For Such a Time as This: Finding Purpose in the Book of Esther

Christopher Ash examines Esther 4–5, focusing on Esther’s courage and faith as she steps up to save her people. He highlights how God orchestrates events and uses individuals to fulfill His purposes, encouraging believers to trust in God’s sovereignty and to act with faith and bravery in challenging situations.

The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.

The book of Esther is about the hidden or unseen God. It’s very striking for a book in the Bible. God is not mentioned once. There’s no prophet telling us what God says. The historian doesn’t tell us what God thinks or what God does. There’s no priest, no sacrifices, no prayer. And it is almost deliberately, perhaps deliberately, drawing our attention to the problem of God being hidden. I’m going to put on the screen the story so far, just so that you know who’s who and where we’ve got to. Let me whistle quickly through this.

It’s about 500 years before Christ. Most of the Jews are scattered in the Persian Empire, which is absolutely vast. And a Jewish girl, a very pretty Jewish girl called Esther, becomes queen by chance, I put in inverted commas, because there’s a certain question mark about whether that really is chance. And she doesn’t tell the king, King Xerxes, the Persian emperor, that she is a Jew, that she belongs to the people of God. She keeps that secret at the moment.

She has an older cousin who is her guardian, called Mordecai, and he again by chance uncovers a plot to assassinate King Xerxes, and he saves Xerxes’ life, but he’s unrewarded. The next thing that happens is that a guy called Haman, who is the arch baddie in the story, he’s the enemy of the Jews, he’s made prime minister. We don’t know quite why, but Mordecai refuses to show him respect and honour and bow down to him. Haman is furious, and we might say he overreacts slightly.

He decides not just to kill Mordecai, but to kill every single Jew in the empire. And Esther 3:13, dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with the order to kill, destroy, and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, women and little children.

¹³ 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. (Esther 3:13, ESV)

So the book of Esther so far has given us a picture of a world in which God is hidden, and in which the people of God sometimes find great hostility. Let me say one more thing before we have our readings, and that is this.

As you may well know, in the Old Testament, the Jews were particularly the people who belonged to the living God. When Christ came, that people was thrown open to every believer, Jew and Gentile, and therefore reading the story today, whenever there’s a reference to a Jew or the Jews, we want really to translate that and to say the people who belong to the living God, Christian believers, Jew or Gentile. Last week we ended at a really depressing point. Sorry, it was two weeks ago when we had the last sermon on this. It was really depressing.

It was so depressing, I was firmly ticked off by one of the congregations for being too gloomy. Well, it was very gloomy. As the next episode is read, chapters four and five, three of the main characters are drawn into the story in very different ways, but as the chapters are read, perhaps you’d like to ask yourself, can you identify with any of the three main characters? We’re starting with chapter four of the Book of Esther, at the first verse.

¹ 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. ² 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. ³ 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. ⁴ 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. ⁵ Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was and why it was. ⁶ Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, ⁷ 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. ⁸ 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. ⁹ And Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. ¹⁰ Then Esther spoke to Hathach and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, ¹¹ “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.” ¹² And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. ¹³ 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. 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 who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” ¹⁵ Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, ¹⁶ “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.” ¹⁷ Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him. (Esther 4, ESV)

So Mordecai went away and carried out all of Esther’s instructions. It’s the beginning of chapter 5 of Esther.

¹ On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the king’s palace, in front of the king’s quarters, while the king was sitting on his royal throne inside the throne room opposite the entrance to the palace. ² And when the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, she won favor in his sight, and he held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand. Then Esther approached and touched the tip of the scepter. ³ And the king said to her, “What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? It shall be given you, even to the half of my kingdom.” ⁴ And Esther said, “If it please the king, let the king and Haman come today to a feast that I have prepared for the king.” ⁵ Then the king said, “Bring Haman quickly, so that we may do as Esther has asked.” So the king and Haman came to the feast that Esther had prepared. ⁶ And as they were drinking wine after the feast, the king said to Esther, “What is your wish? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” ⁷ Then Esther answered, “My wish and my request is: ⁸ If I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it please the king to grant my wish and fulfill my request, let the king and Haman come to the feast that I will prepare for them, and tomorrow I will do as the king has said.” (Esther 5:1-8, ESV)

