Bucking The System - Mordecai

The palace officials at the king’s gate asked Mordecai, “Why are you disobeying the king’s command?” They spoke to him day after day, but still he refused to comply with the order.

Esther 3:3-4

On December 1, 1955, a then-unknown Rosa Parks unintentionally made a national name for herself. When a public bus driver ordered her to give up her seat in the first row of the “colored” section to a white passenger, this young black woman from Montgomery, Alabama, refused. Her unplanned act of civil disobedience marked the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott and helped to launch the career of celebrated civil-rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parks’s single act of courageous noncompliance earned her a lasting legacy in the U.S. civil rights movement.

Though the Bible teaches believers to obey those in authority and comply with the laws of the land, it also recognizes that some situations call for bucking the system.

Mordecai, a Jewish man living in Persia following the Babylonian captivity, had unbending integrity, courage, and faithfulness, all of which were tested when King Ahasuerus ordered his officials to bow before Haman, the king’s chief agent (see Esther 3:2).

Mordecai had repeatedly proved his loyalty to the king, but as a man who served the true and living God, he would not bow before any human, especially one as wicked as Haman. Though it meant potentially grave consequences for all Jews living in Persia at the time, Mordecai took a courageous stand against the king’s decree and did what was right in the Lord’s eyes.

God took over from there, orchestrating events behind the scenes so that the crisis actually advanced the well-being of the entire Hebrew people.

You may hear voices encouraging you to lighten up on your commitment to God and instead “go with the flow.” Those voices may seem quite sensible. But when you take a stand, you demonstrate the ultimate value of your commitment to God, and you encourage secret believers to declare their allegiance to the Lord.