Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I'd like you to open your Bibles at the book of Esther again, and I've entitled today's message "Living Right in a Wrong World," because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about Esther, whose name means "star," being hung up in a darkening sky. God always hangs His brightest lights against a dark background in order that she might shine, in order that she might demonstrate a life that was different from all the other lives around her.

The people that live in darkness because they don't know the Light of life, they don't know God in a personal way, sometimes like to see the light shine, and that light indeed leads them to light. Other times the darkness tries to overcome the light. Of course, John's Gospel tells us that's not possible because God's light can never be overcome. But sometimes when we are little lights shining in a dark place, it seems to be that the darkness does overpower us and all that's left is a little glimmer.

As we get into the story of Esther, we see that the darkness was descending upon the lights that God had placed in His world. The two lights in particular we've been looking at are Esther herself and her uncle, Mordecai. It's his light that we're going to be thinking about a little bit today, as Mordecai was called upon to let his light shine, and we're going to be looking at the conflict that that caused with the powers of darkness when it happened.

If we live rightly in a wrong world, sooner or later there will be this conflict. We can't avoid it forever. Most times we can live alongside darkness and let our little light shine, and perhaps we will have darkness try to overcome us a little bit, but it's not too bad. But there will definitely be a meeting of that light with the darkness. Jesus followers know this. They were called in the New Testament the men and women that turned the world upside down.

I well remember when we were working with young people in England that we were talking about this because young people like a challenge. They like to be told, "Look, this is exciting to be a Christian. It's something that is an alive sort of thing. It's not a religion of 'don't do this' and 'don't do that'—a religion of negatives. Christianity is essentially positive." As we tried to challenge the young people, I came across this verse and threw it out to a bunch of young street kids that had come to the Lord. I said, "You know, Jesus said His followers were men and women and boys and girls and teenagers that had turned the world upside down."

One of them, a boy called Trevor, I remember looked up at me and he said, "That doesn't sound right to me." He said, "Shouldn't the people have said that we were the people that turned the world the right side up?" I said, "Yes, Trevor, you're absolutely right. The world is the wrong way up and Jesus' people turn it the right way up. But because everybody's got things mixed up and down, and black is white and white is black, people in the world in Jesus' day talked about disciples as people that turned the world upside down." Actually, Trevor was absolutely right. But when light and darkness meet each other, it's just as if everybody stood on their head and they're all shaken up and things happen and conflict arises.

That's because we've got a wrong world. The world is wrong. Something is drastically wrong. Just pick up your newspaper and you will see that. There are absolutes. There is a right and there is a wrong. When I first came to the States, there were people talking about all sorts of things that sounded rather weird to me. It's not until I go back to England or I have a visit with my sister who came from England that I'm reminded of all the things that we say wrong or right, depending whether you're English or American.

I do remember that I had to learn about sidewalks and pavements and biscuits and cookies and that when I went to stand in a line, it was really a queue, but you just didn't know that and you all called it a line. Now it sounds even weird to me to stand in a queue or to queue up, as we say. But I tell you, have you ever stood in a queue with a whole lot of people? Now, I don't know whether the people in the queue or the line are believers or non-believers, but do you notice there's a certain moral code?

For example, the people at the front of the line were there and they have to be served before the people in the back of the line. Who said? Who laid this law down? Why should the person who's waited longest be served before the person that's just arrived? You say, "That's right. It's not right for the person at the back of the line to walk up to the front of the line and push us aside. If I've been there first, then it's my right to be served before the person at the back of the line." Who said? What are you appealing to? You're appealing to some sort of law somewhere that says that's right and that's wrong.

Where do we get this moral sense of what is right and what is wrong, even down to standing in a line? People just know. Whether those people in the line go to church or not or are Christians or not is quite irrelevant. There is a moral code stamped on our conscience that tells us what is right and what is wrong even in the little things of life. The problem is the world is full of people that know what is right but do what is wrong. Some of them have got their consciences so messed up or chloroformed they don't even know what is right and what is wrong anymore.

