1. "So much of a life is shaped really by response to a few big crises. We might feel and believe that life is built by the big decisions we make, but looking back, it's very often shaped much more by our response to the decisions we didn't make, the ones that happened to us."

2. "Your conscience may not be infallible, it is invaluable. You need to obey your conscience."

3. "When you stand before the Lord someday to give an account, you will not account for your circumstances, but you will for whether you responded in faith."

4. "One important aspect of biblical counseling is that the alleviation of pain is not its ultimate goal. Faithfulness is. The alleviation of pain is important, but our most pressing problems are spiritual."

5. "The real battle is not even to protect your kids from the world to prepare them to be faithful followers of Christ in the world."

6. "What does it mean to say you've put your faith in Jesus if you don't follow him, if you don't repent? You'll know you've repented if you're following Jesus."

7. "Faith is inherently risky. If there were no risk, there would not be faith. Risk is what shows the value of the one we take hold of when we exercise faith."

8. "Courage is not the absence of fear. Instead, courage is fearing God more than what we might fear."

9. "This is our story, but we are not the heroes. In pretty much any passage of narrative, if putting yourself in the shoes of the protagonist is your main path to interpretation, you're on the wrong path."

10. "He is not a once in a lifetime, when I first became a Christian and then I'm on my own kind of savior. If you really understand that your greatest problems are spiritual problems, then when calamity strikes, you will repent and believe."

Observation Questions

1. According to Esther 3:1-2, what position did King Ahasuerus give to Haman, and what did the king command all his servants to do in response to Haman's promotion?

2. In Esther 3:5-6, how did Haman respond when he learned that Mordecai would not bow down to him, and what did he decide to do as a result?

3. What specific instructions were included in the decree that Haman issued in the king's name, according to Esther 3:13?

4. According to Esther 4:1-3, how did Mordecai and the Jews throughout the provinces respond when they learned of the king's decree?

5. In Esther 4:10-11, what reason does Esther give to Mordecai for why she cannot simply go to the king to plead for her people?

6. What does Mordecai say in Esther 4:14 about what will happen if Esther remains silent, and what question does he pose to her about her position as queen?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that the text repeatedly identifies Haman as "the Agagite" (Esther 3:1, 10), and how does this connect to the earlier conflict between King Saul and King Agag in 1 Samuel 15?

2. How does Mordecai's confident statement in Esther 4:14 that "relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place" demonstrate his faith in God's covenant promises, even though God is never explicitly mentioned in the book of Esther?

3. What transformation do we see in Esther between her initial response in verses 10-11 and her final response in verse 16, and what does this reveal about the nature of faith and courage?

4. How does the sermon's connection between Haman's plot and the "enmity" described in Genesis 3:15 help us understand the spiritual dimension of the crisis facing the Jewish people?

5. In what ways does Esther's willingness to approach the king as a mediator for her people foreshadow the mediating work of Christ, and how does Jesus surpass Esther in this role?

Application Questions

1. The sermon emphasized that our most pressing problems are spiritual, not circumstantial. When you face a difficult situation this week—whether conflict, disappointment, or hardship—what would it look like to prioritize addressing the spiritual dangers (fear, bitterness, doubt) over simply trying to fix the external problem?

2. Mordecai moved from hiding his Jewish identity to publicly identifying with God's people despite the danger. In what specific setting in your life (work, school, neighborhood, social media) are you tempted to hide your identity as a Christian, and what would it look like to identify more openly with Christ and His people?

3. The sermon noted that Esther's faith involved taking a risk aligned with God's promises, even without a guarantee of personal safety. What is one risk—perhaps in generosity, relationships, or sharing the gospel—that you sense God may be calling you to take, and what promise of God can anchor your faith as you step forward?

4. The Jewish people responded to crisis with fasting, weeping, and lamenting—signs of repentance. When calamity or difficulty strikes in your life, how quickly do you turn to self-examination and repentance, and what might change if this became your first response rather than an afterthought?

5. The sermon warned against putting faith in our faith or repentance rather than in Christ Himself. How can you tell the difference between trusting in the sincerity of your own spiritual efforts and actually resting in Jesus as your Savior and hope?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Genesis 3:14-15 — This passage establishes the foundational enmity between the serpent's offspring and the woman's offspring, which the sermon identifies as the deeper spiritual conflict underlying Haman's plot against the Jews.

