Immanuel Sermon Audio
Esther (17:66)
All right, grab a Bible, find the book of Esther, right before Job, the book of Esther, Ezra and Nehemiah Esther. Esther is an interesting book in the Bible, it's really kind of a unique book compared to other books in the Bible, depending on the scholar that you are talking to. Some people say it's either the only book or one of two books in the Bible that does not mention God directly. There is a reference to God in Song of Solomon, some people think there's not, but there is. And so you can scratch that one off and say, Esther is the only book in the Bible that does not mention God. His name is not found anywhere in there. The Lord, God, Yahweh, anything like that. And that was one sticking point, I guess you would say, when Christians were putting together their canon and even before that when Jews were putting together their canon and saying what belongs in the Bible, what books belong in God's Word, some people said, well look, this book doesn't even say God in it, how can you put it in God's book? But I think we'll answer that question tonight in a way that says you should include it in God's Word. There's also interesting in that, at least to my knowledge, it is maybe, I'm trying to think through this before I just spout off and say this out loud, I was going to say the only. Let's say one of maybe very few books, if not the only book in the Bible, that non-Christians read and appreciate for its literary value, does that make sense? They don't necessarily think that the things in it are true or they really happened or even that it is a story about God, even though he's never mentioned by name in it, they just look at it and say that's a great story. Whoever wrote that was a great storyteller and you don't have to be a believer to appreciate the story value of the Book of Esther. And because it's a story, just from beginning to end, it's just one story, one sort of episode extended in the life of a handful of people, it's hard to break it up, it's hard to give you an outline for Esther, I'm not going to do that tonight. There's really no way to do that. But before we jump into Esther, we're going to talk about Jewish celebrations, Jewish holidays, and I just listed a couple of the big ones that maybe you have heard about. First is Hanukkah. What do you know about Hanukkah? Anything? Anything? Hanukkah? It's usually around Christmas time and maybe in the United States we just say oh, that's what the Jews do instead of Christmas. They don't believe Jesus was born, they have Hanukkah, we have Christmas all the same. Very, very different. Hanukkah originated between the time when the Old Testament ended and the New Testament began. So there's about a 400-year gap in there that the Bible doesn't cover in Hanukkah. The first Hanukkah falls right in there somewhere. Sometimes it's called the Feast of Lights, sometimes it's called the Feast of Dedication. You can read about it in the Book of Maccabees, which is part of the Apocrypha. Protestant churches don't recognize those books as Bible books, but you can read about it in that the Book of Maccabees, 165 A.D., or excuse me, BC, 165 B.C., and the basic story goes like this, a foreign army had come and conquered Israel, which had happened many times of course, but they conquered Israel and they desecrated the temple. They didn't tear it down, but they just completely desecrated it. And they did that by taking pig's blood, the blood of an unclean animal, and spilling it in the temple, in the holy place. And to the Jews, this was just, what is the point in even having a temple, if you're going to take an unclean animal and spill its blood, this is disgusting, you've desecrated it. And there was a Jewish man named Judas the Hammer, Judas Maccabee. His nickname was the Hammer, and he was called the Hammer because he kicked tail and he kicked these guys out of Israel, and he led an army to get rid of this foreign occupying force, and when they were gone, they went in and they rededicated the temple. They knew in their minds, we can't just walk in like nothing happened here. This was a violation of God's law, it happened right in the temple, so he said we need to rededicate it. And in part of that, they wanted to light the lamp. It didn't look like that necessarily originally, but they wanted to light the lamp in the temple. And there was a problem, they just fought a war, they were poor peasants, they didn't have enough oil to light it for the eight days they needed to light it to rededicate the temple. So they lit it with what oil they had the first day. And then the second day, when the oil should have run out, it stayed lit. And then the second day, or the third day, excuse me, when it should have definitely run out, it stayed lit all through the eight days, the candle, the light in the temple. It stayed lit while they rededicated the temple, and the Jew said this is a miracle. We believe that God has provided this. Like maybe you think of the widow's oil in the Old Testament. Story would be in first Kings or second Kings, one of the two. And so you think about something like that. Happened supposedly at Hanukkah, and so they have this candle lit today, and they light it to commemorate the eight days, and then there's one in the middle, but the eight on each side, one, two, three, four on each side, is the eight days that it stayed lit. That's Hanukkah. So, not Christmas, for Jews, Hanukkah. Second, Passover, okay? This one's in the Bible. In the book of Exodus, we talked about this several weeks back when we went through Genesis