1707-16P XXX
GOD WORKING THROUGH HUMAN AGENCY
(Esther 8:1-17)
SUBJECT:
F.C.F:
PROPOSITION:
INTRODUCTION:
A. The Protestant Reformation re-captured the central, biblical truth of an entirely gracious salvation. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone as delivered in Scripture alone and all to the glory of God alone. Not one drop of our salvation can be attributed to us. When it comes to justification, how we are reconciled to God, it is entirely a work of monergism, literally “one working.” God alone regenerates the dead sinner and gives them the faith to lay hold of Christ for salvation. When it comes to sanctification, this is a work of synergism, literally, “together working.” But even then God continues to give us the faith and the will to work together with the Holy Spirit for our growth in grace.
From time to time well-meaning Christians have mistakenly imagined that all of salvation is monergism, God alone working, not us, in an error that has been called “quietism.” Even before the Protestant Reformation, some Roman Catholics imagined that the Christian life is entirely passive: you simply sit back and God does it all to you. To try to cooperate or work toward godliness was seen as presumptuous and prideful. And Protestants have fallen into this error as well, often promoted with the catchy though mistaken slogan, “Let go, let God.”
B. It is true that all that happens in our world is the result of God’s divine decree, simply his outworking of his eternally wise and good plan to reveal to thinking creatures, angels and humans, every facet of his glory to the fullest extent possible. God often uses human agents to accomplish his good plan, some willingly as we cooperate with him and do his bidding, others quite unwillingly, those who hate God and oppose his plans. Still God uses them inescapably to do his working, not at all to their credit, but to their eternal loss. And we must remember that God is always working infallibly and that his good and wise plan will unfold in spite of his enemies and in spite of the adversity of his people, even in the face of dire threat of grievous loss and harm.
C. We see this dynamic clearly here in the book of Esther. We find to our surprise that God has been the real main character in the story all along. And now that we are mostly past the crisis point and the villain has been vanquished, we can pause to see what’s really been going on. God has been at work from the beginning.
1. God has shown his faithfulness by protecting is people.
2. God has shown his wisdom and justice and the glory of his wrath by drawing his enemies into his trap.
3. God has ensured the coming of the Messiah whose birth was threatened by the evil, genocidal plot of Haman against all the Jews.
4. And as we see in this chapter, God has also brought others, Gentiles, into covenant relationship with him. God has fulfilled his promise through Abraham to bless all the nations of the earth, and his promises through the prophets that he would draw even the nations to himself.
What we want to focus on this evening, though, is how God uses willing human agents to accomplish his plan, and how we can be those willing agents.
I. GOD PROVOKES HIS PEOPLE TO PRAYER.
A. We have observed hints at prayer all through Esther, especially related to Esther’s risking herself to approach the king in chapter 3. Prayer is not specifically mentioned, only fasting, but the point of fasting is always to be an aid to prayer.
But here in our chapter we find an illustration of prayer as Esther again approaches her husband the king for help under dire and distressing circumstances.
3 Then Esther spoke again to the king. She fell at his feet and wept and pleaded with him to avert the evil plan of Haman the Agagite and the plot that he had devised against the Jews. 4 When the king held out the golden scepter to Esther, 5 Esther rose and stood before the king. And she said, “If it please the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and if the thing seems right before the king, and I am pleasing in his eyes, let an order be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the provinces of the king. 6 For how can I bear to see the calamity that is coming to my people? Or how can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred?”
B. Esther recognized the seriousness of the situation and was driven in her distress to plead for the lives of her people. Though the immediate threat to Mordecai and to herself has passed, Haman’s decree still stood, and something must be done about it. So she was distressed. She bowed and wept and pleaded with the king, the only one who could help her.
C. Now there is a clear application in this. If we allow our theology to filter down into all of life, we, too, would spend much more time on our knees. This morning we considered the sobering reality that when we say of the recently deceased “She’s in a better place” or “His suffering is now over,” we may be lying. Hell is not a better place. The lake of fire is the true beginning of suffering, not the end. And when you go on to contrast all that is promised in glory, and all that is lost through unbelief, well it seems that much bowing and weeping and pleading with God is the only fitting response. Why do our tears not fall every day? Our Lord Jesus wept openly when the people of Jerusalem would not receive him and be saved. The Apostle Paul reported “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” in his heart because the majority of the Jews would not submit to Christ and his salvation.
Beloved, we all have many friends, co-workers, and family members who are utterly lost. Where are our tears? Where are our urgent prayers? The mystery of prayer is that God has determined that he would not act alone in salvation. He would not send angels to bring the good news, only human agents. And he would work through the human agency of prayer. I don’t know why and I don’t fully understand it. But it is clear from the whole Bible that God works through his people, and he has appointed our prayers to accomplish his good work.
God provokes us to prayer. It may be through the dreadful specter of his judgment and wrath that is already falling on many of our friends and loved ones. Or it may be through his discipline of bringing personal hardship and adversity into our lives. When any of us encounters hard times, we must always consider that God is provoking us, driving us in desperation in prayer. In either case, the response is the same: bowing, humbling ourselves before him, weeping in our distress, and pleading with him for his promised mercies.
