Divine Purpose in Times of Crisis // Esther 4

In Pastor Evan Bialk's sermon, he continues his interpretation of the book of Esther, examining chapter four. He highlights that when faced with adversity, we should turn towards God rather than pushing away our anguish or relying solely on our abilities. Addressing Western culture's tendency to suppress grief, Pastor Bialk urges the importance of recognizing and working through sorrow, as Mordecai demonstrated in his state of mourning amidst the plan to annihilate Jews.The sermon's second main point suggests that in times of crisis, we must honor our God-assigned missions, drawing inspiration from Mordecai's faith in Esther having been chosen to defend her people from within the palace walls. Encouragement was offered to listeners to accept that God has a role for everyone, and that it's vital to fulfill those roles, even when it entails stepping out of our safe spaces. Pastor Bialk wraps up his sermon by commending Esther's bravery in deciding to approach the king knowing the risk it posed to her life. He underscores her loyalty towards her people and readiness to heed God's call. The message extended to listeners is to emulate Esther, displaying allegiance to Christ and standing against evil irrespective of any discomfort or threat involved. The sermon draws on verses from Joel and Romans, demonstrating the call for repentance and obedience to God’s word respectively.Portraying Esther and Mordecai as imperfect yet significant figures in God's plans, Pastor Bialk emphasizes that irrespective of past mistakes, God can still employ individuals for his purposes.

Transcript

All right, let's hop into Esther this morning. We're continuing on our series on Esther made for this moment. We are in chapter four of Esther, and.

Just gotta find my place in here. There we go. We are in Esther four this morning. So quick recap of what we've talked about before Esther one. We kind of talked about how the power of man.

We discussed the power of man versus the providence of God, and how we tend to like to drift toward the power of man and how in our own lives, how we gravitate toward our own power of doing things right. We like to look to our own abilities to get things done, and oftentimes we conflict with the providence of God, and the providence of God is going to win out in those situations. Then in chapter two, Chris walked us through Esther's preparation in becoming queen. Remember, in chapter one, Vashti had been kind of exiled from being queen. In chapter two, the king finds a new queen.

He comes back from his war and finds a new queen, and Esther and the preparation that has to go into that, and Esther ultimately being placed in there as a jew, no less being picked as queen. Then in last week, we looked at chapter three, and chapter three was kind of set up to the main conflict between Haman and Mordecai. And we discussed how pride is the downfall of many and how pride is the root of all sin, and how it's Haman's pride in wanting to be essentially worshipped that leads him to this over the top wanting to kill all of the Jews because of the, what he would say, disrespect shown by Mordecai. And so that's kind of where we left it is the conflict has arisen, and Haman goes to the king and asks him to essentially commit genocide against the Jews and Xerxes because of his lack of leadership and corruption around money, basically says, sure, do whatever you want. And that's where.

That's where we're at in Esther four.

And so when Esther four is going to cover a couple of different things, we're going to look at when we face hard things, we need to turn toward God. But oftentimes when we face hard things, we don't turn toward God. We oftentimes make the wrong choice and we rely on our own measures, or we ignore God completely when faced with hard things. But when we embrace our God given purposes, God provides both strength and courage to move through those hard times verses. We're just going to walk through chapter four this morning, and I want us to look first at verses one and two.

When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry, he went up to the entrance of the king's gate, for no one was allowed to enter into the king's gate in sackcloth. Mordecai's response here that we see is great. It's with great emotion over how his individual conflict with Haman, between him and Haman, puts the entire jewish nation into jeopardy. And we see this, and we spoke to it last week, how Haman's plan to annihilate all of the jewish people is way out of proportion to Mordecai's offense. So when Mordecai learns of Haman's plan, his remorse for his offense against Haman is great.

And so he goes out and he puts on, he tears his clothes, and he puts on sackcloth and ashes, and he cries out with a loud and bitter cry. But it's interesting that Mordecai, it doesn't ever say here that Mordecai was sorry for his actions or that he tried to rectify the situation. Last week, we talked about the possible reasons for Mordecai's kind of disobedience to the law to bow down to Haman. And this just kind of this idea that there is nowhere in scripture where it looks like Mordecai is trying to rectify the situation or that he's even sorry for his actions. It kind of intensifies our belief that there was a religious conviction there and Mordecai.

