WISDOM IN FRIENDSHIP & THE FEAST OF PURIM

As I gaze out across the plains from my vantage point on a mountain range high in the Snowy Mountains of Australia, I have been reflecting on the challenges we all face every day of our lives. Of course, there is much that is good, but I have increasingly realized that we walk out each day into a spiritual battle. I read a comment some years ago that has stayed with me. Each day we live our life as though we are living on a cruise ship but we are really living on a battle ship.

It is hard to face any struggle alone, and we can’t ever underestimate the role of friendship in our lives. In my book, Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times (Biblical Foundations For Life In A World That Has Lost Its Way), which I hope will be available later this year, one of the chapters is on wisdom friendship. This week, I include in the Sons of Issachar Newsletter an extract on friendship from book, which readers may find helpful.

So What Does it Mean to Be a Friend?

Being a friend means having a close connection with another person based on mutual trust, support, love and care. We need to know the other person – their life journey, interests and experiences, challenges, what they love and what troubles them. God has created us with a desire for connection with others but a word of warning. Wisdom dictates that close friendships with members of the opposite sex should be avoided. Intimacy creates the danger of sexual temptation and a wise person avoids close friendships with the opposite sex where there is a friendship, this needs to be in the presence of a third person. Many careers have been destroyed through friendships at work becoming more intimate, and of course, this is extremely dangerous when either of the persons involved is married.

King Solomon tells us that:

“A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need (Proverbs 17:17, NLT).

Loyalty is the key ingredient to lasting friendship, and many friendships have been destroyed because a friend has been disloyal through gossip, believing what other people have said or sometimes even failing to stand up and support an absent friend. Solomon said that two are better than one, and if one falls down the friend can help him up (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). Friendship requires that we always think the best of our friend and that if we hear something negative, then rather than saying anything to another person, we go to our friend and check if the negative thing you have heard is true. In many cases, the story will be incorrect, but if it is correct, you can discuss the issue confidentially with your friend. A critical synonym for friendship is confidentiality. Most friendships will thrive when both friends know that what they say will be kept confidential, just between them. This is often difficult for us because when we have secret information, we can find ourselves being drawn into saying something we later regret. Friendship means being discreet at all times.

Friends are important to our emotional well-being, and recently I read that to assess your relationships, it is beneficial to tally all the people you could call in the night if you have a problem[1]. The author of this article says that once you write down the names of the people you could call in the night if you have a problem, then make a plan to spend time with the ones on your list and keep in regular contact. It is easy to take cherished friends for granted and fail to maintain contact in the busyness of life. We must cherish and prioritize time with the most important to us.

One of the critical but difficult aspects of friendship is how you speak the truth in difficult situations. You may think your friend is making unwise choices or leading life in a way that will cause conflict and trouble for them. What do you do? The Book of Proverbs tells us:

“As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend” (Proverbs 27:17).

Friendship requires that we speak the hard things when necessary. Otherwise we will not be a real friends. Your friend’s response will give you an idea of your relationship's strength and whether he or she is wise. King Solomon tells us:

“Do not correct a scoffer, lest he hate you;
Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you.
Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser;
Teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.” (Proverbs 9:8-9).

If your friend’s response to your advice is negative it may be time to re-evaluate your friendship. If your friend is angry with you and immediately turns against you when you speak about a difficult issue, it is a sign that the friend lacks wisdom and it is not useful to pursue the subject. A wise person will take any rebuke or advice seriously and be pleased to have had your frank assessment. Notably, the friend will know that they have someone who is prepared to say the difficult things and who has a genuine concern for their welfare.

The Important Role of Questions in Friendship

One of the essential tools for life is the willingness and ability to ask good questions. U.S. leadership expert Pat Murray said in a seminar I attended many years ago:

“When you are faced with a difficult situation, you don’t need to look for the best solution but rather the best question”. He noted that the right questions open the door to insight and understanding of the issue, which helps us implement the right solutions.

