How God Changes The Unchangable Series

How God Changes the Unchangeable

Series: Letting God Guide You

May 22, 2005

Problems! You got um! I’ve got um! All God’s children got problems! Sometimes problems are small and quickly solved… sometimes problems overwhelm us. It’s like the guy who had 4 long distance calls before he could get out the door to go to work …all of them had problems that needed his attention…and all of them wanted him to catch a plane and have him come to help… he skipped breakfast only to find out that his car wouldn’t start. So he called a taxi. While he was waiting, he got another call from someone else with a problem. Finally the taxi came and the driver asked…”Where do you want me to take you?” He said, “It doesn’t matter, I’ve got problems everywhere!”

Ever had that problem? Problems are everywhere! We deal with them every moment of everyday… from computers crashing, to kids who need rides that we can’t give them. Problems can be overwhelming at times, but if you think about it… problems give meaning to life. For example, the main obstacle a powerboat has to overcome, is water against the propeller… but then again if it wasn’t for the resistance of water against the propeller… the boat couldn’t move!

· The problem of ignorance gives meaning to education.

· Health problems… give meaning to medicine.

· The problem of social disorder gives meaning to government…

Problems give life creative tension! Think about the great things that have come about because of problems… for example… most of the Psalms were written out of great difficulty. Most of the N.T. was written in prisons….

· Bury a person in the snows of Valley Forge and you get a George Washington.

· Raise him in total poverty, and you get a Abraham Lincoln

· Strike him down with infant paralysis and he becomes Franklin D. Roosevelt.

· Have him born in a society filled with racial discrimination and you get a Booker T. Washington, George Washingtom Carver, or a Martin Luther King Jr.

· Call him a slow learner, write him off as uneducable… and you get an Albert Einstein.

Most people want to run from their problems… but because problems are such a large part of life, they end up running from life!

So… the idea isn’t to run from your problems… but to embrace and learn from them. That’s what we’re going to try and do today!

Because as we’ll soon learn, Esther and King Xerxes have a big, (and seemingly insurmountable) problem. READ Esther 8:1-7 (NCV)

The ‘gig’ was up! Esther had just revealed that she was Jewish, and the person who was out to kill her (the Kings Queen), his honored servant Mordecai, AND the entire Jewish race… was none other than his most trusted Chancellor… Haman! This was treason of the greatest kind! The King is so angry… He stomps out. But it gets worse for Haman. Knowing that his goose is cooked, he falls on his knees before Esther. Begging for her mercy,”I had no idea that you were of Jewish blood! It was nothing personal, it’s just that terrible old Jew who sits at the palace gates and refuses to…”

Esther: “For your information, that old Jew is my father!”

Shocked again, he grovels at the couch Esther was laying on, nearly covering her body. It was at that moment that the King comes back in, and thinks that Haman is now molesting his wife! Now he’s really ticked off! Immediately he has Haman hauled off and stuck on the very pole that Haman intended to impale Mordecai on.

But even though Haman is dead, the Jews aren’t in the clear. Haman had tricked King Xerxes into signing the extermination of the Jews into law! And this just wasn’t any law… it was the “Law of the Medes and the Persians”… sealed with the Kings own signet ring! It was a law that couldn’t be broken… not even by the King Himself. Folks! We gotta problem! I’m reminded of the advise that President Eisenhower gave to President John F. Kennedy on his Inauguration Day. He said, ”You’ll find no easy problems ever come to the President of the United States. If they’re easy to solve, somebody else has already solved them.”

The problem King Xerxes is faced with… is a doozy! Imagine this morning if you were “King of the World for a Day”, what would you do? I’ve told people that if I was “King of the World” for a day, in a perfect world… I’d make everyone get rid of their Chevy’s and their Fords and force them to buy a Honda. But then this isn’t a perfect world is it? Ask yourself, “How would you go about solving the problems of this world? How do you go about solving the problems of your life?”