But that doesn't mean that he isn't upset and he isn't distraught that his conflict between him and Haman has brought about this potential genocide against the jewish nation. Now, the act of putting on sackcloth and ashes was an act of deep mourning and distress. And Sackcloth was the apparel of mourners, especially those mourning for the dead. And it's common throughout the Bible period. And we see this especially throughout the Old Testament, the idea of tearing one's clothes and putting on sackcloth and times of grief and distress.

And the Persians would have actually understood this, too, because we see in history that the Persians did this, and they lost great battles and stuff. They tore their clothes in grief, and so they would have recognized the behavior for what it was. And we also know this because there was a law specifically against this. He couldn't go into the king's gate. We talked about what?

The king's gate was a place where they did official business, right? He couldn't go into it wearing sackcloth. So there was a recognition for what Mordecai was going through, and so people who knew him would have recognized that he was in a grieving period. And this is such a stark contrast to the way we handle grief in the west, right. Having gone through various times of grief in my own life, we like to.

In the west, at least my experience with it in the west, we like to push grief away from us. We like to minimize it. We don't like to give it its due. And in reality, we should. And a lot of people have trouble for a long period because they don't.

They don't express their grief well or they don't handle their grief well. And if you've ever gone through, I imagine there's people in this room that have gone through grieving periods, and they understand. I remember when my mom passed away and had her funeral. The words of comfort that people would give me weren't words of comfort. I remember talking to somebody about this just a couple weeks, weeks ago about how in reality, they.

They did more harm than good. Because in the west, we like to minimize grief. We like to just push it away. You know, people would walk in, well, she's in a better place. Wouldn't you want that for her?

And I'm like, no, I want her to be here. I want her to be here. I want her to meet her grandkids. I want to. I want to, you know, yes, I understand the ethereal, like, she's in heaven and.

And healthy with God, and that's amazing. And I praise the Lord that she knew the Lord, and I will see her one day. But in that moment of grief, man, that's not what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, man, I want her to be here. I want her.

I'm thinking about all the things that she's going to miss, all the things that my kids are going to miss out on not having their grandmother, all of those things. Grief is hard, and you have to walk through it. You can't ignore it. And we like to ignore it in the west. We like to minimize it and stuff.

So if you've ever gone to a funeral and you've said something like that, man, maybe this is a wake up call for you. The best thing to do with grief is to sit in it with the other person, have empathy toward them. There are oftentimes not anything that you can say to make that moment any better? What they need is a friend. What they need is love.

And sometimes love is just saying, man, this really sucks. Death sucks. And isn't it great that we serve and know God? And he has promised that one day death will be destroyed, but right now it really sucks. And we don't do that.

We don't express our grief well in the west. So this idea of us tearing our clothes off and putting on sackcloth and mourning and wailing and crying is completely foreign to us. So often you probably read this, and you're like, man, I don't understand where this is coming from. In their culture, it was common to hire people, hire mourners who would come to your house and wail. They would dress up, and they would come and grieve for you.

In a sense that was common. Dealing with grief was such a foreign concept in how they dealt with grief, and still do in some cases. To weigh how we deal with this. I want us to understand that there is great emotion happening in this passage with Mordecai. There is great emotion that he is having in this.

He is seeing the condemnation of his people because of an action that he took. Although he felt justified and righteous in taking that, he knows that this is condemning the jewish people to potential annihilation.

And we see also, I just want to note here that he goes up to the entrance of the king's gate, and he doesn't go in right. He's there in public grieving. He's not doing this grieving in private, either. He's out in public where everybody can see him. Everybody is knowing what's going on.

And that's why, in verse three, we see in every providence, in every province where the king's command and his decree reached, that there was great mourning among the Jews with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them laying in sackcloth and ashes. This behavior that is broader than just Mordecai, the entire jewish population respond in a similar manner. So we see in verses one and two, we see that Mordecai is responding with great emotion, but the entire people, the entire nation of Israel, that is in Persia at the time, is responding with great emotion. They're tearing their clothes off, putting on sackcloth and ashes, and they're, they're grieving because of what is to come. And the strange thing is, most of these people who are doing this would not understand why it's happening unless they knew Mordecai or possibly lived in Susa.

They wouldn't understand why the king had decreed for the jewish population to be executed. But the response is the same. The response is to grieve and call out to God in fasting and weeping and mourning. And I want us to, I want us to just look at this phrase right here at the end of chapter three with fasting and weeping and lamenting, or fasting and weeping and mourning, and some versions.

