Esther: For Such a Time as This, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. You know that at any moment you could get a disastrous phone call from your doctor that could change your life forever. You could walk into work on Monday and be told that you no longer have a job. I cannot guarantee you that I will wake up tomorrow. I cannot guarantee you I will make it home to hug my wife and my kids another time, but what I cannot lose, what I know I will never lose, is whatever I have staked in God's eternal kingdom. So I will bet my life on that. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian, J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Did you know that Esther is one of only two books in the Bible named for a woman? It's been a pretty controversial book over the years, but not because it's named for a girl. It's because God's name is actually never mentioned, not even once in the whole book.

Thankfully, God kept it in there for us because it really has something important to teach us. Today, Pastor J.D. Greer will wrap up a quick trip through Esther and we'll hear the timeless challenge that it is always right to risk it all for the sake of Jesus. Let's jump right into chapter four with Pastor J.D. So as soon as the sun rises and the king gets to the office, guess who just so happens to walk into the room? It's Haman, who has come to ask the king for permission to hang Mordecai. But before he can say anything, the king says, hey, man, I got a question. Get it? Hey, man, hey, man, I got a question.

What should be done? What should be done for the man that the king wants to honor? Now, remember, Haman is very narcissistic and he thinks that he's just awesome. So he naturally assumes King's talking about him. And he thinks, oh, this is good.

I got a chance to really promote myself. And he says, oh, you should make a really big deal out of this. Well, you need to hang a wreath around his neck and give him a special robe. And you need to have a chariot drive him down the city street.

And you need to have a really high ranking government official run behind the chariot and just call out as he's going by. This is the man whom the king loves. And this is what the king does for the man whom he honors. And King Ahasuerus says, that sounds like a great idea.

The guy that I want to honor is named Mordecai and the guy who should do the shouting is you, which is pretty doggone funny. You got to admit. Well, after this little charade, Haman is now madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory. So he kicks his plan to kill all the Jews into overdrive.

Right? And he says, I'm just, I need to, we're going to kill them all. But that night, but that night, remember, he's got to go to Esther's second banquet. And this time Esther works up the courage to tell the king about the plot against her people.

And she reveals in the process that she also is a Jew. And the king says, who would conceive such a plot against you? And Esther points across the table at Haman, who's got his mouth full of mutton and says, that's the man right there.

Well, now it's Ahasuerus has turned to be angry. And so he storms out of the room in rage, at which point Haman goes over to Esther and grabs a hold of her dress and starts to plead for his life. But apparently as he is pleading, he falls down on top of her. So now she's on the ground and he's on top of her. And guess who just so happens to walk back in the room at just that moment. King Ahasuerus, who's like, what?

Now you're trying to rape my wife also? And he orders Haman to be hung on the next available gallows, which of course, just so happens to be the gallows that Haman had constructed the previous night for Mordecai. And so it is that Esther, who got a really rough start in life, saves the Jewish nation. And her courage transformed our lives as well many generations later, because a few generations after this one, one of the descendants of the people that Esther saved that night would be visited by an angel and told that she was pregnant with the Messiah, the Son of God.

And Jesus came into the world and died for our sins. And now we sit here worshiping Him today because of the courage of an orphan girl who responded in the right way in her defining moment of faith. I believe that Esther's story serves two purposes in the Bible. First is it shows us the remarkable way that God brought Jesus into the world. And secondly, it shows you the way that God wants to use you in His global purposes and how you are supposed to respond to your defining moment of faith. You see, I believe that some of you, and we collectively as a church, I believe we're at a defining moment of faith like Esther.

And I'm going to try to unpack that for you. And I want to use Esther's story to show you four ways, four ways that you were supposed to seize your divine moment of faith. Way number one is you need to realize first that God can use Mordecai's and Esther's. Think of Mordecai's as the kinds of people you normally find in a church. They're good people. They're sincere in their faith. They haven't been involved in really any major scandals. They've got pretty vanilla testimonies.

They're boring. You know, the worst things they've done in life are speed or forget to recycle or something like that. They tell you their testimony and it puts you to sleep. Esther's by contrast are people whose lives are filled with shame or regret or maybe compromises and mistakes. Maybe like Esther, you've been the victim of somebody else's manipulation.

Maybe you have been like her, the victim of assault, or maybe you look back and see that you have not always acted with courage and faith when you should. What you need to see is that God has a plan for you also. In fact, Esther is the one that God uses to preserve the messianic line.

Why? Why is it that of all the people in the Jewish nation, why didn't God choose Mordecai? Why choose an orphan girl who has lived a compromised life of faith? Why choose somebody who is vulnerable in every possible way? It has to be that God is showing us that he brings his salvation into the world through unlikely weak instruments who make themselves available to him.

