Esther 4:1-17 “Real People in Real Terror”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹And Mordecai knew all which was done and Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sack cloth and ash and he went out in the middle of the city and he cried out a cry great and bitter. ²And he came in even to the faces of the gate of the king because not to enter to the gate of the king in clothing of sack cloth, ³and in the all of a province and a province from a place which the word of the king and his law arriving, mourning great to the Jews and fasting and weeping and wailing. Sack cloth and ash was spread to the many. ⁴And the maids of Esther came in and her eunuchs, and they told to her, and the queen was deeply distressed, and sent clothes to clothe Mordecai and to take away his sack cloth from upon him and he did not take, ⁵and Esther called to Hathak from the eunuchs of the king who was caused to stand to her face and she commanded him upon Mordecai to know what this and upon what this? ⁶And Hathak went out to Mordecai to the plaza of the city which [was] to the faces of the gate of the king, ⁷and Mordecai told to him all which happened to him and the exact amount of the silver which Haman said to weigh upon the treasuries of the king in the Jews to destroy [them]. ⁸And the copy of the writing of the law which was given in Shushan to destroy them he gave to him to show Esther and to tell to her and to command her to go in to the king to seek favor to him and to seek from his face upon her people. ⁹And Hathak came in and he told to Esther the words of Mordecai, ¹⁰and Esther spoke to Hathak and she commanded him to Mordecai.  ¹¹“The all of the servants of the king and the people of the provinces of the king knowing that every man or woman wo goes to the king to the court of the inner, who was not called, the one of the law of him to kill, except from whom the king extends to him the scepter of the gold, he will live, and I have not been called to go to the king this thirty of day.” ¹²And they told to Mordecai the words of Esther, ¹³and Mordecai said to reply, “Esther, do not think in your soul to escape the house of the king from the all of the Jews, ¹⁴for, if to be silent you are silent in the time of this, relief and the deliverance will stand to the Jews from a place of another and you and the house of your father will perish and who knowing if to a time like this you have arrived to the kingdom?” ¹⁵And Esther said to reply to Mordecai, ¹⁶“Go, gather the all of the Jews found in Shushan and fast upon me and do not eat and do not drink three of days, night and day. I also and my young women will fast thus and in thus I will go to the king, which not according to the law, and if I perish, I perish.” ¹⁷And Mordecai passed over and he did according to the all of which Esther commanded upon him.

I’ve been studying this chapter for about a month now. My heart tells me it ought to be written in letters of gold. Here we find two people in literally their finest hour. Here we find Mordecai and Esther suddenly faced with an unthinkable tragedy and yet that very tragedy becomes only a setting to display what model human beings they are. There is much from which the rest of us can learn.

What do we see? First of all we learn that we believers are far from exempt to hardship and tragedy. There is always (and probably in all of us) the temptation to think that, if you know the Lord and love Him and try to do what’s right, that will mean He’ll somehow make your life easy. We know that other people may face horrific troubles and we know we too must face hardships – just not like really bad ones, right? Well, since our Savior Himself got cruelly murdered, you’d think we’d realize that, no, we aren’t necessarily exempt from any kind of hardship, no matter how unthinkably horrific.

In God’s world, both are true. He does let most of us enjoy a life of love and joy and peace and, even in what we might call the “minor” trials of everyday life, we find Him very present and overwhelmingly kind to us. Isaiah said, “Thou wilt keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon Thee” (26:3). David said, “How great is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who take refuge in You. In the shelter of Your Presence You hide them; in Your dwelling You keep them safe” (Ps. 31:19,20).

Yet Jesus warned us, “In this world you shall have tribulation” (John 16:33). We meet Mordecai in this chapter, “tearing his clothes, putting on sackcloth and ashes, and going out into the city, wailing loudly and bitterly.” Boy, do Mordecai and Esther have to face that “tribulation”! They remind us here in Esther 4 that we must all face troubles, but, at the same time, they teach us much about how we respond.

Can we first of all note it’s okay to grieve? After people get over the idea that God should exempt them from trouble, the next thing they think is that, if you really have faith, you’ll just smile at everything, trust God, and go on skipping through life. “All things work together for good,” right? So surely it must be wrong to suffer under trials. Yet it was the Savior Himself who sweat “as it were great drops of blood” and cried out “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.” Paul said at one point, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life” (II Cor. 1:8). It is an undeniable fact that, in the Bible itself, there is a book called, “Lamentations.”