I want us to look at this, because while the individual words fasting, weeping, and mourning appear throughout the Old Testament, this is a unique phrase that only occurs twice, once in Joel and once in esther. And it forms kind of an intertextual link between Esther and Joel. Joel 212 says, yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all of your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. If this is intentional by the author of Esther, the author of Esther, then, is assuming that his readers are familiar enough with Joel's words to recognize them, and he is inviting his readers in to interpret Esther four in light of this Joel two passage. And so I'm just going to read Joel 212 14 yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments, return to the Lord your God.

For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant and steadfast love, and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God.

Now, it's interesting because the response of Mordecai and the Jews to the edict of death. The author, without explicitly mentioning divine judgment, casts Haman's pogrom, which just means genocide, as an occasion for the jewish people in exile, for their sin, to turn to the Lord, who may relent from sending this calamity on them. The very next statement Joel makes is, rend your heart, not your garments. And it resonates with Mordecai's reactions to Haman's edict. And so we see both Mordecai and the nation of Israel tearing their garments, right, putting on sackcloth and ashes.

That was how they expressed their grief. And yet in Joel, too, the Lord is telling them, in times of calamity, to rend your hearts, not your garments. So what does it mean to rend your heart? It means to return to repentance, to return back to the Lord. Don't tear your clothes, tear your heart.

Tear the things that are separating you from God, away from your heart and return to God. And so that's what Joel is saying. And it's a stark contrast you have here because you have this link, because these are the only two places in the Old Testament where this framework phrase, the unique phrase that has been given here, is linking Joel 212 to Esther four three. And so the author is putting up this contrast for us because we can oftentimes outwardly grieve, but inwardly not change. We can outwardly grieve against our sin.

We can outwardly confess and say, man, I hate that I'm doing this, or I hate that I'm doing this, and I want to change. But inwardly, there is no repentance. There is no turning to God.

I like to call it the christian mask. We like to put on our christian face, our christian mask. And so we say, we can say the right things. We can do the right, do the right things, we can serve. We can look like we're the good Christian.

We can say all the right words. We can grieve outwardly for our sin. But when it comes down to it, when you're at home alone, your heart is bent toward your sin. You love your sin, and you don't want to let go of it, and so you continue to go back to it.

And so this is what the passage is talking about. We're not to rip and tear off our outward if there's nothing going on inside, because what it looks like on the outside doesn't matter. The Lord wants you to change on the inside. And so we're to rend our heart to God.

And this is an invitation to turn to the Lord in repentance, which we will later see demonstrated through fasting, weeping, and wailing of the jewish people later on.

And so when we're faced with hard things, we're called to turn toward the Lord. We're called to turn toward God. This is the idea. Mordecai and the jewish people are faced with something terrible, a calamity, a pogrom, an annihilation of their entire people, and they're grieving. And yet we see this connection, that in that moment, it's not the outward that needs to change.

It's the n word to rend their hearts to the Lord, to repent to the Lord. And oftentimes, too, oftentimes when we face hard things, we make the wrong choice. And we see this in verse four as we go on. When Esther's young women and her eunuchs came to her and told her the queen was deeply distressed, she sent garments to close Mordecai so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. So oftentimes when we're confronted with uncomfortable things, oftentimes we just want to cover them up.

Esther doesn't know why Mordecai is out there. She knows. She sees it. She doesn't know why he's out there grieving. But instead of going to her uncle or cousin, depending on where they fall, where you fall on the lineage, but instead of going to him and asking him, what is wrong, how can I help?

Instead, she sends him clothes and says, can you stop doing what you're doing? You're making me uncomfortable. You're making other people uncomfortable. And how often is that? Our response, our first initial response is not to sit down and care for the person and where they're at.

It is, you're making me uncomfortable. Can you do something else? Here, I'll give you something. A lot of times we like to throw money at problems. Somebody comes off the street or walks up to you and is saying, man, I'm having a really hard time.

Instead of sitting down with them and saying, hey, why are you having a hard time? What's going on in your life? This is, you know, have you met Jesus? Cause he can help oftentimes. I mean, I'm guilty of it, too.

People walk up to me at a gas station and say, hey, can I have a few bucks? This is super uncomfortable. Here, let me give you a buck. Or say, I don't have any money. I don't have any cash.

Go bother somebody else. Right? In those moments where we're uncomfortable, we just like to cover things up. We like to throw money at problems. We like to throw clothes or food pantries for the homeless where we can go and we can serve the homeless a meal, and we can feel good about ourselves.