Haman went out that day happy and in high spirits, but when he saw Mordecai at the King’s gate and observed that he neither rose nor showed fear at his presence, he was filled with rage against Mordecai. Nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home. Calling together his friends and his wife, Haman boasted to them about his vast wealth, his many sons, and all the ways the kings have honored him and how he has elevated him above the other nobles and officials.

And that’s not all Haman added, “I’m the only person Queen Esther invited to accompany the King to the banquet she gave, and she has invited me along with the King tomorrow. But all this gives me no satisfaction as long as I see that Jew Mordecai sitting at the King’s gate.” His wife Serish and all his friends said to him, “Have a gallows built 75 feet high and ask the King in the morning to have Mordecai hanged on it. Then go with the King to the dinner and be happy.”

The suggestion delighted Haman and he had the gallows built. It would be helpful if you can keep Esther, the book of Esther open. May we bow our heads and pray for God’s help in understanding this. God our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this vivid narrative and we ask that as we consider these chapters together, you help us to see something of what they might mean for us today. Amen. Now, I want to consider three characters. I’ve put the headings up there.

A hidden god and a hostile world is the basic context of the book, and I want us to consider Mordecai, Esther, and Haman. And I want us to ask ourselves, as we do, whether we can identify with any of them as the story goes on. Mordecai I’ve called a believer in pain. Chapter 4:1, when Mordecai learned of everything that had been done, that is, the edict against God’s people, he felt the pain, didn’t he? That’s what all the business of tearing of clothes and sackcloth and ashes and wailing and so on meant.

He grasped that to be a believer sometimes means to be in a world where it seems as though believers have no future, and the world just seems to be going very fast in the opposite direction. To be part of a world where there’s oppression, there’s injustice, there’s tragedy which seems to strike at random, at some people and not others, and it doesn’t seem to strike at the bad people. It’s a world in which good people suffer, or outwardly good people seem to suffer, and obviously bad people live in comfort.

And it’s very hard to make sense of the world sometimes, and Mordecai feels the pain of that. But there’s a refreshing honesty about it. Did you notice that little comic little cameo in verse 4? Esther seems to be in a cocoon. Dear old Esther’s living in the palace and she doesn’t seem to have television, radio or newspapers. She seems completely unaware that an edict has been issued in the whole Persian Empire, from India to Ethiopia, that every single Jew should be annihilated.

You’d have thought she might just have grasped that, but she doesn’t seem to have noticed that. So when she hears that her beloved guardian Mordecai is ranting and raving and weeping in the public square with his suit all torn, what does she do? Well, verse 4 says this in effect: She sends her servants to the palace tailors in German Street to buy him a new suit. It’s rather British, really, isn’t it? So superficial. They were putting sticking plaster to cover the wound. It’s all right.

Dear, dear, dear, I speak, she called him uncle, you know, dear uncle, it’ll be all right, don’t cry, it’s embarrassing, it’s not nice to be upset. It’s very British, isn’t it? Outward niceness to cover inner pain. But Mordecai won’t have it, and he insists that Esther learned everything. Verses 7 and 8, he sends her the text of the edict, tells her every detail. And he says to her, “Look, this is very serious, you’ve got to go to the king and beg him to have mercy on the Jews.” And verse 11, Esther says, “No way.”

Esther says, you don’t know what you’re asking me to do. Everybody knows the rules. That old bad-tempered old goat, well, I don’t suppose she says that, but he’s a Persian tyrant. You can’t even knock on his study door without being asked, without risking your life. And if I just turn up to talk to him, even his wife, it’s just possible he’ll be in a good mood and he’ll hold out the golden scepter as a sign that it’s okay. But it’s very unlikely. He’s not usually in a good mood, is he, Mordecai?

