Scripture: Esther 3:8-11; 4:5-5:3
In today’s sermon, I want to talk about the way that God accomplishes mighty things in the lives of his people by making thee points: Point Number One, God’s “hiddenness.” Number Two, Esther’s choice. And Number Three, Jesus and the “golden scepter.”
But first, God’s hiddenness…
We can compare the story of Esther to that “reality show” The Bachelor… Back in chapter 2 of this book, the hero of the story, Esther, is chosen to be thewife of the recently divorced Persian king—Ahasuerus—by a process that’s at least a little bit like the one by which the bachelor chooses his future wife on the hit TV show.
So, in a competition with many other beautiful young women, Esther keeps getting handed the proverbial “rose” until finally she becomes wife and queen.
Except… unlike in The Bachelor, love doesn’t factor in at all. In fact, let’s be honest: Esther herself is a victim of an evil system that promoted sexual abuse. But that’s the way the world worked at that time: Esther didn’t have a choice. Just like Joseph, in Genesis, also didn’t have a choice when he was sold into slavery in Egypt; that was evil. Yet God accomplished mighty things through difficult circumstances! And he does the same with Esther.
I preached on Joseph during this sermon series, and you may recall that Joseph was in slavery for 13 years before being promoted to prime minister of Egypt—and God used his wise leadership to save the lives of millions from the devastating effects of a famine. Joseph’s brothers had no idea God could transform their evil decisions into something so good. Joseph famously says to his brothers, in Genesis 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
Even the foolish, evil, sinful actions of others do not have the power to derail God’s plans for us!
In a very similar way, God transforms the evil that was done to Esther. She doesn’t become prime minister, like Joseph, but she does become wife and queen to the Persian king, Ahasuerus. And she enjoys a position of power, privilege, and influence. She’s royalty now. And it’s because of her royal position that Mordecai has this urgent message to share with her in today’s scripture. (Mordecai has acted as Esther’s adoptive father—although he’s actually an older first cousin.)
But Mordecai has learned of an evil plan: the king’s prime minister—a man named Haman—belongs to a people who have an ancient hatred of Jews. He manipulates the king into signing a decree to have all Jews living in Persia annihilated several months in the future. Mordecai urges Esther to use her power as queen to change the king’s mind and overrule the decree that Haman put into effect… “Go to the king… Talk to him,” Mordecai says. “Tell him to save your people from destruction!”
Of course, it doesn’t help that Esther, up to this point, has kept her Jewish identity a secret from her husband. After all, she’s not sure how well disposed the king would be toward her if he knew the truth that she was Jewish!
But it’s in this context that Mordecai speaks this book’s most famous words to Esther: “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
For such a time as this…
One remarkable feature of the book of Esther, which everyone seems to notice, is the fact that God himself gets no mention in the book. God doesn’t speak to anyone. There’s no prophet who shows up to speak on God’s behalf. God doesn’t appear to anyone in a dream or vision. God’s apparent absence from the story is conspicuous… and this is what I mean when I refer to God’s “hiddenness.” This is a biblical idea. The prophet Isaiah noticed it, too, when he wrote, in Isaiah 45:15, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself.” The popular saying isn’t wrong: “God works in mysterious ways.”
Commentator John Goldingay, points out in his commentary… this is the way living a Christian life often is. After all, for most of us believers most of the time we don’t get to have the experience of Israel in the Book of Exodus, for instance. Think about the spectacular ways God shows up for his people Israel: the burning bush, the ten plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, God’s terrifying appearance on Mt. Sinai, the water from the rock, the manna from heaven. Just think: six out of seven days a week the people had a visible, tangible reminder of God’s presence among them in the form of this miraculous bread from heaven, which no one had ever seen before… and manna was just lying on the ground every morning. That’s a miracle! And also during that 40-year period there was a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night hovering above the Tabernacle for all to see. That’s a miracle! The pillars of cloud and fire would literally direct them where to go!
Our experience of trusting in God usually much more like that of Esther and Mordecai. Isn’t it?
So when Mordecai says, “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” that sounds a lot like “what you intended for evil, God intended for good”—with one important difference: Joseph, in Genesis 50, had the luxury of looking back on the previous 20-plus years of his life and seeing the amazing things that God had already done… seeing how God had already transformed the evil that befell him and used Joseph’s actions for good. He had the luxury of hindsight.
In my opinion, Esther and Mordecai have an even more difficult challenge: They don’t have the luxury of hindsight, of looking back on a crisis that’s already in the past. They have to instead look forward… into an uncertain future… to a crisis that isn’t yet resolved…And they have to trust that if they take these difficult steps of faith… that if they do what they believe God is calling them to do… no matter how risky… that somehow they’ll be okay.
They’re a lot like Peter in that boat on the Sea of Galilee: “If you empower me to walk out on this water, Lord—in the midst of this terrifying storm—you’re going to keep me from drowning, right?”
And lest we think that Esther somehow had it easier than Peter walking on the Sea of Galilee, let’s appreciate for a moment how difficult Esther’s choice was. She says in chapter 4, verse 11:
All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law—to be put to death, except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.
