Esther 8:11 – “The king’s edict granted the Jews in every city the right to assemble and protect themselves; to destroy, kill and annihilate any armed force of any nationality or province that might attack them and their women and children; and to plunder the property of their enemies.”

An interesting feature of the story of Esther is that even when the King discovers the plot to exterminate the Jews (Haman was planning to commit genocide), there was no measure taken to prevent this from occurring.  Instead, Mordecai and Esther convinced the King to authorize resistance by God’s people against their enemies.  This was partly due to an unusual feature of ancient Persian law, which made the previous edict irrevocable; the best they could do was try to offset it or cancel it out with an equal counter-measure.  Instead of prohibiting anyone from attacking the Jews, the new edict simply authorized the Jews to assemble and to protect themselves, and to destroy any who attacked them.

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We are more than conquerors….

Romans 8:36-37 - As it is written, For your sake we face death all day long;  we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

It is something easy to say when everything is going well- that we are more than conquerors.  When we feel a great blessing, we feel confident.  But the Scriptures make this statement immediately after talking about facing death and being desperate.  That is the time we need to remind ourselves of this great truth. 

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1 Samuel 17:40 – “Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.”

When David was preparing to fight Goliath, he refused the fancy royal armor and weapons of Saul (1 Samuel 17:38-39).  Instead, he ensured his victory by first kneeling alone at the brook and picking five smooth stones to use in his slingshot.  This is a prophetic picture of how we need to use spiritual weapons to fight our battles with our own fleshly tendencies and attitudes.  Just as the stones in the stream were smooth from the constant flow of water over them (and their smoothness made them effective in the sling), there are certain spiritual disciplines through which the Holy Spirit flows abundantly, and which are very effective in overcoming the internal obstacles to our faith.  We call these the Means of Grace because they open a conduit for God’s grace to flow more abundantly into our lives.

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Romans 8:37 –   “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Conquerors are people who get something by force.   The Lord calls Christians to be “more than conquerors” because instead of trusting in our strength, we trust in the love of Jesus.  His love is greater than all the armies of the world.

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Romans 8:37 - “… in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us”

In this world, we have many trials and temptations.  Often we feel that the trials and temptations are overwhelming. When Paul wrote this letter, Christians had much more serious trials than we face today.  Not only did they face unemployment, sickness in the home, marriage problems, and other difficulties that we face today, they faced familial and societal rejection and utter poverty; they confronted death of the most painful and humiliating kind—being eaten alive by lions in the coliseum before thousands of cheering spectators.  In spite of this extreme picture of defeat, these believers could go to their death knowing Lord’s promise—we are “more than conquerors.”

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