But did you ever talk to them? Did you ever ask them what's going on in their life, why they're homeless? What brought them to that moment? Did you ever minister to them to say, hey, Jesus loves you, and he doesn't want this. He has something better for you?

We can oftentimes throw things to make ourselves feel better.

We donated all these cans to the food drive. We went and fed the homeless. We gave money to the birthing center down the street that helps women who have gotten pregnant and are unwed or thinking about abortion. But we never go and have a conversation with them. We're not actually ministering to them.

We're trying to cover up the uncomfortableness of sin, the uncomfortableness of the broken world. No, I'm not saying those things are not necessarily good things. We should feed the homeless, we should clothe them. We should provide monetary support to ministries that need that. I'm not saying those are inherently bad, but what I'm saying is if that's the only thing that we're doing as a church, if that's the only thing that we're doing as believers, man, we're missing out on our purpose, on God's purpose for our lives.

And this is what Esther is doing. She sees this really uncomfortable situation with Mordecai, and she's very comfortable with it. So she's just like, I'm going to give you some clothes. Stop doing what you're doing. I'm not even going to ask you what's wrong.

This is honestly the biggest debate on how we help people. The biggest debate oftentimes in the church is how we help people. And ultimately we see that in politics too, of how it divides us on how we help people. Do we give them money? Do we give them services?

Do we help them? Personally, I love Tim Keller's argument for this. In his book reason for God. He argues that from a christian perspective, that many of the things that we argue about on how we help people is kind of a moot point because we're all wanting to help people. We're just coming at it from different ways.

And so the heart behind the believer should, should be to want to get down in the dirt with somebody who is struggling, who is hurting and help them. But oftentimes we divide in a church or politically on how that happens, and instead we need to realize that we have the heart to do it and we need to unify. There needs to be unity. Paul talks a lot about the need for unity in the church, and we need to unify on how we are going to help people who are struggling and hurting. And then we need to go out and do it.

We don't need to just throw money at it. We don't need to cover it up because it makes us uncomfortable at it. We need to be the ones out there helping, serving, meeting people's needs.

Because what we want to meet is both the surface need and the spiritual need.

We both want to meet the surface need and the spiritual need.

We see that in verse five after Mordecai doesn't accept these clothes then, and it's only then that Esther goes and orders her eunuch, Haythec, to go and learn why Mordecai was mourning. Then Esther called for Haythec, one of the king's eunuchs who had been appointed to attend to her and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was and why it was Hatha went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king's gate. Mordecai told him all that had happened to him and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king's treasuries for the destruction of the jews. Mordecai also gave him a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and command her to go to the king and beg his, his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people.

And so when Esther finally, after Mordecai rejects her offer to just cover it up or provide for him physically, she finally goes and asks. She makes the ask, okay, Mordecai, what's going on? And Mordecai is more than willing. If you've ever volunteered with people who are in pain and struggling, you'll know that they are more than willing to open up and share what's going on in their life. Do you know why?

Because they are looking for hope. They are looking for hope, and we have that hope. And if we never ask them, we can never share that hope with them. But Mordecai, when asked, he opens up and he tells the eunuch plainly. What is going on.

Now, I don't know. And it doesn't speak to why Esther was unaware of what was going on, but it is clear that she was unaware of the king's edict here. And so Mordecai is informing her through this eunuch of what is going on. And sometimes we just need to ask first and then listen, because when we ask and listen, we can actually know what their true needs are.

When people are in pain, when people are grieving, when people have lost the loved one, sometimes it's important to ask, what do you need? What is going on? How can I help you? Instead of assuming that they want us to act a certain way or say something, sometimes it's better to ask and just listen and be there in that moment with them. And so Mordecai asks for help.

That's another thing. When people are in grief, when people are in pain and suffering, they're going to ask for help because they want help. They're hurting.

If they're not asking for help, then they haven't gotten to a point where they are genuinely hurting. But people who genuinely are hurting and suffering and in pain and looking for an answer. They're going to ask for help, and they're going to tell us how to help them.

The problem is this is, again, when faced with hard things, we oftentimes make the wrong choices. Esther is confronted with the edict from the king that the jewish people are set to be annihilated. We see this. We see her response in verses nine through eleven. Then Hatha went up and told Esther what Mordecai had said.