Let us not for a minute think that Mordecai is somehow “lacking” in faith. We know the end of the story…but he does not. We know it by sight. At that time, he could only hope for it by faith. He and Esther live exactly where you and I do—in the present, and for them the present is very, very scary. Faith doesn’t mean you or I won’t feel fear. It doesn’t mean we’ll not grieve. It only means we’ll have a hope that under-girds all those fears and griefs.

We see Mordecai’s faith in his statement to Esther, “But, if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place…” How could Mordecai know that? How could he be so assured it was true? I would say, obviously, he knew his Scriptures and he knew all of God’s promises to Abraham and to the nation of Israel. I would further maintain we see his faith when he adds, “[But, if you remain silent]…you and your father’s family will perish.” What is this? It is Mordecai seeing the unseen God. While Mordecai clearly believes in the Lord’s sovereign protection over His people Israel, he also knows that same God loves His people too much to let them be lazy and cowardly. The true and the living God is immanently present with His people to do them good but also to always firmly guide them in the path of right.

We also see his faith in his immortal question to Esther, “Who knows but that you are come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Once again, though living in this world of the unseen God, Mordecai believes in the sovereign overruling providence of God, that though this world seems to tumble along on its own stubborn, godless path, yet the Lord is carefully overruling man’s evil to bring about finally His good and loving plan. “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Prov. 16:9). Joseph had that same faith when he told his brothers, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Gen 50:20). God’s sovereign overruling providence is the truth which gives us Jer. 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.’”

Right off the bat, as you and I would read this passage of Scripture, let us not forget that Mordecai and Esther do not know the outcome. Let us not minimize the terror and grief they face in the present. If for any reason, we would not see them as real people facing real danger, we will lose the hope their example offers. You and I face what look to us like real dangers every single day. Though ours may not be the complete annihilation of our people, yet we still feel the fears. Even in those “little” fears, we need the faith of Mordecai and Esther – to live in the present, not knowing the future, yet, like Moses, persevering because we see “Him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:24).

Haman is a man without God. Haman and Xerxes form a government without God. Yet, we find Esther and Mordecai as two people with God. Haman and Xerxes’ godlessness made them wicked, cruel, and insensitive. Let us go on and see what knowing God produces in our two heroes.

 

Esther 3:7-15 “Government Without God”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁷In the month of the first (it [was] the month of Nisan) in the year of the twelfth to the king Xerxes, he caused to fall Pur (it [was] the lot) to the face of Haman from day to day and from month to month. The twelfth (it [was] the month of Adar). ⁸And Haman said to the king Xerxes, “There [is] a particular people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in the all of the provinces of your kingdom and their laws differing from all of people and the laws of the king not doing and the king, [it is] not being smooth to allow them. ⁹If upon the king good, let it be written to destroy them and ten thousand talents of silver I will weigh upon hands of ones doing the work, to bring upon the treasuries of the king.” ¹⁰And the king took his ring from upon his hand and he gave it to Haman son of Hamadatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews, ¹¹and the king said to Haman, “The silver [is] given to you and the people to do with it according to good in your eyes.” ¹²And the scribes of the king were called in the month of the first in the thirteenth day in it, and it was written according to all which Haman commanded (intensely) to the officials of the king and to the governors who [were] upon province and province and the princes of people and people, province and province according to its writing and people and people according to its language in the name of the king Xerxes, written and sealed in the ring of the king. ¹³And the writings [were] sent in the hand of the runners to the all of the provinces of the king to exterminate, to murder, and to destroy the all of the Jews from young and (even) to old, little children and women in one day in thirteenth to the month of the twelfth, it [being] the month of Adar and to plunder [their possessions]. ¹⁴The copy of the document was set a law in all of province and province, being published to the all of the peoples to be ready ones to the day of that. ¹⁵Runners went out hastened in the word of the king and the law was given in Shushan the citadel and the king and Haman sat to drink and the city of Shushan was perplexed.

So, what happens when men without God attain to positions of leadership? You get government without God. Haman is a man without God, and he is the prime minister. Xerxes is a man without God and he’s the king over it all. And what does that get you? Lies, murder, and stealing.

