The 4th Presbyterian Church, Bethesda Maryland, Sunday evening, September 2, 1990. Dr. Norris speaking on the theme, sorrow in its display. Schrift your references from Esther, the 4th chapter, verses 1 through 17. This is the 4th in the series, The Book of Esther. To the 4th chapter of the Book of Esther, when Mordekiai learned all that had happened, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes and went out into the midst of the city and he cried out with a loud and a bitter cry. He went as far as the square in front of the King's Gate for no one might enter the King's Gate clurbed with sackcloth. And in every province where the King's command and decree arrived, there was great mourning amongst the Jews with busting weeping and wailing and many lay in sackcloth and ashes. So Esther's maids and UNUX came and told her the Queen was deeply distressed. Then she sensed garments to clothe Mordekiai and take his sackcloth away from him but he would not accept them. Then Esther called Hatha, one of the King's UNUX whom he had appointed to attend her and she gave him a commandment concerning Mordekiai to learn what and why this was. So Hatha went out to Mordekiai in the city gate that was in front of the King's Gate. And Mordekiai told him all that had happened to him and the sum of money that him and had promised to pay into the King's treasuries to destroy the Jews. He also gave him a copy of the written decree for their destruction which was written a Tushan that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and that he might command her to go into the King to make supplication to him and plead before him for her people. So Hatha returned and told Esther the words of Mordekiai and then Esther spoke to Hatha and gave him a command for Mordekiai. All the King's servants and the people of the King's provinces know that any man or woman who goes into the inner court to the King who has not been called, he has but one law put all to death except the one to whom the King holds out the golden scepter. That he may live. Yet I myself have not been called to go into the King these 30 days. And so they told Mordekiai Esther's words and then Mordekiai 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 or 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? And then Esther told them to return this answer to Mordekiai. Go gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan and fast for me. Neither eat nor drink for three days or night. My maids and I will fast likewise and so I will go to the King which is against the law. And if I perish, I perish. And then Mordekiai went his way and did according to all that Esther commanded him. A man may God bless to us this reading from his word. The scripture to which I draw your attention this evening is to be found in the 14th verse. As Mordekiai, the great man of God sitting in the seat at the gate of the King of Persia, has heard that hemen, prince of Persia, offended with Mordekiai because he refuses to bow and worship him, determines to destroy not only this man whom he hates, but also every Jew in the land of Persia. And so hemen, this prince of the people, gives and promises to pay into the royal treasury all that it will cost. For one day when any citizen of Persia might raise their hand and strike down any Jew, thus destroying the whole of the Jewish nation in one day and be immune from prosecution under the law. We have seen the progress of hatred in the heart of the prince hemen. We have seen how he hated the Jews and in hating the Jews hated God's people because he refused to base himself before the living God. Now this evening we come to the reality of the sorrow that Mordekiai experienced and yet in that sorrow see something of the picture that he had of the living God. Mordekiai has learned about the plan of destruction. It has come to his attention that he and all his people are to be destroyed. That here is the great beginning of anti-Semitism, here is the destruction of the whole race. And Mordekiai saw distraught that he begins to tear his garments, his mourning and weeping and screaming and crying such that he goes into the market place, into the city square before the palace of the king and he weeps and he wails and he makes demonstration of the fact that he and his people are to be destroyed. Not only as this public but everybody knows what is going to happen and so there is a sense of impending doom. Everybody's attention is focused upon the fact that the Jews are going to die and every one of the Jews in the kingdom has received the commandment of the king, unchangeable. The law of the needs and the persons established cannot be altered by any decree. Mordekiai has to face the fact that he and his people are to be exterminated at the whim of him and at the connivance of this king's axis. And he cried as the first verse, he cried aloud and a bitter cry because the situation was desperate so that he could not contain his sorrow and the pain of the extermination of his people he wiped. So that he was not even able to enter into the court of the king. Now here you have a reference to the fact that the king this despot desired only to hear good news. Anyone who brought bad news and so hurt his day and spulked his day was exterminated. Desperates can do that thing. I wish I had that despotic power. Only good news you hear because only good messengers you allow to come into your presence and those who are mourning, those who are sorrowing, those who are sick, those who are people who speak only of the need of this world. Those are people you banish from your presence. You want to know nothing of the pain and of the events that cause pain. Mordekiai seems helpless in the face of all that happens. And Esther in her palace is