In all things God works for the good of those who love him. Romans 8:28 NIV
Does God care about what goes on in our lives?.......In this sermon series on “wrestling with God” this is a recurring question.
Providence is the term to describe how God interacts with and cares for his Creation, and specifically his people. Everyone has a view of Providence! Atheists believe there is NO God to care. Thus their view is there is no providence—only FATE
Believers are spread across a spectrum:
1. Some believe God is distant and uncaring, having spun the world loose long ago, saying “good luck, folks. Hope you manage okay.”
2. At the other extreme, some believe God is like a great puppeteer, pulling all the strings to control every event, determining every decision. If I buy a new Ferrari today, it is because God willed it for me. . . . and Sunny better learn to like my new car.
3. But most Christians see a more complex providence: God is deeply caring for us, but he gives a broad range of free will, calling upon us to exercise stewardship and responsibility over life and the choices we face.
4. Ultimately, God’s greatest providence for us is our Savior, Jesus Christ
Our Christian music often works hard to speak to God’s providence in our lives--
Three hundred years ago, Handel’s Oratorio, “Messiah”, eloquently spoke to the issue:
For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Ralph Carmichael in the 1960s spoke of a personalized providence with his song, “He’s Everything to me”: A line ran
‘Til by faith I met Him face to face, and I felt the wonder of His Grace,
Then I knew that He was more than just a God who didn’t care, who lived away out there
And now He walks beside me every day.
More recently, a Nigerian Christian singer known as Sinach composed a beautiful psalm to a diversely transcendent God. “Waymaker” starts out as we sang a few minutes ago:
You are here, moving in our midst
I worship You
I worship You
One of the bridge sections emphasizes,
Even when I don’t see it you’re working
Even when I don’t feel it you’re working
You never stop, you never stop working.
Now our text today, the whole Book of Esther speaks to God’s Providence. But it does so obliquely, never specifically mentioning God.
Esther speaks to us in regard to a number of big PROVIDENTIAL issues:
1. Does God care about his people in distress?
2. Does God work, perhaps indirectly through government leaders? ---Kings, Dictators, Presidents, governors, legislators, even people who do not intend to honor God? . . .
3. Does God work indirectly through people who may be basically evil?
4. Can God be at work in the midst of systems he finds repugnant? —RACISM, SEXISM, CLASSISM or other ABUSIVE AND BIGOTTED MINDSETS?
5. Does God work on our schedule or HIS?
Esther does not give final answers to any of these questions, but the story opens windows of understanding for all of us.
There are 5 Key Characters.
1. Xerxes- the most powerful man in the world at this time, King over the Persian Empire.
2. Vashti- Xerxes’ Queen
3. Esther- The “star” of the story—in fact that’s what her name means. --a Jewish girl, probably born as a slave in Babylon, now living in Persia.
4. Mordecai- A leader among the captive, displaced Jews, with unusual political savvy, also Esther’s uncle who became her adoptive father.
5. Haman- A politically conniving Persian politician who had no limits in his thirst for power and dominance.
Every good story has Tensions—
Major cultural tension between Powerful government with a powerful king and a captive, enslaved nation of Jewish involuntary immigrants. This tension gets played out personally--
Esther/Mordecai. Mordecai was an uncle who adopted and raised Esther after her parents died. He mentored her through extraordinary transitions into adult roles.
Xerxes/Vashti. Xerxes was the all-powerful King—Vashti was the woman he chose to be his first subservient queen.
Haman/Mordecai, All Jews. Mordecai’s unwillingness to be in awe of Haman led Haman to unreasoned Hatred—BIGOTRY-- Toward Mordecai and all who shared his Jewish faith.
Esther/Xerxes. Everybody loved her. Can the king tolerate her popularity and her sense of moral integrity?
The unspoken tension—God and everybody. He is not represented in a temple, pillar of fire, or any appointed priest, but all this is happening in His world and His PEOPLE are involved.
Let’s get into The story—
I am going to give you an embarrassingly abbreviated summary of the story: You can read it, and I invite you to do so--10 to 50 minutes of reading, depending not only on reading speed, but on time spent pausing and reflecting.
