How Brave Are We?

Sermon Title: How brave are we?

Scripture Text: Esther 7:1-10

Quote:

Life is an Echo. What you send out, comes back. What you sow, you reap. What you give, you get. What you see in others, exists in you (us). (Zig Ziglar)

There’s a lot that has happened before our text begins today. Looking back we see that Queen Vashti, the daughter of the Babylonian King that was conquered by King Xerxes is the first wife we see. During a drunken party King Xerxes asks Queen Vashti to come before the drunken party to show off her beauty. This was an insult because she was to come scantily dressed or maybe nude to show her beauty. She said no to him and was banished. Queen Vashti was maybe the first feminist.

Queen Ester was then picked to be the next Queen. They say it wasn’t all together her physical beauty but her godly beauty that drew her to the King.

The new Queen had a cousin, uncle or husband that worked in the palace. His name was Mordecai. They say he could have married her not as a wife but as protection from other men.

Haman got a ruling from the King that as he passed by people would have to bow down to him. Mordecai wouldn’t bow down to Haman. He said that he only bowed down to his God. Thus we have a feud between the two of them.

Haman got the king to send out a decree, that couldn’t be rescinded, that all the Jews could be killed and all they had could be taken from them. The decree was dated to take place in a year. It would take that long for the decree to get throughout the Kingdom normally.

Queen Esther invited the King and Haman to her banquet where she started to win over the King to save her people, the Jews, from being killed.

And our story continues:

Scripture: Now hear the reading of God’s Word.

Esther 7:1–10 NLT

So the king and Haman went to Queen Esther’s banquet. 2 On this second occasion, while they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, “Tell me what you want, Queen Esther. What is your request? I will give it to you, even if it is half the kingdom!”

3 Queen Esther replied, “If I have found favor with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request, I ask that my life and the lives of my people will be spared. 4 For my people and I have been sold to those who would kill, slaughter, and annihilate us. If we had merely been sold as slaves, I could remain quiet, for that would be too trivial a matter to warrant disturbing the king.”

5 “Who would do such a thing?” King Xerxes demanded. “Who would be so presumptuous as to touch you?”

6 Esther replied, “This wicked Haman is our adversary and our enemy.” Haman grew pale with fright before the king and queen. 7 Then the king jumped to his feet in a rage and went out into the palace garden.

Haman, however, stayed behind to plead for his life with Queen Esther, for he knew that the king intended to kill him. 8 In despair he fell on the couch where Queen Esther was reclining, just as the king was returning from the palace garden.

The king exclaimed, “Will he even assault the queen right here in the palace, before my very eyes?” And as soon as the king spoke, his attendants covered Haman’s face, signaling his doom.

9 Then Harbona, one of the king’s eunuchs, said, “Haman has set up a sharpened pole that stands seventy-five feet tall in his own courtyard. He intended to use it to impale Mordecai, the man who saved the king from assassination.”

“Then impale Haman on it!” the king ordered. 10 So they impaled Haman on the pole he had set up for Mordecai, and the king’s anger subsided.

THE WORD OF GOD

FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD

THANKS BE TO GOD

Summation:

Mordecai’s statement to Queen Ester: “Perhaps You Were Born for Such a Time as This.”

I can say the same thing to us: “Perhaps You (we) Were Born for Such a Time as This.”

1 Peter 4:12:

Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you.

I say Buckle up it’s going to turn out OK because God said so:

Romans 8:28 NLT

28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

God has placed us in Jobs, Positions, given us resources and education that most times isn’t only a Master Degree to be his representative wherever we are. God has opened opportunities for us to optimize his purpose in our life.

-Don’t let Him down!