Gómez: I like chamomile tea.

Erin: You do? Does it make you sleepy?

Betsy: Yes! I like all those sleepytime-time type of teas. I like fruity teas for the day, too, because I’m not a coffee person. I think I have coffee in my veins already. So I can’t do coffee, because I go crazy! So I like fruity teas, but I enjoy those kinds of teas that kind of relax me and helps me calm down a little.

Erin: Not me, I can’t do those sleepytime teas. I have no trouble falling asleep! With sleepytime tea, I’m out! But I like all kinds of teas. My favorite kind of tea is (how do you say that brand) T-Z-O? 

Dr. Venessa and Betsy: “Tazo.”

Erin: TZO Awake. That’s my favorite kind of tea. It’s so-o-o good! And I just like it straight . . . straight tea.

Betsy: No honey? I like honey

Erin: I’ll take honey, but if there’s no honey I’ll just drink it regular. I like it with milk in it, kind of the British way.

Betsy: That’s new for me! I saw a friend dripping honey in her tea, and I was like, “What are you doing?” 

She was like, “Oh, that’s a thing!” 

I’m like, “Oh, okay. I think I need to get used to that!”

Erin: Well, we didn’t come here to talk about tea, although we could clearly talk about tea for awhile. We are here to talk about the book of Esther. We are just friends walking through a Bible study. We’re walking through the study Esther:Trusting God’s Plan, and we’re inviting women to walk through this study with us.

I’ve said it before: my life has been so impacted by opening the Bible with women . . . and with men, but particularly with grabbing friends—like-minded women—and opening the Bible. And that’s what we’re doing here on the Women of the Bible podcast. We hope that you have women in your world that you’re doing that with, but if not, let us be your virtual Bible study group.

We’ve made to session 4, which takes us to chapter 4 in the book of Esther. And what happens here in Esther 4 is that Esther agrees to intervene on the behalf of the Jews. And if you would ladies would help us just go backwards a little bit: what have we already covered in chapters 1–3? Why does Esther need to intervene on the behalf of the Jews?

Dr. Venessa: I’ll start with chapter 1. King Ahasuerus is having this amazing, extremely long banquet. 

Erin: Venessa has to say the king’s name for me every time. I struggle to say it. It just sounds so lovely when you say it!

Betsy [to Dr. Venessa]: You could be a Bible reader, like on those apps. (laughter)

Dr. Venessa: Ahasuerus or Xerxes.

Erin: He wasn’t a nice guy.

Dr. Vanessa: Nah. You know, they were getting tipsy and having a good time, and he asked his wife, Vashti at the time—the queen—to come out and present herself and her royal crown in all her beauty. Toss to you, Betsy.

Betsy: She’s says “no,” so that creates a turmoil among the men because they say, “Well! If she’s doing that, what’s going to happen with our women?!” So they pronounce like an edict that every woman has to do whatever the man says. 

Erin: And what happens to Vashti? 

Betsy: She’s taken off of the throne. 

Erin: She is. She’s no longer the queen; she’s banished from the king’s sight. We don’t see in Scripture that she’s killed; we don’t know what becomes of her. That’s the end of her story as far as we know, but she’s out.

And then, we meet these three individuals: Mordecai, Esther, and Haman. Mordecai was a Jew taken from Jerusalem in the deportation of the Jews to Susa, where we find him. Esther, who is his adopted daughter; what do we know about Esther at this point in the story?

Betsy: She’s an orphan. So she is Mordecai’s cousin, because she’s the daughter of his uncle, right? He takes her in.

Dr. Venessa: It’s hard to keep that straight sometimes, because sometimes I think, Wait a minute, so he’s her uncle? But I went back and looked at that and it was, “Wait, no, not really.” 

Erin: It’s like all of our family relationships: like we’re kind of cousins, kind of uncles, kind of friends . . . we’re not sure who we are. But they’re cousins, and we don’t know an age difference; we’ve got to assume there is one. Mordecai takes her in as his adopted daughter. And then we meet the villain of the story: Haman. 