So no one in Persia is permitted to enter the king’s inner court without first being summoned by the king to do so. It is a capital crime. You will literally lose your head… Unless… Unless the king holds out his golden scepter and let’s you draw near. This is a hard and fast law of the empire. And everyone, Esther says, knows it.
And you say, “Yes, but… for heaven’s sake… this is the wife of the king. Surely the king will give her a free pass! Surely he’ll extend the golden scepter to her!”
Not so fast! Ahasuerus is a wicked man. Notice those words at the end of the verse: Esther says, “But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.” In other words, the king hasn’t seen me, or even wanted to see me for thirty days. And to be sure, the king is not spending his nights alone. He’s sleeping with somebody. We know this from the early chapters: the king has a harem of available women to sleep with!
Esther may have been the most attractive, the most desirable woman that Ahasuerus had ever laid his eyes on when he chose her to be his wife. But now Esther has every reason to fear that she’s been replaced… that the king has moved on to someone else… that she no longer enjoys his favor… and that he no longer wants her. And so… when she enters his inner court, she rightly fears that he won’t extend the golden scepter, and she’ll be executed. And why should Ahasuerus care? Human life comes very cheap to people like him.
That’s what’s at stake here for Esther!
And when Mordecai says, “Who knows,” he’s asking a genuine question. He’s expressing uncertainty: he doesn’t know for sure his plan to have Esther talk to the king will work. “Who knows?” And that kind of uncertainty can be scary. But that’s real life…
But like Mordecai and Esther, we can still be confident, even in the midst of uncertainty, that God will take care of us and will always be working for our good!
And that’s Point Number One: what to do when God’s plans are “hidden” from us… when we’re afraid… when the future is uncertain and unclear.
Point Number Two: Esther’s choice…
Let’s look again at verse 14. Mordecai tells his cousin, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place.”
Question: What makes Mordecai so confident that God will provide “relief and deliverance” to his fellow Jews?
Answer? Because Mordecai knows his Bible: He knows, for instance, what God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He knows what God promised Moses. He knows what God promised David. He knows what God promised through prophets like Isaiah… like Jeremiah… like Ezekiel. Granted, he doesn’t have as much of God’s Word as we have today, but he has enough of it to know that the Messiah is still going to come from his people Israel… that this Messiah will be a descendant of King David… and this Messiah will rescue his people.
He knows that that hasn’t happened yet. He knows that God is hardly finished with Israel—“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” 1—and he knows that if God isn’t finished with Israel, then no worldly empire will ever be able to “finish them off” through genocide, either. So he clings to the promises of God in holy scripture.
And he tells Esther, in so many words, you have a choice to make. “Make the right choice and who knows what good things God might do because of it. But if you make the wrong choice, God will still rescue his people Israel—and you’ll probably end up getting killed anyway!”
If you’ve heard me preach for any length of time, you know that I often brag about God and his providential hand in our lives, his sovereign rule over our lives, his fingerprints all over the history of our lives and world. And when I do so, I’m standing on the solid ground of many promises of God’s Word—including, most famously, Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
I find that promise—and many others like it—immensely comforting.
But I wonder: do Mordecai’s words to Esther contradict this promise from Romans 8:28? Sure, Paul says, “All things work together for good,” but Mordecai seems to be telling Esther that not all things work together for good… that in fact there is one thing, at least, that will not work together for her good: and that is, if she makes the wrong choice in this particular situation and doesn’t go see the king.
So it’s worth asking: Does God redeem the wrong choices we make?
It’s a good question. I grew up in a youth group, after all, that emphasized the importance of “finding God’s will for your life.” Did you ever hear about this? And sometimes the youth ministers and youth leaders who talked about this would emphasize how important it was to not “miss” God’s will… And they often talked as if “God’s will” for our lives was this one choice, or a small series of choices… and if you don’t obey God and do what he wants you to do… you miss the boat. You’re out of luck. God will still love you and save you, of course, but forget about your life following God’s original and best plan!
Well, I now see how biblically deficient these words are. Because God stands above time and space, even as he operates within time and space. Therefore God knows exactly what will happen in the future—and he always has known… even before he created us… even before he created the world! He already knew all of our mistakes, all of our failures, all of our bad choices, all of our sins!
So the good news is, “God’s will” for our lives… God’s good plan for our lives… already factors in all the “bad choices” we make—all the sinful choices, all the mistakes, all the errors in judgment, all the wrong turns along the way. It even factors in the choices we make when we misunderstand what God wants us to do in our lives.
I like the way Bible scholar N.T. Wright talked about this issue in a recent podcast. He talked about how Paul made a series of “wrong” choices and God redeemed them. When we read Paul’s letter to the Romans, we learn that Paul is gearing up to make a missionary journey to Spain. He sincerely believes God is calling him to bring the gospel to Spain. In fact, he tells the Romans that he’s planning on using the financial support that he receives from the churches in Rome to pay for his mission to Spain.
