Esther: Celebrate Your Deliverance

The Book of Esther reveals the backstory for the Feast of Purim, which celebrates the deliverance of the Jews from an annihilation plot during the days of the Persian empire. The heroes of this story are Esther, a Jewish captive turned Persian queen, and Mordecai, her guardian and cousin. But standing sovereignly behind these heroes is God. While God is not expressly mentioned in the book, a closer look shows that God's hand of providence is behind this grand reversal of conditions. As Mordecai implores Esther to save the Jews, he tells her, "And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this" (4:14). God providentially used Esther, and Mordecai, to save his people from certain extinction. In a greater way, Esther foreshadows the ultimate reversal which God has bestowed on his church in Christ—who forever reversed the conditions of our estate from slavery to freedom and from death to life (Acts 2:22-24; Col. 1:13; Eph. 2:4-8). While the Jews celebrate temporal deliverance with the Feast of Purim, we celebrate eternal salvation by "proclaiming the excellencies" of our God who has saved us in Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Peter 2:9-10).