As we listen to God in Scripture we want to get a better grip on how we live for Him in the secular world, eg at work; don’t we? And two old testament books in particular tell us about someone living for God in a highly secular situation. One is Daniel; the other is Esther, whose story our Jewish friends celebrate in the joyful Purim celebration each year – the nearest Jewish equivalent to Britain’s November 5!
Esther tells of a girl from God’s people taken away forcibly from home to the Persian capital; after God has allowed Jerusalem to be captured, and its temple – God’s temple – destroyed. In fact that temple only ever started functioning again, humanly speaking, because of what this woman does; so it’s a divinely-recorded example of God working to care for His people via one woman who, through no fault of her own, is trapped in an unbelievably degrading, sexist, sordid, powerless and dangerous secular situation. God chooses to work through the weak (1 Cor 1:27)…
When I say Esther is someone in a deeply ungodly and dehumanizing situation, I’m thinking of chapter 1. In one way it’s strangely contemporary, oddly reminiscent of how the hiphop scene can be: lots of bling (1:4,7), big issues of respect (1:17-18), and a world where women can be treated as no more than toys for men. In 1:10-11 the emperor’s queen at that time, Vashti, gets summoned to perform for his crowd of drunken men… Presumably she was asked to show a bit of cleavage, but what she showed was independence; and that society being what it was, the sugar hit the fan (1:12,16-19).
And then the story has an odd three year gap; probably because it’s the time when secular history tells us King Xerxes invaded Greece and was defeated (see the `300` films). King Xerxes returns home and he hasn’t got a queen any more. So what happens is pretty hideous(2:2-4); all over the empire, girls are snatched from home, pulled out of any relationships they may have, so that this horny old emperor can have sex with them one night each; and if they don’t catch his fancy, as most won’t, they’ll spend the rest of their lives in his harem (2:8, 13-14). Esther gets snatched into this appalling process – and God didn’t rescue her. As it happens, however, the emperor fancies her, she becomes Miss Persian Empire and ends up as the queen (2:17) – which isn’t that great, since if she enters the emperor’s presence unsummoned she will be killed (4:11). What this book reveals, then, is how God can do something spectacularly good with someone normal but courageous even in a desperately sordid situation.
Now there’s something else going on in this history. It’s a curious book to have in the Bible, because God’s name doesn’t appear anywhere. And not only is God out of the picture (as we might say) in that sense; Esther is about someone surviving & still obeying God when He’s seemed completely inactive, in fact He’s done the opposite of what anyone would have wanted.
Like Daniel, the background to this book is the catastrophe that has come upon Jerusalem. In 2 Samuel 6 someone touches God’s Ark and is immediately struck dead; in Daniel 1, in contrast, the Babylonians who destroy Jerusalem remove the Temple’s treasures and put them in the temple of their own god; and God does absolutely nothing. But we see in Esther, and repeatedly in Daniel too, how they both find in very practical, secular reality that, despite all that has happened, and the apparent total absence of God’s caring control, God is still, quite literally, the permanent Lord over all kings. A lesson for us when we maybe feel God is amazingly inactive: Be strong, be faithful, wait for the big picture – He’s still there!
But the book of Esther takes this a stage deeper than Daniel’s, because in Daniel there are several miracles. In Esther, although God is vitally at work, it is, we may say, `covertly’. There is hardly any `direct’ supernatural involvement: just one vital coincidence, God’s silent overruling in giving Xerxes a stray thought at a crucial moment (6:1) when much prayer and fasting is going on – and that changes his actions and redirects the Jews’ history. But that is all. So this can be God’s Word for us about how we go on living for Him when He seems totally inactive and silent; how do we handle that?
Of course when that happens, when God seems totally silent, I have to ask myself, is there any reason in me? But the answer may well be no. Sometimes, God is being silent & inactive, not because of any failing on my side, but just for my longterm good, because lessons are learned & growth happens in the wilderness that can’t happen anywhere else – and certainly not in heaven! Faith says that no experience with our loving God can be wasted, even when He seems to be most not there. But that can be very hard to handle in faith; and in such situations we really need to support each other.
I do still need to look into my heart and think: maybe there is some reason for God’s silence that I should work on. Esther’s place in Scripture is right after Ezra and Nehemiah, about those Jews who went back in faith to rebuild Palestine. And that was hard; and they made mistakes. But eventually their faith led to Jerusalem and its temple being rebuilt. The book of Esther, in contrast, is about those Jews who didn’t go back to Palestine, staying behind instead in the Persian capital. Might they in general have been people who deliberately chose the affluence & comfort of the capital of the godless emperor, rather than returning to the land God had given them to rebuild His temple, in the one place where He had clearly stated His presence would be in that era? Are these the ones whose hearts had gone a bit cold? Is it unsurprising, then, that in this book about them, God’s name is not mentioned, and His supernatural power seems absent?