Haman hates Mordecai! But really, we traced it back, Haman’s hatred is for the Jews, and so this edict gets issued that on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month on the Jewish calendar, what’s going to happen?

Dr. Venessa: The subjects of Xerxes are going to seize all of their possessions and plunder them.

Erin: They’re going to plunder the Jews, and they’re going to kill every man, woman and child. Now, we haven’t talked about it yet, but that day was chosen by casting lots—which is like throwing of the dice.

So even in that we see the providence of God, because this date on the calendar doesn’t happen immediately. They throw it to fate—they think—when they’re going to annihilate the Jews and this provides enough time for the events to unfold that we’re going to talk about.

Now, if the decision had been made to do it the next day, the Lord still could have intervened, but we see the hand of God in all this. That gets us all the way to chapter 4; you’re caught up! I hope you’ve been listening along with us, but if you haven’t, you just got the (I used to say Cliff’s Notes version, but nobody knows Cliff’s Notes anymore) Wikipedia version of Esther.

That takes us to Esther 4, and Mordecai gives his adopted daughter this impassioned speech. Now, Mordecai can’t directly talk to Esther, so all of this that happens in chapter 4 happens through an intermediary. Let’s remind ourselves and remind those listening: “Why can’t Mordecai directly talk to Esther?” Where is Esther; where is Mordecai?

Betsy: So Esther is in the palace right now, so Mordecai doesn’t have access to her. He’s mourning, and he wants to let her know the reason for his mourning. 

Dr. Venessa: Yes, and he also can’t enter there with sackcloth and ashes. Isn’t it in chapter 4 where she keeps trying to send him clothes to put on? “Get yourself together, Dude! I want to talk to you; get it together!”

Erin: We don’t wear sackcloth and ashes on purpose. (I say that my personal style is “bag lady chic!”) So sometimes I look like I’m wearing sackcloth and ashes, just because I can’t get my fashion act together! But why is Mordecai wearing sackcloth and ashes? What is he trying to communicate.

Betsy: He’s mourning for his people. If we see the bigger picture, he’s mourning because God’s plan is at stake, God’s doing. He’s mourning; he’s sad.

Erin: It’s not that I want to wear sackcloth and ashes, but I love that in the Old Testament—that outward expression of grief. Often it was over sin, over a people’s sin. Job did it, he sat in the dirt. It’s just that grief. What do we do instead? I think we act like we’re okay.

Dr. Venessa: Well, we wear black to funerals; we sometimes wear little black veils to funerals. We have our ways of showing we’re in mourning.

Betsy: Yes, but I think our external response to sin and our compassion to the world . . . I think we could be better at showing that.

Erin: Yes, I think we could show it more overtly. Well, girls, if I was your Bible study teacher, I would be giving you both many gold stars because you really did good on your Esther recap! 

So throughout the land, the Jews are mourning their impending doom. There’s this collective lamentation that is happening.

And we’ve got to remember that within a generation, these Jews have experienced the fall of their culture, and they’ve been taken into this place. They’re already refugees. And now it sounds like they are going to be executed! Scripture says: “mothers, husbands, men, women and children.” I mean, I can’t imagine the knot in the stomach of the mamas knowing, “A day is coming when my baby is going to be executed!”

Betsy: What could be darker than that?!

Erin: It doesn’t get any darker than that! There’s nowhere for them to go. The government is not in their corner; there is no haven for them. The reason I’m setting the stage so elaborately is because we need to know the tone of all that’s happening around here. And so, Esther and Mordecai communicate through an intermediary, because Esther is captive in the king’s harem.

I’m going to read in Esther 4:8 Mordecai’s first plea to Esther: 

Mordecai also gave him a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and command her to go to the king to beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people.

Now that sounds like, “Oh, sure, she ought to be able to do that at this point! She’s his wife; she should be able to go to the king!” But we know she can’t just go to the king. Why can’t she?

