Deciding to Stand up for God

James Allen Ward was a young airman from New Zealand serving in the RAF. Like many young people caught up in WW2, he was rather shy and unassuming. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him that would make him stand out in a crowd. But on a clear, moonlit summer night in 1941, Sergeant James Allen Ward did an unbelievably brave thing.

Ward was a crewmember on a Vickers Wellington twin- engine bomber. His squadron was returning from a raid on Nazi-occupied Holland. The anti-aircraft defenses were heavy, and Ward’s airplane was hit by flak. The starboard engine burst into flames. Since the Wellington bomber was made mainly of wood, the men knew that they would never make it back to England unless that fire was put out.

That’s when Sergeant Ward sprang into action. He tied a rope around his waist and secured it to the inside of the fuselage. Then, he grabbed a fire extinguisher, opened a hatch, and crawled out onto the wing. The icy wind ripped at his clothing as he hung on for dear life to the leading edge. The other crewmen watched mesmerized as Ward inched his way out to the burning engine. Imagine the sight of a man clinging to the wing of a burning airplane at 13,000 feet over the North Sea!

When Ward got as close to the raging inferno as he could, he emptied the contents of the extinguisher into the fire. The blaze sputtered and went out. He groped his way back to safety, and the bomber managed to limp home on its one remaining engine.

For saving his airplane and crew, James Allen Ward was given the Victoria Cross, Great Britain’s highest award for valor. Winston Churchill summoned the airman to 10 Downing Street for tea. When Ward was ushered into the presence of the Prime Minister, he was almost struck dumb with awe. He could barely find words to answer Churchill’s simplest questions.

Finally, Churchill looked at the uncomfortable hero with compassion and said “Young man, you must feel very humble and awkward in my presence.” Ward just nodded in agreement. Churchill continued, “Then you can imagine how humble and awkward I feel in yours.”

Someone has said “Great occasions do not make heroes of cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silent and imperceptible, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or we grow weak, until at last some crisis shows us what we have become.”

In recent weeks, we have been looking at the way we make decisions. Every day we are confronted with hundreds of decisions; some minor, some major, all with consequences.

The awakening of courage takes place in the many little decisions of life that we face every day. Often we face choices where we have two options. One is to take the easy way, the safer way. The other is to take a harder, perhaps more painful way – yet a way that leads to a better result. Often these kinds of choices come into our lives unannounced – we find ourselves thrust into the middle of circumstances where we must choose which way we will take.

For example, many of our young people will either be entering or returning to university in a few weeks. Chuck Colson recently wrote a column on what it is like to be a Christian college student these days.

A professor at one liberal arts college was infamous for holding up a Bible on the first day of class and asking, “How many of you believe this book is the Word of God?” One or two students would sheepishly raise their hands. The professor would then say, “Here’s what I think of this book!” and he would throw it out an open window.

Or consider the story of a student named Frank. When Frank expressed a Christian point of view in a course on family law, a female student shouted, “Why don’t you just shut up!” The professor merely smirked and said to Frank, “I guess she told you!”

Each of these students was confronted with a choice – either to stand up and be counted as one who believes in God, or to fade into the woodwork and hope that no one discovers their inner convictions.

There is a young woman tucked away in the pages of the Old Testament who faced such a decision. Like Sgt. Ward, she was shy and unassuming, though very beautiful. Yet she found herself thrust into the crossroads of history where she had a choice to make: a choice between silence and safety, or daring and death. Her name was Esther. Her story is found on page 354 in the pew Bible.

There are very few characters in the Bible that we can say we know exactly what they looked like. This fellow, though, is one of them. His name is Xerxes – that’s a Greek translation of his Persian name Khshayarshan. The Hebrew people called him Ahasuerus. In 486 BC, Xerxes became king of the Persian Empire, and he ruled it for the next 21 years. Xerxes was the man who would become Esther’s husband.

I am not exaggerating when I say that Xerxes was not a very nice man. The Bible tells us that he held a huge banquet for his nobles. Invitations went out to all the 127 provinces of the Persian Empire, stretching from India in the East to the borders of Greece in the West. It was the largest and most powerful empire the world had ever seen. Xerxes was the most powerful man on earth.

At the banquet, the drinking and carousing got out of hand. In a drunken stupor, Xerxes ordered that his Queen, a woman named Vashti, parade before his nobles so that he could display her beauty. Women in those days were treated as nothing more than trophies, or objects. Vashti, to her credit, flatly refused to participate. But Xerxes was enraged that she would dare to defy him, so he had her deposed as Queen.