Of all the people in Israel, this is who God chose to bring salvation into the world. A young orphaned immigrant with a checkered past. My point is this, it doesn't matter what your history is. It doesn't matter what your ability is.

It only matters what your availability is. God has placed you at a specific place with specific opportunities, with a checkered history for the purposes of his kingdom. And I want you to look around this week and realize that you are in a palace, so to speak.

Maybe not a literal palace, but you're in a place where you've got a chance to influence and literally to save the lives of others. And I'll show you what I mean by that in a few minutes. And maybe from this point, you even look backwards and you realize that you got a lot of regrets in life and maybe you genuinely have been a victim. And maybe you've made a lot of mistakes to get where you are, but the point is you're here now and it's time to quit looking backwards. And it's time to start looking forwards because God wants to start a new thing with you and he wants to begin today. Esther did not get off to the best start, but in her defining moment, she said, yes.

She put her yes on the table and she changed the course of history. That is where some of you are. It is never too late for you to begin the journey of faith. Salvation is all about new beginnings. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away.

All things have become new. I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord. Plans to use you as a blessing, to prosper you, to make you a blessing to others.

I have good works that I have preordained that you should go and walk in and you will never find them as long as you are looking backwards and a prisoner of the past. God has released you from your shame. He has set you free from the victimization that you have experienced from others. And he wants you to walk forward and he wants you to become a blessing to others.

So stop looking backwards and start looking forwards and put your yes on the table and make yourself available to him. Number two. Number two, from Esther's story, we see that God has been at work in your life, whether you've recognized it or not. He has been at work in your life, whether you've recognized it or not. Again, where's the name of God in this book? It's not there.

Not a single time. Yet the fingerprints of God are all over this book, are they not? Aren't the fingerprints of God all over this book? Think about all the so-called coincidences that led Esther into being in this position. Queen Vashti just so happens to upset her husband and he just so happens to come up with a contest to replace her that Esther has been designed and gifted by God to win. And Esther just so happens to be Mordecai's cousin who just so happens to stumble onto a plot to kill the king. And it just so happens that for some reason, he isn't honored when he saves the king's life, but his act of heroism gets buried in a book. And it just so happens that the night before Mordecai is to be hanged, the king can't sleep, a divinely produced insomnia. And it just so happens that the guy who goes to get a bedtime story out of all the books in the king's library randomly picks the book that records the story of Mordecai saving the king's life. And it just so happens that when the king decides that they need to honor Mordecai first thing in the morning, the first one to walk into the room is Haman. And it just so happens that the banquet where Esther unveils Haman's life is just so happens Haman's evil plan, the king just so happens to come back in the moment that he thinks Haman is trying to rape his wife. And it just so happens that when the king orders Haman to be hanged, the only gallows that are available are the ones that Haman built the day before for Mordecai.

It's like my friend David Platt says, folks, you can't write a script any better than that. Do you realize what the book of Esther is teaching you about history and about your life? It's teaching you that God has the whole system rigged. He is sovereignly weaving the stories of his people for his redemptive purposes.

And that includes your story. You have a divinely appointed role in the kingdom, and you have been sovereignly shaped to fulfill that role. And you will never feel like you have found your purpose or place in life until you start to fulfill that role. You see, think of your palace as the place of opportunity. Think of it as the place that God has placed you. There are people that God has put into your life that he intends for you to share Christ with.

It's why he puts you where he puts you. You're in a certain dorm. You're in a certain dorm room. You're in a certain office complex, a classroom, a neighborhood.

You're in a certain cubicle. God has given you certain platforms, and he's given you abilities from which he intends to use you to bless and to serve others. He has given you certain passions that you have acted on, and now you are where you are.

You have been given financial resources. We, each of us, has been given financial resources for just such a time as this to enable this church to reach the world. God is not calling us because we are able.

He's not calling us because we have a perfect history. He just wants us to make ourselves available to him. Some at church, listen, we're not the most impressive people in the world. We're not the richest. We're not the most talented, but we are here at this moment, and we are sovereignly placed here in this moment, and our God has rigged the system to bring the great commission to completion, and all that God needs, he has already put in our hands.

Already. He's not sitting in heaven in heaven saying, well, if we can just get a few more talented and a few more rich people saved, he's already put it here. All he wants us to do is respond to him and say we're available, that we've come into the kingdom for just such a time as this.

The question is, have you put your yes on the table yet? By the way, for some of you, you don't even know God. You don't even know God yet, and what you need to realize is that God brought you here this weekend in pursuit of you because he wants to start a relationship with you. See, sometimes when I'm up here preaching, I look around, and as I'm talking, I'll see somebody that I don't really know, and I'll look at them, and I'll just think like, I wonder what their story is, and for some of you, I know that you're here because God's been speaking to you, and you can see, look in your life, and you can see these moments where God has been, if you look at it, you see that he's been pursuing you. He's put questions in your heart, and then somebody invited you to come to our church, and at first you said no, and you resisted, and finally you just consented, and now you're here.

