It is the closest that God’s people have ever come to actual extinction.  It was the original attempt at the final solution.  Driven from the security of their nation home, into a diaspora that spanned the farthest reaches of the Persian empire – from India to Ethiopia – they were at the complete mercy and goodwill of the peoples among whom they lived.  Which they enjoyed…until they didn’t.  The hatred and determination of just one man flowered into an irrevocable, empire-wide edict, which when carried out would have resulted in the extermination of almost every living Jew on the face of the earth.  Never have God’s people hung by a thinner thread.  But as we’ll be reminded this morning, the survival of God’s people has never depended upon God’s people.  It is the sheer miracle of the mere existence of God’s people that is on full display in Esther 8:1-14, in a message entitled, “Saving the Unsavable”.

It has become an idiom for a place or state of extreme disadvantage, antagonism, or hostility. We’ll say, he or she was thrown into the lion’s den. Or a person who is entering a dangerous or threatening situation will describe their experience as they felt like they were walking into a lion’s den. It seems like there are more people than ever, who for many reasons, feel like that’s exactly the place where they find themselves today in the midst of these turbulent and uncertain times. This morning we’ll take a close look at the actual story to which we owe the familiar idiom. The experience of a godly young man, in a strange land far from home, who faced down not only antagonism and hostility, but a literal den of lions. What brought him to that situation, how was he delivered, and what happened as a result? And importantly, what exactly does it have to say to those of us who find ourselves feeling like were living in the midst of our own lion’s den, right here and right now. For that we’ll turn this morning to Daniel 6:1-28, in a message entitled, “Shutting the Mouths of the Unshuttable”.

Matthew 14

Daniel 3:1-30

Jonah 3:1-4:11