Dr. Venessa: You have to be summoned by the king. Even though you’re the queen, you still have to be summoned, and if you rush in there, you can be killed for going before him without being summoned! 

Erin: And this is not a love story between King Xerxes and Esther. It’s not like they dated for five years, and they were engaged, and they’ve been happily married for ten. She was chosen after this elaborate beauty pageant because she pleased him on her night with the king. 

He summons women; he’s in charge of the women, and so she can’t just go to him and decide. So, Venessa, would you read to us Esther’s reply that we find in verse 11?

Dr. Venessa: 

All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that for any man or woman who comes to the king to the inner court who is not summoned, he has but one law, that he be put to death, unless the king holds out to him the golden scepter so that he may live. And I have not been summoned to come to the king for these thirty days (NASB).

Betsy: Wow.

Erin: Alright, so Esther at first, says, “I can’t do it! Everybody knows I can’t do it. Everybody knows that if I go in without being called, there’s one law.” And what’s the law? The law of death! And yet Mordecai is relentless. Betsy, can you read us Mordecai’s second plea? We find it in verse 13.

Betsy: Yes. It says, 

Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews.” 

Erin: Very good. Let’s keep reading through verse 14.

“For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, [God is faithful!] but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 

How powerful is that!?

Erin: When we hear the book of Esther, that’s the language we tend to focus on: “for such a time as this.” But I’m so fascinated by the few words before that where Mordecai says, “Listen. If you don’t do it, there will be a deliverer!” It was a gospel proclamation right there: “There will be a deliverer; God will keep His Word!”

And so, Esther responds. She asks Mordecai to gather the Jews and have them fast and pray, and she promises to go to the king. And this is our indicator. It doesn’t overtly say in Scripture much about Esther’s faith, but this is the moment where we know she’s a woman of faith, because she’s fasting out of surrender. Fasting is an act of surrender; praying is an act of surrender.

And I just thought—if you don’t mind—I would love to talk about fasting for a moment. I feel like fasting is not talked about much in the church; there are a lot of reasons for that. I was talking about fasting to my group of women that I lead Bible study with. One of my friends said, “I’m not doing that! I’m never doing that!” She just didn’t want to go there; it scared her.

There are also places in Scripture where it tells us when we fast that it’s something we do privately. (see Matt. 6:17–18). But I worry that the fact we’re not talking about fasting means we’re not fasting. So, just for a moment, I’d love to get your take on fasting, your thoughts on fasting. What the Lord has shown you from His Word about fasting, because it’s clearly a biblical principle.

Dr. Venessa: It is.

Betsy: When we see this in this context, we can realize this an impossible task for her, and she knows! She’s scared, she’s afraid, her life is at stake. So what is the response to that? She clings to God, she goes to God.

That’s why I think we don’t fast as much, because we think we can do things on our own. “We have this Christian life all together, so why do we need to fast? I have what I need.” I really love a quote from Pastor John Piper (and I have that in my journal and I keep going back to that, because sometimes it’s really hard for me to fast). 

He says, “Fasting is a physical exclamation point at the end of the sentences: ‘I need You! I want You! I long for You! You’re my treasure! I want more of You! Oh, for the day when You would return! Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!’”

Erin: I love that! 

Betsy: It’s like, “I don’t fast because I want Him to answer a certain prayer. I fast because, ‘I need You!’” I love that, because that’s exactly why Esther was fasting. And she’s not fasting by herself. She says, “I need God so much that I need all of my people, each of us, to fast! Let’s go cling to God; let’s go ask for His deliverance!”

Erin: They assume they’re going to soon be executed. I’d be eating everything in sight! I’d be eating waffles and ice cream and burgers and steak! But instead, they’re going to turn their hearts to fasting, even though these might be their last few days on earth. I love that, as an exclamation. Venessa, any thoughts on fasting?

