Where is God in this?
No question, if you think–you do not even have to think deeply–you have asked this question. We have all found ourselves in places and circumstances where we must make a choice and the choice is tough. It’s a choice that has down-side possibilities, even catastrophic probabilities.
There are times we seek God’s voice, and all we hear is a seeming void. Where is God in the silence?
It might come as a surprise, but there is a book of Scripture in which we do not find God’s name mentioned once, not even in passing. It’s a book about which we cannot find a single commentary written by the early church fathers for more than 500 years. The book so troubled Luther he never preached from it and wondered out loud if it really belonged in the Bible. We are going to hear God’s voice and see God’s hand in the amazing story of Esther.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 58:04 — 39.9MB)
Downloads
Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Buddy Hoffman
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
March 3, 2013
Return: Where Is God in This?
Esther
Open your Bibles to the book of Esther. If you have one of those handout sheets, the title of this is Where Is God in This? Now I haven’t any question in my mind that all of us, if you live for any length of time at all, you come into circumstances that just seem as if God is absent. You look at it, and you say to yourself, “I just don’t see God in this. I don’t hear God in this. I don’t understand how God could be in this.”
We are going through a series, and I want to congratulate you who have been hanging in here with us in this 12-episode series. I know that some places in here, you’ve gone, “Wait a minute. How does that fit with that? How does that fit with that?” It’s kind of like going to a family reunion and wondering who’s whose. “Is that my cousin?” “No, they just came along with Joe.”
One of the things we are deeply committed to is that we want to teach the Bible. It’s something that if you are coming around here a bit, it’s kind of a popular thing to do to just kind of give spiritual pep talks, but here’s what the Bible says about the Bible. This is what Paul told Timothy, “Teach the Word. Be instant in season, out of season, for the time will come when people will not endure sound teaching.”
Do you know what he said? There’s going to come a time that when you open your Bible and you teach it, people are going to go, “Oh, that’s boring. Oh, I really want to hear something else.” He says, “When that happens, don’t let it phase you. Open the Bible. Teach the Bible.” Do you know why? Because his Word never comes back void.
Now then, here’s what I want you to do. If you haven’t been with us in a while, just kind of hang with us, and I think you’ll catch up, but let me just tell you where you are. If you have your Bible open to Esther, go back just a little bit and you’ll see Ezra. Do you see that book of Ezra? There’s Ezra and then there’s Nehemiah.
If you go back to Ezra, last week, we talked about Ezra, the first six chapters. At the end of chapter 6 in the book of Ezra, right before Ezra 7… Now I’m just going to give you some background here. The first six chapters, the primary character is Zerubbabel. Starting in Ezra 7, the primary character is Ezra. He is called the scribe. The first six chapters is about rebuilding the temple. It’s about worship. Worship really matters. Worship orients your life. Who do you worship?
You could really make a pretty strong argument that all sin is essentially idolatry. It’s the failure to worship. John Piper makes a really strong argument that the reason mission exists is because right worship doesn’t. That’s what our job in mission is to bring worshipers into the kingdom. So you have Ezra 1-6, which is about worship, and it’s about rebuilding the temple. Now then, Ezra 7 through the end of the book is about the Word.
Ezra is a preacher. He’s a teacher. This is what it says about Ezra. I love this about Ezra, that he set his mind to know the law and to do the law and to teach the law. They get worship going, but it’s kind of not right on target. Ezra comes in there, and he goes, “It’s fine that you’re worshiping, but it needs to be guided by the truth of Scripture.”
You have worship and then you have the Word. The Word directs you. The Word guides you. There’s a beautiful passage over in the book of Proverbs. It says when you walk in the way it will guide you. When you sleep in the night it will keep you. When you wake in the morning it will give you counsel. If you know the Word, what will happen is the Holy Spirit will take that truth and ignite it in your heart, and he will guide you. He will keep you. He will direct you.
So Ezra 1-6 is about what? Worship and the temple. Ezra 7 through the end of the book is about what? The Word. Now Nehemiah is about the walls. I remember reading the book of Nehemiah and thinking, even as a child, “Walls? There’s a book in the Bible about walls? What’s so important about walls that there’s a whole book in the Bible about walls?”
