Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Esther 4:14
For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, [then] shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for [such] a time as this?
14. relief ] A.V. enlargement, a word now obsolete in the sense of relief or deliverance. It does not occur elsewhere in the A.V., but we find the corresponding verb, meaning to set at large, to give freedom to move without obstruction, in 2Sa 22:37 (= Psa 18:36) (‘Thou hast enlarged my steps under me’); Psa 4:1 (‘Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress’). For the same use of the verb in Old English compare
“Thrice hath this Hotspur
Discomfited great Douglas, ta’en him once,
Enlarged him. ”
I Henry IV. iii. 2. 115.
“ Enlarge the man committed yesterday.”
Henry V. ii. 2. 40.
from another place ] not meaning simply from some human source, as when Judas Maccabaeus sent an embassy to Rome to ask aid against Greek oppression ( 1Ma 8:17 ), or later, when his brother Jonathan applied in the same quarter and for the same object ( 1Ma 12:1 ). The reference here, though veiled after the reticent fashion of this Book, is to the Divine agency, whether working through earthly means or not. Israel cannot perish.
but thou and thy father’s house shall perish ] Her inactivity would involve not only herself but her family in ruin. Thus she has nothing to hope from that alternative. It ensures her death; the other course but risks it.
who knoweth whether ] = perhaps. Cp. the same expression in Joe 2:14; Jon 3:9.
whether thou art not come ] A.V. whether thou art come. It is true that the ‘not’ has no literal equivalent in the original Hebrew, but still the R.V. is a more accurate translation of the exact sense. Mordecai means, We cannot say that Providence has not shaped thy fortunes to this very end, and given thee a position enabling thee to deliver thy whole nation in the impending crisis.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
From another place – i. e. from some other quarter. Mordecai probably concluded from the prophetic Scriptures that God would NOT allow His people to be destroyed before His purposes with respect to them were accomplished, and was therefore satisfied that deliverance would arise from one quarter or another.
Thou and thy fathers house shall be destroyed – i. e. a divine vengeance will overtake thee and thine, if thou neglectest thy plain duty. Though the name of God is not contained in the Book of Esther, there is in this verse a distinct, tacit allusion to Gods promises, and to the direction of human events by Divine Providence.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Est 4:14
Then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place.
Female deliverers in Israel
In former ages women, as Deborah and Jael, had been made the instruments of saving Israel. Esther might have a place among those whose memories, after so many generations, were still fragrant among their countrymen. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Enlargement and deliverance
Enlargement and deliverance will arise to the Jews, to the Israel of God, under the gospel as well as under the law. Amidst all the distresses of the Church, we may rest assured that she cannot perish. All, therefore, who perform eminent services to the Church ought humbly to thank the Lord for choosing to employ them rather than others; for He is never at a loss for servants to do His work. (G. Lawson.)
And who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?–
The use of talents to be accounted for
A man who knows a particular remedy for a certain disease, of which others are ignorant, would be chargeable with the fatal consequences that may arise from the general ignorance if he locks up his knowledge within his own breast. If Providence furnish us with talents which are not granted to others, we must account for our use of them. If we have opportunities of doing much good which others have not, and make no use of them, we make ourselves guilty of a crime which can be charged upon none but ourselves. (G. Lawson.)
Services suitable to our situation required by God
If God has done remarkable things for us, we have reason to believe that He expects some services from us suited to the situation in which He has placed us, and to the means of service with which He has furnished us. We ought, therefore, when we consider what God hath done for us, to consider at the same time what He requires from us. If our circumstances are peculiar it is likely that some peculiar services are required. (G. Lawson.)
The time for usefulness
Our times are in the Lords hands. He fixes the bounds of our habitations and arranges our conditions according to His own will. His servants have a special earthly calling wherein they are called, the duties of which they are individually to fulfil. He has particular relative objects to secure in the exaltation of those whom He loves. And when any of His servants are raised to influence, or wealth, or power, it is that He may make them effective instruments of His power for blessing to others. There is, therefore, a special propriety of time at which His gifts of power and influence are bestowed upon particular men. If one is made rich, it is because there are many poor waiting to be enriched by him, and he is to have the greater blessing of imparting, giving to his fellow-men. There is a particular reason, could we know it, for which we are come to the kingdom for such a time. We should study our duty in the circumstances of its time. Every virtue and trait of holiness in her character shines with increasing brightness and beauty as Esther goes forward in her appointed dispensation. Let us consider the circumstances of the time,
1. It was a time of great trial for the people of Israel.
2. The time tested the sincerity of Esthers affection for Mordecai, and brought that into immediate demonstration.
3. The time also tried the sincerity of Esthers affection for her nation. The truly pious heart will cherish an universal love. The wants and sorrows of all mankind are the subjects of its sympathy and its concern. But true religion especially exalts and enlarges domestic love, and love for our country and nation. The more truly the heart is engaged for God the more earnestly will it feel the sorrows and needs of those who are near to us. Have we wealth? We have those connected with us who are poor and suffering. Have we station or knowledge? It is no Christian heart which has no fellowship in suffering and no tenderness for woe. Yet we sadly see a hardness of heart often attendant on exalted conditions. Men seem to feel that they have been elevated by their own efforts, and that inability to do the same in others is in some degree a crime which ought to be punished by suffering. They invent every possible excuse for withholding their demanded aid.
4. The time displayed her entire disinterestedness of spirit, and her trust in God. She resolved to put the request of Mordecai into immediate operation. Mere self-indulgence would have delighted in her own state of luxury and enjoyment, and have shut her ears and her heart against the cries and woes of her people. To preserve this people she must hazard her own life. Beautiful is this illustration of a disinterested and devoted spirit. I am content to perish to gain the great end of blessing to others which I have before me. Such was the love of our Divine Redeemer for us. For the joy that was set before Him He endured the Cross and despised the shame. (S. H. Tyng, D. D.)
A human voice speaks Divine lessons for human lives
What are the Divine lessons which this human voice speaks, not only to Esther, but to every true soul.
I. That great advantages are conferred for a divine purpose. Talents, position, influence, wealth.
II. That God requires that such advantages should be faithfully used for the promotion of his purposes.
III. That such divine purposes cannot be frustrated.
IV. Those who frustrate divine purposes shall be injured.
V. Learn that a faithful discharge of duty must bring rich Results. (W. Burrows, B. A.)
Esthers exaltation; or who knoweth
I shall lay out my sermon under four words.
I. Hearken!
1. To a question. Brother, will you separate your interests from those of your people and your God? Do you mean to say, I shall look to my own salvation, but I cannot be supposed to take an interest in saving others? In such a spirit as that I do not say you will be lost, but I say you are lost already. It is as needful that you be saved from selfishness as from any other vice.
2. To a second question: If you could separate your interests from those of the cause of God, would you thereby secure them?
3. Remember, for your humiliation, that God can do without you.
4. As God can do without us, it may be He will do without us.
5. How will you bear the disgrace, if ever it come upon you, of having suffered your golden opportunities to be despised?
II. Consider–
1. To what some of you have been advanced.
2. Why the Lord has brought you where you are.
3. At what a time it is that you have been thus advanced.
4. Under what special circumstances you have come where you are.
5. With what singular personal adaptations you are endowed for the work to which God has called you.
III. Aspire. Who knoweth, etc. When Louis Napoleon was shut up in the fortress of Ham, and everybody ridiculed his foolish attempts upon France, yet he said to himself, Who knows? I am the nephew of my uncle, and may yet sit upon the imperial throne, and he did so before many years had passed. I have no desire to make any man ambitious after the poor thrones, etc., of earth, but I would fain make you all ardently ambitious to honour God and bless men.
IV. Confide.
1. If thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this, be con fident that thou art safe.
2. If God has a purpose to serve by a man, that man will live out his day and accomplish the Divine design. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The duty of the hour
(to an agricultural college):–This exemplifies a truth of universal application and of particular pertinency. The idea is that the general welfare is best promoted by the advancement of the individual, while the advancement of the individual can be maintained only by his loyal devotion to the public weal. We have discovered in these latter days that relations are of more moment than things. Charcoal, sulphur, nitre are things of some potency, in themselves considered; but they must be brought into the proper relations, the one to the other, before the might of gunpowder shakes the earth. I observe–
1. That the college graduate of to-day, who has completed a four years course of liberal training in a well-equipped and thoroughly-manned institution of learning comes into a kingdom.
2. The college graduate of to-day comes into his kingdom at a time of marvellous and portentous significance.
3. Our time, with its sudden transitions, is fraught with danger to all classes of society, but to none more than to those who till the soil. (C. S. Walker, Ph. D.)
The principles of Divine providence
I. That the providence of God is concerned about the highest good of man. This is shown–
1. In the advent of Christ for the worlds salvation.
2. The spread of the gospel and the conversion of the Gentiles.
3. The restoration of peace between nations and the final destruction of slavery.
II. The highest good of man is secured independently of mans individual conduct. The stream of human agency is like a river, ever flowing and ever changing. One drop in the stream cannot say, When I am gone the channel will be dry. No sooner is room made than another follows, and the channel is ever full. So it is in the history of man. Gods providence will secure workers.
III. That men are placed by God in such positions that they may secure for themselves the honour of helping god in his providential work.
IV. In not making use of our providential position we expose ourselves to fearful evils.
V. That in making use of our providential positions, we shall require special qualifications, and shall have the sympathy and co-operation of a holy universe, as well as the commendation and blessing of god. Notice–
1. That in doing our duty we show the possession of the highest and noblest moral qualities.
(1) Duty done under the pressure of difficulty is done by faith in God, and is therefore a proof of piety.
(2) Duty done in difficulty requires a self-sacrificing disposition.
(3) Duty done amid difficulties requires consummate skill.
(4) In doing duty no time should be lost.
2. That in doing our duty we have the help of a holy universe (Est 6:1). (Evan Lewis.)
The preservation of the Jews an illustration of the Divine government
The text presents for our consideration–
I. A firm conviction of an overruling providence.
II. The recognition of human instrumentalities in the divine government.
III. The principle of self-sacrifice which enables men to re acceptable instruments in the divine government. (Prof. E. J. Wolf, D. D.)
Position and responsibility
Our Lords great principle, Unto whom much is given of him shall much be required, is clear as a mathematical axiom when we look at it in the abstract; but nothing is harder than for people to apply it to their own cases. If it were freely admitted, the ambition that grasps at the first places would be shamed into silence. If it were generally acted on, the wide social cleft between the fortunate and the miserable would be speedily bridged over. The total ignoring of this tremendous principle by the great majority of those who enjoy the privileged positions in society is doubtless one of the chief causes of the ominous unrest that is growing more and more disturbing in the less favoured ranks of life. If this supercilious contempt for an imperative duty continues, what can be the end but an awful retribution? Was it not the wilful blindness of the dancers in the Tuileries to the misery of the serfs in the fields that caused revolutionary France to run red with blood? (W. F. Adeney, M. A.)
