“FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS”
(The Discipline of Fasting)

REVEREND JOHN FOWLER

September 28, 2003

Esther 4:1-17

One of the most forgotten spiritual disciplines is the discipline of fasting. I don’t know whether it’s better to preach this after people have had breakfast or before they are getting ready to have lunch. On time that I ventured to preach about this wouldn’t you know, it was someone’s family reunion and I certainly got teased about it, “Well, are you fasting today, Preacher?”

“No, I wasn’t. I was just talking about it. I didn’t say I was going to practice it today.”

But I do want you to think in terms of this is a forgotten discipline that is a great aid to praying. That’s what it is. It’s an aid to praying, and whether it is using the Bible – it’s referring to going without food – but for many of us it would greatly benefit us to just think in terms of Lent: that you give up something; that fast is to give up, and for many of us, if we fasted the TV, or cell phone, or the radio, it would have the same benefit. Only you and the Lord would know what would be best. But what it will do is help your hearing. It will help you to hear the Lord more clearly, to know His will, and to have the courage to do His will. In Chapter 4, it says in Esther:

I want you to think about your hearing a little bit today. How is your hearing? Do you hear like you once did?

If you didn’t hear that, someone needs to elbow you and tell you that you didn’t hear what the preacher just said. I don’t hear like I once did. I take after the mother’s side of the family: they turn gray early and they don’t hear well. I remember my Uncle Pink and grandmother visiting when I was a boy, and they would just shout at each other. I thought they were mad at each other. My mother said, “Uncle Pink won’t wear his hearing aid and that is what he has to do. It’s just very loud.” My mother has worn hearing aids for years and I can always tell when the batteries are going because you talk and there is kind of this glazed look, and I say, “Well, Ma, how are the batteries in your hearing aid?” It’s important to be able to hear.

How is your hearing spiritually? When you pray do you feel like you can hear what God is saying? This forgotten discipline that many Christians resist, if it be rediscovered, I believe many not only would know God’s will, but they would have the courage and the confidence to do what God has called them to do because they will have that sense that, “I have heard from God, and He has called me to do this, and He is going to see me through it.”

Why did Esther fast and call others to fast and to pray? Well, she was facing a crisis. I love the story of Esther. It begins with Chapter 1, where it seems that King Xerxes, one the main characters, is quite a partier. (I was in a fraternity and I thought I was exposed to some serious partiers. They would start on Thursday night - the mixer - Friday, Saturday, I mean really getting cranked up, and Sunday they would recover. And then, if they stayed in school, they went back to classes on Monday, and the next Thursday night it just went on again.)

But these are some real serious partiers. King Xerxes has been displaying his vast kingdom to his business associates and government officials for almost half a year and it culminates in a week-long party. Chapter I says that King Xerxes is high in spirits. He is drunk. And so, he calls for Queen Vashti because, “Well, I’ve got a good looking wife. I want you’all to see her.”

“Well, yeah, we’d love to see her.”

So he sends for her. Well, Queen Vashti is having her own party with her ladies, and she says, “No. I won’t come. I’m not coming down there to that drunken brawl.”

Well, instead of the King talking to Vashti, he calls his counselors together, “What am I going to do?”

And they tell him simply like this: “Well look, King. If word gets out that the queen won’t do what the king says, it’s just the beginning of all these women rebelling against their husbands throughout the nation. You’ve got to do something. I mean, this is just the beginning of what is going to happen.”

So, they came with this legislation that essentially said that the man is master of his house, and they passed it – no problem – and they still hadn’t done anything about Queen Vashti.

But they finally decided to put some teeth into this legislation and said, “You know, you really ought to replace Queen Vashti.”

“OK. Well, how do I do it?”

“Well, here. Have a beauty pageant – Queen of Persia, Miss Persia – and get all the most beautiful girls, and whoever wins the contest, that will be your queen.”

“Sounds good to me,” says King Xerxes. And so that’s what they did.

And after about a year of preparing all these beautiful women in the kingdom, Esther rises to the top, and King Xerxes likes her the best. She is a Jew. She has come from the Babylonian exile. She has been raised by her cousin, Mordecai. It is a Cinderella story and if the story ended there, you would say they lived happily ever after. But it doesn’t. Enter the villain. His name is Haman. Haman is the Prime Minister. He is ambitious. He is rising in power.

Xerxes says, finally, “He has risen so high, everybody bow down to him. I think that highly of him.” He likes that.

