A Time Such as This

Unfiltered Plans

Just a quick show of hands, how many of your remember covering the story of Esther in Sunday School or seeing the Veggie Tales episode about it when Esther was portrayed as a leek - yes, I did have to look that up. How many of you have really thought about Esther or read through the book since then?

Well, today we’re going to talk about the book of Esther, the whole book because it’s one of the accounts from the Old Testament where we talk about it in Sunday School and then never really take a serious look at the whole book again. And the problem with that, and with a few other Bible stories, is that when we tell them in Sunday School we clean them up a little bit. I’m not doing that this morning.

As I read through it this week, it actually made me think of playoffs (believe it or not), specifically for the Nashville Predators - my favorite hockey team. It’s getting close to playoff time for hockey and the commentators are starting to show the graphic where it shows everything that needs to happen for a certain team to make the playoffs. The same thing happens in all the sports I watch, but right now I’m seeing it start for hockey. And it’s a list where these teams need to lose, these teams can have an overtime loss, and these teams need to win x number of games. If you’re a sports fan, you’ve seen similar lists. And just like things need to happen in a certain way for the Preds to make the playoffs, certain things had to happen for the Israelites in exile during Esther’s time. Now what I want you to keep an eye out for that as we walk through Esther’s story , looking for how many things had to happen a certain way for the outcome to be what it was.

Queen Esther

The story of Esther starts with King Ahasuerus in his capital city. And the king is throwing a huge party to celebrate how incredible he is and he has all of his nobles and all of his governors at this party. This party, this feast, was scheduled to last seven days and all of the officials and everyone in the city was invited. On the last day, the king summoned his wife to show her off to all of his nobles and officials. She refused to come at his command, embarrassing him in front of all these people. So what he does, is she is never allowed to come into the king’s presence again and she loses her title as queen. He sets out to find someone to replace her. Now here’s one of the parts that you probably didn’t here in Sunday school. The order is for all the beautiful young women in the kingdom to be gathered to in the king’s palace and for them to be given their cosmetics. He was essentially setting up a beauty pageant to select his next queen. That’s where we start with King Ahasuerus.

Then we look over to Esther. She was a Jew living in the capital with her cousin Mordecai because her parents had both died and he took her in. Apparently Esther was attractive enough to be taken in when the king’s command went out. Mordecai told her not to let people know she was Jewish and she gained the favor of Hegai, the king’s eunuch in charge of the beauty pageant. She was given servants to help her, food, and advanced to the best place in the harem. All of the women were given twelve months to beautify themselves, and they were given whatever they needed. Esther used nothing except what the Hegai advised - and he was presumably familiar with what the king liked, so this was probably a wise move for her.

So now that we have the characters established, we get to the beauty pageant - which is still a nice way of describing it. Every night a women from the group would go to the king and the next day she would return to a second harem. If the king summoned her again by name, she would go back to him and become queen. If not, she would just live out her days in the palace, separate from the king. It came around to Esther’s turn and she was called back to the king, he set the royal crown on her head and made her the new queen. Not exactly a story we would tell to kids in Sunday School, but that is how it happened.

After Esther became queen, Mordecai found out that a few guards were planning to assassinate the king. He told cousin Esther, she told the king, and the assassins were put to death. Esther gave the credit to Mordecai and that’ll be important later.

Now we come to another key figure in the life of Esther, by all accounts the villain of the story. This guy named Haman was elevated to the highest position in the kingdom under the king. Despite that, Mordecai wouldn’t bow down or pay homage to Haman. Maybe Mordecai was taking seriously the idea of bowing down to God alone, maybe he just didn’t respect Haman, maybe he had problems with authority - I don’t know, Bible doesn’t say. Anyway, Haman doesn’t like this, seems like he might’ve been a little insecure. But he decides that he wants to kill Mordecai, and all of the people remotely related to him, in response. So Haman goes to the king and offers to pay him 10,000 talents (or roughly 750,000 pounds) of silver to, and I’m quoting Esther 3:13 here, send

Esther 3:13 (ESV)

Letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with instruction to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods.

Mordecai finds out about this order and asks Esther to go to the king and ask him to remove the order. Esther responds and says that if anyone goes before the king without being summoned, they will be put to death unless the king extends his golden scepter to them. Mordecai responds and says in Esther 4:14

Esther 4:14 (ESV)

For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

Esther then says “okay, I’ll do it, but have all the Jews fast and pray for me.

A few days later, Esther gets herself ready and goes into the throne room. The king sees her and extends the golden scepter, allowing her to stay without being put to death. She invites the king and Haman to a feast. The king agrees and tells Haman to come along. Then at that feast, she invites them to another feast the next day.

So Haman goes along and sees Mordecai in the gate, takes a second to hate him, and goes home to his wife and friends. He brags to them about how rich he is and how many sons he has and how high he has risen and about the fact that Queen Esther is holding a feast and only him and the king were invited but then he says that none of it is worth anything as long as Mordecai is still alive. So his wife and friends say “hey you should build a 75 foot high gallows to hang him from.” He goes to sleep feeling pretty great about that plan.

That same night, the king can’t sleep so he has someone bring “the book of memorable deeds” and read it to him. I’m not making that up, it’s what the book was called. The king had someone read him a bedtime story. But in the book is a reminder that Mordecai foiled the assassin’s plot earlier - I told you that would be important. The king asks “what did we do to thank Mordecai for that again?” The person reading to him says “nothing.” So the next day, Haman goes to the king to ask for permission to hang Mordecai, but before he can ask, the king asks him “what should be done to the man whom the king delights to honor?” Haman thinks that the king is talking about him and says “give that man royal robes to wear, royal horses to ride, put a crown on his head, and let a noble lead him on the horse around the city telling people to celebrate the man.”

So the king makes Haman do all of that for Mordecai.

Haman goes home to pout before some of the king’s men bring him to the second feast with Queen Esther. At the feast, Esther says to the king “please save my people, we’ve been sold out to be killed and annihilated. If it was just that we were going to be sold into slavery, I wouldn’t even mention it, but since it’s death I figured I would say something.” The king says “who would dare do something like that?!” And Esther says “funny you should ask, it’s Haman, he’s the worst.”

Then it says - and I’m quoting again - in Esther 7:7

Esther 7:7 (ESV)

And the king arose in his wrath from the wine-drinking and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg for his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that harm was determined against him by the king.

So the king, who it seems is drunk and angry, comes back in and sees Haman begging on Esther’s couch for mercy. He says “he’s even assaulting the queen in my presence.” One of the king’s men helpfully reminds the king “Haman had a giant gallows built for Mordecai, the man who saved you.” So the king has Haman hung on those gallows.

Esther then begs the king to stop the annihilation of her people, the Jews. He does, and what’s more, in Esther 8:11 he says

Esther 8:11 (ESV)

saying that the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, children and women included, and to plunder their goods,

When all is said and done, the Jews killed 75,000 people who hated them but laid no hands on the plunder. A festival is founded to celebrate these events each year called the Feast of Purim and Mordecai is elevated to the second in command of the whole kingdom.

What’d We Learn?

Keeping the whole story of Esther in mind, I want to draw your attention back to what Mordecai said early on. He trusts that “relief and deliverance will rise from another place,” he trusts that God will take care of His people somehow, but he challenges Esther to act saying “who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” God’s plan removed Vashti, put Esther in the right place, attracted the king to her, gave her favor to ask things of the king, put Mordecai in a place to foil the assassination, and even gave the king a sleepless night and a bedtime story - all to save His people from annihilation and death.

God’s plan is kinda like getting from one place to another on the roads. You might take the highway, you might take surface streets, you might take the long way around, you might take a shortcut, you might even take the long way that you swore ‘was a shortcut.’ God’s plan was ultimately realized in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. His plan for you and for me is salvation and eternal life. And when that plan was before Jesus, He didn’t back away, but He willingly went to the cross to save each and every one of us. Jesus came to earth for a time such as that, all to save His people from death and hell.

God’s plan will be done, and there are many ways that He might do that, but when you have something in front of you, I want to challenge you to consider “whether you have come to [this place] for a time such as this?” Think about how God is using you to help the people around you, to disciple the people around you, to witness to the people around you, to be His hands in the world. Always on the lookout for times such as these.