"God Saves" Esther 8 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Esther chapter 8.

Esther 8 · chapter mention

I want to begin tonight with a brief story about Sir Robert Watson Watt.

Robert Watt, as he is known.

Watson Watt, his last name, is the man who invented radar.

I don't expect you to have known that, but it's kind of a big deal.

He's credited with shortening World War II.

His radar invention allowed us to find planes and to keep our planes from hitting each other and to keep enemy planes from finding us.

So it's just imagine flying before there was radar.

Because if I mean that's how planes see, they're moving too fast to adjust, you know?

And so radar becomes a critical element of warfare and of aviation.

Because he invented radar, he was somewhat of a war hero.

He was knighted by the British government.

He was given a large cash reward by the American government, enough of a reward that allowed him to leave England and move to Canada, where he lived in rural Canada.

Apparently that was his goal in life.

And in the 1950s, uh Sir Robert Watson Watt, remember he was knighted, gets pulled over for speeding in rural Canada by a mounty or whatever.

And they uh stopped him and they knew how fast he was going, faster than the posted speed limit, because of the radar.

Which last week we talked about irony.

You should have a whole different category of irony for that.

Well, he took this in good.

First of all, he was fascinated by it.

He, I think at the time was unaware of its usage in traffic enforcement.

You know, he thought it was confined to airplanes, and now, lo and behold, he's being stopped for it.

So he took it in good humor and he went home and wrote a poem about it.

And I have the poem for you tonight.

Uh he speaks of himself in the third person.

Pity Sir Robert Watson Watt, strange target of this radar plot.

And thus with others I can mention, I've become the victim of my own invention.

His magical, all-seeing eye enabled cloud-bound planes to fly.

But now, by some ironic twist, it spots the speeding motorist and bites, no doubt, with legal wit, the hands that once created it.

That sets us up for Mordecai's rise in Esther chapter 8.

Esther 8 · chapter mention

The tables have been turned on Haman.

Haman had plotted the demise of Mordecai, plotted the demise of the Jews.

If you remember, Haman was the uh, you could call him the prime minister for King Ahazarius in Persia, the Medo-Persian Empire, which was the strongest empire in the world at the time, ruled by King Aheswarius, who was not to be trifled with.

His word was unbound in its authority, his edicts were final.

Nothing, nobody could cross him, nobody could approach him without permission.

Nothing he wrote or said could ever be undone, according to the laws of the Medes and Persians.

That was the world in which he operated.

And he had elevated Haman to be his right-hand man.

Haman had his signet ring.

Haman had, in that sense, unbridled power, second only to the king.

If you remember, the king had fired the queen because she did not come when he called and did a beauty contest and replaced the king with Esther, who was Jewish.

She was young.

She had been orphaned, raised by her uncle, and she ascended to the ranks to the king's harem and won the king's favor and became the new queen.

Unbeknownst to Haman, Esther was Jewish, and unbeknownst to Haman, the one who raised her was Mordecai, and Mordecai was known to Haman.

Mordecai was in the king's court.

Mordecai was an advisor to the Jew, not as high ranking, advisor to the king, not as high ranking as Haman, of course.

Mordecai stayed at the gates of the city and dealt with disputes before they reached someone at the high level of Haman.

Mordecai, if you recall, uncovered a plot to kill the king and exposed it, and then was not adequately rewarded, and months and months went by with that being unknown by the emperor himself.

In the meantime, Mordecai refused to bow to Haman.

Mordecai didn't respect Haman, owing to the fact that Haman was an Agatite.

He had come from the line of Agag, the king, that the Jews were supposed to eliminate, that Saul refused to eliminate, and Samuel ended up putting to death.

There had been a long battle between them and the Jews.

And Mordecai, perhaps knowing that, perhaps not knowing that.

The scripture doesn't make clear, but it does make clear that Mordecai couldn't stand Haman and wouldn't bow for him.

He'd bow for anyone else, but he wouldn't bow to Haman.

And Haman didn't care if the whole world bowed to him.

As long as Mordecai didn't, Haman was furious.

And so Haman, if you recall, purposed to put to death Mordecai.

He wasn't satisfied with just putting to death Mordecai.

He wanted to kill all the Jews, bringing about really a story arc in the Bible that goes back to the days of the judges when they were led back into the promised land through Joshua and then the judges and the Israelites' refusal to obey God's word.