I think you all remember the young man, or the older man now, who came to our missions conference. He wrote a book called *Peace Child*, and he and his wife did a very brave thing. They got in a little boat and they went to live among a tribe of people that really had lived such degenerate lives that they didn't know what was right and what was wrong anymore. They decided, as they listened to the Christian Gospel and they heard about Judas, who had betrayed Jesus Christ, that he would be their savior. They liked him because Judas was doing the sort of things they were doing.

They didn't like Jesus. Jesus did all those soft things like forgiving people. They didn't forgive anyone. They fattened people for friendship. They pretended to be a friend with someone and got them so that they weren't scared anymore, and then they ate them because they were cannibals. They thought this was great fun. When they heard about Judas betraying Jesus—he'd been hand-picked, one of the twelve—they thought this was a great idea. So they said, "We don't want Jesus as our Savior, we want Judas." What had happened? They had got the whole thing the wrong way up—upside down.

There are a few groups of people in the world like that that are so seared in their conscience—the Bible calls it a seared conscience, as if their consciences had a red-hot iron put across it and numbed it, destroyed it—that they don't know what naturally is right and what naturally is wrong. Killing somebody appears to be the right thing to do rather than the wrong thing to do. But they're very, very minimal, those sort of people. Most people really know what is right and what is wrong.

Satan, of course, is behind all this. He's behind selling the idea that something that is wrong is right. He knows if he has little lights around the place, shedding light into the darkness, the darkness of this philosophy that what is right is wrong, that he needs to obliterate those lights. He does it intellectually, he does it with philosophies, he does it with some weird satanic religions, he does it through books, he does it through conversations, he does it through lifestyles, he does it in all sorts of ways.

Basically, he's behind putting out the lights. Antisemitism is an animosity towards the Jewish people, which when fully developed results in genocide—the attempt to exterminate the Jews. The Jews were God's big light. Corporately, they were supposed to be a big light that would dissipate the darkness and show the whole world the Savior. For salvation is of the Jews, Jesus reminded us. Satan knows he has to obliterate all the lights and particularly this big light, this big nation that God had chosen, even though it was a small nation. It was a lot of lights all together, so it was too big a light for Satan to allow to be kept switched on.

He began right at the beginning of the Bible obliterating all these lights so that people would really think darkness was the way to go and that right was wrong. He started with Cain murdering Abel in Genesis chapter four. He wanted to obliterate this good little light. Abel was the good little light. Cain lived in darkness and he didn't like the light shining into his darkness and showing him up, and so he obliterated it. God said, "Where's your brother?" and he said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God said, "The voice of your brother's blood cries to Me from the ground."

Then God gave Adam and Eve another son called Seth. Then, says the Bible, men began to proclaim the name of the Lord. Why? Because through Seth, God preserved a godly seed or line through which the Savior would come. The light was still shining even though Cain had tried to put it out. Another son came through which would come the Light of the World. Cain tries to put the light out. We come into Exodus; Moses is the little light. His family and his family's family and the Jewish people are now under bondage.

Pharaoh tries to obliterate the light by limiting the children of the children of Israel. We know that story very well, don't we? Satan moves again to obliterate the people, to limit the population. It wasn't outright genocide, but it was pretty bad. All the little babies thrown into the river to make nice lunch for the crocodiles—little boy babies. God preserves Moses because He's keeping the light lit, blowing it gently as the little light bobbed among the crocodiles in the ark in God's protection because God doesn't let His little lights get blown out. He's got to show darkness that darkness is wrong.

You go on through the Scriptures and you get the Edomites and the Canaanites and the Agagites, and these were people who were specifically, dreadfully hostile to Israel—the big light. They run around trying to do all sorts of things to the Israelites to put out the light, particularly the Agagites, whose king was Agag or Agag, from whom descended Haman. So the Edomites, the Canaanites, and the Agagites were particularly Israel's enemies. Satan used these people. He was behind it in an attempt to defeat God in His redemptive purposes.

Whenever you see the genocide happening, whenever you see this animosity about the Jews coming to the fore, then you've got to say there's something behind this. Why do these people in the world and in the world history move against the Jewish people? There has to be more about it than just a minority in trouble. We have many minorities in the world in trouble with people who are antagonistic towards them. But through history, has there ever been a people like the Jewish people? No. Whom nations have tried to gobble up and against whom animosity has risen in waves that defy description, that are beyond man's hatred to man? Yes, behind that we have to see Satan's face.