unaware as the princess of the kingdom of what is happening for she was not informed of the royal decree. She is in one part of the palace and what happens in the seat of government does not come to her and so she does not know the peril of her people. Nor does she know the hatred that Haman has for Mordekiai who is her guardian and her surrogate parent. And so she sends clothes to Mordekiai and asks why is it that this terrible anguish has come upon you? Why the sorrow, what terrible misfortune has touched you? Here are new clothes. Here are things that will gladen you. Here is a sign of my own care, the feel your love of the daughter for her guardian. Mordekiai returns with hard and harsh word, reminding her of her nationhood and of the fact that she too is a US standing as one who will face persecution. And here we have a great example of a human situation where every possible alternative seems bleak and hopeless and helpless. There is nothing that anyone can do, there seems to be no alternative to the annihilation of a great people, to the destruction of this race and everyone is struck with terror. It is no great leap for us to see ourselves at places where there is only darkness in our life. Where there does not seem to be any place of radiance or joy, there seem to be no escape from the pressing of this world and where it's many needs. And the response like Mordekiai is that of despondency. Now Mordekiai begins to make public demonstration of fasting and praying and mourning. He lets it be known that he is distraught but even in his pain and his anguish. Listen to the words of this great text. For here Mordekiai teaches us three great truths that are the sustaining power and its bleak moments in our life and our human experience. And I don't doubt that there are people in this congregation tonight for no bleakness and sorrow and darkness that almost is unyielding and unending as it touches your soul. A pain that cannot be removed and we cry out in our anguish. What do we do? Listen to this great word. If you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place. Deliverance will arise as Mordekiai. And the first thing we see in the midst of all this pain and anguish amidst all human helplessness is an utter and absolute confidence in God and in his purpose. Mordekiai, I knew that his people were God's people. He knew that he was a chosen son of the living God. He knew that the Jew was a chosen race appointed by God not for destruction, but to be his messengers to all the world. He knew that God's promises had been given and that he had never been withdrawn and that God keeps his word immutably and unchangeably. And so Mordekiai cries out, deliverance will arise. Now here is an optimism that our generation would do well to listen to not the optimism of positive thinking. Not the optimism of alternative thinking, always finding some way out, some new road to walk down, some new place by which we can change the way in which we do things and thus survive amidst all the dangers and difficulties of our world. Now here is the optimism that comes from knowing the living God and his word and his promise. He knew God's pledge to the people and to him, I will be your God and you shall be my people, Christ God. He knew the psalm and had able to sing it, the Lord reigneth, and heaven under our his footstool, the Lord, the Lord and all his might will accomplish this, might he think, what might he think, the salvation of his people? He will rescue the Jew from the midst of their terrible plight. He will save his people. Why? Because he is God. Now here is an optimism that is not bound upon human capability. It is not bound up with a determination to say I will be able to find some way through this if I remain positive and thoughtful and take all opportunities as challenges. Here was a man who had abandoned all human strength. He tore his guns, he whacked, he screamed, he was alive with all his human emotion, falling out of it and yet there was no sense that there was a human strength for his plight and for his situation. He was not believing that they could find in some human soul one who would save them but God. God in all his goodness and in all his grace and all his power is Lord. Here we see that Mordor K.I. comes to God and the Mard is not a force. He is not a principle of being. He is not an idea that is the uttermost of all our concept. He is not the immovable and unseeable force of human history. He comes to a God who is personal who has pledged his word and to his people who has stood from heaven and chosen and nation and chosen individuals within this nation. And raised them up wide to show for his glory to the nations and he has pledged himself to this people that he will be their God. Here was a man who knew God. He was aware of the frailties of the human flesh. He was aware of the fail-fallenness of human nature. In you the human vessels might yet fail. He was even afraid that Esther, his undotten or adopted daughter may fail at the place of hurt choosing. Or he says, you and your father's house will perish if you remain completely silent. He was aware that Esther had the opportunity to be still and to say nothing. He did not put his hope and his confidence even in a high-place princess in the royal house of Persia. He put his confidence in this. It was the pledge of God. Now it's important for us to recognize that his pledge was not simply the idea of God, an idea that was conjured in his own thought and his own heart, but a God who had revealed himself. Too often in our generation we live with people who say, well I have nothing to fear from God because the God that I believe in will never do anything to hurt me. You will never do anything to touch my life in any way with