Identity Crisis

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca.

You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word, or on Facebook.

You can also find us on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Please enjoy the following sermon. All right, before we go to the

Word, let us go to our God and beseech Him in prayer one more time. Lord, we come to your

Word now. Before we come to your Word, we come to the God of that Word.

These are not mere words on a page written by men, but we have your

Word. Lord, you have spoken. Lord, we trust, we believe that your

Word has power, that it is not a collection of empty words that do nothing.

Oh, we ask now that your Spirit would accompany your words and let them bear much fruit in us.

Oh, we need them to bear much fruit in us. We need you to work in us.

Oh, we cannot accomplish that work in and of ourselves. Oh, would you do just that now, by your grace, accomplish what you have set out to do?

Oh, that we would listen now, and that you would make these words go from our head into our hearts.

Oh, that we would leave here as people not ashamed to be people of God, to be men and women of the living

God, that we would go forth from here with boldness, and show

Christ to the world. Oh, help us to that end. Amen.

I want to begin our time together by asking you this.

Who are you? Common question that all of us have heard in some form or other at some point in our life.

Every time we meet someone new, we either ask this question or have been asked that very question.

Of course, the very first thing that comes to our mind is, of course, our name. The parents gave us our name.

That's how we are recognized amongst people. It's so important in our society and culture that we even have little plastic cards with it on it next to a picture to identify us.

After we think of our name in terms of who we are, that might be closely followed by our occupation.

Perhaps what you do for work. It's after all a big part of your life and what you do for most of the day for at least five out of the seven days of the week.

So God -given means to provide for our needs. We may also say to someone that we are a father or a mother, a husband or a wife.

Some of us are from a different country here. We might mention that we're from a different nationality.

And after more conversation, we might pursue some questioning about some of the person's interests and hobbies and all that sort of thing.

All these are a common pattern in the question of who are we? Who are you?

And we could say that after a conversation like that, to some degree, though small as it might be, we do have a rough idea of who the person is we're talking to.

But that's not quite what we're after today when we ask this question. There is more to it.

If you think about this, when somebody asks you, who are you? At what point in answering that very question do you identify yourself?

Not by your name, your job, your family status, your nationality, but as a

Christian, as a son or daughter of God, as one of the people of God?

Is that part of your answer at all? Do you say

I am a child of the living and true God? Is that part of who you are?

As Christians that should be high up on our list and in many cases much higher than it is in reality.

I think nothing else is more important about us. It dictates our morals, our ethics at work, how we raise our children, what we do with our free time.

Everything else about us flows out of our being Christian. And it's irrelevant if the world knows our name.

We have tons of examples in the New Testament of people, the paralytic, the woman touching

Christ's garment. And we know nothing about them except the most important thing, the object of their faith, the

Christ that they believed in. And so much more important than our job, status, whatever else it might be, is our knowing

Christ and being known by Him. And so the question that follows that I want to ask today and consider today is do those around you know that you are a child of God?

That besides everything else, at the very core of your being, that is who you are.

Do they know that most important thing and fact about you? We often hide or compromise that part of our identity, don't we?

For some of us, it might be in the distant past, we were so open about it. But as time went on, it turns out we're not so much anymore.

And we're not even quite sure what happened really because we don't love the Lord any less. We don't have any less appreciation and affection for the gospel.

But for some reason, many people we interact with regularly do not know who we really are.

We blend in so well, almost hiding at times as if we are keeping our

Christian identity a secret from those around us. And what happens is we enter what

I call an identity crisis in that sense, where we hide and deny who we truly are and ought to be from those that we interact with, where we separate our private

Christian experience from our quote -unquote public life, the one where we interact with unbelievers to the point where we deny the

Lord himself. I think Esther chapter 2 in a sense gives us an example of such a crisis, a case study of this type of identity crisis.

If you haven't turned there, join me and we'll unpack this a bit more in Esther chapter 2.

We'll look at verses 1 through 20 today. And what we'll do is we'll get our bearings straight, getting into some of the context, looking at verses 1 through 7.

And we'll skip a little bit. We'll go to 12 through 14. And we'll see really two worlds colliding.

And after that, we'll look at the compromising of our identity as God's people in verses 8 through 11, and the verses at the end, 15 through 20.

And so let's get into it. And look, beginning in verses 1 through 4.

And we'll get our context and our bearings right here. After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered

Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her. Then the king's young men who attended him said, let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king.