---Ancient Persia replaced Babylon as the most powerful nation on earth-- Dominating from India to North Africa to Europe. All nations within the empire either submitted or were squashed. Many were relocated: at least the people deemed most useful to the empire were transferred involuntarily to where the King wanted them. That is how many of the Jews happened to be in Xerxes realm.
The story begins with a conflict in the King’s household. Xerxes became King through a power struggle, and he understood POWER. Power is what being King was all about. Power is enhanced by pageantry and showmanship. He threw a huge party for all of his most important political aides and military leaders, the people who kept Xerxes in power. The party went on for six months. (That’s REALLY a party.) At a time when he and his partying colleagues were thoroughly liquored up, he sent one of his men to bring his Queen Vashti to parade in front of his drunk buddies to show them how beautiful she was: For reasons that are never explained, Vashti resisted being ogled and leered at by a bunch of drunk politicians & soldiers. She said NO!
NO? Some people don’t believe they can be told NO!.
Here’s an illustration. I was once on a board where a certain board member (Let’s call him Mr. Peterson) said “My daddy taught me, that nobody ever says NO to a Peterson.” After he had held a board meeting long overtime attempting to make everyone agree with him on a bad idea, another board member stood and looked him in the eye, declaring, “Mr. Peterson, Listen carefully to what I am saying to you: NO! You may talk all night, but the answer in the morning will still be NO.” The Peterson proposal was rejected. Mr. Peterson never came to another meeting of that board.
King Xerxes, however, had no equal to challenge him. So, he called his top staff together. What are we going to do? They agreed that Vashti’s defiant act of self-respect would have devastating consequences if not faced firmly! Soon every wife in the Kingdom will be thinking she has a right to say NO to her husband’s UNREASONABLE demands! Imagine the chaos of wives thinking for themselves!
So, Vashti was dethroned, perhaps decapitated, and a search for a new queen was launched.
Now notice that the text says nothing of God approving any of this, But the readers assumed, God is watching and still working.
So, the king ordered his agents to do a search for candidates for a new QUEEN. Only two requirements: She had to be drop-dead beautiful, and she had to “know her place.” How many of you have hoped that your stunning good looks might put you in a position of power? I have been spared any such anticipation. But when the King’s men found Esther, they were like “WOW. We have a 10 for sure!” She was taken into the palace and prepared for presentation to the King, who, when he met her agreed. If there were a Sesame Street translation of his response it would be “Cowabunga!”
Now you might be saying, “The King and all those men aren’t really that superficial, are they? “WHY ARE SO MANY WOMEN NODDING? Again, God’s approval of human action is not a part of this story, but God is at work.
Now while this is going on there are some sub-plots.
Uncle Mordecai was a well-informed man-about-town, committed to his Jewish faith and in position to keep in touch with Queen Esther. One day he heard two of the King’s officials conspiring to assassinate the King. He told Esther, who told the King. The King’s secret service checked it out and the conspirators were hanged. Mordecai saved the king’s life, but no special credit went to him. Remember this for later.
Now we hear from this politician named Haman, who climbed the power ladder to be the top Nobleman, a man EVERYbody had to bow down to. But as a faithful Jew, trusting in the ONE TRUE God, Mordecai refused to bow down to any human, including the human named Haman. Haman was furious at this insult and decided that Mordecai AND everyone who shares his faith should die! He planned a holocaust 2500 years before Hitler. Because of his high rank, he got King Xerxes on board, convincing the King that Jews were a threat to the whole Empire. The order went out that on a certain day, Every Jew—Men, Women, little children would be annihilated! –total Genocide.
Mordecai was appropriately concerned for himself and his people. He asked Esther to “DO SOMETHING!” She responded cautiously: “If I go to the King without being invited, unless he raises his scepter, I could be killed.” She “knew her place.” Such “place” may be a real part of culture, but many godly values, life values supersede cultural codes. Do you ever risk asking “Are the values of my culture really based on God’s values?”
Mordecai responded to Esther’s caution with this message:
Esther 4:13,14: Don’t think that you will escape the fate of all the Jews because you are in the king’s palace. If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jewish people from another place, but you and your father’s family will be destroyed. Who knows, perhaps you have come to your royal position for such a time as this.”