misery. He would never consign me from his presence into darkness. What a care I came to a God who had revealed himself and stood upon the promises of that revealed God in a way that we too are called to stand, not upon some mystical force, not upon a God that we have conjured out of our own imagination. You are created for yourself but upon the living, the true, the God who has spoken a word and that word speaks of who he is, the God who in Jesus Christ has revealed himself in all his might and majesty, all his glory and all his love. This is the God to whom we come. It is the God of Abram and eyes of the God of Mordakai, the God who has pledged himself and it is his word that we stand in, not in any mortal confidence of a principle, but in the confidence of a God pledged word, a God who is personal, whose personality is revealed to us this night in Jesus, his son who has come taking upon himself. And taking upon himself human form has died upon the cross of their humans in that we might be restored to him. And here is the pledge of God to you and to me, if any will cling to him, they shall in no wise be cast out. That's the pledge of God we can stand in. We come to the God who is and who has shown himself in Christ, we can trust or he is promising to none other. And there is our confidence in the darkest of moments, in the times when we have no confidence in any body or anything and we cannot see a way out. We have confidence in God, his purpose and his glory. You know, when we come to the place where we abandon ourselves to him, we begin to learn something of his way and of his faithfulness. And it is as we come to the end of our own capabilities and our own resources that we begin to trust to the unfailing and unmatched grace of God. Deliverance will arise. But there is a second thing, not only do we see the confidence that is born of God here, we see also the way in which submission to God is taught. Deliverance will arise from another place. That's what Mordecai says. He looked, he anticipated and he hoped for the fact that Esther would be the savior of her people. That for such a time as this, she has come into the kingdom, been prepared to be the successor to Vashti in the timing of God's care. She has been lifted to a place where she may be used as the single vehicle to orchestrate all of God's plans. It seems perfectly reasonable to assume that. And yet Mordecai says it is logical and reasonable to assume that, but even if that is not God's purpose, confident in him. Now here we see a challenge to what passes for faith in our generation. And yet for many of us, faith is not faith at all. We articulate our faith in the place where we have to make decision or where we are faced with a choice that we don't know what to do with. As saying, well you know, I will just get out of the way and if God wants somebody to do something, he will raise them up. He will take care of it. I don't have the worry about it. That is not faith at all. I have heard and seen men and women who love Jesus Christ, confessing His Lord and Saviour, retreat from the challenge that God gives to them to be His people simply saying, well you know let God take care of that. Let's just get on and do my thing. Let's be a fetalism. It has nothing at all to do with the Christian doctrine of God's sovereignty. The only response to the sovereignty of God is to own that we are responsible before Him to do any and all things within our power to work for His kingdom to resolve His questions and to be where He has put us to be. For many of us we determine, well you know, I'm not going to bother to do that. Let's somebody else do it. Let's someone else make hard decisions and we blame God for it. We say He's sovereign, let Him get on and do it. It's put nicely for us sometimes in the form of evangelism. If God wants to save somebody, He can do it without me. He is with Saviour. I can't save anyone. It's His Spirit that does it. Therefore I will not speak to anybody about Christ. He can do it without me. He's always done it that way. I don't make the sorts of decisions. Let someone else face the problems that are out there. What does Mordecai teach us about God's sovereignty? It's this. But the way in which we deal with God's sovereignty is to walk according to the path of duty, to confront the questions that are set before us and to use the situations in which we are placed to walk with integrity in His way according to His Word. It is not to avoid. It is not to use God's sovereignty as some form of retreat. It is not to be able to say, well I don't want to deal with this. Let God do it. He will, He can. But I tell you that is not a Christian response. It's fatalism. Nothing less than Islam. If God's will be done, let it all happen. It's fatalism. It's to say we have no part and want no part. We have no responsibility and want no responsibility in His kingdom. What does Mordecai do? When confronted with the reality that she singly placed, may lose her life as she gains access to the throne, says, who knows that for such a time as this I was set in the kingdom? If I perish, I perish. What is she saying? I will do what is right. I will use the opportunities God gives to me. And I will seize the moment. And if I perish, I perish, but at least I will perish doing what God requires. You know, God does not call His Christian people to be cowards. And all too often in our spiritual lives we are cowards. We are afraid to do what He says, afraid to walk where He commands, afraid to believe what He has sent. And so we say, well God will take care of that. I will do the things I do best. Esther did not do best, crawling into the presence of the king. It was not part of her responsibility in any human sense. She did not dance happily into