LIFE LESSONS
ESTHER
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
ESTHER 4: 13-16
MAY 23, 2004
About 10 years ago on March 22, 1994, Aeroflot Flight #310 crashed into the side of a Siberian mountain near the Mongolian border. Everyone onboard that plane died. The news went forth over the world and for most of us it was a distant tragedy but for some of us it was far more personal because there was an American named Dan Lam on that plane, a friend to many of you and a friend to me. He loved Jesus Christ. We all wanted to know what happened. How could it have happened?
The Russian government began to piece together evidence. They found the black box, the recording. They discovered incredibly that the captain of the plane had brought his children into the cockpit, had put one of his children at the controls. This child had disengaged the autopilot and the plane had gone into a violent descent. It took four minutes, four terrifying minutes, for that plane to descend from 30,000 feet and crash into the side of that Siberian mountain. We can ask ourselves why would anyone allow children to fly a plane but of course we’ll never know the answer to that. We do know there was a full crew of pilots. We know that there were nine off-duty pilots in the cabin but none of them could rescue the situation. What exactly happened, God only knows, but this we know. Sometimes it’s appropriate to ask the question, “Who’s flying the plane?”
The truth of the matter is we ask that question all the time, “Who’s flying the plane?” We ask it in a variety of ways. We invest our money in a corporate or company stock. We want to know who’s flying the plane. Who’s in charge of this? We put our children into a Sunday school classroom. Who’s flying the plane? We send our kids to camp. Who’s flying the plane? We want to know who’s in charge. Maybe we ask this question in a broader context, in a grander context. Maybe when we think of this world and we look at its future, we want to know who’s flying the plane. Is mankind in charge? Do we determine our own destiny or is there some kind of divine providence at work? Is there any sense in which God is flying the plane? How about the people of God? Is God working providentially in the lives of His people? Is God working providentially in your life and in my life? Is there any sense in which He’s flying the plane? This is really what the book of Esther is all about. It’s all about divine providence. Who’s flying the plane?
In the year 587, the Babylonian Empire, under the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, conquered the Kingdom of Judah and devastated the city of Jerusalem. The Jewish people were taken into exile to live in Babylonian cities scattered throughout the Babylonian Empire.
In the year 539, the Persian Empire under the leadership of Cyrus the Great, conquered the Babylonian Empire. All the lands, all the cities, all the properties that had belonged to the Babylonian Empire now belonged to the Persian Empire, including the land of Judah, the land of Israel, and the city of Jerusalem. Cyrus, the King of Persia, issued an edict allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem. Many Jews did. They went home en masse, but some Jews stayed in those Babylonian cities which were now Persian cities because they knew the Persians treated people well.
In the year 486 BC, Xerxes I, known to historians also as Ahasuerus, ascended the throne of Persia and ruled the Persian Empire. He took for his Queen a woman named Vashti, also known to historians as Amestris, and the Queen Vashti served Persia along with Xerxes I. After a period of years, Xerxes was displeased with her and he divorced her Xerxes I sought a new queen. He commanded that all of the most beautiful virgins in his capital city of Susa, which was also called Susen. He commanded that all of the most beautiful virgins be brought to him. There was a virgin in the capital Persian city of Susa whose name was Hadassah. She was Jewish. She was a Jewish orphan. She had been reared by her cousin, the Jewish man Mordecai. He had loved her as a daughter. She was beautiful and she was amongst those who were brought before Xerxes I to consider whether or not she should be his queen. She kept her Jewishness stealth. She hid the fact that she was Jewish. Xerxes I, King of Persia, chose her. Queen of Persia, this Jewish woman, Hadassah. She was given a new name, a Persian name, the name Esther, which means, “star.”
So, it was that Esther, a Jewish orphan had ascended to become Queen of Persia. There was an evil prime minister in the king’s court, second in command, and his name was Haman. Haman is a demonic kind of figure in the book of Esther. Haman is a bigot and a racist and Haman hates the Jewish people. He’s swollen with conceit and his ego is full. As he walks around or rides around in his semi-royal carriage, he wants everyone to bow. He wants everyone to do obeisance. He wants everyone to bend the knee because he’s second in command, but Mordecai who had a low-level office in the royal palace—Mordecai, the Jew, refused to bow down before Haman. This enraged the Prime Minister all the more and he swore he would see every single Jewish man, woman and child eradicated and killed. So, he went to the King with a plot. He told the King that the Jewish people had their own laws and they ignored the laws of Persia; they ignored the laws of the land and the laws of the King. He guides the King into a decree that all the Jewish people should be killed.
Word came to the Jews that they were about to be killed. Word came to Mordecai and Mordecai immediately sent a message to his cousin who he loved as a daughter. He sent a message to Esther saying, “Go to the King on behalf of your people. Reveal to the King that you are Jewish. Tell him who you are and plea for your people that they might be saved.” Esther said, “I cannot do this. No one can go before the King unbidden, unsolicited. Nobody can do that, not even the Queen, and he’s not called on me in months. I cannot go into his inner chamber. The penalty is death unless by chance he holds out the golden scepter that I might live.” Mordecai says, “Don’t think that you’re safe in the royal palace just because you are queen and your Jewishness is stealth. Don’t think you’re safe. If you keep silent in such a time as this, there will arise relief and deliverance for the Jewish people from some other quarter, the providence of God.” Mordecai said, “And who knows? If you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this…” Again, divine providence.