Friends need to cultivate the ability to ask good questions. I learnt this from personal experience in a seminar many years ago. The seminar teacher had us consider a significant problem in our lives, and then we were required to work with another person and have that person come up with a range of solutions. My seminar partner was a man in his 50s with a young family who was struggling to get to the gym for regular exercise. He spoke about the problem at length, and immediately I could think of a great solution and felt very pleased with myself. He was quite wealthy, and it was clear that he needed to write a check for $20,000, and he could have a home gym installed. Problem fixed! As I exultantly shared this great solution with him, he showed little interest and had many excuses for why my solution would not work. The outcome was identical when the seminar facilitator brought the other seven or eight “pairs” back together. There was not one person who was prepared to implement the great advice that their partner had offered. Now this group of people had been together for five years and knew one another well. The facilitator then had each of the “pairs” come back together with the instruction that we were no longer able to offer advice but only to ask questions. This ended up being very difficult but highly worthwhile as the questions uncovered many previously obscured issues. It was frustrating for the questioner as, at various times in the questioning process, one was urged to say: “Just do this!”. Such an urge had to be resisted.

Since then, I have continually noted that in almost all cases, the advice we give to friends or relatives is never taken and sometimes is the cause of real offence. The offence is virtually certain when the advice concerns the raising of children! Good questions are open-ended and enable the person to find solutions they are prepared to implement.

My experience is that asking questions is the best approach when a friend asks you for advice. Rather than providing advice, consider the situation carefully and then ask questions. Here are some types of questions that can be valuable when talking to a friend:

• How long have you been feeling like this?

• What options are you considering at the moment?

• Have you written down the situation's pluses and minuses so you can make a more objective assessment?

• What do you feel that your heart is telling you?

• Do you have a strong sense in your heart about the best option?

• What are your main fears concerning this issue?

• How have you found that you have made your best decisions in difficult situations in the past?

• How do you think the decision will impact the lives of those closest to you?

• If your spouse feels pessimistic about what you intend to do, what are their main concerns?

• How will your decision impact your life in the longer term?

• Do you have a sense of a bigger life purpose? What will the impact be of your decision about this bigger purpose?

Many other questions can also open a dialogue with your friend, but the questions above are helpful as a starting point. I have carefully noted conservations in various social situations over the last ten years and noticed how infrequently people ask one another questions. I no longer give advice when asked (if I can help it!) but search for a question that will help a friend uncover a solution. The problem is that providing advice is tempting, but it should be firmly resisted since it is rarely taken. A good aim for us all is to become a friend known for our excellent questions.

Israel and the Feast of Purim

This last week (6-7 March) marked one of Israel's most important festivals or celebrations - the feast of Purim. It commemorates the remarkable story of Queen Esther – see the link here.

The feast is held on the 14^th day of the Hebrew month of Adar, which is the date that was selected for the destruction of all the Jews in Persia at the time of King Xerxes.

The modern Jewish celebration observes a remarkable series of events involving a young Jewish woman Esther. The event is thought to have taken place around 480 BC, during the reign of King Xerxes in the ancient city of Susa (Shushan). This now-ruined Persian city is located in modern Iran, about 1000km southwest of the current capital of Tehran, close to the border with Iraq. The events described took place after the Babylonian exile, when although many returned to Jerusalem after the declaration of King Cyrus, many of the children of Israel remained scattered across the Middle East.

The story is a remarkable one. King Xerxes (called Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther) threw a big party that lasted for six months! The king was showing off all his great possessions, and toward the end of the feast, this included the Queen – Vashti. Vashti didn’t like being put on parade before all the palace officials and refused to attend the king's summons. The result was that Vashti was cast aside, and there was a nationwide beauty pageant for young women auditioning to be the new Queen. Enter the beautiful young Jewish woman, Esther, who had favour with the officials during the preparation process for the beauty pageant and was eventually selected to be the new Queen.

Esther was raised by her cousin Mordecai after her parents died when she was young. Mordecai was a clever, intelligent and well-connected man who told Esther not to reveal that she was Jewish. After Esther is selected as queen, Mordecai overhears a plot against the king and tells Esther, who informs the king. The king dispatches the plotters via the gallows, and this information is recorded in the royal chronicles.

