Making Right Choices
Series: Letting God Guide You
April 17, 2005
Last week we started a series of messages from the book of Esther. Esther’s unique in that, even though it’s a book in the bible, it never uses the name of God. But that doesn’t mean God’s not at work. He may not be specifically mentioned, but His invisible hand is seen on every page of Esther’s story. Esther’s written from God’s perspective. We see the events on earth from God’s point of view.
In the same way… you & I can’t see God, but see Him or not, He’s here working in our lives. Last week I introduced you to 5 people from the book of Esther, each of them representing a different way that God works to direct and guide us in life…
1. King Xerxes illustrated the fact that God can use my ignorance to guide me, so I need to gain insight.
2. Queen Vashti shows that God can use silence to guide me, so I need to learn to be quiet.
3. Mordecai: (Esther’s uncle) shows that God can guide me using (so called) “coincidences”… so I need to pay attention.
4. Esther herself, shows that God will use my brokenness if I let him… so I need to stay humble
5. The evil Haman (the villain of our story) illustrates that God can use my enemies to guide me, but only if I resist revenge.
So last week, we talked about God’s part in giving us direction in life. Today, I want to talk about YOUR part in finding your way in life. Because even though God is all-knowing, and even though He sees the future… He never forces us to do His will. He never takes away our freedom of choice.
God sets the stage for us to succeed in life, but we have to cooperate. So there are some decisions that we need to make in life, if we’re going to follow His will. I want to talk to you about your choices in life.
Every person here this morning is being constantly bombarded with a barrage of decisions and choices. This morning you got up and made some decisions on whether you were going to go to church or lounge around the house like a couch potato. You choose what you were going to wear (by the looks of things, some of you made good choices, others of you… well.) When you came into this building, you decided where you were going to sit. Up near the speakers, where you risked damaging your eardrums, or way in the back, so you can escape out the back door quicker after church.
Our journey through life is an almost dizzying process of decision making. And with every choice, there’s an element of risk involved.
Some choices are monumental and life changing, others are kind of trivial. What career will I pursue? -vs.- a crème filled donut or a bagel? Some choices you make, will take you & your family far away from God… some will draw you closer to Him. Some of the decisions you make… you’ll eventually regret and wish you never made. Other decisions, you’ll thank God that you followed His will. But regardless of whether they’re big decisions or small ones…one thing is true…we make our decisions and then our decisions make us!
This morning we find Esther at a crossroads in her life. She had to make a decision that would change her life and the lives of millions of others. Let me explain… When we first meet King Xerxes, he’s the great and powerful King of Persia… but at the end of chapter 1 he ends up drunk, threatened by his wife’s resistance and scrambling to stay in charge.
Esther 2:1 in the A.S.V. reads this way… READ 2:1. Vs. 16 of this same chap., tells us that all this happened in the 7th year of his reign. Let’s figure this out a minute. Esther 1:3 informs us that his drunken celebration happened in the 3rd year of his reign. So between chap. 1 & chap. 2 … 4 years had gone by. History books tell us that during these 4 years, King Xerxes made an attempt to conquer Greece that back-fired on him. He was defeated and returned back to the capital of Babylon (Susa) with his tail between his legs. With all that happening, his anger against Queen Vashti is long since forgotten. He begins to think about her beauty, the warmth of her arms, the comfort of her understanding. (Sounds like us huh guys?, After we’ve had a fight with our wives. The couch gets a little cold after awhile and we want back in the bedroom!) His spirits low… Xerxes sinks into a deep depression. He’s looking for a companion.
