“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 most well-known in the entire Old Testament. I’m sure that if you’ve been attending church for more than a year or so, you’ve likely 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’m 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 we are challenged by the Holy Spirit to reach out to the brother or sister who has 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 that He has in store for them. Perhaps it’s the pastor who has worked all week to bring the congregation just the correct explanation of God’s Word that will help them get through another week of temptation from the evil one; maybe the Pastor needs an encouraging word from you. Amazingly, we often overlook the fact that those in full-time ministry also need encouragement and blessing.

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, or Sunday School teacher, or deacon, or that senior adult who has been struggling with the fact that they can’t do as much for the Lord as they used to. We all need a blessing, don’t we? Every day, God gives us or someone else the privilege of being a blessing to someone else. Maybe it’s that man or woman who doesn’t 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 say, Yes!

Verse 14 is the basis for the phrase “Privilege to Participate”! Let’s 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 appears to us, God will indeed 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 should strive to emulate. We know God’s promises to believers, we know that our God is faithful and trustworthy, and we know that our God will not allow His people to be destroyed.

When Mordecai told Esther that “God will deliver His people!”, he was also telling her that God was giving her the “Privilege to Participate” in this blessing of deliverance. He was telling her that nothing would stop God’s will, and nothing would stop God from blessing His people when it was 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 to be a blessing to His people? The choice was hers. She could listen to God’s call or ignore it, but either way, God was going to save His people from destruction.

Believer, 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 really is ours; God’s going to 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!"