The story takes a terrible turn when we are introduced to the evil Haman, who turns out to be a descendant of the Amalekites, notorious historical enemies of the Jews. Haman is promoted to a position like Prime Minister. After Mordecai fails to honour him around town, Haman manoeuvres the king into signing a declaration to destroy all the Jews in the kingdom. On the first day of the month of Nisan, lots (called Pur – plural Purim) were cast to determine the date for the Jewish annihilation. The date was set, and there was terrible consternation amongst the Jews scattered throughout the empire. Mordecai sends a message to Esther to petition the king to reverse the decree, but Esther sends a message back to Mordecai saying that she hasn’t seen the king for the last month and that if she appears before him, she could be condemned to death. Mordecai, who understands the providence of God, sends back a message to Esther saying:

“Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace any more than all the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14).

Esther,  a no-nonsense woman, swings into action and calls for all the Jews to join her in a three-day fast before she goes to see the king, which is against the law but says these remarkable words: “..and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).

Esther then goes before the king, seemingly having conceived an intricate plot of her own. She requests that the king and the wicked Haman come to a banquet that she has prepared, and they go to the banquet where the king tells Esther that he will grant any request that she has. At the banquet, Queen Esther requests that the king and Haman come to another banquet prepared for Haman the following day. Haman feels he has made it big and “he’s the man”. However, on the way home, he sees Mordecai, and he is so upset that his wife tells him to make large gallows so that Mordecai can be hanged, which delights the wicked Haman.

The story takes another unusual twist because the night before the second banquet, the king can’t sleep and orders the royal chronicles to be read, perhaps as a soporific. He comes across the story of Mordecai’s role in revealing the previous plot against him and realizes that Mordecai has not been honoured. There are intricacies in the story at this stage that I won’t try to cover, but the result is that the king asks the wicked Haman to lead a horse with Mordecai dressed in fine robes and calls out to everyone about Mordecai’s honour by the king. Haman is humiliated, and when he tells his wife and advisors about what has happened, they realize that it is a sign of impending disaster for wicked Haman.

At this very time, Haman is called to the banquet with the king, organized by Queen Esther. During the feast, the king asks Esther what she wishes to have (even half the kingdom), and she tells the king that she and her people are marked for annihilation. The king is shocked and asks who would devise such a wicked scheme, and Esther, impressive by her clarity and brevity of communication, replies:

“The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman!”

Haman realizes that the game is up for him and is terrified, he pleads with Esther but appears to be assaulting her, and the king orders Haman to hang on the gallows he built for Mordecai. The result is that Mordecai attains Haman’s position and possessions, the Jews gain favour with the king, and fear of the Jews falls on the population. A feast was declared on the day set for Jewish genocide; on that day, the Jews overcame those who hated them.

The story of Esther is one where the unseen providential hand of God is evident at many stages: Esther’s selection as queen, Mordecai’s role in uncovering a plot against the king, the evil Haman and his plot of genocide being exposed after a Jewish fast, and the unrecognised deeds of Mordecai being revealed at a crucial time, as well as Esther’s favour with the king.

The Feast of Purim is important because the descendants of the Persians, the Iranians, have vowed the destruction of Israel and have been relentlessly acquiring nuclear technology to build a nuclear weapon. Over the last 30 years, parades in Iran regularly declare “death to Israel”. Why is this so?

The answer as to why is tied up with the whole story of Israel. It is complex but has been an interest of mine for the last 20 years and is essential in seeking to understand the “signs of the times” today. The Bible tells a remarkable story about Israel, woven in between all the Old Testament's trauma, death and destruction. I will attempt here to provide a bird’s eye view of what is an ongoing story of God’s promises to establish His own people and to bless all the nations of the earth:

• Early in the Genesis narrative, sometime after the Great Flood, God calls Abraham to be His friend and promises descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, with a son then being born to Abraham who was 100 years old and Sarah, his 90-year-old wife.

• God makes an unconditional promise to Abraham that He “..will make you a great nation…and will  bless those who bless you, and curse him who curses you; and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:2-3).