And let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom to gather all the beautiful young virgins to the harem in Susa, the citadel under custody of Hegai, the king's eunuch who is in charge of the women.

Let their cosmetics be given them and let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti.

This pleased the king and he did so. Chapter 2 begins by continuing to set the stage for us for the rest of the book.

Last time you remember in chapter 1, we found her place in history around 482

BC during the reign of Ahasuerus, also known by his Greek name

Xerxes, the king of the Persian empire that had defeated the Babylonians about 50 years prior to his reign and had taken over as the world power of the day.

And the Jews that were carried into exile under the Babylonian empire, even though some had returned at this time to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and the city wall, were still without their own land and dispersed throughout all the

Persian empire. And we were introduced to that king who had all sorts of power and might and he made sure that people knew as much.

Remember this feast that he held for six months and then after that feast he had to hold another one for another week in the palace gardens showing off more of his riches and wealth.

And in addition to all this power he held, he had a beautiful wife whom he commanded to come to this banquet on the last day in order to show her off to the guests.

But as it turns out he wasn't quite as powerful as he portrayed himself to be and his wife refused to obey his command.

He ruled with absolute power over a kingdom but not over his home. So he had responded in rage, made this decree that caused her to lose her position as king and she was to be replaced with someone else that was, as our text said, better than she.

A woman that is just as beautiful but more obedient than Vashti. And so we learned that this empire was ruled by a man that was in love with the external beauties and the riches of the world.

And if he didn't get what he desired he would hesitate on the recommendation of others even to make laws that satisfied his desires.

And that's where chapter two picks up right after where chapter one leaves off.

We're recalling here the decree to get rid of queen Vashti after she refused to obey her husband.

But as we'll see I think in this chapter is that the events of that first chapter that may have seen so random at times and meaningless and so distant become much more personal in the second chapter specifically for a man named

Mordecai and his cousin Esther. And so as we read just a moment ago

Ahasuerus remembered Vashti. He remembered what she had done, the decree made against her.

And because it was now written in the law of the Persians that she was never to come before him again she had to be replaced.

He simply could not be without a queen. And so this group of young men now comes to him, some of his servants, and they suggest a solution to solve that very problem.

And so again we see this this group of people coming to the king suggesting to him what he should do.

He seems just so incapable of ruling himself. And so they lay out this plan for him.

They say that beautiful young virgins from all over the country from every province ought to be gathered together, tracked down, and brought to the citadel, the government complex in the capital of the city.

And then there's supposed to be another supervision of Hegai. And out of all of these women, one that pleases the king would be made his queen.

King delights, he loves that plan, and the the wheels start to turn.

Now what's interesting is that this sort of competition that he starts to become queen wasn't actually the standard procedure of the

Persians to anoint or appoint a queen, but it reveals so much more about who

Ahasuerus was. One historian tells us that some

Persian rulers at times did take women to be their wives, contrary to the custom and the law, that they simply fell in love with while they were usually picked from high -ranking families from the empire.

And then there's a temporary Greek historian named Herodotus from the 5th century

BC. He tells us more about Ahasuerus. He offers us a little glimpse of him, and he says that once after one of his military defeats that King Xerxes fought, he became very known for his sensual over -indulgence.

He tried to have an affair with his brother's wife, and then he later succeeded in having an affair with his brother's wife's daughter, with his niece.

And so this man just simply did whatever he pleased. Everybody was at his mercy, and this was not limited only to the women in the empire in this sense, but we also know from history that each year up to 500 young boys were gathered from this kingdom and castrated to be eunuchs to serve at the king's court.

This was an absolute tyrannical rule. Everyone was at this man's mercy, men and women alike.

Everything he desired or delighted in had to be done. And so he wanted a new queen that meets these qualifications, and so one had to be found.

And then we're told how this machine of the kingdom operates in this process.

We see this if we skip down a little bit to verses 12 through 14.

We read that now when the came for each young woman to go into King Ahasuerus, after being 12 months under the regulations for the women, since this was the regular period of their beautifying, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with spices and ointments for women, when the young woman went in to the king in this way, she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the harem to the king's palace.

In the evening she would go in, and in the morning she would return to the second harem in custody of Shehezgeh.

The king's eunuch was in charge of the concubines. She would not go into the king again unless the king delighted in her, and she was summoned by name.

