📖 Bible Characters II — Unit 4: Esther — For Such a Time as This: The Hidden Providence of God

Of all the books in the Bible, Esther is the strangest in one respect: the name of God is never once mentioned in it. From the first verse to the last, He is never named — and yet He is on every page. It is one of only two books in all of Scripture named for a woman, Ruth being the other. And it tells of a time when the whole people of God stood on the edge of destruction, and the unseen hand of God placed one young woman exactly where she was needed "for such a time as this."

Subject: Esther — "for such a time as this": the hidden providence of God.

Proposition: Though God's name is never once mentioned, His unseen hand places His people exactly where He needs them, and calls them to courageous faith.

The story is set not in Babylon but in Persia, modern Iran, under the great King Xerxes, also called Ahasuerus. We will watch four figures move through the drama.

I. A Fearful Queen

It began at a royal feast. The king, drunk with wine, commanded Queen Vashti to come and display her beauty before his guests. She refused, and for her refusal she was banished from the throne. So began an empire-wide search for a new queen: officers were sent to gather the beautiful young women of every province into the king's harem, and among them, taken like the others, was Mordecai's young cousin Esther, whom he had raised as his own daughter. Neither Esther nor Mordecai appears to have had much real choice once the king's decree went out — this was less an ordinary marriage than an imperial conscription. At Mordecai's instruction, Esther kept her Jewish identity hidden, a caution understandable for a young woman navigating a dangerous and thoroughly pagan court. God can work through hard, morally complicated circumstances His people did not choose, weaving them into His own purposes. Esther was chosen and crowned queen of Persia. Then came the crisis: when the lives of her people hung in the balance, the only way to plead for them was to approach the king uninvited, and to approach the king uninvited was to risk death.

Like Esther, we all face fearful situations. But the Word of God speaks to our fear again and again. "Whenever I am afraid," said David, "I will trust in You" (Psalm 56:3). "There is no fear in love," wrote John, "but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). Of the roughly one hundred and twenty-five commands the Lord Jesus gave, twenty-one of them are some form of "do not be afraid" or "take heart." Fear is a thief. Black Bart, the famous stagecoach robber, paralyzed twenty-nine stagecoach crews by fear alone and never once fired a shot; the fear of him did all his work for him. A study from Johns Hopkins observed that worriers tend to die sooner, and concluded that we are built, in nerve and tissue and cell, for faith and not for fear. We were made to trust. There was a young batter who stepped up to face the blazing fastball of the great Walter Johnson. He took one called strike, then a second, then turned and walked back to the dugout. When the umpire reminded him that he still had another strike coming, he called over his shoulder, "You can keep that third strike — I've seen enough." Fear had beaten him before he ever swung the bat, and fear will do the same to us if we let it.

II. A Vile Tempter

The second figure is Haman, a descendant of the Amalekites, the ancient enemies of Israel. Promoted to high office, Haman was enraged that one man, Mordecai, would not bow down to him. His wounded pride swelled into a monstrous plot: he would not be content to kill Mordecai, but would destroy every Jew in all one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the empire. He bought the king's favor with silver, received the royal signet ring, and issued a decree making the murder of an entire people legal. Behind that decree stood something older and darker than one man's pride. It was Satan's age-old aim to destroy the people of God, the same hatred we see running all through the Bible and still screaming in today's headlines. Our trials and temptations come from Satan and from people doing his work, just as the Lord Jesus Himself was tempted in the wilderness. Yet the believer can say with James, "Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience" (James 1:2-3). God uses even the assaults of the enemy to refine and strengthen His own.

III. A Wise Counselor

The third figure is Mordecai, the wise counselor. Sitting at the king's gate, he had already overheard and exposed a plot against the king's life. Now, when the death decree fell on his people, he sent an urgent message to Esther in the palace: "Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king's palace any more than all the other Jews. 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?" (Esther 4:13-14). It is one of the great challenges in all of Scripture. Esther weighed it, and her answer is what makes her a heroine: she called for a three-day fast, and resolved, "If I perish, I perish!" (Esther 4:16). She would do the right thing whatever it cost her. Notice that her courage was a praying courage. She did not rush in on her own nerve, but asked all the Jews of the city to fast with her for three days and nights, leaning on the unseen God before she dared approach the throne. True boldness is not the absence of fear but faith that acts in spite of it.

There is a moment in Tolkien's tale when Frodo wishes the dangerous task had never come to him, and Gandalf answers that none of us choose our times, but "you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have." So must we. And we have a Counselor greater than Mordecai, for the Lord Jesus is named "Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God" (Isaiah 9:6). A Christian doctor I once supervised in a prison put the whole matter simply: "Regardless of the consequences, I will always try to do the right thing." That is Esther's spirit, and it should be ours.

IV. A Silent God

The fourth figure is the one never named: God Himself. Why is God so often silent? Scripture suggests at least three reasons. First, His silence requires faith rather than sight, and "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Second, His silence makes us struggle to find His will, and it is in that very struggle that the deepest lessons are learned. Third, His silence produces maturity, opening what Paul called "the eyes of the heart" (Ephesians 1:18). But we must be clear: silence is not the same as absence. What looks like silence is in fact providence, for Christ is even now "upholding all things by the word of His power" (Hebrews 1:3).

See how it works out in Esther. On a certain night the king cannot sleep, and to pass the hours he has the royal chronicles read aloud, and in them he hears how Mordecai once saved his life and was never rewarded. The very next morning Haman arrives to ask permission to hang Mordecai on the gallows he has built — and instead is ordered to honor him. In the end the gallows Haman built for Mordecai becomes the gallows on which Haman himself is hanged. It is the great reversal, and not one detail of it is labeled a miracle. We see only the lower story of sleepless nights and palace intrigue; God is at work in the upper story, for "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand" (Ephesians 2:10).

As God once placed Joseph in Egypt, and placed Daniel and his three friends in Babylon, so He placed Mordecai and Esther in Persia at the very hour they were needed. This is why the book can tell its whole story without ever naming God: He needs no mention, for His fingerprints are pressed into every page. And so He has placed you. Behind every so-called coincidence is the hand of a God who is never truly absent. He positions His people exactly where He needs them and calls them to step out in courageous faith. The God who seems silent has been writing the upper story all along, and He can be trusted to finish it — for "all things work together for good to those who love God." When your own hour comes, remember Esther, and remember that you may have come to your place in this world "for such a time as this."