Insight for Living

Guest (Male): Have you ever watched a relationship slowly close off? Maybe an adult son or daughter who's drifted behind a wall that you can't seem to reach through? You've prayed, you've waited, and that wall just won't move. Well today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll recounts a true story in Esther chapter 8.

This remarkable passage will breathe fresh hope into every impossible situation you're facing. Because the God who softened the heart of a Persian king can certainly handle whatever wall stands before you. Chuck titled his message, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down."

Chuck Swindoll: Esther verse 3 fell at his feet, wept and implored him to do something. What's wrong? Well, Haman may be gone but the edict has still been written. And you know how it is with those edicts from Medo-Persia. It has been written, it will be done. The Jews will die in December. So, Esther weeps. It is a document that looks absolutely permanent. It is irrevocable. He extends the golden scepter, which is his way of saying, speak, I'm listening.

Verse 5: She said, if it please the king, and if I have found favor before him, and the matter seems proper to the king and I am pleasing in his sight. What a wonderful way for a wife to speak to a husband. No extra charge for that. Let it be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman. Let it be written, it's already written. But I'm pleading for revoking what has been written. Let it be revoked is what she's saying. Unheard of in the land of the Persians.

She says in verse 6, how can I endure to see the calamity which shall befall my people? How can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred? Look, you wonder if there is a wall so thick that God cannot penetrate. You wonder if documents written in that day, just as documents written in our day, are permanent ink. So the king said to Queen Esther and to Mordecai the Jew, behold, I have given the house of Haman to Esther and him they have hanged on the gallows because he had stretched out his hand against the Jews.

Here is the pen. Here is the stylus. You write to the Jews as you see fit. Is that incredible? You write another law. Furthermore he says, seal it with the king's signet ring for a decree which is written in the name of the king and sealed with the king's signet ring may not be revoked. This one is going to stand. This is it. Count on it. They get together the machinery, they put it together. I love the way this reads.

Verse 10: He wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus, sealed it with the king's signet ring, sent letters by couriers on horses riding on steeds sired by the royal stud. That is great writing. These are the best horses with the finest couriers, the most responsible record. Let them take the message to 127 provinces and spread the word. The Jews will live. I love it. Absolutely amazing.

Look at verse 13: A copy of the edict to be issued as law in each and every province was published to all the peoples so that the Jews should be ready for this day to avenge themselves on their enemies. The Jews are now protected. They now have their own defense provided by the Persian law. No one can touch them. The couriers hastened and impelled by the king's command went out riding on the royal steeds and the decree was given out in Susa the capital.

You may not have some person after you. You may have some document, something that's been written. Some magazine article, some newspaper article, some transcript, some occupational report, some lawsuit, something written that looks so intimidating, so unerasable. And you're sitting here listening to these words thinking if only you knew who is behind that. I do not care who is behind that. I happen to serve a sovereign God who has yet to gasp when he finds anything on this earth.

Nothing we read frightens him. We live under the hand of the Almighty. All the inhabitants of the earth are as nothing, Daniel 4:35. He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand or say unto him what doest thou? None. That is the God you serve child of God. That is the Lord you worship. We live in a day when documents intimidate. I know. But I will tell you, it has an amazing result when God steps in, who will rewrite all records.

Not only will every knee bow before him ultimately, but every lie will be exposed, every falsehood forever forgotten. Be encouraged if you happen to be living under the dread of what has been written. It is not permanent. I love the way the chapter ends. I like stories where everybody lives happily ever after. I even like some fairy tales for that reason. Isn't that romantic? I heard of a child whose mother was telling her of Snow White and seven dwarfs and finally the story ends where a prince comes and he finds her and kisses her back to life.

The little girl is telling her mother about this story she heard at school and the mother is listening to her and she doesn't finish. The mother says, and let me guess, they lived happily ever after. The little girl said, no mother, they got married. That is reality. But here, there is a gloom that has set on the city of Susa and 126 of the other provinces and it cannot be penetrated. It would be like a scene in Auschwitz or Dachau. No one laughs there. Every day is another movement of the clock toward doom.

Look. Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white with a large crown of gold and a garment of fine linen and purple and the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced. For the Jews there was light and gladness and joy and honor. In each and every province, in each and every city, wherever the king's commandment and his decree arrived there was gladness and joy for the Jews. A feast and a holiday. It was like Christmas and New Year's and Easter all rolled into one.

It was like Berlin on the 9th of November. It was like nothing they had ever seen before. They would sing all night because the gloom was lifted. Many of the peoples of the land became Jews for the dread of the Jews had fallen on them. What goes around comes around. Do I speak to you who live in places of gloom and darkness? Where laughter is not in the walls, where your life has become grim and borderline tragic? It will not be that way forever.

While others go home from church on a Sunday and enter into the love and warmth of a family, you go home alone and you do not find warmth. You find the awful memory of broken relationships, remorse and guilt. You look with longing at a scene like this one. You watch with tears as the story unfolds on your television and you think I would love to be there singing again. This is no irrelevant slice of ancient history tucked away in the folds of Esther's scroll. This is life. This is today.

This is written to people who face intimidating, stubborn souls and maybe live with them, maybe are married to them, or have children like that. This is written to people whose lives have been scarred by documents and lawsuits, bad reports, or rumors that seem so permanent. This is written to people whose lives are lived within the thick tall walls of depression and doom. This chapter says there is hope.

There are walls that fall on any day. The good news is that we never know when they are going to. You cannot predict the falling of a wall. I am thinking right now of a college in the Midwest where there was once a lovely tree that was part of the landscape. It was one of the places students met and talked. I am told by those who were there on the campus on that day that they heard a large crack that echoed across the campus as this massive oak fell to the ground.

When someone examined it they noticed that within this massive tree there had been the growing of weakness and even disease to the point that all that was left was what appeared to be a strong trunk but it was nothing more than an empty shell of a tree. With the blowing of a harsh wind one day the tree fell. So it is in our lives. You do not know but God is in the process of breaking a will. I mentioned the man in my own life. There could have been others I could have talked about, but this one stands out.

I want to mention first the walls of stubborn wills and I want to tell you what seems unchangeable is not. The man had a change of heart. I do not know what brought that about. I do know that he moved, took up residence in another town, and wanted to find a church. In fact, he wanted to start a church. They could not find someone to preach and so decided to start with a set of tapes. Guess whose? I would have never thought that had I lived a thousand years. He's changed.

The stubborn will may be your own. You may be one of those individuals that has determined this is the way I will go and I will get there regardless. No one will stand in my way. I pace my closing words more slowly because I respect what I am dealing with here. Stubborn people tend not to listen to this kind of talk. I want you to hear it. When I was a student at seminary I remember hearing a speaker conclude his message with a statement that stayed with me all these years.

That was back in the fall of 1959. He said when God wants to do an impossible task he takes an impossible person and crushes him. Tozer says much the same thing in one of his works. It is doubtful God can use anyone greatly until he has hurt him deeply. I have quoted that and received mail from people who have said you make God appear awfully cruel. It is not cruelty. It is sovereignty. Your stubborn will does not intimidate him. He will bring you to your knees.

I say this to people I love today. Some of you are children of God but the way you live your life very few can tell it because you are so stubbornly persistent. You will not give in. I say to you, you are no match for God. He will break you. He will bend you. He may even have to crush you because he wants your heart. Another wall is the wall of damaging documents. They fall every day. It is amazing how the truth emerges.

That which appeared so permanent at a given time, with the passing of a few years or even months, the truth emerges and you hold your head in your hands thinking how could I have thought this in light of the truth I have seen since? Now I know the truth. The problem is in the waiting period. It is hell on earth for the person hanging in the balance. Take hope, take heart. Some document that looks as though it will ruin you will pass away. The truth will become known.

Third, every day walls of depression and doom and gloom are penetrated by the wonderful presence of the living God. Weeping may endure for the night, Psalm 30:5, but joy comes in the morning. In a season of the year normally given for family and happiness and laughter of children, you may not find much laughter and you may find no happiness. Weeping endures for the night, but joy comes in the morning. I have discovered that hurting people get perspective that those who have not yet hurt like that lack.

Take for example David who writes, "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep thy word," Psalm 119:67. "It is good for me that I was afflicted that I may learn thy statutes," Psalm 119:71. "I know O Lord that thy judgments are righteous and that in faithfulness thou hast afflicted me," Psalm 119:75. You say how can I put it to work? How can I make this happen? I have counsel for all of you to remember and that is what is needed is the presence of the Savior and the perspective of the cross.

It casts its shadow across all of our lives and it makes life bearable. You need the Lord God living in your life. You need him residing there in masterful control. You need him there to prompt perspective or you will fade in anxiety and your enemy will win the day. The document will destroy you. The gloom will depress you. You will turn to a bottle or some drug. You will opt for a lifestyle that you will later regret to fill up the loneliness. All of these things are so available and they speak loud, strong words of appeal to us.

I invite you today to a place of abject affliction. It has blood on it. It once had a man on it who knew affliction like you and I will never know it. Who died misunderstood and maligned, but it had to be so that people like us could have hope. I would like for you to bow your head and close your eyes. For a few moments I would like for you to set aside the stubborn will, whether it's yours or another's, the document that has been haunting your days, the atmosphere that you live in, and I would like for you to answer where is Christ in all of this?

If you are a child of his, how wonderful. All that is needed is to call upon him this day, this very moment. I have noticed in my life that he gives strength in brief bursts. Over the long haul he strengthens us, but it does not come a month at a time, it comes a moment at a time. Ask for that. If it is a stubborn will you are living with, pray for God to soften it. If necessary, to crush it, even if it is in you.

If it is stubborn enough it is ruining relationships. Give it to him. If your visit to the cross today is the first time ever for you then I invite you to give the Lord your life. He sent his one and only son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for those sins that you and I regularly commit so that he might erase the sin question and offer you an answer to your unbelief, forgiveness, security and hope. You are surrounded by people all around the community and all around the globe who have surrendered their hearts to Jesus Christ and given him their wills. It is your turn.

Our Father, find in us an openness that is rare. Give to us a willingness that is not normally found in our lives and hear our prayer as we call upon you today. Thank you for the relevant message from an ancient book. Remind us once again that all walls ultimately fall, just as all knees ultimately bow. In the strong name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): Chuck Swindoll has reminded us today that no wall is too strong for God. Not the stubborn will of someone who's making your life miserable. Not a document that seems to seal your fate. Not the gloom that settled over your days. The same sovereign God who softened the heart of a Persian king and reversed an irrevocable decree is at work in your circumstances right now. This is Insight for Living. Chuck Swindoll has an important closing thought in just a moment, so stay with us.

Chuck titled today's message "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down." It's number nine in his 12-part study of Esther which ends just one week from now. And then beginning on the 10th of June our attention will turn to another powerful series. This time Chuck's focus is on the amazing attributes of God. The central theme of this next study is the power of the cross of Jesus Christ. Chuck?

Chuck Swindoll: The first Monday in July, 1979, that is when Insight for Living aired its very first radio program. I had no idea what was beginning that day. None. If someone had pulled back the curtain and showed me what God was about to do, I am not sure my heart could have held the thrill. We were naive. We were stepping out in faith with a national program and frankly we had no business being that bold. But we were.

We did and men and women responded in droves. Not because we were clever, not because we had some sophisticated strategy or a slick marketing plan. They responded because we heralded the only thing that has ever actually changed a human heart. The cross we proclaim. Nearly five decades later, nothing has changed. Not one thing that matters. Yes the reach has grown and the platforms have multiplied. We go places now that would have seemed like science fiction in 1979.

Into phones, into earbuds, into languages and nations we could never have imagined on that first Monday morning. But the message is identical. It's the cross, always the cross. Look around at the world around you. Bodies failing, relationships fractured. Public discourse that sounds more like a brawl than a conversation. Pain in every direction. Right in the middle of all of it we get to be dispensers of truth. God's truth, the kind that does not shift with the headlines or bend with the culture.

That is an extraordinary privilege. As we approach June 30th, nearly 46 years after that very first broadcast, I want to invite you to join what God is already doing. Your gift to Insight for Living carries the light into dark corners we have not even reached yet from our very first day until now. Let's keep going together.

Guest (Male): As a tangible expression of our gratitude for your gift, we would like to send you a brand new booklet from Chuck. It is called "The Cross We Proclaim." We published this powerful message from Chuck to coincide with his next broadcast series. When you give a gift to Insight for Living we'd be pleased to send you a copy. It is clear we live in a world that's obsessed with image, credentials and making impressions.

In his booklet Chuck says there is a better way to live and it begins at the foot of the cross where all the ground is level. By reading "The Cross We Proclaim" you will find the freedom that comes when you stop managing your reputation and start resting in what Christ accomplished. Once again Chuck's brand new book is titled "The Cross We Proclaim." To give a donation and request a copy call us at 800-772-8888. Or to send a check in the mail along with your request for the booklet, just address the envelope to: Insight for Living, Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas 75034. You can also go to insight.org/donate.

Ever feel like getting even with an enemy? I am Bill Meyer. Do not miss Chuck Swindoll's message about the limitations of retaliation, Tuesday on Insight for Living.

The preceding message "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down" was copyrighted in 1989, 1990, 1997, 2005, 2018 and 2026, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.