Because in the book of Nehemiah, he hears the information that the walls are torn down. What does Nehemiah do? He weeps! He cries. He prays. He actually confesses the sin of his fathers, and he says, “This shouldn’t be.” He goes to the king of Persia and asks for resources to go back and rebuild the wall. Ezra goes to the king of Persia and asks for resources to go back and really establish worship there.
Now let me just give you an idea of why the walls are important. The reason walls are important is because they define who you are. They’re like the city limits. They not only define who you are; they protect you. They turn you from a wanderer to somebody who has a home. When you buy a house, one of the things they will do is they’ll make you get a survey, and you know where you can put your fences. “This is your property. That’s their property. This is my house. This is your house.” You have a survey.
Have you ever seen one of those situations where somebody actually built their driveway on somebody else’s property? Yeah, that’s kind of a problem, isn’t it? “That’s not your property. You can’t build over here. This is not yours.” You have the worship, you have the Word, and then you have these walls that define who you are.
Now let me just say something to you very, very clearly. If you don’t have any lines in your life you won’t go across, then you’re really not anybody. If you don’t have any boundaries, if you don’t have any standards, if you don’t have anything in your life you say, “This is where I live, and we’re not going to cross that line. As a matter of fact, I would rather die than cross that line,” then you’re actually missing something. Do you know what that thing you’re missing is? You’re missing your identity, who you really are.
Now then, this is where we’re going to come in the next few minutes. Go back to Ezra 7, and right above Ezra 7, write the word Esther. If you take notes in your Bible, write the word Esther, because between Ezra 6 and 7 there are about 120 years that transpire. What happens is God uses Esther to actually set the table for Ezra and Nehemiah.
If there had been no Esther, there would’ve been no Nehemiah. If there had been no Esther, there would’ve been no Ezra. If there had been no Esther, there would’ve been no Jerusalem. If there had been no Esther, the Jewish people would’ve been exterminated. This is where a young woman is called to step into her identity, and in stepping into her identity, she changes the trajectory of history. Isn’t that interesting?
Now then, let me give you a couple of other things you might find interesting. Esther is one of the only books in the Bible where the name of God is not mentioned. That has troubled people a lot over the years, that God’s name is not found in the book. As a matter of fact, for the first 500 years of the church, we can’t find a single commentary written on the book of Esther. They really didn’t know what to do with it.
Luther said out loud about the book of Esther on a number of occasions that he didn’t even think it belonged in the Bible. Calvin preached on every chapter of the Bible except the book of Esther. Never preached a sermon out of the book of Esther. The most familiar passage of Esther…you know where it is…is chapter 4. Look at it for a second. There’s Mordecai. The future of the Hebrews hangs in the balance, and Mordecai goes to Esther, and here’s what he says in verse 13.
“Mordecai sent this reply to Esther: ‘Don’t think for a moment that because you’re in the palace you will escape when all other Jews are killed. If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die.'” (Esther 4:13-14) I love the way the ESV and the King James translate this. In the New Living, it says, “Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14) But the translation is, “Who knows whether you were brought to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Have you ever found yourself in one of those situations where you thought, “Maybe this is the reason I was brought into this world. To do this. This moment, this time, this decision. Maybe everything, all the things God has graciously put into my hand, this decision I am about to make is why God did what he has done”?
“Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: ‘Go and gather together all the Jews of Susa…'” (Esther 4:15-16) Now that’s down in what is modern-day Iran, way down south there, and King Xerxes has followed his father and grandfather, and the descendants of Cyrus did not do well. I mean, they did not grow into their positions; they descended into their positions. Cyrus was an amazing king, and Xerxes was Jerksies. I mean, he is a sorry sort of king. He really is.
