Planned On Purpose Series

Tonight I want to start off with a deep question. As I ask it and put it up on the wall, I want you to just sit and think for a moment and write your thoughts on your sermon outline. The question I want us to think about for a moment is, “What is your purpose in life.” Now, I want to stress the “your” in that question. I am not asking what God’s purpose for life is in general for everyone. There are no wrong answers and I am not going to ask you to share them or turn them in, it’s just for you, so write whatever comes to mind. So, take a moment and just jot down your thoughts.

***Wait a few moments***

This can be a very difficult question to answer. I’m sure if we went around the room we would have a ton of different answers. Even though it is a difficult question, everyone is asking it. So many people today are living through their lives thinking, “I have no purpose.” It’s so easy to think that you are just floating through life, not doing anything, not affecting anyone, and feeling like you have nothing to offer the world and the people around you. Even if you believe in God, it’s easy to think, “God can’t use me because I’m dumb, or boring, or whatever!”

Well, this isn’t further from the truth as we are going to look at tonight. God does have a plan for your life and great plans at that. Psalm 139:16 declares that God saw you before you were even born. Every day of your life was recorded in His book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. In other words, God has a purpose for your life that is planned out, step by step!

Tonight I want to spend some time exploring this question of God’s purpose for your life by looking at the story of a woman in the Bible named Esther. Specifically, we are going to be looking at Esther 4:1-17 but before we can read that we have to know some of the background to what is going on in this story.

The story of Esther takes place in the Persian Empire under that reign of a king whose name was Xerxes. The beginning of the book opens up with King Xerxes throwing this huge party for seven days at which he invited every man in the kingdom. There was plenty of alcohol there and basically, for seven days, the people sat around and drank.

On the last day of the party, King Xerxes thought it would be a great idea to get the Queen (she was throwing a party of her own for all the women), put her crown on her head, and have her come and be “gazed upon” by all the men in the kingdom because she was so beautiful. Come on girls, how many of you think that would be fun at a party, to just stand there while guys just ogled you and drooled over you like a piece of meat? Well, as you might expect, she said no, which made the king a little upset. So he banished the queen from the kingdom and decided to choose another queen who was “more worthy.”

In order to pick a new queen, King Xerxes and his officials decided to hold a kingdom wide beauty pageant to pick the best woman of them all. This is where Esther comes into the story. Esther, who was a Jew, had been living in Persia with her uncle Mordecai because her parents had died. So because she was there, she, along with all the other young virgins in the kingdom, was brought to the palace and underwent 12 months, yea, a whole year, of beauty treatments before they could even see the king. When those 12 months had ended and it came time for Esther to go before King Xerxes he liked her more than any of the other women and declared her Queen of Persia. Keep in mind that throughout this process she never told the King or any of the officials that she was a Jew.

Well, to make a long story short, some time later, this guy Haman was promoted in the kingdom and was basically made the second most powerful man in Persia. Because of this, the people would bow down to him and show him respect any time he passed by…except for Mordecai. This infuriated Haman to the point where he basically became the first Hitler. He hated Mordecai so much that rather than just go after him, he decided to go after the entire Jewish population. One day, he sat down with the King and convinced him that there was this “certain race of people” who refused to obey the king that deserved to be annihilated. He also told the King that he would give 375 tons of silver, which would equal about $67 million dollars in our culture, if that certain race was killed. To this, the King agreed and the order was issued to the people. It’s here that we can pick up our Bibles and turn to Esther 4:1-14 and pick up the story.