Haman was a descendant of the Agagites. In its historic outworking, this genocide involves all of God's people, Christians and Jews. When you come into the New Testament, you've got Herod looking for the Light. The Light has been born in a bale of hay. Satan decides to put it out. What does he do? He calls the wise men and says, "Where did you say this King's star arose and what time did it appear, and where is Christ going to be born? I'll get him." He didn't tell the three kings that. God told the three kings that, and they didn't tell him. They went home a different way.

They didn't go back to Herod and tell him where Jesus was. They'd found Him. Herod never found Him. When he realized he'd been duped, he tried to put the light out. How? By killing all the boy babies. Now we're back again. A modern Pharaoh, if you like, in New Testament times, trying to obliterate the light. Why? Because the source is Satan, who is making an attempt to defeat God in His redemptive purposes. This can be repeated. Jesus said, "If the world hates you, it hated Me before it hated you. Expect it. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." I'm blowing on the little lights. I won't allow it to happen.

You can trace it right forward too in the Scriptures to the Antichrist at the end of time, who will turn his fury on all the little Christian lights he can find. So we're dealing with more than just people not liking the way Christians believe. Oh yes. And of course, it's an enemy that's far too big for you and I. It's going to take the forces of heaven to keep the little light shining when Satan really gets wound up. This brings us back to Haman, the ancient Hitler. Even in our day and age, we have seen again a Haman who would obliterate the Jews.

Remember the story? It's nine years now from the beginning of chapter one to where we are now in chapters three and four. Xerxes the King married Vashti, who didn't do what he wanted her to do, so he gets rid of her and he marries Esther, God's little starlight. She becomes a queen—a good queen, the best queen that she can be. She has no option, she has no choice. She is caught in a terrible marriage she cannot get out of. There is no way out for her, and so she makes the best of what she has to make the best of. She cannot change it. What she can change, she does change.

Mordecai, her uncle, becomes her advisor as he has been from her youth and says, "Don't tell the King that you are a Jew. Keep it quiet. There's a time to speak, there's a time to be silent." Mordecai becomes more important in the kingdom, probably Esther's influence. He becomes an advisor to the king. He hears a plot about the king's life, he saves the king's life. It's written down in a book. Then the king forgets all about Mordecai, forgets to say thank you, forgets to reward him, because another person has come on the scene of history and that is Haman the Agagite, the Jew-hater.

Now, I don't know how much of a Jew-hater he was before he found out Mordecai was a Jew, but I do know he hated anybody that shone a little bit brighter than he wanted to shine. That's Satan. Satan never wanted to be Satan. Satan wanted to be God. Satan didn't want to be Prince of Darkness. He wanted to be King of Heaven. Satan wanted to shine like God. Whenever one of Satan's own finds somebody that shines brighter than him, he's not going to like him very much.

Haman found Mordecai, who was shining very brightly. Haman had just decided he would like everybody to bow down as soon as he appeared. Mordecai looked at Haman and said, "I cannot bow before you. You are one of the Jews' ancient enemies. You have always shown your people hostility to my people." You've got to realize that Mordecai was bowing down to Xerxes, but he could not bow to Haman. There is a time to bow to a king, whether he be a believer or not, and there is a time to stand up tall and straight and say, "I cannot bow." The wisdom to know the difference is what comes when we live our lives in touch with the Holy Spirit.

How did the Christians live under Nero? Well, they lived under Nero. Not every Christian was martyred for their faith before lions. Some were because some had to be. The time to bow before Haman for them was over. Others, through a clear conscience, could do those things that they were asked to do by Nero and his cohorts and were not martyred in the arena. Does that mean that they were not godly because they were not martyred? No. There is a time to be silent and there is a time to speak for each of us.

How well we need to know God. How carefully we must listen to the Holy Spirit. I think of a missionary book I've just finished reading about the Boxer Rebellion in China and how many missionaries ran away, led to do so by the Lord, I believe, and how many missionaries didn't and were martyred. It's tempting to say, "Why didn't they all stay and be martyred?" But God leads one to run, as in the Acts of the Apostles, the Christians were scattered abroad because of the persecution. They did not stay, all of them, in Jerusalem, but some did. It's a mystery. But God leads some one way and God leads some another way, and it isn't always because the Christians capitulate or compromise their faith.

There is this conflict with Satan. There is this conflict of interests. Choosing just to do the right thing in the wrong world is where we all have to come to. If we can say, "God, help me to do the right thing in this wrong world at the right time in the right way," then we are living in touch with the Spirit of God and we will know what to do. We will know whether to run or we will know whether to stand. We will know whether to open our mouth or we will know whether to keep it closed. There will be an inner insistence of the Spirit that tells us these things, and it comes down to and back to how well we know God and how we are growing in our relationship with Him.

The issue here, of course, was Mordecai's Jewishness and probably the reason he refused to bow to him was the fact that Haman was a descendant of the king of the Amalekites. You see in Exodus 17 you can read about the conflict Israel had as they came into the Promised Land and began to fight the Amalekites. Maybe you don't know the story, but maybe this will help to pinpoint it in your mind. Do you remember the story of the battles that Israel had as they started to push out the enemies and possess their possessions? There was one particular people, the Amalekites, that were very fierce and very vicious.

Joshua was fighting them in the valley one day, and Moses went up a mountain while Joshua was fighting them in the valley. Aaron and Hur went with him, and Moses held up the rod of God over the battle from a high place. While he held up the rod of God, which signified the authority of God in this world, the battle went well for Israel. But his hands got tired. You see how long you can hold your hands up there like that. Not very long before your arms get really tired. While the battle went on all day, Moses put his arms down. As soon as he put his arms down, the Amalekites began to win.

I bet Joshua's looking up at the hill saying, "Keep your arms up, Moses." Well, in the end, Aaron and Hur that had gone up to help pray about this battle just got Moses to sit down, and one of them held his arms up one side and the other held his arms up the other all day until the Amalekites were beaten. It's a beautiful picture. But the interesting thing, before we spiritualize it too much, was that Israel won. The light overcame the darkness, if you like. At the end of that chapter in Exodus 17:8-15, it says this: God said, "I will have war against the Amalekites from generation to generation."

They will be trouble for Israel, and if somebody doesn't wipe them off the face of the earth, they will be trouble, trouble, trouble to My purposes, My redemptive purposes. And My people will be so decimated by the descendants of these people that My redemptive purposes could be messed up. So, Joshua, I want them wiped out. Saul comes along, and what does he do? He fights against the Amalekites, but he saves the best of them. God has told him to wipe them out because God knows about Haman. He saves the king of Agag, and he saves the best of the sheep and the best of the cattle and just the best of everything and kills everybody else.

Samuel comes along and says to Saul, "Did you do what God told you to do?" "Yes," says Saul. "Then," says Samuel, "what meaneth the bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen?" "Oh, well, I just kept the best, and the king—here's the king, King Agag." Samuel makes this terrible pronouncement: "Saul, that's it. You're finished as far as God is concerned. He will raise up another one after His own heart, namely David." That's it. Because you didn't do what was necessary to do, and because you saved some of these people, there will be trouble for Israel. Guess what? Haman is the trouble.

I believe it's because Mordecai knew all of this that he refused to bow to Haman, who had decided to rule his world. "We must be faithful to God and to the present generation of our people," he said to himself, I'm sure. Now as we come into Esther 3:8-10, we see Haman absolutely incensed by the fact that this Jew, Mordecai, will not bow to him. He doesn't want this spreading because he knows the Jews are all around the whole kingdom and he doesn't want an insurrection on his hands. If Mordecai, who is so important, refuses to bow to Haman and he's the only one that refuses to bow to Haman, this will spread.

So he goes to the king and he says, "There are certain people," and he begins to tell half-truths and downright lies. "Their laws are different." That was a truth. The Torah marks out the Jew from all other people, for they believe in a law that is a higher law than the law of man and certainly a higher law than the law of the Medes and the Persians. "There is a certain people," he says, "whose laws are different, Your Majesty." He begins to put little questions in the king's minds. If their laws are different—different to the law of the Medes and Persians—can they then be loyal? Well, that's what he says. They're not really loyal. That's the half-truth he's introducing.