II. GOD PROVIDES HIS PEOPLE WITH HIS WISDOM.
A. Some time ago I attended a presbytery meeting and in the worship service the preacher warned us pastors not to pretend to be a “know-it-all” when it came to every subject. He said that we can lose credibility when we try to speak on subjects about which we have little experience or expertise. Rather, we should speak about what we know: God’s Word. And he was exactly right.
The king promoted Mordecai to his second in command upon the recommendation of Esther, his Queen. She explained to the king “what he was to her,” not only her cousin and adoptive father, but how he had wisely outmaneuvered his enemy, the wicked Haman. And so the king recognized his wisdom and gave him this high position in his administration. And apparently the people of the city of Susa recognized the same thing in Mordecai, for they sure seem pleased at his new post. Verse 15 tells us: “15 Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white, with a great golden crown and a robe of fine linen and purple, and the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced.”
B. So one of the ways God appoints and uses his people to accomplish his good plan is by providing us with his divine wisdom, the wisdom of his Word. We must bear in mind that what we have in the Word of God is just that, the Word of God. And while some of God’s wisdom is available through the things he has made, through natural revelation as seen in his creation, yet God’s fullest and best wisdom and counsel are contained in his Word. God’s Word, God’s wisdom is never outdated or not relevant in God’s world because it is above all human wisdom. It is not culture-bound as many people claim, it is above culture and truly trans-cultural. Though it applies in every culture, it also judges and condemns ungodly aspects of every culture.
God provides us with his wisdom. Solomon was a shining example of one to whom God granted great wisdom, God’s own Word, and people flocked to Jerusalem to hear his wisdom. Of course that wisdom is scattered all through Scripture, but we often think of the Proverbs or of the book of James in the New Testament as containing collections of the wisdom of God.
C. And, Beloved, we can expect the same today, if we will study and apply God’s wisdom. Our culture is quite sick and in need of the strong corrective of God’s wisdom. Let me give you some examples.
1. Our culture teaches us to prize the innate goodness of the self and to promote the self as our highest good. God’s Word exposes the wickedness and deceitfulness of the self and calls us to deny the self and look to Christ alone.
2. And our culture is terminally confused when it comes to the God-given genders of male and female and what it means to be a man and to be a woman, and the great blessing of God’s design. But we have clear guidance and direction on these matters from God’s Word, and we can be living examples of his wisdom.
3. Our culture is entirely materialistic, that is devoted to the pursuit of wealth and all of the trinkets and toys and comforts it can afford. God’s Word, God’s wisdom teaches us that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions and to resist the lure of covetousness and practice contentment and gratitude as well. We have much, much to teach the world in this realm, and we must begin by practicing this wisdom ourselves.
4. And God’s wisdom calls us to work hard at our work even though we do not worship our work. God’s Wisdom calls us to excel and advance in our understanding of his world, to become true experts at our work, not for our own glory or self-promotion, but to demonstrate his greater wisdom.
Again, God enables us as his people to cooperate in his work in the world by providing us with his incomparable wisdom from his Word.
III. GOD PROSPERS HIS PEOPLE IN GODLINESS.
A. One of the unanticipated results of the faithfulness of God’s people is that Mordecai is promoted to the highest position, and many non-Jews, many pagan Gentiles are drawn to the Lord and become Jews. This is most remarkable, and is really the first time in the Old Testament when this happened on a large scale. “15 Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white, with a great golden crown and a robe of fine linen and purple, and the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced. 16 The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor. 17 And in every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict reached, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday. And many from the peoples of the country declared themselves Jews, for fear of the Jews had fallen on them.”
Now it is true that sometimes when a follower of some religion is promoted publically, many people quickly “convert” for expediency sake. When the first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and made Christianity the official Roman religion, many people quickly “converted” as well. History has demonstrated that a great number of these converts were only pretenders for expediency sake, and most would acknowledged that this actually weakened the church rather than strengthening her.
B. But we have no reason to doubt the sincerity of the coverts of Mordecai’s day. In fact, they seem quite genuine due to the last comment in verse 17: “for fear of the Jews had fallen on them.”
God blesses his people, and the people of the world are made envious and want to get in on the blessing!
C. Now we need to be careful here and understand just what kind of blessings we’re talking about. There is a false teaching that is quite popular in our day, commonly called “the prosperity gospel,” associated with Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, T.D. Jakes, and others which states that God wants you to be healthy and wealthy all the time, and that this is the kind of blessing that will draw people. And in one sense this kind of worldly success will draw people, but it will only draw them through the lure of worldly success and to the goal of worldly success.
Rather, God promotes and prospers his people in godliness, in the much rarer and more valuable treasures of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” And, you see, when people are attracted by these qualities it’s okay for them to be attracted TO these qualities, not to worldly success, because this is precisely what God desires and promises to give to all who come to him.
Let’s not forget that the people of this world are truly miserable and hopeless. They have awful marriages and other relationships, they pursue all the wrong things in life and so constantly come up frustrated, empty, and depressed. And when you and I go hard after Jesus Christ and follow him with abandon, with moment by moment trust and obedience, we may never become rich and famous and successful, but we will live lives that overflow with “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” And that life of genuine godliness is so exceedingly rare that a real Christian will not only pique the interest of others, but will bring the pleas and even demands of others to share with them the secret.