3/3/24 Esther 4:10-17 “Throw Dirt or Give a Flower!”

01 Mar 3/3/24 Esther 4:10-17 “Throw Dirt or Give a Flower!”

3/3/24    Esther 4:10-17        “Throw Dirt or Give a Flower!”

Sometimes I get myself into a mood where I sit and reflect on things that have happened or are happening around me.  Once in a while I wish I had listened to someone from my younger days when they gave me advice because I did the opposite and that sure didn’t work.  For example, I used to wish that I had studied harder when in high school and college so I could have had a better job.  I wished that I had trained harder in sports so that maybe I might have played on the college level; these are just a couple of superficial things that I don’t even care about any more.  I would guess that you all have had these moments when you wished you were born sometime in the future, like when Star Trek is taking place or in the past because you wanted to live like a real cowboy 170 years ago.  However, there is one thing that I wish I had done and it really would have changed my life.  I wish I had come to know Jesus Christ earlier in my life.  People are quick to point out that maybe I had to learn a few life lessons first in order to help me become a better pastor.  They are probably right.  I shouldn’t try to second guess the timing of God.  It is always perfect.  It has never failed yet so I guess I have to be happy with my life the way it is and I am happy.  Today, we are going to look at the story of Esther and hopefully we can see God’s extraordinary timing in action.  It just might make us a little more grateful.

I recently read a story about a man who was laid off from his work and he couldn’t find another job.  His folks were getting to be rather elderly so instead of complaining about not having a job, he went to work for his folks to help them put a new roof on their house and a couple of other improvements.  As soon as he was done, he was offered what he considered to be a dream job.

A year or so before we moved to our first church, Sharon had the chance to retire and she did.  She got to spend a year helping and caring for her mother before she went home to Jesus.  She didn’t know that this would be her last year with her mother when she retired but it was.  It was the perfect timing of God that did this as it was with the man helping his folks.  You see, God does so many things for us that sometimes we overlook His perfect timing.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful here but this is one of the craziest stories in the Bible.  It is full of mystery and intrigue.  If you aren’t that familiar with the story go ahead and read it.  It is a short book that is pretty easy to read.  I think it is important to understand that Esther was just a common person.  She was just like you and me.  As a matter of fact, she had had a rather hard life because she was an orphan.  I’m sure she had spent much time in her youth in sadness wishing her parents were still alive.  It tells us in the story that when King Xerxes called for a new queen, she had to be taken to the palace along with all the other young women.  So it wasn’t her choice to go to the king to audition for the position of queen.  But wouldn’t you know it; she won and became the new queen.  Once again God is using someone who seems to be reluctant at best.

It should also be noted that King Xerxes was not exactly the nicest or smartest king.  He got rid of Queen Vashti in a drunken rage.  If we go back and read this part I think we find that this was not very wise on the part of King Xerxes.  This was the alcohol talking.  This is not a good thing even in today’s world.  But notice how God uses the situation.  This probably wasn’t Plan A for getting Esther into the position where He needed her.  It was probably Plan F or Plan G or even farther down the list.  But I think that it was God’s plan all along to put Esther into that position of being queen.

I think that it is important to remember that God’s plan will be carried out no matter what you do.  Here He uses a drunken king.  He doesn’t do this to promote drunkenness because He is against this kind of behavior and it is a sin.  I think that He does this to put us on notice that He will use whatever He has to in order to get the job done.  You can wander around your whole life like I did but God will finally get you to where you need to be.  I praise the Lord that He is a God of 200 or 300 chances.

Moving on, our modern era isn’t the only time in history where political leaders aren’t the brightest bulbs in the marquee.  King Xerxes listens to his advisor, Haman, when he tells the king that all the Jews must be executed.  What a crazy idea!  He was as bad as Hitler or some of our other modern-day monsters.  Anyway, they come up with a plan where all the Jews would be killed on a certain day.  One of the problems that arise from this is that the new queen, Esther, is a Jew.

Queen Esther thinks that maybe she can avoid being killed because they don’t know she is a Jew and, this is how I might think, they wouldn’t dare execute the queen anyway.  So she decides that she is going to stay out of this and keep her head down.  Basically, God gets her into the position where He wants her and then she decides she won’t help.

How many times do you get caught in positions like this?  Many of us are right where God wants us to be and you sometimes just let things go by and you don’t act like Jesus wants you to act.  There are people in our midst who need help.  We have babies who need help and they can’t even ask.  We have young people struggling with school and life.  We have married couples who are struggling with their marriage vows.  Many times we act just like we were Esther.  We don’t want to be bothered right now with these things.  Let someone else will take care of these things.  Well, here is a little news flash.  You are that someone else!  You are that someone else!  Go and help someone.  Help them in the name of Jesus Christ.  The rewards for helping others out are out of this world!

If you don’t act, then God just might send someone to you to urge you on in the right direction as He did when He sent Esther’s uncle Mordecai to talk to her.  Mordecai had basically raised Esther as one of his own children.  This had to be very hard for Mordecai to ask Esther to do these things because of the tremendous danger this presented for Esther.  But Mordecai was a Godly man and he would only trust God with all of this.  So Mordecai tells Esther that she is the only person who is in position to save the whole nation of Israel.  Not too much pressure, is there?