Maybe you've been here for several weeks. I don't know, but the point is you need to understand that you being here is not your idea. Those questions are from God. Those situations are from God. That pain is from God. That invitation that you received is from God. He is in pursuit of you, and he just wants to get your attention. That's it.

He's got the whole system rigged. Number three, from Esther's story, we learned that you can't hold on to life, so you might as well risk it for the kingdom. Understandably, Esther demurs when Mordecai urges her to go before the king because she knows that she could die, but then we saw how Mordecai responded, didn't we?

Mordecai's like, you might die? Your safety is an illusion, right? We're all going to die, and you might die in this very moment. Death is certain. What is even more certain is that God's going to get his work done.

God's going to accomplish his purposes, so Esther, if you're going to go out, you might as well go out doing what is right. Your safety is a myth. You know that at any moment you could get a disastrous phone call from your doctor that could change your life forever.

You could walk into work on Monday and be told that you no longer have a job. Safety is an illusion, so it is quite foolish for you to build your life in pursuit of safety, and you might as well bet your life on the one thing you know is going to last. It reminds me of the words of Jim Elliot, who was a missionary to Ecuador, who was martyred in his late 20s. He has a very famous statement, and you've probably heard it before. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. What I cannot keep is my life. I cannot guarantee you that I will wake up tomorrow. I cannot guarantee you I will make it home to hug my wife and my kids another time, but what I cannot lose, what I know I will never lose is whatever I have staked in God's eternal kingdom, so I will bet my life on that. I have tried to arrange my life according to that one moment I know is going to happen, the one moment I am certain will happen, the one moment that could happen this afternoon.

I am going to stand before God, and I'm going to answer as to whether or not I have lived out his purposes for my life and whether I leverage my life and my resources for his kingdom. Y'all listen, I have read the Bible all the way to the end. I didn't even stop at Revelation 22, the last chapter in the Bible. I read all the way through the concordance.

I went all the way through the maps, and here's what is clear. God wins. He writes the epilogue. The only question is whether or not you're going to be part of that epilogue. That is what is certain, and so I am angling the resources of my life toward that end that I know is certain. You see, you and I have an even greater assurance of how all this is going to turn out than Esther did. Here's the greater assurance that we have. Listen, we see in Esther's story a shadow of our coming savior.

I mean, think about it. Esther risked her spot in the palace to intercede for the people of God. This prefigured Jesus who years later would not only risk the ultimate palace but lose the ultimate palace, not only risk his life but actually sacrifice his life in order to save his people and who now stands before the throne of God faithfully interceding for us. His resurrection assures us that God is going to win this thing and God is going to overturn all of the diabolical plans of the world's Hamans for good and overwrite all of the enemy schemes with victory. It shows us that he is in control and that he has sovereignly rigged the system for the completion of the great commission.

So why not bet your life on that one thing you know is certain? You see, the point of this book is less about the courage of a man or woman of faith and it is more about God's sovereign control of history. Who do you think the real king is? Who are you bowing to and whose service are you in? This same God assures me that one day people from every tribe and tongue are going to be around the throne of God worshiping him. That's Revelation 5.

That's how the story ends and that means anything that I have risked or sacrificed to that end is not wasted. I've told you before how I see the kind of ministry that we do here as a church. This, by the way, my kids say this is their favorite illustration that I use for them and I'll tell you why. I've told you that our ministry is like, we're like the proverbial woodpecker. Remember this? And we're just the woodpecker that's tapping away at the telephone pole, not making any difference to the telephone pole, just making a little bit of noise. That's all it's doing.

When all of a sudden lightning strikes from heaven, that telephone pole splits a thing in two and the woodpecker's like, kind of goes back and it's looking at this, at this telephone pole, it's now split in two and it flies off and gets several of his buddies, brings them back and it's like, there she is boys. Look at what I did. And I've told you that that's us, right? That's us because we know the promises of God. We know that God has promised that all people will have a thriving gospel witness before history ends. And so we know that when we are there serving and we may not be feel like we're doing that much, we may just be given what we have and it feels like it's nothing.

We might be continuing to pray. We might be sharing Christ with somebody, but whatever you're doing, you're just, and all of a sudden lightning strikes. And we're like, whoa. And then we fly off to all of our friends and we write a newspaper about it. Then we're like, hey here, look at what we did.

But deep down, we know we didn't do anything. We know that we were just tapping away and God sent the lightning bolt of his power. And when that happens, we are going to continue to say, I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew God would do what God said God would do because he promised.