Then he gives the direct lie: "It does not profit the king to let them live." Now there's the smell of the gas chambers about this. If we apply this very simply, it may mean for modern believers that we may never persuade our contemporaries that we are modest, law-abiding, normal people. I believe that the Jews were trying their best to be lights in a dark place in the land of their captivity. But no matter how hard they were trying, it wasn't any good. Their lives were going to be in danger.

Have you ever come across people—I'm sure you have, I certainly have—in this day and age who talk about Christians in a sort of derogatory way, who talk about us as "holy rollers"? Have you ever been called a holy roller? It's hard when you're not accepted as reasonable and responsible, isn't it? And yet we may have to endure unjust judgment as a confessional or professional hazard. I like that phrase. We may have to endure unjust judgment as a confessional or professional hazard as a Christian. I've been reminded of that lately, actually.

When people find out you're a believer, you sort of feel the sense of stigma. Of course, that's the word we get from stigmata, isn't it? The marks of the cross. But you get the stigma feeling and people are looking at you in a little weird way. Do you ever wish, "I wish they didn't think I was weird. I wish I could divorce that from the fact that I've just confessed or witnessed to the fact that I'm a Christian"? You'll never be able to do it. Just the fact of your Jewishness, if you like, or just the fact of your Christianness stamps you in such a way that however reasonably and responsibly you're trying to live, you will have to endure some unjust judgment as a confessional or professional hazard.

That's how it is if you're a Christian. Now how intense that is depends on where you live and what's happening in your world. For some people at this moment in this world, it means prison and torture and death. For us in the West, it doesn't mean those things at this moment. But here in our story, the danger the Jews now faced was because Mordecai was enduring unjust judgment as a confessional or professional hazard. He stood up. He told his Jewishness by the fact that he refused to bow to Haman, and trouble came to everybody because of it.

Remember when I first became a Christian in college, hundreds of years ago, it feels like now? The girl that led me to the Lord listened to me pouring out my problems because my friends had ceased to be my friends as soon as they understood fully what it meant that their friend Jill had become a Christian. This was very difficult for me. That they now looked on me with sort of some sort of downgrading suspicion—she's gone religious maniac type of thing. I didn't want them to feel that, so I tried to be normal and natural and reasonable.

It didn't make any difference how normal and natural and reasonable I tried to be to their opinion of me. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. I remember Janet, the girl that led me to Christ, saying to me, "Well, it might just be one of those situations where they're always going to think of you like that from now on. Look at it like this, Jill. Jesus bore so many things for you. This is something you can bear to stop Him getting hurt. Just sort of put yourself in your mind's eye in front of Jesus and the arrows that Satan is shooting at you through your friends. You can stop them. Yes, they'll hurt, but He's borne enough for you. This is something you can bear for Him."

That was a huge help to me because I love Jesus very much. I never thought there'd be anything I could do for Him. But I could bear this stigma. I could bear this looking down upon me because I'm a Christian. I could bear this as a confessional or professional hazard for Jesus' sake. That was a help. But when do you bow to Haman and when don't you? First of all, when it affects God. When the law of God contravenes the law of man. When you must stand up and witness to the truth as Mordecai felt his time had come to do so.

In Acts of the Apostles, you find this: you find the disciples saying to the people who were trying to put out the light, them, "But who are we to obey? It's better to obey God rather than man." They were saying, "Be quiet. Be quiet or we'll put you in prison." They put them in prison and they wouldn't be quiet. Everybody got converted in the jail. So they brought them out and said, "We told you to be quiet." And they kept blabbing the Gospel all around the place, and they said, "Whom must we obey? We must obey God rather than man."

When do you bow to Haman and when don't you? When it affects God directly. When the law of God contravenes the law of man, then you obey God rather than man. When you're convinced the law of God says no to something, you say no to it. Like I remember my husband's story of when he was a young man in the bank and somebody came in and they needed to see the bank manager, and the bank manager didn't have time for them. When they had gone, he said to Stuart, "Now, next time that man comes in, tell him I'm out." He said, "He'll come back today, I know he will. Tell him I'm out."