Then Esther spoke to Hatha and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, all the king's servants and the people of the king's province know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court, lord, without being called, there is but one law. And we know that this law to be true because the historian Herodias confirms this outside of the Bible. He confirms that the Persians had this law that if somebody entered into the court and the king didn't extend the scepter to them, they would be killed.

There's 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 into the king these 30 days. And so she hasn't seen the king in basically a month, as we would understand it.

And as I was studying through this, I went back and I remembered the Sunday school version of how I was taught this in Sunday school. And they just kind of skated over this part of Esther. But we need to realize what's going on here. When Esther is confronted with the hard truth that her people are going to be killed, her first reaction is to create an excuse on why she can't do anything.

Her first reaction is to make an excuse on why she cannot or would not help. Her response to Mordecai. When Mordecai is pleading with her, please go and seek our favor and see if you can sway the king. She says, I can't do that, because if I do that, I could be killed. She was looking out for herself.

She was more worried about herself than she was her own people.

In the face of her people being killed, she was afraid for her own life. And we so often make up excuses on why we can't help. I remember reading through a book by Francis Chan called the forgotten God, and it was a book on the Holy Spirit and how oftentimes in churches we love to talk about God the Father and God the Son, and how often we forget that there is a third person to the Trinity, God, the Holy Spirit, that is co equal, co worthy of our praise, co eternal.

That the Holy Spirit is God as well, and that the Holy Spirit, if you're a believer, the Holy Spirit resides in you and is sanctifying you and is speaking to you and is guiding you if you're asking for it. But so often, especially in the west, especially in first world countries like America, we love to quench the Holy Spirit. He called quenching it. And that's ignoring the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit oftentimes will call us to do uncomfortable things.

The Holy Spirit will oftentimes call us to do uncomfortable things. It'll call us to go talk to a co worker about Jesus. It'll convict us that we should do that. But because of our fear of man, because of our not wanting to be rejected, we never go talk to that coworker. So maybe that coworker never hears about Jesus.

You know, I was. I was sitting in.

I was sitting in line on the way back to Texas this last week, and I was in line. We were about to board the plane, and I was wearing this t shirt. I went to a pastor's conference a couple weeks ago, and they gave us this t shirt as kind of like a going away gift. And it says, I plant wee water. And on the back it says, God makes it grow.

Okay? And so I'm wearing this t shirt, and it says, I plant, we water. I'm wearing a backpack that covers that God makes it grow apart. And I'm standing in line, and the gentleman in front of me sees the I plant, we water. And he's like, man, that reminds me of this gym I used to go to about.

It had a saying on the wall that said, if the grass is greener on the other side, then you should water your own lawn. Which, yeah, it's a good saying, but in that moment, I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit that I should talk to him. And so I explained what the t shirt was. I said, actually, I mean, that's a great saying and all, but actually, I'm a believer. And this is something that we believe that God brings growth in our lives.

God brings growth in our lives. And our responsibility is to plant the seed to water it, but God brings the growth. And I took my backpack off and I showed it to him, and he was like, so what religion are you? And I was like, I'm Christian, and I'm actually a pastor in Topeka. We got to talking about it, and he was like, yeah.

He was like, so if you're a pastor, what did you preach on on Sunday? And I told him we were in Esther. And I was like, are you familiar with Esther? He says, no, I've never read the Bible, never opened it, never been to a church. And so for the five minutes that I had boarding the plane, as we're on the walkway into the plane, for the five minutes, I got to talk to him about how God is providential in our life and how God loves us, he guides us in our life, and how Jesus is ultimately our goal, to know Jesus, then I never spoke to him again.

Five minutes.

But if I hadn't been listening to the Holy Spirit in that moment or been afraid to take the step of starting a conversation with a complete stranger that I didn't know, man, I would have never done it. If I had quenched the Holy Spirit, if I had made an excuse on why I couldn't do that because I didn't know enough or I was tired, or. Or we only had five minutes. There was no way for me to tell him about anything in five minutes, right. My job in that moment was not.

I mean, it would have been awesome if he had gotten saved in that five minutes, but my job in that is to do exactly what the t shirt said, to plant the seed.

And oftentimes, we don't plant the seed because our first response is like Esther's. We make an excuse on why we can't we make an excuse on why we can't go on the missions trip because I don't want to take off I don't want to take off work and give them my pto to go and tell people about Jesus because I want to go to the beach later on in the summer.