Observing all this, his advisors are thinking, “If we don’t do something quick, he’s going to go back to Vashti, and if he does that, our goose is cooked! Heads are gonna roll (lit.)! And since we’re the ones who suggested he get rid of her in the first place…we gotta keep that from happening!” So they suggest a remedy for their sulking sultan…”Hey, king! Why don’t you hold a beauty contest? Yeah… we’ll search the entire kingdom for beautiful young virgins and then you can have your pick of a wife!” (READ 2:2-4 NIV)
Exit Vashti… Enter Esther. A vacancy opened up at the top of the King’s household and God has just the person waiting in the wings. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Now keep in mind that at this point Esther doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what’s been happening in the royal palace. She doesn’t know a thing about the drunken party, or this royal edict that’s going to totally change her life. Aren’t you glad that even though you haven’t got a clue about what’s going to happen tomorrow. You don’t have a clue about the decisions going on in your bosses office… or your mates mind… that God does?
He’s working behind the scenes… moving, pushing, re-arranging events and changing minds… until even the most awful situations turn out to be a perfect set-up for His plans!
READ Esther 2:8. Here’s Esther living in complete obscurity, minding her own business, when all the sudden there’s a knock at the door and she’s taken by force to join a beauty pageant. Her only crime was that she was drop-dead gorgeous. I can only imagine her fear as she was forced to leave the only family she knew, spend a year shut away in a harem…culminating in a night with a heathen king.
The only bright side to this whole thing is found in vs. 12 (READ 2:12). Did you hear that ladies? 12 months of beauty treatments! 6 mo. of being massaged myrrh oil, six months of perfumes and cosmetics! A full year of nothing by lounging around getting pampered, indulged & fussed over. No dirty dishes, no dirty screaming kids…complete relaxation, no cares, no worries… SNAP OUT OF IT! I could tell I was losing some of you ladies in dreamland!
Now I’m a guy and I admit, I don’t understand how having a year long beauty treatment would be paradise. I mean, how you can you ladies take boiling hot wax, pour it onto your upper thigh, rip the hair out by the root… and still be afraid of a spiders? It doesn’t make sense to me!
Anyway, at the end of the year… Esther got her chance with the King… It kind of reminds me of the reality show, “The Bachelor”. You’ve got all these women fawning over you, vying for your attention and affection… and at the end of the day you choose one. Only in this reality show, the Jewish historian Josephus tells there were over 400 women. Can you imagine the cat-fights that were going on in the harem living quarters?
In the end though, King Xerxes choose Esther above all of them! (READ vs. 17) Esther was crowned Ms. Persia. My guess is that she was chosen not because she was like the rest of the women…but because she different! She probably reminded him a little bit of Queen Vashti. She had a touch of class about her. Esther had a beauty that was more than skin deep. Because she was herself, she won the Kings heart over and he fell deeply in love with her.
As we’ll soon find out, even though Esther was beautiful on the outside, she was even MORE beautiful on the inside. Listen up ladies, because there’s a lot of pressure on you today to spend all your time working on the outside. The world wants you to strut your stuff! “If you got it… show it! If you don’t have it…get it!” Just to let you know, you won’t find that attitude in the bible. The world encourages you to wear seductive clothing, spend lots of money on cosmetics, makeovers, a lift here, a tuck there… Let me share with you what the bible encourages you to do… READ I Tim.2:9,10… 9 And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. 10 For women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do.” I Tim. 2:9,10 (NLT)
The word ‘Modest’ here is grk. ‘aidos’ and lit. means, ‘shamefacedness’; to have a sense of shame. In otherwords, instead of becoming conceited or vain about our looks, instead of a having a “show-off”, “strut your stuff” kind of attitude…the bibles telling us that there ought to be a sense of humility regarding our bodies and our physical appearance.
Does God want you to be frumpy? Does He want you to put your hair in a bun, and wear a dress down to your ankles? No. That’s not what it’s saying here at all. He’s just saying that as a woman of God, you need to be careful, because it’s so easy to draw attention to yourself. Without realizing that when you do that, your drawing attention away from God!