It says, “Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: ‘Go and gather together all the Jews of Susa and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will do the same. And then, though it is against the law, I will go in to see the king.'” I love this phrase. Again, the New Living says, “If I must die, I must die.” But the older translations use it this way, “If I perish, I perish.” (Esther 4:15-16)
Now listen, you know you have discovered your identity when you’re willing to die on that hill. When you look at something and you know that this is not just worth living for; this is worth dying for, then you know you have stepped into something that is so much more than you. But I’m going to tell you something. You haven’t discovered life until you discover something that’s worth more than life itself. “If I perish, I perish.” “So Mordecai went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.” (Esther 4:17)
Okay, here’s the way we want to do it this morning. We want to go down through this sheet. We’re not going to be able to cover every detail, but at least it gives you a trail to follow if you like. I put a couple of bullet points there because I want to be clear about something that I might not have said clearly in the beginning of this message.
The first bullet point is…Let us never imagine that God is incapable of accomplishing his plans apart from us. That’s really important to understand. It’s an easy place to step into to mistake God’s grace and God’s blessing and God’s destiny and his calling for you and let that run in the way of pride. God can do what he wants to do with or without you. He can. It’s really the question…Do you want him to use you?
If you get into a situation where God places you at the crossroads of major circumstance, it’s God’s pleasure that has put you there. If it involves sacrifice, it’s joyful sacrifice. I love that quote that Elliot wrote into his diary before he died down in the jungles of Ecuador. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” That’s a joy. If you read the stories of the martyrs, they do not go to that with, “Oh, poor me!” or, “How important I am!”
This is not talking about superstars; this is talking about God allowing us to partner with him. Do you understand how important it is to make that distinction? Because…listen…God cannot bless pride. God will not bless pride. Pride goeth before a fall. God detests pride. If what we do, we do out of pride, we’re headed down a path that will lead to destruction.
A few weeks ago, we were at a meeting, and there were a couple of hundred people there in this planning meeting to do missional community groups and outreaches, and there were just big plans going on, amazing things going on. I mean, it was just a blessing to be a part of it. Jody called me. She was in this meeting, and she said, “You do remember that 30 years ago you flew down to Atlanta and met with a handful of people in a hotel over by Northlake to pray about whether to plant the church.”
Here we are in this hotel over by Northlake, now with 200 leaders of groups strategizing how to plant house churches, how to do Athens, how to do Midtown, how we reach our neighborhoods, what we’re going to do. I mean, it was just an amazing meeting. The Holy Spirit just kind of took that, and they were recognizing that as they were planning and praying that God was birthing things that 30 years from now we have no idea where that’s going to go. Do you understand that? God is birthing things that are going to change people’s worlds.
Several of the guys who have lived in our basement, and we’ve had like 30 over the last 10 years, said to me, “We’re thinking about this, and I just feel like I need to say thank you because if you had not been obedient to the Holy Spirit, I would’ve never met my wife.” Somebody else said, “If you had not been obedient to the Holy Spirit, this wouldn’t have happened. If you hadn’t been obedient to the Holy Spirit, that wouldn’t have happened. If you hadn’t been obedient to the Holy Spirit, Midtown wouldn’t have happened.”
I’m just listening to this, and I said, “Time out, guys. Listen. God is going to do what God is going to do.” You understand that, don’t you? God is going to do what God is going to do. It’s our privilege to get to be part of it. People talk about, “Oh, look what we’ve done.” Do you know what we’ve done? We’ve just been obedient, and we haven’t always even been obedient. We just tried to be obedient.
God will do amazing things with you if you will just listen and step into the callings of what he has on your life. It’s phenomenal, but I think it’s incredibly important that we recognize it is not about superstars. It’s not about celebrities. God is not looking for celebrities; God is looking for servants. Yeah, amen. This is unbelievably important, because like the world, the church has fallen into a celebrity culture.
I shouldn’t even say this. We do Bible studies at our house. I don’t even do them. Jody and Gabe and other people do them. They even kick me out of them because they say I talk too much. We open our home and people come in. By the way, if you’re not in one and you can’t find a place to connect, you can get in on one.
I’ve had people through the years come into the house, and they say, “Oh, I’ve never been in a pastor’s house before.” It’s like some kind of Holy of Holies thing. It just kind of messes my brain up. “You’ve never been in a pastor’s house?” “Yeah, is this like where you study the Bible?” Do you know what I always say? “Do you want to see where I go to the bathroom?”