Dr. Venessa: Well, every year my pastor-husband calls us to corporately fast. Last year I remember I said, “Okay, Lord I really need You to help me go to the next level with you. So I’m going to offer all these sacrifices.” So we went on a ninety-day liquid . . . I said, ninety-day liquid . . . 

Erin: I heard you, girl! My brain was trying to grasp it! My brain was saying, “We-e-e-ll, milkshakes are liquid!” Throw that burger in the blender! (laughter) 

Dr. Venessa: It was really, really good, but we also added other things. So when I think about fasting, I think about it being sacrificial unto God . . . just as Christ was sacrificed for us. If it’s something that doesn’t really hurt, then . . . If you don’t like cheese and you give up cheese, that’s not quite the sacrifice, right? 

Erin: Sure. Are there people on earth who don’t like cheese?

Dr. Venessa: (Yes, there are a few.) So, for us, it’s more of a sacrificial thing. So I remember we took out TV; now that was difficult! I remember waking up in the middle of the night thinking, There’s a red light on in here somewhere! Where’s it coming from? Well, it’s the light on the cable box. I never knew that, because I sleep with the TV on.

So, just the things you discover in your quiet times, the down times, the times of praying instead of eating or praying instead of being on social media. It’s that drawing near to God so that He can draw near to you. It was an amazing experience!

Erin: Yeah, I have to remind myself when I fast that I’m not twisting the arm of God; that’s not what it is. But the prayer that bubbles up in me, when that hunger hits (and I love food, girl!; man, I love food!), it’s a picture of my hunger and thirst for righteousness. And so, that’s what’s happening in Esther’s story. She is hungry for the Lord to intervene! She’s out of cards to play.

She knows she can’t do it in her own strength, and so she calls the people of God to fast and pray. I love that your pastor-husband calls the people of God in his church to fast and pray! We could maybe do with a little more of that in the Bride. And so that’s what they do, and she says these words of surrender: “If I perish, I perish!”

So I have to ask, is that Esther being careless? Did she have a death wish? Or what do you hear behind those words: “If I perish, I perish?”

Dr. Venessa: I was just thinking, to me it’s sort of like, “Alright, I understand what you’re saying, Mordecai. I am going to entreat the Lord into this situation. I’m going to trust Him to intervene. So if God decides that’s the end for me, then God has decided.”

So I hear it more: “God’s in control; I’m giving it all to Him! I’m going to do what I think is right in this moment, and whatever God says is whatever God says.”

Erin: Yes, that’s what I hear, too. I hear faith. And this Bible study is about trusting God’s plan, about seeing His providential hand in our life. That’s okay to see it, but we ultimately want women to walk through this study and then fall into that invisible hand. Just trust Him.

Dr. Venessa: So let’s broaden this out just a slight bit. You could be working on a job where your boss asks you to lie or to steal or to do something that’s immoral and/or illegal. And you say, “I’m not going to do it. I’m going to stand on the Word of God. I’m going to have my integrity based on biblical truth, and if I’m fired, I’m fired!”

Erin: “If I perish, I perish!” Absolutely!

Betsy: It’s trusting. It’s just abandoning yourself to the sovereignty of God. It reminds me of the other verse that says, “He will save us, but if He doesn’t, we won’t bow!” (see Dan. 3:17–18). 

Dr. Venessa: That’s right!

Betsy: So, it’s the same thing that Mordecai said: “He will send a deliverer; He will save us!” [Esther echoes that:] “If it takes my life it’s okay, but He will bring deliverance!”

Erin: That’s good. Where I’d love for us to park from here is Mordecai’s words in verse 14. There’s a lot here; they’re loaded. Mordecai says to her: 

“For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 

Where did that confidence in Mordecai come from? He just knows! He says, “Listen! You and your father’s house are going to perish!” (Which, by the way, Mordecai is in Esther’s father’s house.)

Dr. Venessa: Exactly!

