Gary Gleans

Chess is a very interesting game.  When I play against my computer I always win on the easy setting.  I usually win on the medium setting.  I almost never win on the hard setting and I have never won on the expert setting.  Chess requires planning multiple moves in advance as well as anticipating the opponent’s moves.  There are times when I feel like I am doing well one the expert level and then all of the sudden I find myself in check mate and am left scratching my head to try to figure out what went wrong.  The book of Esther looks like the unfolding of a chess match using real people.  Neither God nor Stan is mentioned in the book but they are clearly the “players” moving the “pieces” on the stage of life.  The events narrated in this story most likely occur after Ezra’s group of exiles return to Jerusalem and before Nehemiah sets off on his mission to build the wall.  Perhaps the promotion of Mordecai that we find in this narrative help...

Nehemiah is typically used as an example of biblical leadership.  Certainly there are many leadership principles that are illustrated by Nehemiah.  However, the book was not written as a manual for leadership.  It was written as a historical account of the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem from a physical, spiritual and political perspective.  Originally the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were united in one book and when they were first separated they were called First and Second Ezra.  This would lead us to believe that Ezra is most likely the author of the book but he often quotes the historical journal of Nehemiah which accounts for the numerous references to Nehemiah in the first person.  Chronologically, the events described in the book of Esther would fall between the events of Ezra and Nehemiah.  Perhaps the influence of Esther and her uncle Mordecai helps to explain the receptivity of the king to Nehemiah’s proposal.  The captivity is comin...

The book of Ezra picks up in much the same place that 2 Chronicles leaves off with the decree for the children of Israel to return to Jerusalem.  This is yet another evidence of Ezra’s authorship of both works and, more importantly, of God’s sovereign control over the events of His people.  Jeremiah had written that the captivity would last for seventy years since the people had failed to let the land rest every seven years as the Law required.  Naturally, this was not the only Law they had failed to obey but illustrates just how long the people had ignored so much of God’s Word.  However, just as God had promised from the beginning, when the people remembered the Lord and turned back to Him; God would mercifully restore them to Himself and the land.  It is amazing to see God using a pagan king to accomplish His will by authorizing and even funding the restoration of the children of Israel to the land from which they had been removed.  No matter how diffic...

Although First and Second Chronicles were originally only one book, we can see one major difference between the two books: The first book gives us an almost exclusively positive view of David’s reign while the second book gives us both a negative and positive view of Solomon ‘s and the other 20 kings of Judah’s reigns.  Much of the information included in this book has already been seen in Kings; however, there are unique perspectives included in this rendering that certainly enrich our understanding of what happened in the history of the nation.  The book of Kings gives us a back and forth history of the kings of Israel and Judah in a somewhat chronological order.  2 Chronicles gives us an exclusive focus on the kings of Judah and their reigns.  The only mentions we see of the kings in Israel occur when they have some sort of significant interaction with the king of Judah.  It is clear that Ezra had a purpose for this focus on Judah as he prepares the people t...