Let me tell you something. God is not looking for celebrities. God is looking for people who will humble themselves and recognize that whatever happens that is miraculous and good it is because God is miraculous and good! Yes. That’s just the bullet point. I have like four big points! That was my little point.
The other little bullet point is…Let us never forget that the choices we make today reverberate across the generations. Now those kind of seem contradictory. God is going to do whatever God is going to do, but you and I need to recognize the fact that God is sovereign does not relieve us of responsibility. It doesn’t.
The choices you make, I make, whether we’re going to stay married, who we’re going to marry, where we’re going to school, what kind of moral purity we’re going to walk in, whether we’re going to be good stewards of the resources God has given us, whether we’re going to be engaged in our children’s lives, whether we’re going to be engaged in the community, those things reverberate across generations.
The fact that my parents, my father, chose to take me to a church where they taught the Word of God and they cared about kids, that didn’t just influence our family; that has influenced every family that has been influenced by every choice we’ve ever made. It’s incredibly important that we understand this.
You say, “What does this have to do with Esther? How is this relevant?” This might be interesting to you. It might not. We’ll find out. When the prime minister of Israel last met with the president of the United States, the prime minister of Israel brought him a gift, which it’s customary for heads of state to exchange gifts. They’re usually like cuff links, or something like that, maybe some food or some kind of token gift as an expression of their country.
But the last time the president met with the prime minister of Israel, he brought him a copy of the book of Esther. Isn’t that interesting? He brought him a copy of the book of Esther. The commander in chief of the singular superpower that is left in the world was handed a copy of the book of Esther.
Now the president has had no official response whether he read it or whether he sees a role in that or not. The spokesman for the president said it makes for interesting background reading. Now if you know the book of Esther, it certainly does. Four chapters we want to hit here a little bit.
1. Chapter 1: Who is Xerxes and who is Vashti? Xerxes is the king of Persia, which is modern-day Iran. It is the kingdom that freed the nation, the refugees. It was led by a man named Cyrus, who was a noble man who believed no man should be a slave of another man.
I know people don’t recognize this, but the history of Iran has the longest recorded history of religious toleration of any culture in existence. There’s a Cyrus scroll documenting this freedom of religion. Cyrus even financed the rebuilding of the temple, and he sent armies to protect Zerubbabel as he built the temple.
But as time went on, as often happens, wealth produced a decadent lifestyle. Every king had expanded the empire up to Xerxes. He fights a war off in Egypt, and that doesn’t really go well. He finally finds that out. You probably don’t need to raise your hand or acknowledge if you’ve seen that movie 300, but if you did, it’s a compilation of wars that are going on between Xerxes and Leonidas, and it’s about the rise of that Greek influence of Athens and Greece that is coming.
What’s going on in this particular chapter…it’s often read as sort of he had this big banquet and party…but what is going on time wise on the blackboard of history is they’re looking up north and they’re seeing this different kind of government. It’s called a republic. It’s where people are saying, “We believe people ought to vote, and we believe people should have self-determination.”
They really didn’t know how to fight the Greeks, because the Greeks had a new kind of warfare. Up until this point, all the warfare was settled by who had the biggest and baddest armies, who had the most chariots, who had the most archers, who was the biggest and the baddest. What the Greeks discovered was a new kind of warfare. They had these shields they would put in front of them, and they covered the right side of them but didn’t cover the left side of them.
It was covered with brass. They would put their arms through it. Then they would line up shoulder to shoulder, shoulder to shoulder, rank to rank, and they would start with their very best and strongest soldiers who would demonstrate how we fight together in ranks. As they would go back, there would be father and uncles and sons and grandsons, and at the very back there would be grandfathers, sometimes very old men.
They would start telling them stories of battle, and they would say, “Keep the ranks.” They didn’t fight with swords. They had this spear. This spear was about eight feet long and had a steel tip and a bronze tip on the other end. They would move forward. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! A chariot was helpless against them because no horse will impale itself on a spear.
They were impervious to the arrows because they would all gather together and they would put these shields up over their head. As they moved together rank by rank, they would say, “Remember, this is how we do it. We stay. Don’t break ranks. Keep moving forward.” By the way, the Greeks took over the world by staying together. Looking after the guy next to you is the Greek way of war.
