Battle Plans

Transcript of the segment on the Third Day:

A friend of mine, David Strain, drew attention to the Jewish midrash. The Jewish midrash is a kind of commentary on this passage. And it focuses of the Jews’ three days of fasting under the threat of death and the way that God answered it. And here’s what the midrash says: It declares “Israel (quote) Israel is never left in dire distress more than three days.” And it points to Hosea chapter 6, one of the prophets, “After two days, he will revive us. On the third day, he will raise us up that we may live before him.” And what the midrash says, unwittingly, happens. You see these three days are not thrown in there as kind of and irrelevant detail. They’re of great significance in the Bible, these three days. Jonah is in the belly of the fish three days. He emergence meant life for Jonah, but also life for people in Nineveh who would hear the gospel through Jonah. Those three days were days of prayer under the shadow of death. And now on the third day as Esther ventures all on the will of God, there is life and hope. And when Esther’s Savior comes into the world, he is not only under the risk of perishing, but he comes to perish. He comes into the world to die for his people’s sins. He comes to bear their sins in his own body on the cross. When he is delivered over for our trespasses, he is raised on the third day for our justification.

“The royal scepter, as it were, is pointed at Jesus in the grave, and it spells life to him and it spells life to all the Israel of God.”
“Haman is the first person to conceive of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
“Hitler, as well as Haman, engaged in the kind of occultic activity