Hardship. Most of us have stories to tell of the hardships that we have experienced in life. Most of us can point to times in our lives where we really had to struggle in order to overcome our circumstances. Sometimes the difficulties we have overcome were forced upon us by outside forces beyond our control. Sometimes the difficulties were the result, either directly or indirectly, by our own behavior or actions. In either circumstance, as hard as those situations may have seemed, very few of us faced the same type of difficulties and hardship that a young Jewish woman named Hadassah faced. The story of Hadassah (better known by the Persian name she was given, Esther) is one of determination and will-power, faith and steadfastness overcoming fear and potential death. Esther’s example is one we can all learn from and apply to our lives, and is the reason we commemorate her story at this time every year.

The book of Esther is a very intriguing addition to the canon of Scripture. It is one of only two books in the Bible that never mentions the name of Adonai, nor does either book even contain the word Elohim, the Hebrew word for “God.” Further, the book of Esther does not record any supernatural miracles performed by Adonai, nor does it describe any direct divine intervention at all. While this book may not directly mention Adonai, it does clearly convey the message that He is always working for our benefit. It may not always be evident, but His providence is always working behind the scenes to cause His will to be performed. The seeming coincidences, the reversals of fortune, and the poetic justice that pervades the message of this book are not accidental, nor are they mere happenstance. The book of Esther teaches us through its underlying message that The Almighty arranges to have specific people put into particular places at the precise time they need to be in order to cause His plan to unfold. Just one example of this can be seen when the king can’t sleep. He just randomly decides to go read some court archives? In his reading of these archives, he just randomly reads the record of Mordechai’s faithfulness to his king? Random chance is rarely random at all.

 

What the story of Esther also communicates to us, however, is that we are not mere puppets who were created to be manipulated and used so that His will becomes reality. Rather, as is revealed through Mordechai’s challenge to his niece, Esther, that we play an active and vital role in causing His plans to become manifest. Further, we fulfill those roles when we choose to act in accordance with His unseen hand. This is evident in Esther 4:14, where Mordechai tells Esther,

            “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”

 

 

 

Esther had a choice; she could risk her life and approach her husband, the King, unbidden, or she could remain in her lofty position as Queen and allow fate, so to speak, to determine the future of her people. By approaching the king unannounced, even though he was her husband, the king would be within his royal rights to have her executed for her breach of courtly decorum. Esther had no assurance that her husband would extend to her his scepter and spare her life. She had to make this choice: to either believe in faith that the Elohim Who had chosen the Jewish people to be His own treasured possession had Himself placed her in the position as Queen and that He would be with her and protect her when she approached the king, or to passively sit back and preserve her own life instead.

 

Of course, if Esther had chosen to avoid the risk and to wait for Elohim to use someone else instead of her to accomplish His will, it wouldn’t have made for a very good story, would it? Fortunately, we do have the record of what Esther did. In this record, we discover that it is Esther’s love for her people that ultimately outweighs her fear of personal safety. It is because she is willing to sacrifice even her own life that this awe-inspiring story has become recounted each year at this time as a commemoration of those vents that happened so long ago.

 

Esther’s example presents us with a great lesson: nothing we do in this life will matter, none of it will make any significant impact, none of it will make any difference, nothing we pursue will make the world around us a better place UNLESS what we are doing is motivated by our love for Our King and for His people that He created in His image. This is why, when asked what the greatest command is, Yeshua responds not only with the Shema, but also by telling us to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is also why Yeshua instructed His disciples with the following words in the gospel of John 15:12-13,

            “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has            no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

 

This is also why Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians that,

            “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy   gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all           knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am            nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be      burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”

This same sentiment is echoed by the Apostle John.

            “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God   and knows God.  The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love… Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another… If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his            brother, he is a liar, for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love         God Whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves     God should love his brother also.” 1 John 4:7-8, 11, 20-21

These passages create for us a powerful message: that if we are unable, incapable, or simply refuse to love our neighbor, our friend, our brother, then do we truly have an active faith? If we cannot love those around us, can we truly say that we are servants of The Most High, the same One Who fashioned each one of those people who surround us with His own hand? If that makes you feel uneasy, then this will certainly make you hurt: Yeshua didn’t just instruct us to love those whom we like. He also commands us to love those whom we dislike.

            “If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces     you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from      him who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your            neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who    persecute you, so that you may be sons of Your Father Who is in heaven; for He causes His sun          to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the        same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the       Gentiles do the same?” Matthew 5:40-47

 

Luke records Yeshua putting it this way in his gospel account,

            “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the way you want them to treat you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful , just as your Father is merciful.” Luke 6:27-36

 

Yeshua calls us to a higher standard even than the one Mordechai challenged Esther with. Are we willing to answer that type of call? Will we stand up and be counted among the faithful sheep Yeshua describes in Matthew 25:31-46, feeding the hungry, caring for the stranger, clothing the naked, tending the sick, and visiting the imprisoned? Or will we be counted among the goats for failing to do all the above?

 

Allow me to put it another way: We know that Adonai is love and is the source of all true love. With that being the case, how would your life change if you suddenly decided to stop believing in Adonai? If all of a sudden, you decided to become an atheist, how would your life change? Would it stay the same? Would your life look unchanged from the outsider’s perspective? Would there be any real change in the way you conduct yourself if you suddenly decided there is no Creator?

Perhaps you would insist, in answering that line of questioning, that the life you lead currently is different than the way an atheist would conduct themselves. If so, then please allow me to ask a follow-up question: what are you doing right now in your life that requires faith? Are we living for the moment? Were we crafted by the hands of The Creator so that we could put in 40 hours a week at work and earn a paycheck? So we could attend a weekly fellowship, sit back and listen to a sermon, and then go back to our lives unchanged? Are any of these things our purpose in life?

Or, instead, were we formed and fashioned by the hands of a loving Father and placed in this very moment in time in order to perform specific good works, things that Adonai planned for us to accomplish for His name long before we ever existed? Did the Father send His beloved Son to die for us so that we could just kick back, soak in our blessings, and bask in our freedom in Him? Or did He set us free from our sin and death so that we might proclaim to others that He breaks the chains of hatred, division, pain, suffering, and sin, even if doing so might cause us pain ourselves?

When we read the book of Esther, we find out about a woman who really was willing to sacrifice everything for her people. She didn’t do so because she had some big, lucrative incentive prompting her. She didn’t do so in order to make her own name known among all the peoples (although Adonai ensured that this did indeed happen). She did so because of her love for others and due to her great faith in the unseen King Who was right there with her, giving her the strength that she needed to be an overcomer.

Are we living like Esther? Are we willing to risk our very lives in order that others might be saved, set free, and avoid the persecution of the coming judgement? Or are we instead merely comparing our lives to the lives of the others around us and then complaining about the role that we have been given? Esther didn’t complain about the position she had been thrust into. Instead, she fasted and sought the will of The Father for her guidance, strength, and counsel.

We often claim verse like “I can do all things through Messiah Who strengthens me,” and “Trust in Adonai with all your heart,” but then we live our lives and make our plans in such a way that displays and communicates to those around us (who are watching us to see if we will truly stand up for Our King) that we don’t even really believe that He exists. Our greatest fear as individuals and as a body of believers shouldn’t be of failure. When Esther approached the king of Persia, fear for her own life wasn’t her greatest concern. Instead, our greatest fear should be that we will be great successes at things in life that don’t have any type of positive impact on the world around us. Of becoming masters of things that have no eternal meaning. Succeeding at things that just don’t matter is not success at all.

We have a tendency within this movement. We tend to adopt the mindset that because we have come to the conclusion that Torah still applies to our lives that we have somehow “arrived.” We often behave as if we have nothing else to learn once we start learning Torah. Instead, we assume that it is now our job to tell everyone who has ears that we now know everything there is to know about anything biblical.

What is the purpose of our lives? To impress others with our knowledge and our grasp of the commands of the Torah? Or are we to be His faithful servants, loving Him with all that we have and loving others as ourselves? Are we behaving like first century Pharisees, lording it over those who lack the “understanding” of the Scriptures the way we do? Or is that greater understanding provoking us to become more humble, more servant-like, more gentle, more loving toward others?

The good news is that we are not without hope. Messiah showed us the way by His sacrificial life of unconditional love. The beauty of learning to subject our flesh to His will and to humble ourselves unto obedience to His instructions is that, as He stated in Matthew 11:30, “His yoke is easy and His burden is light.” If we are obedient to His instructions, not because we HAVE TO do so, but because we love Him with all our heart and all our soul, then being obedient to Him is easy and not burdensome. Walking with the type of faith that Esther displayed will become second nature to us.

If, however, we are attempting to obey Him, not out of an expression of love, but instead because we see it as a list of “dos and don’ts,” or we do so out of a sense of requirement only, then we will miss the entire reason for bringing ourselves into submission to His word. Fortunately, like Esther, He has given us the ability to choose, and He will be with us as we obey His will.

Let’s be diligent to display the same type of faith that Esther did. Let’s cast off our fleshly desires and instead let’s cling to the Lover of our souls. Let us submit our wills completely to His and devote ourselves wholly to Him. After all, perhaps we were created for such a time as this…