Esther 5:9-14 “Learning”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁹And Haman went out in that day joyful and pleased of heart and Haman saw Mordecai in the gate of the king and he did not stand and he did not tremble from him and Haman was filled with rage on Mordecai, ¹⁰and Haman restrained himself and he came in to his house and he sent and brought in his friends and Zeresh his wife. ¹¹and Haman recounted to them the glory of his wealth and the many of his sons and all of which the king caused him to grow and which he raised him on the princes and nobles of the king, ¹²and Haman said, “Also Esther the queen has not caused to come in with the king to the banquet which she prepared except me, and also tomorrow I one called to it with the king, ¹³and the all of this [is] nothing smooth to me in all of time which I one seeing Mordecai the Jew sitting in the gate of the king.” ¹⁴And Zeresh his wife (and the all of his friends) said to him, “Let them make a gallows fifty cubits high and in the morning speak to the king and let them hang Mordecai on it and go in with the king to the banquet happy,” and the word was pleasing to the eyes of Haman and he made the gallows.

Well, well. Here we are again. The Bible is a book that allows us to “walk with the wise and be wise”—to watch and listen and learn as good people live their lives.  However, it also parades before our eyes the wicked and affords us the same opportunity—to watch and listen and learn. “Beat a fool and the simple learn discretion.” In a sense, there is as much to learn observing the wicked as the righteous.

However…and I cannot assert this emphatically enough…you can only learn from the wicked if you realize “you’re the man.” In order to learn from them, I must humbly recognize I share with them the same sin nature. As the old saying says, “There but for the grace of God go I.” In order to learn anything from Haman, his wife and friends, I must see them in my own heart.

I say all of this because practically every modern commentary on Esther seems more than content to essentially mock at Haman’s evil and move on. They learn absolutely nothing from him because they can’t see him in their own hearts. On the contrary, the old commentaries (before around 1900), glean pages and pages of very helpful observations, precisely because they do see him in their own hearts. I would sadly observe that the modern church has almost totally lost the ability to learn anything from the Bible because they no longer see that it applies to their everyday lives. It has become nothing more than a book about “how to be religious,” if even that.

So, if you and I would benefit from this passage, let us pause and ponder the profound wickedness we see in Haman, his wife and his friends, realizing, in the end, it is our own face we behold in the mirror.

“And so Haman went out that day joyful and pleased of heart.”  It’s nice that Haman is happy. Even a very wicked man finds things in this world to be “happy” about. But note here what it is that is fueling his “happiness.” What is it? His pride. Haman leaves Esther’s banquet swelled up like a toad. As he walks out, he is, in his own mind, a VERY big fish in a little pond. He probably had a couple of servants carry a mirror in front of him so he could admire himself all the way home! But suddenly someone pops his bubble. Mordecai doesn’t share Haman’s inflated opinion of himself.

And Haman’s response? “He was filled with rage.” But wasn’t he just a minute before “joyful and pleased of heart”? What prodigiously important event could have possibly so ruined the day of this extremely wealthy, powerful man? What happened? A man wouldn’t stand. There you go. Explains it perfectly, does it not? You and I have probably flown into a few rages just in the last couple of days because someone wouldn’t stand in our presence, yes?

I read one old illustration that went something like this: Take two pennies and hold them in your hand. What are they worth? Especially today we’d say, “Basically nothing.” Two cents. It won’t buy anything. Now hold them against your eyes and notice, how much do you see? “Nothing at all,” you reply, “The two pennies are blocking my vision.” But wait a minute—I thought we all just agreed that two pennies are worthless. Now we’re saying they can completely block our vision? When the two worthless pennies are before our eyes, suddenly we can’t see anything else that matters. We can’t see all the blessings and beauty that surrounds us. All we can see is two worthless pennies.

Isn’t that what is happening to Haman? He goes on below to brag about his great wealth, his many sons, his powerful position, and the honor Esther has accorded him. But, in his own words, “All this gives me no satisfaction as long as I see that Jew Mordecai sitting at the king’s gate.”

That is precisely what the sin of pride does to all of us—it causes us to focus our minds on what is in the end worthless, and in so doing to completely lose sight of and the satisfaction of all the many blessings we do enjoy. We might more quickly recognize the problem as greed or discontent—which are just subtle forms of pride. We want something. We think we deserve something. We put its two pennies in our eyes and lose sight of all else that truly matters. I may not be plotting the murder of an entire people group, but I am just as capable as Haman of letting pride blind me to the things that really matter.

And therein is a lesson for all of us to take from this wicked man. When suddenly something has stolen our joy, when something has stirred serious anger in our hearts, when suddenly there is something filling our mind and our eyes, we need to step back and ask, “Lord, have I let pride get the best of me?” If I’m willing to pray that sincerely, and if suddenly the Lord does help me to see it is pride, then, as a believer, I have the wonderful privilege of repenting. I can remember my Savior who “made Himself nothing.” I can simply give up whatever it was I thought I deserved or whatever it was I so strongly desired, let those pennies of worthlessness drop into His hands and once again be free to see all the blessings that surround me.

