It's Time

In other words, Mordecai, this is a dangerous thing you’re suggesting. Do you want me to be killed? That’s what happens to anyone he doesn’t call unless he happens to extend his scepter, and he hasn’t called me for a while.

Esther doesn’t seem to get the point, so Mordecai spells it out for her.

Look at Mordecai. First of all, it’s partly his fault the Jews are in this mess. There is nothing to suggest that Mordecai treated any other dignitary like he treated Haman. But, of course this response of Haman is an echo of what happened back in 1 Samuel 15 when Saul was supposed to have destroyed the Amelekites and spared Agag the king. Haman is called an Agagite, and Mordecai is from Kish, Saul’s family. So there’s an enmity between these two that has never been settled. Haman would like to settle it by destroying all the Jews.

But back to Mordecai, he sees the real danger here and he also sees the hand of God in events that have brought Esther to the position of queen. Esther is at the right place at the right time to do the right thing that will tip the scales in the right direction. Listen again to his instruction to her: 13 And Mordecai told them to answer Esther: "Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace any more than all the other Jews.

14 "For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"

Mordecai sees the big picture, doesn’t he. He has the gift of insight that is rare. He sees clearly that Esther has a choice, but he also sees the consequences of her choices. She can try to save herself and she will lose. She can give up herself and try to save others and she might lose, but she might also win! Choice number one seems like the safe one, but actually it is the most ruinous of all. Choice number two seems like taking the greatest risk, but actually, it is the only worthy choice she can make.

Mordecai’s confidence is great here: Esther, if you blow it, deliverance will arise from another source, but you and your father’s house will perish! Esther, don’t take the coward’s way. It will end in failure. Take the honorable way. Why do you think you are where you are right now?

It is a tough choice. It is a risky choice. She could be killed. But she’s the one person who is in the best place possible to make the difference.

A dear friend of ours, Terry Baker, told about a time when he was young and he loved to sit in the front seat of his grandparent’s car and change the gears while his grandfather drove. They had a Corvare, which Ralph Nader had once called “unsafe and any speed.” One time when his parents and he and his sister were all going home together in that car, his granddad offered to let him sit up front and shift the gears, but Terry just did not want to do it. He cried when they tried to persuade him to and kept begging to sit in the back with his sister. Well, they let him. On the way home they had an accident and his grandmother was sitting where Terry would have been and she was killed in the accident. It appeared that whoever had been sitting there would have most likely died. Terry suffered for years about that, thinking he had caused his grandmother to be killed. When Terry was 40 he discovered he had cancer. He had moved with his wife and son to Powell, WY, and was working as an editor for a newspaper there. When he realized his condition was terminal he pulled out all the stops and began writing editorials about his cancer and sharing his faith in Christ as much as possible. The impact was amazing on their little town. Terry preached a sermon just a few months before he died saying, “Now I know why I was spared in that accident as a child. It was so that I could be here at just such a time as this.” Terry said that before he knew he was dying, he didn’t share the gospel with much urgency. But now, knowing that the time is short, he said, it really makes it clear, nothing is more important that being ready to meet the Lord and helping others to be prepared as well.