What with his indigestion, his hangovers, his gout, and his obsession with the fall in the NASDAQ index, he has a filthy temper. And if he’s in a bad mood, I’m for the electric chair. That’s the gist of what Esther says to Mordecai. And what’s more, she says, at the end of verse 11, “It’s been 30 days since he called me.” I don’t quite know why that was, whether Xerxes had been suffering a sad loss of libido or whether he’d been trying others in the harem. We don’t know.

But anyway, Esther says, “It’s been a long time since he’s wanted to see me. Things not looking good.” And Mordecai says to her, verse 13, “Get real.” And he says, “Don’t think that because you’re in the king’s house, you alone of all the Jews will escape. you’re not as safe as you think.” And Mordecai says to her, “This life is not a game. Mordecai doesn’t live in a fantasy world of cushioned sofas and good food and central heating and widescreen sky television behind securely locked doors.”

He doesn’t live in the palace, he lives in the real world. And he understands this world is not a game and it’s about rescue. And unless we’re rescued, he says, we’re going to die. And then in verse 14, he says something very, very surprising. Verse 14 of chapter 4 is probably the most important verse in the whole book. And if you remain silent at this time, well, what would we expect him to say?

We’d expect him to say, Esther, if you remain silent at this time, if you won’t go and see the king, then we’re all going to cough it, you included. But actually he doesn’t say that. Do you see in verse 14, if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place. But you and your father’s family will perish. Now that’s extraordinary. It’s an extraordinary thing for him to say. What does it mean? It’s not fatalism. People often mistake Christian faith for fatalism.

You know, things will be as things will be and there’s nothing we can do about it. But it’s not fatalism. He wouldn’t be urging Esther to do something if he was a fatalist. No, he understands that our actions matter. Nor is he a universalist. He doesn’t say, no, it’ll all turn out all right in the end for everybody. No, he says, unless you take some action, you’re going to die and your father’s family. But what Mordecai has grasped is that it is not possible for the people of God finally to perish. Relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise.

¹³ 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. 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 who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14, ESV)

He’s grasped that because God is sovereign, and God has chosen to call to belong to him men and women and boys and girls, every single one he calls to belong to him, he’s able to keep. And he will keep, because nobody’s strong enough to pluck them out of his hand. And he’s grasped that truth, that it’s not possible for the people of God finally to perish. They will be in heaven in the end.

And the only question for Esther is whether or not she’s going to be part of that. And Mordecai shows us what it is to be a believer in this world, a believer in pain. And it may be that you can identify with him, and you feel sometimes acutely just what a miserable place this world can be. But you trust that there is an unseen God, and that he will bring relief to all who trust him and belong to him in the end. But what about Esther?

Well, now Esther comes center stage, and I’ve called this heading “A Position with a Purpose.” Did you notice how Mordecai ends in verse 14? “Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this.” Now, Mordecai is a man of faith, and he has grasped the fact that Esther, out of all the girls, was picked to be queen. It wasn’t simply that that’s the way the lottery in the harem panned out. And you and I, I guess, most of us, perhaps all of us, are trained.

When something happens, we’re trained to look back in the past and to say, “Well, now what caused it to happen? What event beforehand, coming together, caused this event to happen?” What are sometimes called efficient causes by philosophers. So that, you know, Esther’s parents came from good genetic stock, so she turned out to be very pretty, you know, that sort of thing.

Well, that’s fair enough, but Mordecai looks beyond these and he understands that there is also something called a final cause or a purpose, an overarching purpose, and that the fact that Esther became Queen of Persia was for a purpose and for a reason. you’ve come to royal position for such a time as this, and the reason she’s come there is so that she can be the saviour. But she can only be the saviour by risking her life. So well, after three days and nights of fasting, she launches out and it’s the adventure of her life.

