The Hidden Hand of God in Remembrance & Celebration
Introduction: Landing the Plane on Esther
Well, church, it is good to be with you as always. My name is Mike, and I’m one of the teaching pastors here at The Well. Today, I get the great privilege of landing the plane on the book of Esther. If you’re new around here, we have been in this book for eleven weeks now, looking at the hidden hand of God throughout the entire story.
I don’t know what your perspective has been, but it seems like this study has been really good for our church. It has pushed on some of our preconceived notions about the Scriptures and the characters written in them. Hopefully, as it has for me, it has caused you to lift your sights and see God’s hand all over this Bible—and maybe all over your life as well.
If you’re a guest, we are grateful you’re joining us. You’re catching the end of a great series, and if you want to catch up, you can find everything online. To those joining us online, we’re glad you’re here too.
We are going to be in the back half of chapter nine, starting in verse 20. This week is a celebration of what happened last week. As you remember from the beginning of the story, a man named Haman issued a decree through King Xerxes to annihilate the Jews. He hated them, rallied a group against them, and gave a green light to literally annihilate every man, woman, and child.
But at the eleventh hour, God showed up. He issued a counter-decree through Esther, a woman He had elevated within the Persian kingdom to have influence for the sake of her people. As her character arc developed, she went from being shy and hiding her lamp under a bushel to becoming a bold, courageous young woman used by God to deliver His people. It is a beautiful story. Last week, we saw the people of God prevail over those who hated them. It was a tough text to walk through, but it was beautiful to see God show up.
As we have seen, God is never mentioned verbatim in this book, yet His hand is everywhere. Today, we watch that hidden hand move into remembrance and celebration.
A Great Reversal: From Sorrow to Gladness
In Esther chapter nine, the people reflect on what happened and begin to celebrate what God has done.
Esther 9:20-22 (NASB)
Then Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, obliging them to celebrate the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same month, annually, because on those days the Jews rid themselves of their enemies, and [it was a] month which was turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and rejoicing and sending portions [of food] to one another and gifts to the poor.
As we saw last week, God accomplished an incredible reversal. The text points it out specifically: their sorrow turned into gladness and their mourning into a holiday. A spontaneous feast erupted because God’s hidden hand saved His people.
These patterns are all over Scripture. Our guide in Israel always says the feasts and festivals are all basically the same: “They tried to kill us; God rescued us; now let’s eat!” That is the festival schedule all over the Old Testament. It is a celebration of God’s deliverance from Haman.
Esther 9:24 (NASB)
For Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the adversary of all the Jews, had schemed against the Jews to destroy them and had cast Pur, that is the lot, to disturb them and destroy them.
I am very grateful that we don’t have to go through the names of Haman’s ten sons again this week; I barely made it through last week! But it is good to be reminded of God’s faithfulness. Those men were hanged and publicly put on display as a reminder that if you share in the hate of Haman, this would be your demise as well. Haman’s wicked scheme returned on his own head—one of the many, many reversals we see in this book.
Esther 9:26 (NASB)
Therefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur. And because of the instructions in this letter, both what they had seen in this regard and what had happened to them,
This feast was called Purim because Haman, twelve months earlier, had cast the “pur” (the lot) to determine the “appropriate” month to annihilate the Jewish people. God took the very thing intended for evil and flipped it to save His people. It is almost a mockery of Haman and his gods, and an elevation of the celebration that came from the hand of Yahweh.
The Foresight to Remember
You can imagine the celebration that erupted when certain annihilation had come and gone and the Jewish people had prevailed. But Esther and Mordecai knew this couldn’t just be a one-time party.
Esther 9:27-28 (NASB)
the Jews established and made a custom for themselves and for their descendants and for all those who allied themselves with them, so that they would not fail to celebrate these two days according to their regulation and according to their appointed time annually. So these days were to be remembered and celebrated throughout every generation, every family, every province and every city; and these days of Purim were not to fail from among the Jews, or their memory fade from their descendants.