I don't want to stop on the side of the road and help somebody who's broken down and show them the love of Christ and possibly have a conversation because that would make me feel uncomfortable, or possibly make them feel uncomfortable, or I've got better things to do, or I don't want to stop. It would mean inconvenience to me. I can't serve at church because I was hurt by the church, or I don't think I have any good talents to give to the church. I can't tell somebody about Jesus because I don't know enough to tell people about Jesus. I don't know how to do the Romans road or go through all of scripture.

I'm not educated enough to tell people about Jesus.

Are you educated to tell people about your life, because if you're a believer, then God should be moving in your life, and you should be able to point people to how God has changed you in your life and what you were like before you met Jesus and after.

We can't submit to the Holy Spirit because it would make us uncomfortable. And comfort, I think, is one of the great sins in american culture, in the church today, because we love our comfort. I love comfort. I don't like being uncomfortable. But we love comfort, oftentimes to the detriment of the world around us, where we're not being the missionaries and the light, because we're too wrapped up in our comfort than we are wanting to see people come to Jesus and Esther, just like we don't want to put our life on the line, our reputation on the line, our comfort on the line.

But we see here, there's a big shift here at the end of Esther four, that when we embrace our God given purpose, God will provide what we need. In Esther twelve, Mordecai confronts Esther, and they told Mordecai what Esther had said. Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 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 into the kingdom for such a time as this. Mordecai's reply reminds her that she will not escape this edict and that it will only actually be worse for her if she remains silent. Mordecai is confident that no matter Esther's choice here, that the Lord will provide another way of deliverance if she remains silent. Now, there's a lot of debate here on whether or not the term he uses in verse 14, relief and deliverance, will rise for the Jews from another place. Whether or not that is talking about Mordecai is specifically saying God will.

Textually, it's implying that Mordecai believes that there will be another person that will be raised up, that will bring deliverance. But it shows Mordecai's confidence that God's providence, if God's providence is true and can be trusted, that Mordecai believes that God will bring somebody else to bring them deliverance.

Mordecai is confident that the Lord will provide another way, even if she remains silent. But he believes that Esther was put in the palace for a reason. And so, he says, to her.

And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this.

God has placed each of us here in this time, in this place for a purpose. You could say that we were made for this moment.

God placed you here on May 5, 2024, in Topeka, Kansas, for a purpose. You are made for this moment of time and history, and you have a purpose on your life.

God has a purpose for you. We know that because in Ephesians, it says, for those who are believers, that God has prepared good works for us to do ahead of time for us to do. We have a purpose, a God given purpose right now in this moment of history. And we don't want to miss out on our life's purpose.

And sometimes that means that we can't be silent in the light of the evil we see around us. And that's what Mordecai is saying to Esther. God placed you in the place that you're at and the time you're at for a purpose, and you can't be silent in the light of evil that you see. And so for believers, our application here for in this moment, and when we recognize that God has placed each one of us and made each one of us for this moment, it means that our purpose here is to tell people about Jesus and to show the world a better way of living. Not to be moralistic, but a better way of living by surrendering your life to Christ, surrendering your life to our king Jesus, and living in a way that is honoring to God, living in a way that is honoring to him and following his commands.

But it also means that we can't be silent in the light of the evil that we see around us. It's our job of believers to call people to repentance, call people to repentance, tell them that the kingdom of God is at hand, that it has come, and they are to repent. They are to know, how are they supposed to repent if they believe what they are doing is okay?

One of the things I dislike severely and when I hear believers say it is, well, if, especially in Americans, because we have this idea that it's okay that somebody else is sinning, somebody else is sinning because it's not bothering me.

So they can live their life the way they want to live it, I'm going to live my life as long as they leave me alone, right? I mean, that's the idea of, you know, the general idea of a lot of Americans. But as a believer, man, they're going to hell. How can you say that you don't care what they're doing. If they're going to hell, they stand condemned for eternity in hell.

We are to show them that the sexual perversion, the abortion, the sex slave, the human trafficking that is prevalent in today's world, the rise of anti semitism, I mean, we have it all across the nation, in our college campuses right now, where people are protesting and physically assaulting the jewish people. We are called to point those things out and point them to Jesus and say, this is going to take you to hell. This is not what God intended for you. This is not good for you. Jesus is better.

Jesus is better. And the way following him is better. Your life will be better. And I don't mean filled with riches and comfort, but you will have joy in your life because you will have the joy of Christ. Your life will ultimately be better following Jesus than following after your sin.

