Esther's Exaltation; or Who Knoweth
Spurgeon, Charles Haddon
Esther 4:14
For if you altogether hold your peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place…
I shall lay out my sermon under four words.
I. HEARKEN!
1. To a question. Brother, will you separate your interests from those of your people and your God? Do you mean to say, "I shall look to my own salvation, but I cannot be supposed to take an interest in saving others"? In such a spirit as that I do not say you will be lost, but I say you are lost already. It is as needful that you be saved from selfishness as from any other vice.
2. To a second question: If you could separate your interests from those of the cause of God, would you thereby secure them?
3. Remember, for your humiliation, that God can do without you.
4. As God can do without us, it may be He will do without us.
5. How will you bear the disgrace, if ever it come upon you, of having suffered your golden opportunities to be despised?
II. CONSIDER —
1. To what some of you have been advanced.
2. Why the Lord has brought you where you are.
3. At what a time it is that you have been thus advanced.
4. Under what special circumstances you have come where you are.
5. With what singular personal adaptations you are endowed for the work to which God has called you.
III. ASPIRE. "Who knoweth," etc. When Louis Napoleon was shut up in the fortress of Ham, and everybody ridiculed his foolish attempts upon France, yet he said to himself, "Who knows? I am the nephew of my uncle, and may yet sit upon the imperial throne," and he did so before many years had passed. I have no desire to make any man ambitious after the poor thrones, etc., of earth, but I would fain make you all ardently ambitious to honour God and bless men.
IV. CONFIDE.
1. If thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this, be con fident that thou art safe.
2. If God has a purpose to serve by a man, that man will live out his day and accomplish the Divine design.
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