But unlike the saviour she foreshadows, she doesn’t have to die. But she also foreshadows the Christian. And if you are a Christian, I want to encourage you to set Esther alongside yourself, because my guess is that if you’re a Christian, there are times in your life, as there are in mine, when we wonder or even resent the position that we’re in. And my guess is that some of us today wish we were not in the circumstances we’re in at work.

And maybe that there’s somebody here and not many days go past without us thinking, I wish I were not here now. This work situation is so difficult, things are so divided, there’s so much grumbling, there are so many difficult ethical quandaries, whatever it may be, I wish it wasn’t me that had to be here now. Or it may be that you’re a Christian and you are troubled because in the workplace it’s very difficult to be surrounded by people who really don’t seem to care a fig about God and the things of God, and it’s uncomfortable.

Or it may be there’s something in your family life which makes you wish that you weren’t here now, anywhere else, but not here. And it may be that we need a Mordecai by our side to say, “Who knows but that you have come to this particular position, this uncomfortable position, for such a time as this.” you are not here by chance; you’re not here just by your own design; you’re not here just for your own ambitions; you’ve been placed where you are.

And who knows but that you are to be in a sense, perhaps not so much a saviour as one who will point others to the saviour. But if you’re going to do that, you’re going to have to break out of your cowardly secrecy. That was what Esther had to do. I remember as if it were yesterday when I began my first proper job after graduating. I was a development engineer in a huge telecommunications company. We had an office in the west end of London.

And when I joined, no one in the office knew that I was a Christian, and it was much easier not to tell them. I think I must have had natural opportunities to tell them, not to preach to them or be pushy or aggressive, but just in natural conversation. A little bit more courage from me and it could have come out quite naturally. But I remember that the longer I didn’t tell them, the harder it became.

And I can’t remember how finally it slipped out, almost in spite of myself, but from the day they knew that I was a Christian, a pretty pathetic one, but from the day they knew that I was one, it was easier to live as one. Because although, so far as I know, there weren’t other Christians in the office at that time, once they knew that I was a Christian, they expected me to live up to it, and that made it easier to do so.

So I want to say to you, if you’re a Christian, as you go into work tomorrow or as you mix this week with neighbours or family or friends, could it be that you uniquely have come to this position, in this group of people, at this time, for a purpose? And if there’s some costly word, which may just risk, not so much your life, perhaps your reputation, risk what they think of you. But you need to say it. And maybe a lot hinges for them on whether you do or not.

That’s how it was for Esther. She was in a position with a purpose. Well, finally, and I’m going to be quite brief on this last character, Haman. I’ve called him a proud man in danger. Chapter 5, the narrative continues. Esther put on her royal robes, verse 1. I think that means she spent three hours at the hairdressing salon. I think she spent a long time choosing the prettiest clothes. Forgive me, ladies, if I’ve misread you completely. But I think she took them out and looked at them and then put them back and took others out.

I think she spent quite a while picking what she wore that day, don’t you think? A lot of trouble with her make-up. And then she took her life in her hands and knocked on the king’s door. And hey, presto, he smiles. And he holds out the golden scepter. Oh, come in, my darling, he says. Haven’t seen you for ages. What have you been doing with yourself? What can I do for you? I’d love to give you a present today, anything up to half my kingdom. He didn’t mean that. They never did.

But it was a way of speaking at court. And then Esther does not come straight to the point. Isn’t that interesting? Her years of marriage have taught her that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. So she invites him to a banquet. Lots of banquets in this book. And she invites Haman, too. And over liqueurs and coffee, verse 6, the king asks her again, now what is it you want, my darling? And still she doesn’t say. She invites him to another banquet and Haman again as well.

Well, I don’t know quite what’s going on here, but if Esther wants to make Haman unpopular with the king, it’s a brilliant bit of psychology. I mean, Haman is just a little bit too pleased to be the third at these intimate dinners, isn’t he? He noticed that the king hasn’t seen Esther for 30 days, and he really seems to be quite keen on her, and the flame is burning brightly again. Doesn’t he know that there are times when two’s company and three is a crowd?

