Insight for Living

Bill Meyer: Because God doesn't leave us love notes in the sky, and since we can't see His caring hands, and because we pray to an invisible God, sometimes we're tempted to question His sovereign control. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll traces the ordained footsteps of an Old Testament favorite.

Chuck's series is called Esther, a Woman of Strength and Dignity. And in today's study, we're reminded that God is like a fresh breeze, always in motion and working His will, though invisible to the human eye.

Chuck Swindoll: Winston Churchill had an appointment with destiny. It was on the morning of May 10, 1939. The German army had invaded Holland and Belgium, and France was next. The King of England summoned Churchill and asked him to mobilize the government against Hitler and the Nazis.

Churchill's journal records his feelings that fateful evening. I quote from that journal. "I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial."

Quite likely, Esther must have felt in a similar way when she heard Mordecai's words. "For if you remain silent at this time," he told her, "relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, and you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?"

We find those immortal words in Esther 4, verse 14. We could call that Esther's appointment with destiny. As the book of Esther opens, we sense God's hand moving events toward the moment when she would step forward and keep that appointment with destiny.

I want to read a few verses from Esther 1 and then chapter 2. If you have your Bible, please turn to the first chapter of Esther. I'll begin with verse 1, reading from the New American Standard Bible. Now it took place in the days of Ahasuerus, the Ahasuerus who reigned from India to Ethiopia over 127 provinces.

In those days, as King Ahasuerus sat on his royal throne which was at the citadel in Susa, in the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all his princes and attendants, the army officers of Persia and Media, the nobles and the princes of his provinces being in his presence.

Verse 10. On the seventh day when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded seven eunuchs who served in the presence of King Ahasuerus to bring Queen Vashti before the king with her royal crown in order to display her beauty to the people and the princes, for she was beautiful.

But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king's command delivered by the eunuchs. Then the king became very angry, and his wrath burned within him. Now please drop down with me to verse 19, where we read what the king's advisor counseled him to do.

"If it pleases the king, let a royal edict be issued by him and let it be written in the laws of Persia and Media, so that it cannot be repealed, that Vashti may no longer come into the presence of King Ahasuerus and let the king give her royal position to another who is more worthy than she."

Now onto chapter 2, verse 1. After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had subsided, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her. Then the king's attendants who served him said, "Let beautiful young virgins be sought for the king.

Let the king appoint overseers in all the provinces of his kingdom that they may gather every beautiful young virgin to the citadel of Susa, to the harem, into the custody of Hegai, the king's eunuch, who is in charge of the women, and let their cosmetics be given them.

Then let the young lady who pleases the king be queen in place of Vashti." And the matter pleased the king, and he did accordingly.

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, "There She Goes . . . Miss Persia!"

Chuck Swindoll: God is a specialist in turning the mundane into the meaningful. However, most of our days begin rather predictably. We could probably enter into our diary the same three words day after day: no big deal.

Days don't begin with divine skywriting. We aren't catapulted into the hours of the morning by some great movement of God where we can sense His presence or audibly hear His voice. However, some days that began rather uneventfully lead into things unbelievable, indescribable. In fact, so different and unexpected they change our whole lives.

I heard this past week so many stories that emerged from that vast storm that swept across the Caribbean and on into the southeast section of our country. I heard about a young man who was living in New York and his plans that day didn't seem that significant.

He was to pack for a trip, which we have all done, and that's certainly not very eventful. However, that particular day he was to fly down to what was later to become the center of the storm. He didn't know it at the time he made these plans.

It wasn't just your basic trip. He was going to meet his bride because they were going to get married within a few days. To his surprise, his bride's parents' home where they were to meet was completely destroyed in the meantime.

Also, he got on the plane at LaGuardia Airport and wound up in the East River. It was the plane that never got airborne. While he was not injured and was able to get off, it was, of course, an incredible experience for him, which caused him to be asked to be interviewed on this particular television talk show.

He did make the trip, by the way, and in his own words, the limousine was 30 minutes late, which I think was absolutely predictable knowing limousines as they are. Their plans were to honeymoon in the Virgin Islands, which I'm sure were changed.

Now stop and think about that fellow. He started the day expecting just your basic trip to meet a lovely young woman he was to marry, to be involved in a honeymoon that would be absolutely delightful, only to find all those plans changed.

Most of us begin our days with the same song, second verse, and the next day same song, third verse, and the next same song, fourth verse kind of mentality when in fact God moves in and brings about a remarkable series of events we would have never guessed or been able to predict.

God not only moves in unusual ways, He also moves, I'm convinced, on uneventful days. I think He is just as involved in the mundane events as He is in the miraculous. I believe His hand is in it all. To quote that great theologian, Howie Stevenson, "God moves among the casseroles."

I love that line. Just the basic events of life. Let me show you a case in point. Let me illustrate from the Scriptures a perfect example of an unknown young woman whose life had nothing to do with the events we're going to spend our time looking at for the next number of minutes.

