Esther 2:23 And when inquisition was made of the matter, it was found out; therefore they were both hanged on a tree: and it was written in the book of the chronicles before the king.
Did your vote count in the last election? Regardless of what election that may have been, I know what you may be thinking, but did your vote count? Do you feel as if you have a voice in the governance of the country? If you are serving, does your ministry matter? In short, do the decisions and actions you make today make a difference? It is so easy to go through life and feel as if you are powerless and it does not matter what you do one way or the other. You are just kind of fatalistic about things. Things are going to happen that are going to happen, and there is nothing you can do about it.
The book of Esther is a book about the providence of God. Providence comes from “providere” which means “looking ahead.” That is exactly what God was doing in saving the Jewish people from a wicked man named Haman. Haman was a courtier of great stature in the Persian Empire and he wanted to kill all of the Jewish people.
Queen Esther, as unlikely as it may been, was the Jewish queen of this kingdom. In Esther 1 and 2 there are a couple of incidents that seem to be unconnected and not to matter. One that was that Esther was taken into the harem and made the new queen of this new empire. Second, her father figure, Mordecai, who was actually her cousin, heard about a plot to kill the king and basically saved the king’s life.
Esther 2:23 says, “And when inquisition was made of the matter, it was found out; therefore they were both [the plotters] hanged on a tree: and it was written in the book of the chronicles before the king.” Then what happened? Nothing! As the dust is settling and the secret service agents are patching things up after a planned attempt on the king’s life, the king says, “Tell that young man, ‘Good job.’ I appreciate his sparing my life. Write it down in the records.” Then, it was basically forgotten.
So, you have these two seemingly unrelated incidents; you have Mordecai and Esther the Jews; and you have a man named Haman, the Jew’s enemy. Esther 3:1 says, “After these things the king Ahasuerus promote Haman…and advanced him, and set his seat above all…” So, the right people were losing and the wrong people were winning, but providence is the ability of God to look ahead. It is also God providing for His people before they even knew they had a need.
Now, one of the great things about the book of Esther is that though God’s name is not even mentioned in this book, which makes it unique in the Bible, you don’t have to see God’s name to see God’s face just as a child does not need to know her grandfather’s name to recognize his face when she sees a photograph. God is clearly seen in this book.
No matter how futile your life and efforts may seem, what you do today does matter. It matters regardless of the apparently random nature of your life right now. You don’t have to see the big picture to know that there is one. A God that is too big to comprehend is certainly big enough to comprehend you. That is what you learn from this story. Mordecai saves the king’s life and nothing seem to happen, but before the story of Esther is over and God provided for His people, you find that this was a key event. The king forgot about it, but God did not. So, what you do today does matter, regardless of the apparently random nature of events.
What you do today does matter no matter who may notice you. In this case, the king did not notice what Mordecai had done. Later, Haman also noticed Mordecai, hated him, and wished him to be killed along with all of his people. We are not going to do the right thing if being favorably noticed is our main goal. This king who was saved by Mordecai was cut off from everyone and everything who could give him any kind of intelligence of what was going on in the kingdom. Even Esther could not approach him without his permission. So, maybe you feel as if no one notices, but God does notice. The Bible says, “We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”
So, what you do today does matter no matter the feelings of futility that you may feel. Here is wicked Haman whom King Ahasuerus promoted. The king forgot the man who saved his life and promoted the man that was just rotten all the way through, but God was on the throne no matter who seemed to be ruling the kingdom.
What you do does matter no matter the wait. Esther 3:15 says, “And the king and Haman sat down to drink; but the city Shushan was perplexed.” In other words, they sat down to have a nice evening and drink their problems away, and I’m sure that Mordecai felt that no one knew what was going on. It was several years, but timing is everything. In the end, God used all these events to bring about the rescue of these people. This is not in spite of the fact that God is sovereign; it is because God is sovereign. He reigns. I don’t have to know the significance of the decisions I make today to know that there is significance, and I don’t have to shoulder the burden alone. There is a God in Heaven.
How do I reconcile the sovereignty of God and the free will of man that I am responsible to exercise? The answer is that the paradox is not solved by your intellect. It is solved by your faith. In our minds we think, “I can be here or I can be there.” But God is not a man; He can be here and there. We can say, “I was; I am; I will be.” God is in yesterday and in tomorrow. He is not hemmed in by time and space, which is just to say that we cannot impose our restrictions on an infinite God. That means that God is sovereign, I do have choices, and what I do today does matter.
Do you know where things are going in the world, your life, and your work? Maybe not, but do you know what you should do today? You probably do.