Insight for Living

The Bible contains 66 books. All of them are woven together as a unified picture of God's love and His plan of redemption. While some are primarily focused on theological content, such as Hebrews or the book of Romans, others, like the one we're enjoying right now, tell a life story. Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll invites us to follow along in the Old Testament book of Esther. This ancient account reveals the remarkable courage and integrity of a woman whose walk with destiny changed history forever.

Chuck Swindoll: The Bible is full of great women. And for that matter, so is history. Along with the Joan of Arcs, the Florence Nightingales, and the Madame Curies, we find countless other nameless mothers and sisters and daughters. It was Abraham Lincoln who once said, "No man is poor who has had a godly mother." Down through the history of time marches an endless succession of courageous and visionary women, virtuous women, self-sacrificing, great women.

Today, we will pick up the story of just such a woman. This one happens to be in her late teens, perhaps early twenties. Her name is Esther. We find Esther in the powder room of the palace, if you will, where the contestants are putting on their makeup for the Miss Persia pageant. I'll read her story to you. It's found in Esther chapter two, verses 8 through 17.

"So it came about, when the command and decree of the king were heard and many young ladies were gathered to the citadel of Susa into the custody of Hegai, that Esther was taken to the king's palace into the custody of Hegai, who was in charge of the women. Now the young lady pleased him and found favor with him. So he quickly provided her with her cosmetics and food, gave her seven choice maids from the king's palace and transferred her and her maids to the best place in the harem. Esther did not make known her people or her kindred, for Mordecai had instructed her that she should not make them known."

Picking up at verse 15, "Now when the turn of Esther, the daughter of Abihail, the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her as his daughter, came to go in to the king, she did not request anything except what Hegai, the king's eunuch who was in charge of the women, advised. And Esther found favor in the eyes of all who saw her. So Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus to his royal palace in the tenth month, which is the month Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign. The king loved Esther more than all the women, and she found favor and kindness with him more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti."

Bill Meyer: You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the book of Esther on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook by going to insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message "Strength and Dignity on Parade."

Chuck Swindoll: In so many ways, there is not a more powerful creature on earth than a woman. God planned it that way. God has given the woman a sense of strength and dignity that is found in not another of His creations, not another. Her influence through the centuries is legendary. To begin with, it is through the woman children are born, and only through the woman.

Chances are good that if there was any sense of direction provided for children, ourselves included, in the formative years of life, the most significant influence has come from the woman. The most dignified and significant of all roles in life is the role of a mother. I have never met a man I respected who did not say that the touch of his mother's hand on his life made him different.

The counsel of a mother is eloquent even when not a word is spoken. Who hasn't caught a look from his or her mother? Who hasn't been moved to a decision by the silence of a mother, and certainly by the tears of a mother? I'm convinced that mothers win ballgames.

Some wag down at the office put a sign on my door this past week that reads, "Will the lady who left her 11 kids at Texas Stadium please pick them up? They're beating the Cowboys 14 to nothing." No respect. What I've said regarding the power and influence of a mother, I would certainly say regarding a wife.

I don't know of a husband I respect who doesn't confess that there have been times where the confidence of his wife bolstered his own, or even admitted after an argument that it had drained away so much of his joy and reason for going on. If ladies realized the power they have over their husbands, I believe they would use it far more wisely and, may I say, even more often.

Decisions that we men make, we who are married, are often made as a result of blending them through the wisdom of our wives, listening to their advice, seeking their counsel, and heeding their warning. If I must speak only for myself, I can assure you that I am today the man I am because of the wife I have.

I could no more stand in this place and fill this role if it had not been for her presence in my life than the man in the proverbial moon. You see, there are God-given strengths that are placed in the life of a woman, and it seems as though in abundance there as in no other creature. Let me name four. I, if I had time, could name perhaps 20 or 24 of them, but certainly these four would be included.

First, God has given the woman an intuition. There is a sixth sense that is residing in the life of most women I know that allows them to penetrate the hardest shell and see beyond the thickest facade and to read truth when error and falsehood is being presented. Women have the ability to sense character or the lack of such, while we men seem far more gullible as it relates to that.

There is an intuition given by God that most women can enjoy. The perception is at times incredible and on occasion maddening. Second, God has given the woman an endurance to pain that He has not given to most men. An ability to handle hardship over the long haul. The pioneer woman is still in our day a saying from our history.

They have the ability to press on against insuperable odds with relentless determination to persevere. How many men have been kept at the job simply because a woman in his life believed in him? Third, along with intuition and endurance, God has given the woman a unique responsiveness He's not given to the man.

We men are far more closed. Closed toward God and closed toward one another. But the woman, there is a warmth. There is a responsiveness to the things of God. If I announce just about any subject found in Scripture and present what I plan to say about it, chances are good to hear me speak on it, there will be more women than men.

There is a desire on the part of the woman to grow, to react, to feel, to show affection toward the things of God that is not found in the average man. Along with these qualities and tied into the third, the fourth would be vulnerability. Most women I know are less afraid than men to tell the truth about their lives.