Stuart, seventeen years of age, said, "Excuse me, sir, will you be out?" The bank manager said, "No, I won't be out. Just tell him I'm out." Stuart, seventeen years of age, said, "Sorry, sir, can't do that." "What do you mean you can't do it? Tell him I'm out!" He said, "I can't tell a lie for you, sir, because if I told a lie for you, how do I know I'd never tell one to you?" Now the bank manager was mad, but what could he say to that? You see the law of God at that point was contravening the law of man, and Stuart did not bow to Haman, who is a picture of the flesh or selfishness or the world, and say, "Sure, I'll tell him you're out."

That was a time to stand up and be counted. Some people in the bank didn't like him doing that because they were busy telling lies all over the place. The light shone in their darkness and the darkness didn't comprehend it and the darkness didn't like it. Stuart became to some of the people that saw that incident a "holy roller" or a fanatic or somebody that took their religion too far. It was a professional or confessional hazard that he had to live under. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

When it affects God, that's when you stand up and you refuse to bow. When it affects others. If you are a leader in a high place, then people expect right behavior from you. Mordecai knew that what he did with Haman determined what a lot of people in the kingdom were going to do with Haman. If Haman came from the King of Agag, it would only be a matter of time before he exterminated the Jews if he could anyway because he hated them as a nation and as a people. When you know it's going to affect others, perhaps it's time not to bow to Haman—the stumbling block principle, if you like.

When it affects yourself. Let me take that little picture for you. Let me take you back to the mountain. The battle going on in the desert can be used as a picture of the flesh battling the spirit. For the Amalekites give us a picture in the Scriptures of the flesh or of our old nature. Joshua or Israel speaks of the spirit. What you're seeing is the battle of the spirit and the authority of God over the forces of our flesh and Satan and God's power through prayer being applied to this situation, this battle in the valley.

Haman represents to us the flesh in us—the selfishness, the old nature before we knew Jesus. When we come to know Christ, He gives us His Spirit, who is represented in this story, if you like, by Mordecai. Mordecai takes on Haman, just as when you become a Christian, God lends you His Spirit who takes on the old nature. The old nature that wants to live after darkness, wants to live wrongly in a wrong world, says, "No, no, you must live rightly. You must not bow to Haman."

Haman insists that this is the time to say we're a Christian, this is the time to keep silent, this is the time not to give in, this is the time to take a stand. When it affects yourself, when you recognize, "Hey, I can't bow to Haman. That's what I would have done before I was a Christian," that's the time to stand up and say, "I won't do it." Haman I know. He lives within me. He is my worst self, wanting to destroy the spirit that God has lent to me in order to resist him. War is declared early in a child's life. I remember listening to Haman, doing what he told me to do: cheating at exams, treating people in a shabby way.

Haman I know. Haman intimidates me, forcing me to cower, demanding recognition, wanting to be served, yea more, worshipped. Haman must be faced and overcome. Mordecai will help me. He will help me not to capitulate. Mordecai is like God's Spirit, standing up straight and tall with head erect, telling the truth, offering me power, helping me to overcome evil. Mordecai I know. I am Esther, living for the King. Haman is strong and I am weak, but God is God. Standing somewhere in the shadows of my life, He is ready to come to my aid if I ask Him to. I will overcome someday. Haman I know, Mordecai I know, but God I must know best.

Here is a little picture that we can take right from the Scriptures and understand what this story can tell us in helping us to go back to our world and shine. We are Christian people, and we are in the same danger from the enemy of the Christ that the Jewish people were in danger. Satan is our enemy. What we have to do is to go to our world and care enough and pray enough and dare enough to stand up to Haman when God calls us to.

What happened in the Scripture was Mordecai said to Esther, "For such a time as this, God has placed you in this place. Help us now. Haman has determined on a certain day that all of us will be destroyed. Speak to the King. You are his wife. He doesn't know you're a Jew. Speak to him for us. Plead for us for our lives." You see, we've got to care enough not to bow to Haman to do something about it. Let's take you now to Esther's place. You've got to care enough about your Jewishness or your Christianness to shine in a dark world.