2. 1 Samuel 15:1-23 — This account of King Saul's failure to fully obey God's command to destroy the Amalekites and their king Agag provides essential background for understanding the ancient conflict between Mordecai's and Haman's lineages.

3. Joel 2:12-17 — The sermon draws direct parallels between the Jewish response in Esther 4 and Joel's call to repentance, showing that fasting, weeping, and lamenting are the proper response to crisis.

4. Genesis 12:1-3 — God's covenant promises to Abraham that He would make a great nation and bless all families through him form the foundation for Mordecai's confidence that deliverance would come for the Jews.

5. Romans 5:6-11 — This passage shows how Christ died for the ungodly and God's enemies, demonstrating how Jesus surpasses Esther as a mediator who intercedes for those who are truly guilty.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Life Is Shaped by Our Response to Crises We Didn't Choose

II. Your Most Pressing Problems in Crisis Are Spiritual Problems (Esther 3)

III. Your Most Important Response in Crisis Is to Repent and Believe (Esther 4:1-16)

IV. Your Most Precious Hope in Crisis Is God's Appointed Savior (Esther 4)

V. Our Hope Lies Not in Our Faith or Repentance, but in Jesus Christ

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Detailed Sermon Outline

so much of a life is shaped really by response to a few big crises. So we might feel and believe that life is built by the big decisions we make, but looking back, it's very often shaped much more by our response to the decisions we didn't make, the ones that happened to us.

One example of that that comes to mind, given the terrain our passage will cover this morning, is that of Corrie Ten Boom. Survivor of one of the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. Corrie never thought of herself being made of what heroes are made of. She was a watchmaker who lived with her family home, in her family home with her father and her sister. And yet, when Jewish refugees began stumbling into her Dutch town seeking safe haven from the Nazi's murderous advance, she housed them.

And she found housing for more of them, which meant trying to figure out some system to get ration cards for them, which further pulled her in to organize resistance against the occupiers. And yet through all that, as she writes so honestly in her book, the Hiding Place, she struggled with fear. She struggled with selfishness, with self-pity. She struggled to trust God, and she continued to serve. And she and her sister, who seemed really to struggle with none of these things, sanely as she was, they were both arrested along with their father.

Corrie and her sister Betsie were eventually imprisoned in the notorious concentration camp at Ravensbrück.

But even there, Corrie and her sister, and later just Corrie, after her sister died, continued to be faithful, leading Bible studies, teaching of their hope in Jesus, keeping hope in Jesus.

Like many, that was a crisis that defined Corrie's life. But unlike many, Corrie's response defined her life even more. So for the rest of her days, she traveled the world, writing and speaking of her hope, and Jesus that she found even in that horrible camp. And her reflection looking back is a powerful one. She said, In order to realize the worth of the anchor, we need to feel the stress of the storm.

That's not bitterness, that's faith. But that's a faith that did not come easily to Corrie. That is a faith that defined her life. So, for you, how will you respond to the great crises of your life? That's what brings us this morning to one of the great crises in the Bible, the crisis of Esther chapter 3 and the beginning of a response, which is Esther chapter 4.

How will you respond well to the great crises of your life?

These chapters are going to answer that question in three observations, which will be the three points of today's sermon. First observation, that your most pressing problems in crisis are spiritual problems. That's Esther chapter three. Second, your most important response in crisis is to repent and believe, Esther four. And third, your most precious hope in crisis is God's appointed Savior, also Esther 4.

Your most pressing problems are spiritual. Your most important response is to repent and believe your most precious hope is God's appointed Savior. So whether you're eight years old or 80, I hope those are three observations that you can keep as guiding lights if you are to respond well to the great crises of your life.

Now, before we get much further, I should offer one bit of warning to those who are new to the Bible, and that is that we are gonna be doing a lot of flipping back and forth through the pages of Scripture. Because the biblical background for our passages this morning is extensive. And for you, that might feel disorienting because you're not gonna know all the passages we go to and you won't immediately see all the connections. So my advice to you is not to get lost flipping back and forth trying to figure out where Joel is or Genesis. Just stay in Esther.

But I want you to listen and consider that in the intricacy of how Scripture is put together, you might be seeing evidence of a divine author. So let's dive in. Starting with Esther 3, which you'll find on page 411, 411 of your pew Bibles, and our first point, your most pressing problems are spiritual problems. Let me summarize where we are in this book if you weren't here last week. Esther's chapters one and two that we studied last week really are the set up for the book and they can be summarized in the four banquets that happen in those chapters.