And so we can't be silent in the light of the evil we see around us. And sometimes, as believers, we want to hide our choices and hide our choice to serve Jesus. We want to remain in the pagan world. But that's impossible. You must make a choice.

Will you stand for Jesus or will you stand for the world? And we see this defining moment in Esther in verses 15 through 17. Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, go gather all the Jews to be found in Susa and hold a fast on my behalf. And do not eat or drink for these three days or night or three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do.

Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish. Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him. So we see this defining moment for Esther where she is confronted. She is between a rock and a hard place.

She finds herself, her life, in jeopardy. No matter the choice she. No matter the choice she makes, her life is in jeopardy. And it seems to be human nature that sometimes we will do only the right thing when it's too. When it becomes too painful to continue to do the wrong thing.

Let's say that again. It seems to be human nature, that sometimes we will do the right thing only when it becomes too painful to continue to do the wrong thing. And so Esther, when confronted with this, she has to make a choice. Is she going to continue to live like a pagan, like she has been the last five years? Or is she going to identify herself with God's chosen people and try and save them.

And oftentimes it's only when we're in this hard place that we make the right choice.

We can make the wrong choice, though. The small defining moments in our life that lead to these larger defining moments.

When we come up to this, when you have a big defining moment in our life, it is the small defining moments, the small moments in your life, the small choices that lead us to whether or not or how we're going to make that large defining moment. I say this because it's easy to cheat on an exam or cheat on your taxes, and you might not think anything about that. But if you walk through life cheating on things, what's to say that when the choice comes to cheat on your spouse that you're not going to make. You're not going to make the choice to cheat on your spouse? You cheated on the exam in grade school and in high school.

You cheated on exams, you cheated on taxes, you cheated on maybe a girlfriend. And then when it comes to it, when you're confronted on it, the big defining do I cheat on my spouse? Maybe. I mean, you've cheated the rest of your life. What's the big deal?

The fact is that the small moments in life have a culminating effect on a person's character.

If you ask addicts or alcoholics or drug addicts, or porn and sex addicts, or people who have embezzled money, if you ask them why did they do it most of the time, or why are they in the trouble they're in most of the time? They're not going to say that they started out wanting to be a drug addict, or they started out wanting to embezzle money, or they started out wanting to be an alcoholic most of the time. It started off with a choice of, okay, I'm going to. I'll take this one hit of marijuana one time, and then the next time it's like, hey, bringing together, smoke pot, you want to get. You want to come.

You want to come over and do it with us? And it's like, okay, sure. And then it becomes a thing, a regular thing. And then it's like, hey, you want to do some cocaine?

Well, okay, I'll try that. Okay, do you want to try some heroin? Now then all of a sudden you got a drug addict. There might be people in this room that have struggled with that. Maybe not drug addiction, but alcoholism.

There might be somebody right now that's struggling with alcoholism.

And if you ask him, do you want to be an alcoholic or how did you become an alcoholic? Well, maybe I started drinking. It was socially. And then I just started drinking at home, became more and more. And I've had friends and I've had this conversation with them, and never once did I ever hear them say I wanted to be an alcoholic.

I started out trying to be an alcoholic, or I started out trying to be a drug addict, or I started out and I wanted to embezzle money from my company or something like that. An opportunity that came, you know, $5 was left on the counter, and nobody was letting know that you took it, right? So you slid into your pocket. The next thing you know, you're stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company.

There's testimony of believers that have done that.

But the good thing is God is gracious in those moments where he is bigger than our problems, he is bigger than our struggles, he is bigger. And so when we are confronted with this, if we are believers, then we have the Holy Spirit who can help us move back toward Christ or move back toward Jesus.

But oftentimes it's only when we hit rock bottom that that happens. And for Esther, I would say this is hitting rock bottom for Esther, basically, hey, Esther, if you don't do anything, you're going to die either way. And so when Esther is confronted with this, we see her turn toward God, we see her turn toward God, we see Esther's plan, and we actually see this beard in Joel two. Remember we talked about Joel 212 14 and how it's mirrored with Esther four and how it sets the tone for Esther four? And so when Esther goes and makes her this big choice that she is going to go before the king and she's going to stand before him, and she says, if I perish, I perish.

I'm going to go before the king. I'm going to plead our case before the king. We see this mirroring Joel two. Joel 215 16. Below the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people, consecrate the congregation.