And why is that? Because they are of their father, the devil, and the lusts of their father they will do. He is a liar and the father of lies. He was a murderer from the beginning.  His people are thieves and robbers. And what do you get when they control the government? Lies, murder, and stealing.

I feel like this study of the book of Esther has profoundly opened my eyes to see this world for what it really is—a world without God. And chapter 3 really showcases what comes with a government without God. Up until about the early 1960’s the government of America was comprised of people who at least respected the Bible and acknowledged God. This country was founded to begin with by men who at least acknowledged God. Even our very first official national document, the Declaration of Independence, begins by declaring “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights…” “Endowed by their Creator.”

As late as the 1950’s, even the Supreme Court was still acknowledging that our Constitution and this nation’s laws were based on the Bible. When I was growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s “everyone” went to church. I remember even at school, we all had an awareness of God. We may still have done a lot of “bad” things, but at least we knew they were bad. We’d tell each other things like, “Anyone who commits suicide goes straight to hell!” That may not have been true, but it reflected the very underlying assumption of our culture—that there is a heaven and a hell. What our forefathers founded was very deliberately a nation with God. And what did it get us? 200 years of unprecedented prosperity.

America has certainly had its own share of lies, murder, and stealing, but that only reinforces what the book of Esther is showing us. Even in a basically “good” government, you will still always have bad men, so that even the best of human governments can only be a strange mixture of respect for God and downright evil.

But what Esther is showing us is government totally without God, government without any restraint or sense of morality. Somewhere back there in the 60’s and 70’s, we determined to be a nation without God and it is no surprise at all to find ourselves now 50 years later with a government of shocking corruption. Is it any surprise that one of the first things our government without God did was to legalize abortion? And since then literally millions of helpless babies have been cruelly murdered. Is it any surprise that we became a nation of school shootings?

This passage of Scripture—Esther chapter 3—exposes human government for what it really is. The politicians in America and their lap dogs, the liberal media, feed us an endless stream of lies, claim they want to do us good, then huddle together and sell out to big corporations and lobbyists who make them multi-millionaires on salaries that can only comprise a fraction of their accumulated wealth.

At first glance, someone may assert that Haman and Xerxes are extreme examples of wicked men in government. But are they? Really? Or does it appear “extreme” only because the real truth is clearly exposed? It was interesting reading “the old guys” and their commentaries from the 1600’s through the late 1800’s. Although they acknowledged that human history has been marred by massacres in many places, yet they were horrified that anything so evil as this plot of Haman could ever have been concocted. Then there was the Holocaust. For those of us on this side of WW II, we have no trouble believing that a government could cruelly murder six million of its own people. Actually, the twentieth century was, if anything, the century of mass murders. In the Soviet Union, under Lenin and Stalin, once again the government murdered literally millions of their own citizens.

So are Haman and Xerxes really extreme examples or do we have before us a stark warning of the real truth of human government, government without God?

See what we have. Haman approaches Xerxes with three clear goals: lying, murder, and stealing. Notice his art: “There is a certain people.” He deliberately does not identify who he’s talking about, lest perhaps Xerxes might have any affection for the Jewish people. He says, “They do not obey the king’s laws.” In fact, in every nation in history, the most faithful citizens have been the believers. A Roman centurion was once ordered to execute any of his soldiers who called themselves Christians. His reply was, “But they’re my best soldiers!” It is reported that in a Russian town, the Christians decided to build themselves a church even though it was not allowed. When the local governor was told to stop them, his reply was, “They are our finest citizens. If building a church means I’ll have more like them, then let them be.”

It is true that Mordecai didn’t obey the king’s law to bow to Haman, but Mordecai is also the man who exposed Bigthana and Teresh and saved the king’s life. That fact itself contradicts Haman’s claim that “it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them.” Haman never even intimates the real reason for all of this is his hatred for one man, Mordecai. He hides his true agenda behind the illusion that he’s sincerely concerned about the king’s best interest.

And what does he recommend? Murder and stealing. He proposes an order to “destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and little children…and to plunder their goods.”