There was no expense spared really for this process. Once these women arrived in the capital, they had to spend a whole year preparing themselves under the supervision and training for one attempt to please this king.

They made available all the spices and ointments that were very popular in ancient

Persia at the time. There was a major export from them, and they were used by the wealthy oftentimes.

These were made available to these women for them to become or make themselves more beautiful and appealing to Xerxes.

So there was a lot on the line for these women. They had one night to impress this king, and only one of them would be chosen at the end.

And we read that those who were not made queen would then move from the harem of the young women to the harem of the concubines, a common practice at the time as well.

Many kings in Persia had several hundreds of them at a time, which was really a miserable existence in many ways.

It was a life so dependent on the pleasure of the king. You didn't have many freedoms. You were unable to to leave home and return to marry.

The children that may have been born to you would serve in high positions but had absolutely no right to the throne.

And so everything in the kingdom here is done with one goal in mind, to please

Ahasuerus. His delight is the kingdom's greatest concern, and these great pains are taken to make that happen.

Everything is focused on the external and on pleasure alone. Now there's

Jews living in the land, and none of this, or they rather, are not immune to any of these things.

We're introduced to two of them in verses five through seven, where we read that now there was a

Jew in Susa, the citadel, whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, son of Shimeh, son of Kish, a

Benjaminite, who had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives, carried away with Jeconiah, king of Judah, who never could nether, king of Babylon, had carried away.

He was bringing up Hadasah, that is Esther, the daughter of his uncle, for she had neither father nor mother.

The young woman had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at. And when her father and her mother died,

Mordecai took her as his own daughter. This is where we finally meet two of the main characters in the story of this book,

Mordecai and Esther. And these two are particularly affected by this decree to find a new queen.

We're told that Mordecai is a Jew who lives in the citadel. It's very possible that he had some form of government position there.

Archaeologists have found a tablet in a different capital that mentions a name, a man by the name of Marduka, who was an official in the early years of King Xerxes reign there.

And so Mordecai is from a legit Jewish line from within the very tribe of Benjamin.

He's a descendant of those who were exiled with Jeconiah more than a hundred years before the events in the book of Esther take place.

Jeconiah was the second last king of Judah before it eventually completely fell into Babylonian captivity.

And so Mordecai is identified as as part of the chosen people of God.

The very people that God had made a covenant with, but that found themselves living in another land under this

Gentile ruler. He's a Jew in a Gentile pagan land.

And we also meet this girl, his cousin Esther, known by her

Hebrew name Hadassah. And she's the cousin who was taken in by Mordecai once her parents had died.

But what stands out about Esther is her beauty. Some rabbis have gone so far as to suggest that she was one of the four most beautiful women in the world alongside

Sarah and Rahab and Abigail. What we do know is that she was, as verse seven says, lovely to look at.

That's the exact same language that was used of Vashti earlier in chapter one.

She meets the qualifications set out by this king perfectly. And so we have this foreshadowing of what is to come of her being made queen.

And so what we see here now in this context, this pagan nation in which these

Jews, the people of God, two worlds begin to collide.

This Persian kingdom that Xerxes is ruling over, who does whatever he pleases, whenever he pleases, is obsessed with beautiful women, riches, and glory.

And the one in which the Jews are supposed to be God's chosen people, yet find themselves in exile.

And so their faithfulness to the Lord as his people is going to be severely tested.

And so there's a little bit of a tension building now in the story. Are they going to be faithful?

Are they going to act as the Lord's people? How are things going to play out?

There are pressures from them, from the land they live in, from this ungodly nation, to see how things turn out.

We can look at verses eight through 11 and we'll get a glimpse of it.

We'll see that things are not as easy as they seem for them, and that there's a beginning to compromise the identity that they have as God's very own people.

In verse eight, so when a king's order and his edict were proclaimed, and when many young women were gathered in Susa the citadel in custody of Hegai, Esther was also taken into the palace, into the king's palace, and put in custody of Hegai, who had charge of the women.

And the young woman pleased him and won his favor. And he quickly provided her with her cosmetics and her portion of food, and with seven chosen young women from the king's palace, and advanced her and her young women to the best place in the harem.

Esther had not made known her people or kindred, for Mordecai had commanded her not to make it known.

And every day Mordecai walked in front of the court of the harem to learn how Esther was, and what was happening to her.

In verse 15 to 20, we read another episode of the the happenings.