Whether or not she was aware of it, she was following the playbook that the prophet Joel had laid out in scripture for God's people. Because what does she do? She says, go gather all the jews. Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast. Hold a fast on my behalf.

Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I'm going to do that. My young women are do that. You do that also. Call a solemn assembly.

Gather the people. Consecrate the congregation. She is following this playbook in Joel two to rend their hearts. To repent toward God, to call out for God, for salvation, and her at the end of it, she says, if I perish, I perish.

Certainly the most fundamental of things when we hear the gospel of Jesus Christ is decide how to respond to it. The gospel confronts us with the decision either to continue to live as pagans or to identify ourselves with the people of God. The church, our choice, defines who we are and with what people we identify. The decision to be identified with Christ energizes our life. It gives us a purpose bigger than our own concerns and problems and a hope that goes beyond our own death.

It transforms us into people moved by the Holy Spirit, human agents of God's grace and love. In this world, however, the new birth is only the beginning of decisions. It has to be followed by the continuous sequence of defining moments throughout life, as we daily face decisions that demand we choose either to identify ourselves with Christ by obedience to his word or to live as pagans in that moment. Only if we live as Christ commands in every moment, in every decision, will we be the agents through whom the promises of the new covenant are fulfilled by the winsome testimony of our words and our lives. Others are called to come to Christ and to identify with his people by sustained obedience to God's word, which the apostle Paul calls the renewing of your mind.

In romans twelve two, God's promise of his transforming work in our own lives is realized and touches the lives of others in ways we can neither control nor predict. So as we're wrapping up Esther four, I want us to remember that after her decision to identify with herself, with God's people, and we're going to see other decisions she's going to make later on, that she becomes an active agent for her people.

She is setting the tone for her people. She is calling them to repentance by following Joel's playbook, to go and fast and call out to God, and that she's going to be the one to go before the king, she's planning a strategy to save her people. And it's encouraging to realize that even if we turn to God reluctantly and perhaps even for the wrong reasons, we are still putting ourselves in a position to receive God's promise and mercy. The Bible, from Genesis to revelation is the story of God's reconciling, fallen humanity to himself and Jesus Christ. Other than Jesus himself, the people in the Bible stories are no paragons of virtue.

Each of them have serious character flaws and questionable motives. Because of this, we must be cautious in discerning before imitating the specific behaviors of any biblical person, particularly those in the Old Testament. As Christians, our exemplary role model is Jesus and the basis for ethical living, the fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And so we might look at this in Sunday school. A lot of times they hold up Esther and they still go, look at how courageous and brave Esther was.

And what I'm saying is, look at how broken Esther was. Look at how broken Esther was, and look at all the wrong choices that Esther made and how God still used her to save his people.

There are so oftentimes I hear from people that I'm too broken. I've done too much stuff in my life that God can't use me or God can't love me. It's just not true. If you look at anybody in the Old Testament, anybody in the Old Testament and how God had used them, you know it's not going to be true. And Esther is true.

Esther, that's true of Esther too. She's broken. There's a lot of faults there, and God still used her. And that should be an encouragement to us, that in our brokenness, God can still use us.

Each of the biblical characters is shown in a relationship to God and his people. Some end up rejecting God and opposing his work. Those who are reconciled to God become testimonies of God's redemptive work and history. To the extent that some examples are to be followed, some aren't. The author of Esther's story does not hold up Esther or Mordecai as the exemplary role models in their specific behaviors.

But the story does show that there are two opposing sides represented by God's people.

You've got God's people and the rest of humanity, who, by opposing God's people, end up opposing God himself. Esther seems to be caught between the gentile world of the pagan court and the jewish world in which she was raised. And by showing all the good that came from her decision to identify with God's covenant people, the biblical author of Esther implicitly invites us to consider where they are, where we are in relationship to God. So today we can gain insight and wisdom in the example of Esther as she resolves the tension in her identity by deciding to cast her lot with God's covenant people. And perhaps, like Esther, you have been brought to this moment in your life by circumstances over which you had no control, combined with flawed decisions as you made along the way.

Perhaps instead of living for God, you have so concealed your christian faith that no one would even identify you as Christian. Then suddenly you find yourself facing calamity either in the circumstances of your life or others, or just within your own inner emotional world. Regardless of the straits you find yourself in. Turn to the Lord. Repent, rend your heart not your garment.

Fast, weep, mourn and return to the Lord, your God. His purposes are greater than yours. And perhaps you have come to this present situation for such a time as this. Let's pray.