Do you ever wonder if you are at a point in life where God could uniquely use you? If God wants you to do something risky, not culturally approved, do you dare to take action?
Esther decided that her PLACE was determined by a higher authority than the KING. She responded to her uncle:
Get all the Jews to pray and fast with me for the next three days. Then I will approach the King. If I die, I die!
That decision set in motion a series of events that no scriptwriter could have imagined. You need to read it yourself.
In briefest summary---
Esther approached the King who looked at her and raised his scepter, saying, “Anything you ask is yours.” She asked first for a banquet to which Haman, the evil guy, would be invited.
In the meantime, villainous, Haman, thinking he would soon witness the death of all Jews, had 75-foot-tall gallows built for his most hated Jew, Mordecai. He wanted to hang him high for all to see.
That very night, the King had insomnia, which led him to read in the royal records that he had never honored Mordecai for his heroic act of saving the king from assassination. So, in the morning he summoned Haman to come to his chamber: “How should I honor a man who deserves the king’s honor?” Haman, thinking HE was to be honored, said, “Give him one of the King’s robes, put him on the King’s horse, and have the King’s servant lead him around the city, proclaiming, “Here is the King’s most honored man.”
The king said to Haman, “That’s great! I want you to be the announcer and lead the horse. Put Mordecai on the horse and present him to the kingdom as my honored friend.”
Haman was mortified by Mordecai, but the King’s orders are absolute, so all of that happened immediately, after which Haman went home and ranted about his humiliation, Be he still had hopes that Dinner with the King would give him glory. . .. He was wrong.
At the banquet the King Xerxes asked Esther, “What is your request?”
Esther responded, “Please let me live, and let my people live, because someone wants to kill us all.”
The king was outraged. “Who would do this horrific thing?”
Esther pointed to Haman. The furious king stormed out of the chamber. When he came back, he found Haman groping Esther asking for mercy. That did not improve Xerxes’ mood. The King had learned about the 7-story gallows Haman had built and he ordered Haman hung on it. He hung HAMAN HIGH.
That seemed to calm the king down. Then he gave all of Haman’s wealth to Esther, and he overruled the decree against the Jews with a new decree empowering the Jews. Then he made Mordecai Prime Minister of the Empire. And the
Denouement of the story shows how it all came to be true--- A young woman went from slavery to royalty and used the grace she received to so something distinctly Godly to save her people from annihilation.
Isn’t that a great story? How would you like to apply it? Let me encourage you to read the story first, then just do some reflection. Some questions to ask yourself:
1. Do I experience the grace of God? Perhaps in ways that I’ve not really acknowledged? Do I just consume God’s grace, never acknowledging it or passing it on?
2. Do I ever exhibit prejudice? A selfish, prejudicial spirit characterized Haman? Bias and bigotry have often penetrated the body of Christ, and sincere Christian people shove gospel aside to assert racial, ethnic, social, or some other kind of superficial superiority. Can you submit that spirit to the cleansing of Christ?
3. Can I be like Mordecai? —Is there someone in your life who could use your encouragement to ask if perhaps THIS is the moment when that person’s gifts, talents, abilities, relationships, and place in life all come together to do something distinctly good, or even distinctly Godly. If you see it, go for it!
4. Is God at work in my life? Even if he has not dramatically spoken to you? You may never have seen a burning bush, Never heard the unmistakable voice of God in a thundercloud, or even a text-message. But you have sensed moments when God MAY be influencing you, or even influencing THROUGH you.
5. Does God want ME to do something specific? Whether to rescue a nation, to lovingly help my neighbor, to finally gain victory over an addiction, or simply choose to obey your Lord. In time of uncertainty, can you simply pray, “Lord, what do YOU want me to do.” Can you ask others to pray for you, facing your risks by saying, “If I die, I die.”
This may be the moment for your first steps as a Christ follower.
PRAYER—Lord, are you speaking to us today through Esther? Please give us boldness to act in faith, to live out YOUR will. Have Your way in our lives today. Amen