Untitled Sermon (3)

We hope because God’s faithfulness is based on his promises not on ours.

Intro

Over the past several week we have been talking about the Single ladies of the bible. We took a look at Lydia heard from Angie from Grace home ministries and asked ourselves the question what are we going to do with the Gospel? Last week we walked through the story of Naomi and heard from Mrs. Sharon and wadded through the waters of having purpose in the face of great sorrow and how God is able to redeem situations that we see as lost. This week we find ourselves in the book of Esther quite frankly looking at a story that is filled with hardship and suffering.

Example of separation

A little background on the book of Esther. It was written to the Jews while they were in captivity about a story that happened while they were in captivity. They had been in captivity for a while and at the time were really wrestling with questions like are we still God’s covenant people? The story itself takes place after Ezra and Nehemiah have taken a contingent of people back to jerusalem to rebuild the city. But there were still Jews living elsewhere in the world and struggling to find their purpose and really to know if the God of their ancestors was real or even cared about them. There are a couple main characters in the story one being Esther, an orphan girl who was raised by her uncle, and Mordecai, the Uncle. An important thing to remember is that they were living amongst a foreign people in a hostile area. This is where we will pick up the story. And what we are going to see throughout the story of Esther is that we hope because God’s faithfulness is based on his promises not us.

Story

Story of Esther begins with King Ahasuerus (King A) throwing a big party for all of the high ranking people. It is a war party. They are planning the next conquest against Greece.

Well its part of tradition that all of the people involved drink lots of wine. They believed that it put them in a higher spiritual state and gave them wisdom as they discussed.

As I’m sure you are aware in altered states people tend to do things that are less than smart. The King gets a great idea that it would make a statement if he paraded the queen in front of all the important people. To show how important and beautiful she was....

Question for the guys..have you ever demanded..not asked..demanded that your wife do something for you? How did that work out?

Well the queen said, “aint gonna happen” now there are several theories about why this could possibly be but, it really doesn’t matter. Whats important is what happens next. The King gets angry because he just got dissed by the queen, he casts her out at the counsel of his “young men”.

The author is setting up the story for us. We know that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. The picture of the court of King A that we are getting isn’t good. He is a king that makes massive decisions with lasting consequences based on his own whims and at the counsel of young me. It wasn’t a pleasant place to be.

This is only magnified as the story continues. He was advised to gather all of the pretty virgins in the land to find a new queen. And this is where Esther enters the story.

Esther is picked to be taken to the Kings harem.

You know one thing that I want to be sure we grasp is that this was not a good situation for Esther to find herself in. This is not the Bachelor. She was being trafficked. Trafficking people was a common and normal thing in this empire. This is the same King who would yearly gather over 500 young boys, castrate them, and make them serve in the government because they would listen better. At this point, Ester was along for the ride and hoping that she would survive.

But Esther is the one that the king picks to be his queen. And we move into what I like to call phase two of the story.

You see this entire time there is a subplot going on. While Ester was doing her thing in the kings palace Mordeci was chilling by the gate and discovered a plot against the King. He told Ester who told the King who killed the traitors. Bravo right? This is like a bad version of survivor. Well not so fast....There was this cat named Haman. Haman didnt like Mordeci very much because Mordeci was a faithful Jew who wouldn’t bow down to Haman like everyone else would.

This is where the rubber hits the road. Haman had just gotten a promotion and all he wanted to do with that promotion is kill Mordecai along with every other Jewish person throughout the known world.

As you can imagine this wasn’t good news. And this is where we find ourselves in chapter 4. Esther and Mordeci are having a conversation through one of the Eunuchs. Basically Mordeci told Esther that she needed to go talk to the king…but Esther comes back at him in Verse 11.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

“All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law—to be put to death, except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.”

This is a girl who was forced into the situation that she was currently in. She probably doesn’t even like the King…can you immagine the emotions that Esther is feeling?

Mordecai didnt take this very well…he sent a message back to Esther.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

“Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14 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 then he says this… “And who knows whether you have not come to the Kingdom for such a time as this?”

This is where I want to sit for a little while. This is a profound statement that Mordecai makes. The book of Esther is unique in several ways from many other books of the Bible. One of those is that God is not explicitly mentioned a single time in the entire book of Esther. Not once. That’s like making an avengers movie without Iron Man and still trying to call it the Avengers...

Its like the Andy Griffith show without Barney Fife

But you cannot read through the book of Esther and not see God moving throughout the entire story!

Esther found herself serving a self-righteous king who wanted her because she was hot not because she was qualified, facing a crisis for her people, stuck between a rock and a hard place. But what we have the luxury of seeing is that God’s promises are dependent on Himself.

The Jewish people were living in captivity. We know that historically speaking this only happened they forgot about their promises to God. Esther was raised in captivity and while I am sure that she had been told about who God was, she had no actual experience for reference of what he had done for the Jewish people.

Esther did not have the luxury of being able to see the story from a 10,000 foot perspective like we do. She was living it, she was suffering through it. She was born into captivity, raised in it, and then torn apart from her adoptive uncle to be paraded before the king because he wanted a wife. I think its safe to assume that Esther was probably asking herself a lot of why questions. Why is this happening to me? Why am I here? Where is this God of my ancestors?