This day was not the end of the celebration; it was the beginning. Esther and Mordecai had the foresight to say, “We are not going to forget this. We are going to remember so that every generation knows this event.” As they looked in the rearview mirror, they refused to let the memory fade.
Purim became a mandatory feast. It was celebrated in the month of Adar (late February or early March). They would read the book of Esther, and every time the name Haman was mentioned, they would boo or hiss. They would dress in costumes, share meals, and hold parades. Central to it all was the “pur”—the symbol of God using circumstances to deliver His people.
Unlike other Old Testament festivals mandated directly by God in the Law, this one began as a spontaneous eruption of joy and gratitude. One of my most precious memories of leading trips to Israel is having Shabbat dinner with our guide. He brought us into his home with his wife, kids, and neighbors. We sat with them and enjoyed their celebration of God. They shared laughter and stories, but at the heart was a call to remember. A father would pray and instruct his son, “One day, when you have kids, you’re going to recite these prayers and remember our God’s faithful hand.”
That is exactly what Esther and Mordecai were doing. They memorialized the day.
Esther 9:31-32 (NASB)
to establish these days of Purim at their appointed times, just as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther had established for them, and just as they had established for themselves and for their descendants with instructions for their times of fasting and their lamentations. The command of Esther established these customs for Purim, and it was written in the book.
They didn’t want the sands of time to wash out the memory of what happened. They made it a command because God recognized a tendency in His people that is also true in us: inertia moves us toward forgetting, not remembering. We are like a bucket with small holes; the water of our memory leaks out over time if we aren’t intentional about filling it back up.
The Danger of the Full Soul
Listen to what God told His people on the doorstep of the Promised Land. He warned them long before they ever entered.
Deuteronomy 8:11-14 (NASB)
’Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived [in them], and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
God said, “I’m going to provide such abundance. You’re going to live in amazing homes and have great harvests. Your money will multiply. These are blessings from My hand, but there’s a problem: if you aren’t careful, you’re going to forget where they came from.”
He recognized that when we are satisfied and successful, we tend to forget the Lord. We forget the manna provided every day. We forget the hand of slavery we were pulled from.
Deuteronomy 4:9 (NASB)
’Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and your grandsons.
Tell the stories. Share God’s faithful hand in your life. I was at lunch the other day with my parents and my brother. My dad is 84, a Vietnam pilot who flew F-4s. I mentioned that my wife and I hiked the Grand Canyon this summer, and my dad just offhandedly said, “Oh yeah, I flew an F-4 through the Grand Canyon one day.”
I said, “Dad, I’m almost 50 years old. How have I never heard this story? You’re a Maverick! How do I not know this?” He just shrugged and said, “Everybody flew a plane through the canyon, Mike. It’s just a thing I did on a Thursday.”
I realized in that moment that if he hadn’t been intentional about sharing that story, it would have died with him. My mom was hearing it for the first time, too! We have to share the stories, because our natural drift is toward forgetting. All over Deuteronomy, God says: Remember you were slaves. Remember the way the Lord led you. Ask your father and he will inform you.
When we go to Israel, we often come home with rings that have the Hebrew word for “Remember” inscribed on them. When we look at our hands, we remember what God showed us in that season. We all need those physical reminders.
Rock Piles and Divine Joy
In the Old Testament, the people were commanded on at least seven occasions to stop, go on vacation, and celebrate the work of God. They would travel to Jerusalem and celebrate His creation, His provision, His promises, and the forgiveness of sins. Entire towns would be deserted as people marched to Jerusalem, singing the Psalms of Ascent and partying on the way. They took mandatory PTO to celebrate God.
They also established physical memorials. Near the Jordan River, there was a rock pile. When a boy would ask, “Dad, what is this rock pile?” the father would say, “That was the day God parted the Jordan. Your grandfather carried me across on his shoulders on dry ground.”