In this, you could almost pity Haman. The man is a slave. He may be unfathomably rich, but he has no Lord to turn to. He has no one to help him see his evil pride for what it is. He has no one to protect him from himself. Notice where he says “…and I am invited with the king to Esther’s banquet tomorrow…but it gives me pleasure as long as I see Mordecai…” I have underlined the “I” twice because in the original language it is emphatic. In Hebrew the “I” is normally expressed as part of the verb itself. When they verbalize the pronoun separately, it is for emphasis. What does this tell us? Even the very grammar would tell us Haman is full of himself. And where does that get him? In spite of his great wealth, here he is miserable. That is always where our evil pride will leave us—miserable even if we’re swimming in an ocean of blessings. Such is life in a world without God.

Haman is a man without God. He is married to a woman without God and surrounded by friends without God. Is it any surprise they think the solution to their problems is murder? They are “of their father the devil and the lusts of their father they will do.” Herein, again, we see the nightmare of a world without God. Haman, living as a man without God, has surrounded himself with people without God. So when it comes time to seek their advice, do they point him to the real problem? Did anyone of them even suggest the possibility that Mordecai really isn’t that big a deal? You can bet they didn’t. You can bet they know better than to risk even the remotest possibility of crossing this man. They will tell him what he wants to hear. And, of course, their advice rises straight from the pits of hell.

His own wife urges him to murder a man. His circle of friends urge him to murder a man. Not one of them loves him enough to tell him the truth. Maybe it’s because they can’t see the truth. Maybe they have so many pennies stuck in their own eyes, they can’t see to warn Haman he’s got them in his? The blind lead the blind and they all fall in a pit. Such is the end of a world without God. Haman can’t see it’s Haman who needs to be murdered, not Mordecai. It’s Haman who’s ruining Haman’s life, not Mordecai. But he can’t see it.

Haman would show the world that you can get it all—you can get wealth and power and position, everything your heart could possibly desire—and still be a miserable man. The book of Ecclesiastes would teach us this, but Haman’s life shouts it. All the wealth in the world can’t protect you and me from our own proud hearts. It takes God in our lives to protect us from us. Haman, his wife, and his friends live in a world without that God, but the good news for the rest of us is that we don’t have to live like that. The fact is there is a God and He is very present and very available to anyone willing to open their heart to Him.

There is a great deal to learn from Haman. The old commentaries draw out so much more than I’ve scratched down here, but in the end we can conclude we don’t have to be Hamans. We can be an Esther or a Mordecai and live our lives free--free from our pride--free to enjoy the blessings the Lord has showered us with--free to trust Him above ourselves. Lord help us all to truly learn from Haman!

 

Esther 5:2-8 “Ripening”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²And it was when the king sees Esther the queen standing in the court and she lifted grace in his eyes and the king extended to Esther the golden scepter which was in his hand and Esther approached and she touched in the head of the scepter, ³and the king said to her, “What to you, Esther the queen, and what [is] your request? Until the half of the kingdom and it will be given to you.” ⁴Esther answered, “If upon the king it is pleasing, may the king come and Haman today to the banquet which I have prepared to him.” ⁵And the king said, “Cause to hasten Haman to do the word of Esther,” and the king came and Haman to the banquet which Esther had done. ⁶And the king said to Esther in the banquet of the wine, “What [is] your petition and it will be given to you, and what is your request? Until the half of the kingdom, it will be done.” ⁷And Esther answered and she said, “My petition and my request:” ⁸If I have found grace in the eyes of the king and if upon the king it is pleasing to give my petition and to do my request, let the king come and Haman [to] the banquet which I will do for them and tomorrow I will do as the word of the king.”

This is one more passage where I could start by noting how the minute the king saw Esther he was pleased. I said all I probably need to say in my comments back on 2:8, 15, 17, but I want to note again how everywhere Esther goes, she “wins people’s favor.” Someone can assert that is mainly because she is very beautiful, but, once again, remember this king has a harem toy box filled with very beautiful girls. It would be nothing exceptional for there to be a beautiful girl in Xerxes’ palace. Of course her beauty doesn’t hurt anything, but obviously what is winning everyone’s favor is something else, something the other girls don’t have, and something that makes her “exceptional.” We all know what it is – it is her sweetness, her “meek and quiet spirit.” As I pointed out earlier, it is also an amazing truth of grace that the Lord actually steps in and turns people’s hearts to favor us believers, but I want to emphasize again here that we have our own contribution to make.