Gods purpose and mans opportunity
I draw from the text the following general truths:
I. That running through the providence of this world there is a gracious divine purpose for its ultimate salvation.
1. Mordecai believed in the indestructibility of the Jews. This was with him evidently a religious faith. This faith must have been founded on one or more of the promises of God.
2. This purpose of the preservation of the Jews is but a branch and a sign of another and grander purpose–a purpose to gather and save the whole world. This types itself in the kingly history; gleams in the prophets vision; breathes in the holy psalm; speaks out in the Acts of the Apostles; runs through all the epistles, and sighs up to heaven in that last apocalyptic cry, Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
II. That rich and rare opportunities occur in the progress of things, by which believing men are allowed to come effectually to the help of the lord against the mighty. We must spread the gospel or lose it. Our moral opportunities, our seasonable times for action, are very precious, are very brief, and when they are gone they cannot be renewed. So it is at times with Churches, with societies, and with nations.
III. That the neglect of such providential calls has a tendency to bring destruction. Mordecai probably had in view a general principle of retribution, acting at all times, but sure to act swiftly and terribly in a case like this. This principle has its fullest application to the ungodly. The way, the hope, the expectation, the works, the memory, and saddest of all, the soul of the wicked shall perish. Let a Christian man neglect opportunities and hold truth in unrighteousness, and what will happen to him? He perishes as to the real power of his life. It is the same with Churches, etc. No Church, etc., can live except as they continue to be in harmony with the purpose and the providence of God. Where are the seven Churches in Asia?
IV. That obedience will bring elevation and blessing. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)
Inactivity in the cause of Christ condemned
Reflect–
I. That the man who used these words was evidently well aware that the cause of God was not dependent on the aids of men. This is evident if we consider–
1. The meanness of the instruments and the greatness of the work to be done.
2. How absolute are the promises of God, which show His determination to bless His people.
3. The power of God. These considerations ought to teach the instruments to be humble, and they ought also to confirm the faith of the people of God.
II. That his providence does raise up suitable instruments to carry forward his work.
III. That it is the duty of those instruments to give themselves up to the work. We are not only to study the book of God to know what is our duty in general, but also the book of providence to know what is the particular duty He designs us to do. We ought to study–
1. Our particular talent.
2. Our sphere.
3. Our circumstances.
4. The times.
IV. That an awful doom rests on those who listen not to the call of providence.
1. We shall lose the satisfaction of doing good.
2. We shall not prosper.
(1) Temporally.
(2) Spiritually.
Those who are not actively employed in the service of Christ feel most of the bitterness arising from doubts as to their actual condition and fears as to their spiritual state. Listlessness in the cause of Christ will be a cause of gloom on a dying bed.
3. There is an intimate connection between the degrees of glory in heaven and the exercises of activity here. (W. H. Cooper.)
Providence and opportunity
Gods providential purpose; mans present opportunity; that is how I read the lesson of this marvellous history. A purpose clearly written on the face of events and to be readily deciphered from their grouping. Moses at the Red Sea heard a voice telling him to stretch his rod over the sea, that a way might be made for the ransomed to pass over. Now we have no voice; but circumstances gather about us, the rod is thrust into our hand, and we miss our deliverance if we do not see that we must wave the rod. We are not in intellectual and religious infancy. We ought to be able to discover without any warning voice what Gods purpose is, and what our opportunity is worth.
I. As to life itself, human existence; entry upon it is a coming to a kingdom. Living now, we are conditioned by the time and circumstances of to-day. Our days have fallen on a time different from all that have gone before, unique in this particular, if in nothing else–the power of public opinion. In former days but one man here and there seemed to have a kingdom to enter upon, a few men swayed the nations, a few men seemed to be inspired to deeds which raised them into leaders of the people. But now the rulers in name are the ruled in fact. The government is governed and the people control everything. It is a great thing to live now. Literature and science pour their wealth out before us. By these things we have the chance of being better men in some directions of thought and of exerting a mightier influence in the world than our fathers could exert. Some men might just as well have lived hundreds of years ago, for any appreciation they seem to have of the privileges and demands of the time. No time is like another in all its details. We have to make it what it shall be. By the impulse of an earnest life, by the influence of holy character, by brief words spoken and little deeds done according to our opportunity, must we do something to mould that public opinion which is omnipotent.
II. As Christians we have come to a kingdom. Christianity has always presented two aspects, the offensive and the defensive. In the old days of national warfare, when ships were made of wood, rough-wrought cannon and shot were sufficient means of attack. But with the iron-plating has necessarily come improvement in the means of destruction. As the ship becomes more exposed to the danger of improved appliances she must be more scientifically defended. We sometimes smile as we see the way in which truth used to be asserted and defended. We now see that truth is its own best defence. (J. Jones.)
The day we live in
Esther had her God-appointed work. You and I have ours.
I. In order to meet the special demand of this age you need to be an unmistakable, aggressive christian. Of half-and-half Christians we do not want any more. A great deal of the piety of the day is too exclusive. It hides itself. It needs more fresh air, more outdoor exercise. There are many Christians who are giving their entire life to self-examination. They are feeling their pulses to see what is the condition of their spiritual health. How long would a man have robust physical health if he kept all the day feeling his pulse instead of going out into active, earnest, every-day work? I was once amid the wonderful, bewitching cactus growths of North Carolina. I never was more bewildered with the beauty of flowers, and yet when I would take up one of these cactuses and pull the leaves apart the beauty was all gone. You could hardly tell that it had ever been a flower. And there are a great many Christian people in this day just pulling apart their Christian experiences to see what there is in them, and there is nothing left in them. This style of self-examination is a damage instead of an advantage to their Christian character. I remember when I was a boy I used to have a small piece in the garden that I called my own, and I planted corn there, and every few days I would pull it up to see how fast it was growing. Now, there are a great many Christian people in this day whose self-examination merely amounts to the pulling up of that which they only yesterday or the day before planted. If you want to have a stalwart Christian character, plant it right out of doors in the great field of Christian usefulness. The century plant is wonderfully suggestive and wonderfully beautiful, but I never look at it without thinking of its parsimony. It lets whole generations go by before it puts forth one blossom; so I have really more admiration when I see the dewy tears in the blue eyes of the violets, for they come every spring. Time is going by so rapidly that we cannot afford to be idle. A recent statistician says that human life now has an average of only thirty-two years. From these thirty-two years you must subtract all the time you take for sleep, and the taking of food, and recreation; that will leave you about sixteen years. From those sixteen years you must subtract all the time that you are necessarily engaged in the earning of a livelihood; that will leave you about eight years. From those eight years you must take all the days, and weeks, and months–all the length of time that is passed in sickness; leaving you about one year in which to work for God.
II. To meet the duties this age demands of you, you must, on the one hand, avoid reckless iconoclasm, and on the other hand, not stick too much to things because they are old. Do not take hold of a thing merely because it is new. Do not adhere to anything merely because it is old. There is not a single enterprise of the Church or the world but has sometime been scoffed at. There was a time when men derided even Bible societies, and when a few young men met in Massachusetts and organised the first missionary society ever organised in this country there went laughter and ridicule all around the Christian Church. They said the undertaking was preposterous. And so also the work of Jesus Christ was assailed. People cried out, Who ever heard of such theories of ethics and government? Who ever noticed such a style of preaching as Jesus had? Many have thought that the chariot of Gods truth would fall to pieces if it once got out of the old rut. And so there are those who have no patience with anything like improvement in church architecture, or with anything like good, hearty, earnest church singing, and they deride any form of religious discussion which goes down walking among every-day men rather than that which makes an excursion on rhetorical stilts. Oh, that the Church of God would wake up to an adaptability of work! There is work for you to do, and for me to do, in order to this grand accomplishment. Here is my pulpit, and I preach in it. Your pulpit is the bank. Your pulpit is the store. Your pulpit is the editorial chair. Your pulpit is the anvil. Your pulpit is the house scaffolding. Your pulpit is the mechanics shop.
III. In order to be qualified to meet your duty in this particular age, you want unbounded faith in the triumph of the truth and the overthrow of wickedness, (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)
Womens duty to the age
(a womans sermon to women):–What is womens duty? It is to be gentle, true, devoted. It is to be as strong as it is in her to be and as beautiful as possible. It is to be a discreet keeper at home, a willing performer of out-of-sight duties, a helpmeet to man, a mother in Israel, a handmaid of the Lord. It is a fact past denial that women do exert an immense influence in the world. An English bishop has said, A nation is what its women make it. No man is so strong, or so wise, or so good, that he can afford to do without the gentle remonstrance, the inspiriting plaudits, the pure and bright life-example of the women of his family. There is great need now for women who understand the times and know what the people ought to do. Reforms are necessary, and in making them we shall certainly have to begin with ourselves. Better women will make better homes, better homes will make better society, better society will raise the tone of public opinion, and influence those who frame and execute our laws. Let us learn from the example of Queen Esther how to become better.
I. Let us recognise the fact that as she had her opportunity, so have we ours. If we look around us we must see how God brings certain persons into certain circumstances because they are most fit to be there. One in a family converted. One in a family to whom has been given the seeing eyes and the understanding heart. One in a family more clever, more strong, more amiable than the rest. Why? That that one may fulfil the duties, and meet, not shirk, the responsibilities of that position.
II. Let us learn that the fact of a duty being difficult and dangerous is no excuse for our failing to perform it honestly.
III. We may learn the source of true strength and confidence.
IV. We may learn that having seen our duty, and asked gods guidance and blessing, we should fearlessly go through with our task. Fearlessly, but wisely, according to the light that is given to us. Esther fortified her soul with trust in God, and then used her own common sense. Esthers judgment was equal to her courage. She knew how to bide her time. (Marianne Farningham.)
Public duty
This message sets before us three weighty principles.
I. That Gods cause is independent of our efforts. Mordecai believed that the record of Gods faithfulness in the past gave the assurance that in some way of His own He would prevent the extinction of His people. This is an attitude of mind we should seek to cultivate in reference to the cause of Christ. This cause has the omnipotence of God behind it. He has promised Christ the heathen for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession, and, whoever helps and whoever hinders, His word shall not be broken. One man with truth and the promise of God at his back is stronger than an opposing world. The cause of Christ has come through crises when persecution has tried to exterminate it. It has passed through periods of scepticism when learning and cleverness have fancied that they have blown it away as an exploded superstition. Men have had to stand up for it single-handed against principalities and powers, but with it at their backs they have been stronger than all that were against them.