the king's pleasure and say, look at me, husband, aunt, I welcome there. He could go and find another queen. He had dismissed Vashti promptly and easily. He could kill Esther in fulfillment of the law. He didn't have to see anybody. He didn't want to see. But she did that, which was right. God calls us this evening, if we own Jesus Christ as Lord, always in every circumstance and wherever we are put to do that, which is right according to His Word. To face those issues that are ours, and to move with them. He sets us, not our own agenda and the things that we do best. He puts us in the kingdom for such a time as this. He sets us that we may be His people now, not doing the things that we are ideally called to do and to be, but to do what He has set us to do now. I have often thought, where I give an opportunity to be a preacher at any time in history, when would it have been? It would undoubtedly have been at least in the nineteenth century, certainly not in the twentieth century. I would never have chosen to be born today. I have all people am least suited for this present situation of our world. I love and live and love in another world. Does that mean I can simply live and do the things that a nineteenth century preacher would love to do? Of course it doesn't. It means that Rob Norris is set in fourth church in Washington DC in 1990, ill-equipped, served by the Spirit of God. Ill-prepared in temperament and voice and desire, except by the call of God. Ill-prepared with human wisdom and desire for any of these things, except that God's appointment is for such a time as this. Do you know there is something else? You are set for exactly this time, in exactly this church, in exactly this appointment with God's destiny. Now there isn't one of us tonight that is prepared to be God's person for this moment. There isn't one of us that wouldn't find a more comfortable place in another epoch or place in history. But we weren't put there. I can't be Rob Norris Calvin or Rob Norris Wesley. I can't be Rob Norris Augustine or any of the great men I would love to be. And set today, tonight in this place for this time, and so are you, with whatever you bear, with whatever the challenges of this generation, with whatever the weaknesses we believe in our mind and our intellect and our heart that we face, we have this thing, we are appointed by God for this hour. And we cannot run away from it. It is ours. It is God's. And it isn't good enough to say, well God can take care of it. He has put us. He has raised us up of people to himself for this moment. That we might be, he is my face. For such a time as this, we are put in the kingdom. Well there is a third thing we see from this verse. You will gather that I am not going to finish this verse this evening. We will return to the 14th verse next Sunday evening, and maybe the Sunday evening after that who knows. But there is a third thing that we see in this verse. There is a confidence that those who oppose God will be overcome. If Esther you remain completely silent at this time, you and your father's house will perish. The truth is that God will cast down one and lift up another. If the Lord reigns, if he is absolutely and ultimately sovereign over all things, it is unspeakably wicked of you and me not to acknowledge his authority or to oppose him and his forward movement and his growth and his kingdom in our life. So that is the truth of the matter. And that is what Motaka was saying to Esther. If God is sovereign, it is unspeakably wicked. If you do not do that for which you have been set apart, she had the free choice not to do what she would do her, but God would still save his people. Were it not Esther, it would be another. But God's plan does not fail and his purpose is never thwarted, and he never ever fails. His word does not return vibe to him, but it accomplishes all things that he purposed for it. This is our God. Jesus Christ is never defeated. His kingdom is never overturned, he has never destroyed. His enemy is never triumphed nor not even on the cross, for he is the one who when he was slain turns a very deep into a victory and when he was lifted high, the triumph of his enemies became the greatest defeat for God made him who knew no sin to be our sin and in and being our sin there. He made us his people. God will never be bested. All that we will find in our disobedience is that we will perish, those who oppose him will know only the breaking of their lives by his stuff. Go forth from here this evening with these words graven upon your head and your heart and your hands. The Lord, our Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ reigns and he has called you, has chosen you and has appointed you in this day and generation in this place to serve him. Your appointment is made and they are revocable. Your task, clear and your power is the grace of His Spirit. Go forward for you there long, a chosen people to the King.
Our Father, we thank you that we know that our God reigns, our confidence is not in ourselves but in Him, nor in all that we can do but in your great power at work in us and in our weakness we confess to you that we are afraid as Esther was afraid. In the incapacity of our minds we recognize that the challenges of the day are greater than we can humanly deal with and yet this one thing we know that God even our God is King. And our Father as we trust and abide in that, we thank you that there is born in us a confidence that does not fail, a hope that does not diminish, a joy that enables us to triumph amidst all the pain of circumstance and the distress of the moments of this life. Grant to us grace to see you and to know you and to abide in you both now and always in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.