And yet, in God's tapestry, He was weaving together an unknown orphaned young woman into the life of the most powerful man in the Persian Empire. And He began in one of those same song, fourth verse kind of days, so familiar to a king and yet life-changing for this young woman.

My Bible is open to one of the most least-read sections of the Scriptures, the book of Esther. Turn if you will to this first chapter as we continue our study of this wonderful woman's life, which I say again begins in an uneventful manner.

You could almost read it like you're reading a fairy tale to your children or grandchildren: once upon a time. Or maybe you would expect it to say something like, "There once lived a great king in the land of Persia whose life was soon to touch an unknown orphan."

While you're looking at this early part of Esther, let's do a quick little review from both Old and New Testament on days that seemed uneventful but became unbelievable. How about the day Christ was born? I'm convinced in my heart there wasn't one citizen in Judea who expected a life-changing event like that, certainly not in this little town of Bethlehem.

And yet, before that day had ended, life—in fact history—was being reshaped. And if you like that one, how about the morning He was raised from the dead? Nobody expected that. Nobody, not even His twelve. He had been placed in a grave as a corpse.

The grave had been sealed with a Roman seal. A guard had been set on duty 24 hours a day. And yet, when they arrived, that morning was the beginning of an unbelievable series of events that still haven't stopped occurring.

I'll tell you another. It's mentioned often in the New Testament, but it hasn't happened yet. It's the day Christ will return. Schoolchildren will have their lunches packed and they'll be off to school. Traffic will choke the freeways.

Merchants will be opening their doors to customers. The stock market will be abuzz with excitement and interest and activity. And suddenly He will split the sky, and the dead in Christ will be raised first.

There will be that incredible reunion that will leave this planet like it has never been before. No one will know the morning. It could be tomorrow. As a matter of fact, this very day could have been rather uneventful for you, sort of another ho-hum, same old no big deal kind of day. But before you go to bed tonight, He could come back.

Over in the Old Testament, we have many days like this. How about that morning before the great waters covered the earth, and only Noah and his family found safety in a little ark? How about that morning that the bush began to burn and it wouldn't go out, and that shepherd, 80-year-old shepherd, who was convinced he would never again hear the voice of God, to say nothing of being commissioned to a big task, would be told he was to lead an exodus?

How about the morning that Judean on that Judean hillside when a Jewish teenager was watching his father's sheep, and he finally heard before sundown his father's call, "David, Samuel is here to speak to you." And he learned before dark he would be the next king of Israel.

F.B. Meyer has said it so well: "Fit yourself for God's service. Be faithful," he writes. "He will presently appoint thee in some unlikely quarter. In a shepherd's hut or in an artisan's cottage, God has His prepared and appointed instrument.

As yet the shaft is hidden in His quiver, in the shadow of His hand. But at the precise moment at which it will tell with the greatest effect, it will be produced and launched on the air." One of these mornings, God will step into your child's life and say, "This is the day I launch you."

Some of us need to hear that today, don't we? One of these days, God will step on the earth's scene and say, "This is your last day on earth," and we will die. But that day like all other days will begin with sort of a yawn, like the story begins.

Now it took place in the days of Ahasuerus, the same one who reigned from India to Ethiopia over 127 provinces. Here in this mundane historical account that would catch no one's attention. In fact, the New International Version says it this way: "This is what happened during the time of Xerxes."

Another king, another kingdom, another day, another year. If you have a pen in hand, mark something you wouldn't normally mark: in the third year of his reign, verse 3. He is at his royal throne which is located at the capital of Persia.

Some versions of the Bible read Shushan; ours reads Susa. He was at the capital, which was sort of the Washington, D.C. of the world. He was in the third year of his reign. I want you to put that on the back burner of your mind. I'll come back to it before I'm through and point out the significance of it. It makes sense later on.

He gave a banquet. Now there's nothing new about banquets in nobility. That's common standard operating procedure. He gave a banquet, however, that was like no other banquet. Observe the size of it. It was for all his princes and attendants, army officers of Persia, so there was military brass as well as nobility, the nobles and the princes of his provinces being in his presence when he displayed the riches of his royal glory and the splendor of his great majesty for many days.

Now look: 180 days. We're talking six months of banqueting. You should laugh. I mean, this was enough to make Forbes' birthday party look like a stingy potluck. This is six months of majesty and glory of the king.

There are parades, there's celebration, there's music, there's dancing, there's eating, there's drinking, there's sleeping, there's relaxing, there's celebrating. It is like no other banquet. 180 days of it, when they all heard the praises of the king.

By the way, inscriptions have been unearthed in which the king himself refers to himself in these terms. And I quote, "The great king, the king of kings, the king of the lands occupied by many races, the king of this great earth." I mean, he didn't suffer from modesty. Let's say that.

He invited, however, another group and a larger group to a second banquet on the heels of the first. When those days were completed, we read in verse 5, the same king gave another banquet and it lasted seven days.

It was for all the people who were present in Susa, the capital, from the greatest to the least in the court of the garden of the king's palace. So now he opens the doors and lets anybody in, from the least to the greatest, and they must have come by the hundreds, maybe by the thousands. Think of that place.