Exodus, second book in the Bible. This is God's people's slaves in Egypt. God brings them out, but the night he brings them out, or the night before he brings them out, they slaughter an animal, wipe the blood on the door. And death passes over them, and then they come out while the Egyptians mourned that their firstborn died, because they didn't do, obviously, what God had told his people to do. And every year, the Jews were supposed to celebrate this. God said, "You do this every year, and you remember, and when you're doing it, and your kids have no idea what's going on, and they say, "Why are we doing this?" Then you sit them down, and you say, "This is what God did for us." He brought us out, and this is how it happened, and you do the whole thing with the lamb and the Passover meal, and all of this stuff, and you remember. It's sad when you read through the Old Testament, God's people never did it, almost never. It was a rare thing when a good king came along, and the Bible makes a point to say, "Hey, they actually celebrated the Passover this year. They didn't do it for hundreds and hundreds of years in there, but that is the Passover." Rosh Hashanah, I don't know if that's the right pronunciation, but you get the idea. Not in the Bible. This is, anybody know what this is? Yes, ram's horn, very good, how'd you guess? What really is it? Anybody know? Yeah, Jewish New Year, okay? This is Jewish New Year. We think of New Year as a celebration, kind of like, "Woo-hoo, we made it another year. It's a new year now. This is exciting," and there's some of that for the Jewish celebration, but more than that is a time of introspection, at least it's supposed to be, and on the New Year, in the Jewish tradition, you're supposed to sort of reflect and say, "Okay, did I do a good job of using my year? What did I do this year? Was it a good year? Was it a year that I used to honor the Lord to help other people, or was it a selfish year?" And so that's the focus there in New Year. They spend 10 days leading up to the next holiday in repentance, and the next holiday is Yom Kippur, which is Day of Atonement, okay? Yom means Day, Kippur means Atonement. So this is Day of Atonement. You can read about this in Leviticus. This is once a year, the high priest only goes into the holy place of, originally it was the tabernacle, then it was the temple, and first he offers a sacrifice for himself because he is a sinful man, is not fit to represent anybody. So he offers a sacrifice for himself, then he comes back with two goats or two sheep, depending on what your translation, how it works there, but two animals. In the first animal, he lays his hands on this animal, confesses sins on it, and they kill it, right? It's the unlucky animal. The other animal, they do the same thing, lay their hands on it, confesses the sins, and they drive it away out into the wilderness. In both of those things are a picture for God's people saying, blood has to be spilt to pay the penalty of sin. And when you do that, God is removing your sin from you, right? And that couldn't be pictured in the same animal. And so there's two, one whose blood is spilt to pay the penalty, one who shows that your sins have been placed on this animal and it's being carried away. You get to the New Testament, we believe Jesus fulfilled both of those animals, right? Book of Hebrews says he was the great high priest, he didn't have to offer any sacrifice for himself, he just offered himself for us to pay the penalty for our sins and to remove our sins from us. This one is interesting today because there is no temple in Jerusalem. There's a mosque sitting on the site where the temple used to be built and should be built if they were to ever rebuild it. And so today they don't offer that sacrifice and instead prayers are offered instead of an actual sacrifice. So there's Yom Kippur. Last one is Purim and all it means is dice. And this is not once a year the Jews go to Las Vegas and have a good old time. This is the book of Esther. And you read the story of Esther and you get to the end and you say, ah, that's why they celebrate Purim and that's why they call the holiday dice, literally the holiday is called dice or lots. So we're going to talk about Purim tonight and where that came about. Just to put Esther in its spot in the Bible to help you sort of get the overarching story, it's the last book in a sections of books or a section of books in the Old Testament. And so the first section of books is the law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, those five go together. The next section is history. Joshua, Judges and Ruth sort of go together. We've talked about that. First and second Samuel, first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles. Ezra and Nehemiah sort of go together and then there is Esther. These are the books that tell the story basically of Israel, the nation. And they are roughly, roughly in chronological order, although there are some things that go out of order in there, but you get the general flow of the story. We were working on books of the Bible tonight before we came up to O'wanna, just fun fact for you in the Old Testament. There are five divisions of books and to help you remember how many in each one, it's five, twelve, five, five, twelve. Five in the law, twelve in the history, five in the poets, five in the major prophets, twelve in the minor prophets, five, twelve, five, five, twelve gives you all the books in the Old Testament. So that's where Esther falls. Here's the history of Israel. We've been talking about this throughout the history books really. The conquest, period of the judges, the monarchy, that's Saul, then David, then Solomon, then division of the kingdom, Rebaum, Jeroboam, rebellion, Israel sins, goes after idols, then Judah sins and goes after idols. They both get sent into exile and then they both come back. Now we're sort of going out of order because we just looked at Ezra and Nehemiah and those books fall in the return. Ezra and Nehemiah are the last things saying these are God's people coming back. Then you get to Esther and you back up and you say, wait, now they're still in exile. They haven't started coming back yet, just maybe a little bit, they've started coming back but the folks are still in exile. So here's how those last three books fit together, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. Cyrus first sins Zerubbabel in the year 538 and he's sent to rebuild the temple and that is told in the first part of the book of Ezra. So first Zerubbabel goes back to build the temple. The next thing in the timeline is Esther still in exile, Mary's Xerxes or I read out of the ESV and in the ESV it's called Ahasaurus and Ahasaurus and Xerxes to us sound nothing the same but if you trace it back in the language somehow they come from the same Persian word. So I'm not smart enough to explain that to you, just take my word for it. Ahasaurus is Xerxes, it's not a mistake in your Bible or mine. So Esther, Mary's Ahasaurus, she becomes the queen of Persia, that's the story of the book of Esther we're going to talk about tonight. Then comes Arteserxes who comes after Xerxes, he sends Ezra back in 458 and his job is to teach the law, that's told in the second half of Ezra and then lastly Arteserxes sends Nehemiah in 444 and his job is to rebuild the walls, obviously that's told in the book of Nehemiah which we talked about last week. So Esther sort of fits right in the middle there, right between Zerubbabel and Ezra. Folks are still in exile, a few of them are coming home but Esther is in exile and if you just look in Esther 2 we're going to back up to chapter 1 but if you look in chapter 2 verse 5 it says there was a Jew in Susa the citadel whose name was Mordecai the son of Jer the son of Sheme, son of Kish, Abingomite who had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives carried away with Jekoniah king of Judah whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away. He was bringing up Hadassah that is Esther the daughter of his uncle for she had neither father nor mother. She was beautiful in her figure and she was lovely to look at and when her father and mother died Mordecai took her as his own daughter. The speculation about how did they die when did they die? Did they die when Nebuchadnezzar came and hauled people off? There was a lot of people who died at that time. The city was under siege and maybe her parents tried to fight or maybe her parents tried to escape and somehow they were killed. Maybe they died in a wagon crash or a fire or who knows what but her parents were dead and she's living with Mordecai and they're in exile they live in Susa which is the capital of Persia and so there you go Persian Empire you can see Egypt you can see Arabia that's most of that is what we think of as Saudi Arabia today and then the Persian Empire is sort of Turkey a little bit up into Greece down into Syria and Iraq and Iran and then even all the way over into India and up to kind of the east side of the Caspian Sea. So you get a sense for the Persian Empire and I know it's not the greatest map but right in between Persian and Empire down a little bit there's Susa the capital city so that's where all this is taking place in the story of Esther. So take your Bible and like I said I can't really break it down for you so we're just going to talk about the story and for some of you this will be a review I know for some of you maybe you've never read the Book of Esther and we'll at least do a fly over tonight and talk about some of the major points here it starts off with a guy named Xerxes you meet him in verse one chapter one and he's the king and he decides I'm going to have a keg party he doesn't call it a keg party but that's what we would call it I'm going to have a big party for all my friends and we're going to have as much beer as anybody wants to drink there will be no limit on how much alcohol anyone wants to consume and this isn't just a one night party this is going to be an extended party so realizing we are at church in some comments at this point may not be appropriate just tell me when a bunch of guys with money get together and drink for days and days and days what happens okay they do stupid things what else happens what's that okay you know women are going to be involved for good probably for bad probably nothing good about it take that back women are going to be involved and anything else there is going to be a lot of sinning people will be drunk women will be involved stupid decisions will be made agree okay let's see what happens in chapter one look at verse 10 on the seventh day oh there you go seventh day of the party when the heart of the king was Mary with wine translation he was drunk okay seven days into the party this is what you call a bender I had neighbors in Kentucky and he was not a nice neighbor and he used to every now and then stop by my house and say preacher I'm about to go on a bender you're not going to see me for a couple of days and we wouldn't see him for a couple of days he'd stain his house and he'd come out and we'd say how was the bender oh man I feel like I've been hit by a truck imagine that so there you go king is on a bender seventh day when the heart of the king was Mary with wine he commanded mehuman bista harbona bigtha and abaggtha zethar and carcass the seven eunuchs who served in the presence of king Ahasarus to bring queen Vashti before the king with her royal crown in order to show the peoples in the princes her beauty for she was lovely to look at seven days in he's drunk now women are involved seven days into it he says I think it'd be a good idea to bring my wife out here for everyone to gawk at and that means what you think it means when you read that what he expected his wife to do means exactly what you think it means in the Bible is very modest in describing it but you get the idea he brings her out or he he commands her to come out verse 12 queen Vashti refused to come at the king's command delivered by the eunuchs at this the king became enraged in his anger burned within him so right there in those verses you have everything we talked about you know they're going to get drunk you know women are going to be involved and you know somebody's going to do something stupid and the stupid thing is when his queen refuses to come out and let all these drunk guys gawk at her he says you're not the queen anymore forget you I'm done with you if you're not going to do what the king says you're out of here so Vashti is no longer the queen come to chapter two we meet Mordecai we read verse three we read Hadassah or Esther his niece or relative in some some way shape or form and listen I'm saying this this will not be the last time I say this in the book of Esther it just so happens that they were living in Judah and they get hauled into exile by Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon and they end up in Sousa it just so happens wow that Esther gets hauled from her home with Mordecai planted in Sousa so we meet them here in chapter two and the king Xerxes comes up with the plan and the plan is basically I want to see all the nice ladies who are not married and I want you to bring them into the palace for six months and I want you to make them look good and smell good and at the end of six months when you prep them all up and you train them all up and you have them all looking nice I'm going to pick my favorite one and you read the story and one is brought into him each night and again Esther's very reserved but it means what you think it means brings these ladies in one at a time and when it finally comes to Esther it just so happens just so I mean crazy it just so happens that of all these ladies she's the one that he likes the most and he says huh I think you'll do just so happens what a coincidence Esther is now the queen look at chapter two verse 16 says when Esther was taken to king Ahasaros king Xerxes into his royal palace in the tenth month which is the month of Tibet in the seventh year of his reign the king loved Esther more than all the women and she won grace and found favor in his sight more than all the virgins so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti so she becomes the new queen interesting in the next couple of verses verse 20 it specifically says she did not tell anybody that she was a Jew it just so happens that Mordecai told Esther why don't you just keep that quiet you're a pretty young lady nobody needs to know this just don't ask don't tell be quiet don't tell anybody that you're a Jew and it says that she obeys Mordecai like he was his father he was her father and so she doesn't tell anybody that now you go down to chapter 3 and we meet a guy named Haman the egg a guide in chapter 3 and skip something in chapter 2 that's worth mentioning look at chapter 2 verse 21 before we get to Haman it says in those days Mordecai was sitting at the king's gate big thumb and taresh two of the king's eunuchs who guarded the threshold became angry and they sought to lay hands on king Hasarus this came to the knowledge of Mordecai it just so happens he's walking through the gates and he hears these guys whispering under their breath and they're saying we're going to kill the king and it just so happens he walks by at the exact right time and he hears this he makes it known to the king he saves his life from this assassination attempt and listen it just so happens that the king says this is such a great day my life has been saved we ought to write it down in my book the king had an ego and everything in his life they wrote down in a book and he says you should write this down God named Mordecai saved my life put it in there in the book so they put it in the book all of this quite a coincidence chapter three we meet Haman look at chapter three verse one after these things king Hasarus promoted Haman the agogite the son of Hamadatha and advanced him and set him on his throne above all the officials who are with him and all the king servants who are at the king's gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman for the king had so commanded concerning him but Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage Haman gets promoted to number two and everybody is supposed to bow down when he walks in the room and Mordecai's a Jew and he's maybe heard the stories of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego right who have been in battle on and he's thinking to himself I'm not supposed to bow down to this guy I'm not supposed to bow down to anybody but God and he refuses to do it Haman is furious he hates Mordecai hates Mordecai and so there you go Haman is angry and Haman says like the rational person he is because Haman excuse me