But, Mordecai will have none of that – not because he has anything against Haman – but because Mordecai is a Jew. He doesn’t bow down to anyone or anything other than the Lord God. And so, Haman hates him. He sees everyone bowing down to him, and here is Mordecai, “I just can’t do that.” So, not only does he want to kill this Jew, he wants to kill all the Jews. He is like an Adolph Hitler. And so, he finally talks the king into an edit, “You know, there are these people who are scattered all over your kingdom. They are different; their ways are different. They won’t bow down to me or to you. We ought to do something about them.”

“That’s fine.”

“In fact, I’ll put money in the treasury if you’ll let me do something about it.”

“Well, that’s fine. Go ahead. It doesn’t bother me.”

So, he doesn’t realize that he has just given the OK to annihilate all the Jews. So then you have Chapter 4 where Mordecai and the Jews are fasting and they are praying. They are in great distress and they are making a plea to Esther that, “You are in a position of influence. You can do something about this. Who knows that maybe you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this.”

She calls for a fast. Why did she do that? In the Old Testament there are a lot of examples of fasting. It is like a Who’s Who in the Bible – whether it’s Moses going up to Mt. Sinai to get the Ten Commandments, or David fasting for his child who is sick, or Daniel fasting and praying for some three weeks, seeking the will of God about going back out of captivity. The prophet, Elijah. We certainly know of Jesus fasting in the wilderness forty days and nights, seeking and praying for the Father to reveal clearly to Him what His will was and how to be the Savior of the world. The Apostle Paul certainly believed in fasting.

It’s easy to resist those examples because, well, those are some pretty heavy-weight people, aren’t they? But in the Old Testament he gives us some specific reasons of why they fasted. And all of them have to do with: we’ve got to hear God. We’ve got to be sure that we are hearing the Lord. One is they fasted at the time of war or the threat of it. Israel fasted at Bethel in the war against the Benjamites, it says in Judges. The king of Britain called for a national fast in 1756 when there was a threatened invasion of France, and John Wesley writes in his journal that in London it was a day of tremendous blessing and then he noted later in his journal that the invasion was averted.

In the Old Testament they fasted in times of war. They fasted when loved ones were sick. David certainly fasted and wept for his sick child. They fasted when loved ones died and again we have the example of David, who when Solomon and Jonathan died, he would not eat; he wept, and he mourned, and he fasted. They fasted when they sought God’s forgiveness. Moses fasted for forty days because of the sin of Israel. Jonah, when he called the people of Nineveh to repent, they did; and they fasted and repented and lay in sack cloth and ashes. They also fasted when there was impending danger. Jehoshaphat in Second Chronicles, called for a fast.

Why don’t we do it? Well, I know why I don’t do it as much as I should. I like to eat. I mean, that’s just all there is to it. We are talking about food. We’re not talking about praying, and reading the Bible, and worshipping. We’re not talking about tithing either. We’re talking about eating, and we like to eat. I remember the first time that I fasted. It was as a youth minister; we had a starvathon. The title was “Let it Growl”. I think it was to raise money for World Vision, and we stayed inside; I think we went to play put-put, but I know it was thirty hours without eating; I remember that very well. And well, I was real proud of myself. I thought it was really something, because, I tell you, I did not miss many meals growing up, and don’t today, as well. The thing I found at that time was: you know, it's one thing to read statistics about world hunger; it’s even another thing to see the pictures of people who are hungry. It’s another thing to have hunger in your own stomach and to begin just to have a little taste of what it is like for people all over the world who don’t have a choice about that. Why don’t we do it? Well, we like to eat. There’s no question about it.

Another one is the other extreme: cynicism. We think of monks who fast and pray for just hours on end, and we don’t relate to them. I heard a story about a monk who, well things didn’t work out for him. He went to a monastery where there was a vow of silence and he could talk after each year. After the first year they asked him what he had to say for himself.

He said, “I’m cold.” That was it.

And then he went on to try to be a good monk for another year, and after the end of the second year they asked him again, “Well, what do you have to say?”

“Food stinks.”

And then, after the third year (and again he is trying to be a good monk) they call him together; he has been waiting a whole year. At the end of three years he finally says, “I quit.”

And his superior said, “Well, I’m not surprised. You’ve done nothing but complain since you’ve been here.”

But, why don’t we fast? Oftentimes we just think, “Well, that’s weird. I don’t know if I should do that.” But Esther knew that, “I’m facing a crisis. And fasting, in and of itself, no, that’s not going to change God’s mind, but what I need to do is, I need to be sure, as I am praying, that I am really hearing Him clearly. I don’t want to do this wrong. My life is on the line; the lives of my people are on the line.”

So she (tape change)……….……faith to see the king. And the king, he’s glad to see her. It’s been a month.

He says, “Queen Esther, it’s good to see you.” He extends the royal scepter and says, “What can I do for you? Even half of my kingdom, whatever you want, I will give it to you.”

And she says, “I want you to come to the banquet and invite Haman, too, if you would.”

“Fine. I love to eat and I love banquets. I’ll be there.”

And so they come to the banquet that day and Haman just loves it. “This is great! I’m dining with the King and the Queen.”

And the King is filled with pride and thinks it’s wonderful and he says, “Really, Esther, what really do you want?”

“Well, what I really want is you to come back tomorrow, and I want you to come to another banquet and invite Haman as well.”

So they do that, and she has a plan. God is leading her; doesn’t want to let her hand out too quickly, but she is setting the trap; that’s what she’s doing.

Mordecai still wouldn’t bow to Haman, and in Chapter 5, as Haman leaves the first lunch, he is thrilled that he is eating with the King and the Queen, but it still bothers him that this Mordecai will not bow down to him. He goes home; he’s sulking; he’s mad.

His wife says, “What is the matter?”

“Well, it’s Mordecai; he won’t bow down to me. Everything else is going well.”

“What in the world? Why don’t you just have him killed?”

“Why not? It’s a good idea.”

So, they have a gallows built – seventy-five feet high. And he can’t wait to go see the king and tell him, “You know, I just want to kill him, have him lynched.” And so he goes in the middle of the night. Well, it so just happens that the king can’t sleep; he’s reading this book of the annals which gives an account of a lot of things that have gone on in his kingdom, and he just so happens to be reading of when Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, discovered an assassination plot, told Esther, and saved his life.

He is reading this and he talks to his servants, “What’s been done for this man who saved my life?”

“Nothing.”

And then, here comes Haman. He wants to talk about lynching Mordecai.

And the king says, “What should be done, Haman, for the man that I want to honor?”

And he thinks the king is talking about him, and he says, “Oh, I’ll tell you what you ought to do. You ought to get the best robe; get your best horse; have a parade and just say, ‘This is what happens to the one that the king is pleased with.’”

“Fine. Haman, I want you to take Mordecai and do that for him.”

Well, Haman is mortified, but he has to do it. And so here he is; he goes out with his enemy and he puts this robe on him; he puts him on the horse; he takes him through town, and he comes home and he just can’t believe what has happened.

And then when they find out what has happened his friend says, “Well, if he thinks this highly of Mordecai, I don’t know what to expect in the future for you.”

And then off he has to go to second banquet. It’s not a good banquet for him.

They get there and finally King Xerxes says to Esther, “Really, what is on your heart?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what’s on my heart, King. My people are in trouble. They are in a crisis. It’s a desperate time. There is someone who wants to wipe us out, annihilate us.”

“Who would do such a thing?” the king asks. And she looks across the dinner table.

“This vile Haman.”

And he is furious; and he goes out in a rage, which is pretty common for him. Haman is desperate. He grabs at Esther’s ankles, or legs or whatever, and he is just begging for his life.

The king comes back in. “Well, will he even molest the Queen in my palace?”

And he takes Haman off and Haman is hanged on the gallows he had built for his enemy, Mordecai. It was quite a change of events, all because a woman took the time to pray. With the aid of fasting, she knew what God wanted her to do and had the courage to carry it out.

What do we think of fasting today? We look at the life of Jesus Christ and are reminded that He began his ministry in a time of silence, and praying, and fasting, seeking clear guidance from His Lord of how to carry out His ministry. But then, He also, on the Sermon on the Mount, said, “And when you fast……,” assuming that His disciples would do it. But then He was criticized because He was not like John the Baptist; He didn’t fast on a regular basis. And so, yes, if you would say that, other than the wilderness time, Jesus didn’t fast.

But his response to that was, “Well, when the bridegroom is with you, that’s not the time to fast. But when the bridegroom leaves, then you will.”

To me, it’s probably a reaction to the Pharisees of that time. Now they fasted, and everybody knew it too. They fasted on Mondays and Thursdays, which was market day, and they made sure everybody knew about it. It defeats the purpose if you make a show of it. What you want to do is that it is between you and the Lord. You give up – whether it is food or whether it is some noise. Take some time for solitude that you really can hear the Lord.

How do we do it? The early Methodist, John Wesley, practiced Wednesday and Friday. Wesley guarded against extremes. His basically was a sunup to sundown. He thought it was an important aid to prayer, but he didn’t want people to go to extremes, but that they would clearly know the will of God. Think of it in terms of Lent. During this past Lenten season, six weeks before Easter, what did you give up? Did it draw you closer to God? Did it aid you in prayer?

This is an aid that helps us to hear Him and it helps us to have the courage to do His will. Do you need to hear God better? Do you need courage to do His will? Esther, maybe you’ve come into the kingdom for such a time as this.

Let us pray.