You know, when the king starts playing footsie with Esther under the table, wants to start canoodling with her. Is Haman a welcome guest at this intimate little dinner? I don’t think so, he’s a lemon. But he doesn’t notice, does he? Verse 9, he’s dead chuffed. And if only one thing spoils his day, which is that when his limo sweeps out of the palace gates, he can just see through the darkened glass the Jew Mordecai who won’t bow down to him, like all the rest.

Anyway, he goes off home, and he’s very full of himself, isn’t he? Verse 11, he boasted to his wife and friends about his vast wealth, his many sons. I don’t know what his wife thought of that because I don’t suppose she was the mother of all of them. Anyway, all the ways the king had honored him, how he’d elevated him above the other nobles and officials. And that’s not all, verse 12, I’m the only person Queen Esther invited to accompany the king to the banquet she gave.

And there’s another one tomorrow and it’s just me and the king. As you know, the only thing that makes me cross, he says, verse 13, is that pesky Jew Mordecai who doesn’t respect me. Well, says his wife and friends, why not build a gallows 75 feet high? Isn’t it marvellous? The story’s told in primary colours, isn’t it? And tell the king to have Mordecai hanged on it. You know how important you are with the king, he’s bound to do what you say. Then there’ll be nothing to spoil your dinner.

⁹ And Haman went out that day joyful and glad of heart. But when Haman saw Mordecai in the king’s gate, that he neither rose nor trembled before him, he was filled with wrath against Mordecai. ¹⁰ Nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home, and he sent and brought his friends and his wife Zeresh. ¹¹ And Haman recounted to them the splendor of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honored him, and how he had advanced him above the officials and the servants of the king. ¹² Then Haman said, “Even Queen Esther let no one but me come with the king to the feast she prepared. And tomorrow also I am invited by her together with the king. ¹³ Yet all this is worth nothing to me, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.” (Esther 5:9-13, ESV)

And then Haman thinks this is a bright idea, so he makes the gallows. Isn’t it marvelous? And the height of this absurd gallows pictures for us and mirrors the absurdity of Haman’s pride. Here is a man who thinks that because he cannot see God, there is no God to see. Not a living, real God, or true God who actually does anything in human affairs.

No, no, Haman is much too busy making a success of life, much too busy going right to the top, push, push, push, and he hasn’t got time to pay attention to a hidden God. And the only thing that irritates him in life is that there are one or two people around like Mordecai who insist that we ought to pay attention to God and that really gets his goat. And Haman, of course he’s painted on a big canvas, isn’t he?

But he pictures for us every man or woman who lives in this world without paying attention to God. He pictures for us in an extreme form the man or woman who is too busy to listen to God or to attend to the claims of Jesus Christ. He pictures for us the man or woman who wants to rule their own life, making our own little decisions in our own little way for our own ends to serve our own purposes. That’s what Haman pictures. But he is in terrible danger.

I’m not going to spoil next week’s denouement, but there are time bombs under Haman’s chair of which he’s unaware. If this were a pantomime and we were the audience, we’d be saying to Haman, look behind you or better still, look above you. There really is a God who’s at work in human affairs. And if you want to act as your own little God, you’re making a great mistake. Well, I’m going to close there, but I wonder if you identified with any of those three.

I wonder if you identified with Mordecai, the honest believer who feels the pain of living in a world that seems to be going in the wrong direction, but who is confident that finally God will rescue those who trust him. I wonder if you identified with Esther, a fearful believer who has to grasp that she is where she is for a purpose. I wonder if you identified with her. with Haman, proud little god of his own, but in terrible danger. Maybe you identified with more than one of those at different times and in different ways.

But as I say, I’m not going to spoil next week’s dramatic denouement.