Last week I concluded with this question before we opened the space for prayer: Do we have the confidence to keep at it, knocking away, every single day of our lives? I know we do. Believe it, because Jesus Christ is your confidence and He will never let you go.
I spent some time in prayer this past week asking God for confidence to keep knocking away, every single day. Just kept knocking. Day in and day out. I’ll be honest with you—my confidence didn’t change one bit. It doesn’t feel like it anyways. But every day I prayed and asked God to make me confident to keep knocking away every single moment, guess what—I became a little bit calmer, a little less anxious, a little less worried, and a little more confident that it was going to be okay. That’s what this series is about. Confidence is believing in something with trust and undeniable conviction. The writer of the Hebrews says “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” So we continue in this third week of our series, this last week of the summer to talk about confidence against all costs.
You’ll understand what that means in a few minutes, but I want us to think about a time in our lives when our confidence just completely shrank back because you knew that one way or another that it was going to cost you something—so in your lack of confidence you did nothing. Earlier this week I had to go speak to the executive board of a company to talk about progress on a project I’m helping them on and when I got to start thinking about what I would talk about my confidence just dropped. Like, has that ever happened to you? Your confidence just dropped. It dropped because I knew that if I presented the lack of progress one way, it would be damning against me, and if I said it another way it would be damning against them. So the how of me telling them a story to make it look like we can do better was beginning to weigh down on me. There wasn’t enough time to think it through and actually craft it. It’s not like a sermon where all the answers are in the Bible and all I have to do is look for it and read it and then do what it says. I had to craft something from scratch. My confidence was shot. Well the good news is that I’m here to tell you about the experience.
I’m sure you know what the feeling is like. You’ve sat the night before a huge test or a huge paper or a huge presentation, and you’ve completely lost your cool because you knew that whatever you chose, it would cost you something. It may not have been something work or school related. Maybe it was relationship related. If you said something or portrayed something in some light, then you knew—it will make you pay.
This morning, we’re going to look at the story of Esther in the Old Testament. I know in this series we’ve been hitting a lot of big name old testament characters whose stories we know so well, but just because you know their story doesn’t mean you remember their story is. So I want you to look at the story of Esther with a renewed perspective—through the eyes of faith, believing something will happen despite what it looks like.
Just a little background on why we picked up the story half way through the book. The context of Esther was that the Israelites no longer had a country. The Babylonians and then the Persians took Israel, then Judah and when this story was written, a large body of Israelites were living their lives as immigrants in Persia. In Persia they were casted out as second class citizens, and often ostracized for their beliefs and practices. The king of Persia at the time was a guy named Xerxes I who was temperamental and constantly worried that people were plotting against him. I understand the sentiment because that’s how he eventually gets assassinated.
Long story short, the temperamental king gets mad at his wife, then has her killed. Now he’s widowed and lonely, so he has a beauty pageant to pick himself a new wife. That new wife is a lady named Esther. Esther, is the cousin/niece of a guy named Mordecai, who happens also to be some type of former Israelite royal family, in the lineage of Saul. So it’s interesting to see how this work out because now we have Esther, who was royalty but probably didn’t know it, and Mordecai, who probably knew it because he was living in exile and he spent his days in the King’s gate. Mordecai, being somewhat politically connected makes enemies with this guy name Haman who was genocidal. He finds out that Haman is trying to coax the king to sign an edict to have all Israelites killed in Persia. So Mordecai is worried and upset and generally not in a confident place, so he turns to his niece/cousin, Esther. Esther 4:10-17, let’s go.
10 Then she instructed him to say to Mordecai, 11 “All the king’s officials and the people of the royal provinces know that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned the king has but one law: that they be put to death unless the king extends the gold scepter to them and spares their lives. But thirty days have passed since I was called to go to the king.”