Esther agrees to go to the King. She asked only that her people throughout Susa would pray and fast for three days and then she placed herself in the hands of God. Divine providence. “If I perish, I perish. Pray. Fast. Place yourself in His hands and trust whatever happens, even if you die.” And so, she went to the King. You know the story. He held out the golden scepter that she might live and she pleaded for her people. As the story progresses, you see divine providence everywhere. The amazing thing about the book of Esther is that the name of God is not even mentioned and yet the hand of God, the fingerprints of God, are all over this book. Ultimately the twisted plots of Haman failed. The very gallows that Haman had designed to kill Mordecai on were used in his own death, and the followers of Haman were slain. Mordecai was elevated to Prime Minister of Persia and Esther is the Queen who saved her people, all by divine providence. That’s what it’s about.
This morning we really only have one life lesson and it concerns divine providence, and it is this. God is providentially active in the lives of His people. God works providentially in the lives of His people. Go to Romans 8: 28 and we have that famous verse: “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord and who are called according to His purpose.”
Do you love the Lord? Do you love Jesus? Have you been called according to His purpose? Do you live to serve His purposes on earth? Are you genuinely a Christian? Do you really believe? If you do, God wants you to know He is at work providentially in your life and through your life, at all times and in all circumstances, He is working for good and He wants you to believe that. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like God is working for good. We all have bad days. Sometimes we have horrible days and we just think, “Wow! Where’s God? How could I have a day like this?”
I read, sometime ago, a letter. This was an actual letter, the real deal. It was written by an employee to his construction foreman. Letters become semi-famous. You may have read it but the letter goes like this: “I arrived at the job after the storm, checked the building out and saw that the top needed repairs. I rigged a hoist and a boom, attached the rope to a barrel and pulled the bricks to the top. When I pulled the barrel to the top, I secured the rope at the bottom. After repairing the building, I went back to fill the barrel with leftover bricks. I went down and released the rope to lower the bricks and the barrel was heavier than I and it jerked me off the ground. I decided to hang on. Half-way up, I met the barrel coming down, received a blow to the shoulder. I hung on, went to the top where I hit my head on the boom. I caught my fingers in the pulley. In the meantime, the barrel hit the ground and burst open, throwing bricks all over. This made the barrel lighter than I, and I started going down at high speed. Halfway down I met the barrel coming up and received a blow to my shins. I continued down and fell on the bricks, receiving cuts and bruises. At this time, I must have lost my presence of mind because I let go of the rope and the barrel came down yet again. It hit me on the head. I respectively request sick leave.”
Now, that’s a bad day. We all have bad days. I’m sure it had to have been a horrible day for Mordecai when word came of the decree of Xerxes I that the Jews were to be slain. It must have felt like a boatload of bricks fell on his head. Esther must have felt the same when the word came to her. A bad day. A really bad day, but God was at work providentially and God wants us to understand He’s always at work providentially. Even though we cannot see it, God is working.
Outside in the front of the building we have a new walkway through the grass. Have you seen that as you come to the front of the church? It cuts right through the grass in front of the Inklings Bookstore. Some of you were walking over that grass anyway so we put stone in there and now you don’t need to feel guilty anymore. That pathway is called Addison’s Pathway. We’re going to have a plaque on that and it’s going to explain why this is Addison’s Pathway.
Addison’s Pathway was the name of the path that ran along the river in Oxford, England. It was along that path that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien often walked together. They were best friends in this world and they loved Jesus Christ. They would walk along that path and they would talk about God. They would talk about the providence of God. They would talk about their love for Jesus. They would talk about the books they were writing and of course Tolkien and Lewis were two of the greatest Christian writers of the 20th century. C.S. Lewis wrote more than 30 books from the Chronicles of Narnia to Mere Christianity, the Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, countless books. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings and of course that trilogy of books has become famous with the movie recently released which won the Academy Award. Tolkien also wrote Unfinished Tales and The Silmarillion. He wrote countless letters to his friends and they have been accumulated into a book which I have at home. I love the letters because they are just filled with his love for Jesus.
Tolkien rarely wrote an explicitly Christian book or article but he wrote two very Christian articles and I have them both at home. One article is called, “Eucatastrofos.” These are two Greek words that have been combined by Tolkien though never combined in the Greek language. The word catastrofos is the word from which we get the English word catastrophe. The Greek word “eu” is the Greek word for good, so “eu catastrofos” means, “good catastrophe.” Tolkien believed in good catastrophes. A lot of times you experience what you think is a catastrophe but God in his providence means it for good. Tolkien argues in this article that the greatest example of a eu catastrophos is the cross itself. For the followers of Jesus, the cross at first seemed like a catastrophe. Their Master was dead but of course through His death they found salvation and forgiveness. Eu catastrophes, a good catastrophe.
