The Example of Mordecai (by T. Austin-Sparks, 1888-1971)
Mordecai was great in the king’s house, and his fame went forth throughout all the provinces; for the man Mordecai waxed greater and greater. (Esther 9:4)
“The man… waxed greater and greater.” You see how this little phrase “the man” in every connection is related to stature, to growth, to greatness. “The man Mordecai waxed and greater.” Why? What was the secret of his greatness? Why did God sovereignly act to bring that man right up, in that startling way, from sitting at the door as a kind of eavesdropper and beggar, bring him up and up and up, until at last this could be said of him: “the man Mordecai waxed greater and greater”
Why? There is only one reason. Here was a man who at any cost was devoted to the interests of the Lord’s people and to the Lord’s testimony as vested in the Lord’s people. That is the answer. You know the story of Mordecai and of Esther. Here is a man whose whole story is summed up in this deep, overwhelming concern for the Lord’s people, because they embodied the Lord’s testimony.
We need, of course, to go over that whole ground of how Israel, chosen of God, was chosen as a people in the earth to be the vessel of His testimony, and here these people are at the point of being wiped out to the last child by this cunning, evil work, the devil-inspired device of Haman, “this wicked Haman”, the Agagite. This man Mordecai set himself right in the full tide and flood of that iniquity, which was nothing less than the destruction of the life of the people of God in order to carry away the Lord’s testimony from the earth. He set himself, and the tide broke on him, and God honored him and raised him up and saw to it that he became great. His greatness was not the mere turn of fortune in his favor. It was because of what God was in him; and it is ever like that. Whatever other people try to do, however much they try to keep us down and under and out, spiritual greatness will be brought about by the Lord in us, if only we have this overwhelming concern for His interests in His people.