When the turn came for Esther, the daughter of Abihail, the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her as his own daughter, to go into the king, she asked for nothing except what

Hegai, the king's eunuch, who had charge of the women, advised. Now Esther was winning favor in the eyes of all who saw her.

And when Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus into his royal palace in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign, the king loved

Esther more than all the women, and she won grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.

Then the king gave a great feast for all his officials and servants. It was Esther's feast.

He also granted a remission of taxes to the provinces and gave gifts with royal generosity.

Now when the virgins were gathered together the second time, Mordecai was sitting at the king's gate.

Esther had not made known her kindred or her people as Mordecai had commanded her, for Esther obeyed

Mordecai just as when she was brought up by him. We're not surprised by seeing

Esther being taken into the king's palace. The question is, how does she deal with it?

This can be a little bit tricky. We have to be careful here not to fully condemn Esther.

There's a degree of ambiguity here in the text. There are many details that were simply not given, but I believe that the author strongly implies a level of compliance and compromise.

We're not given the why, but Esther went with the flow. In verse 9, she pleased

Haggai to the point that she won his favor. She didn't find favor in his eyes, this idiom that we see often throughout the

Old Testament. She won it. One's not simply placed in the best place in the harem without playing by the rules, especially when the king that's ruling the land is known for demanding full obedience to the point of even getting rid of his own wife if she doesn't cater to his desires.

After all, Vashti was to be replaced by one that was better than she.

I think verse 10 kind of reinforces this a little bit when it tells us that she had not made known her people or kindred because Mordecai had told her not to.

We're not told why this advice was given. Maybe Mordecai knew of some animosity toward the

Jews that we'll see in chapter 3, but it's interesting to note the place of that phrase in the text.

We see it twice. The not making known her Jewish identity is mentioned in verse 10.

Then Esther goes into the king. He's pleased with her more than all the other women. She wins his grace and favor, his crowned queen.

And then in verse 20, the same thing is mentioned again, that she had not made known her people.

These comments bracket this whole episode of her becoming queen.

She was able to go through this whole process of beautifying, of being with the king for a night, of marrying a pagan gentile for at least a year in the harem without anybody realizing that she was a

Jew. She was able to hide her identity as one of the very people of God.

To some degree, she compromised what it meant to be a faithful Jew. At the very least, they were not to marry gentiles.

And the question is, is it possible to live faithfully and private in a way that it never shows?

I think we have to ask ourselves that very question. Can we live as Christians without any outward evidence to those around us?

We are the people of God. We live in a nation, in a society that is hostile to him.

And so our two worlds collide, don't they? This world and our identity, they're at odds.

And so can we live in private without any outward evidence? I don't think we can.

What is seen outwardly of us is merely a reflection what's in our heart, isn't it?

And what happens is who we are. We are Christian. You are a new creation.

You have been made new. You are a different person. Your old self has passed away and the new has come.

You know what happened to your old self? It was crucified with Christ. You're no longer a slave to sin but to righteousness.

You've been given that new heart and it shows in everything that you do because you are that new creation.

That's what identifies us before God. We're called to let our light shine before others that they may see our good works and give glory to our

Father who is in heaven. We are to be children of God without blemish in the midst of crooked and twisted generation among whom we shine as lights in the world.

Spurgeon said this, came across his quote a week ago or so.

A Christian man should so shine in his life that a person could not live with him a week without knowing the gospel.

His conversation should be such that all who are about him should clearly perceive whose he is and whom he serves and should see the image of Jesus reflected in his daily actions.

If we keep this light, this light of Christ, the light of the gospel contained with our own four walls at home, we're not shining in the world.

We're hiding the light that Christ is in and so do we hide

Christ? Do we hide our identity of who we really are in the world?

We could sit here and we could cast severe judgment on Esther but when we think about it, we're not a whole lot better.

We have the fullness of Christ revealed to us that she didn't have and we still hide it and what really what really breaks me and ought to break us

I think is that we're not always asked or forced to do so to deny him in this nation but we do so too often on our own accord.

We should seek the spirit.

We should beseech the Lord that he would help us to to search our hearts and make it clear to us where we hide who we truly are.

Where we hide our Christ before men and why. To fit in into the world.

To not seem weird for not joining in the gossip, slander and debauchery of the world.

To be accepted, respected by the ungodly. To be more likely to get that promotion or or job because it's easier to join the sin of others than to be the only one taking a stand against it.