Banquet number one, for six months, King Ahasuerus wines and dines military leaders to induce them to join an assault on Greece. Banquet two, he extends that celebration to everyone in the royal city. Banquet three, his queen Vashti has her own banquet for the women, but she's summoned by a self-absorbed king to come to his banquet to show her off to his guests. She refuses. The king's advisors panic and she's deposed.

A new queen is sought in some dystopian farce of a beauty pageant, and Esther, an orphaned Jewish young woman, is coronated in a fourth banquet. And with Esther as queen, the plot against the king's life that's overheard by her uncle Mordecai can be communicated to the king, saving the king's life. And so as we talked last week, we leave chapter two with Esther as the king's queen and Mordecai in the king's debt. And so the God who is never mentioned in this book has moved all the pieces into place to rescue his people before their crisis even begins. The Persian court in these first two chapters of Esther is obsessed with appearances, absent any concern about substance, which further emphasizes the one thing we cannot see, the hand of God, which is part of what makes Esther so relevant to those of us today who also must learn to trust the hand of God that we cannot see.

Well, that's Esther chapters 1 and 2. Let's start reading in chapter 3.

After these things, King Ahasuerus promoted Esther the Agagite, sorry, promoted Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, and advanced him, and set his throne above all the officials who were with him. And all the king's servants who were at the king's gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman, for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage. Then the king's servants who were at the king's gate said to Mordecai, 'Why do you transgress the king's command?' and when they spoke to him day after day, and he would not listen to them, they told Haman, in order to see whether Mordecai's words would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew. And when Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down to pay homage to him, Haman was filled with fury.

But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone. So as they had made known to him the people of Mordecai, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus. In the first month, which is the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that is, they cast lots before Haman day after day, and they cast it month after month to the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar. Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king's laws, so that it is not the king's profit to tolerate them.

If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries. So the king took the signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews. And the king said to Haman, the money is given to you, the people also to do with them as it seems good to you.

Then the king's scribes were summoned on the thirteenth day of the first month, and an edict according to all that Haman commanded was written to the king's satraps, and to the governors over all the provinces, and to the officials of all the peoples, to every province in its own script, and every people in its own language, it was written in the name of King Ahaziah and sealed with the king's signet ring. 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 13th day of the 12th month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods. A copy of the document was to be issued as a decree in every province by proclamation to all the peoples to be ready for that day. The quarries went out hurriedly by order of the king, and the decree was issued in Susa, the citadel. And the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was thrown into confusion.

With how everything finished in Esther 2, we're expecting Esther 3 to open with accolades for Mordecai. But instead, verse 1, after these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman. Who is Haman? We don't know much yet, though we do know that his name sounds an awful lot like the Hebrew word for anger, hama. And he's descended from a man named Hammedatha and another named Agag, which we'll think about in a moment.

Now, there's two things that just don't make sense as you're reading through Esther. The first is why Mordecai won't bow down to Haman. There's plenty of bowing to superiors in the Bible. Even Abraham bowed to a Hittite king. And the second mystery is Haman's response.

Right, he gets slighted by a mid-level official and verse six, as they have made known to him the people of Mordecai, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus. Really? That's craziness.

So we need a little history lesson. Go all the way back to Exodus chapter 17 as the people of Israel were fleeing the previous attempt to wipe them out by Pharaoh in Egypt and a people called the Amalekites attacked them as they're leaving Egypt, seemingly without provocation. And here's how Moses later recounts what happens in Deuteronomy 25.

He says to them, Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. Therefore, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God has given you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven, you shall not forget.

So a few hundred years later, the people have settled into their land and God calls in their first king, Saul, son of Kish, to make good on this by attacking the Amalekites, led at the time by their king named Agag. That's all in 1 Samuel 15. But Saul only partially obeys God and so God removes Saul as king. And maybe this is beginning to come into focus for you. Because Mordecai and Esther, we discovered in chapter one, are distant descendants of Kish, the father of King Saul, and Haman, the Agagite, as we see that repeated reference here in Esther three, is apparently a descendant of King Agag.

