Esther and God’s Hand

Transcript

One of the questions that I get asked occasionally is, which is my favorite book of the Bible?  Maybe you get asked that question as well. I always find that a difficult question to answer because I don’t know that I’ve actually got a favorite book of the Bible. As you know, I teach Old Testament mostly at Foundation Institute, and there are several books in the Old Testament that I enjoy very much. Sometimes I’ve answered that the book of Genesis is my favorite.  Sometimes I’ve pointed to other books of the Bible. I don’t know that I have any one favorite book of the Bible. Maybe you do. But when I’ve been asked that question, I’ve often mentioned the two brief, short stories that feature female heroines in the Old Testament. I enjoy Ruth and the book of Esther. They’re both wonderful books, coming from very different angles, featuring women of faith in both cases. In particular, I really enjoy the book of Esther. It’s a book that’s easy to read. It’s easy to move through. It reads beautifully, but it encompasses a very important lesson.  

Ironically, the book of Esther had a hard time finding its way into the canon of scripture. You may be aware of this, but it struggled to find a place in the canon. Even some of the Jewish sages over the years were doubtful about it. And when we come down to the Christian era, Martin Luther made some comments about the book of Esther that I thought were rather interesting.  Though he included it, that is, the book of Esther in his Bible, Martin Luther was very ambivalent about it. “I am so great an enemy to the second book of Maccabees, and to Esther, that I wish that it had not come to us at all. It has too many heathen unnaturalities,” he said in Table Talk 24. And in one exchange with Erasmus, he said, “It deserves to be regarded as non-canonical.” Now, of course, that reflected Luther’s point of view. Luther started out very desirous of converting Jews, and when he didn’t get very far, he turned a little bit anti-Jewish, but that probably partly explains his comment.  

The only legitimate Luther quote speaking poorly of Esther in regard to canonicity comes from The Bondage of the Will. That’s a work I’ve never heard of before I found this quote: “Though I could rightly reject this book [Ecclesiasticus]”—that’s the Apocryphal book, not Ecclesiastes—“for the time being I accept it, so as not to waste time by getting involved in the dispute about the books received in the Hebrew canon. For you poke more than a little sarcastic fun at this when you compare Proverbs and the Song of Solomon (which with a sneering innuendo you call the “Love Song”) with the two books of Esdras, Judith, the story of Susanna and the Dragon, and Esther.” So he groups a bunch of books that do, in fact, belong in the Apocrypha with the book of Esther. Continuing: “which despite their inclusion of it in the canon deserves more than all the rest, in my judgment, to be regarded as non-canonical.” And I found that on the internet, www.beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com, comments on Luther’s view of Esther.

You may be aware that the great discovery and biblical scrolls and biblical texts of the twentieth century was the Dead Sea Scrolls, and you probably also know that when they excavated all of the Dead Sea Scrolls (supposing they have all been excavated. I suppose there could still be a few left to be found, but it looks as if they have found most of them.), they found that the Dead Sea community, whoever they were, had all of the Old Testament books except for the book of Esther. Every other book of the Hebrew Scriptures is included, and the book of Esther is missing from the grouping of books that Dead Sea Qumran community, as it’s called—nobody’s quite sure who they were, anymore. Why? Why? Why did this book have such a hard time getting accepted? What is it about the book of Esther that put it under suspicion by some of the ancients, and why did the Dead Sea Scrolls community not include it in their library?

We can’t answer for sure, but there’s something that stands out about this particular book, and it’s an important point. There’s no explicit mention of God in the book of Esther. Now, you’ve probably heard that before, and it’s true. Nowhere in the book of Esther is God’s name or any one of God’s names actually included. It doesn’t include the name that we include as “the Lord,” which was Yahweh, or something like that in the original Hebrew, or God, which was Elohim, and of course, there are several other names for God. There’s no explicit mention of God at all in the book. And so some people said, “Well, how can you possibly have a book that belongs in the Bible that doesn’t mention God?” Well, if you have read the book of Esther recently, I’m sure you’ll see very clearly, as we’ll see in the course of the sermon, that this is a book that even though it doesn’t mention God, it has God’s fingerprints all over it.

Let’s give a brief synopsis of the story. The story is set in the Persian Empire in the early fifth century B.C., right around 485 B.C. A brief history lesson: Cyrus’s decree that the Jews could return to the Holy Land, to Palestine, was issued in 539 B.C., so the events in the book of Esther took place after that. Now, you may know that not all the Jews returned. My own people didn’t, for example. A lot of them stayed, and Babylon, of course, was taken over by Persia, and the Persians were much more benevolent than any of the great empires that had dominated the ancient Near East prior to that point. So a lot of them stayed. Look in the book of Ezra, and some of those numbers are very, very small. And you have in this book of Esther—it’s a book that would actually make a wonderful movie, and of course, movies have been done based on the book of Esther—you have the beautiful young orphan girl who is brought up by her cousin.  Interestingly, Josephus refers to Mordecai as her uncle. He actually was not her uncle. The Bible says he was her cousin, and he occupies a kind of an uncle type of a role; he’s very protective of her. And, the Jews are living really quite comfortably and quite happily in the Persian Empire at that juncture of history—until events take place. And there is a man in the Persian court who was the classic Jew-hater and begins to stir things up.  