Suddenly, the whole atmosphere changes!  She tells Mordecai to have the Jews in the area go into a three day time of fasting and prayer.  I’ll explain this prayer and fasting in a minute.  Esther and her people around her will do the same.  Look at this again.  The first thing she does is go into a time prayer and fasting.  I have told you before that I don’t know why fasting works so well but it does.  And here we have it again as Esther is trying to get closer to God so she will know what to do.  I urge you to consider, sometime in the future, to try the Daniel Fast.  It is a great way to get closer to God who will help you to feel and do better.

You folks probably think that I am a stuck record when it comes to prayer but this is so important.  Everything you do should begin with prayer.  When you are out and about in your work or whatever, pray!  It might be just a little mental prayer but pray.  I firmly believe that the reason we have so many problems in this country is that we don’t pray.  I really don’t care if people try to tell me that I can’t pray here or I can’t pray there, I will pray anyway!

There is a very good magazine that I like to read called Angels on Earth.  I highly recommend this to everyone.  Obviously, this magazine tells many stories of how angels are with us and we don’t even realize it.  The other thing that this magazine does is that it reinforces the need we have for prayer.  Let’s think about this for a moment.

I know some people are against some of the anti-prayer laws the legislature passes.  Do you have anyone praying about this?  Why not?  I know that many of the things we do, we do on a seasonal basis.  Do you pray about your crops or your livelihood?  Why not?  Whether we like it or not, we all have to attend meetings once in a while.  Do you begin with prayer?  Why not?  Esther began her journey into the unknown with 3 days of prayer and she lived in a country that obviously didn’t believe in God.  I don’t think that our situation is so much different today.

I would like to stop here for a moment and explain about how God or prayer are not directly mentioned in Esther.  You can look and you will not find mention of either but I have been referring to prayer.  If you know Jesus on a personal basis, you see His hand working all through the story of how the Jews were saved.  Not only that, but the Jewish people know exactly what they are supposed to do when they are fasting.  I think prayer goes right along with fasting in their tradition.  When Esther calls for 3 days of fasting, I think she means 3 days of fasting with prayer because that is what they did in their culture.  This is a tremendous story of how God works and we shouldn’t get bogged down by Satan telling us how this could never be because God isn’t directly mentioned.

Now look what happens next.  We have talked about this a lot.  When we get done with our prayer time, the next step is action.  When Esther got done with her fast and prayer, she had a plan and she immediately sets out to execute this complicated plan.  This plan will end up with the disgracing and executing of Haman, the villain.  It will save the Jewish people from execution.  I would like you to think about this for a moment.  Esther has not really had an original idea in her journey to this point.  Circumstances brought her to Mordecai, then to King Xerxes.  Now suddenly after 3 days of fasting she comes up with this complicated plan with many twists and turns of intrigue.  Are you thinking that she came up with this on her own?  I doubt it.  God gave her this plan.  Then she executed it even if it meant her death if it failed.

There are times when we hear how someone has this great idea on how to do something and it turns out to be better than great.  Then the person gets all sorts of praise for what they did.  We also hear about how a great basketball player practices a lot to make himself better.  Or maybe we can just go to the local coffee shop and hear how someone did this great thing or that.  I would say that these people’s claims are wrong.  God gives you these wonderful ideas.  God gives you talent to bounce a basketball.  God gives you all these things and more in your times of prayer and out of it.  However, ideas aren’t much good unless you implement them.  You should all know that there is nothing better than getting one of these ideas and then putting it into action.  Every week I write one of these sermons and I just have to marvel at how wonderfully creative our maker really is.  The craziest part to me has always been that Jesus would use someone like me to deliver the message.  He is so great!  He is so good!  I just love the Lord!

When we pray, get the message, and implement the message, then there is only one thing left.  We then get to enjoy the rewards from Jesus.  These rewards are also out of this world because there is a good chance they will not be in the form of dollars and cents.  I think that if Jesus gave us monetary rewards, it would really be an insult to us.  Why in the world would He give us money when we can have peace and happiness?  Why would we want more profits if we can have the joy of Christ along with this tremendous love?  Why would we want anything other than this 100% fulfilling relationship we can have with Jesus?  If you have been given a message, implement it in the name of Jesus today and see what happens.  You may find a goodness and kindness that you have never known before.  And if you don’t know Jesus, then confess your sins to Him and ask Him to live in your heart.  Your life will be infinitely better.

This story of Esther reminds me of a story told by Bishop Lalachan of little girl dressed in a fine white dress carrying a bouquet of flowers.  She was walking along a dusty street and she passed a little boy playing.  The boy was a mischievous imp who thought it would be fun to throw a hand full of dirt on the girl, thus soiling her pretty dress and shoes.  The girl stopped in her tracks and her face got pink and her lower lip came out like she was about to cry.  But instead, a smile broke out on her face and she reached into her bouquet and took a flower and offered it to the mean little boy.  There has never been a little boy who was any more surprised or who felt so much shame.  He hung his head as his face turned red.  His unkind, mean fun had been spoiled because in return for a handful of dirt, he was handed a pretty flower.  Wouldn’t it be something if we could all live in a world like this today?  Wouldn’t it be great if we could listen and obey as Esther did?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is your choice and yours alone.  You can either throw the dirt or you can give the flower.  Jesus wants to help you in everything, every phase, every part of your life.  Let Him take over your life and you will never, never regret it.  Jesus first loved us so we could love others.  Thank you Jesus for this tremendous love you pour out on us.  Let’s pray.