Even as you walk out of this sanctuary today, you’ll walk past a rock pile. It’s one of The Well’s rock piles, placed there so we don’t forget God’s faithfulness in giving us this building and the generosity of His people. One of our eight foundational practices is exactly that: we celebrate the work of God.
At the core of celebration is joy. God is the most joyous being in the entire universe.
Psalms 16:11 (NASB)
You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.
True, level-ten joy is who God is. When we celebrate, we are reminding ourselves of how God feels about us. In Luke 15, when the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son are found, there is a massive celebration. They kill the fattened calf and throw a party. That is the core of who God is—a celebratory God—and He admonishes us to be the same.
Hebrews 10:24-25 (NASB)
and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging [one another]; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
To “stimulate one another” is to encourage and celebrate one another. It means recognizing God’s hand in someone else’s life and calling attention to it.
What if we, as a church, started celebrating the things that matter to God? What if we celebrated people stepping into Re-Engage to save their struggling marriages? What if we celebrated someone joining a Life Group for the first time and being vulnerable enough to say, “Here is the real me—will you still love me?” What if we celebrated the people who show up at Regen on Monday nights to step out of the darkness and into the light?
We should celebrate healthy families, people using their talents for the Kingdom, and spiritual birthdays. We are actually mandated to celebrate two things: baptism and communion. That’s why next week, when we do baptisms, we aren’t going to hide in a back room. We’re going to do it in front of everyone, and we are going to lose our minds together! We’re going to say, “Praise God, we see the new life in Christ!” And in communion, though it is somber, we are celebrating that God did for us what we could never do for ourselves.
From the Hidden Hand to the Visible Hand
To live this way takes intentionality. It takes slowing down. We have to downshift to recognize what is happening around us. It takes reflection—looking in the rearview mirror and asking, “God, where were You this week?” It takes gratitude to say, “Lord, You showed up. Maybe not how I expected, but You showed me You are sovereign.”
That is what Esther is pushing us toward. The book of Esther ends with a perpetual celebration of God’s deliverance at the eleventh hour, through unlikely participants, in an ungodly culture, against overwhelming odds. It was read annually to remind the people that the hidden hand of God is always working, regardless of whether the enemy is Persia, Rome, or something we face today.
But the greatest way we can celebrate is the day His hidden hand became a very visible hand. The day God’s hand went from behind the scenes to abundantly clear through the person of His Son.
John 1:14 (NASB)
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Philippians 2:7-8 (NASB)
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, [and] being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
John 1:29 (NASB)
The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, ’Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
God displayed His Son publicly as the satisfaction for our sins. For a season, His hand was hidden, but in Christ, He revealed His hand. We look in the rearview mirror at that day because faithful men and women recorded it and said, “This day was miraculous.”
A Challenge for Thanksgiving
As we look toward this coming week, we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s a great holiday. But what if we raised the bar on how we celebrated?
What if, instead of just eating too much turkey and watching the Cowboys lose again (and they will lose, I’m telling you, and I’m going to cry), we said, “God, how can we include You in this?”
What if those of us in the older generation intentionally shared the stories? Not just the common ones, like flying F-4s, but the spiritual ones. Do your grandkids know how your grandfather put his faith in Christ? Do they know how God worked in your grandmother’s life during college? Do they know the story of how your parents came together?
Older generation, the onus is on us. If we aren’t intentional, those stories of God’s faithful hand will die with us. We must memorialize them and say, “God showed up this day.”
Let’s take a page out of the book of Esther. Let’s talk about God’s hidden hand. Let’s pass that baton so the next generation will remember that God is good, God is sovereign, and God is providential in all things.
Father, thank You for Your goodness. Thank You for books like Esther that remind us Your hand is all over our lives. Teach us to pause, to reflect, and to see where You have been. Teach us to name it and celebrate it. May we teach these things to our children so they never forget who You are and what You have done. We acknowledge today that You are a great and wonderful God. Most importantly, we thank You for Jesus and the new life we have in Him. In His name we pray, Amen.