The emperor who was on the throne at the time is referred to in the book as Ahasuerus. If you remember how he is referred to in the Hebrew, Achashverosh, in the Hebrew probably to be equated with the, by the Greek name Xerxes I. And under him everything was going fine. The Jewish community was living very happily until, until things suddenly began to go bad. Now, when we look in the book of Esther, one of the things we need to remember, of course, is that this was God’s people back then. There was, of course, no New Testament Church of God. And what’s more, the Persian Empire was very, very dominant. 

Let’s turn to the book of Esther. And I want to pick up on the very first verse in the book, 
Esther 1:1. It’s a wonderful, wonderful book, full of action and full of personality. Let’s take note of this because this is an important point.

Esther 1:1 Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus (this was the Ahasuerus who reigned over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India (in the east, a long way over) to Ethiopia…) (in the west and south of Egypt).

Now that’s one of those geographical details that you can read right over, but it’s really quite important because it means that this Persian Empire was huge. What’s more, probably most of the Jews in the entire world at that point lived under the Persian Empire.

So the events that take place in this book will eventually have to do with the lineage of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. We know from many of the prophecies that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, was going to come from the nation of Judah. And we’ve got this man Mordecai, who gets introduced.  He’s the great-grandson of the captive, and Esther. And Esther is the very attractive personality in many ways. She was a young woman, and I think in many ways she was an example for women, young women, in particular, in the Church today. She was not just beautiful—the Scriptures tell us that she was—but she was also very intelligent, and she was also very godly.  There are many beautiful people in the world today, but not many who combine all of that together—a person who is good-looking, plus intelligent, plus God-fearing. And she’s an orphan.  And she’s brought up by her cousin Mordecai.

Now into all of this we find that Ahasuerus has a wife whose name is Vashti. And you remember Vashti. This may be the prototype for the feminist movement, beginning in the Persian Empire in the fifth century B.C. She was pretty feisty. In fact, when she was commanded to appear in front of the king and his guests, she refuses. She says, “No! I’m not going to come!” And, of course, this was not very pleasing to the Persian king.  

And also we get a very bad guy, the Jew-hater Haman, the Agagite. We’re told where he came from. He was an Agagite; he was an Amalekite. Agag came from Amalek. Now that name may mean a little bit to us. Amalek was one of the sub-groups of the nation of Edom. Monday morning, as we get started, I’m going to be teaching the book of Obadiah. It’s only 21 verses long, but it’s all about Edom, and it’s a fascinating little book. And Edom was the nation that was and, I think, is implacably opposed to Israel, historically and even down unto our day.  The Amalekites were the worst of the worst. They were vicious. They were violent. They were out for the blood of Israel and later of the Jewish nation. And Haman comes from Amalek. He is an Agagite from that sub-group of that nation of Edom. In fact, you may know—do you know what they do in the synagogue when they read the book of Esther, and they read it on the Feast of Purim? Some of you may be aware of this—when they read this, they actually make it a big, festive occasion; and when the name of Haman comes up, everybody stamps and boos, and they have rattles, and they twirl the rattles, and—we wouldn’t do that in the Church, I know. But, that’s what they do in the synagogue service at the Festival of Purim, which, of course, is mentioned in this book.  

Mordecai refuses to bow the knee to Haman. Probably insisting that he will keep the Second Commandment, he won’t bow down in a sign of obeisance or even worship. He refuses to bow down, bow the knee to Haman, as Haman parades himself in this very egotistical way as he goes through Susa, which is where all of this takes place—one of the great Persian cities. Haman has the king’s favor. He has tremendous favor from the king. 
Signet rings are not very much in favor anymore. Maybe some of you have a signet ring or had a signet ring. But in the Bible the signet has a tremendous symbolic significance. I used to have a signet in this ring that I’m wearing, and the stone broke, so I had to have the stone replaced a number of years ago. But signets are not very popular anymore. But a signet is a stone or metal carving with the image, the head of a king or an aristocrat. And the person who controlled the signet would take the signet ring and press the signet down on a glob of hot wax. Have you ever seen that ancient type of correspondence where you’ve got an envelope and on the back of the envelope is a little round red glob of wax, and sometimes there’s an imprint on the wax? You know, and it may have come from a wealthy person. What happened—somebody took the signet and pressed down on that glob of wax and left the shape of the head of a prominent person or maybe the name, an inscription of that prominent person. If you control the king’s signet, you could, in effect, write in his name. You could do whatever you wanted. The signet is something that shows up elsewhere in the scriptures. 

Haman, the bad guy, has the signet, and utilizing the signet, he brings forth the decree. And the decree, of course, is death to all the Jews. And he does it in a very—how shall we put it?—very deceptive manner—because—we won’t go all the way through it, but you may be aware of this—he doesn’t even name who it is. He tells the king, “I’ll give you some money for your treasury.  I’ll put money in your treasury.” And then he says, “There is this group of people,” unnamed, “and they don’t follow your laws. They’re not loyal subjects of your kingdom.” Sometimes when I read the book of Esther, I think to myself, “You know, there’s more than a passing similarity here”; because I think, at times, God’s people down through history have had this same charge brought against them.  

So, anyway, Haman has the signet. He convinces the king to decree death to all the Jews. And, of course, it seemed just like a story from the ancient world, but for the fact, of course, that among all of these people, the Jewish people, presumably, are the predecessors of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.  

Let’s keep our place in the book of Esther. Let’s go back to Genesis 49, verse 10. We’ll come back to the book of Esther, briefly. When Martin Luther objected to the book of Esther, I wonder whether he fully understood the implications of what he was saying. 

Genesis 49 and verse 10 tells us (This is Jacob prophesying over the tribes.) The scepter shall not depart from Judah, (The scepter was a kingly emblem, symbol.) nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; (Shiloh is a reference to Jesus Christ, the Messiah.) and to Him shall be the obedience of the people. (And he goes on to describe some of the things Christ would do in the first century, there in verse 11.) Binding His donkey to the vine . . .  

In other words, Jesus Christ, the Savior of all humankind, was to come from the lineage of Judah, and so, had the plot succeeded, the world would have been left without a Savior. Now, of course, there’s a sense in which the plot could not have succeeded. You can read this, and you say, well, God has to intervene. But I think if we’d been in the middle of it, if we’d been Jews in the Persian Empire, it wouldn’t have been quite so easy to conclude that. The plot is against all the Jews, including the generations prior to Jesus Christ, the Messiah. I’ve thought about this.  You know, some might say, well, weren’t there Jews outside of the Persian Empire? Maybe there were. Were there any Jews in China at the time? You know, there’s a long tradition of Jews in China. Well, yes, perhaps there were. But, if you think about it for a moment—what did Micah say about where the Messiah was going to come from? Micah, chapter 5. Micah said specifically that Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem was a town in Judea. And so, Haman’s plot threatens to undermine God’s plan.  

With that rather too lengthy backdrop, let’s get into lessons of the book of Esther, and let’s begin in Esther, chapter 4. There’s a lot we can draw out of this. Let’s begin in Esther, chapter 4.  Here is the situation where Esther has been selected as the replacement queen after Vashti; and she initially gained very great favor from the king. I think, when the book of Esther uses the word “favor,” it’s not just referring to the fact that she was physically beautiful; she was. The scriptures tell us that. But I think, you know, the king had this enormous beauty contest, and he could have selected any one of the young virgins from his empire. Now, he saw something more than that in Esther. He saw quality of character in her. He saw a strength inside of her. It was not there in the other women.

Let’s pick it up in Esther, chapter 4, because I think this is interesting. Here is Esther, and Mordecai, her cousin, outside of the gates of the palace—Esther, now the primary queen inside of the Persian Empire, inside the palace in Susa.

Esther 4:10 So Esther spoke to Hathach, and gave him a command for Mordecai: (Mordecai has passed the message to her in her royal quarters and has told her about the decree.)

Verse 11 “All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that any man or woman who goes into the inner court to the king, who has not been called, he has but one law: put all to death except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter, that he may live….”

At FI we watch a movie. We don’t show a lot of Bible movies because most of them are not very good, but the one that we show on the book of Esther is actually quite good and quite faithful to the scriptures. And it shows the king sitting on his throne rather testily dealing with matters of governance in the Persian Empire, and he’s got this scepter there, and you didn’t dare approach the king without getting an invitation. To show up without an invitation meant “curtains for you,” and that included the queen too. Let’s see what she says.  

Verse 11, still: “Yet I myself have not been called to go in to the king these thirty days.”  

Verse 12 So they told Mordecai Esther’s words.

One of the things I think we should notice about Esther, and I think one of the lessons here from Esther’s example—she’s a heroine of faith. She comes through all of this as a heroine of faith.  And yet, when Mordecai initially approaches her, and he says to her, “Something’s got to be done, and maybe you’re here for a reason,” her immediate reaction is not one of—how shall we put it?—iron faith. She has the natural reaction, initially, and her immediate reaction betrays a little bit of fear. You know, Mordecai’s going to tell her, “Don’t think you’re going to get away with it because you’re in the royal court. Don’t think that you’ll get off with your life.”

Verse 13-14 Then Mordecai told them to answer Esther: “Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace any more than all the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place . . .” 

And that’s the closest that we get to a mention of God in the book. Mordecai surely had God in mind, but he doesn’t mention God by name. He’s alluding to the fact that he had faith God would intervene. Somebody said to me a little while ago that Mordecai is the hero of faith in this book, and I think that that’s true.  

Verse 14 continued: “but you and your father’s house will perish. (And he reminds her of the fact that she’s an orphan, and there’s no one else surviving from her father’s house.) Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

How would we react? How would you react? How would I react in a situation like that? You’re not going to get off the hook. The human reaction is—well—you know—I’m safe here because he doesn’t know I’m Jewish. It was the custom back then in the Persian Empire, and that was, one didn’t necessarily have to reveal one’s religion. The custom was known as kitman, and that custom said, well, you could dissemble. You didn’t have to make it known. It was even regarded as a little bit distasteful to ask someone what their religion was. Some would object and say, “How could a Jewish woman ever have become the queen in the Persian Empire?” Well, that was the custom. She had apparently concealed her religion. She could have reacted and said, “Well, I’m okay here. Why should I get involved? Keep me out of this. I’m okay.” She needed her cousin’s urgings, and an implicit threat. 

Verse 15-16 Esther told them to reply to Mordecai:“Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.”   

It’s a tremendous declaration of faith. What I would like for us to note here is that there is a mixture of fear and faith inside of Esther. She looked to what was going on; she realized her life was in danger; and she had that little bit of prodding from her cousin. And, you know, sometimes I think we as members of God’s Church, we get really upset with ourselves. We’re too hard on ourselves when we have health problems or we have financial problems—where we have a moment where we waver a little bit. Have you ever had that moment? I have. Where we wavered a little bit in faith, and we think, “I’m a member of the Church. I’m supposed to have faith made out of iron. I’m not supposed to waver.”