Here’s Xerxes. They have this army of (some people say) a million men. We don’t know really how many it was, but it was hundreds of thousands of men, great ships. Here are these thousands of men who don’t even have a king, but they’ve learned how to fight together. Xerxes doesn’t have a clue what to do with these losses he has had.
Now he has brought all his guys together. They’re having this war council. Now they’re going to throw this party. Xerxes is in his thirties. I should read this through with you, but here’s what happened. They all just got really, really, really drunk. How many of you know you’re probably not at your best when you’re buzzed? Well, he was more than buzzed; he was (what do you call it today?) wasted. He was wasted.
He’s also quite egotistical, and he goes (it’s kind of funny actually)… In verse 10, it says, “On the seventh day of the feast, when King Xerxes was in high spirits…” Sometimes we domesticate the Bible. When we domesticate it, we rob it of some of its shock value. “… because of the wine, he told the seven…” (Esther 1:10) What does your Bible say? Yes. By the way, two of these eunuchs are going to try to kill him, which I don’t blame them. He says, “Go get Queen Vashti.”
“He wanted the nobles and all the other men to gaze on her beauty, for she was a very beautiful woman.” (Esther 1:11) He says, “Put the royal crown on her head.” Now the rabbis say what was going on her is he wanted Vashti to come to this drunken group of men wearing nothing but the crown. Vashti says, “No.” Good for Vashti, huh? Okay, say yes. Amen. Ladies, you do recognize you can say no.
I put it on here. What part of no don’t you understand? No! “No, I’m not going to do that. I am not going to live a life that my value is sexuality.” You are more than your sexuality. You’re more than your gender. You’re more than your set of organs. Vashti says, “I’m not going to do it.” I’m going to have to hurry you through here, but I wish I didn’t, because it’s quite interesting.
Here Xerxes says, “Man, what should I do about this?” All of Xerxes’ buddies say, “You can’t let her get away with it, because if she gets away with it, our wives are going to hear about it. Then nobody in the kingdom is going to have a wife who’ll do what they tell them.” He goes, “Okay, what should I do?” They say, “Banish her from your presence.” Do you know what? She didn’t want to see his ugly face anyhow. So Vashti really gets what she wants.
But then they come up with this other brilliant idea. “Let’s go through the whole kingdom and let’s find the most beautiful women in the whole kingdom, and then you can choose who your queen is going to be.” Does that sound like a reality television program to you? This is like The Bachelor on steroids! “Who will be America’s Next Top Model?”
Well, what is that? Well, you get to prance around, and you get taken care of, and you get paparazzi, and you get famous, and you can put it on your Facebook. Ladies, please listen to me. You are more than your shape. Do you know, only the ladies are clapping? Yes. You are more than your shape. It is a deranged world we’re living in.
You watch this happen over and over again. You get these seventh and eighth grade girls who have just confidence galore, and they want to do things, and they want to become things, and then they recognize that the world defines them completely in terms of their sexuality, and they lose their confidence. Don’t let that happen to your kids. Don’t let the world shape you and me into the mold of this world. Yes.
You are more than your hairdo. I know that! You’re more than how fast you are on the track team. You’re more than what position you get on the sports team. You’re more than whether you make the cheerleading squad or not. You’re more than whether you get into the gifted classes or not.
Listen. I’m going to tell you something. I was never put in a gifted class in my life…ever! No gifted class for me. I was put in the extra-help class! If it weren’t for spellcheck, I still would be in so much trouble. I’m not giving any excuses; it’s just reality. You are more than that. Do not let the world tell you that’s who you are. Do not let the world give you that identity. Thank you very much.
And definitely don’t let somebody drunk tell you who you are! And that includes you! Not that I’m speaking from any experience. Guys (don’t raise your hand), how many of you got in a fight when you were younger because you were drunk? Yes, you might’ve lost, or at least somebody got hurt, because your mind is screwed up. I shouldn’t have said that, should I? But the reality is we need to be able to think clearly in a messed-up world.