because Mordecai did this I want to kill every Jew in Persia he's a Jew all Jews must be this way if he's not going to bow down I just want to kill every Jew in Persia look at chapter three verse seven in the first month which is the month of Nisan in the twelfth year of king Ahasaras they cast poor that's the single version in Hebrew of Purim the M on the end of a word in Hebrew means it's plural M is S for us we add an S they add an M so they cast poor they roll a dice they cast lots before Haman day after day and they cast it month after month till the twelfth month with which is the month of Adar and basically what they're saying is Haman you can kill all the Jews when do you want to do it I don't know let's roll dice let's just let the dice decide what month we're going to kill them so they roll these dice and they play their little game and it just so happens that it's not that month that they roll and it's not the next day that they roll it's a little ways out the month of Adar that they roll all of this again quite a coincidence so you come in chapter three and Mordecai finds out about it chapter four chapter three Mordecai finds out he says okay I won't bow down to this guy now he wants to kill all of us he has permission to do it and they have a date set when they're going to round us up and just slaughter us genocide all of us are going to die he says our only hope is Queen Esther we need the queen to go tell the king that she's a Jew and to put a stop to this whole thing and so he goes and he ask Esther to help look at chapter four verse 11 Esther is speaking and it says all the king servants and the people of the king's province is no that if any man or woman goes to the king in the inner court without being called there's but one law to be put to death except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live but as for me I've not been called to come into the king for 30 days she says look if I go in there the law says I go without being invited and he just chops my head off and he hasn't said anything maybe they're having a fight who knows maybe he's got another lady we're not told but for 30 days he hasn't talked to Esther she hasn't been called in to see her husband a month and now her people are saying we need you to go talk to your husband the one who's mad at you and you're having this tiff apparently and we need you to save our life and she's telling them I could die unless he holds out the scepter they're going to kill me verse 12 they told Mordecai what Esther said and Mordecai said to them told them to reply to Esther do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews in other words eventually they're going to figure it out and you're dead so do nothing we're all going to die and sooner or later you're going to die verse 14 if you keep silent at this time relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place but you and your father's house will perish and who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time is this in other words Mordecai says look maybe maybe all this is not a coincidence being sent into exile being planted in sousa being picked among all the virgins and me and Haman and all this stuff maybe it's not just a coincidence maybe you're the one that's supposed to bring this deliverance but he says if it's not you it's going to it'll come from somewhere else God will take care of his people he's not bringing his people back from exile just to let us all die in exile God won't let that happen God will keep his promise he doesn't mention God but he does say deliverance will come from somebody else and so here's a great statement by Esther verse 16 she says okay get all the Jews together and hold the fast for three days don't eat or drink and me and my friends are going to do the exact same thing in other words we're going to spend time praying about this before I just rush in so we're going to fast we're going to pray and then here it comes I will go to the king though it is against the law and if I perish I perish it's 50/50 he could kill me or he could listen either way I know that I need to do this so I'll go in and if I perish I perish so she goes in and this is in chapter 5 and it says in verse 2 that when the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court she won favor in his sight and he held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand and when you get to that part of the story you guys know how it goes so you kind of know the answer but when you get there and you're reading it the first time you're just ready for Esther to blurt it all out right that's the tension it's gone he didn't kill her he's gonna listen and you just think she's just gonna say I'm a Jew and they're trying to kill us all and you have to stop payment blah blah blah spill the whole thing and she doesn't do it she comes in he holds out the scepter and Esther says what how about a dinner party let's go eat tonight my treat you and me and I don't know why don't we invite Haman the king has no idea all the things going on behind the scenes he says okay great we'll go eat dinner you me and Haman so they go to dinner and you can read about this dinner you get to the dinner and what you're thinking is okay here it comes she's gonna tell him Haman's there I see what she's doing now she wanted to get just the three of them alone she's gonna tell him does she tell him at dinner that night she doesn't say anything the Bible doesn't tell us why she doesn't say anything at dinner but what are the possibilities what are the what is a possible explanation maybe it just