I would submit to you that when we look into the Scriptures, not just look in the book of Esther, that elsewhere in the Scriptures that the heroes of faith whom God used reacted this way. Often their initial reaction was a human reaction, and it was one that betrayed a certain measure of uncertainty, a certain measure of fear. “Abraham, you’re going to have a son.” What did he do? He laughed. “Sarah, ninety years old, you’re going to conceive; you’re going to bear the son of promise for your husband.” What happened? She laughed.  

I think one of the things we should learn from all of these examples—yes, we are people of faith, but our faith is not built out of iron and steel. And if you or I have ever had a moment when we wavered for just a little bit, you know, that doesn’t mean we’ve committed the unpardonable sin.  Esther took a little bit of prodding. She gathered her courage; she gathered her faith. And then she comes up with this remarkable, amazing confession of faith when she says, “You know, if I perish, I perish.  If I perish, I perish.” And she did a remarkable thing. She did everything that was in her power, but she wasn’t an iron maiden in terms of her faith. And you and I, as people of faith, are not iron men and women in terms of our faith.

If we ever waver, if we worry about health conditions, about our finances, does that mean we are terrible people? Does that mean we’re not qualified to be members of the Church? I think there’s a lesson here that we all too often overlook. Of course, when we have those moments of perplexity and we’re worried about things, where do we go? Where do we go after that? Do we go to our knees and we talk to God? Do we look into the scriptures? But, to have a moment of uncertainty, a moment of perplexity prior to the assertion of the kind of faith that God does want us to have doesn’t mean that we’ve, you know, we’ve apostatized, that we’ve left the faith. Esther was like that. She comes through as a heroine of faith, but it took a little bit of prodding—didn’t it?—from her cousin Mordecai.  

And then, as we’ve just read, something else takes place that I think is worth noting. Look at what she does there at the end of chapter four. We just read that. She proposes a fast, and not just one day, but three days and three nights, and her maids were going to fast as well—three days and three nights—a full 72-hour fast. And I think, within her own quarters, she had enough independence, she had enough freedom of action that she could have said to her maids, fast with me, and they would have done that. So it was a full three-day, three-night fast. And in chapter 5, verse 1, look at what happens.

Esther 5:1 It happened on the third day that Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the king’s palace, across from the king’s house, while the king sat on his royal throne in the royal house, facing the entrance of the house.  

And you know what? She still fasted. When she went in to the king, she’s still fasting. Now, there are many other examples, of course, that we could look at in the Bible, but I think many of us in God’s Church, probably the majority, maybe even all of us, understand from this example and from other examples that we’ve been through, that fasting changes things. Fasting changes things. One of the big lessons in this book and elsewhere: Fasting changes things. Esther understood that. She didn’t just jump straight in. She said, “If I’m going in to the king, we’re going to fast for three days.” And she’s still got her tummy empty when she goes in to the king. 

Matthew 6:17-18 We’ll come back to the book of Esther, briefly, but what did Jesus Christ say?      

Matthew 6:17 (Jesus Christ says to us, His disciples) “But you, when you fast (not if, when you fast), anoint your head and wash your face,” (and certainly, that should be for us more than once a year on the Day of Atonement. A frequency, you know, we don’t have a Talmudic teaching on that, but fasting is one of those things that we need to use from time to time as one of our spiritual tools to draw us close to God.)  
Verse 18 “so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”  

Fasting changes things. Sometimes I think about the subject of fasting—maybe you’ve had the same thought pattern—I think to myself, you know, among God’s people, we’ve seen so frequently when we fast that things change. And then, in a sense, it’s a pretty small gesture.

Remember the first time you fasted on the Day of Atonement? I ask the students how old they were when they began to fast on the Day of Atonement, and I’m amazed. Some of them began to fast very, very young—seven years of age, eight years of age, you know, even in some cases younger than that—a full day’s fast.  And I’m not saying that’s what has to be done. But the point is, you know, when you’re a child, when you’re in the very early years of life, you fast for 24 hours, and you think you’re going to die. “Ahhhhh! I can’t survive this! When does that sun disappear over the horizon?” You can’t wait until the sun’s disappeared over the horizon so you can take a little bit of nourishment. And as you get a little further along in life, well, you know, let’s be frank about it, the metabolism slows a little bit, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t bother us quite as much. You might get sleepy and have difficulty sitting there with the Bible in your lap, and you doze off a little bit because the blood sugar’s gone down, right? But it doesn’t bother us in terms of hunger quite so much. The point that I am making is that fasting, in a sense, is a pretty small gesture. But!—it’s the gesture that God honors.    

And so, from time to time, we all need to ask ourselves, when was the last time we fasted? It’s something we need to use from time to time, and we don’t hold it back just for a crisis moment.  We need to use fasting from time to time when we don’t feel close enough to God. When was the last time? Do I need a day of fasting? This was a crisis moment, and certainly we need to fast in crisis moments as well. But we also need to fast from time to time just to get a little closer to God when we feel we’re not close enough to him. We need to fast when we have to petition God for good judgment, you know, when it’s decision time. We’ve got young people in the congregation here and many of them probably over at Camp Carter. But, you know, some young people face decisions about college, more than one offer to go to college, you know, a very good opportunity to take a day for prayer and fasting and ask God to give good judgment. When big personal decisions—boyfriend, girlfriend, marriage decisions come up, it’s also a very good time for fasting. When there’s a decision to be made about a job opportunity, also a very good time for fasting. There’s much that could be said about this.

