A Defining Moment

A Defining Moment Esther 4:1-17

Observations from Esther 4:1-9
Esther who had been clueless about the decree against the Jews is updated by a distraught Mordecai. He wants her to plead with the king for the lives of the Jews. Instead of begging God in prayer and pleading with Him for deliverance, Mordecai’s first thought was for Esther to appeal to the king. It seems he was placing his hopes on an intervention at the human level.

Observations from Esther 4:10-12
Initially Esther was unwilling to go to the king because 1. She was not supposed to go uninvited and could be put to death if the king did not extend the golden scepter, and 2. The king had not asked for her in the last 30 days. Most of us are like Esther and not like Daniel and his friends, but isn’t it fantastic that God also uses fainthearted people like Esther. A disciple is one who counts the cost and is willing to incur it. A disciple is one who takes up the cross and follows Jesus.

Observations from Esther 4:13-14
Mordecai was not one to take No for an answer. He made three points in his reply to Esther.

#1 “Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews.” There was no escape clause for the queen. If they died, she would likely die too.

#2 “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place.” The future of God’s people was assured only if God would deliver them. But instead of stating God as the ground of his confidence, Mordecai said vaguely, “relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place.”

#3 “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Mordecai says “Who knows . . .?” It was not coincidence that Esther became the queen at this very time when the Jews needed help. Mordecai’s words should have been similar to that of Joseph who said to his brothers: “God sent me before you to preserve life,”

Mordecai was asking her to risk her life to save the covenant people, but strangely he does not invoke the name of the God who carried the lives of the covenant people in His hands.

Our sovereign God will accomplish all His objectives with or without us. He calls us not out of His need for us but out of our need to find fulfilment in serving Him.

Till now she might have regarded herself as an undercover believer, passive and following the path of least resistance. Now a defining moment had come, and she had been given the opportunity to declare her faith publicly, by identifying herself with the people of God.

Observations from Esther 4:15-17
Esther’s words If I perish, perish, I believe, is not a statement of robust faith but a statement acknowledging the inevitable.

The God who controls history pushed her into a situation where there was no other way out. Esther realised that she had no other option but to do what Mordecai commanded. She said: If I perish, perish. From this point on, Esther took the lead, and Mordecai and others followed her.

Closing applications
Esther’s defining moment is a shadow of the greatest defining moment in the history of the world. If Jesus retreated, He would save Himself, but the whole world would perish in its sin.

Esther responded in her defining moment with the knowledge that she might perish, but Jesus responded with the knowledge that He would surely perish, and that in his perishing, God would accomplish the deliverance of His people—a salvation much greater than the deliverance from the edict of Haman.

Do we look like Esther and Mordecai or do we look like Daniel and his friends. Do we live out the theology we proclaim. Do we remind ourselves that God is in control of all things, and that He has promised to work all things together for His glory and our good?

Life was going well for the Jews in Persia. But in an instant, their world turned upside down, which turned them to look to God in fasting. What should God do to us as a church that will force us to go down on our knees in prayer?

God can use even our faint faith as the means of bringing glory to Himself. With this assurance we should be saying, If I perish, I perish. Let me perish in a way that brings glory to God.

If we are not willing to do what God has called us to do in our defining moments, as Mordecai pointed out, God will still accomplish His purposes through other means, but we will miss out on being a part of the work of God in that situation and in our own lives.

Like Esther, every one of us faces defining moments in our own lives. The most fundamental moment is when we hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and decide how to respond to it. We may choose to identify ourselves with Christ and His people, or we may choose to continue to live like the world.

When believers take God at His word and step out in faith, God is faithful and carries them through.