READ I Peter 3:3-5 “Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty that depends on fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. 4 You should be known for the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. 5 That is the way the holy women of old made themselves beautiful.” - I Peter 3:3-5 (NLT). I believe Esther’s one of the ‘holy women of old’ that Peter’s referring to here. Women whose beauty depended on their spiritual maturity and development, not just their outward looks. Ladies, God doesn’t want your confidence to come from how you look on the outside, but by what you do and who you are… by the beauty of your character.
It wasn’t long after Esther became queen that trouble rears it’s ugly head. Haman is promoted to a position of prominence and power. Being the insecure little weasel he was, Haman loved it when people bowed down to him. In fact, He expected it… so when he found out that Esthers uncle Mordecai wouldn’t bow… He was enraged. He went to King Xerxes and got him to sign a law that all Jews would be exterminated on a certain day. Xerxes didn’t realize that his new wife was Jewish, and so in effect he was signing his wife’s own death certificate in the process.
When Mordacai finds out what Haman has done, He’s overtaken with grief and immediately contacts Esther. Let’s pick up the story in Esther 4:4-8. (READ) In response, Esther sends an urgent message back to Mordacai, that basically says, “Uncle, there’s only one problem with pleading our case with the king…If you go into the Kings presence unannounced and uninvited…you’re dead meat, unless by some miracle he holds up his golden scepter. I haven’t been called in 30 days. So if I go into his courtyard I could be risking death, and there goes our chance of saving our people. I don’t know what to do!”
Do you see the catch 22 she’s in? Do you sense the anxiety and anxiousness of the moment? It’s decision time. What’s she going to do? Maybe it’s decision time in your life. Your heads not on the chopping block (or maybe it is!)…but nonetheless, you need to make a critical decision.
· Maybe it’s a financial decision that could mean prosperity or poverty…
· It could be a health decision for either you or an ailing parent…
· Maybe you’re making a decision about a relationship… should I continue it, or should I break it off?
Whatever the decision, you’re on the hot seat and you can’t get out of it. So whatcha gonna do? Well, if it helps, I want to give you 4 Choice Observations about Choices this morning from the experience of Esther. And they come from Mordacai as He sends a message to Esther in vs. 4:12-14 READ…
Here’s the 1st choice observation about choices…
1. You have the POWER and the PRIVILEGE of choice.
Write that down in your notes this morning… Esther was put in the position of great responsibility and Mordacai knew it. She had both the power and the privilege to make a huge decision.
The fact of the matter is, where you are today is a result of the decisions you made yesterday… and where you’ll be tomorrow will be a result of the decision you make today. That’s a scary statement… but it’s true! It’s like a sign found in the Canadian Northlands, where vehicles leave deep ruts in the muddy roads that freeze over in the winter… “Driver, please choose carefully which rut you drive in… you’ll be in it for the next 20 miles.” In life, you’re free to choose the ruts you drive in, but be careful, because you’ll be in them for a long time!
God could have programmed us like computers or given us a set of instincts like animals, but instead He gave us a free-will. It was risky business on His part, because the capacity to choose also gives us the ability to choose wrongly! Esther had the power and the privilege of choice… but what would she chose?
Ultimately we’re all responsible for the choices we make. I know a lot of people who don’t want to take responsibility for their choices… “It’s my parents fault I am what I am today!” Of course that was true when you were a child… no one asked you whether you wanted cloth or paper when it came to diapers… you were a slave to your conditions…But as we grow older… life is based less on our conditions and more on our choices. We made the choices that got us where we are today!
When Mordacai heard of Esther’s dilemma He sent a message to her. In it He said vs.13, “Just because you live in the king’s palace, don’t think that out of all the Jewish people you alone will escape.” In otherwords, “Esther you’ve got a choice to make, and whether you realize it or not, you won’t escape the consequences of your choice. You’ll be responsible for the outcome either way.!” Even though she was the Queen, Mordacai was filling her in on her responsibilities.
