Preparing for the King

I've started studying Esther a few days a week using Beth Moore's study book. This morning I read Esther 2 about the girls who had been chosen to be part of the beauty/new queen competition. It is so sickening the way they are treated: 12 months of beauty treatments then a night with King Xerxes, after which they get put in the concubine harem. Just imagine their feelings of being used and rejected. It's shocking to read. But seeing how the girls were treated makes the way God treats us, His bride so much more beautiful and wonderful. I was really moved reading the cross references and seeing how our experience differs so vastly. Here's what Beth Moore says:

This morning...I thanked God for being the kind of King who gives a woman dignity instead of taking it, a righteous King whose commands are always for our good and whose ways are always toward our wholeness.

In contrast to the gods of many world religions, our God never asks anything perverse of us. Men who please Him are not promised a harem of virgins for their sexual enjoyment when they die. Our God views women with purity, not sensuality.

[Below are] several Scriptures that paint a beautifully contrasting picture of our King, including our vastly different preparation for His Kingdom.

I delight greatly in the LORD;

my soul rejoices in my God.

For he has clothed me with garments of salvation

and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,

as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Isaiah 61.10

Husbands, love your wives,

just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,

and to present her to himself as a radiant church,

without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish,

but holy and blameless.

Ephesians 5. 25-27

'Let us rejoice and be glad

and give him glory!

For the wedding of the Lamb has come,

and his bride has made herself ready.

Fine linen, bright and clean,

was given her to wear.'

(Fine linen stand for he righteous acts of God's holy people.)

...On his robe and on his thigh he had his name written:

KING OF KING AND LORD OF LORDS.

Revelation 19. 7-8,19

In stark contrast to King Xerxes, King Jesus gave himself in greatest love for His bride so that he could cover us with garments of salvation and robes of righteousness. We who comprise His bride will make ourselves ready for the King through nothing less than the soul-healing pursuit of purity. And where we're going there will be no night. No darkness at all. We will dwell in the bright, broad daylight of Christ's glorious presence.

My salvation and my honour depend on God.

Psalm 62.7