Because in the end these folk who stayed behind ended up being secretive about their identity (2:10,20); their identity as God’s people got more and more muted. I find this very challenging: which kind of person am I? And what this story tells me is how in the end I can’t get away with that: for these people too, the time arrived when dangerous faithfulness finally became essential. Maybe God will say to some of us, through this book: Practise being bold! Call on My Spirit’s strength within you, and then live out your Christian identity!
How then does the story go on? It’s God’s world, but here’s Esther living in a deeply degrading & sexist situation, where God might seem to have vanished and the supernatural hasn’t happened. But what happens is God saves the entire Jewish nation through this one woman’s discipleship & bravery. (We can follow the action particularly in 3:1-4:16.) So what do we learn about a woman who God uses so vitally in this terrible situation?
Let’s flag up two practical things. First, 4:16: even in a time when God seems silent & inactive, Esther keeps up the vital disciplines of prayer and fasting. In the Bible God’s people fast at moments that are particularly crucial, and we should too. Jesus says `when you fast`, not if (Matt 6:16). Do I? When our church faces danger, or a big decision? When we’re starting Christianity Explored or Alpha? (Fasting maybe from food, or maybe from something else – social media, TV?) Or when we hear serious news of the Church, of persecuted brothers and sisters, elsewhere?
Fasting seems sometimes to release God’s blessing (see Matt 6:18). Roger Forster tells of a ministry team who after six fruitless months fasted a month, and then saw 25 people turn to Christ in five months. Might one of the ways God wants you to make a silent difference in your church be to fast for His blessing? Having said that, it’s important that fasting isn’t a way of earning God’s blessing, an especially effective way to twist God’s arm to get what we want. I know myself that that’s how it can feel; if I’ve fasted then I should get my sweeties as a result… No: fasting is first of all an offering to God, not a way to get things, and it’s a sign that God has established of our seriousness. Won’t it be a nuisance (I tend to think) to fast and feel weak or constipated or whatever that day or the next? Yes, it will! And that’s why we do it. As Forster says, it’s a sign of the importance we place on seeing God’s kingdom come, that we take it this seriously; we’re saying to God, I can do without food but I can’t do without You.
I wonder, if more of us fasted from time to time, how we would notice the difference; the greater sense that our church is marked by passion for seriousness for God, His Word and His gospel, that we’re not just people who happen to come on Sundays. Jesus promises that, when we fast, our Father who sees what’s done in secret will reward us. And that’s true. It’s one of God’s key ways forward for tough times. And we all have these!
(There’s a post with a bit more on fasting on this site in `Other Useful Stuff` – originally written as a handout for my church.)
And then the second practical thing: Esther’s bold obedience of faith in 4:14-16. Like we’ve seen, Esther has been accustomed to hiding her identity as a member of God’s people (2:10). Now God says: step out, stand up, take your chances in open confession of that identity and of the God you worship. And it’s dangerous (`If I perish, I perish`, she says); but she knows Who she belongs to, and what that God is like, and because of that she takes her stand.
And what happens? Our loving God comes through. Not immediately, but at the right time. And we notice how He does: this one woman steps out in courage, and God meets that, not through some huge, spectacular miracle – in that sense things don’t change – but through just a tiny coincidence, the king remembering something at the crucial moment (2:23, 6:1-3, 7:1-10, 8:3-8). And through that tiny `coincidence` the entire Jewish nation are saved; and, noticeably, it results also from a single good deed by Esther’s uncle Mordecai earlier on, that seemed at the time to have produced nothing good at all (6:3). Have we sometimes felt we’ve done good and it’s been completely wasted? Particularly at those times when God seems inactive? What is God saying to us about this through Esther?
So then: the books of Esther and Daniel are both about people surviving & obeying God in a very, very secular situation; and one where God seems to have stepped right back into inactivity. And genuine disaster has come, upon God’s sinful people the Jews. But what Esther finds, sooner or later, and Daniel too, is the hugely joyful thing that, as they take their stand boldly in prayerful, obedient faith, God comes through. And something happens that saves the entire nation, and is recorded for all humankind for the next 2500 years.
I suspect such things happen to most or all of us sometimes. Sometimes through no fauIt of our own, just as Esther was in this situation through no fault of her own. And this book is teaching us: in the end you’ll be able to look back and see that God came through. And it’s as we feed on the memory of what God’s Word has said to us that He will get it into our heads: `If God is for us, who can be against us?` So on the one hand let’s thank him: He came through for Esther; He will for us. And then on the other: because of that, He calls us like Esther to be willing to stand up for his glory and his kingdom…
Let’s pray: This week, Lord, I want Your miraculous strength; please empower me to be bold in living for You. By the strength of Your Spirit, who loves to partner with the weak things of this world to build Your glorious kingdom! Amen!
