Esther 4
Our reading will be Esther chapter
four, it’s 17 verses. And we pick up where we left
off last week, the edict to exterminate all the people of God who were
exiled in the Persian Babylonian Empire will be exterminated on
a certain day. And so the edict standing, is
the context where we pick up in chapter four. It says, when
Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his
clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes and went out into the
midst of the city and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry.
He went up to the entrance of the king’s gate for no one was
allowed to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. And in
every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree
reached, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting
and weeping and lamenting, and many of them laying in sackcloth
and ashes. When Esther’s young women and
her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed.
She sent garments to clothe Mordecai so that he might take off his
sackcloth, but he would not accept them. Then Esther called for
Hathath, one of the king’s eunuchs who had been appointed to attend
her and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was
and why it was. Hathach went out to Mordecai
in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate and
Mordecai told him all that had happened to him and the exact
sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries
for the destruction of the Jews. Mordecai also gave him a copy
of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction,
that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and command
her to go to the king and to beg his favor and to plead with
him on behalf of her people. And Hathach went and told Esther
what Mordecai had said. Then Esther spoke to Hathach
and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, all the king’s servants
and all the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man
or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being
called, there is 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 have not been
called to come in to the king these 30 days.” And they told
Mordecai what Esther had said. Then Mordecai told them to reply
to Esther, do not think that you yourself in the king’s palace
will escape any more than all the other Jews. For 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 as this. Then Esther told them to reply
to Mordecai, go gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and
hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three
days, night or day. I and my young women will also
fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though
it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish. Mordecai
then went away and did everything as Esther ordered him. Amen,
the word of the living God. So the most beautiful woman from
India to Ethiopia has a major dilemma. That’s what we’ve learned
thus far in the book of Esther. She has risen to her position
as queen. She’s risen to her place, the
wife of Ahasuerus, really by virtue of her beauty. Remember,
she is a young Jewish gal raised not by her parents, but by her
uncle Mordecai. And for some reason, maybe four
or five generations of being in exile has worn down the Jewish
people, many of them, at least in their case, it’s true, from
their from their dietary laws, from their purity laws, from
their hours of prayer. We contrast Esther with Daniel. Daniel was devoted, Esther is,
well, she’s assimilated. But this woman has a major dilemma. What do we say these days, see
something, say something? Yeah, or it’s see something,
say nothing. That’s really the dilemma before
her. She can risk her own neck, go to the king, tell him Haman’s
plot, or she can keep quiet. She can save her own neck while
her people across the kingdom will perish. This is 17 verses
of agony. Look at how many times the word
distress, how many times the word mourning, how many times
the reference to sackcloth and ashes and crying out and mourning
and fasting and all of the words of bitterness and hardship. These are 17 verses of great
agony. And we get the 17 verses and
we say, okay, it happened, it happened, it happened. But we
could fill in the gaps, couldn’t we? And we could think of the
sleepless nights. We could think of the pit in the stomach. We
could think of the nausea. We could think of the chills,
the flush feeling of all of our blood leaving our bodies. So
much going on, 17 verses of agony. But thank the Lord for a go-between. There’s hay thatch. A lot of
you went through the Downton Abbey craze, you know, PBS, Masterpiece
Theater, a couple years ago. We liked watching the upstairs
and the downstairs of whatever that house was called. And they
had footmen and they had butlers, but they got nothing on Esther.
She has a chief eunuch. I mean, everybody needs a yard
guy, right? But you need a chief eunuch.
I would love to have a chief eunuch. I would have arrived
in life. But she has, hey thatch, the king’s eunuch assigned to
her life and well-being. Several years ago we had four
pastoral interns at the church and we loved joking with them
that their job was to pick up our dry cleaning and do our banking
and all the rest. But the funny thing was, we always
ended up serving them, which was rather humbling, but the
way it ought to be, I suppose. But that’s her privilege in life. And so between Esther in the
king’s harem and Mordecai at the king’s gate, this Hathath
fellow plays a really, really important role in our story. Can you imagine what is going
on in the Queen’s mind and heart. She can’t speak to her uncle.
She’s relied on him for advice. He’s raised her from a youth,
but they’re stuck in their separate places with this Haythatch fella,
and I imagine she feels rather powerless, though she’s She’s
the queen. And maybe it doesn’t mean she
rules or has much influence, but she is, after all, the queen
of the most vast empire yet to be on the face of the earth.
A couple other thoughts about Esther. We often think of her
as a hero, a heroine, right? We often think of her as the
one who saved the Jews. But remember, a couple weeks
ago, we spoiled that party. We’ll spoil it again tonight.