To stand for righteousness because we want to please people and avoid unnecessary conflict.

Maybe because we're terrified to speak the truth to those who really need to hear even our own family and friends at times.

People whose love for sin is destroying their lives, their very own souls, their suffering, their shambles.

We have the truth that so many so desperately need and we're silent. We hide the

Christ that we know, that we love. Now what about these outside pressures that we have no control over?

We're at the mercy of those in authority. We have people over us in almost every aspect of our life.

Can instill a fear and a worry in us. But do we not have faithful examples of the

Lord's power and walking with his people? You think of Daniel and his friends.

They were in a very similar situation to Esther. They were in Babylonian exile. These young boys supposed to be trained in the language and the literature of the

Chaldeans. They were given this unclean food and what did they do? They rejected it.

They remained faithful to the Lord. They didn't hide. They did not compromise.

They didn't even worship the king of Babylon when all people were called to do so. And they were known not to do so.

Nebuchadnezzar and his officials, they knew exactly who Daniel was. And yet the Lord raised him up to a high position within that nation.

Yes, there were trials. There was suffering on his part. But the Lord was with him and he is with us still as well.

He will not leave us or forsake us. He was with Joseph in Egypt who walked faithfully, not defiling himself and was raised up to the second in command in all the land.

Brothers and sisters, none of these things reputation, recognition, respect, fear, whatever it is, are worth to hide who we are.

They're not worth compromising our identity as a child of God for or denying our

God, denying our Christ. Let us be on guard.

We will not enter into this form of identity crisis. Let's not hide or compromise who we are as God's people to leave

Christ at home and not show him forth to those around us. Let us put him on display with every word, with every deed, simply being faithful Christians.

You know when Esther prepared herself for this king, really this unworthy king, this ungodly man, the one that desired nothing but pleasure and beauty from his bride.

If we don't hide, we're showing the world the beautiful king that is

Jesus Christ. A beautiful king, a worthy king to be shown.

One that has not sought a bride based on outward appearance, but he has taken the ugly and the vile and the disgusting and he has made them a beautiful bride from the inside out.

Church, Christian, you are part of that bride. It is you so that you can be pleased in him.

You can rejoice in him. And you know what? He's not one who treats his bride as a commodity.

He's not pleased with her one day and then cast her out the next, never to look at her again, to ever come before him.

You can be confident that he will always delight in her. That he will not substitute you for another.

That he will not go and have some kind of ridiculous contest to look for a better one that is more beautiful.

It has cost him too much to make you his. And there's hope even.

That if we have hid him, if we have hidden who we are, if we have compromised our faith, even the story of Esther gives us hope.

The Lord is big enough and strong enough to redeem it. Esther will be a means to save the

Jewish people. We can come and return to him and confess and we will find forgiveness.

And our King is even beautifying us now. And at times that does include periods of trials and suffering.

And they seem so hard and so difficult and almost worthless.

But our trials and sufferings, they're preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

And what do we do at these times? We're at the lowest of lowest. When we're in the sort of speak in the belly of the fish with Jonah.

When our soul is cast down, we look to the heavenly bridegroom, don't we?

We have nowhere else to look. We have nowhere else to go. We look at that King, the eternal

King, that heavenly bridegroom who reigns, who leads us by his gentle hand.

And we look unto him and we see the certainty and the fullness of the love of God for his people.

Brothers and sisters, we have a King, a kind King.

He doesn't seek outward fleeting beauty. He has given himself for his very own people and he will not cast you out.

Nothing can now separate us from him. Let us submit to him.

Even while this process of being sanctified is hard at times, he's a good and a loving and a kind and a gentle and a faithful King unto his people.

Let's go to him in prayer. Oh Father, we are your people.

It is what defines us, what is most important about us.

At the end of our days, nothing else will matter. How many riches we may have gathered, how much reputation we may have among men.

All that matters is that we know Christ and that he knows us, will help us, strengthen us, encourage us, embolden us to go forth, to not hide, to not compromise who we are in him.

Or that all those around us would see not us but him, to see

Christ in us, to look on him and then to come to him with repentance and faith.

He'll help us to be ready and willing to suffer the consequences for full obedience to you, to him, to not fear the world.

Oh what can he do to us but take our life and speed us on into glory? Well we ask this so that Christ would be magnified and glorified in and through us.

In his name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.

If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church or our

Instagram at gracechurchyeg all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca.