“The Privilege to Participate!”

“Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, ‘Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?’” (Esther 4:13-14 ESV)

This passage of Scripture is one of the best-known in the Old Testament. I am sure if you have been going to church for more than a year or so, you have heard a message on “for such a time as this.” I love to listen to messages that explain this exhortation to Queen Esther from her uncle Mordecai on how God could use her to be a blessing to the entire Jewish nation, with the application that even today, we can be used by God to be a blessing to others.  

If you have followed my discussions about God’s precious Word, I am sure you have heard me say the phrase, “God will give each of us the Privilege to Participate in His blessings.”  By this, I mean that God will bless His people, and He may very well use one of us to be or to deliver that blessing to them.

When the Holy Spirit challenges us to reach out to the brother or sister that just lost a loved one, or is going through physical or emotional stress, God is not ignoring them. He may be giving you the opportunity and privilege to participate in the special blessings He has in store for you.

Maybe it is that Pastor who has worked all week to bring to the congregation just the right explanation of God’s Word that will help them get through another week of temptation from the evil one; maybe the Pastor just needs an encouraging word from you. Amazingly, we overlook those in full-time ministry who also need to be encouraged and blessed.

It may be that God has a special blessing already for them, and He wants to allow you the privilege to participate in encouraging that Pastor, Sunday School teacher, deacon, or senior adult who has been struggling with the fact that they cannot do as much for the Lord as they used to. We all need a blessing, do we not? Every day God gives us or someone else the privilege to be that blessing to someone else.

Maybe it is that man or woman who does not know the love of Jesus, and God is giving you the privilege to show His love to them. God gives all of us the “Privilege to Participate in His blessings.”  All we have to do is to say, Yes!

Verse 14 is the basis for the phrase “Privilege to Participate”! Let us go back and reread verse 14; “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” [Emphasis Mine]. You see, nothing can stop God’s will, nothing! No matter how dark the situation looks to us, God will certainly find a way to bring about His will. It was God’s will for the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob not to be destroyed, as was the plan of Hamon. God was never going to let His people be destroyed. God had made an unconditional promise to Abraham and another unconditional promise to David, that their descendants would be a blessing to all the nations and that the promised Messiah would come from David’s descendants.

This was going to happen! Mordecai knew that God is a promise keeper! Mordecai never doubted that God would deliver the Jews. I find this amazing and something that we need to imitate. We know God’s promises to believers are kept. We know that our God is faithful and trustworthy and will not allow His people to be destroyed.

When Mordecai told Esther that “God will deliver His people!” he also told her that God was giving her the “Privilege to Participate” in this blessing of deliverance. He was telling her that nothing will stop God’s will, and nothing will stop God from blessing His people when it is time for a blessing. The only question was whether Esther wanted to be part of that blessing or not. Would she see this opportunity as a privilege or a burden? Would she be willing to be used by God in this way at this time or not? Would Esther see this task that God called her to do as a “Privilege to Participate” in God’s will and as a blessing to His people? The choice was hers. She could listen to or ignore God’s call, but either way, God would save His people from destruction.

Dear believers, we must answer this same question in our lives. “Who knows if we have not come to this kingdom for such a time as this?” It may be that God has put us in this exact place at this exact time to give us the “Privilege to Participate” in His will and be a part of His blessings.

The choice is ours; God will give that blessing regardless of our participation; the question is, will we be a part of it or not?

"Living in Grace is not about what I can do, but about what Jesus has already done!"