Erin: He says, “We’re not going to make it through, but the people of God are going to make it through.” That confidence comes from knowing God’s covenant wa-a-a-y back with Abraham. I’m going to take us to a passage that Carrie Gaul took us to in a previous session. Let’s go to Genesis 12. This would have been Mordecai’s forefather, Abraham.

God makes this promise in Genesis 12:1–3: 

Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So, Mordecai knows that there’s this generational promise that comes through his forefather Abraham, that all the families of earth are going to be blessed [through Abraham’s descendants]. He also knows that those who come against the descendants of Abraham cannot stand, because we see that way back here in Genesis 12. But then, it gets better! The promises of God are so good. 

Let’s turn to 2 Samuel 7:16; this is God’s covenant with David (I’m going to start in verse 13: 

“He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

“When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you.

“And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.” In accordance with all these words, and in accordance with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David (vv. 13–17).

Now we know, because of where we stand in history, that this is pointing forward to Christ. Mordecai didn’t know that piece of the puzzle, but he knows that the throne of David is going to stand; he knows that the people of God are going to go through to the generations. He knows that those who oppose the people of God ultimately won’t prosper.

He rests in the promises of God, even though his circumstances seemed like none of that was true, right? Because they’d been removed from the Promised Land, they’d been taken forcibly from their home. It wasn’t a Jew who was on the throne—King Xerxes was not of the people God. 

It might have felt like (I don’t know if you feel this way) the promise to David is that His steadfast love will never leave him. When my life is hard, that’s the first promise I doubt. I think, Oh no! I’ve blown it! The tap water of [God’s] love has dried up for me. There are all kinds of reasons why my heart goes to that place.

But the circumstances seemed like God had broken His promises. Yet Mordecai in this kind of Brave Heart moment of conviction says, “Either we’re going to stand up and do what is right, or God is going to use somebody else—but the promises of God will stand!” 

Betsy: What a beautiful picture! Amen!

Erin: Oh, man, I just love it. I want to see Hollywood turn it into a movie or see it on the big screen, somehow, because it’s just so dramatic! My life has been so transformed by the promises of God! I know your lives have as well. I thought we might just spend the time we have here left just sharing the promises of God that have impacted your own lives. 

We won’t name all of them. There are over 3,000 promises of God to His people in the Word of God, so that would be a very long podcast episode. What are the promises of God that have impacted your own life? I’d just love to hear you share.

Betsy: I am a mom of two little boys and I stay at home, so I am surrounded with a lot of ordinary, mundane moments and things. It is really easy for me to forget, because I am overwhelmed with everything I have to do. The only thing that gets me through the day, where I can find strength, is remembering this promise that we find in 1 Peter 1:3–4. It says that, 

He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. 

So I just try to soak my mind in that promise and remember that eternity is right around the corner, and God is going to change everything. He’s going to deliver me from even my own sin.

When you were talking about Mordecai and his hope for deliverance, I think it’s the same for us every day, even today. We see so much darkness; we see how the people of God are being targeted in so many ways. We live in such a huge oppression, but at the same time, we know that He’s coming back. Our Deliverer is coming back! 

Eternity and the promise of that place that He has for me is like the go-to promise every day. Also, we have a resource in Revive Our Hearts that we can download or order. It’s called Fifty Promises to Live By. I love it! It’s a pamphlet, a really short book, that you can have handy. I think my mind is like a Teflon pan . . . like truth doesn’t stick.

Erin: I say that I get “spiritual amnesia!” I know it, and then I forget it. Then I know it, and I forget it!

Betsy: Yes, so that pamphlet is a good thing to have at hand.

Erin: I love the word you read to us from that passage: “imperishable.” That’s the right word for the promises of God! Moths can’t eat them, rust can’t destroy them, people can’t take them. They exist throughout eternity. The promises of God are permanent!

Venessa, the promise of God you stand on . . .