• God’s promise is later reiterated to Abraham’s son, Isaac, when God declares an “everlasting covenant for his offspring” (Genesis 17:19) and then to Isaac’s son, Jacob; God declares to Jacob: “I am the LORD God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. Also, your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 28:13-14).

• God declared an “everlasting covenant” to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants – today’s Jews – that He would prosper them and establish them in a land of their own, part of which includes today’s nation of Israel.

• The Old Testament is a story of God’s love and human failure where His nation, Israel rebels against Him repeatedly, and God lovingly disciplines them over thousands of years. However, his unconditional promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob remains because God is the same today, yesterday and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

• The ultimate historical failure in the nation of Israel was that of the rabbis leadership when they failed to recognize Jesus as the Jewish Messiah because He came not as the anticipated conquering king but as a suffering servant. Did this failure of the Jewish leaders invalidate God’s promises? Of course not – the promises were unconditional.

• The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the dispersal of the children of Israel seemed to put the final nail in the coffin for a Jewish homeland, and various Bible experts proposed a “replacement theology”, where the church must now inherit God’s promises to Israel. St Paul answers this question definitively in his letter to the Romans (11:1-2), “..has God cast away His people? Certainly not! …. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.”

• Unfortunately, God’s rejection of the Jews has become a mainstream Christian doctrine and, shockingly, was part of Martin Luther’s later writings, which had a powerful impact on Nazi Germany.

• God’s chosen people, the children of Israel, have been horrifically persecuted down the centuries, and this situation continues until today. The dispersion of the children of Israel was prophesied by Moses even before they entered the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 28:63-65) and was God’s punishment. However, his love for His people and His covenant is absolute.

• Persecution of the Jews has been ongoing and following Jesus’ crucifixion, since the Romans destroyed Jerusalem with the resultant scattering of the Jewish people. At the time of Colombus’ departure from Spain for the New World in 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled (on pain of death) all the Jews from Spain, which ushered in the Spanish Inquisition, which surprisingly only ended in 1834. It is estimated that 31,912 heretics (mostly Jews) were burned at the stake.

• Unfortunately, the horrific story of the Nazi holocaust was not an isolated event, and today, antisemitism has made a comeback, politically and even in the church. We all need to be aware that this has deep spiritual roots, and unknowingly, some well-meaning people inadvertently join the satanic forces. The BDS movement aimed at boycotting Israel economically - has taken root at most Western universities, led by communist agitators. Many political, economic and spiritual forces are against Israel and the Jewish people, but God has already declared:

“Fear not, for I am with you;
Be not dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you,
Yes, I will help you,
I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

What seemed impossible – the nation of Israel re-established in their ancient land - happened in May 1948, but was an event predicted in the Bible. Despite many attempts by Arab neighbours to wipe out Israel, the country has survived. God has not finished with Israel, and the feast of Purim is a reminder that there are dark spiritual forces at work in the world that seek the destruction of the Jewish people. Fortunately, for the Jews, they have a majority because they have God on their side. Israel has prospered remarkably despite all the forces arraigned against them.

Israel is not a perfect nation, although it is the only democracy in the Middle East, and its Arab neighbours have repeatedly vowed to wipe it off the face of the earth.

This brings into focus Purim and the ancient planned genocide of all Jews in Persia, which today is modern Iran. The spirit of the antichrist, which is at the root of antisemitism, is active throughout the world today. It is good to be alert to this antichrist, antisemitic spirit. Thousands of years ago, God said He would bless those who blessed Abraham. We need to stand with God’s Chosen People, and we will be blessed.

There is coming, a remarkable day, a mystery, and was written about by St Paul, who says that his readers should not be:

“..ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26).

There is a coming day when the children of Israel will recognize their Messiah, but in the meantime, there will be ongoing persecution. We must keep our eyes on what is happening in Jerusalem, contested real estate under continual spiritual threat. It is the city where the Great King will return to rule, and what happens in Israel is vital to help us understand what is happening in God’s timeline.

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[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/seven-lessons-worlds-longest-running-study-happiness/?WT.mc_id=e_DM96869&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_Edi_New_Sub&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_Edi_New_Sub20230123&utm_campaign=DM96869