That's why most counselors will tell you 70 percent or more of their counselees are women. They're willing to ask for help. You doubt that? Just remember the last time you were lost in the car, men, and your wife said, "Why don't we just stop and ask?" We will drive 100 miles further to prove that we knew where we were going.

The woman will simply stop and ask. Women are less guarded. They're open. They're willing, even willing to admit fears and apprehensions, slight though they may be and acute though they are at times, they will say so. They are usually the ones in the marriage who are the first to say, "There's something wrong here."

I'm not thinking simply of mothers and simply of wives today. I'm thinking of the woman in general with these qualities. In fact, look at Proverbs chapter 11. And I will take you through several Proverbs for the sake of saving time. We'll limit it to Proverbs, but the Bible is replete with examples of the significance and the strength and the power God has given the woman.

Look at Proverbs 11:16. "A gracious woman attains honor." Violent men attain riches. Isn't that interesting? There is something about the grace and, as I shall say later, the charm of a woman that brings her a place of honor that we men would love to have but cannot attain. Look at 22: "As a ring of gold in a swine's snout, so is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion."

How much we long to see discretion in a woman. Not even her beauty will hide the fact that she lacks it. Look at 12:4: "An excellent wife is the crown of her husband." She is the final jewel. She is the uppermost crown. She gives him a place of significance personally and publicly. Look at 18:22: "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord."

And 19:14, same book, next chapter: "House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord." Best of all pieces of literature on the woman is chapter 31 Proverbs. It's the classic section in my opinion of anything I have ever read for upholding the dignity and honor of the woman.

31:10: "An excellent wife," the old version reads, "a virtuous woman who can find? Her worth is far above jewels." And then he begins after that opening to describe the worth of the woman. She has a husband who trusts in her. Why of course. He will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life.

And then it describes her diligence as she carries on along with her role as a wife and along with her role as a mother. She has a business and it's with efficiency and diligence she carries out her responsibility. She, verse 21, she's not afraid of the snow for her household. She's prepared for it.

25, my wife's favorite verse: "Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future." There is a strength of character and there is a sense of dignity about the godly woman that cannot be found even among godly men. She smiles at the future. She opens her mouth in wisdom and the teaching of kindness is there, right there on her tongue.

How many of us learned good manners, what I often call class, from our mothers? How few have learned it from their fathers. Verse 28 tells us her children will rise up and bless her. Even her husband will praise her saying, "Many have done nobly, but you excel them all."

It's a beautiful presentation. The Bible is full, as is history as well, of great women. Along with the Joan of Arcs and the Florence Nightingales and the Madame Curies and the Mother Teresas and so many of the others. There are early saints who write of their mothers and their sisters and their daughters.

There are many presidents who speak of their success as being directly linked to the mother. Lincoln said, "No man is poor who has had a godly mother." Military heroes, statesmen, literary and musical geniuses alike often attribute the development and cultivation of their skills first to their mothers and the continuation of it to their wives.

There are courageous ladies. There are visionary, virtuous women, self-sacrificing women down through the history of time. In Scripture, some are singled out. This past week, I did a little project I had never done before. I thought my way through the Scriptures from Genesis through Revelation by calling to mind the women that are mentioned within those sections.

It's remarkable. A few of them: Sarah, the mother of Isaac and the wife of Abraham. Jochebed, the mother of Moses, who sacrificially kept him until he was weaned, graciously prepared him for the courtroom where he would live for the following 35 or so years of his life. Hannah, the mother of Samuel.

Abigail, the wife of Nabal, who saved him from death by an angry David because she knew how to handle both men. Nabal she handled one way, and David she handled another. There is Deborah. There is Ruth. There is Elizabeth. There is Lois. There is Priscilla. There is Lydia. There is Phoebe.

All the way through Scripture, there are these women who keep emerging, most of them sort of out of obscurity, only to fade again into another kind of obscurity. But they have left their mark on the Greats. No extra charge for this, but I want to say that if I feel compassion for anyone today, I feel compassion for the woman of God who has to endure the nonsense that comes from the media regarding your role, regarding your significance, regarding your place in society.

I don't know of any who would have a right to be more confused than the woman. All sorts of answers, all sorts of messages, all sorts of alleged proof, and you must wonder at times in the whirlwind of your mind what exactly am I supposed to do, what exactly am I supposed to be?

If there is anyone in your family who needs assistance, my parental friends, it is your daughters. Your sons, yes, but a special measure of assistance needs to be given to your daughters so they know what it is to be a lady, so they know how to conduct themselves as a woman, a young woman of God, what that means and what it does not mean.

Especially if she is one of these intellectual, highly gifted young women as so many of them are, she will live in great frustration, and there will be many ready to give her her script if you do not speak and guide and graciously shape her life. We're looking into the life of an Old Testament woman named Esther as we study this wonderful biography.

