Tony Evans - Date with Destiny
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This final sermon on Esther 9-10 celebrates God's providence turning the "day" of intended destruction into a day of Jewish victory and the Feast of Purim. It emphasizes that God orchestrates events over time, calls for complete dealing with sin, and invites us to trust our "Quarterback," who turns defeat into victory.
The Day of Divine Reversal
Welcome to an epic event! As the curtain rises over a slave girl caught in a set of circumstances out of her control, you're going to discover how the invisible hand of God intervenes in her life, and the life of her relative, and in the life of her people to save all of them from certain doom. This is a story that will blow your mind, but it is also a story that will transform your life and give you a much bigger view of God. As we've been going through the Book of Esther, we've been attacking the theology of luck. You cannot have divine providence *and* luck, chance, fate, happenstance.
Let's go back. Esther is a beautiful young lady, and through a series of providential events, she becomes wife of the king. Mordecai, her cousin, has set this thing in motion. But Mordecai will not bow before Haman, #2 in charge. Haman decrees to kill all the Jews. And then Haman… rolled the dice? And they come up 12 months from now? No, he didn't do it like that. He did! He rolls the dice, and they come up: season 6, month 12. We will kill them 12 months from now. Because you have to understand, when the devil rolls the dice, God controls what number comes up. Because there is no luck where there's providence.
And so there's a 12-month gap between his declaration of death and his executing that declaration. Mordecai says to Esther, "You've been called to the kingdom for such a time as this. It's not just that you're pretty. It's not just that you're in the king's palace. He allowed you to be pretty and to be in the king's palace because he had a kingdom purpose for you to perform in this arena." Then, through another series of providential events, God flips the script. Through a delay—when God stops Esther from declaring to the king what was going on with Haman, and He blocks her in the middle of her first sentence—He stops her because He had other things He had to arrange.
So that Mordecai would be elevated and Haman would be demoted, and ultimately, Haman killed. He even allowed the king to walk in the garden to give Haman time to be all over Esther, so the king thought Haman was assaulting his wife when he was really begging for his life. And he didn't give him a chance to explain himself and had him executed on Mordecai's gallows. Because He's got to die, tie, die? He's creating a picture through the most normal of events, through flipping the script. And so now we come to the final two chapters.
The "Day" Arrives
Verse 1 of chapter 9: "Now in the twelfth month (that is, the month of Adar) on the day when the king's command and edict were about to be executed, on the day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain mastery over them, it was turned to the contrary so that the Jews themselves gained mastery over those who hated them." Uh, just in case you didn't know it, all of us have a "day." Oh, you don't believe me? All you gotta do is read Ephesians chapter six, verses 10 to 18. He calls it "the evil day." That's the day the devil has determined to do you in. That's the day the devil has determined to destroy your life.
That's the day when the Hamans that he brings into our experience wants to ruin your future. That's *the day*. Well, wait a minute. This day is 12 months later. But you have to understand, God's been setting it up for a year. It didn't come and fully reveal itself till *the day*, because God is always moving over a period of time to bring his conclusion about at the right time. And so God allows evil to develop. He allows evil to perpetuate itself. He allows evil to replicate itself in order to situate evil in the right place so that while He's delivering you, He's handling them.
And He's doing that so that this day becomes a bigger day than the original day when it started. Because on the original day, 12 months earlier, all he had was a plan. By the time we get to this day, Haman is dead, and God is getting ready to wipe out everybody who was against the Jews. Because God always has a bigger plan than you are aware of. You just haven't gotten to the day yet to see it worked out. God is so precise in his movements in our lives, as we are living under his rule, that—watch this—He will make things worse in order to make them better.
Let's see, you got to watch this. God is so precise that, in order to accomplish what he's seeking to accomplish in our lives as we align ourselves unto him, He will actually make things worse before He makes them better. So if you now understand the bigness of providence, and you're walking in alignment with God, and things go worse, don't just react to what you see. React to the One who let it happen so that God is accomplishing something bigger than what you're seeing in your circumstance at the moment.
Kingdom Purpose in Promotion
On this day, now we're told in verse 4 that Mordecai has become great in the king's house. "His fame spread throughout all the provinces, for the man Mordecai became greater and greater." Mordecai has gotten promoted through a series of events that had nothing to do with him. I mean, it *had* to do with him because he predicted the king's assassination plot, but because of what Haman did, he got promoted. You need to make a parenthesis here because far too many Christians climb the secular ladder of success and don't make a kingdom connection to their reason for being there.
All they see is more money, more prestige, and more power. They do not connect the fact that God allowed me to get to this place because He wants to use me at a higher level. He doesn't mind you being blessed, as long as you understand that there is a kingdom reason why God has allowed you to get that promotion, get that degree, get that opportunity, have those resources. It's not just for your car, just for your house, just for your clothes, and just for your notoriety. And so you must ask the question every time God comes through for you and takes you from where you were and moves you to another level: "What was your kingdom reason for me being here? What spiritual influence do you want me to wield with the opportunity that you've given me?"