But, anyway, I find it very interesting that in the book of Esther—to get back on track, here—in the book of Esther, when she goes in to the king, she is still fasting. This woman was a woman of faith, but she did the things that needed to be done, everything that she could, to make it come out right. And that’s the other thing that I think should draw our attention in this book. Esther does something, because in Esther, chapter five, as she approaches the king, he holds out this scepter. Why did he do that? Did God have a hand in that? Did God reach down from heaven and give her a little bit of favor so she didn’t die? I think so. I think so. This has got God’s fingerprints all over it. The title I have given to the sermon is “Esther and the Hidden Hand of God.”

Esther did something. The king held out the golden scepter, and—you know what?—Esther could have jumped in. She could have said, you know, “My people and I, we’re about to be
exterminated. Please do something for us.” But she didn’t. She was smarter than that. The king held out the golden scepter, and she could have said, “Well, now’s my chance; now’s my chance.” But she didn’t. What did she do?

Esther 5:4 (Look at this. It’s amazing the way this is phrased.) Esther answered, “If it pleases the king, let the king and Haman come today to the banquet that I have prepared for him.”  

I’ve searched in vain in my Bible to find where it says, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” I don’t think it’s in the Bible, is it? Anybody found it there? Maybe it should be. There’s a lot of truth to that.

Verse 5 The king said, “Bring Haman quickly, that he may do as Esther has said.” So the king and Haman went to the banquet that Esther had prepared.

Faith without works is dead. Esther was a woman of faith, but she exercised a lot of good judgment as well all the way through this. She brought everything to bear. They asked for God’s favor; she exercises good judgment; and she invites them over for dinner. I’m sure it was a great dinner. I’ll bet it was really, really delicious. It was the best that the Persian Empire could offer.

Proverbs 15:28 (We’re going to come back to the book of Esther. I think there’s a very important lesson here, one that Esther, I believe, understood.) The heart of the righteous studies how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours forth evil.
 
Now that’s not to say that we’re wicked and we pour forth evil, but even we sometimes just blurt things out when there are times in life when it is better to hold things back and wait for the right time. Esther understood this—so she invites the king and Haman to dinner, and they come to dinner, and they’ve enjoyed this beautiful, beautiful dinner, and everyone’s feeling very, very happy and feeling very, very good, and she could have thought to herself, well, now’s the chance! Now I’ll blurt it out! I’ll tell the king what I want. We’re about to be exterminated, my people and I. There’s a pogrom; there’s an extermination against us.

No! She didn’t do that. You know the story, I’m sure. You know the story because you’ve read it, I’m sure, maybe not recently, but it’s a wonderful, wonderful sequence of events in which what she does in the first dinner is, of course, she invites them to another dinner! Now, I think we men do have heart and stomach closely connected, don’t we? Did any doctor ever examine that, you know? I think there is physiological evidence that in males they are more closely connected than in females. Maybe that’s not true; I don’t know. But there’s a lot of truth to that, by the way. Young girls understand this. Teenage girls understand that if they want something from Dad, they don’t grab him when he’s come home from work, and he’s battled Dallas traffic, and he’s all hot and sweaty and hungry, and he wants to relax. They wait until after dinner—right? Wait until he’s feeling good, had dinner; he’s had a glass of wine with dinner; he’s taken his shoes off; and then they ask him.

So what did Esther do? At the first dinner she says, come to another dinner; and there’s a second banquet. And we’re not going to read all the way through this. I want to draw your attention to something here while we’re talking about Esther doing her part. She did everything in her power and beyond to make sure this came out right. And there is something that I noticed. I’ve taught the book of Esther several times before, and something struck me as I was going through it this past year. And I’d like to draw your attention to it—in Esther, chapter 7.

When we read of her petition before the king in Esther, chapter 5, she says things like, “If it please the king . . . if I have found favor in his sight . . .” Did you ever notice, she talks to him in the third person? She talks to him in the third person. If you ever meet the Queen of England, you would say, “I hope Your Majesty is well. Thank Your Majesty for receiving me.” You avoid the use of the second person pronoun. The second person pronoun is too direct, and you don’t use the second person pronoun for a king, for a very prominent person, for an aristocrat. To do so would be audacious in the extreme.

Now we’ve got some Spanish-speaking brethren here, and everybody else remembers their high school Spanish, right? Yeah, right! Do you remember, when you conjugate the Spanish verbs, do you remember that you have the usted form of the verb? And you’ve got the tú form of the verb? And the usted form of the verb resembles the third person singular él or ella? Some of you don’t know what in the world I’m talking about. Right? Never mind. For those who’ve got degrees in linguistics, I’ll carry on, and then I’ll stop talking about this.

In the Spanish verb conjugation with usted, which is the formal singular form, and it goes together with the third person singular verb form. Why? Because usted originally was vuestra merced, which means “Your Grace.” In other words, when you use usted, in the really technical sense you’re not using the second person at all. You’re using the third person singular to avoid talking directly to the person. To talk directly to the person was lacking in respect; it was too audacious. You did it with your buddies; you didn’t do it with the king. 

All right, with that in mind—and we’ll finish the linguistic lesson here—but I want to draw your attention to this. Let’s read Esther 7, verses 1-3. It’s verse 3 where there’s this detail that I’ve never seen before. 