And we know from history that Paul got it wrong. He misunderstood God’s specific will for him in this situation. He misunderstood what God wanted him to do. God did not want him to go to Spain. Instead, Paul ended up getting arrested first… and was sent to Rome in chains before he ever took that missionary journey.
So… was all of Paul’s praying, all of his planning, all his effort directed toward his missionary journey to Spain, wasted?
Hardly! As Wright points out, the main reason that Paul wrote his letter to the Romans—his magnum opus, his most important letter, the letter that explains the meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ better than anything, a letter that has literally changed the world—but he wrote this letter in the first place for one main reason: as a way of enlisting financial support for his upcoming trip to Spain.
God redeemed Paul’s mistake by giving the world his letter to the Romans! That’s more than a consolation prize!
Or consider Joni Eareckson Tada. The name looks like “Joanie,” but she pronounces it “Johnny.” She’s an internationally known author of 45 books, she’s an artist, she’s a speaker. And… she’s a former athlete. In fact, she was voted “best athlete” in her senior class—a champion swimmer, diver, and tennis player. And fifty-five years ago, at age 17, she dove off a raft into the shallows of the Chesapeake Bay. She misjudged the depth, hit her head on the sandy bottom, and lost all sensation in her arms and legs. She was paralyzed. She has been a quadriplegic ever since.
Joni made a choice to make that dive. God respected her free-will decision to do so, even though it was the wrong choice… and it was costly and seemingly tragic.
Yet, in an article she published on The Gospel Coalition website on the fiftieth anniversary of her accident, listen to all the good things that she says resulted from that fateful and perhaps foolish choice: It has “meant purged sin, a love for the lost, increased compassion, stretched hope, an appetite for grace, an increase of faith, a happy longing for heaven, a desire to serve, a delight in prayer, and a hunger for [God’s] Word. Oh, bless the stern schoolmaster that is my wheelchair!… It’s all to the praise of deeper healing in Christ.”2
As hard as it is to believe, Joni Eareckson Tada thanks God for what nearly everyone else would agree was a tragic mistake!
God redeems even our bad choices… “All things work together for good” really does mean all things… if we only have the faith to believe it.
But let’s get back to Esther: even if Esther made the wrong choice… and worst came to worst… and she died the way Mordecai warned that she might. Well… she certainly wouldn’t have been complaining. She would be in Paradise with Jesus, from that moment on, praising God for his amazing grace—that he saved even a sinner like Esther, who, when given a difficult choice, put her own interests ahead of the interests of her people. God had mercy even on a sinner like her! She is a trophy of God’s grace! Praise God!
Of course, because she made the right choice instead, heaven could wait… She chose to obey God… and God did something far more glorious through her choice!
Point Number Three: Jesus and the “golden scepter”…
Last fall, I preached a sermon on Leviticus chapter 10—on the strange, shocking deaths of Nadab and Abihu, two of Aaron’s sons, who were careless about God’s holiness in the sanctuary of the tabernacle… and God struck them down. And we may recall the man Uzzah, from 2 Samuel chapter 6, who was helping to transport the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. The ox stumbled, the Ark started to tip over, and Uzzah reached out to steady the Ark and prevent it from falling. And what happened when he touched the Ark? He got zapped. He died. Uzzah’s experience frightened King David so much that he said, “We’re just going to leave the Ark here for a while.”
We recall Isaiah chapter 6: When Isaiah has a profound encounter with God in the Temple one day. He’s worried that he’s gotten too close to God. And he says, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” 3
Even Peter in the gospels… Jesus enables him to have a miraculous catch of fish and instead of being happy about it he falls at Jesus’ feet and begs him to leave him: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 4 Why? Because he recognizes he’s in the presence of God, and he knows that sinful human beings can’t survive in the presence of a holy God: our sin and God’s holiness are not compatible. Left to our own devices, apart from God’s grace, we have a deadly serious problem when it comes to having a relationship with God!
And in a way, even Esther’s experience with King Ahasuerus reminds me of this problem. She’s afraid to walk into the throne room of her husband, the king. She knows she’s not worthy to do so… And unless the king extends the golden scepter, she knows she’s a dead woman. She could say of her herself, “Woe is me! For I am lost…”
And that’s how it is with us sinners in the presence of God: Unless God solves our problem with sin, we’re dead!
But good news: That’s precisely why Jesus came into the world: to live a life of perfect holiness for us—which we were unable to live. And to die the godforsaken death that we deserved to die… on the cross… in our place!
Now, as we believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, everything changes for us. So much so that the author of Hebrews can say, in chapter 4, verse 16, “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”
So… when we enter the throne room of God, it’s now as if God extends the golden scepter to us. And guess what? That scepter is in the shape of a cross.
- Jeremiah 29:11
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Joni Eareckson Tada, “Why Joni Eareckson Tada Praises God for Not Healing Her,” thegospelcoalition.org, 17 July 2019. Accessed 20 July 2019. - Isaiah 6:5 ESV
- Luke 5:8 ESV