That left him with the question of where to find a new queen. That was a question that wasn’t to be settled for another four years. In the meantime, Xerxes got busy extending his empire. He decided to invade Europe. History tells us that he had an army of several hundred thousand men, and a navy of a thousand ships. They marched to the banks of the Hellespont, that narrow channel that separates Asia from Europe in what is now the country of Turkey.

Xerxes ordered his engineers to build a bridge. No sooner was the bridge completed, and the army about to march across, when a storm came up and destroyed it. Xerxes was enraged again, this time against his corps of engineers for building such a flimsy structure, and against the wind and the waves for daring to knock it down. He had the engineers executed. Then he had some of his soldiers give the water 300 lashes for being so insolent. Xerxes was a man of violent temper who was used to getting his own way!

Ultimately, his invasion of Greece did not go well. Although he managed to take the city of Athens, he was ultimately defeated and had to return to the Persian capital, the city of Susa, where he licked his wounds. That’s when he turned his attention back to finding a new queen to replace Vashti.

His advisors suggested a beauty contest, which would include contestants from all 127 provinces of the Empire. The girl who was crowned Miss Persia would become Xerxes’ new wife. What a dubious prize!

That’s how a young Jewish girl named Hadassah, whose Persian name was Esther, came to the capital city that year. She was an orphan who had been adopted by her uncle Mordecai. She grew up to be a very beautiful woman, and that’s why she was selected to be in the contest. Nobody seemed to notice that she was Jewish, and her uncle instructed her to keep quiet about it.

The Bible tells us that all the women in the contest, who we would assume were good-looking to begin with, were given beauty treatments for a whole year by the best cosmetologists in the Persian Empire. Imagine, ladies, a whole year of milk baths and mud packs, perfume and pampering! They must have gone through a lot of Oil of Olay! And all this just to satisfy the ego-mania of a man who got whatever he wanted.

The beauty pageant was held, and the Bible tells us: “Now the king was attracted to Esther more than to any of the other women, and she won his favor and approval more than any of the other virgins. So he set a royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. But Esther had kept secret her family background and nationality just as Mordecai had told her to do, for she continued to follow Mordecai’s instructions as she had done when he was bringing her up.”

So now we have a Persian king who has just married a Jewish queen, only he doesn’t know that she’s Jewish. The plot thickens!

This is where a man named Haman comes into the story. Haman was a royal official with high connections in the court of Xerxes. As a matter of fact, Xerxes elevated Haman to a place of honor above all the other nobles. When Haman walked by, all of the other nobles bowed down in recognition of his favored status. That suited Haman just fine because he was a vain, ambitious man.

The only problem was that Mordecai, the Jew, didn’t bow down to him. That really got under Haman’s skin. The Bible says: “When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. Yet having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.”

The Bible tells us that the Jews are God’s chosen people. As such, they have been the target of Satan for as long as they have been in existence as a nation. Why? Because it was through the Jews that God would bring redemption to all mankind. It was through the Jews that Jesus Christ would be born. It was through the Jews that God would deal the deathblow to Satan. So from Satan’s point of view, if the Jews could somehow be wiped out, there would be no Messiah, there would be no cross, there would be no redemption for mankind.

So down through history, Satan has made it his business to wipe out the Jews. From their four hundred years of slavery in Egypt to the death camps of Nazi Germany; from Haman to Hitler, the Jews have been Satan’s prime target. That was what was really behind Haman’s hatred. He was merely a tool in Satan’s hand to destroy God’s people; to derail God’s program; to defeat God’s cause.

The Bible tells us that Haman began laying plans for a Holocaust in Persia:

Esther 3:8 Then Haman said to King Xerxes, “There is a certain people dispersed and scattered among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom whose customs are different from those of all other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them”

And that is what King Xerxes did. Duped by Haman’s lies, and unaware that the queen he had just married was a Jew herself, he issued a decree that on a given day, the Jews were to be wiped out. The Bible tells us “Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with the order to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and little children—on a single day.”

When Mordecai heard of it, he put on sackcloth and ashes, the garments of mourning. As the word spread, the Jews of the Persian Empire did likewise. They fasted and prayed and wept in fear at the awful day that was approaching.