didn't feel right for some reason okay what's another possibility okay could have been culture could have been custom that he had a seven day beer party maybe if you go eat dinner you're supposed to do it two nights in a row I don't know so maybe there's a cultural thing there what's another possibility okay now you know the rest of the story though she doesn't know the rest of the story what's another possibility what's that maybe she prayed and she just felt like this was the direction God wanted her to take it's possibility what's another possibility maybe she just chickened out she seems like a pretty brave lady right she knows she could die and she goes into the king anyway so I don't want to just say Esther's a big chicken but I think it's entirely possible she goes down she sits to dinner and she thinks oh I just don't know what to say how do I bring it up what do I do what's the king gonna think Haman might argue Haman might make me look bad so maybe she just panics ah so she knows she knows she's not dumb she says I'm clean because of wine decisions come a little bit easier when the king has a little bit in his system yeah and the king has told her already when she came in I'll give you anything up to half the kingdom tell me what you want he told her that right away and she could have just spilled at all but she said let's go have dinner they go have dinner the offer still stands what do you want have the kingdom let me know she doesn't ask and instead at that dinner she says let's have dinner the next night so for whatever reason maybe she's prayed about it maybe God's directed her maybe Mordecai gave her advice maybe she went out maybe it was all part of her master plan for whatever reason she says that we are going to have dinner the next night now again you know how it ends but if you're Haman you're starting to think that life is pretty good you're number two in the kingdom in all the Persia right next to Xerxes or a Hasteros and you're about to slaughter all the people you hate the most all the Jews are about to get flushed and you're behind all of it especially Mordecai the guy that you really really hate and at this point in the story Nancy you're right his head gets a little bit too big and he says you know what I know we set this day when we're going to just go slaughter all these Jews but Mordecai deserves a little bit worse so let's build some gallows build them tall right this is like Clint Eastwood hang them high right I want you to build them up there and Mordecai rest of them we're just going to go slit their throats we're just going to kill them all Mordecai I want it to be a public spectacle I want to humiliate him why because he humiliated me he refused to bow down to me he defied me so I'm going to humiliate him just like he did to me and so that is his plan and it just so happens that he decides and he gives the order to build these gallows okay so they've had she goes in she gets the scepter let's have dinner they go have dinner they just chit chat she says let's have dinner again the next night Haman says life is so good I just think I'm going to go all the way and punish Mordecai to the extreme and he's ready for dinner the next night with just him and the queen he is an important important guy and it just so happens that night that the king can't sleep maybe this is part of Esther's plan maybe she fed him something spicy and he had indigestion or maybe she spiked him with something and he had stomach problems or who knows he can't sleep he's wide awake all night and he's twiddling his thumbs and I told you this guy has an ego you know he has an ego right he just gets rid of his wife when she doesn't come out and do whatever he wants her to do he picks from all these ladies he thinks he's pretty big stuff so he says I can't sleep what do I want to do do I want to watch an episode of Downton Abbey do I want to do a crossword puzzle hey get the book about me read to me about me I want to hear about me there you go guy goes back to the closet of books about the king I don't which one do I want to read I hate these books these are the worst books ever it just so happens he picks this one off the shelf okay here we go once upon a time there was a couple of guys that tried to kill the king and there was a guy named Mordecai who overheard it at the gates and he saved your life and then the next story whoa wait a minute I forgot about that that was a good story almost died Mordecai saved me this is in the middle of the night what do we do for that guy we give him a house we give him a million dollars what do we do we didn't do anything for him it's not written down in the book that's just how the story ends he saved your life you were happy in the story and the king says to himself well he saved the most important person in the kingdom we should do something for Mordecai right so finally he can go to sleep the next morning Haman comes in Haman's excited we're going to kill Mordecai we're going to get these Jews and the king Xerxes says to Haman this is the best part of the story in my opinion as Haman Haman I need a I need a plan to honor somebody important there's somebody I have in mind who is a special guy and I just want to do something really nice for him what do you think we should do for someone like that Haman who also has an ego thinks what oh buddy life couldn't get better but it just did I think you ought to give him some of your fancy clothes and I think you ought to let him ride your horse and I think you ought to parade him up and down the streets and when they're going up and down