2. Chapter 2: Who are Mordecai and Esther? What I want to say here is Esther is not Mary. People read the book of Esther and they think Esther is like this really good girl who is like a humble Mary, the mother of Jesus. No, she’s not. She is much more like… I don’t even know who the slut of the day is. I’m sorry, but there’s a new one every month. Let’s just go with Madonna. That’s the last time I checked. If you want to just say, “You shouldn’t have said it,” I should’ve.
Look at 2:5. “At that time there was a Jewish man in the fortress of Susa whose name was Mordecai…” (Esther 2:5) Notice this about him. He knows he is of the tribe of Benjamin. He knows his family. They have been exiled. He knows his family history. Look at this. “This man had a very beautiful and lovely young cousin…” What’s the name there? Is it Esther? “…Hadassah…” (Esther 2:7) That’s Esther’s covenant name. That’s her Jewish name. That’s her Hebrew name.
Literally, that name means myrtle, which is like a small bush that produces violet, fragrant flowers. Symbolically, it was a word for a fragrance of grace. Somebody back there somewhere named her a name that was symbolic of the covenant people. Her covenant name, that God had made a covenant with her people as Jewish people and called them out. She had this name that they knew that she knew that they knew there was this history of, “We are God’s people. We have a different identity.”
Her other name is Esther. Now we like the name Esther, but we don’t really think about where Esther comes from. The word Esther literally means star, but it comes from the goddess Ishtar, which was the goddess of fertility. It was the goddess of war. It was called by the Canaanites Ashtoreth. If you’ve been with us in our series, you know what goes with that whole identity of Ashtoreth. It is a love goddess. It really is absolutely the idea of, “You are the queen of lovemaking. You are the sexual beauty queen of the world.”
She has walked around with this dual identity. “I am a fragrance of grace. I’m a person who is part of the covenant community.” The world looks at her and they see her beauty and they see the light of God in her life, and they see she’s just a gorgeous girl, and they go, “We want to take that beauty and we want to make it something else.”
This contest goes on. Mordecai lets her go into the contest. Dads, how many of you think that’s a good idea? No. Somebody needs to go, “Mordecai, that’s not a good idea.”
“Well, but I have a good job here at the king’s court, and if I don’t go along with the way things are here…this is just the way things are here in Persia…then I could be in trouble.”
“Listen, Mordecai, grab Esther. Run away. Get out of there. No.”
Now let me just tell you something. If you are a man and you are a father, if somebody’s dating your daughter, meet with him. Know their name. Ask them questions. Amen? You say, “Well, I don’t want to interfere with my kid’s life.” That’s the job description of parents. Parents, your job is to interfere. That’s your job.
When your kid says, “We’re going to go off to Panama City for Spring Break,” your job is to say, “I don’t think so! If you want to go off for Spring Break, we’ll go with you.”
“No, we don’t want you there.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll be in the way.”
“That’s the point!”
You do realize we lose kids down there every year. Go down there and ask the police what they think about it. Do you know what they think about it? “Where are the moms and dads?” Who in the world thinks it’s a good idea for a 16-year-old kid to be given the keys to a car, given the keys to a condo, and thrown all in the same place? Listen, if you think that’s a good idea, you need testing! It’s not a good idea.
3. Chapter 3: What’s Haman’s Hang-up? So there’s Haman there. This is kind of a black humor there, because, you know, he gets hung up. I don’t have time to get into that, but he builds this 75-foot scaffold. We read that, scaffold, and we think of the Old West where they would hang people and the floor drops. No, the way they killed people on the scaffold of that day is they impaled them. So they hung them up. He gets in trouble. Life doesn’t work out well for Haman.
4. Chapter 4: Do we know God’s name for us? This is really where I want to land. Do you know God’s name for you? There’s a fill-in here you can write down. It’s be who you are. We need to work from our God-given identity, not from the identity the world tries to tell us we are. We need to recognize we have worth because we’re created in the image of God. That’s why we have worth.
Our worth is not how many followers we have on Twitter. Our worth is not how many likes we get on Instagram. Our worth is not what our status in the community is. Our worth is not how many people think we’re cool or like us. Our worth is not what our grade point average is or what our degrees are or the places we’ve been or the things we’ve seen. Our worth is that we were created in the image of God and Jesus Christ died for us. Amen?