Dr. Venessa: Well, picking up a little bit from where Betsy left off, I love where the Scripture says, “He goes away to prepare a place for me . . .” But, here’s where it gets good. “. . .if it wasn’t so, He would have told me!” (see John 14:1–2). So for me, it’s the confidence that God will never lie to me, that God is not a liar.

He is Truth; He is Righteousness, so I can trust everything that He says. In times of trouble I can trust that this life is not my home. This too shall pass, these things are not eternal. When it’s all over, I will rest in the arms of the Lord. I can know that no matter how hard this life gets, He’s gone away to prepare a place for me and that I will be there, because He said so!

Erin: I love that! And He will keep His promises to you.

Dr. Venessa: He will keep His promises; yes He will!

Erin: He absolutely will! I need the promises of God so desperately! Sometimes I write them on my arm with a Sharpie; sometimes I write them other places where I can look. Sometimes I just repeat them over and over and over: “Surely I will never leave you nor forsake you” (see Heb. 13:5). “I am with you always to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). “I’m close to the brokenhearted and with those who are crushed in spirit” (see Ps. 34:18). 

Then he calls me into a co-mission with Him for the redemption of the world. These are His promises, and He’s going to keep them. We can’t use humans as our litmus test for promise keepers. We all have people in our lives who have broken promises. 

God’s not that way. He’s not a man that He should change, a son of man that He should lie (see Num. 23:19). What He says you might as well just put it in the bank; it is going to come true! 

I was traveling not long ago and this woman was sitting next to me. I’m a heads-down traveler, earbuds, don’t-talk-to-me kind of traveler. She wasn’t picking up on the vibe! 

She’s trying to talk to me, and she goes on to tell me this elaborate story with humility and tears in her eyes. I don’t think she was making it up (in fact I Googled it later). Her pastor-husband had been murdered! She was on her way home from the trial where she faced the man who killed him—and she did that to offer him forgiveness!

I didn’t know what to say to her; I’m not good in those moments. So I asked this question: “Are the promises of God true?” She looked me in the eyes and she said, “Every single one of them!” I needed to know if a woman who had been in the valley of the shadow of death still held onto the promises of God. And she did!

I’ll never forget her. I look forward to seeing her in heaven someday, because she’s anchored me to the promises in ways that have helped me so many times. I want women to read the book of Esther and throw down an anchor and say, “I’m anchored to the promises of God! What He has said, He will do!”

Betsy: Yes. What a great difference Mordecai is making here. I mean, everybody is in despair, everybody is freaking out, but there’s one man that says, “I trust God’s promise, and I know He will deliver us!” So imagine that in our world, in our days—when our world is crumbling, when everything’s fading, when we feel like desperate despair. Will you be that woman—will I be that woman—that will stand and say, “My eyes can’t see salvation, but . . .”

Erin: “My heart fails me! My emotions tell me something totally different!”

Betsy: Exactly! Yes, but I know that my Rock will stand, that His promises are sure! That’s my prayer for today, for this afternoon. 

Dr. Venessa: And for this very moment. There are so many women that face so many things. I love this promise, Psalm 93:4, “Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!” (NASB).

Erin: Yes! 

Betsy: Wow!

Dr. Venessa: You know, because we go through many things in this world as women. You have your teenagers that go astray, you have husbands that walk out, finances that fail. Many things in this world are unstable, but our God assured that He is mighty. We can be sure to stand on the stableness of that Rock.

Erin: And He always will be!

Dr. Venessa: He always will be!

Erin: Venessa, will you send our listeners out with Isaiah 14:24–27? It just is a reminder that if the Lord has promised it, it is as good as done!

Dr. Venessa: Sure will. 

The Lord of hosts has sworn saying, "Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand, to break Assyria in My land, and I will trample him on My mountains. Then his yoke will be removed from them and his burden removed from their shoulder. This is the plan devised against the whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out against all the nations. For the Lord of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?” (NASB).

Erin: Amen! That’s where we stand, we stand on the promises of God! 

All Scripture is taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.