I belabor the point because I think there is far too little emphasis (actually none at all) on the spirit which believers carry especially into their workplaces. As this book has illustrated from the beginning, what most people are living in is a world without God. He doesn’t exist in their minds. But a world without God will be in the end a world without love, a world without humility and sweetness. And so, when a true believer walks into that world and carries with them the spirit of Jesus, when they are gracious and considerate and kind and dependable and trustworthy, then whether they are physically beautiful or not, they will tend to “win people’s favor.” They will be exceptional. And this is precisely what the Lord wants us to do. He wants us to be “in the world,” but the “not of it,” which means that we live the fruit of the Spirit and “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.”

Esther did and you and I should too.

I have very much enjoyed studying and pondering on this particular passage. Lord only knows how many times I’ve read through this book of Esther, but I’ve always wondered why she does this whole thing with inviting the king and Haman to her banquets. Probably the first thing that comes to our minds is that she simply “chickened out,” that, just as she was about to make her appeal, she chickened out and instead came up with this idea of a banquet. Then the same thing happened at the end of the first banquet – she chickened out and invited them to another.

However, having slowed down and pondered it all, I notice something I think would completely contradict that understanding. Note that what Esther says is, “If it pleases the king, let the king, together with Haman, come today to a banquet I have prepared for him.” Note it is a banquet “I have prepared for him.” Esther didn’t just think of this while she was standing there gripped with fear. She already had the banquet ready before she even went in to the king. She went in planning to invite him to her banquet.

I want to acknowledge that Hebrew verbs absolutely do not carry the chronological precision we know in English, so that, with no other evidence available, you would have to be careful not to invest too much in translating it “have prepared.” Unfortunately for us, the same Hebrew verb could be translated, “I will prepare.” However, notice that the king’s response is “Bring Haman at once, so that we may do what Esther says.” “At once.” The most natural translation would be “the banquet I have prepared,” and when Esther invites the king and Haman, they need to respond “at once.” I think, upon pondering, there is no question that Esther went into the king with her banquet already prepared and fully intending that her request would be to invite him and Haman to her banquet. In other words, she is working a plan.

Here is another factor to support this suggestion that she is working a plan. Why is she inviting Haman at all? He isn’t even present at this first request, as the king has to say, “Bring Haman at once.” Someone had to go get him. It’s not like he was sitting there beside the king and so, of course, Esther invites him too. No, she is very deliberately inviting him. She planned to.

But then, we might ask, “Why in the world would you want Haman present?” The whole point is to plead with the king against Haman. You’d think it far better for him not to be present. Yet Esther invites him not only the first day but the second as well. Again, to me that has every indication she is working some kind of plan.

Then we wonder, why the second day? Did she just chicken out at the end of the first banquet? Again, I think all of the evidence in the passage itself leads us to understand she is working a plan and so, this request was just more of it. She had every intention, from the very beginning to have two banquets. I personally do not doubt at all this is a cultural thing—that the two banquets, the two invitations, are a way of communicating to the king this is something very important. I strongly suggest that, when she invited him to a second banquet and says, “Then I will answer the king’s question,” he would immediately understand this is no ordinary request. He would know she’s not just asking a favor for some friend or asking permission to wallpaper her apartment. He now knows for sure that whatever she has on her mind is of some monumental importance. And he’ll know that it’s important for a full 24 hours before she actually asks.

So, instead of seeing our girl Esther as someone timidly chickening out, what we see is that she is a very smart girl who knows how to devise and work a plan. It is possible the Lord gave her the plan while she and all her friends were fasting and praying for three days, but, since this book is intentionally “a world without God,” we aren’t provided with those details. It’s just as possible He simply “put it in her mind,” like He does with you and me. At any rate, our beautiful girl isn’t just beautiful. She’s also smart, can devise a good plan, and then bravely work it through.

Before I quit, I particularly want to call our American attentions to what Esther is doing. What I mean is this: It is the very nature of us Americans to always be in a big hurry. That’s how the rest of the world sees us—brash, reckless, and always in a big hurry. If it was us, the second we realized our only hope was to go into the king, we would have rushed into his presence, fell on the floor blubbering and begging, and hoping he’d grant our request. Instead, here is our Esther faced with the complete annihilation of her people and yet she devises a plan that takes two days to carry out. Faced with impending danger, yet she took the time to think things through and to come up with a plan and then work it through.

Just to belabor my point, I would suggest what we Americans would have seen is the dangers of delay. What if Haman suspected? What if he found out what the Jews had all been fasting and praying about for three days and then had a whole 24 hours to spin the situation and turn the king’s heart against Esther? On this first encounter, when the king saw Esther, he was pleased. How does she know he’ll still be favorable to her tomorrow? Maybe she’d better “strike while the iron is hot?” That is how our harried minds work. But not Esther’s.