That's the background of this.

It really comes to a head in the book of Esther, though, when the prime minister, being Anagigites, decides he's going to kill all the Jews, including Mordecai, but not knowing it included the queen.

And that's the background of the plot of the book of Esther.

The queen discovers what was happening through Mordecai letting her know.

The queen makes an appeal to the king and begs the king, and the king doesn't know what he's going to do.

He can't undo his command to slaughter the Jews.

It can't be avoided.

He also can't turn against his prime minister, who's elevated, but he loves the queen and respects the queen and was genuinely confused.

Haman, if you recall from last week, took to begging the queen for his own life, grabbing her around the legs and begging for his life, falling on top of her.

Remember, there had been lots of alcohol involved in this.

Falling on top of her, the emperor sees him on top of the queen and makes his choice a lot easier.

He decides to kill Haman.

Haman is ordered to be executed.

His eunuchs tell him, the emperor's eunuchs let him know, that Haman had built a giant pole, a gallows, it's called, but a giant pole on which he was going to impale Mordecai.

And so chapter seven ends with the king saying, Great, what a time saver.

Let's just put Haman on that pole that he designed for Mordecai.

And that's how chapter seven ends.

This whole reversal, of course, has been, it has this uh comedic element to it.

We know the Lord will never test his people beyond what they can endure.

We also know that the Lord will protect the Jews.

He will not allow the Jews to be annihilated and obliterated because the promise of the Savior was going to come through them.

It reminds me of something that the uh uh Christian comedian once said that I know the Lord won't give me more than I can bear.

I just wish he had a more reasonable understanding of what I could bear.

And that's really where we are at the end of chapter 7, where you're still confused.

How are the Jews going to escape this?

How are they going to escape this?

And so much of this is writing on Queen Esther, who is here entirely by providence.

That's the point of the book of Esther.

The book of Esther doesn't mention the word God a single time.

There's nobody praying in it, there's no overt worship in it.

It's it's almost too on the nose here.

The Jews are in exile, these Jews, they're not back in Israel where they probably ought to be, quite honestly.

And yet God is still superintending every detail of their life.

Esther exemplifies this perfectly.

Esther didn't ask to be Jewish, she didn't ask to be orphaned, she didn't ask to be raised by Mordecai, she didn't ask to get brought to the king, and she didn't ask to be the queen.

In fact, it seems perhaps she could have even done her darndest not to.

Even once she was the queen, she didn't seek the king's favor.

Remember, there had been several months that went by without her even seeing the king.

She was content to let God work without her putting herself in the way anywhere, and yet God used all of that to rescue the Jews.

God used her ambivalence, to use her apathy in some sense.

Remember when she first heard about the plot, she basically said, There's not much I can do.

You know, you're the queen, Mordecai tells her, and she's I don't know, not much I can do.

To this point, she's often just been through the book of Esther referred to as Esther, but from now on she'll be known as Queen Esther.

She has achieved her status.

That takes place in chapter 7, uh, verse, I believe it's verse 1 in chapter 7 or verse 2, or yeah, verse 1 there, Queen Esther, and she'll be that way for the rest of the book, and we see her that way tonight.

On that day, chapter 8, verse 1, that day being the it's you know into mourning now was the feast where Haman has now been executed.

It was that same interaction there.

King Ahazarius gave to Queen Esther the house of Haman, the enemy of the Jews.

Even there, it's just interesting how the narrator notes this.

In the Persian Empire, if you're put to death for insubordination or treason, your property and all of your family become servants to the crown, your property goes back to the government.

Here, Haman is certainly the enemy of the crown, at least that's what the king perceived, and so he is put to death.

His property should go to the Persian Empire, it should go to the king and the empire, but instead the narrator lets you know the king is perceiving Haman as an enemy of the Jews.

And so the Jews get his property.

What a strange twist in irony, isn't it?

What a strange twist in God's providence.

That the man who is obsessed with putting to death all of the Jews, obsessed with eliminating the Jewish ethnic group from the world, ends up dying on a pole he made to kill a Jew, and all of his property goes to the Jewish queen that he didn't even know was Jewish.

So Esther gets his property.

Mordecai came before the king.

Esther told what he was to her.

So Esther now tells the king that Mordecai is her uncle.

This is another the last piece of information the king didn't know.