Esther 7:1-3 The king and Haman went to dine with Queen Esther. And on the second day, at the banquet of wine, the king again said to Esther, (This banquet of wine was a mishteh; it was a wine feast that was going on. So they’d been steadily drinking, and they’re feeling very good, and the food was wonderful, and) the king again said to Esther, “What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request, up to half my kingdom? It shall be done!” (And this is, in a sense, the most tense moment in the entire book. And I want you to notice this verse 3, because I’ve never seen this before this year.) Then Queen Esther answered and said, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king,” (Look through the entire book, and I believe this statement is true—this is the only place in the book where she uses the second person to talk to the king. She’s looking him right in the eye, that particular moment when everybody’s feeling good; he’s had a wonderful meal; and she does something that is very audacious. And she doesn’t say, “If I’ve found favor in the king’s sight”—third person. She says,) “If I have found favor in your sight,” (And it’s really pretty daring; and we can read right over it, but we shouldn’t.) “And if it pleases the king,” (She’s trying to tell him, this is an emergency situation, and please, I need you to become involved in this. Therefore, she’s that daring, and she’s that audacious.) “If it pleases the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request.” 

Oh, yes! Esther was not just a pretty face. She was very, very wise as well, and she knew what she was doing. I wonder how much Esther had knowledge of God’s hand in all of this. Do you ever wonder about that with Joseph, Joseph in Egypt, sold into slavery by his brothers? And apparently thirteen years went by. How much did Joseph even realize that God had a purpose in it? One of the lessons of this book of Esther, one of the lessons of the Joseph story—which we’ll talk about a little bit—is that God works in providential ways.  And I think there’s a lesson for us as well in that—God works in providential ways. 

What’s the definition of the word “providence”? From www.merriam-webster.com, quote: 
“divine guidance or care. capitalized: God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny.” From www.wikipedia.org –for whatever that’s worth. I understand that if you’re writing a term paper in college, you’re not permitted to quote from Wikipedia, but this is a sermon, so I can get away with it. I take it with a grain of salt, anyway. Wikipedia.org: “In theology, divine providence, or providence, is God’s intervention in the world. ‘Divine Providence’ (usually capitalized) is also used as a title of God. A distinction is usually made between ‘general providence,’ which refers to God’s continuous upholding the existence and natural order of the universe . . .” We heard a little bit about that in the sermonette, didn’t we? “. . . and ‘special providence,’ which refers to God’s extraordinary intervention in the life of people.” Providence.  Providence.  Have you ever seen God’s providence in your life? Is anything in your life, has anything ever come together in your life that indicated God had a hand in it? I’m sure you can answer, yes.  God is the author of divine providence.     

I found a quote in a book that I’ve got on my shelf in the office that I thought was interesting, and I’m going to quote it to you without comment, at least not initially, and see what you think about it. This is from a book called The Canon of Scripture, by F. F. Bruce, on page 101.  F. F. Bruce is, I think, deceased now, but he was really quite a good biblical scholar and quite conservative, and a lot of the things he had to say were quite good. We would agree with many of them. And this book in particular is about the canon, how we got the canon, which books became part of the Bible.

And I quote from page 101: “Esther is one of the books which Jerome acknowledged as acceptable for the establishing of doctrine, though, to be sure, it is difficult to imagine what doctrine of Christian faith could be established by the book of Esther.” And in a footnote on the same page: “It might be said that Esther bears witness to the operation of divine providence, but that is not a distinctively Jewish or Christian doctrine. (It was an essential feature of Stoic belief.)” 

Now F. F. Bruce may be right in that the whole concept of providence was developed in Greek philosophy. But I think he’s wrong, and I think he missed something in the book of Esther. The book of Esther shows something that many of us have come to understand from our lives: that God does work in providential ways. He works things out providentially. He brings circumstances together.  

Esther 4:14 (Mordecai here indicates that he believed in God’s providential hand.) “’For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place . . .’”  

Mordecai believed in divine providence. We do, I think, because we’ve seen it. We know God operates in certain ways, and we know when things happen in our lives, sometimes it was too much to be just plain coincidence. Joseph, in Egypt, believed in divine providence. “This isn’t coincidence!” Have you ever said that? “This isn’t coincidence!” 

Let’s keep our place in the book of Esther and go to Genesis 45:5-7. You remember the scene: Joseph now elevated to number two in the Egyptian Empire. Let’s pick it up in verse 4, verses 4-7.

Genesis 45:4-7 And Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near to me.” And they came near. And he said: “I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. (And they’re astonished by all of this.) But now, do not therefore be grieved nor angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.”

We wonder about Joseph. He must have come through horrible suffering, you know. He lost his freedom over a matter of principle. Betrayed by his brothers—what went through his mind in all of those years when he’s waiting to get out of the Egyptian dungeon? Was he aware of God’s hand? And this Scripture and other Scriptures indicate that he understood, but he probably puzzled over it. He probably thought to himself, God has a hand in in this, so what’s He doing? But He must have a hand in this. So Joseph understood that God did have a hand, and when the whole thing, of course, comes to the climax at the end of the book, Joseph says, no, I understand; God had a hand in this. I’m not going to be vindictive. God’s providence.

I think part of the art of serving God in His Church is recognizing God’s providential hand. How good are we at that? How good are we at seeing that? Do we ever miss it? I think I have occasionally. Have you ever missed it? Sometimes we need to be sensitive to what’s going on and see God’s hand in our lives. 