The 2nd observation I want to make about choices is…
2. The SOONER you make the right choice, the better.
You know what the 1st response of most of us is when faced with a crucial decision… we PROCRASTINATE! We back-off, bail out or beat around the bush! Anything but face it! I’ve been asking myself lately “Why do I delay at the point of decision” (because I’m terrible at procrastination!). I think I know why… FEAR. It’s like someone said, “Indecision is the mark of a fearful mind.”
You say, “Fear of what?” Well, the fear of rejection for starters! We think to ourselves… “What if I fail? What if I embarrass myself?” If you have fear in your life about a decision you need to make… welcome to the human race! It’s normal. If you’re never afraid… you’re a fool, because there are some things you need to be afraid of. The important thing is how you deal with your fear. Do you let it paralyze you or do you face it? See, courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s moving ahead in spite of your fear!
Esther, was afraid. I guarantee you she was afraid… but she didn’t let her fear freeze her! She faced it head on! Before you make any important decision, you need to go through 4 stages…
1. The FACT stage. This is where you gather all the information available to you. Find out what you need to know, what you already know and what you don’t know. Prov. 18:13 says… “What a shame, how stupid to decide before knowing the facts.”
The 2nd stage of wise decision making is… The FEED-BACK stage.
This is where you ask God and you ask people around you what they think. They should be people that you trust and have some knowledge and wisdom in the area you need it. For example, I wouldn’t ask someone who just filed for bankrupsy how to set up a budget, or a persons who’s kid is in Juvenile Detention on how to raise my kids.
Know what our biggest problem is when it comes to asking questions sometimes? PRIDE! We’re too proud to ask. It’s like when I get lost… (explain) I don’t want to appear to be ignorant.
I’m learning, it’s better to look dumb, than to make a big mistake and have people KNOW I’m dumb!
The 3rd stage of successful decision making is the FOCUS stage. This is where you focus in on the negatives and positives. Mordacai pretty much did that for Esther… “Esther honey, there’s a risk of dying either way… if the King would allow millions to die… don’t think He’d spare you!”
Lastly, is the FORWARD stage… This is where you’ve asked all the questions and evaluated all the evidence, weighed the pros and cons… and now it’s time to take the plunge! If at this point, you refuse to make a decision, your delay could cost you… big time!
Which leads to the next observation about choices…
3. To not choose is to lose your CHOICE!
We need to realize that the window of opportunity won’t remain open indefinitely. Listen to what Mordacai says next to Esther in vs.14 of chap. 4… If you keep quiet at this time, someone else will help and save the Jewish people, but you and your father’s family will all die.” –Esther 4:14
Know what that verse says to me? None of us are indispensable to God’s plans. He gives me the power and the privilege to serve Him, but if I choose to ignore that privilege, or if I choose not to serve Him wholeheartedly… He can (and will) find somebody else. In otherwords, He wants to use me, but I’m not absolutely necessary. He won’t stop His plans because of my disobedience!
I may think I’m pretty important to the success of this church, or you may think you’re pretty irreplaceable at your job… but you know what? If you choose to goof off at your job… they can get somebody else! If I choose to disobey God, He can find someone else to pastor this church. (and they’ll probably do a better job!) No ones indispensable to the plans of an all-powerful God!
I don’t know how many times I’ve thought certain people were crucial, as I’ve planted churches… “Lord, they can’t go… you can’t let them go Lord!” And they leave the church for one reason or another… and God replaces them without missing a beat! Now, don’t get me wrong… I want you to stay serving God in this church…and God wants to use you… but don’t think for a minute that you’re irreplaceable! Mordacai says, “Esther, God wants to use you, but if you decide to keep quiet, He’ll find somebody else who will speak up!” Not to choose, is to lose your choice!
Which leads to the 4th observation I see in this passage about decisions…
4. The chosen few are the few who have CHOSEN.
Someone once said that, “Great people are ordinary people who make extra-ordinary decisions” By that standard, Esther was a great person! Listen to the last sentence of Mordacai’s message to Esther in vs. 14… And who knows, you may have been chosen queen for just such a time as this.”