Robert Hawker (ca. 1800) noted, along exactly these lines: “We are, like children, all in haste to gather the fruit, though unripe, and would be injurious. God keeps it till it is more suited for us, and our hearts more suited to receive it.” There you go—fruit needs to ripen. It takes time. Jesus said much the same thing, “What man, building a tower, doesn’t first sit down and count the cost to see if he has the resources to finish it?”

Our girl knew how to let the fruit ripen. She had the courage and the faith to let things work. Especially for us Americans, it would do us all well to let her example weigh on our minds and maybe, even just a little, help us to be more careful, deliberate people.

Here we are walking along beside this young, beautiful girl, only to discover she’s also wise. Perhaps as we would walk with the wise, the Lord would make us each more like her. May we learn the discipline of letting fruit ripen!

 

Esther 5:1 “Faith & Feet”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹And it was in the day of the third and Esther put on royal [clothes] and she stood in the court of the house of the king inside opposite the house of the king and the king [was] sitting upon the throne of his royalty in the house of the royalty opposite the gate of the house.

This is one of those verses in the Bible where we need to stop and ponder deeply what it teaches us. As is often the case with verses like this, it appears at first glance as just a statement of fact carrying forward the narrative of our book. Esther put on her royal robes and went and stood in the presence of the king. That seems very “matter of fact.” However, I would suggest our problem here is that we know “the end of the story.”

Esther does not. Therein lies the enormity of what she can teach us here. Esther does not know the end of the story. For all she knows, verse 2 will tell how the king flew into a rage and commanded his attendants to execute her. For all she knows as she awakens on this the third day, it may very well be the day of her death. She wasn’t kidding when she said, “I will go and stand before the king, and if I perish, I perish.”

Again, I would urge anyone reading these words to put away our casual reading of these words. There is nothing “casual” going on here. For all Esther knows, she is walking to her death. If you would learn from this passage, let the terror she must feel fill your own mind. The man on the throne is not your kindly old Uncle Joe. This is Xerxes. The man on the throne is a cruel tyrant with a violent temper. Esther may be his queen but he has a few hundred other pretty girls he keeps in his harem toy box. This is the man who had all the engineers killed because a storm came along and destroyed a bridge he was building. In fact, in that situation, he even ordered his men to whip the water with chains to punish it for destroying his bridge.

Esther would have every reason in the world to be absolutely terrified at the thought of barging into the king’s presence uninvited. As she said, “There is only one law for anyone approaching the king uninvited—to be put to death.” Esther does not know the end of the story. She doesn’t know what the next five minutes will hold. She only knows that for the love of her people, she must do this.

Slow down and let your heart join Esther in her terror. She isn’t made out of cardboard. She is a real human being just like you and me. Though we may know her to be a young woman of great faith and love, she is still human and, for all she knows, she’s walking to her death.

Do you ever face hard situations? Do you ever feel duty calling you, it would seem, to your death? Of course you do. You face it in a million different situations every day. Sometimes it is as simple as a phone call you really don’t want to make.  No doubt, just like Esther, there may be some monumental fear you must face in the life God has given you to live. But whether it be the little fears of everyday duties or the great fear of that one momentous challenge of our destinies, we all know deeply exactly what Esther is facing. We’ve all been there. In fact, it’s where we live.

In this, there is much to learn.

In this moment, Esther takes her place beside so many other people of faith. I think of Ruth standing there beside Naomi on the east side of the Jordan. Orpah turned back to “her people and her gods,” to the comfort and security of the familiar. But Ruth said, “Your people will be my people, and your God my God,” then crossed the Jordan with Naomi--walking into a future that could have ended very badly. Like Esther, she didn’t know the end of the story. But her faith moved her feet in spite of her fears.

I think of Ruth’s great grandson David as he walked out onto the battlefield with his slingshot. He too had much to fear. He too was walking to his death, but he asked, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” He told Saul, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine.” I think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as they stood there before a very angry Nebuchadnezzar and said, “Our God whom we serve is able to save us from the fiery furnace, and He may, but even if He does not, we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

We could multiply examples throughout the Bible and certainly admire every one of these people, but I want to point out again that this is what you and I face every day. Ours may be a million “little” fears, but they are fears nevertheless. And to be people of integrity, people of faith, we too must step into our futures doing the right thing, the loving thing, and simply trust our God with that future.

He tells us, “Fear not, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged; I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; Yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of My righteousness…for I, the Lord your God will hold your right hand, saying to you, “Fear not. I will help you” (Isa. 41:10,14). He would have us remember, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a well-ordered mind” (II Tim. 1:7).

Esther would teach us today that fear doesn’t have to control us. We, like her, can rise above those fears and be people of integrity. We can go to our jobs and face even the difficult assignments, the difficult people, the difficult deadlines, and yet go on being kind, encouraging and helpful to others. Although we may feel the “terror,” it doesn’t have to control us. Faith can be the engine that moves our feet.