But the only reason the text gives us for Mordecai's refusal to bow before Haman is verse four, because he was a Jew. Being a Jew would not have kept him from bowing to Gentile superiors in general, but it does seem to have kept him from bowing to this one in particular, something has clicked in Mordecai's conscience as he goes from telling Esther not to identify as a Jew in chapter two to deciding that he himself must identify as a Jew here, knowing how costly that might be. Side note, your conscience may not be infallible, it is invaluable.

You need to obey your conscience. How does this affect Haman? Well, we can see how this is not just an interpersonal conflict blown out of proportion. This is a vendetta that's generations in the making. And just like the Amalekites of old, Haman, their descendant, doesn't fight fair.

You hear his subtle scaremongering in verse 8, this sinister idea that these people are hidden everywhere. You see his deception, the accusation that these people disobey the king's laws, his failure to ever mention which people he's talking about when he speaks to the king. And you see his bribery in verse 9. Haman is pulling out all the stops in this fight against the people of God.

But there's an even deeper backstory to what's going on here. You see, back in Genesis chapter 3, after the serpent who is Satan had tempted Eve and Adam and Eve had failed that test, God says this to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. That's the gospel of Jesus Christ in seed form, that there would be enmity between the line of the woman and that of the serpent, right? People wouldn't just give in to the serpent.

And that one day from the line of the woman would come one who would crush the head of the serpent. And we read of this playing out first with Cain in the line of wickedness seeking to murder Abel because he was righteous. Pharaoh, A king who wears a serpent on his head, seeking to kill every male Israelite baby, seeking to wipe out the line of promise. Haman then doing the same thing. If you're here from a Jewish background or you're familiar with Jewish culture, what is it when Esther is read at Purim and Haman's name is mentioned that you're supposed to say?

Isn't that interesting? Then King Herod seeks to eliminate-- that was Herod. But we'll have to stop it otherwise I'll never get through the sermon.

Right. Herod-- Herod-- seeks to eliminate the promised servant-crusher, as we're going to see later on this evening, and Judas, like Haman, selling the promised one for silver. So what you see in all of this is that Haman's murderous rage is just one more chapter in a long story of Satan seeking to destroy the line of God's promise through which the Savior would one day come.

So what do we make of all of this background? Well, we realize that the people in Esther's day were not merely at risk of losing their lives.

They were not merely at risk of losing their nation. They were at risk of losing their savior. Their deepest problem was a spiritual one. And I pull that strand out because that is where Esther 3 meets our own experience at the most fundamental level. Our most pressing problems are also spiritual.

Our most pressing peril is also spiritual. Our most pressing fears should also be spiritual.

And that's true really at two different levels. First, at the most fundamental level of salvation from sin. So some of you are here this morning not because you're Christians, you don't belong to Christ, but because you're curious. And I want to say, I'm delighted you're here. I would love to help you explore that religious curiosity in any way I can.

And I would want you to know, that your most pressing problems are spiritual in nature. You may think that your most pressing problem is your loneliness, or your lack of meaning, or professional conflict, or your lack of joy. And I would agree with you that those are very real problems, but those are only symptoms of your most pressing problem. And the insatiable nature of those problems, I think, is probably a clue to the truth of that. If these were your most pressing problems, that would make you out to be a victim.

But the Bible says that you are not ultimately a victim, you are a sinner who has transgressed the law of a perfectly good God, and so the spiritual problem of needing forgiveness and restoration with your Creator is your most pressing problem.

And this is also true at a different level.

Of the Christian who does in fact have forgiveness in Christ. Right? When your problem is illness or loneliness or conflict or betrayal, the problem that should most command your attention is your spiritual problem, the fear, doubt, bitterness, or envy that could result. Right? When you stand before the Lord someday to give an account, You will not account for your circumstances, but you will for whether you responded in faith.

So if you come into my office to talk to me about your struggling marriage, everything in me wants to reassure you that I've got a plan. We can figure this out. We're going to get you around the corner.

I can't promise that. That's not ultimately my job. My job is to help you be faithful to Jesus. One important aspect of biblical counseling, like you'll find at this church, is that the alleviation of pain is not its ultimate goal. Faithfulness is.

The alleviation of pain is important, but our most pressing problems are spiritual. That is where our joy is most at stake.