12 When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, 13 he sent back this answer: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
15 Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: 16 “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”
17 So Mordecai went away and carried out all of Esther’s instructions. (Esther 4:10-17)
Do you see this in verse 11? Mordecai wanted Esther to go talk to her husband. Unfortunately, if you spoke to the king and the king didn’t ask you a question or say anything to you, it usually meant that you were going to die. That’s the law. In fact, despite that it was her husband, she hadn’t seen him in 1 month. Esther was not confident that she could speak to her husband about the current issue that is bothering her uncle. In fact, she didn’t believe she could live if she did speak. There was no faith in staying alive or being a queen. I get it. You get it. You understand that this isn’t a good place to find yourself. It’s a rock and a hard place because you know if you say anything you’re probably going to die and if you don’t say anything, you’re probably going to die anyways.
Mordecai, however, has this to say in verse 14: “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” You see this is important for us when we talk about confidence. You know that when you face a situation where your confidence begins to shake because whatever you do will cost you, you were born for this. This is exactly why you are who you are. You need to live for the situations when you have your back against the wall and you need confidence against all costs. Making a decision will cost you something. Doing something will cost you something. You need confidence to do either. You were born for this. Don’t forget it.
Sometimes we forget that we were created for a purpose. We were created to follow Jesus Christ. We were saved because there are circumstances that only us, where we are, can really tackle and handle. It boils down to whether or not you believe and are confident that this is your purpose. I believe it is. It’s not mine to be confident. It’s yours to be confident that your situation is unique to you and you are unique to the situation because you were called for just a time like this.
But if you’re lacking confidence, I’ll tell you what: you can do what Esther asks Mordecai to do—look toward who God is. When Esther tells Mordecai to fast for her, she is telling him to start looking toward who God is and find God. She says she’ll do the same. We don’t feel confident in our circumstances because we know the costs, but we forget that the costs that we’re faced with pale in comparison to what it costs us not to be confident in God. We forget that Jesus Christ, God’s son paid all the cost for us. There is no cost for us. We need to be confident and believe that God created us for this moment we’re finding ourselves in where we’re treading water and about to drown and lose it all.
I want to turn quickly to Luke 9:56-62.
57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
59 He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
61 Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” 62 Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:56-62)
Look at these three callings made by Jesus. It’s interestingly harsh of Jesus. But this was the point that Jesus was getting across to people: being Christian already costs us something, don’t have second thoughts about confidently following God through the circumstances of our lives. Be confident that God is who He says He is in the Bible and seek God out in our lives and our circumstances and you’ll see that the costs of whatever it is, they kind of all fade away because we are fit for service in the kingdom of God and we’re called to this moment. Can we do that? I know you can. I know you want to.
Let’s go back to Esther, chapter 5.
1On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the palace, in front of the king’s hall. The king was sitting on his royal throne in the hall, facing the entrance. 2 When he saw Queen Esther standing in the court, he was pleased with her and held out to her the gold scepter that was in his hand. So Esther approached and touched the tip of the scepter.
3 Then the king asked, “What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be given you.” (Esther 5:1-3)
Knowing what you know, you need to just go for it. If you read the Book of Esther, you know that this is the beginning of the end. The king receives Esther because of her confidence and boldness. But really because Esther got up on the third day and focused so hard on God during her fast that there was nothing to lose. She believed that God would rescue her and her people because God is the king of kings and lord of lords and there is nothing that can stop him. Spoiler alert: Haman is impaled by the same sadistic pole that he set up to have Mordecai killed on. It was all because Esther had confidence in God. This is the story for all of the people in God’s story. They are confident in who God is. Not who they are or what they do; but who God is and what He does.
If you believe Jesus Christ is your savior. If you believe that God has plans for you. If you believe that there is hope that will happen, you need to undoubtedly open yourself up to being confident in where God is asking you to go and do. I know last week we closed in prayer, asking God for everyday confidence; today I want us to pray outloud and ask God for confidence in Him when we’re about to lose it all. Let’s pray.
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