THE RISK OF FAITH, PART 3: ESTHER

Esther 4:1-5:3 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
24 October, 2004 All Rights Reserved

Esther was a beautiful young Jewish woman with no mother or father who was living in the Medo-Persian empire just after the Jews returned to the promised land after the Babylonian captivity. Most of the Jewish people never went back to the land and settled in various cities of Mesopotamia. The Persian king, Ahasuerus, rejected his wife for disobedience and set out to replace her by compelling all the beautiful women of the land to "try out" for queen. Esther's uncle, Mordecai, counseled her not to reveal that she was Jewish. No one was found more beautiful and Esther became Queen. Then a very bad man, Haman, set out to kill all the Jews because Mordecai refused to bow to him when he passed. So Esther decided to approach the King with a request that he not kill the Jews, but going into the King's presence without an invitation was punished by death--unless the King held out his staff to the person. This was the risk of faith as it came to Queen Esther. We can learn great faith lessons from her story.

1. There is no reason to think that avoiding the risk of faith is safer. "Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, "Do not imagine that you in the king's palace can escape any more than all the Jews" (Esther 4:13).

2. A sovereign God intent upon achieving his purposes will go around us if we do not embrace the risk of faith. "For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father's house will perish" (Esther 4:14a). By God's design many things will simply fail if we do not do them. There are people who will never hear the good news of Christ because we did not tell them. But the grand purposes of God will be achieved with or without us. The only question is whether we will be God's servant at the critical point in time or duck the challenge.

3. We must take the risk of faith to find God's purposes for our lives. "And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14b). Even Mordecai, the loving uncle who watched over Esther every day, could not remove the risk for her. In the same way no one can remove the risk of following the Lord in our families, our churches, and our country. What if we faced our challenges with the words of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego on our lips? When they were about to be thrown into the furnace for not worshiping the king they responded: "If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up" (Daniel 3:17-18).

4. When the risk of faith is upon us it is time to seek the Lord in prayer and fasting. "Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, "Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa, and fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens also will fast in the same way" (Esther 4:15-16a). It only makes sense that if our only hope is help from the Lord that we should seek him! And if we do not pray and fast in times of trouble it means we have placed our hope somewhere else.

5. The risk of faith can only be faced with a total commitment of our lives to the Lord. "And thus I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish." So Mordecai went away and did just as Esther had commanded him (Esther 4:16b-17). Half-hearted commitment to the Lord fails all the way. It only looks good until it is tested. It's like having an emergency parachute that won't open, or a life raft which won't inflate.

Esther's faith was rewarded: "When the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, she obtained favor in his sight; and the king extended to Esther the golden scepter which was in his hand. So Esther came near and touched the top of the scepter. Then the king said to her, 'What is troubling you, Queen Esther? And what is your request? Even to half of the kingdom it shall be given to you'" (Esther 5:2-3). Not only did Esther not die but the Jews were saved from annihilation and Mordecai was elevated to second place in the kingdom.

Shortly after the Lord called me into the ministry at age 19 I began praying about where to attend seminary. I also collected information and talked to people. About four years later it seemed that the Lord was finally focusing me on one place--except that it was three thousand miles away and Barbara was in her second year of a very well-paying career. Our prayers became very intense at that time. We began to receive the newspaper from the area where we planned to go. We did not know how we would get there, how we would pay for it, whether Barb could get a job, or anything. We looked for circumstances to firm up to confirm our decision to go, but they did not.

Finally, it seemed that the Lord was leading us to commit without knowing how it was going to work. I will never forget Barb and I kneeling in the floor of our bedroom in Endicott, New York, and committing to go no matter what. Within a few days we received a phone call from a company in Los Angeles in which Barb had contacted through a classified ad. Their message was: "How soon can you come? Get a mover and we'll pay for it!" It turned out they needed a programmer to work on the exact military computer she was working using the exact same esoteric military programming language. The seminary turned out to be the exact place I needed to be at that time in my walk with Christ.

Our testimony and that of Esther is that God responds to us when we embrace the risk of faith with total commitment. What is your testimony? Are you trying to leap into eternity with half a parachute? Are you facing the challenges of life with a defective life raft? Embracing the risk of faith is a better way, and the only way to discover God's purposes in your life.