“People to meet in heaven: Esther”
Esther 4:14
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
It was a clear, cool day in January of 2009 when US Airways Flight 1549 took off from New York’s LaGuardia airport, bound for Seattle, Washington. On board was a crew of five with a hundred and fifty passengers. The pilot was fifty-seven-year-old Captain Chesley Sullenberger, known to his friends as “Sully.”
First Officer Jeffrey Skiles had just passed a training course and needed experience on that particular aircraft, so Sully let him take the controls. But as Skiles took off shortly before 3:30 that afternoon, he noticed a flock of birds high in the sky.
Then sure enough, two minutes later, the worst happened. At 2,800 feet in the air, they hit the birds, taking out both engines and crippling the aircraft. Passengers and crew reported hearing “very loud bangs” and seeing flaming exhaust. Then silence.
Sully would have landed the aircraft back at LaGuardia or even New Jersey, but there was no way he could make it that far. The aircraft had lost all power. So having no other option, he radioed to air traffic control, “We’re going to be in the Hudson,” and told the passengers and crew to brace for impact.
Ninety seconds later, at 3:31 p.m., the plane ended its six-minute flight, ditching in the Hudson. A hundred passengers were injured, five of them seriously, but not a single life was lost.
Later, a member of the NTSB said the accident “has to go down as the most successful ditching in aviation history.” And she said, “These people knew what they were supposed to do and they did it and as a result, no lives were lost.”
But there is more to the story--the landing was amazing and even miraculous, but it was no coincidence. For not only was Sully a good pilot, he was a former Air Force fighter pilot and he was a glider pilot. And with his vast amount of training and experience, he made it possible for every passenger and every member of his crew to step off the plane alive.
Who could have known that, of all people and all pilots, Sully could have been the right one at the right time, for such a time as this?
So it was for a woman named Esther. As her uncle Mordecai once said, “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
If you would, please turn with me in your Bible to page 519, as I read the words of Esther chapter 1. I’ll start at verse 1: “Now in the days of Ahasuerus, the Ahasuerus who reigned from India to Ethiopia over 127 provinces, in those days when King Ahasuerus sat on his royal throne in Susa, the citadel, in the third year of his reign he gave a feast for all his officials and servants. The army of Persia and Media and the nobles and governors of the provinces were before him, while he showed the riches of his royal glory and the splendor and pomp of his greatness for many days, 180 days.”
Let’s stop there for just a moment.
Now Ahasuerus, (also known as Xerxes for you history buffs), had been in power for three years. And life was good because his nation was at peace.
But Ahasuerus was pretty bold and rather arrogant, so he decided to conquer Greece. But before he sent his men off to battle, he thought it best to have a six-month-long strategy session, a six-month-long planning meeting, to be sure his men could win the war.
So that’s what he did. Even more, the Bible says, in verse 4, “He showed the riches of his royal glory and the splendor and pomp of his greatness for many days, 180 days.”
Then after those 180 days passed, he decided to throw a party, a really big party, lasting seven more days. Look at verse 5: “And when these days were completed, the king gave for all the people present in Susa the citadel, both great and small, a feast lasting for seven days in the court of the garden of the king’s palace.”
Now as you can imagine, if the king is going to throw a party, it has to be a really big party! Look at verse 6: “There were white cotton curtains and violet hangings fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rods and marble pillars, and also couches of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother-of-pearl and precious stones. Drinks were served in golden vessels, vessels of different kinds, and the royal wine was lavished according to the bounty of the king.”
It was such a big deal, even his queen, Queen Vashti, threw a party too. Look at verse 9: “Queen Vashti also gave a feast for the women in the palace that belonged to King Ahasuerus.”
But when that week-long party was just about done, on the seventh day, that’s when things got a little out of hand. After all, Ahasuerus was pretty bold and rather arrogant, so it’s no surprise he was about to get himself into trouble.
Look at verse 10: “On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, (in other words, drunk!), he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha and Abagtha, Zethar and Carkas, the seven eunuchs who served in the presence of King Ahasuerus, to bring Queen Vashti before the king with her royal crown, in order to show the peoples and the princes her beauty, for she was lovely to look at.”