She’s a child of Abraham. but she’s married to a pagan
king. She is a daughter of the covenant,
but married to a foreigner. Everything she has done literally
up until this point is, well, it’s mostly ungodly. Okay, she
obeyed Mordecai, she did what he asked, she was probably schooled
in maybe what had trickled down as the ways of a good Jewish
child at the time. not in the land, five generations
since exile. But nevertheless, here she is. God is going to use her and maybe
in a sense, she will be a hero of the faith. Well, let’s think
about some of the big issues in this passage. First of all,
there’s an edict. The edict has been written, it’s
been passed, it’s been stamped with the signet. It’s been translated
into all the languages of the 127 provinces, satrapies, whatever
you call them. It’s been distributed. It’s set
in stone. It is the law of the Medes and
Persians, and it will come to pass in 11 months. The reality on the ground will
be the annihilation of a population, an ethnic cleansing. We hear
about these things on the news, we read about them in history,
but this is right before us and it’s the people of God. Not that
other nations don’t matter, but this is the people of God facing
certain death by an edict of a maniacal king and his foolish
counselors. I’ve got a question for you.
How many of you have already forgotten about Afghanistan? It’s a rhetorical question. It’s
already many new cycles in the past. Were we not horrified in
August of a Taliban takeover? Were we not horrified of the
murders and the threats, particularly against the women of Afghanistan?
That’s just old news now, but not for them. And so our hearts
must be in this story. Our hearts must be in the story
when the plight of humanity is at stake. So the reality on the
ground is in 11 months, doom is sure. It’s all because Mordecai
would not bow down. And so maybe you got your ethical
hat on here for a minute. Just get the vaccine. Just bow
to political pressure and political correctness. Just do what you’re
told to get the job. Just say what you gotta say to
make HR happy. Tell your children as you drop
them off at school, don’t be offensive. I was thinking earlier
when you said wild goose chase. Geese are now offended. You can’t
say anything anymore. You can’t use euphemisms. You
can’t throw out old sayings. Mordecai, you should have just
bowed. You didn’t have to mean anything. You could have just
tipped the hat. You could have just, you know,
you could have had the contempt in your heart and just done the
little hand motion. But this is all because Mordecai
would not bow. No, it’s worse than that. It’s
the ancient battle between the seed of the serpent, the seed
of the woman. This is the ancient battle between
Satan and Christ. It’s manifesting itself here
in the life of Haman and his hatred for Mordecai and now for
the Jewish population. This ancient hatred, this plot
comes from a bribe. Remember last week, hey king,
I’ll put a dump truck load of silver into your treasury if
you’ll pass this edict. It’s all about money, isn’t it?
It’s all about beauty. It’s all about excess. It’s all
about the wine flowing. It’s all about the partying and
the finery. We don’t care, Haman says, Ahasuerus
says, we don’t care who it happens to as long as we can eat and
drink and be merry. Remember when the edict was written
in our study last week, the two sat down to drink. But meanwhile,
we have this picture. And it’s the second thing we
want to think about after the edict. We want to think about
the mourning, not the AM, but the M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. There’s sackcloth, there’s ashes,
there’s wailing and weeping. There’s all of this weariness
and distress. And it’s not over something that
has happened. Usually we weep and wail when
something terrible has happened. But this is simply over the edict. They know what a serious predicament
they’re in. They’re living in the world’s
most powerful nation at that time. And so if an edict goes
out to exterminate the entire Jewish population, it’s a sure
bet it’s gonna take place. It’s gonna happen. They’re ethnicity
known. We’ve read about it in subsequent
history. We’ve read about the Germans,
the Nazis. We’ve read about the communists and what they’ve done.
In our own lifetime, and particularly mine, a little younger than some
of y’all, we’ve seen ethnic cleansing, the Kurds. We see the situation
in Afghanistan now. We know the difficulty of persecution
in many modern day cultures. God’s people under duress. And
so there’s mourning. This story moves from the excesses
of the king. the pleasures of the king to
the day of destruction, the day of execution. I don’t know how
many times in your life you felt a weightiness, a heaviness, you
felt on the threshold of eternity and all of a sudden the trivialities
of life did not matter. The TV guide was irrelevant.
The People magazine headlines were foolishness to you. It was time to get down to brass
tacks, we say. That’s what they’re facing. And while we live, and
I want to be careful here not to be a little too preachy, but
while we live our normal lives, while we pick up our groceries,
pump our gas, and yes, we complain about inflation, and it’s worth
complaining about, it hurts. There are people in other parts
of the world in far worse conditions, far worse situations, and it’s
not just pain at the pump. It’s death for being a worshiper.
It’s suffering for preaching Jesus. It’s separation from families. And so we could stand a little
mourning in our lives. We could stand a little dust
and sackcloth and ashes, but we don’t have time to mourn with
those who are in pain. We’re busy. We’ve got our TV
guides and our people magazines and our trivialities. But could we not use a little
mourning over the suffering of the people of God. We live in
our excesses of eosurus, while God’s people in other parts of
the world are suffering with a hand of execution weighing
over them. So there’s the edict, there’s
the mourning. But let’s think about the third
feature of the passage. It’s the queen. It’s the queen
finally hearing news. Now, picture this. There’s been
weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, we say, right? The
Jewish population throughout the entire kingdom has heard
of this edict. They now feel the weight of this. And guess what? Queen Esther
is insulated from this. Isn’t that a stark contrast?
She’s living in the excesses of the harem. In contrast to
that, the king keeps these women for his pleasure. These women
are disposable. And they’re really only treated
well for that one night he’ll be with them. Yet, there’s another
people who are completely disposable as well. And it’s their lives
that are disposable. But Queen Esther is insulated
from this. And there’s a spiritual lesson
we really ought to see in Queen Esther’s life. She’s serving
two masters. She’s the queen. She’s married
to an oriental king. She has not kept the faith, so
to speak. She’s married outside the covenant. She is queen by day, but secretly
a Jew. Remember the first couple of
chapters, don’t tell who you are. Don’t tell who your people
are. It finally has to be told. But she is living two lives. But can’t you imagine as hardship
brings these rare moments of clarity. Her people are in trouble. She is in trouble. She is not,
as Mordecai tells her by message, she is not immune to this edict. And so she sends a change of
clothes. It can’t be, Mordecai, that you’re
out and about making a fool of yourself. It’s going to make
the situation worse. You’re going to bring more attention.
They’ll move this edict up. execute and annihilate all of
us, not in 11 months, but in 11 days if we’re not careful.
So there’s all these notes and correspondence. There’s the wrestling
with what to do, the desire to serve Yahweh, but you know how
this goes. We face an ethical situation.
We face a dilemma. Maybe it’s in the workplace.
Maybe it’s with a health care decision. Maybe it’s with friendships
or a church decision. Maybe it’s with our children.
Maybe it’s with our grown children. We have this thing we face. I know what the right thing is.
And the right thing will be really hard. And so we start rationalizing. And we end up over here. And
so we can’t fault Esther too much. I mean, she did the wrong
thing. She’s living the wrong way. She’s
two-faced. She’s serving two masters. And
we know biblically and theologically how that goes, but how often
are we there ourselves, willing to compromise, willing to wrestle,
but hoping for that free pass? Lord, I’ll serve you, but just
don’t make it too hard. I’ll serve you, but don’t make
me suffer. And so there’s great hardship
that has fallen upon her life. The most beautiful woman in the
world, we said at the beginning, is in a great dilemma. Now her dilemma is a big one.
It’s not just the extermination of her people. She’s married
to a wicked man. She’s married to an impulsive
man. She’s married to a drunk. And she is married to this wicked,
impulsive drunk who has surrounded himself with idiots. And so she
knows that unless the golden scepter is held out, she cannot
enter this inner chamber where only these seven, well, idiots
sit surrounding him eating and drinking and making merry and
talking about who knows what. It’s certainly probably not fit
for church. She’s in a big predicament, not
just with her people, but with her king and with her husband.
Last chapter, chapter three, it begins speaking of a second
harem. And we think, oh, the king’s
just got backups. This man, and you can look up
historical records, you can see how the design of his harem thing
worked. He had this whole separate house
attached to his palace, and it was like a escalator, one escalator
going up and one going down. Bring one in, and if I’m happy,
fine, if I’m not. What does Esther know? He is
not a one-woman man. What does Esther know? He’ll
banish me like he’s done to Vashti. And so her big dilemma is here
is if I go into the king, will I get his heart or will I get
his temper? And what does she resolve? I’m
going to go. And if I perish, I perish. If
I die, I die. That’s not a situation we often
find ourselves in, but it’s It’s got some lessons for us. I think
of Psalm 15 very often. Psalm 15, who can dwell on God’s
holy hill? Who can enter into his tabernacle?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart. He who does not swear
falsely. And this is the best part of
Psalm 15. He who gives his word even if
it hurts him. This is a Psalm I often read
when we have an elder or deacon candidate come before the elders
to be interviewed to become an officer in the church, will you
swear to your own hurt? Will you serve the Lord and this
church, even if your reputation, what do a group of men do when
they get together, you wonder? Well, we don’t wanna do church
discipline because, well, they’re a big giver. We don’t wanna,
you know, we don’t wanna upset the apple cart here and so, We never swear to our own hurt,
because we like our own necks, we like our skin, we like our
hides, and so the passage teaches us what Psalm 15 teaches us. A godly person will, well, endure
injury, maybe even death for the sake of the people of God.