Of course, the Lord of the Rings and the writings of Tolkien are just filled with eucatastrophos, good catastrophes. So, are our lives as God works providentially in our lives. In one of his letters, Tolkien wrote these words. “No man can estimate what is really happening at the present. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labors with vast power and perpetual success but always in vain, preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.” He really believed in divine providence. How about you? Do you really believe God is working even in the catastrophes and that He’s working for good in your life?
There was an article in Leadership Magazine by Richard Exley. The article was called “Decent Exposure.” In the article, Exley describes a minister, true story of a pastor whose son committed suicide. Just ten days later the pastor was in the pulpit. He told the congregation he could not make his son’s suicide with Romans 8:28. How does this work together for good? He said he couldn’t make it fit but he said he still believed that Jesus is the great shipbuilder. He said, “You know how it is with ships? They’re built of steel and these steel plates are welded together. Any plate, individually, if thrown into the ocean would sink but somehow when they’re all put together it floats.” He said, “Looking at the death of my son individually—if you throw that steel into the sea of Romans 8: 28, it sinks but I know and I believe that if you could see all the pieces, it would float.”
Life is kind of a puzzle. I have a puzzle in my study at home. It’s never finished. It’s on this big table. It’s always in process. I really rarely work on it. It’s a 2,000-piece puzzle and it’s rated extremely difficult. There’s a picture on the box which is of little help. Occasionally when I’m feeling kind of stressed out and looking for a little sanity, I might work on that puzzle. It rarely helps but, you know, think how hard it would be to put a puzzle together if you didn’t have the picture. The Bible tells us that’s exactly the predicament we’re in. Only God sees the picture. We don’t even have all the pieces. We just have a few pieces and we’re trying to figure the deal out and we can’t so we live by faith and the providence of God. In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul writes, “We all see in a mirror dimly. Then we will see face-to-face. Now, we know in part. Then we will know fully even as we have been fully known.” Only God sees the whole picture. The word “dimly” in the passage is the Greek from which we get the English word “enigma.” We all see in a mirror enigmatically. All of life seems a little bit like an enigma to us, a mystery, a puzzle, and we can’t puzzle it out. We can’t figure it out but God is at work providentially in our lives.
Our time is really up but I want to just share one story before we come to the Lord’s Table. The story concerns a man you’ve all heard of, Ignace Jan Paderewski, one of the most famous concert pianists in the world’s history. I know most of you have heard of Paderewski. He was not only a concert pianist. He was a composer, a statesman, Premier of Poland and President of Poland living in exile. After the turn of the century, shortly after the year 1900, Paderewski came here to the United States, to New York City to perform in a concert. It was for the rich and the famous. The concert hall in New York City was packed. It was a black tie deal. The men wore tuxedos. The women wore evening gowns. High society. The stage was empty because Paderewski hadn’t come out yet. The crowd, the rich and the famous, they were all waiting.
There was a woman there with her 9-year old boy. Suddenly she was panicked to realize she didn’t know where he was. He had slipped away. Then she saw him going up onto the stage where the grand piano was. She thought, “Oh no!” She had forced him to take piano lessons and he’d always hated it but he had learned one song and he was very proud of it. That was Chopsticks. And so, her son, this 9-year old boy, went up to the grand piano and he started playing Chopsticks. The people laughed. Some people were angry. There was a great uproar and suddenly there was silence because Paderewski came out onto the stage. He walked toward the grand piano as this boy was playing Chopsticks. He came up behind the boy. He put his arms on either side and he whispered in the boy’s ear, “Don’t stop. Keep playing. Don’t stop. Keep playing.” Then Paderewski began to play on either side and suddenly Chopsticks became a masterpiece. The whole concert hall could not believe the majesty and the beauty of the music because the master had transformed what this little boy was playing.
I think it is true, all of us, no matter how gifted we think we are, we’re just playing Chopsticks. Jesus is the Master. He’s the Master and he whispers in our ear, “Don’t stop. Keep playing. Don’t stop. Keep playing. Who knows the masterpiece He can make of your life by His providence? It’s all about Him. I would never have the nerve to preach a single sermon if it was about me because I play Chopsticks. Who would have the nerve to sing in the choir or to teach a Sunday school class or to go into the inner city and be a tutor to an inner city child? We’re all afraid because we play Chopsticks! But Jesus is the Master and He works providentially in our lives, so we don’t quit. We keep playing, trusting His providence and the greatness that is His.
So, we look as Esther and we see a very clear message that God is at work providentially in the lives of His people. As you come to the Communion Table today, you come and you thank Jesus for His body broken and His blood shed. As you come to this Table and you take the sacred oath once again, you renew your sacred vow to live for Jesus and to seek to serve Him, to never quit, always to keep playing. You come and you express once more your trust in His providence, that He might make of your life some kind of masterpiece, that He might bring great good in ways unknown to you, not known until you pass through heaven’s gates. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.