Haman is defeated, but the work of saving God’s people isn’t over yet, rather like the long ending of The Lord of the Rings that always seems to drag on. Esther and Mordecai still have to secure an irrevocable decree to save their people.

A message for the new year, and one worth needing as much as anyone: growing in the fear of the Lord in an age that’s already full of fear and anxiety about everything except God. Psalm 130 paints a picture of a healthy, saving fear.

An unlikely comparison: the providence of Esther and the rules Chuck Jones set himself for drawing Wile E. Coyote cartoons, where the villain is always undone by his own devices. Haman’s plot finally catches up with him at the queen’s banquet.

This is a missions Sunday, introducing a partnership with Christian Compassion Ministries as the answer to a long-prayed-for opportunity. The appeal is grounded in James’s own definition of pure religion: caring for orphans and widows in their distress.

Christians are often guilty of a headline mentality about providence: judging whether God’s plan is on track by how the news looks that week. This almost comic chapter, where a sleepless king’s insomnia becomes the hinge of Israel’s deliverance, says otherwise.

Every branch of the church practices communion, but few agree on what it actually means. Consider a biblical theology of the Lord’s Supper, addressing the different views Christians bring to the table from their own backgrounds.

Pride goes before destruction, but humility comes before honor, as Proverbs 16 puts it, opening Esther 5. After the tense exchange between Esther and Mordecai in chapter 4, this chapter plays out exactly what that proverb warns and promises.

This is a sermon preached as much to the preacher’s own heart as anyone else’s: we lose sensitivity to sin over time and become hardened to it. Consider Jeremiah’s call to break up the fallow ground of a heart grown hard.

Why do we so often need hard times before we get serious with God? C.S. Lewis’s image of pain as God’s megaphone to a deaf world sets up the decision Esther now faces: whether to risk her life for her people.

Every culture has its own way of saying goodbye, and the New Testament takes those ordinary customs of greeting and farewell and fills them with gospel meaning. This closes out Philippians with Paul’s final farewell to the church.