I think that's a particularly important observation for those of you who have jobs that involve defeating enemies. That could be jobs in the military or law enforcement or health care or law, politics, an election, maybe. For those in jobs with enemies, we need to work extra hard to ensure that for us, our greatest ambition is faithfulness and our greatest concerns are the world, the flesh, and the devil, otherwise it is It is so easy for the ends to justify the means.

And this is an important principle for parents as well. It's very easy as a parent to get caught up in the million things involved in helping your kids grow up, from potty training to driver's ed. But the most pressing problem you are seeking to address is a spiritual problem, and we should never lose sight of that. I hope that is what dominates your prayer life. I hope that is what dominates your conversations about your kids.

The real battle is not even to protect your kids from the world to prepare them to be faithful followers of Christ in the world.

So if your most pressing problems are spiritual problems, what are you doing about that? 1 Peter 5:8 warns us that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. My family and I had the privilege this summer of watching from the roof of our car while a pride of lions hunted. And it was amazing to watch how patient they were, how cunning they were, how coordinated they were. That's a picture Peter says of what you and I are up against.

So Peter says two things. First he says, Be sober-minded. Don't lose your head and forget what the real battle's all about. And second he says, Be watchful. A church covenant says it well, we will, it says, exercise an affectionate care and watchfulness over each other and in faithfully admonish and treat one another as occasion may require.

Watchfulness over ourselves, watchfulness over each other, and it says, an affectionate care and watchfulness. Not me feeling better by pointing out your sin, but recognizing that part of following Jesus is helping other people follow Jesus. And that involves watching over their souls. So I wonder, members of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, over whose souls outside your immediate family are you providing affectionate care and watchfulness?

You see, underneath the national peril that Esther three describes is a spiritual peril, so for us, But I want you to put yourself in the shoes of these people. In this absolute monarchy, the absolute monarch has just given his absolute authority, verse 10, to Haman, the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews.

No checks, no balances, nowhere to hide, this man rules the world and he's coming for you. What are you going to do? Well, turn with me to Esther chapter 4.

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. 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. 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. 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 may take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. Then Esther called for Hattuch, 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.

Hattuch went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king's gate, and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him and the exact sum of money Haman had promised to pay into the king's treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. 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. And Hattush went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. Then Esther spoke to Hattush and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, 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 into the king these 30 days.

And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. 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. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise 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?

Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 'Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf; 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.' Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

Chapter 4 is the source of our second and third points. In point 1, we saw that your most pressing problems are spiritual problems. In point 2, your most important response is to repent and believe. We'll take each of these in turn, seeing repentance in this passage and then faith.

I think it's the transformations in Esther and Mordecai that most pop out in this text.

I mentioned Mordecai's already in chapter 3. Not only does he now identify as a Jew, publicly labeling himself as part of Haman's target in chapter 4, verse 2, but chapter 4, verse 8, he's commanding Esther to do the same, to plead on behalf of her people.

Identifying as part of God's people has always been an important aspect of being God's people.

When kids at school are making fun of Christians, a good amount of wisdom is needed to know when and how to identify as a Christian, but never identifying as a Christian is not an option. As John Milton said, I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue. In other words, Christianity only exists outside the closet. And then there's Esther's transformation. We saw in chapter one how obsessed this empire is with appearances.

Well, what is Esther's first response to Mordecai's mourning? Is a good daughter of the empire, she sends him a new pair of clothes as if he were dressed in sackcloth merely because he had nothing else to wear. And when Mordecai first looks to her for help, she essentially squeaks back, why look at me?

Everyone knows, she says in verse 11, that going to the king is unbidden, even as the queen is a death sentence. Sorry. Wish I could help.

Now, just like with the compromise that we saw in Esther last week, we should be highly sympathetic to her plight and to her fears, but that should not keep us from observing her weakness. I think, frankly, it just makes her more relatable, more like Corrie than Betsy, for those of you who know the hiding place.

And yet, by verse 16, we see an entirely different Esther. Esther's name comes from Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war. We've seen the love. Well, now this girl's about to ride to war. Taking risks, making sacrifices, determined to save her people.

Whereas Mordecai is commanding Esther in chapter 2 and in chapter 4 verse 8, Now she's the one, verse 17, giving out orders, linguistically marking that transformation.

So we see these transformations. The question is, what's underneath them? Well, for both Esther and Mordecai, I would suggest that these are transformations due to repentance. Both had sought to remain hidden. Both now realize that faithfulness requires a more courageous path.

And the text gives more hints of repentance. Look, for instance, at the Jewish people's response in verse 3: 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. Sometimes in Scripture, sackcloth and ashes are a sign of repentance. Sometimes they're merely a sign of mourning.

But that triad of fasting and weeping and lamenting occurs only one other place in the Scriptures, Joel 2 that Elizabeth read to us earlier in the service. Joel was written at least 100 years before Esther. It describes an invading force poised to destroy God's people, and the Lord says, Yet even now. Joel 2:12. Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with lamenting, and rend your hearts and not your garments.

Return to the Lord, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounded in steadfast love, for he relents over disaster.

So it is possible that this triad in both Esther and Joel's call to repentance is incidental, I think that's unlikely. It is a subtle detail in the text, yet in a book about a hidden God, subtlety really is Esther's signature style. What's more, that's not the only part of Esther 4 that echoes Joel 2. Who knows? Joel asks in verse 14 of Joel 2 whether he will turn and relent. Just like Mordecai asked Esther, who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

And it's notable that in verse 16, Esther tells Mordecai not merely to proclaim a fast, he tells her, sorry, Esther says, to gather the people, to assemble the people. Why would you do that? That seems to be the very opposite of good sense in these dangerous times. Well, most likely because that is precisely what Joel 2 commands, call a solemn assembly. Gather the people to repent.

Between Mordecai and Esther's transformations and these references to Joel's call to repentance, it seems that repentance is shot through this chapter. Now, what would they be repenting of? That's less clear. Perhaps a general worldliness that kept them from returning to Jerusalem like we talked about last week. Perhaps a desire to blend in like Mordecai and Esther.

Perhaps repentant of their failure in the past now that they see the threat posed by Haman, the Agagite. But whatever that cause, that theme is significant. When these people see calamity rising, they repent. It's true that we cannot normally draw a solid line between every calamity and a particular sin. Yet I think as modern Christians, our innate assumption is that calamity is never a result of our sin, that it never requires repentance, and that would not be true to Scripture.

So often we are faced with hardship, our first cry is an embittered, why me? But are we too quick to assume innocence before a holy God? Perhaps, like these people, our first reaction when we see calamity should be to repent. Even if that calamity was not sent as a result of a particular sin, it is nonetheless an opportunity to see and repent of our sin. As David says in Psalm 119:67, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word.

When you are afflicted, where is repentance on your to-do list?

Repentance is very simply turning from self and sin to and toward God. It applies to all of life. It has no ifs, ands, or buts, and that's important.

Are you here this morning needing to return to God? Take those promises in Joel 2 this afternoon, read them to yourself. Return, he says. Return.

You know, in a church like this, I don't think it's uncommon to be a kid who honestly wants to be a Christian. And it seems to you, you've tried to be a Christian maybe many times, but you fear it hasn't worked because things like reading your Bible and going to church and obeying your parents still aren't things you want.

If that's you, I have two words for you. The first is to be patient. If you want to follow Christ, keep asking him and he will give you what you ask. But the second word I have for you is to repent. I think many people are in your situation because they've never really repented.

They're happy to give over some of their life to Jesus, maybe even most of their life to Jesus, but not at all. And yet repentance means to follow Christ in everything. So, ask yourself, are you willing to give him control of everything?

In a small corner of the internet, there are raging debates over whether Waze or Google Maps is most reliable. I happen to know that our evening preacher from last week is in the WAYS camp, and I know that because I have seen this small corner of the internet. But what does it mean to say you've put your faith in WAYS if you don't follow the directions it gives to you? What does it mean to say you've put your faith in Jesus if you don't follow him, if you don't repent? You'll know you've repented if you're following Jesus.

After all, repentance is a crucial part of what it means to come to Christ. To become a Christian, Jesus said, is to repent and believe. Those aren't two things, they're one. But you and I have sinned. That's our biggest problem.

We have sinned against a holy and good God in ways that we've admitted and many in ways we've never admitted to ourselves. And the judgment due us is death and hell forever. Yet in his mercy, God sent his son, Jesus, to die in our place, taking the wrath of God that we deserve so that we might be forgiven, and we receive that by faith. That's the Christian gospel. But faith is more just intellectual assent.

If you trust him, you trust him with everything, including how you're going to live your life, thus faith and repentance. That is how you could be forgiven of your sins by a holy and good God because faith and repentance come together.

So it's probably not very surprising that here in Esther 4 we not merely see repentance, we also see faith. We see amazing faith. Mordecai and Esther are such examples in this regard. So let's look first at Mordecai in verse 14. This is what he says to Esther.

He says, For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from some other place. How did he know that? Well, he knew that because he trusted God's promises. But back in Genesis chapter 12, when God first called Abram, he said, I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Which is a promise reiterated to Moses about Haman's ancestors like we saw earlier and repeated through the prophets. God had promised that the people he was using to deliver a Savior for the world could never be wiped out. And Mordecai, it seems, believed that. His faith was not some kind of new age attempt to speak optimism into existence, which I'm sad to say is how many people in this world view the idea of faith. No, he simply believed what God said.

And he was willing to stake his life on that. And he invited Esther to do the same. And she rises to the challenge, doesn't she? Which I think is an even more remarkable example of faith. Because for Esther, God's promise was in no way a guarantee of her personal safety.

Thus those courageous words in verse 16: I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.

I love Esther's example of faith because of how true to our own experience her faith was. When God commands people in the Bible to do something, it often requires great faith to obey, but at least their faith is in direct response to a direct command of God. Esther had no such command, no promise by God that if she went to the king all would be well. Yet, and this is important, the risk she took was in line with the promises of God. God had promised to deliver his people.

She risked her life on a plan that could be used to deliver the people and so the risk she took, I think, was an unusually strategic one.

So let's say you take on a financial risk to give and be generous. I will not promise you, unlike so many prosperity gospel teachers, that that will work out well for you financially. But when you take risks like that, you are taking risks in line with God's promise. It is more blessed to give than to receive. And those are the very best risks to take.

If you take a risk to build a friendship in this church with someone who is very different from you, someone you would honestly never hang out with except that you're both Christians, I cannot promise you're going to have a fantastic friendship or that you're going to enjoy each other's company, but you are taking a risk in line with God's promise that we are one in Christ and those are the very best risks to take.

If you choose to risk health and life to take the gospel to people who have never heard of Jesus, or if you choose to risk your to take the gospel to a person across the office. You, like Esther, have no guarantee of personal safety, but you do have the confidence that comes to knowing that the risk you take is in line with the promises of God to bring peoples from all nations under heaven to himself. And those are the very best risks to take.

My friends, faith is inherently risky. If there were no risk, there would not be faith. Risk is what shows the value of the one we take hold of when we exercise faith. I'm not suggesting that God's promises are at risk, but most acts of faith that we encounter in this life are very much like Esther's, where you could lose what you risk without God defaulting on his promises and yet you are taking risks in line with God's promises.

That's another way in which Esther is so true to our experiences. So be like Esther. And though your personal safety cannot be guaranteed, you will not be disappointed. Even the veteran of a losing battle and a righteous war that is ultimately won takes pride in his service because in the end, the victory was just as much his.

In that Esther, I think, is a marvelous example of what courage really is. But courage is not the absence of fear. Instead, courage is fearing God more than what we might fear. By faith. As William Grinnell said, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow your master so that when the enemy comes, he comes too late.

You have no life to lose because you have given it already to Christ.

Unless I fail to notice the humility of Esther's stance. I have to think that Mordecai's words here must be in the maybe top five most misapplied Bible verses for such a time as this, right? Where we throw at our chest and convince ourselves that we alone can accomplish what God needs because he has put us here for such a time as this.

But Mordecai asks this as a question, not a statement, let alone a boast. And Esther is keenly aware that this may end very badly for her. You and I are in no way indispensable to God. His plans are in no way conditioned on our obedience. And as pleased as Satan will be if we give in like the passive Esther of verse 11, he will be equally pleased if we rise to the challenge of this self-important version of a distorted verse 14.

For such a time as this?

We should note that Esther and Mordecai sat at a pivotal intersection of salvation history when everything that God had done from the time of Abraham and his promises for the future was threatened with extinction in a day.

You and I will never be in such a time as this. So as useful as Mordecai and Esther may be as examples, that is actually not the main message this passage gives us. If it were, I think we might mistakenly think that repentance and faith are the solution to our problems rather than the proper response to our problems, that hope lies in the earnestness of our repentance or the sincerity of our faith. Which is why our third and final point is so critical. Your most precious hope is God's appointed Savior.