And he told us where the thing was going. And I didn't know what was certain in life, but what's certain is that Jesus said, I'll build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And I am glad that every single thing that I invested in his kingdom, I knew that none of it has been wasted. And I knew that God has multiplied it all for his kingdom. He is not a fool who gives what he can't hold onto anyway to gain access, to put a stake in what he can never lose.

I know the question. The question is not whether or not I'm going to lose my life. I'm going to lose it somewhere somehow. The question is, am I going to have a stake in what lasts forever? Many of you have been given great wealth and in eternity, you are going to lose it all. As the old proverb says, you cannot take any of it with you. So you might as well invest a large chunk of it in the things that last forever. List out all of you, the five things in your life that had the most monetary value. So put them, just put them down on a piece of paper. Just look at them and realize that not a one of those five are you going to carry with you into eternity?

Not one. So is it maybe that the spirit of God is telling you to already go ahead and transfer one of those into his kingdom now? Since you can't hold onto it anyway, why not transfer one of those things now?

And it is recognizing that I can't hold onto it, so why not leverage it and invest it in the kingdom that lasts, the kingdom that lasts forever. Lastly, number four, the need is urgent. Esther's story shows us that the need is urgent. Esther stood at the crossroads of a literal life or death moment for Israel. People's lives were on the line. If she did not act, people would die. We also stand at a literal crossroads of life and death for other people.

Let me just consider this. Listen, on average, tomorrow, 60 babies will be aborted in our area tomorrow. Every single day, somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 children die from starvation or a preventable disease. There are more slaves around the world today than at any time in history. Most tragically, there are millions of people around us that are gonna spend an eternity in hell and 3.1 billion people around the world have yet to hear the gospel given, explained to them in a way that they can understand.

How dare we just sit by? By the way, don't lose the impact of that last one. That's all the college students who often, they're moved by the needs of the world. Their heart aches for global suffering and that's awesome. But the greatest of all suffering is eternal suffering. For some of you, your heart breaks for those who hunger. The greatest hunger is the hunger for the bread of life.

You yearn to see people freed from slavery. The greatest slavery is the slavery to sin. Of all the things to give your life to, the gospel is the most important. It's not that we should ever ignore the other things. I mean, they should always go together when you're preaching peace and salvation to someone's soul.

You should also bringing peace and prosperity to their body. It's just that we must never forget that the gospel is paramount, that the gospel is the greatest need that the world has and of all the things to give your life to, you should give it to the spread of the gospel. Esther's life shows us that these are issues of life and death importance. And just like Esther couldn't ignore those life and death realities, some at church I would say, neither can we. Some at church, Esther's story in the Bible is a great story.

But it is also a picture of your life. We are in the same moment as Esther. You are in a divinely orchestrated moment. You have been sovereignly put somewhere by God with certain opportunities and certain resources, and what you do with them has life and death implications for others. We have been placed here for just such a time as this. It doesn't matter what your history is. It doesn't matter what your ability is.

It matters what your availability is. I'm thankful for that reminder today from Pastor J.D. Greer in Summit Life. As we look ahead to a new year, a lot of people are setting goals for themselves, whether that's a financial goal, a health goal, whatever it may be. Pastor J.D., do you have any thoughts for our listeners as they're kind of looking ahead and making these plans? No matter what you do, you cannot add any more seconds to your day. So the question is, how do you make the most of your days and how do you use them well? Well, it takes planning. The easiest way to waste your life is not through some big dramatic decision.

It's through not capitalizing on a bunch of small moments. And the first of the year is a great moment to say, God, what have you been doing in my life? What do you want to accomplish in my heart this year? What do you want to accomplish through me? This planner will help you ask some of those questions. Setting goals of any kind is important. Health goals, education goals, financial goals, those are great, but the most important ones are spiritual goals so that you can say when you and I stand before God, I live 2022 the way that you wanted me to live it. I think this is a tool that will help you get your mind around that and get started on it.

We've included a Bible reading plan that will help you maintain the most important spiritual discipline. Don't miss this resource. I really think it'll make a difference in your year.

Just go to jdgrae.com where you can get your copy. If you've already given on behalf of our entire team and your fellow listeners, thank you. But if you haven't given that crucial year-end gift quite yet, there is still time. We're inviting you to do so right now so that Summit Life can continue bringing gospel-centered teaching not only to your station but to the countless others in the new year. When you give, you're helping more people to hear the gospel in 2022 than ever before, and so in reality, Summit Life is your ministry.

Will you join us today? When you do, we'll say thanks by sending you our annual 2022 Summit Life planner to help you stay focused on the gospel in the new year. Ask for a copy of the 2022 Summit Life planner when you donate today by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or request the planner when you give online at jdgrae.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again tomorrow as Pastor JD explains that if we offer our desperation to God in prayer, we will find Him eager to listen, eager to forgive, eager to heal, eager to step in and help. Join us next time for Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.