GOD MAKES UP HIS JEWELS ESTHER 3, 4

When I was making progress in the journey of healing, I made this drawing expressing Malachi 3:17 when God recorded He was making up His jewels from those who feared Him.

God creates jewels in the “bowels” of the earth - in darkness, under great  pressure and tremendous heat.  

He keeps His jewels in His hand.

It is such a gift to be shunned and despised so we can discover just WHO are we following:   

Esther 3:2 And all the king's servants, that were in the king's gate, bowed, and reverenced Haman: for the king had so commanded concerning him. 

But Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence.

 Satan's work is to get us to bow to man's favor

 instead of God's Spirit…

The lives of God's chosen people, 

and Mordecai's life in particular, were then threatened:

Esther 3:5-6  And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath.

[6] And he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone; for they had shewed him the people of Mordecai: wherefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai.

Esther 5:14 KJV Then said Zeresh his wife and all his friends unto him, Let a gallows be made of fifty cubits high, and to morrow speak thou unto the king that Mordecai may be hanged thereon: then go thou in merrily with the king unto the banquet. And the thing pleased Haman; and he caused the gallows to be made.

Esther would not be spared.  

She had already “given her life” to an ungodly king - 

not realizing the”long term” effect for the sake of delivering God’s people.

We (!!) know "the end of the story!  Esther and Mordecai did not.

The choice became very personal for Esther:

Esther 4:8 Also he, (Mordecai), gave him the copy of the writing of the decree that was given at Shushan to destroy them, to shew it unto Esther, and to declare it unto her, and to charge her that she should go in unto the king, to make supplication unto him, and to make request before him for her people. 

Esther’s reply to Mordecai:

v11 All the king's servants, and the people of the king's provinces, do know, that whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden sceptre, that he may live: but I have not been called to come in unto the king these thirty days.

          v13 Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, 

“Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews.”

  Esther’s commitment:

 v16 Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and 

so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law:

if I perish, I perish.

For me, the choice to tell the decision making men about my violation came on a  Sunday morning in August of 1989.

Peace would be mine only if I went to them.  I fully anticipated 

I would no longer be given a place in the work. 

"If I perish, I perish. "

God took note of just TWO lives…

And to the present day Esther is remembered among the Jewish nation for the price she paid to deliver some of God’s people.

God saves and keeps even His own heritage even 

as He has promised -

Jeremiah 31:35-36 KJV Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name: [36] If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.

SOME HISTORY

 Below I’ve added some “history” if a reader is interested.  It is my perspective of the background to the book of Esther.

We're talking maybe 80 years since Mordecai's great grandfather,  Kish, seemingly chose to  stay in Babylon rather than to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the city when Cyrus came to reign in Babylon.

Cyrus had been named by Isaiah, ch. 45:1, as the one who would give that liberty to those who would grasp freedom at great cost to their own “comfort” by returning to poverty stricken and demolished Jerusalem.

I “jump to the conclusion” that Mordecai’s forefather did not return to Jerusalem because the name is not in the lists in Ezra 2, the rebuilding of the temple, or in Nehemiah 3, the building of “the wall” some years later.

(Personal perception): 

The descendants, Mordecai and Esther, were reaping the slavery of the outcome of the disobedience of leaders and those who followed them for over 500 years.