I appreciate what Christopher Ash says about applying biblical narrative. He says, this is our story, but we are not the heroes. In pretty much any passage of narrative, if putting yourself in the shoes of the protagonist is your main path to interpretation, you're on the wrong path. This is our story. We are not the heroes.

So in Esther. Though the examples of Esther and Mordecai are wonderful, the main point this passage is making is that our hope, well, it's not an example, it lies in God's Savior. In Luke 24, Jesus tells us that all Scripture speaks of him. The book of Esther points to Christ by establishing themes and paths that Jesus would one day walk to get us ready for him. We'll see that especially next week.

In that regard, I think another caution by Christopher Ash is useful in interpretation. We're very used to, in the Bible, one particular figure pointing to Christ, like a David or a Moses. Esther's a little more complicated. Ash says, Esther isn't so much like the much-loved Chronicles of Narnia where we have one figure, Aslan, pointing to Christ. Instead, it's more like the Lord of the Rings, where we see some of Christ in Aragorn, the forgotten king, and some of Christ in Frodo, the sacrificial bear, and some in the resurrected Gandalf.

In this book, we see patterns of Christ in both Mordecai and Esther. Mordecai trusts God's promise in the darkest of hours, even if Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. And Esther offers herself as a mediator, even as Jesus did. That means our primary application of this passage should not be one of inspiration. I can be like Esther.

But gratitude for the one she pointed to. We also need a mediator to speak before the king on our behalf. But whereas Esther's people were innocent of the accusations Haman made against them, we are very guilty, aren't we? And more of the accusations our consciences make against us. And whereas the wrathful decree by that earthly king was poorly considered and grounded in foolishness, the wrathful decree our God has made against us because of our sin is in fact grounded in His justice, which is rooted in His goodness.

Yet look to the Savior to whom Esther points.

Mordecai wondered if Esther had come to her throne for such a time as this. Galatians 4:4 says that when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son. Esther decided to risk her life, which was courageous. Jesus decided to give his life in our place because of our sin.

Just listen to Jesus in the garden with Esther's words in the back of your mind. He says, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as yous will. And then he rose and went to the cross.

Esther decided to stand for a people who rallied around her Jesus stood for his people even when they abandoned him. Esther spoke to those who were no true enemies of the king. Jesus, Romans 5 tells us, at just the right time died for the ungodly, for sinners, for God's enemies. He died for us. And though Esther has long since perished, Jesus continues to stand before his heavenly Father interceding for us.

Jesus came at just the right time, giving his life for us, who were his enemies, who abandoned him, to reconcile us with the King of Kings and to intercede for us as long as our lives will last.

My friends, what a savior we have. Why would you ever look anywhere else? And he is not a once in a lifetime, when I first became a Christian and then I'm on my own kind of savior. If you really understand that your greatest problems are spiritual problems, then when calamity strikes, you will repent and believe as Esther and Mordecai did. But you will not put your faith in your faith or in your repentance as if deliverance depends on how hard you trust or how earnestly you repent.

You will put your faith in the one you have faith in, the one you repent to follow. In Jesus Christ, our risen Lord. He's our Savior. He is our hope. And with that, we should conclude.

You will face crises in this life. And the Bible in no way minimizes them. I think one reason why Esther exists in our Bibles is to remind us that evil is real, that evil is present, that evil is eager, Yet the message of Esther is so much deeper than a simple Disney-like good triumphs over evil because evil not merely exists out there, evil exists in here. To quote Corrie Ten Boom again, if you look at the world, you'll be distressed. If you look within, you'll be depressed.

If you look at God, you'll be at rest.

Why is that?

Because as we've seen in Esther, as bad as the problems in this world might be, our most pressing problems are spiritual problems. So we respond to our spiritual problems the way we should respond to all spiritual problems with repentance and faith. But again, our faith is not in our faith or in our repentance. Our faith is in our Savior who will rescue us today from the evil within and will rescue us one day from the evil without so that the prayer that closes Psalm 10 might be finally fulfilled.

O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless, and the oppressed so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.

Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, we pray that you would give us the faith of Esther. We pray that you would give us the faith of Mordecai. We pray that faith would show in repentance, but far more than anything else, we pray that you give us their Savior, that we would put our hope, our trust, our lives in Jesus Christ our Lord, knowing that there is no more secure, no better place to put them. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.