the streets somebody goes in front and everybody has to bow down to whoever's riding your horse that would be awesome Xerxes Haman I pay you the big bucks for a reason that is a fantastic plan go find Mordecai and do that for him give him my clothes put him on my horse and why don't you walk around with him why don't you be the guy to take him around town and tell everybody to bow down don't forget to bow down to because you're taking him around you need to bow down with him and so Haman has to do this and he's mortified I he just he is eat up with rage here is what really is the best part of the story okay he does this he takes him up and down the streets dresses him up makes everybody bow down look at Esther 6 verse 12 Mordecai returned to the king's gate but Haman hurried to his house mourning with his head covered right he is humiliated and Haman told his wife Xerash and all his friends everything that had happened to him then his wise men and his wife Xerash said to him if Mordecai before whom you have begun to fall as of the Jewish people you will not overcome him but will surely fall before him thank you honey that's his wife saying look you're trying to kill this guy and that's what happened you're dead that's what his wife just told him you're gonna die you can't beat this guy you came up with this big plan and look what happened you're toast you're gonna die and so there you go supportive spouse that she was mrs. Xerash chapter 7 chapter 7 look at chapter 7 starting in verse 7 Esther that goes to dinner with Haman and the king and she tells him I am a Jew and Haman is trying to kill all of my people which means me and verse 7 says the king arose in his wrath from the wine drinking there you go mrs. Geneva you hit it right on the head wine again involved she's not a dumb lady he went into the palace garden but Haman stayed to beg for his life from queen Esther for he saw that harm was determined against him by the king so you understand what happened they're sitting in this little room eating Esther spills the beans Haman doesn't know what to say the king is so mad he says I'm this like your dad when you got in trouble and you were six years old I'm so mad I can't talk to you right now I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna walk a little bit of this off I'm so angry I'm so mad so he leaves so now it's Esther and Haman and Haman is on his knees bagging pleading holding on to her feet grasping at her hands please please please please please please verse 8 the king returned from the palace garden to the place where they were drinking wine as Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was it just so happens that as Esther is being fawned over by Haman and he's just drooled please please have mercy the king walks back in and he thinks what he's half drunk and he sees this guy falling all over his wife and he thinks what I step outside for two minutes and you're making a move on my wife that's what he thinks he's falling on the couch where Esther was in the king said well he even assault the queen of my presence at my own house is the word left the mouth of the king they covered Haman's face then harbona one of the eunuchs in attendance of the king said moreover the gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai whose words saved the king it just so happens that they're done they're standing at Haman's house 50 qubits high and the king said that'll do hang him on that so they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai then the wrath of the king abated says on that day king or hazardous gave to queen Esther the house of Haman the enemy of the Jews and Mordecai came before the king the king for Esther told what he was to her and the king took off his signet ring which he had taken from Haman and gave it to Mordecai and Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman irony of ironies here at the end and you can read the rest of it basically in that culture once you made a law you couldn't unmake it but you could make a new law so they made a new law that said Jews you know the day's coming fight back get your sword on get your knife on practice up your ninja skills because these guys are coming from you and on this day you do whatever you need to do you fight back you kill them it's all on you and so the Jews do that look at chapter nine verse 19 says therefore the Jews of the villages who live in the rural towns hold the 14th day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting as a holiday and as a day on which they send gifts of food to one another keep reading Mordecai recorded all these things and sent letters to all the Jews who are in all the provinces of king Hasareth both near and far obliging them to keep the 14th day of the month Adar and also the 15th day of the same year by year as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday that they should make them days of feasting and gladness days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor so the Jews accepted what they had started to do and what Mordecai had written to them Haman the agogite the son of Hamadath and the enemy of all the Jews had plotted against the Jews to destroy them and had cast poor that is dice or lots to crush and destroy them but when it came before the king he gave orders in writing that his evil plan that he had devised against the Jews should return on his own head and that he and his son should be hanged on the gallows therefore they called these days Purim after the term pure therefore because all that was written in this letter and of what they had faced