II. That we are not independent of it. We cannot hold back from Christs cause with impunity. It can do without us, but we cannot do without it. If religion is a reality, to live without it is to suppress and ultimately destroy the most noble part of our being. To live without God is to renounce the profoundest and most influential experience which life contains. If Christ is the central figure in history, and if the movement He has set ageing is the central current of history, then to be dissociated with His aims is to be a cipher or perhaps even a minus quantity in the sum of good.
III. Christs cause offers the noblest employment foe our gifts. It is a transfiguring moment when the thought first penetrates a man that the purpose for which he has received his gifts is to help humanity and the cause of Christ in the world. A man enters upon his spiritual majority when he ceases to be the most important object in the world to himself, and sees outside an object which makes him forget himself and irresistibly draws him on. The problem of the degraded and disinherited is pressing on the attention of intelligent minds with an urgency which cannot be disregarded. The heathen world is opening everywhere to the influences of the gospel If you would run in response to this call, do not neglect the preparation. Knowledge is the armour of light in which the battles of progress have to be fought. Life for God in public must be balanced by life with God in secret. (James Stalker, D. D.)
Womans opportunities-
It has been observed that with every great emergency God has raised up a man equal to the emergency. As God called Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Elijah, David, and Daniel for a special work, so He called Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, Washington and Lincoln. As God inspired Bezaleel to invent cunning works, so to-day He raises up such men as an Edison to solve and use mysterious forces of nature. Every age and every emergency has had the men needed for the age and the emergency. The apostles met the demand of their age. The Church Fathers did a peculiar work for which they were fitted. Luther came upon the scene just when needed. This is also true of all great men who have become the worlds leaders and saviours. I have spoken of man, but what has been said of him is equally as true of woman. She may not have been so conspicuous a figure, but she was none the less important. When Samuels mother consecrated her boy to the service of Jehovah; had she no part in determining the destiny of Israel? When the mother and grandmother instructed young Timothy in the Scriptures, did they have no part in the establishment of the Apostolic Church? When Martha and Mary made a home for the Saviour, a place where He could lay His head, did they not perform an important part? When the mother of Augustine taught and conversed with him about Scriptures, did she not do much toward making Augustinian confessions possible? The mother of Alfred the Great was his first teacher and always his most trusted counsellor. The mother of Henry VII. of England did more than her royal son for the dissemination of learning and the establishment of colleges. The rise of Methodism goes back beyond John or Charles Wesley to their noble mother. Who familiar with the life of Herschel and his sister can doubt that much of his greatness rests upon her co-operation and untiring labour? The name of Joan of Arc suggests what woman can do on the field of war. Of every woman mentioned it might be said, Thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this. The breadth of womans influence is widening. She is the strongest social force of to-day. Life is her key-board which she may sweep with a masters touch if she will. To woman all doors are open. She may enter and win her bread without being touched by snobbishness and caste. The entrance of woman into the various occupations has had the tendency to stop the growing boorishness which was manifesting itself in business circles. It is slowly but surely leading men to recognise the one great work of life not to be money getting, but character building. She is giving a shading to the values of life; hence we are beginning to place things more nearly where they belong. In temperance reform woman has been, and is still, the leader. Time and again she has undergone the scoffs of rowdies and the ridicule of pot-house politicians, but feeling that God called her to the kingdom for such an hour as this, she has risked popularity and society influence in defence of home and children. The most important work in all this widening field of womans activity is the evangelisation of the world. It is of God. It touches mans deepest need. It brings him the blessings of a Christian civilisation and the assurance of life eternal. It is therefore the highest service woman can enter into. There is nothing that will yield greater joy or larger returns. (W. C. Burns, D. D.)
The Church and the present crisis
I ask you to observe–
I. That a crisis has come of overwhelming importance in the religious history of the world. It is a crisis of magnificent opportunity and also of infinite responsibility. It is a crisis in which unparalleled success may be achieved for the glory of God, or where Churches may be utterly broken and destroyed by their unfaithfulness and disobedience. It is, indeed, the crisis of history; for never have such opportunities for the evangelisation of our own country, or of the heathen abroad, been presented; never have difficulties been so remarkably removed, and never were calls for help so loud and piercing as just now. That I may help you to realise this truth, let me recall a few facts to your remembrance. Within the lifetime of some now here the world was practically closed against the extension of Protestant Christianity. Mohammedanism sealed itself against the truth of Jesus; and the heathen nations of the earth were walled around by prejudice or by prohibitory laws. China and Japan were hermetically sealed against the entrance of Christianity. And now, with our scientific discoveries, our mechanical inventions, our great social movements and combinations, we are sweeping along with a rapidity which it is almost bewildering to contemplate. All this is wonderful beyond realisation. Never did the human race move so quickly. Time after time have the maps of the world been altered and reformed in our day. Now with a startling swiftness the moral map of the world is changing, and no one can presage what will be the next great movement that will command the wonder of mankind. In all these revolutions and developments of the hour, what institution ought to be more concerned than the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ? The Church of to-day is the arbiter of the worlds future. It is called on to save idolatrous nations awakening from the sleep of ages from relapsing into the abyss of scepticism. It is summoned to sanctify and beautify the growing intelligence and wealth of barbarous peoples, by suffusing them with the glory of Christian holiness and truth. It is destined to become the harbinger and bestower of liberty, of enfranchisement, of spiritual expansion to classes and masses of the race who have hitherto groaned in bondage and shame.
II. What is required from the church to meet the pressing crisis. We have a Church of the times; we need a Church for the times. The Church of the times is far too much formal, aiming at gentility and fashion; the Church for the times must be spiritual and powerful, aiming at evangelistic aggression and the conversion of the world. If the Church will seek a new baptism and enter on a new career of aggressiveness, how soon the most glorious prophecies of time shall be fulfilled it is impossible to realise. A short work will God make upon the earth. A very brief period sufficed for the destruction of Sennacheribs host and for the downfall of Babylon. It was a short time only that was required for the humbling of Napoleons pride. And if the Church of God, with her splendour of learning, her ripeness of intellect, her boundless wealth, and her unparalleled vantage-ground, be only faithful and obedient, and ready for the avalanche of opportunities which now present themselves, the progress of the gospel must be far more rapid and glorious than ever before. (W. J. Townsend.)
Man born for an end
While we continue on earth we are obliged to a sort of spiritual speculation; to judge as well as we can, but to remain uncertain; to take the most important steps in the dark; to pursue our course like vessels in a mist, cautiously and fearfully, having no clear view of the coast by which we sail, but only catching here and there a dubious Sign of where we are, and whither we are tending. This acting on venture is emphatically taught in the text. Observe–
I. That all generations and individuals are created for their own end. We cannot doubt that it was with a definite design that God set up the pillars of the universe. And so with its continued existence. The mighty river of human life which gushed forth in Adam, flows, we are sure, to some goal and makes to some issue. God beholds the vast tide of being sweeping on to a glorious consummation, which He perceives now, and we shall see hereafter, to have been the point to which the current tended from the beginning. This will appear from the continual changes which take place. Why do not mens habits remain always the same? Why does one generation abandon the principles and tastes of its predecessor? How is it that the nineteenth century is not like the sixteenth? Continual change intimates that we are travelling on to an appointed destination. To suppose otherwise would be to suppose God to be a God, not of order, but of confusion. We see traces of this in the several dispensations of religion which God has revealed. The law prepared the way for the gospel; all the wars and conquests of Rome brought the human family into a condition the most favourable for the preaching of the apostles. The Patriarchal, the Levitical, and the Christian dispensations, appear to follow in manifest order, each working up and fading into that which came next. What the world is now is a necessary step to what the world is to be. And what is true of periods of a thousand years is true also of each period of fourscore years. Every generation of human kind is born for an end. We are apt to consider overmuch individual life, not the life of the universe. We see unnumbered ripples on the stream of time, coming and going apparently without cause or effect: God beholds in each ripple an onward flow; that not one could be withdrawn without injury to the symmetry of the great whole. There arises out of all this a very solemn character attaching to our tenure of life. We have our part in a stupendous work, whose limits we cannot discern. We have been launched into being just at the moment when we were wanted. Not to do our own pleasure, but to fulfil a part in working out Gods counsels. This is the solemn vocation of each generation.
II. Very commonly a mans life works up to, or hangs upon a certain critical moment. Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Oh I they are words which may well sound in the ears of the soul, at many a sick-bed, at many an event of inferior importance in our earthly career. How did Abraham live seventy years in his fathers house an ordinary man, till the mysterious moment when the voice said to him, Come out from thy kindred? and on what he did at that strange bidding hung not only his, but the worlds history! How did all Davids life turn upon the incident, that at the moment when he chanced to visit his brethren in the camp, at that moment Goliath came out with his defiance of the living God! And so with ourselves: there are in almost every mans life turning-points upon which all hangs. Who cannot look back and discern times and seasons when, if he had acted otherwise, his whole after-life would have been altered? And thus in religion–whether a man be lost or saved will frequently depend upon a step taken at a particular crisis; all subsequent steps grow out of that step. True that every hour of our lives is an hour when good and evil are set before us. There are strong temptations occurring at intervals, which, well got over, leave a mans heart for a long time at liberty; which, if not resisted, lead from deceit to deceit-from sin to sin–until there is no getting the feet out of the net. Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Sometimes a mans whole life may be traced afterwards to have led up to one such moment. His education, his tastes, his companionships may all be discerned to have been the instrumentality of drawing him into the wilderness for his one great conflict with the adversary. (J. B. Woodford, M. A.)
Every one has his peculiar work
The thought to a devout man is always supreme–thou art come here for such a time–for such a purpose. Thy steps are ordered of the Lord. Thy talents, thy character, thy place in society have all been shaped and settled, with a special adaptation to the Divine purpose. Nothing walks with aimless feet. As in the human body every function, so in the Divine government every Christian is placed to do a work which none else can do, and his Lords eye is ever on him. While this is his victory over every base fear, and discouraging thought, his faith, his confidence that God has called him to his proper work, will sustain him in it. (Homilist.)
Emergency
Let us learn from the appeal of Mordecai to Esther that opportunity is the test of character. Who knoweth, he said, whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? It was the tidal time of her life, the great opportunity of her existence, and the question was whether she would rise to the occasion and make it subservient to her greatness or whether it would sweep her away with it as weak, irresolute, and unequal to the emergency. Happily she stood the test, and by her courageous self-devotion proved that she was worthy of the affection with which her foster-father regarded her. Character is revealed only by being tested, and that test often comes in the shape of sudden elevation. The common idea, I know, is that character is tested only by affliction; but I am not sure if prosperity be not a more searching acid than adversity. Now, this is a truth which ought never to be lost sight of by any one among us. What we shall do in a crisis depends upon what we have been doing all along in the ordinary routine of our lives, when no such emergency was on us. We cannot cut ourselves off from the past. There is a continuity in our lives, such that the habits which we have formed in the days that are gone do largely condition for us our resources in the present. Every day we live we are either adding to that constant element in us which constitutes our truest selves, and so increasing that reserve force on which in times of emergency we can draw with advantage, or we are expending with imprudent prodigality our spiritual capital, and living morally beyond our means, so that when a crisis comes we cannot stand it, and must inevitably go down. The careful man who husbands his earnings and stores them in some safe bank is able, when a time of adversity comes upon him, to tide over the difficulty by breaking in upon the surplus which he has accumulated. We all see and admit that in the case of deposits that are made outside of ourselves, and which are not us so much as they are ours. But we too frequently fail to take note of it in respect to the character deposits or drafts which we are constantly making on or from ourselves–meaning, thereby, our souls. If, as each morning dawns, we meet every duty as it calls us, or face every temptation as it attacks us, as a duty to be performed, or a temptation to be resisted out of regard to the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall thereby add to our store of strength for the confronting of what may yet be before us; but if we go through our lives seeking only our own ease or the gratification of our appetites, or the indulgence of some evil ambition, we are, in all that, only weakening ourselves, and making ourselves so much the less to be relied upon when we come into our kingdom, and have to face a time like that which Esther was here required to meet. Travellers tell us of a tree in tropical countries, the inner parts of which are sometimes eaten out by ants, while the bark and leaves remain apparently as fresh as ever, and it is not till the tornado comes and sweeps it down that its weakness is discovered. But the storm did not make the tree weak: it only revealed how weak it really was; and its feebleness was the result of the gnawings of innumerable insects through a long course of years. In like manner, if we let our characters be honeycombed by neglect of common duty, or by daily indulgence in secret sin, or by habitual yielding to some temptation, we cannot expect anything else than failure when the testing hour shall come. What an importance thus attaches to what I may call the commonplace of life I We are apt, when we read such a history as that before us, to exclaim, How tremendously important these grand outstanding opportunities of doing some great service are! And no doubt they are all that we can say they are, But then we forget that the bearing in these of the individuals to whom they have been given will depend on the characters which they have been forming and strengthening in the ordinary routine life of every day before they came into their kingdom. It is out of the commonplace, well and faithfully done, that the heroic is born; and the splendid devotion of Esther to the welfare of her people would never have been heard of had she not meekly learned and diligently practised the lessons of her girlhood which Mordecai taught her in his pious home. The prize-taker at the end of the year is the daily plodder all through it. The gaining of his diploma by a student depends, no doubt, on the manner in which he passes his final examination. That is for him the equivalent of this occasion in the life of Esther; but then the proficiency which at that time he manifests does itself depend on the steady, constant perseverance which he has maintained in his class work from hour to hour throughout his course. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Junctures
Nor does this prophetic utterance of Mordecai apply simply to our position and responsibility as a nation, but also to our circumstances and obligations as individuals. When a ship is moving in a certain course, and there is descried a wrecked crew and passengers tossed in their little boat, or imprisoned on some lonely island, the captain might well consider whether he has not been brought into the course which he has taken for such a time–such an occasion of humanity and benevolent action as that–and would be censured if he did not avail himself of it for the rescue of the perishing. In every life there are junctures when the same reflection should have a place in our minds. It may be an orphan family cast in the way of a wealthy relative whom he has the opportunity of taking under his protection and guardianship, or an infidel assault on the vital doctrines of Christianity, when just such talents and faith as we may possess may be what is needful to repel it, or an injury being done to a neighbour when, from our position and influence, interference on our part may be all that is called for to prevent it. In a thousand different ways may we have to consider whether God has not so placed us in providence as to be specially qualified and circumstanced for the accomplishment of particular works of faith and labours of love. (T. McEwan.)
Our opportunity
As I read Captain Mahans masterly and noble Life of Nelson the other day with Esther in my mind, I could not but mark with my pencil such things as these in that great sea-captain who had such a hand in setting England up on her high opportunity. Opportunity, says the excellent biographer, flitted by, but Nelson was always ready and grasped it. Again, and again, and again the same thing is said of Nelson, till it shines out above all his other great gifts, and becomes the best description of his great genius. But we are not great queens like Esther, with the deliverance of Israel in our hands; nor are we great sea captains like Lord Nelson, with the making of modern England in our hands. No. But we are what we are, and what God has made us to be and to do. We all have our own circle set round us of God, and out of our own circle our own opportunities continually arise. Our opportunities may not be so far-reaching or so high sounding as some other mens are; but they are our opportunities, and they are far-reaching enough for us. Our opportunities are life or death to us and to others; they are salvation or condemnation to our immortal souls; and is that not circle, and opportunity enough? We are all tempted every day to say, If I only were Esther! It I only had a great opportunity, would I not rise to it! Would I not speak out at any risk! Would I not do a work, and win a name, and deliver Israel, and glorify God! Did you ever read of Clemens, and Fervidus, and Eugenia, and their imaginary piety? Clemens had his head full of all manner of hypothetical liberalities. He kept proposing to himself continually what he would o if he only had a great estate. Come to thy senses, Clemens. Do not talk what thou wouldst be sure to do if thou wast an angel, but think what thou canst do as a man. Remember what the poor widow did with her one mite, and go and do likewise. Fervidus, again, is only sorry he is not a minister. What a reformation he would have worked in his own life by this time, and in his whole parish, if only God had made him a minister! He would have saved his own soul, and the souls of his people, in season and out of season. Do you believe yourself, Fervidus? You are deceiving yourself. You hire a cabman to drive you to church, and he sits in the wet street waiting for you, and you never ask him how he manages to live with no Sabbath. It is not asked of you, Fervidus, to live and die a martyr; but just to visit your cabmans wife and children, and have family worship with them on a Sabbath night like you would have done if you had been a minister. Eugenia, again, is a young lady full of the most devout dispositions. If she ever has a family she will let you see family religion. She is more scandalised than she can tell you at the way that some of her schoolfellows have married heathens, and at the life they lead without Gods worship in their newly-married houses. But, Eugenia, you may never be married so as to show married people how to live. At the same time, you have a maid already, all to yourself. She dresses you for church, and then you leave her to have as little religion as a Hottentot. You turn her away when she displeases you, and you hire another, and so on, till you will die unmarried, and without a godly household, and your circle will be dissolved and your opportunity for ever lost. Your maid, and her sister, and her widowed mother, and her ill-doing brother, and her sweetheart, they all are your circle at present, and your opportunity is fast flitting by; and, because it is so near you every day, you do not discover it. Oh, Eugenia, full to the eyes of so many vain imaginations! You never heard of Eugenia, and Fervidus, and Clemens before, and do not know where to find them. But no matter. You and I are Fervidus and Eugenia ourselves. You and I are Mordecai and Esther ourselves. We are in that circle, and amid those opportunities, the very best that all the power, and all the wisdom, and all the love of God can provide for us. (A. Whyte, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 14. Then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise] He had a confidence that deliverance would come by some means; and he thought that Esther would be the most likely; and that, if she did not use the influence which her providential station gave her, she would be highly culpable.
And who knoweth whether thou art come] As if he had said, “Is it likely that Divine providence would have so distinguished thee, and raised thee from a state of abject obscurity, merely for thy own sake? Must it not have been on some public account! Did not he see what was coming? and has he not put thee in the place where thou mayest counteract one of the most ruinous purposes ever formed?” Is there a human being who has not some particular station by an especial providence, at some particular time, in which he can be of some essential service to his neighbour, in averting evil or procuring good, if he be but faithful to the grace and opportunity afforded by this station? Who dares give a negative to these questions? We lose much, both in reference to ourselves and others, by not adverting to our providental situation and circumstances. While on this subject, I will give the reader two important sayings, from two eminent men, both keen observers of human nature, and deeply attentive in all such cases to the operations of Divine providence: –
“To every thing there is a season; and a time to every purpose under heaven. Therefore withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thy hand to do it.
SOLOMON.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.
SHAKESPEARE.
Has there not been a case, within time of memory, when evil was designed against a whole people, through the Hamans who had poisoned the ears of well-intentioned men; in which one poor man, in consequence of a situation into which he was brought by an astonishing providence, used the influence which his situation gave him; and, by the mercy of his God, turned the whole evil aside? By the association of ideas the following passage will present itself to the reader’s memory, who may have any acquaintance with the circumstance:-
“There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man!”
“Then said, I, Ah, Lord God! They say of me, DOTH HE NOT SPEAK PARABLES?” Rem acu tetigi.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
From another place; from another hand, and by another means; which God can, and I am fully persuaded will, raise up.
Thou and thy fathers house shall be destroyed, by the righteous and dreadful judgment of God, punishing thy cowardice and self-seeking, and thy want of love to God, and to his and thy own people.
Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? It is probable God hath raised thee to this honour for this very season; and therefore go on courageously, and doubt not of the success.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time,…. And will not speak to the king in favour of the Jews, because of the danger she would be exposed to in doing it:
then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; Mordecai seemed confident of it, that by some means or another the Jews would be delivered; if not through the intercession of Esther, yet from some other quarter, or by some other hand:
but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed; for such neglect of the people of God when in distress, want of pity to them, and not exerting herself as she might in their behalf; so that seeing she and her family must perish, it was better to perish in a good cause than in a bad one:
and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? he intimates that he believed that the providence of God had raised her to that dignity, that she might be an instrument of saving his people in the time of their distress; and this he said to encourage her to make the experiment.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(14) Enlargement.Literally, a breathing-space.
From another place.Although he does not explain his meaning, and, indeed, seems to be speaking with studied reserve, still we may suppose that Mordecai here refers to Divine help, which he asserts will be vouchsafed in this extremity. It does not necessarily follow that we are to see in this declaration a proof of the earnestness of Mordecais faith; probably had his faith been like that of many of his countrymen he would not have been in Persia at all, but with the struggling band in Juda.
Thou and thy fathers house shall be destroyed.That is, by the hand of God, who having raised thee to this pitch of glory and power will require it from thee, if thou fail in that which it plainly devolves upon thee to do. It is clear there is a good deal of force in these last words of Mordecai. Esthers rise had been so marvellous that one might well see in it the hand of God, and if so there was clearly a very special object in view, which it must be her anxious care to work for. In the whole tone of the conversation, however, there seems a lack of higher and more noble feelings, an absence of any suggestion of turning for aid to God; and thus in return, when God carries out His purpose, and grants deliverance, it seems done indirectly, without the conferring of any special blessing on the human instruments.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
14. Enlargement , breathing room; freedom from restraint. Compare the kindred word rendered respite in Exo 8:15.
Deliverance arise another place Note the faith of Mordecai. He is confident his nation cannot perish. Help will come from some quarter.
Who knoweth? Mordecai discerns a divine providence in Esther’s attaining to the royal dignity. God had elevated her to a position in which she might be the principal agent in effecting the salvation of her people, and hence she is warned that if she fails in the duty of that hour, Divine vengeance will most surely fall on her and all her father’s house.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Est 4:14. And who knoweth, &c. Who knoweth whether thou art not raised to the royal dignity, that thou mightest be a succour in these times? Houbigant.
REFLECTIONS.As yet Esther seems to have had but an imperfect knowledge of the cause of Mordecai’s affliction; and as it was impossible, by the custom of Persia, to have a personal conference with him, she sends Hatach, a trusty eunuch, to inquire and report the particulars. Hereupon,
1. Mordecai relates the whole of the matter; transmits, by the eunuch, a copy of the decree, and charges her by all means to use her utmost influence to get it reversed, by undeceiving the king with regard to the misrepresentations of Haman. Note; Could truth but find its way to the royal ear, much of the people’s miseries would be relieved.
2. Esther returns, by the same messenger, an answer to Mordecai’s request. To appear in the royal presence uncalled, was death by the Persian law, except the king stretched out the golden sceptre; nor were the queens excepted from it: and, for some time past, the king seems to have neglected her, which would make the essay more dangerous; and therefore she rather wishes him to seek some other advocate, than expose her to the imminent peril of death. Note; (1.) The King of kings is not thus inaccessible; whosoever will, may come unto him boldly with every request, and are sure never to be denied. (2.) God in his providence permits the most discouraging circumstances, in order to exercise the faith and brighten the crown of the redeemed.
3. Mordecai lessens not his importunity for the danger which Esther suggested to him. He let her know, that if her kindred fell, she must not hope to escape; that he fully believed God would stand by them, and she would lose the honour of being their deliverer if she declined this service; nay, that God would visit upon her and her father’s house such a cowardly refusal; and, while the rest escaped, they would be left to perish. He concludes with suggesting, that her advancement was ordered for this great purpose, and that she was therefore bound to correspond with the designs of God herein. Note; (1.) If we have faith to trust God, he will never fail us. (2.) They who, through unbelieving fear, decline the path of duty, are justly given up to the danger which they thus sinfully seek to shun. (3.) It is good to observe the leadings of providence, and correspond with what appears to be the design of God in placing us in such a station or circumstance.
4. Determined at last, Esther resolved at all hazards to make the essay: but first she enjoined Mordecai, and all the Jews in Shushan, to spend three days in prayer and fasting, while she did the same in the palace, to humble their souls for the sins which provoked these threatened judgments, and to seek the favour and blessing of God on her attempt, who alone could incline the king’s heart to grant her suit. Putting her life in her hand, she then resolved to go to the king: she could but perish. Note; (1.) In all our distresses there is a throne of grace open, and a God who heareth prayer. (2.) When we are truly humbled under our sins, we may hope that God will deliver us from our afflictions. (3.) While we are desiring the prayers of others, let us not forget to be importunate for ourselves. (4.) When we can trust God with all, then all is safe.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Est 4:14 For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, [then] shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for [such] a time as this?
Ver. 14. But if thou altogether boldest thy peace ] And so make thyself guilty of a sinful silence, nay, of the death of so many innocents; for not to do good when it is in the power of a man’s hand is to do evil, and not to save is to destroy, as our Saviour showeth, Mar 3:14 . Qui non cum potest, servat; occidit. Passive wickedness is deeply taxed in some of those seven Churches, Rev. ii., iii. In a storm at sea it is a shame to sit still, or to be asleep, with Jonah, in the sides of the ship, when it is in danger of drowning. Every man cannot sit at the stern; but then he may handle the ropes, or manage the oars, &c. The self-seeker, the private spirited man, may he be but warm in is own feathers, regards not the danger of the house; he is totus in se, entirely in himself, like the snail, still within doors and at home; like the squirrel, he ever digs his hole towards the sunrising; his care is to keep on the warm side of the hedge, to sleep in a whole skin, to save one, whatever become of the many. From doing thus, Mordecai deterreth Esther by a heap of holy arguments; discovering a heroical faith and a well-knit resolution.
At this time
Then shall their enlargement
And deliverance arise
Italiam, Italiam laeto clamore salutat (Virg.).
But thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed] Here he thundereth and threateneth her, if to save herself she shall desert the Church. Mordecai’s message, like David’s ditty, is composed of discords. Sour and sweet make the best sauce; promises and menaces mixed will soonest work, Psa 101:1 . God told Abraham, that for the love he bare him, he would bless those that blessed him, and curse such as cursed him, Gen 12:3 . Their sin should find them out, and they should rue it in their posterity. As one fire, so one fear, should drive out another.
And who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Esther
ESTHER’ S VENTURE
MORDECAI AND ESTHER
Est 4:14
All Christians are agreed in holding the principles which underlie our missionary operations. They all believe that the world is a fallen world, that without Christ the fallen world is a lost world, that the preaching of the Gospel is the way to bring Christ to those who need Him, that to the Church is committed the ministry of reconciliation.
These are the grand truths from which the grand missionary enterprise has sprung. It is not my intention to enlarge on them now. But in this and in all cases, there are secondary motives besides, and inferior to those which are derived from the real fundamental principles. We are stimulated to action not only because we hold certain great principles, but because they are reinforced by certain subordinate considerations.
It is the duty of all Christians to promote the missionary cause on the lofty grounds already referred to. Besides that, it may be in a special way our duty for some additional reasons drawn from peculiarities in our condition. Circumstances do not make duties, but they may bring a special weight of obligation on us to do them. Times again do not make duties, but they too make a thing a special duty now. The consideration of consequences may not decide us in matters of conscience, but it may allowably come in to deter us from what is on higher grounds a sin to be avoided, or a good deed to be done. Success or failure is an alternative that must not be thought of when we are asking ourselves, ‘Ought I to do this?’ but when we have answered that question, we may go to work with a lighter heart and a firmer hand if we are sure that we are not going to fail.
All these are inferior considerations which do not avail to determine duty and do not go deep enough to constitute the real foundation of our obligation. They are considerations which can scarcely be shut out, and should be taken in determining the weight of our obligation, in shaping the selection of our duties, in stimulating the zeal and sedulousness with which we do what we know to be right.
To a consideration of some of these secondary reasons for energy in the work of missions I ask your attention. The verse which I have selected for my text is spoken by Mordecai to Esther, when urging her to her perilous patriotism. It singularly blends the statesman and the believer. He sees that if she selfishly refuses to identify herself with her people, in their calamity, the wave that sweeps them away will not be stayed outside her royal dwelling; he knows too much of courts to think that she can stand against that burst of popular fury should it break out. But he looks on as a devout man believing God’s promises, and seeing past all instruments; he warns her that ‘deliverance and enlargement shall arise.’ He is no fatalist; he believes in man’s work, therefore he urges her to let herself be the instrument by which God’s work shall be done. He is no atheist; he believes in God’s sovereign power and unchangeable faithfulness, therefore he looks without dismay to the possibility of her failure. He knows that if she is idle, all the evil will come on her head, who has been unfaithful, and that in spite of that God’s faithfulness shall not be made of none effect. He believes that she has been raised to her position for God’s sake, for her brethren’s sake, not her own.
‘Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?’ There speaks the devout statesman, the court-experienced believer. He has seen favourites tended and tossed aside, viziers powerful and beheaded, kings half deified and deserted in their utmost need. Sitting at the gate there, he has seen generations of Hamans go out and in; he has seen the craft, the cruelty, the lusts which have been the apparent causes of the puppets’ rise and fall, and he has looked beyond it all and believed in a Hand that pulled the wires, in a King of Kings who raiseth up one and setteth down another. So he believes that his Esther has come to the kingdom by God’s appointment, to do God’s work at God’s time. And these convictions keep him calm and stir her.
We may find here a series of considerations having a special bearing on this missionary work. To them I ask your attention.
I. God gives us our position that we may use it for His cause, for the spread of the Gospel.
a No man has anything for his own sake-no man liveth to himself. We come to the kingdom for others. Here we touch the foundation of all authority; we learn the awful burden of all talents, the dreadful weight of every gift.
b No man receives the Gospel for his own sake. We are not non-conductors, but stand all linked hand in hand. We are members of the body that the blood may flow freely through us. For no loftier reason did God light the candle than that it might give light. We are beacons kindled to transmit, till every sister light flashes back the ray.
c We especially have received a position in the world for the conversion of the world. Our national character and position unite that of the Jew in his two stages-we are set to be the ‘light of the world,’ and we are ‘tribes of the wandering foot.’ Our history, all, has tended to this function, our local position, our laws, our commerce. We are citizens of a nation which ‘as a nest has found the riches’ of the peoples. In every land our people dwell.
Think of our colonies. Think that we are brought into contact with heathen, whether we will or not. We cannot help influencing them. ‘Through you the name of God is blasphemed amongst the Gentiles.’ Think of our sailors. Why this position? What is plainer than that all this is in order that the Gospel might be spread? God has ever let the Gospel follow in the tracks made for it by commercial law.
This object does not exclude others. Our language, our literature, our other rich spiritual treasures, we hold them all that we may impart. But remember that all these other good things that England has will spread themselves with little effort, people will be glad to get them. But the Gospel will not be spread so. It must be taken to those who do not want it. It must be held forth with outstretched hands to ‘a disobedient and gainsaying people.’ It is found of them that seek it not.
Like the Lord we must go to the wanderers, we must find them as they lie panting and thirsty in the wild wilderness. Therefore Christian men must make special earnest efforts or the work will not be done. They must be as the ‘dew that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.’
And again, such action does not involve approval of the means by which such a position has become ours. Mordecai knew what vile passions had been at work to put Esther there, and did not forget poor Vashti, and we have no need to hide conviction that England’s place has often been won by wrong, been kept by violence and fraud, that, as she has strode to empire, her foot has trodden on many a venerable throne unjustly thrown down, and her skirts have been dabbled with ‘the blood of poor innocents,’ splashed there with her armed hoof. Be it so!-Still! ‘Thou makest the wrath of man to praise Thee.’ Still-’we are debtors both to the Greek and barbarian,’ and all the more debtors because of ills inflicted. God has laid on us a solemn responsibility. Over all the dust of base intrigues, and the smoke of bloody battles, and the hubbub of busy commerce, His hand has been working, and though we have been sinful, He has given us a place and a power, mighty and awful. We have received these not for our own glory, not that we should boast of our dominion, not that we should gather tribute of gain and glory from subject peoples, not even that we should carry to them the great though lesser blessings of language, united order, peaceful commerce, sway over brute nature, but that we should give them what will make them men-Christ.
We have a work to do, an awful work. To us all as Christians, to us especially as citizens of this land and members of this race, to us and to our brethren across the Atlantic the message comes, by our history, our manners, etc., as plainly as if it were written in every wave that beats around our coast. ‘Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord.’
II. God lays upon us special missionary work by the special characteristics of the times.
Look at the condition of heathenism. It is everywhere tottering. ‘The idols are on the beasts, Bel boweth down.’ The grim gods sit half famished already. There is a crack in every temple wall. Mahommedanism, Buddhism, Brahminism-they are none of them progressive. They are none of them vital. Think how only the Gospel outleaps space and time. How all these systems are of time and devoured by it, as Saturn eats his own children. They are of the things that can be shaken, and their being shaken makes more certain the remaining of the things that cannot be shaken.
Look at the fields open. India, China, Japan, Africa, in a word, ‘The field is the world’ in a degree in which it never was before. ‘Such a time’-a time of seething, and we can determine the cosmos; a plastic time, and we can mould it; it is a deluge, push the ark boldly out and ransom some.
III. If we neglect the voice of God’s providence, harm comes on us.
The fact is that selfishness is the ruin of any people. When you have a ‘Christian’ nation not using their position for God’s glory, they are using it for their own sakes; and that indicates a state of mind which will lead to numberless other evils in their relation to men, many of which have a direct tendency to rob them of their advantages. For instance, a selfish nation will never hold conquests with a firm grasp. If we do not bind subject peoples to us by benefits, we shall repel them by hatreds. Think of India and its lessons, or of South Africa and its. We have seen the tide of material prosperity ebb away from many a nation and land, and I for my part believe in the Hand of God in history, and believe that the tide follows the motions of the heavens.
The history of the Jewish people is not an exception to the laws of God’s government of the world, but a specimen of it. They who were made a hearth in which the embers of divine truth were kept in a dark world, when they began to think that they had the truth in order that they might be different from other people, and forgot that they were different from others in order that they might first preserve and then impart the truth to all, lost the light and heat of it, stiffened into formal hypocrisy and malice and all uncharitableness, and then the Roman sword smote their national life in twain.
Whatever is not used for God becomes a snare first, then injures the possessors, and tends to destroy the possessors. The march of Providence goes on. Its purposes will be effected. Whatever stands in the way will be mowed remorselessly down, if need be. Helps that have become hindrances will go. The kingdoms of this world will have to fall; and if we are not helping and hasting the coming of the Lord we shall be destroyed by the brightness of His coming. The chariot rolls on. For men and for nations there is only the choice of yoking themselves to the car, and finding themselves borne along rather than bearing it, and partaking the triumph, or of being crushed beneath its awful wheels as they bound along their certain road, bearing Him who rides ‘forth prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness.’
IV. Though we be unfaithful, God’s purpose of mercy to the world shall be accomplished.
This is as certain as the efficacy of a Saviour’s blood can make it, as certain as the universal adaptation and design of a preached Gospel can make it, as certain as the oneness of human nature can make it, as certain as the power of a Comforter who shall convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and judgment can make it, as certain as the misery of man can make it, as certain as the promises of God who cannot lie can make it, as certain as His faithfulness who hangs the rainbow in the heavens and enters into an everlasting covenant with all the earth can make it.
And this accumulation of certainties does not depend on the faithfulness of men. In the width of that mighty result the failure of some single agent may be eliminated. Nay, more, though all men failed, God hath instruments, and will use them Himself, if need were.
Only we may share the triumph and partake of the blessed result. Decide for yourself, what share you will have in that marvellous day. Let your work be such as that it shall abide. Stonehenge, cathedrals, temples stand when all else has passed away. Work for God abides and outlasts everything beside, and the smallest service for Him is only made to flash forth light by the glorifying and revealing fires of that awful day which will burn up the wood, the hay, and the stubble, and flow with beautifying brightness and be flashed back with double splendour from ‘the gold, the silver, and the precious stones,’ the abiding workmanship of devout hearts in that everlasting tabernacle which shall not be taken down, the ransomed souls builded together, ransomed by our preaching, and ‘builded up together for a temple of God by the Spirit.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
enlargement = respite.
who knoweth . . . ? Note the Figure of speech Erotesis (App-6), for emphasis. Used here of hope and trust in God and His overruling grace.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Opportunity
If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall relief and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place, but thou and thy fathers house shall perish: and who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?Est 4:14.
1. The story is too familiar to need much retailing. Haman, the favourite minister of Ahasuerus, entertained a malignant hatred against the Jews, because one of their number, Mordecai, refused to do him reverence as he passed him daily at the gate of the palace. He promised that if the Jews were handed over to him for destruction, ten talents should be paid into the treasury. The king agreed to his favourites demand, and orders were sent out to the governors who were over provinces, and to the princes of every people, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women.
It is always interesting, when possible, to set sacred history by the side of profane, and identify, if we can, the great actors in both. Considerable discussion has taken place with regard to the king who is here called Ahasuerus, as the chief point in enabling us to fix the probable date of the marvellous events which are narrated. There was a succession of powerful monarchs in Persia at the time about which these events occurred; and of these, two are mentioned by critical scholars as being, the one or the other of them, undoubtedly the ruler mentioned here. Ezra speaks of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, and some incline to the opinion that it is the same man who appears in the Book of Esther under the name Ahasuerus. Seeing, however, that this king must have been unnaturally inconsistent when the edict against the Jews was sent out, since he had just before granted them large favours, and remembering that several historians speak of him as having had a Jewish mother, it seems far more probable to identify Ahasuerus with the preceding king, Xerxes, the great invader of Greece, the son of Darius, whom the Athenians so nobly met and conquered at Marathon.
2. Esther was queen. Vashti, who would not degrade herself by obeying the kings drunken commands, had been deposed. Esther was queen, and Esther was a Jewess. Her life, therefore, was likely to be sacrificed with the rest. Her kinsman, Mordecai, who seems to have preserved his faith in God through all the enervating influences of this Persian court, saw that the only hope of escape was in Esther.
3. So complete was the retirement of the women in the recesses of the harem, that the queen knew nothing of the calamity which was impending over her people. Mordecai for nine years had abstained from all communication with her lest her position might be compromised, and she should be identified, to her detriment, with her despised people. Now, however, it was peremptory that he should break through the reserve, and he therefore sent a message to the queen informing her of the plot that was on foot, and asking her to go in to the king to make supplication and request before him for her people.
4. Our text contains the argument which Mordecai used to induce Esther to undertake the hazardous duty. It is an argument which has a very wide application. Let us consider it under four statements
I.We may fail in our duty by simply being silent.
II.If we fail, God gets His work done in some other way.
III.But we suffer for it.
IV.Every opportunity is a call.
I
We may fail in our Duty by simply being Silent
If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time.
1. Esther was very likely tempted to be silent at a time when to speak was necessary to save her countrymen from destruction. We often bite our tongues because we have sinned in speech, but how often have we sinned by silence. For there is a silence that is sinful: If he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity.
It may be that a great cause is in danger. Its advocates and its opponents are pretty evenly balanced. But there is one strong man, who, if he would speak, could turn the fortunes of the day; for men believe in his sincerity and disinterestedness, as well as in his knowledge and insight; and the humbler supporters of the cause are waiting, in hope, to hear what he will say. His gifts, his influence, his experience, not only qualify but entitle him to speak a great word. But he sits in silence, or makes a speech of unworthy compromise. He lets the golden opportunity pass; and it may be that a great injustice is done, or the cause of truth and progress is retarded for years, for want of the word which he could well have spoken.
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Ragswere they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us,they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
We shall march prospering,not thro his presence;
Songs may inspirit us,not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done,while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire;
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more triumph for devils and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Lifes night begins: let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,
Forced praise on our partthe glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!
Best fight on well, for we taught him,strike gallantly,
Menace our heart ere we master his own;
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
Pardoned in Heaven, the first by the throne!1 [Note: Browning, The Lost Leader.]
2. There are many reasons for silence. Sometimes it is due to real and all but unconquerable diffidence, sometimes to cynicism, but sometimes also assuredly to cowardice. The man may suppose that plain, uncompromising speech might alienate his friends, imperil his influence, or injure his reputation. In any case, the day on which a strong and influential man fails, for such a reason, to lift up his voice for the truth is one of the tragic days of his life. In the Providence of God, that was the crisis for which he had come to his kingdom, and he should have bravely met it.
(1) The silence to which Esther was tempted was the silence of expediency. She knew how greatly the Jews needed relief and deliverance, but she feared lest if she spoke in their behalf her own position might be compromised. It is astonishing how many Christians can preserve a prudential silence when an evil demands denunciation. They are anxious for their own peace. They are slaves of expediency. We need to remember George Merediths grand words, Expediency is mans wisdom, doing right is Gods.
The editorial declaration in a popular New York daily paper, that a newspapers chief concern should be with whatever will give it a circulation, was merely the brazen statement of what has become with many the real philosophy of life. It is the substitution of expediency for honesty.1 [Note: J. I. Vance, Tendency, 125.]
(2) Esther was tempted to the silence of selfishness. True, her people were imperilled, but she was happy and free! She had newly come to the throne. The glamour of royalty was upon her. Shall she run the risk of losing her delights? By silence she may have permanent pleasure. This type of silence is very common, and we are often tempted to it. We dread to speak lest our ease and enjoyment should suffer thereby. It is the acute remark of one of our present-day writers, that times of great trouble often reveal the meanness of human nature. Nothing is meaner than to be silent in presence of wrong for the sake of selfish comfort. Bishop Thorold spoke of people being buried in self-love. What a dreadful tomb!
No one enters into the life of Christs discipleship who does not seek, not the renunciation only, but the very death of all his old low self and self-life. For life is far more than just ease and gentleness, far more than confession and the endurance of the tests that God sends us. Life is a daily dying and risingas the old lines run:
As once toward heaven my face was set,
I came unto a place where two ways met.
One led to Paradise and one away;
And fearful of myself lest I should stray,
I paused that I might know
Which was the way wherein I ought to go.
The first was one my weary eyes to please,
Winding along thro pleasant fields of ease,
Beneath the shadow of fair branching trees.
This path of calm and solitude
Surely must lead to heaven, I cried,
In joyous mood.
Yon rugged one, so rough for weary feet,
The footpath of the worlds too busy street,
Can never be the narrow way of life.
But at that moment I thereon espied
A footprint bearing trace of having bled,
And knew it for the Christs, so bowed my head,
And followed where He led.
(3) Esther was tempted to the silence of slothfulness. To speak for the relief and deliverance of the Jews would involve strenuous endeavour. She feared to trample on her ease. Are we not all so tempted? To serve the needy age is to forswear ease. Every great helper of the world has to cry, Virtue is gone out of me. And we shrink from such self-depletion.
Very wonderful is the intimate connection, the subtle interaction, between the forces of our physical and our moral nature. It is one of the chief mysteries of our mysterious being. But it is not a mystery merely; it is a fact of infinite practical significance which cannot be ignored without grave peril. The intelligent recognition of it would save many good people from much sorrow, as it would save others from grievous sin.
The moral degradation which comes from physical indolence is difficult to define. Most of us may thank God that the very circumstances of our life keep us safe from this sin. Few men can help working; most men have to work hard. But sluggishness, an indisposition to make any exertion unless compelled to make it, is sometimes to be met with even in this restless and active age, and in every social condition.1 [Note: R. W. Dale.]
During the formation of one of the lines of railway through the Highlands, a man came to the contractor and asked for a job at the works, when the following conversation took place:
Well, Donald, youve come for work, have you? and what can you do?
Deed, I can do onything.
Well, theres some spade and barrow work going on; you can begin on that.
Ach, but I wadna just like to be workin wi a spade and a wheelbarrow.
O, would you not? Then yonders some rock that needs to be broken away. Can you wield a pick?
I wass never usin a pick, whatefer.
Well, my man, I dont know anything I can give you to do.
So Donald went away crestfallen. But being of an observing turn of mind, he walked along the rails, noting the work of each gang of labourers, until he came to a signal-box, wherein he saw a man seated, who came out now and then, waved a flag, and then resumed his seat. This appeared to Donald to be an occupation entirely after his own heart. He made enquiry of the man, ascertained his hours and his rate of pay, and returned to the contractor, who, when he saw him, good-naturedly asked:
What, back again, Donald? Have you found out what you can do?
Deed, I have, sir. I would just like to get auchteen shullins a week, and to do that, holding out his arm and gently waving the stick he had in his hand.2 [Note: Sir A. Geikie, Scottish Reminiscences, 24.]
II
If We fail God gets His Work done in some other Way
Then shall relief and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place.
1. Mordecai had evidently drunk deeply of the spirit of the history of Israel. Israel was the people of God; the possessor of the promises of God, which had not reached their fulfilment; and sooner could the pillars of the heavens fall than these be broken. Mordecai believed that God watched over Israel night and day; many a time had He delivered her, when everything appeared desperate and the help of man had utterly failed; and the record of Gods faithfulness in the past gave the assurance that in some way of His own He would prevent the extinction of His people.
2. There is wonderful encouragement in Mordecais message. Somehow Gods great delivering work shall be done! We cannot see how, but it shall yet be. All things are possible to omnipotence. Relief and deliverance shall arise from another place. Incapacitated workers may be comforted by this assurance. The work shall not finally suffer through a particular workers disablement.
3. The passage admits of easy application to the Church. One portion of the Church may fail to rise to the height of its duty and, in spite of all the splendid hopes which it enshrines, it may perish. But not so the whole Church, or even the particular purpose which that portion was meant to have fulfilled. Relief and deliverance shall arise to the Church from another place. Men of another sort can be raised up to do the work which we neglected to do.
4. Relief and deliverance shall arise from another place. So it is certain that God from eternity has willed that all flesh should see His salvation. He loves the heathen better than we do. Christ has died not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world. God has made of one blood all nations of men. The race is one in its need. The race is one in its goal. The Gospel is fit for all men. The Gospel is preached to all men. The Gospel shall yet be received by a world, and from every corner of a believing earth will rise one roll of praise to one Father, and the race shall be one in its hopes, one in its Lord, one in faith, one in baptism, one in one God and Father of us all. That grand unity shall certainly come. That true unity and fraternity shall be realized. The blissful wave of the knowledge of the Lord shall cover and hide and flow rejoicingly over all national distinctions. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth. This is as certain as the efficacy of a Saviours blood can make it, as certain as the universal adaptation and design of a preached Gospel can make it, as certain as the oneness of human nature can make it, as certain as the power of a Comforter who shall convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment can make it, as certain as the misery of man can make it, as certain as the promises of God who cannot lie can make it, as certain as His faithfulness who hangs the rainbow in the heavens and enters into an everlasting covenant with all the earth can make it.
This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A princes banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battles edge,
And thought, Had I a sword of keener steel
That blue blade that the kings son bears,but this
Blunt thing!he snapt and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.
Then came the kings son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.
III
But We shall suffer for It
Thou and thy fathers house shall perish.
1. Mordecais precise reference is not absolutely certain: probably he foretells that if the Jews are massacred Esthers Jewish origin will be discovered, and she and her fathers house will share the extermination; or it may be that he merely predicts some indefinite though certain Nemesis.
2. Mordecais principle is for ever true: retribution must ensue upon negligence. We cannot save our lives without at length losing them: they are destroyed who leave their duty undone. We need neither define nor describe the destruction. Sometimes it occurs in this life; at times it takes the form of the overthrow of our temporal possessions; oftener far it manifests itself in open deterioration of character. But God has a hell of fire for the negligent even on this side the veil.
I know not what of evil may yet come of the negligence of the Christian Church towards the population with which it is surrounded. Those wretched beings who starve in over-crowded rooms will not die unavenged, if nothing more comes of it than the sin which is begotten of want. If you live in a house well-ventilated and well-drained, and you have near you hovels foul, filthy, dilapidated, over-crowded, when the fever breeds there it will not respect your garden wall; it will come up into your windows, smite down your children, or lay you yourself in the grave. As such mischief to health cannot be confined to the locality in which it was born, so is it with spiritual and moral disease; it must and will spread on all sides. This may be a selfish argument; but as we are battling with selfishness, we may fitly take Goliaths sword with which to cut off his head. You Christian people suffer if the Church suffers; you suffer even if the world suffers. If you are not creating a holy warmth, the chill of sin is freezing you. Unconsciously the death which is all around will creep over you who are idle in the Church, and it will soon paralyse all your energies unless in the name of God you rouse yourself to give battle to it. You must unite with the Lord and His people in winning the victory over sin, or sin will win the victory over you.
3. We cannot hold back from Christs cause with impunity. It can do without us, but we cannot do without it. Whosoever will save his life, said our Lord, shall lose it. If religion is a reality, to live without it is to suppress and ultimately to destroy the most sacred portion of our own being. It is a kind of suicide, or at least a mutilation. If it is possible for man to enjoy in this life intimacy and fellowship with God, then to live without God is to renounce the profoundest and most influential experience which life contains. If Jesus Christ is the central figure in history, and if the movement which He set agoing is the central current of history, then to be dissociated from His aims is to be a cipher, or perhaps even a minus quantity, in the sum of good. It may, indeed, in the meantime facilitate our own pleasure, and it may clear the way for the pursuit of our personal ambitions; but when we look back on our career from the end of life, will it satisfy us to remember the number of pleasant sensations we have had, if we have to confess to ourselves that we are dying without having contributed anything to the real progress of mankind and without ever having seen the real glory of the world?
Not once or twice in our rough island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory:
He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes,
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden roses.
Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory:
He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Thro the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevaild,
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun.1 [Note: Tennyson, The Duke of Wellington.]
IV
Every Opportunity is a Special Call
Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
1. Mordecai sees the exigency of the time. He sees something more. He believes in an over-ruling Providence. He has watched the gradual grouping of events, and knows they have not come by chance. A little while ago it might have struck him as strange that a Jewess should sit upon the Persian throne; but now he understands it. One higher than Ahasuerus circled with the coronet Esthers brow; One who does nothing without a meaning and an end. The man, in his high-souled faith, reads Gods reason, and understands why Esther has been exalted. She has come to the kingdom for such a time as this. The life of thousands is placed in her hands. Now she has an opportunity of accomplishing her Divine destiny, and shall she not be equal to the occasion?
These words instantly lit the whole career of Esther with a new and solemn meaning. It was, then, not for nothing that she was queen, and it was not an accident that had set her upon the throne. This was the crisis to which, throughout the brilliant, happy years, she had all unconsciously been borne; and now she was to prove to the world whether she was a queen in name only or also in deed and truth. The honour of queen she had enjoyed; the higher honour of the heroine she had yet to achieve. The appeal of Mordecai flashed a light upon her destiny. In a moment she saw the drift of the past, the meaning of the present, the vastness of the opportunity; and she swiftly made up her mind. I will go, she said. Let all the Jews fast for me; and, though it is against the law, I will appear before the king; and if I perish, I perish.1 [Note: J. E. MFadyen.]
2. Gods providential purpose; mans present opportunity: that is how we are to read the lesson of this marvellous history. A purpose clearly written on the face of events, and to be readily deciphered from their grouping; but still so written that men must open their eyes if they would see it, and open their heart if they would understand it. In former days, when the people were hurrying from their bondage, when they stood in danger, with a sea in front, and an army behind, a Voice spoke bidding Moses stretch his rod over the sea, that a way might be made for the ransomed to pass over. Now we have no voice, but circumstances gather about us; the rod is thrust into our hand, and we miss our deliverance if we do not see that we must wave the rod. In olden time Moses was bidden strike the rock, and water gushed forth. Now we see the thirsting multitudes, and again the rod is put in our grasp. There comes no water if we do not see that we must strike. We are not in intellectual and religious infancy. We ought to be able to discover without any warning voice what Gods purpose is, and what our opportunity is worth.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
There is nothing that stands still in time, so that no duty at all admits of delay; each is strictly the duty of the moment. The act of social kindness, which is a gracious attention this week, becomes an overdue debt the next, and is presented with sad apology instead of being received with glad surprise. The wounded tenderness to which we spoke not the timely and soothing word, passes into permanent soreness instead of healing with grateful love. All round our human existence, indeed, does this same thing appear. Each present conviction, each secret suggestion of duty, constitutes a distinct and separate call of God, which can never be slighted without the certainty of its total departure or its fainter return. Our true opportunities come but once; they are sufficient but not redundant; we have time enough for the longest duty, but not for the shortest sin.1 [Note: James Martineau.]