Application

We are no different than Esther. We ask ourselves the same questions. Where is my purpose? Why is it so hard to find someone who I can do life with? Why does it seem like all of the people around me who I love are dying, why are they sick? Why does my life feel like a cyclical wheel of disappointment? Why do I keep messing up, disappointing myself and people around me?

These questions hurt. We feel like we shouldn’t have them, but we do. But here me when I say this, God’s promises are dependent on himself. Sin has wrecked this world, it has torn apart everything that God intended to be good and left in its wake an aftermath that leaves people broken and longing. But church we can hope because we know that God has made a way. We can hope because God’s promises are dependent on Himself, not on us.

Esther didn’t stand a chance. It was basically certain death if she went to the king…but what happened…spoiler alert. It worked out! God was faithful to his people. God was faithful to the promise that he made to Abraham to make him into a great nation. And He is still faithful. God made a way through Jesus. And yes life sucks. Sin sucks. Brokenness sucks. But hear me…God is faithful to his promises.

This doesn’t mean a cushy life, this means an eternal salvation with a broken road in between.

Point 2

You know the Jewish people had been in captivity for quite a long time. And this is one of the reasons that the book of Esther was written in the first place. It was to encourage a people who were longing for hope. They were forgetting who they were, or more importantly whose they were.

Esther had never experienced who God was. All she knew was a life in exile. I am sure she had heard stories about who God was and what he had done for the His people, but she had no experience of it. But this is what Mordecai is calling her to verse 14. She has no idea if what she has heard was true or not but she decides to push forward. What we see happen over the next coupe chapters is that Esther prepares a banquet for the King and for Hamaan. While at the feast Esther reveals Hamaans plot and the King is enraged. Basically because of Esthers actions the entire people of Israel are saved. And look, this took guts. There was a long standing rule that if someone entered the kings court without being summoned and the king didnt extend his scepter to them, they were killed..no questions asked. So not only did Esther have to go to the king without being summoned..she had to ask him to a banquet, and tell him about the plot while Hamaan was there. Guts.

But here’s the thing, Esther isn’t the hero of this story. She isn’t the main character. God is. You know how i told you that God isnt explicitly mentioned once..well thats true, but that doesn’t mean He isn’t the one at the center of it all. He is making it abundanlty clear that His Faithfulness is not based on our merrit. There is no limit on the promises he makes, not stipulations. He sticks to his promises.

Look Esther should have been killed when she went into the court. We’ve already established that the king had a temper. Esther shouldn’t have even been in the situation that she was in. Historically speaking it was common practice for the King to only pick a wife from one of seven royal families. Hamaan got real upset with mordeci and was planning on hanging him the morning before the banquet, but the king “couldnt sleep” the night before and had the book “memorable deeds” read to him. He realized nobody did anything for mordecai when he saved his life and therefore instead of hanging him, he paraded him through the streets…if you read through the book of Esther and dont see the hand of the Lord at work then you are fooling yourself.

Look, its been a hot minute since Jesus was on the earth…2 centuries. And i know when I think about friendships that I have had over the years and those that I have grown apart from, there are two thing that almost never fails to accelerate that process. Time and distance. 2000 years is a lot of time and distance. I think it is easy for us a Christians to forget the promises that God has given us. We live in a fallen and sinful world that is constantly trying to make us forget who we are and whose we are. Our value, our worth, and our identity are based on God’s promises to us. Our value was made evident through the cross.

Single mom when your at your last straw with your kids, you feel like everyone has turned their back on you, and you don’t see an end in sight. God’s promises ring true, you have hope because he made a way through Christ. Your value is seen through the cross.

Single lady, when you are struggling to find purpose, to find your niche, to feel wanted. Your value is seen through the work of Christ on the cross not through the eyes of those around you.

Church, lets not make it our mission to tell people what they can or cannot do. Our mission should be to serve and encourage all those around us by proclaiming the promises of God. By declaring the gospel to the lost. We should be encouraging our singles by helping them flourish in their God given gifts.

Let me make this abundantly clear. Single Lady…single guy…your worth and value is not bound to a potential spouse. Single mother, you are not less-than because there is no longer a man in the picture. Your value, your worth is bound in the fact that God created You and Jesus died on the cross for you.

Conclusion:

I think its easy to find ourselves asking the same question that the Jews were asking. Are we still God’s covenant people in community with him? Lets break it down a little further. How about this one. Does God even care about me? Does my life even matter? We are coming out of a season of seclusion and physical and social distancing. We live in a broken and sinful world. Hopelessness is an easy path to follow. But as believers we an hope because we know God is working in our lives even when we don’t see it.

Esther had no idea what her actions were going to do. She couldn’t see God working in her choices to save and redeem his people. But He did.

We hope because we know that God’s promises are not dependent upon us but on Himself. We hope because we know that God’s faithfulness is not based on our merritt. Our hope is not tied to the value that we or other people put on our lives, our hope is tied to the cross. Our hope is tied to the fact that God made a way for us even while we were still sinners. Our hope is tied to God’s faithfulness to his promises not to us, and friends, God never forgets his promises.

This morning we have unique opportunity this morning to hear from a couple of our own single ladies and how their lives have been impacted by the gospel.