Einstein is famously quoted as having said “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” You ever heard that? Now, I looked to a little bit of research, and the meaning of that is debated. Some people say, well, now, Einstein didn’t believe in God, not in a personal god, not the way we do. Others say, well, Einstein did believe in a personal god. Whatever the case, you know, God does work through coincidences or perhaps through providence. It wasn’t coincidence that Esther was in the royal court; God put her there. Yes, He did. It wasn’t coincidence that Joseph was betrayed by his brothers; God supervised the circumstances. And even though they were painful, He made sure they came out in the right way.
Joseph says it again in Genesis 50, verse 20—very famous verse here, almost at the end of the book of Genesis. His brothers are afraid he is going to be vindictive. He wasn’t. He was actually very magnanimous and very forgiving. Look at what he says.

Genesis 50:20  But as for you, (speaking to his brothers) you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. 

Is Joseph even hinting at knowledge that Judah was there? And from Judah eventually comes the Messiah. Did Joseph understand that? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe he had some understanding of that. At least he understood that it referred to his family. At least he understood that it referred to the offspring of his family. Jacob knew that. He prophesied over the twelve sons in the previous chapter. 

Does God work through—quote—coincidences? Through providence? Yes, I think so. And we know that from our own experience. We should recognize those things. We need to be aware of those things and sensitive to those things and not miss them in our lives. Missing God’s hand can be one of the things one regrets greatly later in life. We should see those things. And that applies, of course, in many areas—employment, opportunities for college and advancement. Many areas one could apply it. The book of Esther makes that very clear. 

You know, of course, what they are doing here when she goes into the king, and it mentions in there fasting—well, to whom were they fasting? To God, obviously. And what else are they doing? They’re praying as well; which brings us to another point as we go to Esther 6 and verse 1.

This is maybe the turning point in the book. They’re all fasting; they’re all praying. And what happens in the royal court? All of a sudden the king has an attack of insomnia; he can’t sleep. 

Esther 6:1 That night the king could not sleep. So one was commanded to bring the book of the records of the chronicles; (Kings of great nations back then kept chronicles. They kept an account of everything that happened in their empire. It was important for the purposes of history, but it was important for another reason as well.  And that is, that if anyone had done a great act of patriotism, a great act of loyalty for the king, this had to be recorded. And the king wakes up in the middle of the night. He didn’t have his email; he didn’t have internet; of course, no TV. And he says, “Bring the chronicles! I’d like to hear about them.”) and they were read before the king.

Verse 2 And it was found written that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs, the doorkeepers who had sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus.

Earlier in the book Mordecai tipped off the royal court that there was an assassination plot, and he did the right thing, but he hadn’t been rewarded for it. 

Verse 3 Then the king said, “What honor or dignity has been bestowed on Mordecai for this?” And the king’s servants who attended him said, “Nothing has been done for him.”

Oh, no! Horrors! You don’t do this in the Persian Empire! A citizen of the Persian Empire saved the life of the king? Hey! He has to be rewarded. And, of course, from there flows the turnaround in the book. 

But there’s a point here, and I wonder if any of those who were fasting and praying about everything that went on at that point when Esther went in to the king—the fast is probably over—but the answer is not complete at this point, and that God is answering their prayers, of course. And it brings us to another point, and that is that the answers to prayer can often be unpredictable. You ever seen that? The answers to prayer can often be unpredictable. 

I found a wonderful quote from Herbert W. Armstrong from a radio program—and I think this may have gone back to the 1950s or the 1960s; I don’t have the date on it—but a program that he did title “Answered Prayer.” And he explained it with wonderful clarity, as he had that way of explaining things. 

He says, “The one question is, has God promised to do it in your Bible? If He has, then probabilities, possibilities, feelings, convictions, impressions have absolutely nothing one way or the other to do with it. God has a thousand ways that we know nothing of, of answering and of providing whatever He has promised. We don’t need to know how He’s going to do it or when.”

And that’s another thing—He almost never does it in a way that we expect. Ever experienced that? I’ll bet you have. Many of us have. 

“So don’t try to figure out how it’s possible for God to do whatever you ask. You are trusting in a supernatural God, a miracle-working God, so believe in that power of God. God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. What He has promised, he will perform, but He’ll do it in His way and His time. Leave all that to God and just trust Him. Rely on His word.”

Well, of course, they didn’t have His word in the same way that we do; we’ve got the complete Bible. But there was that promise that Messiah was going to come from the tribe of Judah. There were other things that bore on this as well—God’s faithfulness to the covenant—and here we’ve got this surprising moment of insomnia: the king can’t sleep. “What’s been done for the guy who tipped me off? He saved my life, and nothing has been done for that individual.” Let’s keep our place here. We’re going to come back to the book of Esther. 

John 3, verse 8. It’s a scripture that maybe you wouldn’t think of in this regard, but I think it does bear on this subject. John 3, verse 8, in the New Testament. Talking about the Holy Spirit—the Holy Spirit is, of course, the agency, the projection of God. The Holy Spirit is not a person. The Holy Spirit is, however, closely associated with God. It is the projection of the power and the presence of God.

John 3:8 (Jesus and Nicodemus, and He makes a very similar point; He says,) “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 

And I realize that’s speaking about regeneration, but the point being here, that the way in which the Holy Spirit functions can often be very unpredictable. The Holy Spirit flows, and it works in ways that we can’t always predict. We should never try to “bottle up” God with the Holy Spirit. He answers prayers in ways that we don’t necessarily anticipate. And I think that that quote from Mr. Armstrong is a very good quote, very apropos. When we face difficulties in life, we do need to trust God. And we shouldn’t predict. We shouldn’t try to figure out how it’s going to happen. 