All but Esther. It is hard to believe that she didn’t know about the decree, but her actions at the beginning of chapter 4 make it obvious that Esther didn’t realize what was going on. Her privileged position in the palace had probably insulated her from the current events that were happening outside.

She heard that her uncle Mordecai was dressed in mourning, so she sent out a change of clothes for him. When he refused them, she sent out her personal assistant to find out what was bothering him.

That’s when she learned the truth. Mordecai gave the messenger a copy of the text of Haman’s decree to show to Esther. And he urged Esther to go into the king’s presence to beg for mercy and plead with Xerxes for her people.

This put Esther squarely on the spot! Up until this time, she had enjoyed the luxury of the palace and her privileged position as queen. This must have been pretty heady stuff for a girl who had grown up as an orphan. Sure, she was Jewish, she was one of God’s people, but that hadn’t really cost her anything, had it? That was still a secret, and it could remain a secret if she wanted it to.

But now, her people were in danger, and Esther was their last hope. But for her to save them, she would have to take her place with them. She would have to identify herself as a Jew, and plead with Xerxes, not only for their lives but for her own life, too. She would have to put her life on the line.

Her first reaction was to say “Don’t ask me to do this, Mordecai. I really can’t make a difference here. There’s no use me going in to talk to Xerxes, because the law says you can’t go into the king’s presence unless you’re summoned. If you do, you die, and dead people can’t talk. Perhaps it would be better for me to just wait here in the palace in the hope that maybe Xerxes will send for me. Then, who knows? Maybe I can slip in a good word for the Jews.” In other words, let events run their course and see what happens.

But when Mordecai heard what she was thinking, he said “No Esther! You’ve got to speak up! You can’t hide under your royal robes the fact that you are a Jew. You’re either on God’s side or you’re not, and you’ve got to declare now.”

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

There are moments of decision in our lives when we have to choose whose side we’re on. Are we on God’s side or are we on the other side? Every one of us would probably rather go through life not having to make such a choice at all. Like Esther, we’d like to enjoy the luxuries of the palace without going public about our true identity. There’s a certain safety in the shadows.

But if we’re followers of Jesus Christ, the time will come, sooner or later, when we will have to declare ourselves. We have to choose to be identified as his disciples. And that choice can be dangerous.

I’ll always remember a Czechoslovakian pastor I met in Bratislava in 1989. His name was Andre. In those days before the collapse of Communism, it was dangerous to be known as a Christian. You could lose your job; your children would not be admitted to the university; your friends would shun you. Andre had had his share of encounters with the police. He had been in jail more than once.

It would have been so much easier for Andre and his family to simply remain silent. Stop preaching. Be an obedient citizen. Keep quiet. Don’t speak up for Jesus. He could have made that choice. But he didn’t. Because he knew it was better to die standing up for God’s cause than to live as a coward in the shadows.

Esther had a choice to make. What did she do? Look at what she said in verse 16…

“Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”

If I perish, I perish. This is the statement of a woman who had counted the cost - a woman who had come to realize that her own life and her own privileges were not as important to her as the honor of standing up for something greater - God’s cause.

We need to be like Esther. As Christians, we have enjoyed the luxury of living in a country that for many years has given at least lip service to the values of the Word of God. It was, and in many ways still is, easy to be a Christian without ever having to make any sacrifices for it. Without ever having to count the cost.

But those days are quickly coming to an end. There are forces afoot in Canada today that are utterly hostile to the cause of God and to the people of God. There is an undercurrent of evil and intolerance running through this land that is bubbling to the surface in increasingly visible ways.

And the time is soon coming when the people of God will have to stand up and be counted. The choices we make in the little moments of decision today are going to determine on whose side we’ll be standing when the bigger test comes.

The great Spanish author Cervantes said “He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses friends loses more; but he who loses courage loses all.”

“Great occasions do not make heroes of cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silent and imperceptible, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or we grow weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become.”

Esther stood up to champion the cause of her people. And God honored her. Through a remarkable series of events, Haman’s plot was foiled, he himself was executed, and the enemies of God’s people were destroyed. To this day, the Jewish people still celebrate the courage of Esther in the Feast of Purim: the courage that brought them deliverance.

What will you do in such a moment of decision?

We have learned from Abraham to say YES to God.

We have learned from Ruth to determine to be a blessing to other people.

We have learned from Esther to stand up for God’s cause.