This morning we are in Esther chapter four, verses one through 17. Esther chapter four, you'll find on page 412 in the Blue Bibles. Esther chapter four. We continue through Esther this morning. This book tells about a Jewish girl, Esther, who became queen of Persia, as we've read. After that happened, her cousin who raised her, Mordecai, powerfully, I should say mortally offended a powerful official named Haman. And Haman, in his rage, set out not just to have vengeance on Mordecai, but actually to wipe out all the Jewish people. He got the king to agree that they would all be attacked on a certain day. And it's at that point we pick up the story in chapter four. Please follow along as I read God's word. 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 the king's gate clothed in sackcloth. And in every province, wherever the king's command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes. When Esther's young women and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed. She sent garments to clothe Mordecai so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. Then Esther called for Hathok, one of the king's eunuchs who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai and learn what this was and why it was. Hathock went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king's gate, and 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 to beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people. And Hathok went and told Esther what Mordecai had said, that Esther spoke to Hathok and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say. 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 into the king these 30 days. 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 to this kingdom for such a time as this? The nester 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 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. And here is the reading of God's holy word. Let's pray and ask the Lord would help us as we consider it this morning. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for giving us your holy word. Please use it this morning to teach us what it means to live with confidence under your rule. We ask it in the name of the one you have appointed as Lord over all, your son, Jesus Christ. Amen. People often find it hard to focus and do the right thing in a threatening situation. A policeman once told me about a behavior that the police and his police force called black and white fever. And it's a kind of syndrome where when a person sees a police car in the vicinity, the person begins to get kind of rattled and do erratic things. Even though the person hasn't done anything wrong, wasn't intending to, the person is just unnerved and begins to drive strangely. Now, people get rattled or can get rattled at threats like that, just perceived threats. How much harder is it to focus and properly respond to a truly dire situation? And here we have in this passage a situation where real harm is threatening and Mordecai and Esther are taking counsel and they are struggling with what to do. But here we see that God helps them. God helps them. And Esther, in particular, comes to realize that there is really nothing to be done. There is nothing to be done but the right thing. Nothing to be done, what God is clearly calling her to do, to simply do it and trust God. And what we're going to focus on this morning. is how obedience is always the safest plan. We know that obedience is the right thing to do. We just have a hard time doing it sometimes when we're under pressure. But God's word is going to encourage us this morning. Two points in the message. First of all, a world of risk. Secondly, a God who delivers. And then we're going to conclude with a sort of epilogue asking the question, is God in your story? And I'll explain more about that when we get to it. So first of all, a world of risk. A world of risk. This is portrayed for us in verses 1 through 14. Here, God's people face trouble and it is trouble of an extraordinary kind. On the other hand, the fact that they are facing trouble is by no means extraordinary. By no means is it extraordinary to face trouble. All people, all people, and I will say especially people, who trust in the true God, whether Old Testament believers or New Testament Christians today, all people can expect trouble and true believers can even expect, in some ways, more trouble than others. First of all, we all face troubles common to life in a fallen world. That's the first category of three sorts of trouble. Trouble is common to life in a fallen world. This side of glory, we face sicknesses and conflicts and accidents and all manner of things. And we also experience people treating one another with pride and hate. Many people groups, not just God's people, many people groups have faced efforts to exterminate them, or at least greatly reduce their numbers. Genocide. I wish this were an uncommon story in human history. It is actually a very common story in human history, and it is grievous, but all too common. So there's a common troubles of life in a fallen world. Secondly, true believers, Old Testament and New Testament. face animosity from those who oppose the true God. We saw last time how Haman was an Agagite. We talked about what that means. What it means is that he was descended from or he was perhaps like a people group, the Amalekites. who had historically opposed God's people. They hated God. They tried to wipe out his people. That's who they were. And that's who Haman was. And it's simply true that God's people of all ages will face some level of opposition from those who simply oppose the living and true God. In our own day, people are increasingly rejecting the rule of Christ and rejecting what the Bible teaches about right and wrong. And the church is more and more feeling the pressure coming to bear from a kind of what I'll call a new morality of self-indulgence that's being aggressively taught and promoted. And the church, Christians are being told not simply live and let live, but get on board and agree with this. And we're starting to feel the heat somewhat in our own day. But there's nothing unique to this, folks. God's people have always felt the heat for being Christians in one way or the other. So there's a common troubles, a common to mankind opposition to God's people specifically. Thirdly, believers qualify for God's special training program or pruning. That is, our Heavenly Father has an interest in training us, and sometimes that training involves hardship. I think that God probably designed Haman's threat to shake up his people in the Persian Empire. Some of them had achieved some degree of success. There was Mordecai working in the king's gate, Esther the queen, and surely there are others doing well in various ways. They're in Persia. They had chosen not to return to Judah. God providentially here uses Haman to shape them and remind them that they are a pilgrim people and their home is not ultimately in this world, but in God's kingdom. God designs testing like this for all of us, and he does it to draw us closer to him. Jesus talked about this in John 15 when he said, every branch that does bear fruit, my father. He doesn't say commends, although our father loves it when we obey him. But he says, my father prunes that it may bear more fruit. So Jesus there is cluing us into the fact that God is going to shape us. And just as our Lord Jesus Christ passed through trouble in order to redeem us, God calls us as those redeemed by him to be further, as it were, shaped by passing through trouble by his grace and glory on the way to our eternal inheritance. until his work in us is complete. Sounds a little grim, maybe, but it's God's purpose. And it's good because our purposeful God who trains his people in this sort of way does all things well. We can think of how oftentimes change and shaping involves some amount of friction, or pain, we could say, metaphorically. It's with the teeth of a saw that a carpenter shapes the wood right, or sandpaper. It's with drilling and dynamite that a worker moves the rock. It's with heat and with pressure that a metal worker shapes his material. And it's with trouble, oftentimes, it is with trouble that God shapes his people. And I think it's undeniable. both in the Bible and in our own lives, that God does his most extensive work when we are in sackcloth rather than silk. Wouldn't you say that's true in your own life? The times when you've had to draw him closest to God is when he really has you on your knees in every sense. Take Esther here, for instance. I think in this chapter, Esther, is a real example of God's shaping and sanctifying work. Now, back in chapter two, we talked about how Esther participated in this queen pageant contest. And we noted how in Deuteronomy chapter seven, verse three, God forbid his people to intermarry with those who didn't know him. And I don't know all of Esther's circumstances in that That makes me hold back from being utterly dogmatic about this. But as I look at that, I think my opinion, it seems to me, is that Esther, at that point in chapter two, should have taken the great risk of refusing to participate. Now, if she had done so, it would have been a great risk of her life and well-being. But here you see in chapter 4, God calls her. He gives her another chance to die, put it that way. He calls her to sacrifice everything once over again. In other words, whether or not she should have resisted the king and tried to protest back in chapter 2, I think so. But in some ways, I leave the question open. It's clear that here. It's clear that here God is giving her a clear opportunity to throw it on the wastebasket, potentially to risk everything, not just her position, but her very life. And did you notice the struggle in Esther when Mordecai first appeals to her? Did you notice how she pushed back? She says, no, that's death. I can't do that. And then he basically says, You have to do that, at which point she says, OK. She releases control of her life to God implicitly when she says, if I perish, I perish here, we can see God working in Esther in the fire. Well, how did how does this help us? Helps us in a couple of ways, first of all, you know that Struggle in your life means God is working. When you look at a construction site and you see a shower of sparks coming from some beam somewhere, you know that a welder is at work. And you may not exactly understand that welder's project, but you can see that somebody is at work. When you see in your own life a shower of sparks, as it were, You can see that the Lord is working and you may not understand the Lord's projects, but you know, he is building something here in Chapter four. All we see are sparks. We don't yet see what God is doing. The rest of the book of Esther will reveal God's construction project. We'll see what he's doing. But when when when the sparks are showering in your life, even if you cannot discern the project, trust the worker. Even if you can't tell what the product is, discern the one who is working in your life. So it helps us in that way. It's just a simple message to trust the Lord, first of all. And secondly, it helps us because it reminds us to appeal to God in our troubles, to appeal to God in our troubles. Too often we engage in a sort of spark management in our life. We try to mitigate and strategize and and deal with all this, these kind of issues or whatever it is that's troubling us rather than first and primarily going to the worker and saying, Lord, I don't know what you're working on, but thank you and help me help me to understand if possible, but help me just be faithful. So it reminds us to appeal to him. And just. Esther really, it comes down to for her, fast for me, she says. Let us fast, and implicitly, let us pray. She doesn't say let us pray, but everywhere else pretty much in scripture, when they're fasting, they're praying, and it would be pretty extraordinary to understand this in any different way. So they are appealing to God, And and she's also trusting him as she says, if I perish, I perish. So we can trust the builder, trust the builder, and that leads to our second point, which is a God who delivers the God who delivers there in verses 15 through 17. Mordecai said. Even if she did nothing, deliverance would arise for the Jews from another place. Implicitly, God is going to deliver them one way or another. And when he says that, Mordecai acknowledges two great things. First of all, that neither he nor Esther has the power to engineer a decisive solution to this problem. They're going to try something. And who knows? But God is going to deliver his people One way or another, if we could only realize this, that deliverance does not lie with us. And so we don't have to get into spark management. We can analyze, we can make plans, but it doesn't bring safety. We're often wrong about what is dangerous. We think something is dangerous and it's not. We think something is safe and it isn't. We are so often mistaken The solution does not lie in our analysis or the measures that we take. The safest bet is always to just do the right thing and trust in God. And also, as Mordecai said, deliverance will arise for God's people, deliverance will arise, or as Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Jesus will preserve his church. And even if you pay the ultimate price for your commitment to Jesus Christ. If God called you to that, he himself would vindicate you and he himself would raise you up. All of God's people will be delivered, even those who suffered cruelly in this life. There is no martyr in heaven complaining that he got a bum deal. It just isn't. They're all happy and satisfied in the Lord. They're trusting in him and rejoicing in his plans and glorying in his love so we can trust him. God always delivers his people. There's also a theological point here for us to realize, and that is that this this passage reminds us of the importance of having an intercessor. The Jews needed somebody to go to the one who had delivered this doom to them, the king. and persuade him to take it off or to deal with it. They needed someone to go in there and plead their case to intercede. So they needed Esther to go in there. And would it work? Was this Esther's hour? Was this the reason for which she had come into the kingdom? Well, in the words, the quotable words of Mordecai, who knows? Who knows? Maybe so. Maybe it isn't. So that's where we're left with at the end of chapter four. You know, as we reflect on that, we we have to rejoice at the greatness and effectiveness of our intercessor, the Lord Jesus Christ, because we are all by nature in trouble, not in trouble because there's a genocidal plot against us, but we're in trouble with God because of our sins. We've offended him. By all the many ways we've dishonored him by deliberately doing things that are wrong. We've offended our great God, and we need someone to stand between us and his holy righteousness in order to make it right. And that's where the Lord Jesus Christ came in. He took to himself human nature and came down and offered himself a sacrifice on the cross to pay for our sins. And then he rose again with new life to share with us and he ascended into heaven. And as we recently studied in the book of Hebrews, he intercedes for us. So he is there in the merits of his sacrifice so that we also might be forgiven, accepted and received in glory. If you trust in Jesus, then God will surely forgive you and receive you and save you. It makes all the difference who your intercessor is. And the Lord Jesus Christ is a great and effective one. Jesus embodies Mordecai's hope. Mordecai said, Deliverance will arise for the Jews from somewhere. Jesus Christ is that great deliverance that has in the fullness of time. Jesus arrived to do that delivering work. Now he intercedes for us and he is coming again. Jesus Christ is, we could say, Mordecai's hope, the great intercessor and savior. By way of application, In every struggle you face, remember that God delivers his people. And in every struggle you face, remember that you have a great intercessor, the Lord Jesus Christ, who effectively represents us before the Father and is a is a channel and conduit of all his favor to us. So when you face situations, when doing the right thing seems incredibly difficult, Move ahead. Trust God and do the right thing. Trust God and do the right thing. We can think of examples, let's say you have a burden to share Christ with a friend of yours and you've been working on that friendship for a long time, so long that you value it an awful lot and you don't want to wreck it. And so you're waiting for that perfect moment to open up and you're going to share Christ with your friend. Well, you've been waiting for years and you know that, you know, love my neighbor. You really ought to say something. Well, here the Lord encourages you through the example of Esther, the hero of the story, to simply do the right thing and trust in God. Another example, let's say you've been dishonest. And you, you know, you ought to come clean and you dread the consequences. You dread those consequences. Listen to Esther saying, if I perish, I perish. She's going to trust God and she's going to do the right thing. She's going to move ahead in confidence in her great God and obedience. Be bold, folks. Trust God and do the right thing. Let's say you you are stuck. in a bad relationship, stuck in a bad relationship. It seems like you have the wolf by the ear. You're afraid to let go and you're afraid to hang on and you don't know what to do, even though even though God's word is pretty clear about what you ought to do. Be strong, follow God's word and trust in him, move forward in obedience for God is with you and he tells you what to do and he will help you. God always delivers his people. Let's say you feel discouraged by a situation in your family or in your marriage, and you earnestly wish that there were some measure of hope on the horizon, but there just isn't. And you are discouraged about hanging in there, and you just don't know how long you can. God is with his people. And our obedience to God does not does not hinge on the glimmer of hope that we may or may not have on the immediate horizon. It hinges on God's faithfulness and on the fact that God is the one who has who delivers his people as proved by the fact that Jesus Christ has already come and done his saving work. Can you hang in there? Can you do the right thing? Absolutely. By God's power, obey and do the right thing. Trust in him. Let's say you have bitterness in your heart and you know you ought to forgive somebody, but you just love locking them up in there and hating them. And you don't want to let go. You don't want to let go because they wronged you, even though you know the Lord says to forgive. Friends, you've got to open up and forgive. It seems hard sometimes to the point of being impossible if bitterness is set in. But friends, forgive as you have been forgiving because it's the command of the Lord and you must obey him and he will strengthen you to do what seems hard or even impossible. Do you see the teaching here of how God, he loves us and he commands us and he enables us by his grace to do what he says, he invites us into the joy of doing what's right, the joy of doing what's right. And then finally, this morning, the sort of epilogue to the passage where we ask the question, is God in our story? Is God in our story? It's a very curious feature to the book of Esther that it doesn't mention the name of God anywhere. Not only does it not mention the name of God, it doesn't mention anything religious at all. In our chapter, in chapter four, It almost seems to be a studied determination not to say it, where Mordecai says deliverance will arise from somewhere, but he doesn't say it. Right. Esther calls for a fast, but she doesn't mention prayer, even though they certainly prayed. She says, if I perish, I perish. But she leaves it to us to infer that she's trusting in God. Why? Wow, there's lots of theories, but I think I think certainly it is at least a rhetorical advice, a device whereby not mentioning God, it makes us think about God. Kind of like when someone says, don't think about pink elephants, drive them from your mind. You start thinking about them and you can't help it. Right. In the book of Esther, by not mentioning God. You think about him, wow, all of a sudden you see him everywhere because he's not mentioned. So I think it's a kind of teaching device, but also by leaving out mention of God, it makes you wrestle with the meaning of the story. It makes you wrestle with the meaning of the story. And if I could just put it this way and be totally blunt, with Esther and Mordecai, were they saints or were they schemers? Because it doesn't make it explicit. It doesn't make it explicit. It doesn't spell out for you that there were godly people and they were trusting the Lord. It just doesn't. Now, as I read the story. I can't understand the story unless they were saints. I clearly and decisively interpret this as Mordecai and Esther were God fearing people and heroes of the faith, especially here in chapter four. Esther, our estimation of her character is really going up and we can see what God is doing in her life. So God is in their story, in actuality, and also functionally, I believe they're trusting him. But by leaving God's name out, the book of Esther forces the Jewish exiles who read this history to wrestle with the same question. They were so successful, they were so comfortable, they were so not going back to the land of Judah. And why not? You know, were they really religious people? Were they really God fears or were they strivers and succeeders and schemers? Was God in their story, functionally, in terms of them leaning on him? They needed to remember God. And I think that's one function of not mentioning the name of God in the book. You can see, in closing here, you can see how that applies to us on the whole in many ways. We are, relative to others, fairly comfortable. We enjoy, in some measure, many of us, success to some degree. And the book of Esther challenges us with the question of, is God functionally in our story? Is God really in our story? Not in the sense that he exists and he superintends everything, but am I actually leaning on him, depending on him? And a couple of ways you can tell that you are depending on the Lord is, as we mentioned before, when the sparks start to fly in your life, You see the builder and you turn to him and you trust in him. And also, secondly, in your life, when push comes to shove, when it's really hard to obey the Lord, you are willing to do so by his grace, by his power and for his glory. Those sorts of things are evidence that the Lord is really at work in our lives. Foundationally, God is in our lives if we trust in Christ, if we trust in Christ. And so my encouragement to you today is that if you are in Christ, then live accordingly. If you are in Christ, then live accordingly. Mordecai said that deliverance would arise for the Jews. We know that God's deliverance has already come in the Lord Jesus Christ, that deliverance is here. How should we live? We should trust and obey. Let us trust and obey. That's God's word for you this morning. Let's pray and ask for his blessing as we think about what it means and how it applies. Our father in heaven, we thank you for your presence with your people. Even though your name never appears in the book of Esther, we can see your providential hand everywhere. We see how you strengthen your people and we give you praise. Father, as we think about how this applies to us, we see that we need you to strengthen us as well. Lord, would you please help us to take heart in the Lord Jesus Christ, our great Deliverer, and surrender our very lives to you. Help us, Lord, to trust you. and trust you at all things. And so experience the reign of Jesus Christ. And so know the joy of obedience. We ask it in his name. Amen.