There’s another thing to think of, this Me Too movement we’re
in. You know, see something, say
something. You know, we say, oh, They didn’t
mean anything by it. They’re a good person. Well,
good people don’t do that kind of stuff. But what’s the old
saying? All evil needs is for good people
to stand by and do nothing. So sometimes it’s time for us
to act. This also brings up ethics. How
do we know what’s right and wrong? Well, it’s in the Bible. It’s
rooted in creation. It’s rooted in natural law. Should
we kill people? No, it’s wrong to kill humanity. Should we abort babies for the
sake of convenience? Should we tolerate all the things
we tolerate in our homes and in our churches? We need to be
ethical people. This is not the time for Esther
to be reading through Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative
and deciding the greatest good for the greatest number and all
that, it’s either right or wrong. This brings up the thought of
risk. Is it worth it to lose it all
to follow Christ? Is it worth it to protect your reputation and keep
quiet? Is it worth it to live with a guilty conscience that
haunts you at night because you made the wrong choice and you
now realize that for the sake of convenience for you, you have
hurt so many others? I don’t mean this politically,
and I know it’s a political issue, but could you imagine having
to sleep at night saying all that was done with the Afghan,
Afghani folks? You know, we’re learning that
there’s still Tons of people there, oh, they didn’t want to
leave. Well, yeah, they did. They just wanted to leave with
their whole family or with their loved ones. And could you imagine
trying to sleep at night? We have lost our conscience,
I think, in our country when we just say, oh, didn’t happen.
Doesn’t bother me. This brings up the idea of having
a Christian worldview. How do we interpret events? How
do we think through issues in life? There’s a lot of chants and lots
in the book of Esther. They cast lots. They wanted to
see when to bring this edict before Ahasuerus, and it took
almost a year. But God is at work. God is sovereignly
at work, and he’s using Esther. He’s using her sins. He’s using
her weakness. He’s using her foolishness. She
is at the right place at the right time for such a time as
this. Doesn’t make all of her behavior
correct, but we see God’s purposes, God’s ways. We want to be used
by the Lord, and if we die, we die. Think of Jim Elliott, Nate
Saint. Think of, was it Roger Udarian
and those five missionaries? Willing to go into very hostile
Alka Indian territory. As they went in that day, they
sang, we rest in thee, God is my shield and defender. And what
kind of world will we live in if people, especially Christians,
aren’t willing to stick their necks out to do the right thing? What did the Apostle Paul say?
To live is Christ and to die is gain. But Mordecai is a man
of faith in this passage. He’s the last person we want
to think of. And just for a minute here, and I really mean a minute,
R.C. Sproul says you can say in conclusion
as a preacher as many times as you want. I hadn’t said that
yet, but in conclusion. Mordecai makes a very interesting
statement. He says to Esther, relief and
deliverance is gonna come, and it can come from you, and you’ll
save your own neck. But if you choose to do the wrong
thing, it will come later, and you and your household will be
dead. Now, that is a firm, This is a man who remembers the
promises of God from of old to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob.
And this is a man who, think of it this way, we complain about
Christianity in America, it’s all but gone, and it is. This
is a man of Jewish faith, four or five generations removed from
the promised land. And this is his faith in a time
of faint hope. truth. This is his faith from
the work of generations before him and planting the promises
of God in him. And so just when you think the
light in America is really dim, there can be people like Mordecai
that remember the promises and an entire church, an entire people
is saved because they remember a promise and they act on it.
So, don’t think too small of dark times. They can be the best
times for the people of God. Let’s go before God in prayer.
Our Lord, we remember your promises. They are from of old. You have
promised to be a God to your people, and your promise is to
bring us into your everlasting presence forever. Though trouble
assails us, though Satan does his worst, We belong to Christ
Jesus, and if we perish, we perish. But to live is Christ and to
die is great gain. So remind us of these truths
tonight. Plant them deep in our hearts,
we pray in Christ’s name, amen.