You ever had the experience of looking for employment, and you think this door over here is bound to open because I’m ideally suited to this particular job? And it’s bound to . . . this is the one. And you bang on the door, and you bang on the door, and you bang on the door, and nothing happens. And all of a sudden the door opens, and it’s even way outside of your vision, your lateral vision. It’s just one way that God works. And you got the job that you needed that God opened for you. Answered prayers can be answered in a way that’s unpredictable.

And then we get the turnaround, and the book of Esther is a book about a turnaround. Esther 9, verses 20-22. There’s a wonderful turnaround in this book.

By the way, the Festival of Purim—you may be aware of it—occurs almost exactly one month prior to the Passover. It’s a Jewish national festival; it’s not a commanded festival for the Church, but it’s not a pagan festival either. And it’s the Festival of Purim that celebrates the outcome of the book of Esther—because God turned things around.

Esther 9:20-22 Mordecai wrote these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, to establish among them that they should celebrate yearly the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar, as the days on which the Jews had rest from their enemies, as the month which was turned from sorrow to joy for them, and from mourning to a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and joy, of sending presents to one another and gifts to the poor. 

Taste some hamantaschen if you never have. Hamantaschen is a little Jewish pastry you can buy. Whole Foods has it, and there are other places in town where you can buy it. Very tasty. And you buy them around Purim time. They’re sort of a triangular type of pastries with jam or a date or seeds in the middle. Very tasty. They gave gifts to one another; they made it a special occasion. 

But God worked a turnaround. 

Romans 8:28 . . . all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

We understand that. We struggle with that at times when we’re sick. We struggle with it when we face an employment crisis. We struggle with it when we’ve got difficulties in the family and emotional difficulties, don’t we? We all do that. But it says so, and it’s true. When you’re in God’s hands, He always makes sure that things come out for the best—long run, He always does. Of course, the key for us is to stick with it, to stick with the program, to hold on, to be faithful to Him. God is faithful.

What’s the theme of the book of Esther? I’m tempted to give a pop quiz, but I won’t. What’s the theme of the book of Esther? Well, maybe a beautiful, godly young woman—but there’s a little bit more to it than that. One of the great themes of the book of Esther is my favorite Hebrew word, “covenant loyalty.” When God agrees to do something, He’s faithful to it. The Hebrew word for “covenant loyalty” is hesed—“covenant loyalty, covenant love.” God agrees to do something, and He sticks with it. And, of course, this is one of the characteristics that should be in us as well. God is always faithful when He’s entered into a covenant. And perhaps one of the great lessons of the book of Esther is that we’re to be faithful, even when we can’t see the outcome.

Psalm 136:1-3. Actually, we’ll use the word hesed all the way through the chapter. The word translated “mercy” in our English Bibles is the Hebrew word hesed. And “mercy” is not a good translation, but it’s very difficult to find an English word that captures the thrust of the Hebrew word hesed. Hesed is love in its purest form. Hesed is loyalty to the covenant. Hesed is covenant loyalty, and it tells us about God.

Psalm 136:1-3 Oh, give thanks to the (Eternal), for He is good! For His mercy (His hesed) endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the God of gods! For His mercy endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the Lord of lords! For His mercy endures forever. (In the Hebrew it is kiy l’olam hasdow. His hesed, His hesed is l’olam goes out to all eternity. It’s not limited spatially; it’s not limited in time.)

I remember one of the prayers that is done at the Jewish Passover service—the Seder service—and I can remember doing this in the family. I didn’t have much of a religious upbringing, but I can remember this very vividly, and you’ll understand why when I explain what we did when we did the Dayeinu prayer. This was the very elaborate Jewish Seder service—the same time we have the Night to Be Observed. It’s a long dinner for the Jews, and lots and lots of prayers. And I can recall sitting there wishing the prayers would all be over so we could eat dinner. You know, lots of cups of wine and washing of hands and one thing and another. And at one point in the evening you have this prayer called Dayeinu. I can remember my dad putting a napkin on the back of his jacket because we’d all take a bunch of spring onions and go around the table and whip one another on the back. It was designed—it was crazy, right?—it was designed to represent the Egyptian taskmasters beating the Israelites. 

And while you’re doing all of this, the head of the household says dayeinu: “If God had brought us out of Egypt, but if He’d not given us manna, dayeinu—it would have been enough. If God had given us manna, but He’d not given us quail to eat, dayeinu—it would have been enough. If God had given us quail, but He’d not brought water out of the rock, dayeinu—it would have been enough.”

And it’s a lovely prayer, but it’s really not true! Because without any of those, it wouldn’t have been enough. They would have perished! Really, all of it made a chain, and all of it indicated God’s loyalty to the covenant, and that He has a sequence of steps. Anyway, it’s a very noble sentiment, but they wouldn’t have got very far without water, if they’d had manna and quail and no water. 

Now the point being that God brings His people step by step through everything that they face. God is loyal to the covenant. God is loyal to the covenant. Are we? There’s a payoff; there’s a payoff. We have to stick with it. We have to be faithful even when we can’t see the outcome of the things that are taking place in our life. When we’re in those circumstances, it’s a question of when and not if. Many lessons, but that’s one of the beautiful lessons of this wonderful book of Esther.