Do you know what the Christian community can do and what the kingdom of God could do if all Christians became "kingdomized"? That they understood that there was a supernatural purpose for my presence in this situation. So here we are. Mordecai is in this situation on *the day*, on *this day*. Now it's time for them to get involved in the will of God. Because we're told in verse 6, at the citadel in Susa, the Jews killed and destroyed 500 men. On top of that, we learn in verse 10 this included the ten sons of Haman. Okay.
The decree was, if anybody comes at you Jews, based on the decree of Haman, you're able to get them back. Let me explain. God's will calls for your involvement, not to sit on the side. This is spiritual warfare, and spiritual warfare means you must be involved. You don't sit back and say, "Oh, God's gonna do it," when God has given you weapons to use to do it with. That's again why Ephesians 6, verses 10 to 18, talks about the armor of God. First Corinthians chapter 10 talks about the weapons of our warfare. That you are called into spiritual battle.
You can't pray for a job and not go job hunting, talking about, "God gonna do it, okay." You cannot *not* do what God has placed in your hand to do, to be workers together with Him. You must apply the spiritual to the situational. And God's purposes and power works through our obedience, using whatever legitimate resources God has provided us, because God wants us involved in the battle. Just like she had to use her clout with the king, Mordecai has to use his clout with the king. There will be circumstances that call for your actions.
Dealing Completely with Evil
The king says the Jews have killed 500 guys, including the ten sons of Haman, verse 12. "And what else you want? Yeah, what else you want to do?" You know, ladies love to be married to somebody and say, "Honey, I'll do whatever, baby. Anything. What else?" I just killed 510 folks for you. What else you want? Esther says, watch this now: "If it pleases the king, let tomorrow also be granted to the Jews who are in Susa to do according to the edict of today, and let Haman's ten sons be hanged on the gallows." You know what makes Esther so special and significant? She didn't want to get rid of *some* of the sin; she wanted to get rid of *all* of it.
"Give me more time so that we never have to deal with this mess again. And then take the ten sons of Haman, and I want you to put them on the gallows." The ten sons have already been killed, but I want you to put them on the gallows so that… You know what's called "running up the score" in football? In football, when you want to run up the score on somebody, you already won the game. There's a minute left in the game, and you're still scoring touchdowns, and you're ahead by 25 points already. That's called running up the score. And you know what? When you're running up the score, you're showing off. But when you're running up the score, you're letting them know, "You don't want to play with this. You don't want none of this. None of this. Because if you come at me again, I'm gonna give you some more of this."
It's called running up the score. It's making a big deal of who you were in order to make a point. Well, God used Esther to make a point. Point number one: Don't get rid of part of the sin you're dealing with. Get rid of *all* of the sin you're dealing with, so that cancer of sin won't come back at you later on. Remember, the only reason that they're having to deal with the enemy is because of Haman. Haman… he was from Agag. Agag was the king that Saul refused to kill. So when Saul refused to kill him, he had other lineage that came forward.
So by the time you get to the Book of Esther, there are thousands of people against the Jews because Saul didn't deal with it like God said deal with it years ago. Because if he would have dealt with it when God said deal with it, there wouldn't have been a Haman (who was tied to Agag) who would have put you in this problem to start with. That's why we're having issues in our country today, because sins that didn't get dealt with years ago keep coming up, keep coming up, keep coming up, keep coming up. Because we don't cut the sin short.
We've got to do that in our personal lives. We've got to say, "I'm going to not only deal with a piece of the sin," because if you cut out some of the cancer, whatever you leave behind is going to manifest itself one more time at the right season. So he says, cut the whole sin. This woman says, "I want to get rid of this so my children, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren never have to face this mess again. And I want them to see what happens when God deals with evil by putting those ten boys up there. Because I want them to see that God will even destroy your lineage if your lineage is carrying on your evil."
So this is a message for parents. If parents don't invest spiritually in their children, then what you're doing is perpetuating a generational evil that goes on and on. And that's what we're seeing out here in a lot of the welfare. You're seeing generational bondage and generational irresponsibility. It'll sing it over and over and over again because people don't want to call it evil. They want to deal with it sympathetically, or they want to ignore it. They don't want to call it sin for what it is. Cut the whole thing off so it keeps going generation after generation after generation.
Esther—the book is named for Esther because she wanted to solve it once and for all. She wanted to get rid of all the evil, and she wanted to show what evil can do because it passes down to our children, to our youth, and to generations. So this woman takes the stand to deal with evil completely. They have now destroyed the enemies. See, when you hear God in the Bible destroying whole groups of people, and it doesn't feel right and it doesn't look right and it doesn't read right, but when God does that, He's doing that to keep greater evil from showing up later.