She had to care enough. She had a choice just like you and I do. Her choice was, "Nobody knows me. I haven't told the King I'm Jewish. I'm the Queen. I could get away with it. Why don't I get away with it? Why stick my head out to be shot off?" Remember my eldest son going to school and Stuart saying to him one day, junior high school, "Does anybody ever really get after you because you're a Christian?" David said, "No." And Stuart said, "Oh, that's good." David said, "It's probably because they don't know I am." Stuart said, "Oh, why don't you tell them sometime?"

David said, "You must be kidding. I'd get my head shot off." He knew exactly as a junior high kid what it would take to let them know he was a Christian. As he grew in the Lord, he began to care enough and pray enough and dare enough to get his head shot off, which he did as soon as he opened his mouth and made a stand. But you've got to care enough. The choice is yours. David said, "Nobody knows I'm a Christian while I keep my mouth shut. It's going to be all right."

That was Esther's place exactly. She had to choose. I mean, you might say she's a fool. She's the Queen. She's the only one that's going to survive this genocide. What's she going to open her mouth for? It was a choice. The problem is we don't need to risk it. We don't need to risk losing a friend, making a relative upset. Maybe they don't know we're a Christian. Crazy if we tell them. We know the trouble it'll cause.

Well, of course, the answer to that is the answer that Mordecai gave her. "All of us on a certain date are due to be exterminated." That's like a lost world. All of the people who are lost without Christ on a certain date, the judgment day, are about to be exterminated, if you like. If we do not open our mouth and witness and bring them life, salvation may arrive from another direction for them. That was Mordecai's answer. But we will not escape.

We will arrive before God with empty hands. We will be judged not for our sin, but for the life that we have received and what we did with it, the message we were given, for we are the ministers of reconciliation. We will not escape. It will come out eventually. We cannot hide our light under a bushel. But whether we share or whether we don't will determine if we really care. Little hymn says, "Do you know that souls are dying, do you care? Children lost and voices dying, do you care? Can you say with God's dear Son, not my will but Thine be done? Does it matter? Does it matter? Do you care?"

How do we care? How do we care more? How do we care enough to stand up and have our head shot off? How do we care to do what Mordecai did? You expose yourself to the Scriptures, you hang your heart over the Bible, or as somebody has said, you hang your heart over hell. That'll do it. Then you'll care. What do you believe? Do you believe people are lost without Christ? If you don't believe that, you won't bother witnessing. I wish I didn't believe it. I wish there wasn't a place called hell. But I believe there is. And if I love people, I'll care.

So you expose yourself to the Scriptures, you expose yourself to the Holy Spirit, you expose yourself to the saints—to people that do care. Have you ever noticed if you're around Christians that are really alive, that care about people, how it rubs off? You want to care more? Get involved with a lively bunch of people in a Bible study or make a friend of somebody that really knows how to witness. You've got to care enough. You've got to pray enough. And you've got to dare enough.

There's got to come a time when you say, "Haman, thus far and no further. I will not let you rule over me. I will not bow to my darkness that I used to be before I was a Christian, to my flesh. I will stand up and be counted for Jesus Christ." So, that's as far as we've got. Next we're going to see what Esther did about that choice she had before her. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your goodness. We thank You for Your grace. We thank You that down through the Bible years, from Genesis until now, You have preserved Your people against the onslaught of Satan, who has used all sorts of people, all sorts of things down the years to exterminate the light, to obliterate it. And we thank You as we think through those Bible history stories that have been written down and preserved for us that we see You standing in the shadows protecting, but we also see Satan in the shadows too, shooting, planning, scheming. His devices haven't changed. He hates the light.

And Lord, we would be lights. We would be like Mordecai, so in touch with God that we know when to say no, when to be loyal to the king if we can, and when to say the law of my God contravenes the law of my earthly master and I must stand up and be counted. Lord, sometimes it's hard, and it's simply because we don't know You well enough. And we ask that You may come to us, that You may renew our faith in Thee, and You may make us a Mordecai, however frightening Haman seems to be in our mind's eye and hang us up in Your dark world and help us to shine forth Your light and Your truth. And help us to turn up this old world back on its axis again, turning the world the right side up, Lord. Help us to do that, that Your name may be glorified. We ask it for Jesus' sake and in His name we pray, amen.