Sunday, February 8, 2015
On this Sunday morning, Jeff Shamess, Congregational Life Pastor from Harvest Church (OPC) in Wyoming, MI–the mother church of NCF–was the guest preacher. He taught from the book of Esther, chap. 6, under the title, “The Ordinary Providence of God and Me.” While pondering the little switcheroo between Haman and Mordecai at the climax of the story, I was suddenly struck by some of the premial significance of the episode that had evidently escaped me earlier.
Mordecai’s reward included salvation for his fellow countrymen…an extension of premial justice to many other persons. Or perhaps this benefit should be viewed as also resulting from Ahasuerus’s favor toward Esther, now extended to her entire people.
In both cases, please observe, the dispensation of salvation on behalf of the whole Jewish population in Persia would still be premial, and not in the least resulting from any penal displacement of punishment onto a substitute (unless you were to construe Haman as such a surrogate!)
Thus even the book of Esther, where God’s name does not appear, is still rich in Messianic significance in terms of the super-compensated reward of premial justice that it reveals. But whereas in Job, the reward is focused on its benefit to Job, in Esther the reward is contemplated from the aspect of its ultimate benefit to the whole people. So here is another narrative layer to the theme we saw in the history of Joseph in Egypt, the earlier major power in civilization. Notice how God is intent in bringing blessing to the nations.
This was not a point of Jeff’s sermon. But it bears careful consideration in view of its messianic fulfillment in Jesus.
I was able to share these observations with Jeff after the sermon, and also conveyed my basic understanding of the premial approach to the Atonement and how I arrived at it over the years. Regrettably, I did not have any of my Atonement documents handy to give him before he left.
The Premial Atonement 