Celebrating Providence: The Feast of Purim
Mordecai records the events. He sends letters to the Jews throughout the provinces. Oh, and now, c'mon in the gang, it's time to party! Celebration time is here! Because verse 22, they enter into a day of feasting and rejoicing and sending portions of food to one another and giving gifts to the poor. Oh, it's a time of celebration because it's a time of deliverance. Look, when God's day becomes your day, you're going to praise him at another level. God will let things go downhill, let evil seem like it's achieving something, so that when He gets to that day, He knows He's going to get some praise out of you.
He knows He's going to get some glory out of you. He's not going to get that trite stuff we just throw at Him because we're supposed to do it. He's going to get some heartfelt celebration because of what He's done and how He did it and how He defeated our enemies by reversing something, how He blew our minds. And so they killed all of these people, and they were set free. And so we come now to an official celebration. I love this official celebration that they had because of this deliverance that God brought them through.
Verse 26: "Therefore they called these days Purim after the name Pur." Because of the instructions in the letter, both what they had seen in this regard and what had happened to them. This is sweet. He says this celebration that they had… they said, "We're going to call this Purim." Well, remember the word "Pur" (piyrah) was the word Haman used for throwing the dice in chapter 3, verse 7. He called it the "Pur" or the dice, the lots. So he threw the dice; it came up 12 months. Oh, well, guess what? We're gonna have a celebration, and we're gonna celebrate it every year, and we're going to call it Purim.
Verse 27: "The Jews established and made a custom for themselves and for their descendants and for all those who allied themselves with them, so that they would not fail to celebrate these two days according to their regulation and according to their appointed time annually." You know what they did? They answered the definition of this book. See, "Pur" (Purim) was luck. It was to roll the dice and throw it down. They said, "Oh, I got your luck! We're gonna call it Purim because we're going to celebrate God is the God of what people call luck. And every time we get it together, we're going to celebrate." Ain't no luck, just God and the providence of God.
This celebration was to remind themselves that God was a providential God. The subject of the Book of Esther is the providence of God intervening on behalf of the people of God against the evil that is against the people of God in order to accomplish his kingdom program. This Book of Esther is about the providence of God that looks like luck, chance, fate, and happenstance. It's the providence of God on behalf of the people of God against the evil one (Satan and his minions) against the people of God, in order to demonstrate, for the glory of God, the advancement of the kingdom of God.
And they said every year we're going to do it for ourselves—watch this—and our descendants. So parents, you ought to be telling your kids the story. You ought to let them hear the story about how God came through. A lot of you were here for Super Bowl 51. In Super Bowl 51, in the third quarter, the New England Patriots were losing by 25 points. They were celebrated in Houston, and if you were Atlanta fans, you were celebrating in Atlanta because it was all but over. How you gonna get back? In the third quarter, you don't have enough time to overcome 25 points.
But a couple of things happened. The Patriots got better, and Atlanta made some mistakes. Instead of running the clock out, they made calls that kept the clock on the side of the New England Patriots. And slowly, over the rest of the quarter and a half, New England climbed back, and they climbed back, and they climbed back until you come to the end of the game. At the end of the game, we got a tie ball game. Oh, but then there was the toss. The ref tossed the coin, and when it hit and said the New England Patriots won the toss, I said, "It's a wrap."
And the reason I said it's a wrap is because I knew who the quarterback was. See, because the quarterback is Tom Brady. I had no doubt that he would be able to not only overcome 25 points, but in overtime, to secure the victory. I don't know how long the devil been beating you. I don't know how far behind you are, and you feel like a loser—a loser in your life, a loser in your home, a loser in your circumstance, a loser in your finance, a loser in your future. I know the score may be against you, but I know a quarterback.
I know somebody who knows how to take the ball, who knows how to call a play, and who knows how to throw it and score a touchdown with his ability. I know a quarterback who can turn losers into winners. I know a quarterback who can turn defeat into victories. I know if you just let him have your life, he can throw a touchdown with your existence. So give God the ball of your life and let him score a touchdown with his providential care.
God's Time and Our Trust
Time is in God's hands. You see, God exists from eternity to eternity, and therefore time is not an issue for him. Now I know it is for us because we're linear and limited in our time, but He is not. And so therefore, He can arrange time to accomplish an eternal plan and still operate within our time frame. One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day. So since God is not in a hurry and we are, we need to be willing to adjust our limited timetable to His unlimited timelessness.
Because God seems to be slow sometimes when we are rushed. Pause. Selah. Take a moment and take a deep breath and say, "Okay, God. My time is in your hands. I have a—shall we call it a—date with your destiny. I want to position myself so that when your timetable and your clock rings out for your purpose for my life, I have positioned myself to realize it and won't have any unnecessary delays. Because I know you got time to wait, and since I don't want to waste any of my limited time, I want to accomplish all that you have from your unlimited time."