Jesus said it really well. “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Is the whole world worth the price of one soul?” Now we know what a soul is worth, and we know what something is worth based on what somebody is willing to pay for it. Right?
Many of you have homes that are not worth what they were. If you have a home, you have a house that one time somebody did an appraisal, and they said, “It’s worth this.” Then you wanted to refinance, and they said, “It’s worth this.” Do you know what a home is worth? Whatever someone is willing to pay for it. Do you know what a car is worth? Whatever somebody is willing to pay for it.
Do you know what a soul is worth? It’s what God is willing to pay for it, and he paid his Son. Yeah. That gives us worth. That assigns us infinite worth. We are unique. We were created by God, and Jesus Christ died on the cross for us so we could spend eternity with him. Don’t let the world tell you you don’t have worth, because your whole life you’re going to hear it.
You’re going to hear people tell you you don’t have worth because you’re too young. You’re going to have people tell you you don’t have worth because you’re too old. You’re going to have people tell you you don’t have worth because somebody produces more than you produce. You’re going to have people tell you you don’t have worth because you’re not as smart or as cute or tall or small or whatever it is. Let me tell you something really, really clear. That is not the voice of God.
So what does God call you? A just wrote some of the things down that are pretty clear. He calls you his child. I have children. I have eight grandchildren. Do you know what a grandchild has to do to make you pleased? Nothing. They gurgle. I was at the hospital a couple of weeks ago. I’m holding this little baby in my arms. This little baby is gurgling. Do you know what I said? “Oh, how precious! He’s gurgling.” You rub his little head. “Wow, what a head.”
Do you understand God delights in you? He calls you son. He calls you daughter. He calls you his child. He calls you called. Do you know that? He calls you called, invited. The very fact you’re sitting here in this service this morning, something happened to you, and you don’t even probably know it. God initiated in your heart that said, “Come! Look at me. Come unto me.” You think, “I’ve always kind of had this hunger for God.” No, God put it there. God put in your heart a hunger for himself. Insane, isn’t it! Man, I like it.
Chosen. Family. Beloved. Saints. Friends. Don’t you like the thought that you’re a friend of God? One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Lazarus. He’s never called a disciple. Do you know what he’s always called? A friend of Jesus. Wouldn’t it be amazing that your identity in eternity is that Jesus liked to hang out at your house? “What do you like about Lazarus?” “Ah, he makes me laugh. His sisters are amazing cooks. I’ve had some of the best naps on their couch.”
Ambassador. Forgiven. Rich. Partners. He calls you mine. He calls you my people. He calls you justified. He calls you the work of his hands. He calls you holy. Do you know what I love? In one place in the Old Testament, he says, “I have written you on my hands.” Do you think about that?
Do any of you remember back in the old days when you couldn’t exchange contacts, and you were talking to a girl, and she said, “Call me sometime,” and you said, “Give me your number”? You got home and your mom said, “What’s on your hand?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s that name?”
“It’s a number. I met this girl up at the Dairy Queen. She said, ‘Call me.'”
Now listen. God has you written on the palm of his hands! Yeah. Let’s just enjoy that for a minute. Let’s do this this morning. We’re going to get out of here. We are. But let’s get the band up here and let’s just take a couple of the songs to have Communion and listen to God, what he calls you. Listen and see if you’re hearing a lie that says you’re worthless, you’re unforgiven, you’re inadequate, or see if you hear a voice that says you’re loved, you’re valuable, you’re mine, you’re my friend.
I’m going to stand right down here. If you’ve never come into the kingdom, I’d love to pray with you. If you’re struggling with something, healing, or just a burden you want somebody to pray with you, we have a prayer team here would be happy to pray with you. But let’s take a few minutes, not just run out of here.
Let’s ruminate a little bit about, “Are we Esther? Are we living in the identity the world has assigned us, or are we living in Hadassah, that covenant communion?” That kind of communion can say, “If I perish, I perish,” and that changes the world. Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you for you. Thank you for the kind of God you are. Lord, help us to walk in the identity we have in you, in Christ. In your holy name we pray, amen.