Mordacai was beginning to see all the pieces of God’s providential puzzle come together. The reason she was orphaned at a young age… why He was chosen to raise her… why he had a position in the Kings administration…and how it was that her beauty and character gained her a place in the Kings heart. “Esther, God’s chosen you for just such a time as this. Make the right choice and fulfill God’s plan for your life!”
Do you believe God has a plan for your life? I do! I believe He has a plan for my life! I can see clearly how and why God allowed me to go through a painful church closure and an even more painful church split… to be here on this day, pastoring this church.
I believe that God is working in your life, putting the pieces together in just the right way, to bring you to His plan and purpose for your life! I don’t believe He’s wasted even 1 trial or heartache to bring you to the point of decision you find yourself at today. I believe in a sovereign God, who gives His children choices that will effect their destiny. So what are you waiting for? You were chosen for such a time as this!
Listen… CHOICE not chance determines your destiny! So many people are living in “Lottery Land”… waiting for that magic ticket to bring them to riches and happiness. Don’t be a fool! Your decisions determine your destiny! Esther makes her decision, and I want you to hear how she responds to her uncle… “Go and get all the Jewish people in Susa together. For my sake, give up eating; do not eat or drink for three days, night and day. I and my servant girls will also give up eating. Then I will go to the king, even though it is against the law, and if I die, I die.” – Esther 4:15,16
“Then I will go to the King… and if I die… I die!” Wow! This was a gutsy little lady! She laid it on the line folks! She made her choice and she was willing to die for it!
On April 20, 1999, in a Littleton, Colorado, a modern day Esther was faced with a moment of truth, as two angry teenage gunmen began shooting their fellow students. Cassie was in the Columbine High School library that day to study during lunch, when a member of the “Trenchcoat Mafia” broke in. He went over to her, pointed a gun at her face and asked her, "Do you believe in God?" She took a deep breath, then answered with a clear voice, "YES!"
"Why?" the gunman asked… but before she could answer, he pulled the trigger, ending her life on earth. Michael W. Smith wrote a song that tells the story of Cassie Bernall, and challenges us to live our life for God. (Show video)
The day before her death, Cassie wrote a note and handed it to her friend Amanda, this is what it said, “Honestly, I want to live completely for God. It’s hard and scary, but totally worth it. —Cassie Bernall, April 19, 1999
Are you willing to die for the decisions you make today? If you’re not, you’re making the wrong decisions! Indecision only breeds insecurity and frustration… in not only yourself but in the people around you. Some of you men have wives that are waiting for you to step to the plate and become the spiritual leader in your home. Some of you parents have kids who are waiting for you to be the Mom, the Dad that they need. Unfortunately, your children will either be the proud inheritants or the begruntled reapers of the decisions you make today.
Would you like to be able to say YES to Jesus, like Cassie did? Would you like to be able to say YES to knowing God has forgiven your sins; YES to knowing that you can someday be with Him for eternity?
First it requires that you make the most humbling choice of all… the choice to admit your sin. The Bible says in Romans 3:23..."For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". One of the most important decisions you can make is the decision that will touch every area of your life and determine your eternal destiny. It’s the decision for follow the Lord God with all your heart, mind and soul.
It was another famous bible character who stood before thousands of Israelites and issued this challenge over 3,000 years ago, and it’s still just as relevant… READ Josh.24:15… choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” (RSV)
I want to challenge you this morning to make a decision to give your life to Jesus Christ. You’ll never discover your true purpose in life until you do. Jesus was willing to die so you could make that decision. The best decision I ever made was to say, “Jesus, if you’re real, come into my life and change me. He responded to that prayer, and it changed my destiny! Remember, not to decide is to decide!
You were made for a purpose and designed for greatness, and success in life is discovering that purpose and then getting in the center of God’s will… will you pray that prayer?
PRAY