on this matter and what have happened to them the Jews firmly obligated themselves in their offspring and all who joined them that without fail they would keep these two days according to what was written at the time appointed every year that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation in every clan province and city that these days of Purim should never fall into disuse among the Jews nor should the commemoration of these days cease among their descendants and then Esther gives a letter Queen Esther gives this letter about Purim and celebrating and that's the end of the book here's the lessons very very simple okay a great story but really a pretty simple story and so the lessons are simple number one there are no coincidences none not in Esther's life not in Mordecai's life not in your life not in my life none we we think that there are oh that's what a coincidence what imagine the odds oh it's a small world oh I can't believe that's who would have guessed there's no coincidences in life and you look at the book of Esther and you say God G.O.D. is never found anywhere on the book on the pages in writing but he's in every every paragraph in every sentence every just so happens is not a it just so happened he's behind the scenes orchestrating putting all these things into place for the good of his people next to go together God wants his people to have faith and he wants them to take action. Esther had to do both of those things right she had to believe that either God would protect her and use her or as Mordecai said deliverance is going to come from somewhere else and the reason they had faith in that is not just saying well we're such great people God wouldn't let any bad things happen to us that had nothing to do with it they're in the midst of the period you understand Zerubbabel just went back Ezra's getting ready to go Nehemiah's getting ready to go they're in this time of return and they're saying God has promised to do this he promised to send us into exile if we disobeyed and he did it but he also promised that after 70 years he would bring us back and so Mordecai's looking around saying there's no way he's gonna let everybody die that would break his promise if we all die and nobody gets to go back God doesn't keep his word God is going to keep his word he said that we would go back we will go back they had to have faith they also had to take action and that action took courage and took guts last lesson is this God can deliver miraculously or providentially the story of Esther really is not all that different than the story of the Exodus we think of the Exodus as this big giant miracle and locusts and the thunder and the hail and the Passover and all these amazing things that happened in the Exodus and God saved his people with all these miraculous things Esther is the exact same story except God doesn't do it with flashing lights and signs and miracles and wonders he does it all behind the scenes with people who didn't even realize what was going on but the exact same thing happened God's people are not in the land that God promised to give them in Exodus and in Esther and God has told them in both of those stories I will bring you into the land a promise I will do it and in the Exodus he chooses to do it this way miraculously and with Esther he chooses to do it this way quietly not a lot of fanfare no Moses show down with Pharaoh just quietly behind the scenes through a young poor Jewish girl and when you compare those two Esther is really a picture of what God did for us through Jesus how God saved his people at the cross it wasn't crazy signs and big powerful things and shows a might and power like you see with God versus Pharaoh in Exodus it's just a humble relatively unknown guy in the back corner of a powerful empire doing something that honestly most people didn't take a whole lot of notice of but through it through the humility of it and through God putting all the right pieces in place God saved his people so in the end Esther is a great picture of what Jesus did for us in saving us at the cross so there you go that's Esther next week we jump into the book of Job and we will try to tackle that's a difficult book we'll try to tackle Job so let me pray for us and then we will wrap up this evening father we love you thank you for your grace in your mercy and our lives father help us to believe that there are no coincidences there are no there's no chance there's no happenstance but that you are in control of our lives from beginning to end big things little things father forgive us when we have too small of an idea of who you are and what you're capable of father forgive us when we only look for miraculous deliverance or we only look for spectacular saving but father help us to also be aware and be mindful that you can save in any way that you choose miraculously or providentially boldly and publicly or behind the scenes and quietly father we thank you for Jesus and for the humility of his life and the humility of his death and that father in the strangest of ways in the most unexpected of circumstances you used Jesus and his life and his death and his resurrection to give us life and to save us and to make us your people to give us the hope of a land and a place that you're preparing for us father we are grateful for the bible we pray that as we continue to study through these old testament books that we would be mindful of your promises mindful of of all of these events all of these stories all of these prophecies pointing us forward to your son Jesus Christ and we pray in his name amen