And how does the king respond? Notice he doesn’t make even the slightest inquiry. He doesn’t ask, exactly which group of people is this? He doesn’t ask in what ways they “don’t obey the king’s laws.” He does not do even the bare minimum that any ruler would be expected to do when someone is proposing to massacre an entire people group of his own subjects. When he wanted to depose Vashti, he sought the advice of his seven counselors. Not here. He just hands Haman his ring and says, “Do whatever you wish.”

No doubt, Haman’s offer of ten thousand talents of silver appealed to the king’s greedy heart. Granted he tells Haman to keep his money, but Haman is talking his language. Ten thousand talents of silver is a fantastic sum of money. There’s probably no way today to determine absolutely how much that was worth, but it is somewhere in the 100’s of millions or even billions of dollars. Just like the American government today, that’s the numbers they all like to talk about. The real truth is the more billions of dollars are floating around, the easier it is to siphon off millions into their own pockets.

Haman’s wicked decree is issued, an entire people group is targeted for an undeserved massacre, and what do Haman and Xerxes do? They “sit down to drink.” There you have it. These two men’s only real goal in government is their own personal pleasure and gain. The real truth is they couldn’t care less about the people they govern. “The people” are only of value for the wealth and taxes Xerxes can embezzle from them. And while the citadel of Susa is “bewildered,” Haman and Xerxes laugh and party.

For those with the eyes to see, this is government without God.

What’s probably most horrifying to me is to see that this is my government. No wonder our Congress never does anything to actually help us. While they vote themselves the most extravagant salary/benefits package probably in the history of mankind, they do nothing to address the problems that actually face our people. And why not? Because they don’t care. They aren’t there to do us good. They’re there to do themselves good. They lie to us, raise our taxes, and you can bet it’s only a matter of time, and those of us who call their hand on it will pay the price. One way or another, they’ll order our execution, then “sit down to drink.”

The passage before us is very, very ugly and very, very scary, but I’m actually encouraged to see the truth. In a sense, it is a relief to stop trying to believe my government cares about me, that senators and congressmen really should be working for the people’s best interest. It is a strange sort of relief to simply face the fact that ours is today a government without God. They are of their father the devil and the lusts of their father they will do. It is more than ever true that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Believers more than ever ought to be putting on “the armor of God.” We should, more than ever, be praying for our nation, praying for revival, praying that godly people would find their way into government, but we should not be surprised to find out our government without God is corrupt and evil.

Would to God that somehow in His great power, His Spirit could sweep across our country so dramatically that we could actually once again be “one nation under God.” “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” For the sake of our children and grandchildren, God help us to be all we should be, to pray all we should, but if no such revival comes, let us remind ourselves this world is not our home. We are servants of the Most High God. Although Jesus is the rightful king over all the earth, for now Satan is “the prince of the power of the air.” Let us not be surprised at the evil that surrounds us, but rather, with eyes wide open, may we, like Jesus, love and do good and be found faithful to show our world the God they cannot see.

Esther 3:5,6 “A Man Without God”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁵And Haman saw that Mordecai not bowing and not honoring to him and Haman was filled with anger, ⁶and it was of little value in his eyes to send a hand in Mordecai, to him alone, because they had told to him the people of Mordecai and Haman sought (intently) to exterminate the all of the Jews who [were] in the all of the kingdom of Xerxes, the people of Mordecai.

So, people want to live in a world without God. Does that matter? Is faith an arbitrary decision, something you can choose for or against?  Is it really just something you decide for yourself? Haman is a living answer to that question. Haman is a man without God. The awful truth is that he illustrates for us exactly what humans become in their world without God.

We all have a problem with anger. Anyone who has lived a few years already has a “Hall of Shame” in their mind for the stupid things they’ve done and said, the damage they’ve wreaked because something made them angry and it just went downhill from there. If we’re honest, we all have that problem. Haman gets angry and the Hebrew literally says he was “filled with anger.” He was full of it. It took over his mind, his heart, his thoughts, his plans. As it says in Prov. 25:28, “Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.” Too bad he doesn’t know that Prov. 19:19 already warned, “A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty.”

And why is he angry? He’s angry because someone won’t fall down and worship him. To see Mordecai standing galls him. If you asked him, you can bet he’d say he’s angry because the king’s command is being disobeyed. He’d make himself sound noble. But the real truth is that Mordecai has wounded his pride, his sinful, arrogant, delusive pride. It has nothing to do with the king’s command or any other flimsy charade he might conjure up. He is angry because someone won’t worship him.

Can he see any of this? Of course not. “The pride of your heart has deceived you.” “The heart of man is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things.” His sin has already blinded him. Haman has set himself on a course of self-destruction but he doesn’t know it, he can’t see it, and even if he did, he would be powerless to stop it. There is only one hope for you and me to conquer the anger and pride in our hearts: God. We believers have the wonderful privilege to cry out, “Who shall save me from this body of death?” and hear the answer, “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” But, you see, Haman is a man without God. He has no hope.

When people think they can choose God or not and go on their merry way, like Haman, they are not realizing the enormity of their own sin natures. They are not realizing they are their own worst enemy. They are not realizing the mortal danger they are born into – that the very air they breathe is trying to kill them. Without God, they have no Rock, no Fortress, no Strong Deliverer to cry to, to deliver them from themselves and the malignancy of this fallen world.

And, not surprisingly, who is Haman like? “You are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning…”  Satan is a lion “roaming the earth, seeking those he can devour.” His demon in Revelation is named “Apollyon,” which means “destroyer.” He exists to kill people. The minute Haman’s pride is wounded and his anger provoked, he resolves to kill people. He first would kill Mordecai, but then, being of his father the devil, it seems “too light a thing” to kill only Mordecai. Why waste such a golden opportunity, when we can kill thousands, if not millions!

Herein lies the problem. Whether we see it or not, we are born into a cosmic spiritual war. In this war, there are only two sides: God’s and Satan’s. There are only two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. To refuse to serve God is to be enslaved to Satan, to be doomed to a life of murder and lies – a life of destroying relationships and living in delusions. Only God can deliver me from living out the image of my father the devil.

Does it matter? Is it okay to live without God? Is it okay to live out our lives ignoring God, pretending He doesn’t exist? The Haman in all of us tells us the answer.  Think of how the book of Galatians describes it: To live without God is to live “the works of the flesh.” And what are they? “Sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (5:19-21).  The book of Titus describes us as, “foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures…living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another” (2:3). Romans 1:29 says that having turned our backs on God, we “have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity…full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.”

It is only the Lord’s kindness, “causing His sun to shine on the evil and good,” His “common grace” that prevents us all from being as bad as we could have been. It’s only because of His grace that this world gets to enjoy some measures of love and kindness, to bring out the image of God, even in people who have ignored Him. No, the decision was not arbitrary whether to know Jesus or not.

We see this especially in the contrast between Mordecai & Esther and Haman. Mordecai is the man who took his little orphaned cousin “to daughter.” Mordecai is the man who “every day” walked “back and forth” to know of Esther’s “peace.” Mordecai is the man who faithfully exposed Bigthan and Teresh’s plot, in great danger to himself, and Mordecai is the man who had the courage not to bow to a man God had cursed. And then there is our precious Esther, the girl who could be uncommonly beautiful, yet still be sweet and humble, and who will, in time, risk her own life to save the lives of her people.

None of this is surprising of course. The Bible calls it “the fruit of the Spirit.” And what is that? “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (5:22,23). To those who would listen, God says, “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Col. 3:12-14). Mordecai and Esther live out all of these virtues right before our eyes.

Haman may be an extreme example of the demon in all of us, but can we all be honest enough to look around and realize there’s way too much of Haman in our world? And can we also look at people who really do love Jesus and admit that they and their families look a whole lot more like Mordecai & Esther than Haman? Granted there are a LOT of “religious” people who are nothing but Hamans hiding behind a disguise of the Bible and Christianity, but we need to consider the real Christians, the people whose lives exemplify the fruit of the Spirit, not the spirit of this fallen world.

Does it matter? Does it make any difference? In God’s perfect order of this world, it is our choice. He grants us that dignity. We can choose to know Him or not. He would force no one to love Him. But does it matter? Is it okay to live in this world as if God didn’t exist? Is it okay to be “a man without God?” The book of Esther quietly answers that question. Do I want to be just another Haman? Or would I know the love and kindness, the faithfulness and courage of Esther & Mordecai?

The difference in life and death.