Esther Still Speaks
By: Shafer Parker
Most church-goers learn the story of Esther in Sunday School. I mean, how can anyone resist the romance of a Jewish girl chosen to be queen of the Persian Empire after the previous queen had angered Emperor Xerxes (King Ahasuerus in the book of Esther) and gotten herself deposed? But what you may not know is how powerfully the book of Esther speaks to Christians today. In fact, I believe Esther is arguably one of the top five most relevant Bible books for modern Christians. Read on, then, if you are at all curious about why I would say that.
Most church-goers learn the story of Esther in Sunday School. I mean, how can anyone resist the romance of a Jewish girl chosen to be queen of the Persian Empire after the previous queen had angered Emperor Xerxes (King Ahasuerus in the book of Esther) and gotten herself deposed? But what you may not know is how powerfully the book of Esther speaks to Christians today. In fact, I believe Esther is arguably one of the top five most relevant Bible books for modern Christians. Read on, then, if you are at all curious about why I would say that.
Let’s jump to the point where the plot begins to thicken. It turns out Esther was raised by her uncle Mordecai, a well-known Jew who cautioned her to keep her ethnic identity secret when she was in the palace or with the king. Mordecai was a man of some authority at court, who ingratiated himself with the king by uncovering a plot to assassinate him. But another man at court, Haman, was even more favoured by Xerxes. The king liked Haman so much he gave orders that all the other servants had to pay him homage, bowing so low their faces touched the ground. Haman loved it. He was of the royal lineage of the Amalakites, one of Israel’s ancient enemies going all the way back to the Exodus. Israel had defeated the Amalakites many times, and it must have done Haman’s heart good to be able to enjoy some of his ancestral privileges, even if technically he was still only a servant at the Persian court.
Among Xerxes’ servants, Mordecai alone refused to bow. As a Jew such public humility and “worship” was reserved for God alone and Haman didn’t qualify. Mordecai’s intentional disrespect left Haman incensed, to the point that merely punishing his enemy would never be enough. Haman went to Xerxes and persuaded him to authorise the elimination of the entire Jewish race from the kingdom, which covered most of the civilised world. It appears that Hitler was a Johnny-come-lately in the long line of those who’ve attempted to wipe out the people from whom Messiah sprang.
This brings us to the point of my essay, and to understand it you need to read the argument Haman used to persuade his patron that the Jews needed killing.
“Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, ‘There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king's laws, so that it is not to the king's profit to tolerate them’” (Esther 3:8).
Does that not also describe today’s Christians? Are we not scattered everywhere? Seriously, ours is the most widespread faith in the world. There are still unreached people groups in the various corners of the world, but apart from some very tiny jurisdictions there is no nation without a recognizable Christian population, and the same simply cannot be said for any other faith. Moreover, like the Jews in Esther’s day, Christians are influential wherever they are found. Just as Mordecai and Esther were embedded at the very top of Persian administration, so Christians matter wherever they are found. Even in Muslim lands many government offices are held by Christians, because Muslim rulers know they are both competent and provably more trustworthy than representatives of other religions.
But Haman mentioned one more outstanding quality possessed by the Jews of his day, as well as the Christians of our day. “Their laws are different from those of every other people,” he said, “and they do not keep the king’s laws.” Haman did not mean that the Jews disagreed with Xerxes over things like speed limits and taxes. It wasn’t as though the king had posted a national speed limit of 80 kph while the Jews wanted to drive their chariots at 100 kph. Haman was suggesting the Jews lived by different standards than everyone else. They had a covenant relationship with the Living God and they lived by the revealed truth of the Old Testament, which they believed was the very Word of God. From the Bible they learned, not just right from wrong, but that every life is lived under the guidance and oversight of the living God. Even though they were exiles from the Promised Land, their God had proven Himself trustworthy, and they were prepared to sacrifice their lives for Him.
On the other hand, all the other peoples of the world—literally all of them—lived in a pagan world controlled by fate and chance. As Bible teacher Martin Breneman has written, the pagan worldview “was based on a kind of pantheistic outlook that sees innate laws in the totality of the universe; even the gods were subject to these laws.” We might not call what the ancients did “science,” but fundamentally, the attitude was the same. Like modern atheists, they believed the human race was alone in a harsh, unfeeling universe, and it was up to them to figure out how to control the world for their benefit. To this end, they constantly sought to understand all the “laws” that would enable them to bend the gods and nature (practically indistinguishable in their eyes) to their will. They were not scientists in the modern sense, but their mindset and aims were surprisingly similar.
Are not Christians in much the same place today? The only difference between us and the Jews of Esther’s day is that we have even more revealed truth than they did. They had the Old Testament. We have the Old and the New. Plus, we live under a new covenant based on even better promises (Heb. 8:6). On this side of our Lord’s death and resurrection, we have even more practical reasons to trust God than they did. And because the purpose of life is oriented toward God—His will, and His glory—every so-called rule, or law by which we live is different from the world. We trust and obey, not perfectly, but differently from the world. And we live in hope because, as Breneman has written, “We believe in a God Who not only stands above history, but is the force behind it” (see Esther 4:14).
The consequence of this is that we are as much hated by modern Hamans as ever Mordecai was in his day. Moreover, the drumbeat to devise ways to remove Christian influence from the world beats today as forcefully as ever. The only question is, will we, like Esther, take a stand for truth and right, trusting God to sustain us. “If I perish, I perish,” Esther said before launching her initiative to stop Haman’s plan. But she didn’t perish. In fact, she and the Jews were victorious. And so will we be victorious if we believe and act upon the Scriptural promise that Christ is seated on His throne in heaven, “waiting until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet'' (Heb. 10:13). In this passage, Jesus isn’t coming to rescue us. Rather, He waits for us to take our stand, dressed in the armour of God, proclaiming the truth of the gospel, and thus proving the victory of the cross! Our God is with us still.
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