Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Living in the Tension | The Writings | Esther 4-7

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Do you feel like an outsider because of your loyalty to Jesus? Do you feel the tension between your beliefs and the culture's beliefs? How do we live within that tension? In today's episode, Patrick looks at Esther 4-7, reminding us that God places us inside the tension for a reason - to live as faithful outsiders. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Esther 4-7

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Esther is one of the rare books in the Bible, which I think is best enjoyed in a single bite. That's not to say that you won't get anything out of it by meditating on each chapter or verse slowly, but it is to say that it's one of the best stories in the entire Bible. And I find that I feel the narrative tension best when I read it in one sitting. And that's because tension is precisely where the story. this story comes to life. Perhaps that's why I love it so much, because I feel tension in my life, too,

almost every day. Just like Esther, there are times when I feel out of place in this world. I feel like an outsider in my culture. Like I don't belong here. I'm in a consumeristic culture. And yet Jesus tells me that happiness doesn't consist in an abundance of possessions. Every ad tells me the opposite, so I feel kind of strange, like an outsider in our materialistic milieu. I live in a hyperbollah. I live in a hypersexualized culture, and yet Jesus tells me that sex is reserved for one man and one woman in a marriage covenant. Shows are filled with sex. Ads are filled with sex. Social media is littered with sexual risque content, and so I feel strange, like an outsider in our sexualized society. I live in an unforgiving, angry culture, and yet Jesus tells me to forgive an endless

number of times. When someone strikes me, he says to turn the other cheek. He calls me to love my enemies and to bless those who persecute me. But the world around me loves to cancel people for any reason. It says that if someone hurts you, you should hurt them back. Cut them off. Tell them how it is. Our politics are angry. Enemies hate each other. They demonize each other. And so I feel strange when I won't participate. I feel like an outsider in our spiteful civilization. If you're like me, you feel like an outsider from time to time, maybe a lot of the time. You feel the tension between yourself and the world around you in many different ways. You feel it around the water cooler at work when everyone agrees about something like it's an obvious truth, but you don't agree because it's not obviously true to you

because Jesus said otherwise. You feel that tension when you're at meals with family or with friends. You feel it when those you love don't understand why you won't indulge in materialism, your sexual desires, or your anger. You feel it when people in the news call your view of reality barbaric or backwards. You feel it in a disagreement with your kids or you feel it in a disagreement with your parents. You feel the tension thrumming every time you're on social media or listening to the radio or watching TV and you think this world is so out of joint with the way of Jesus. How did this happen? How did everything go so wrong? And what's going to happen to me if I don't conform? Perhaps you fear losing a job or maybe you fear losing a promotion or an opportunity

conform to culture or else. Or maybe if you're losing a relationship because of the tension or something you think you need to survive, maybe that makes you surly. Like you want to fight the culture, combat the culture, and take back what's yours. Or maybe you just want to escape from it all. Coaster yourself away from everybody else with only Christians.

Or to just try to avoid conflict at all costs. Whatever bad solution you're tempted by, you're tempted by it because the tension, is real and it's all around you. You are an outsider in this world and that means tension is an inescapable fact of your life. And that's precisely why you need to hear the story of Esther because it's a story about this kind of tension. Esther may have been the queen of Persia, but she was still an outsider. If you remember yesterday's episode, you'll remember that an Agagite named Haman paid off the king of Persia in order to get him to send a decree to all of Persia,

saying that there could be a genocide of Jews. Esther was a Jew, and she could do nothing to change that decree. She was an outsider, and she might die for it. Persians might think nothing of that kind of violence, but Esther knew what was wrong. She knew that the Persian way of violence enforced was anathema to God. She was an outsider. So what did she do? What were her temptations as an outsider living in a terrible, life-threatening tension? Well, we pick up in Esther four. Mordecai, that's Esther's uncle, learned of all that had been done, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the city, wailing loudly and bitterly. But he went only as far as the king's gate, because no one clothed and sackcloth was allowed to enter it. In every province to which

the edict and order of the king came, there was a great mourning amongst the Jews with fasting, weeping, and wailing. Many lay in sackcloth and ashes. When Esther's eunuchs and female attendants came and told her about Mordecai, she was in great distress. She sent clothes for him to put on instead of his sackcloth, but he wouldn't accept them. Then Esther summoned Hathak, one of the king's eunuchs assigned to attend her, and she ordered him to find out what was troubling Mordecai and why. And so Hathak went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king's gate, and Mordecai told him everything that had happened to him, including the exact amount of money Haman had promised to pay the royal treasury for the destruction of the Jews. He gave him a man. He gave him a lot of the Jews. He gave

him a copy of the text of the edict for their annihilation, which had been published in Susa to show Esther and to explain it to her. And he told him to instruct her to go into the king's presence and to beg for mercy and to plead with him for her people. Hathak went back and reported to Esther what Mordecai had said. And then she instructed him to say to Mordecai, 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 golden scepter to them and spares their lives. But 30 days have passed since I was called to go to the king. So let's just pause here. What was Esther's temptation? She was tempted to avoid the

conflict, to coister herself away and hope that the problem would just disappear. Is that your temptation when you feel tension in your life? Or is your temptation to conform to the culture around you? Just to say, well, let the Persians kill the Jews because I'm not a Jew anymore, or at least I'll pretend I'm not. Or is your temptation to combat the culture? To take up arms and say, I'll kill the king with the sword or with my words, but however I do it, he will do my will. He will stop. Check out Mordecai's response to Esther's attempt to avoid conflict, because that was her temptation. Verse 12. When Esther's words were reported to Mordecai, 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.

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. And it's at this point that we reach the height of the tension. What will Esther do? And in this moment we see a deep truth. What if God made us to be outsiders? What if God has put us into the tension, just like He did with Esther, precisely because he has

designed each and every one of us for a time such as this? Do you realize that where you are is not an accident? Where Esther was wasn't an accident. She was put there for this very purpose to be an outsider who could challenge the king. Jesus is calling you to both cultivate and resist the culture around you, to seek after the good and to resist the evil. Come what may. He's put you where you are for his purposes. In Esther's case, the story ends up working out. She agrees to risk her life and visit the king unbidden. After an elaborate set of banquets, she finally asks him to protect the Jewish people and tells him that Haman was plotting to kill her and her whole family. The king goes into a rage and he executes Haman and gives the Jews permission to defend themselves. Now, not every story of tension ends so

cleanly. Jesus certainly didn't. The tension he felt what the world landed him on a cross. But that's a reminder to us all that life is only on the other side of death. That was the case for Esther. She had to face her death to find life. And so whatever you fear in this world, fear not. God is with you in that tension. He's working through you. You are where you are for such a time as this.