Seven days of it. Whoever wrote this was there. There were hangings of fine white and violet linen held by cords of fine purple linen on silver rings and marble columns. It sounds like an interior designer wrote this, doesn't it?

There were couches of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement. There was marble, there was mother-of-pearl, there were precious stones. It was something to behold. And along with this, there was plenty of drinking.

Drinks were served in golden vessels of various kinds, and the royal wine was plentiful according to the king's bounty. Hold nothing back. Bring it on. Let them have all they want for seven days. This went on.

The drinking was done according to the law; there was no compulsion. For so the king had given orders to each official of his household that he should do according to the desires of each person. If you want to drink, great.

If you want to drink a lot, great. If you didn't want to drink at all, that's fine. If you want to drink a little bit, it's all up to you. It's up to you. There's no compulsion. So there was freedom, there was banqueting, there was revelry, there was beauty, there was incredible display of majesty and power and riches.

It was one of those heady kind of look how great we are type of settings. No one-night black-tie affair; this was a banquet to be remembered. The queen wasn't there. Apparently, in the king's orders, there would not be the presence of Queen Vashti and her friends.

So verse 9 tells us she gave a banquet for the women in the palace which belonged to King Ahasuerus. So in another part of this palace, she held her banquet. On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, the guy was soused. He was drunk.

And while he was in this drunken, unrestrained mental state, he makes a command to his wise men that are at least listed here, the seven eunuchs who served in his presence. And this is what he commanded.

They were to bring Queen Vashti before the king with her royal crown. The original says turban. Whatever. She was to wear her royal headpiece in order to display her beauty to the people and the princes, for she was beautiful.

You can count on this: when Scripture says she's beautiful, it really means it. It isn't trying to show favor toward her because she's a queen. If she was ugly, it would probably say she was ugly. But when it says she's beautiful, it means she was a knockout.

And she was to come wearing her royal headdress and she was to display her beauty for all of his half-drunk friends to see. Now, some Jewish scholars wrestle with what this means. Some suggest it simply meant she was to come unveiled, which would have been scandal enough in a Persian court.

Others suggest that she was to come wearing only her crown, which would have been another kind of scandal. She said no. Queen Vashti, verse 12, refused to come at the king's command. Alexander Whyte, a writer of Old Testament and New Testament characters, does a masterful job with the book of Esther, lifting a little section from what he has written.

"Whatever the royal order that came to her out of the banqueting hall exactly was, the brave queen refused to obey it. Her beauty was her own and her husband's. It was not for open show among hundreds of half-drunk men.

I shall leave this part of the unsavory story veiled up in all the restrained and dignified language of the sacred writer." Doesn't that sound like something written in the 19th century? Isn't that beautiful? I won't let my imaginations run wild. Well, not being Alexander Whyte, I did.

And I'll tell you what: I admire Vashti. I admire Queen Vashti. Since when does submission mean that the wife is a sexual pawn in the carnal desires of her husband, no matter what they may be? It was never God's design that a wife submit to whatever extreme whims a husband may entertain.

To carry out evil desires from his mind is to rob a wife of her dignity. And to display her before a public that would have nothing in mind but lust is not submission; it's slavery. And it's still slavery, and it isn't right.

And I applaud Vashti for her courageous decision. Marriage does not give a husband the right or the license to fulfill his basest fantasies by using his wife as a thing.

Bill Meyer: God's sovereignty isn't reserved for mountaintop moments; it operates just as powerfully in the mundane, the messy, and the morally complicated. Chuck Swindoll says there's much more to discover in the pages ahead.

Esther's story is just the beginning. And as a complement to what you're hearing on this program, Insight for Living offers a variety of practical resources. Each one will equip you to go deeper into this amazing story of Esther, this woman of remarkable strength and dignity.

If Esther's courage, faith, and quiet trust in God have resonated with you, we'd love to help you take the next step. Our Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook lets you move from hearing this story to truly owning it, all while working through the text at your own pace.

The spiral-bound design opens completely flat, so it rests right alongside your Bible. And there's room for your personal reflections too, because your response to God's Word is part of the story. To purchase the Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook for Esther, call us at 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org/offer.

Esther and Nehemiah: two very different leaders, two very similar callings. Both were ordinary people handed an extraordinary moment. God used Esther to save a nation; God used Nehemiah to rebuild one.

And while our current series has been focused on Esther's remarkable story, Chuck Swindoll has spent a lifetime studying leaders like these and drawing out the principles that never go out of style. His classic book, "Hand Me Another Brick," takes Nehemiah's experience brick by brick and turns it into a practical guide for anyone who leads anything.

We'd love to send it to you as a thank you for supporting this ministry. To send your contribution and request for the book in the mail, write to us at Insight for Living, Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas 75034.

Again, Chuck's book on Nehemiah is called "Hand Me Another Brick," and our number again is 800-772-8888 or visit insight.org/donate.

I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll continues to tell the fascinating story of Esther, Friday on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, "There She Goes . . . Miss Persia!," 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.