Uh oh! We’ve got a problem!
If I could, let me ask you women a quick question--if your husband was sloshed, plastered--stone-drunk--in the middle of a week-long bash and he commanded you to come out and do a little dance for his friends, what would you do?
Well, Queen Vashti did what any good, sensible, self-respecting woman would do. She refused. But when she refused, verse 12: “The king became enraged, and his anger burned within him.”
Well, now what? What’s a king to do when his queen refuses to appear before all his soldiers, commanders and friends?
Ahasuerus chatted it over for a moment with his advisors and came up with a perfect plan. It’s time for a new queen! So Vashti was out and the search for queen number two was on.
And out of the blue, that’s when we meet a young, beautiful, orphaned, Jewish girl named Esther. And to make a long story short, after twelve months of beauty treatments and a pretty grueling beauty contest, Esther became queen over all the land.
So why do we care about some poor, little, orphaned Jewish girl-turned-beauty queen and why would we want to ever meet her in heaven? The answer’s simple. Because the plot is about to thicken!
Turn with me now to page 522 as I read the words of chapter 3, verse 8: “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. If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king’s business, that they may put it into the king’s treasuries.’ So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews. And the king said to Haman, ‘The money is given to you, the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you.’”
So what did all that mean? It meant that evil Haman just got permission to kill every Jew in the entire Persian kingdom. Every single one. Not one life left.
But there was hope and only one hope—and that was a queen named Esther.
As her uncle Mordecai said: “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
And sure enough, by God’s great power and blessing, (and a rather complicated series of events), the people’s lives were saved.
At the height of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln found refuge at the midweek meetings of a church in Washington, D.C. And each week, he went in with an aide, sat quietly with his stovepipe hat on his lap and listened intently as the minister opened the Scriptures and taught the Word of God.
But war was tearing the nation apart. Even more, he’d just lost his son and needed words of comfort and hope. The preacher finished his message and the people began to leave.
Lincoln’s aide stopped him for a moment and said, “What did you think of the sermon, Mr. President?”
He answered, “I thought the sermon was carefully thought through, and eloquently delivered.”
The aide said, “You thought it was a great sermon?”
Lincoln replied, “No, I thought he failed. He didn’t ask of us something great.”
When God calls His people, He asks them to do something great. Noah built an ark. Moses led his people out of Egypt. Joshua conquered Jericho. David killed a giant. And a queen named Esther saved the lives of all her people.
It’s no coincidence you work where you do. It’s not fate that you live in the neighborhood you live in. Your lives, your relationships, your jobs, your friends, your everything is not just dumb luck. It’s providence. God has something for you to do. God has placed you where you are, to be an influence for Him in the lives of the people you know. And when we say yes to Him, He will use us, every one of us, to accomplish His purpose and plan.
Before we leave the book of Esther, I have to tell you one funny thing, something that’s troubled Bible students across the centuries. And the funny thing is this--you could page through the entire book, all ten chapters, and never find God mentioned even once. There’s not even a single, solitary prayer. Nothing! Just a story about a poor, orphaned Jewish girl and how she saved the lives of her people.
But just because you don’t see God in Esther doesn’t mean He’s not there. It’s as if He’s intentionally obscured, hiding in the shadows. As one author put it: “God does some of His best work in the shadows, hidden from view, obscured by the dim vision of those whom He’s dealing with.” And he said: “For every Daniel who sees a clear vision of the Son of Man, there are a thousand Esthers who come stumbling, staggering, reluctantly dragged into the will of God.”
And when our Savior Jesus died on the cross, it’s just as true that God never seemed more distant or more absent. See Him hanging, beaten, broken, crying out in despair, questioning why the Father has deserted Him and forsaken Him. Yet even though God may have seemed so far away, that’s where He was most gloriously displayed.
And that’s the God we serve, a God who’s carried you quietly, yet powerfully, through everything in life—all your failures, your tragedies, and your deep disappointments. And He’s brought you to this moment to see that He is not hiding in the shadows, but reigning from His throne.
We give thanks, dear Lord, for this woman named Esther and for the way she saved the lives of Your people. Use us too, we pray, that Your will may be done and Your kingdom come. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen