Esther 3 & 4

Est 3
King Ahasuerus promotes Haman and now requires that the princes of the province and all people should pay homage to Haman, bowing down before him. Mordecai does not do this, saying that he will bow to no other than God, so Haman throws a hissy fit and seeks to destroy all the Jews in the region.

I sometimes want people to bow to me also, but not in such a physical way; but when I do something good for someone else, I want them to thank me and I think I deserve thanks, but that is a lie from the devil. Christ says that once we are done doing the work of the Lord, we should look at ourselves and say "we are unworthy slaves, we have only done what we ought to have done" (Luke 17:10). If you look a few verses ahead of that to verse 5, you'll see that Christ is expounding upon 'increasing [the disciples] faith.' If the we all just got that, we would see that walking by faith is merely doing what the Lord has told us to do. That's huge!

So Haman convinces the king to decree that all Jews are to be destroyed and is able to use the king's funds to do so. He sends out the decree to all the provinces that tells the princes of each to kill and destroy all the Jews. This dude was worse than Hitler.

Est 4
The Jews mourned this decree with loud wailing and fasting, dressed in sackcloth and on ashes. It strikes me that their inner turmoil caused by an outer event is so visibly strong in how they act. If our belief in God were as such, then as James 2:14-26 expounds, our lives would be filled with outer expressions of our inner belief!

Esther gets wind of this edict and mourns as well. She finds out from Mordecai how and why this happened and is urged by Mordecai to go before the King and plead the Jews case. Esther did not like this idea, because it could possibly mean her execution (if you were not summoned by the king and you came before his presence, their was a strong likelyhood that he would have you killed). Then Mordecai writes back some encouraging words and perhaps the most famous words from this book, "And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this" (v14)? Esther, persuaded to go before the king, tells Mordecai that her life is of little consequence compared to his great request.

Praise the Lord for the faith that Mordecai shows and the willingness to submit that Esther presents! These are two great examples of people who loved the Lord.