Esther: Daring Faith for Such a Time as This Exemplo

In Esther 4:8, Mordecai told Esther to go before the king and beg for mercy on behalf of her people. At the end of verse 14, Mordecai said to Esther, “Who knows, perhaps you have come to your royal position for such a time as this” (emphasis mine). This statement always feels less than settling to me. If my life and the lives of an entire people group are on the line, I’d be looking for something a little more solid than who knows? and perhaps. Because we know the end of the story, this statement can feel like a foregone conclusion—surely Esther was the one through whom God would deliver the Jewish people. But in the original language, this sentence is entirely neutral.1 In other words, Esther’s future was anything but certain. We should take Mordecai’s words at face value.2 Maybe Esther was in her position because Almighty God had put her there. One could certainly hope!

Mordecai and Esther were only a few generations into an unprecedented chapter in Israel’s story. What life was supposed to look like for God’s covenant people in a place so far away from Jerusalem and how they, as the Diaspora, fit into God’s plan, were developing ideas. Would God really use Esther, one whose position came through marriage to a pagan king whose Jewish identity was unknown? So much about this situation was outside Israel’s norm. Mordecai may not have been fully certain about whether God would use Esther, but we can almost see his faith putting the pieces together. If God’s covenant was unwavering, why couldn’t Esther be one of the women God would use to save the Jewish people?

Mordecai insisted that even if Esther remained silent, deliverance would come to the Jews from another place. This is the closest anyone comes in the book to referring to God. The implicit message is that God will deliver His people one way or another. The question is, does Esther want to be part of it? But where did Mordecai get the assurance of this deliverance? Remember, Israel no longer had a king through whom rescue could come. The newly rebuilt temple was small compared to Solomon’s, and Jerusalem was struggling to get back on its feet. The Jewish people were scattered throughout an empire that had tolerated them up to this point but didn’t adhere to their beliefs in God. To answer this question, we have to go back to God’s earlier promises to His covenant people.

Deuteronomy 4:31 says, “For the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.” God would keep this covenant even when His people had been driven into faraway places. I can’t help but imagine that Mordecai knew enough about passages like Deuteronomy 4 to know that God would not fail the Jewish people now. Even though Mordecai and his people were seemingly a million miles from the land of promise, Esther was queen in a pagan Persian palace, and Mordecai had angered a chief rival of the Jews by not bowing down to him, somehow, someway, God would keep His promise to preserve His beloved people.

Mordecai believed that God would work out deliverance, but he didn’t know how. When it comes to significant outcomes in my life, I very much like to know both the “will” and the “how.” But it’s precisely the latter that God doesn’t usually share with me. He delights in our trusting Him, even when we don’t know the specifics of how He will work out His plans.

Esther and Mordecai had the confidence to courageously step up, not because God told them how things would turn out or that their lives would be spared, but because they knew that fighting for the Jewish people was in accordance with His will.

Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (NIV). Many things in life are not good. And bad things don’t always work together for good. However, what we can bank on is that in all things, it is God who works for our good!3

Be obedient to Christ. Make choices according to what God has revealed to you in His Word. Trust Him. Though you can’t know how it will all work out, take heart that it will. In His time, in His way, always for your good.

Read Esther 4:13-14 and take a moment to meditate on God’s sovereignty. You’ve been created for this time and place on purpose. Humbly ask God to use you right where he has you today.

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1. Iain M. Duguid, Esther and Ruth, eds. R. D. Phillips & P. G. Ryken, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing 2005), 49.

2. Duguid.

3. I thank Dr. Craig Blomberg for his insight into Romans 8:28.