Tuesday 23 September 2014

Desperate

Up until the plot to kill the king, Esther's relationship with Mordecai was a secret. No longer. She has now sent Hathach to find out why Mordecai is behaving as if some terrible tragedy has happened, and the detail of the account is compelling:

"Esther called for Hathach, one of the royal eunuchs whom the king had assigned to wait on her, and told him to go to Mordecai and get the full story of what was happening. So Hathach went to Mordecai in the town square in front of the King’s Gate. Mordecai told him everything that had happened to him. He also told him the exact amount of money that Haman had promised to deposit in the royal bank to finance the massacre of the Jews. Mordecai also gave him a copy of the bulletin that had been posted in Susa ordering the massacre so he could show it to Esther when he reported back with instructions to go to the king and intercede and plead with him for her people.

Hathach came back and told Esther everything Mordecai had said. Esther talked it over with Hathach and then sent him back to Mordecai with this message: “Everyone who works for the king here, and even the people out in the provinces, knows that there is a single fate for every man or woman who approaches the king without being invited: death. The one exception is if the king extends his gold scepter; then he or she may live. And it’s been thirty days now since I’ve been invited to come to the king.”
"

Proverbs 20:28 says "Love and faithfulness keep a king safe; through love his throne is made secure." which the CEV translates as "Rulers are protected by their mercy and loyalty, but they must be merciful for their kingdoms to last."  Xerxes did not have love and mercy to keep him safe so, to ensure his own safety, he  had surrounded himself with such an amount of physical and legal barriers that not even his own wives could see him unannounced.

It sounded like such a simple request: just ask Esther to go and tell the king what is going to happen.

Yet it was so much more. Moredecai was well aware that the order to massacre the Jews had come, albeit through the hand of Haman, directly from the king: signed and sealed.  He must have thought so highly of Esther that he believed that she could get the king to change his mind. Was Mordecai unaware of palace protocol? Or was he so desperate that he wanted Esther to do everything in her power - and beyond it - to help save their people?

Am I so desperate to love and serve God that I will do everything in my power to save His people?


Esther 4:8 - 11

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