I'd like to have you turn back to the second chapter and we'll draw our thoughts from this section of her life we're looking at today. If you've been with us from the start of the study, you know that she emerges in a rather unusual manner. The land is Persia. The place is Susa, or as it's otherwise called, Shushan, the capital of Persia.

The king is Ahasuerus, otherwise known as Xerxes. His wife Vashti has been demoted from the throne for reasons we'll not get back into, but we covered that last time. She is a forgotten soul, never to be mentioned again. But he comes back from war and he's lonely and in need of the affection and care and enjoyment and pleasure of a woman.

His counselors say, "Here is a unique way to do it. Let's find every possible available beautiful young woman in the kingdom, in all the provinces, and let's bring her here and let you take your choice, and she will become the queen." Notice in reading chapter two of Esther, verse three, the development of the story.

"Let the king appoint overseers in all the provinces of his kingdom, that they may gather every beautiful young virgin to Susa, the capital, to the harem, into the custody of Hegai, the king's eunuch, who was in charge of the women, and let their cosmetics be given them." It's plain and simple, a beauty contest. And the women come from all the provinces.

Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us there were as many as 400 women involved in this rather remarkable contest. The plan was that the finalist would be given an opportunity literally to have an audience with the king. They would spend a night with the king. They would bring with them all their elegance and charm and seduction and beauty that they could possibly muster in a year's time.

And he would make his choice once he has been with these women. Out of the midst of all of this, Esther comes on the scene. Look at verse five. "There was a Jew in Susa, the capital, whose name was Mordecai." Verse seven: "And he was bringing up Hadassah," that's a Jewish word that means myrtle, as in the plant. "That is Esther," that's a Persian name meaning star, as in the star of the heavens.

She was given that name later in her adult life. "He was bringing up Esther, his uncle's daughter, for she had neither father nor mother. Now the young lady was beautiful of form and face, and when her father and her mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter." What you don't read but you have to see between the lines is that she is in the minority.

She is living as a captive in a foreign land. Her home is Jerusalem, that is her people's home, the land of Palestine. And because of the turning and twisting of historical events, her people have been brought in exile to Persia. So she's living a life rather obscurely in the home of Mordecai. I'm sure it was a sheltered home, a monotheistic home, a home of great care and concern for character and for deep beauty.

On top of all this, she had a physical beauty that attracted people to her. Verse eight: "It came about when the command and decree of the king were heard and many young ladies were gathered to Susa, the capital, into the custody of Hegai." Now read carefully. "That Esther was taken to the king's palace into the custody of Hegai, who was in charge of the women."

I'm intrigued by the passive tense. I am also intrigued by the verb itself: "was taken." In fact, this verb can mean taken by force, and some Jewish scholars do that with Esther two. It is so rendered that way in other parts of the Old Testament. I don't know if there was coercion. We're not told that she was forced to go, but I think it would be fair to say there was reluctance.

I mean, just stop and think: why would a young Jewish woman want to get involved in a plan that would involve time with a heathen king and the possibility of intermarriage outside her race? Why would Mordecai ever give his permission for such? Now, I think it's safe to say she went reluctantly. And by the way, isn't it refreshing to find a little reluctance in a beautiful woman? I see that in Esther, and I'm impressed by it.

Bill Meyer: Esther didn't rush toward greatness. She was drawn into it, perhaps reluctantly, certainly by a hand greater than her own. And isn't that how God often works? He doesn't always ask for volunteers. Sometimes He simply moves us, gently, sovereignly, purposefully, into places we never would have chosen for ourselves.

If you find yourself somewhere unexpected today, take heart. Esther's story is just beginning, and yours may be as well. This is Insight for Living and the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. Esther's story is one you don't want to rush past. Every chapter holds something worth sitting with, a question worth wrestling through, a truth worth writing down.

Our Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook gives you the tools to do exactly that. It's an in-depth companion to this series designed to take you beyond Chuck's teaching into your own personal discovery of the Bible. Because what God says to you in His Word matters. To purchase the Bible study workbook for Esther, call 800-772-8888 or go directly to insight.org/offer.

Did you realize that Chuck has also written a full-length book on Esther? It's from the Great Lives series and you'll love engaging in Esther's story, told only as Chuck can tell it. Everyone loves a transformation story: rags to riches, obscurity to royalty, fear to fearless courage. But Esther's story isn't a fairy tale.

It's a true account of an ordinary woman thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and the God who quietly worked behind every scene. Chuck's book on Esther will take you deeper into her world than you've ever been. You'll walk away with more than inspiration; you'll walk away changed. To purchase Chuck Swindoll's full-length book on Esther, visit insight.org/offer.

Thanks for remembering that Insight for Living and the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll are made possible because people like you give generously. We are so grateful for our monthly partners and everyone who supports Insight for Living. I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll continues to describe what he calls "Strength and Dignity on Parade," tomorrow on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, "Strength and Dignity on Parade," was copyrighted in 1989, 1990, 1997, 2005, 2008, 2018, and 2026, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.