Farewell, fair day and fading light!
The clay-born here, with westward sight,
Marks the huge sun now downward soar.
Farewell. We twain shall meet no more.
Farewell. I watch with bursting sigh
My late contemned occasion die.
I linger useless in my tent:
Farewell, fair day, so foully spent!
Farewell, fair day. If any God
At all consider this poor clod,
He who the fair occasion sent
Prepared and placed the impediment.
Let him diviner vengeance take
Give me to sleep, give me to wake
Girded and shod, and bid me play
The hero in the coming day!2 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, Songs of Travel.]
(1) Life is an opportunity.It is coming to our kingdom. To live physically, intellectually, spiritually, to exist, is our call. Do we understand the wonderful possibilities of our life? Often it drops down into a dull routine, monotonous, mechanical. We seem to be within the grasp of a savage power, which puts us here and there, forcing us through daily exercises of one sort and another in a way over which we seem to have no control. But it is possible to have this seeming iron destiny placed under the control of a still higher Power.
Our days have fallen on a time different from all that has gone before, unique in this particular, if in nothing elsethe power of public opinion. In former days, only one man here and there seemed to have a kingdom to enter upon, a few men swayed the nations, a few men seemed to be inspired to deeds which raised them into leaders of the people. But now the rulers in name are the ruled in fact. The government is governed, and the people, as freedom has broadened slowly down from precedent to precedent, control everything. It is a great thing to live now. Are we equal to the occasion? We may know much. Literature pours its wealth out before us. Science teaches us how to look away into space, and follow the stars in their girdling orbits; to look down into little things, and see how great a world of being exists in points and specks which our eye can scarcely discern. It tells us how the earth is made, and reads off to us the story of its framing. Are we equal to our time?
We need it every hour
A purpose high,
To give us strength and power
To do or die.
We need it every hour
A firm, brave will,
That, though hates clouds may lower,
Shall conquer still.
We need it every hour
A calm strong mind,
Enriched by reasons dower,
Nor warped nor blind.
We need it every hour
A patient love,
Which shall all souls endower
From heights above.
We need it every hour
A conscience clear,
That shall be as a tower
Of strength and cheer.
We need it every hour
A true pure life,
Which failure cannot sour
Or turn to strife.1 [Note: Sara A. Underwood.]
(2) Christian life is an opportunity.As Christians we have come to a kingdom. Shall we prove ourselves equal to the times on which our lot has fallen? Christianity, ever since its birth, has presented two aspectsthe offensive and the defensive, self-assertion and aggression. At the building of the wall round Jerusalem men worked with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other, watchful to resist attack, watchful that the work should make progress. So has the new spiritual Jerusalem been built, from the time of the early Fathers of the Church down to the latest contributors to Christian apology, from the time of St. Paul the Apostle down to the latest heroes of missionary enterprise.
No time is without its own pathos and its call for patriotic and self-sacrificing work. Certainly ours is not. The wonderful progress of science in the last two generations has supplied means of helping the world such as have never existed before. The problem of the degraded and disinherited is pressing on the attention of intelligent minds with an urgency which cannot be disregarded. It is intolerable to think that a noble population like ours should forever lie sodden and stupefied, as it now does, beneath a curse like drunkenness; and events are rapidly maturing for a great change. The heathen world is opening everywhere to the influences of the Gospel. And perhaps the most significant of all the signs of the times is the conviction, which is spreading in many different sections of the community, that the average of Christian living is miserably below the standard of the New Testament, and that a far broader, manlier, more courageous and open-eyed style of Christianity is both possible and necessary.
Literature
Cumming (J. E.), The Book of Esther, 110, 139.
Farningham (M.), Women and their Work, 111.
Gore (C.), in The Pulpit Encyclopdia, i. 234.
Hamer (D. J.), Salt and Light, 279.
McFadyen (J. E.), The City with Foundations, 53.
McGarvey (J. W.), Sermons, 232.
Maclaren (A), Expositions: Esther, etc., 14.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxx. (1884), No. 1777.
Stalker (J.), The Four Men, 128.
Talmage (T. de W.), Sermons, vi. 167.
Welldon (J. E. C.), Youth and Duty, 233.
Wilson (S. L.), Helpful Words for Daily Life, 289.
Young (D. T.), Unfamiliar Texts, 218.
Christian Age, xxviii. 4, xl. 116 (Talmage).
Christian World Pulpit, xxxi. 386 (Townsend); lv. 321 (Meyer); lxiv. 280 (Gore); lxxvi. 222 (Jeffs).
Church of England Pulpit, lii. 62 (Lang).
Church Pulpit Year Book, vi. (1909), 160.
Churchmans Pulpit: Mission Work, i. 27 (Lang).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
then shall: Gen 22:14, Num 23:22-24, Deu 32:26, Deu 32:27, Deu 32:36, 1Sa 12:22, Isa 54:17, Jer 30:11, Jer 33:24-26, Jer 46:28, Amo 9:8, Amo 9:9, Mat 16:18, Mat 24:22
enlargement: Heb. respiration, Ezr 9:9, Job 9:18
but thou: Est 2:7, Est 2:15, Jdg 14:15-18, Jdg 15:6
whether: Gen 45:4-8, Isa 45:1-5, Isa 49:23, Act 7:20-25
for such a time: 1Sa 17:29, 2Ki 19:3, Neh 6:11, The fact related in this verse was unquestionably the reason why Esther was raised to regal honours, by the overruling providence of God: she was therefore bound in gratitude to do this service for God, else she would not have answered the end of her elevation, and she need not fear the miscarriage of the enterprise, for if God designed her for it, he would surely bear her through and give success. It appeared by the event that Mordecai spoke prophetically, when he modestly conjectured that Esther came to the kingdom that she might be the instrument of the Jews’ deliverance. Mordecai thoroughly believed that it was a cause which one way or other would certainly be carried, and which, therefore, she might safely venture upon. Instruments might fail, but God’s covenant cannot. There is a wise design in all the providences of God, which is unknown to us till it is accomplished; but it will prove in the issue that all is intended for and centre in the good of those who trust in Him.
Reciprocal: 2Sa 5:12 – his people 1Ch 14:2 – because Est 2:10 – had not showed Est 2:17 – so that he set Job 31:34 – that I Pro 17:17 – General Ecc 3:7 – and a time to speak Isa 22:23 – a glorious Jer 26:16 – General Hab 1:13 – holdest Mat 16:25 – General Rom 9:17 – I raised
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A TRUE HEROINE
Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer, Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.
Est 4:14-16
It was a time of great national peril, of danger averted by the forethought of Mordecai and the courage of Esther, who must always hold a high place among the heroines of history. For the book of Esther is undoubtedly of historical value, though it is no less certainly coloured by the picturesque imagination of its author. It was a crisis in the history of the Jews, and so in the history of humanity. Esther was appealed to for deliverance at her own great risk, and she was not deaf to the appeal. Had she refused to play her part in the affair, it is hard to say what would have been the consequence; but she was put to the test, and proved loyal to her God and her nation. And so she stands out before us as an ideal which we shall do well to imitate.
At first, and not unnaturally, she hesitated to provoke the tyrants wrath by disregard of a domestic order; but, moved at last by her uncles appeal to her sense of responsibility, she declared her belief in the providential care of the God of her fathers, and, with a noble scorn of consequence, her willingness to act.
I. Now, I would have you notice firstas the root of all conscientious action in any crisis of individual lifeEsthers proud scorn of consequence in the fulfilment of her duty.We may compare it with that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego a century before in Babyloniaon the edge of the burning fiery furnaceOur God will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods. The story of this past heroism may well have nerved the young Queen to her noble self-renunciationif I perish, I perish.
It is a conflict which is constantly presenting itself in Christian warfare. If it should please God that she, Esther the queen, should perish because she asserted the claims of down-trodden humanity, then it were better sobetter to cast in her lot with righteousness, to take the suffering that God willed, and bear it, rather than to enjoy life and wealth, equipages, palaces, attendants, as the wages of sin. On the one side right, on the other enjoyment. Right shadowed with pain, enjoyment coloured by sin. Esthers answer was free and decisiveand yet she had counted the cost. We glory in it to-dayif I perish, I perishand would fain act as she acted.
II. Notice further Esthers trust in God.She would hold herself still in Him. This second point of teaching comes home to us to-day as fresh as when the words were spoken. A trust in God can exorcise all evil tendencywhich goeth not out save by prayer and fasting. Fast ye for me I also and my maidens will fast likewise. Though He deny me, yet will I trust in Him. There is the same scorn of consequences which rests proudly on trustfulness in God, when some one says, Whatever happens, I will do what my father and my mother taught me to be right. I will obey my conscience, my Bible, my Saviour. If truth is death, then let me die. To do this, and to be thus, is to have constant and watchful regard for opportunity.
III. Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? These were wise words of Mordecai.They are words which, in things both great and small, we do well to account as teaching an important lesson for ourselves. This was Esthers opportunity. If she had failed to grasp it, the massacre would have taken place, and history would not have told of her magnificent heroism. The world of the twentieth century would have been the poorer for the failure of a Jewish maiden. For may we not account her position in the monarchs harem as raising her far above the commonplace? When God claims from you some special stress of servicesome act of self-surrender in conduct or in judgmentcan you honestly picture yourselves in the character which my text suggests, and in answer to the appeal of Gods SpiritWho knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this?can you catch anything of the controlled enthusiasm of Esther? Fast ye for me I also will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law. In your case it may be the law of rank, or party, or learning, or fashion. But these are of no account when duty calls. Catch, I repeat, her spirit: if I perish, I perish.
Canon R. D. Swallow.
Illustration
It was by the loving providence of God that the Jews were saved, and it is by that same wise, over-ruling care that our lives are shaped day by day. In these materialistic times we are drifting away from the great truth that God guides and moulds human life. Every believing soul is in the hands of a strong and loving Father, Who is fashioning it wisely and well. Esthers God is our God. He who helped His people in trouble twenty-five hundred years ago is just as ready to help us to-day. Dependence upon God is the way to true success.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
4:14 For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, [then] shall there enlargement and deliverance {b} arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for {c} [such] a time as this?
(b) Thus Mordecai spoke in the confidence of that faith which all God’s children should have; which is that God will deliver them, though all worldly means fail.
(c) To deliver God’s Church out of these present dangers.