And how could the king know?

Mordecai sought to hid it.

Esther didn't tell anyone.

It's possible that some of the children in the courtyard had figured it out, but there was no way the emperor would know.

Haman obviously didn't know.

So Mordecai is now brought before the king, verse 2, and the king took off his signet ring, which he had apparently fetched back from Haman before he was impaled, which he had taken from Haman and gave it to Mordecai.

And Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman.

Notice that it's Esther who's acting here.

And this is another change in the book.

It had been so far God acting providentially, it had been Mordecai acting, it had been Haman acting.

Now we see Esther acting.

Esther is doing things.

What's missing in this book, as someone who's read this book repeatedly over the last year, it just stands out to you that the king never does anything in this book.

He's the most powerful person in the world.

He never does anything.

He's always asking, and even when he agrees with advice, he tells you to do it.

So Mordecai comes to the king, and the king is going to give authority to Mordecai.

Esther has found sight and favor in the sight of the king.

Esther is given authority.

Haman wants to kill all the Jews.

And so the king tells Haman, go for it.

He's always telling other people.

Even when he fires the queen back at the beginning of the book, his advisors tell him, get rid of the queen.

He's like, okay, get rid of her then.

That's kind of the way he operates.

And a way he's paralleling the Lord here, you don't see the Lord and at work in this book.

There's not a single verse that says God is doing something in this book.

Not a single verse.

And yet it's so obvious that everything is happening according to God's command.

And there is a big contrast intended between the emperor here and the Lord.

There's contrast and there's similarities and there's contrasts.

The similarities are they are both sovereign over everything that is happening.

They're both in control of everything that is happening, even though they're both not seen doing anything.

But the difference is the king, his ignorance is played up at every turn.

The king doesn't know what's happening around him, even though he's trying to orchestrate it.

What a contrast with God, who knows the motives of every human heart and orchestrates them according to that.

So the king takes off the signet ring, gives it to Esther, or gives it to Mordecai.

So Mordecai has now leapfrogged the rest of the king's court, and he is now the prime minister.

He is the one with the authority of the king.

He's proved himself worthy.

Remember, it was last night in the chronology of Esther.

It was last night where the king was lying awake in bed wondering, how do I reward Mordecai?

Remember, he asked Haman, what should I do to reward the person whom I favor?

And it was Haman's idea to put Mordecai on a horse.

Remember, he didn't know it was Mordecai, to put Mordecai in a horse and have him paraded around the central plaza in Persia there and proclaimed that he is the one whom the king favors.

So now, lo and behold, 24 hours later, the prime minister is dead on a pole.

And so it makes sense that Mordecai would become the new prime minister.

He was just introduced by the previous guy yesterday.

Everybody remembered that.

Well, I'm going to get to an outline for each and I want to talk about God's purpose in this chapter.

I'm going to call it God's purpose.

I'm saying God's purpose is to teach gospel principles in this chapter.

We're going to see through chapter 8.

Remember, there's no mention of God at work, but he is at work in the background.

What's going on in this chapter is that he's going to be teaching gospel principles to us through the actions of Esther chapter 8.

Esther 8 · chapter mention

This events in this are not just tying up loose ends to make a really compelling short story, although it does do that, but it's doing more than that.

These loose loose ends are being providentially tied up to make a point about gospel principles that we learn from Esther 8, and of course they prepare us to receive the good news of Jesus Christ.

The first of those principles we see that God's laws cannot be broken, are tempered.

God's laws cannot be broken, are tempered.

And then God's laws can't be diluted.

That's the big driving tension in Esther chapter 8 tonight.

Esther 8 · chapter mention

It's that the king's edicts can't be undone.

The king can't repeal his own law.

There's no mechanism to repeal an edict the king gives out.

It doesn't exist.

And that was a critical component of the Persian power.

The Medo-Persian Empire was massive.

It was huge.

It was the largest empire the world had ever known at this time.

It was rivaled only by the Greek Empire, which was smaller at this time.

But other than that, I mean they ruled all the way through India, through Africa, through the Middle East, up into parts of Europe.

It was a massive and diverse empire.

The only way it could maintain control over one crown is if that crown had unrivaled authority.

And so it was a critical component to their approach of how they governed their people was that the local groups had somewhat autonomy.

It was different than the Babylonians.

The Babylonians wanted everybody to be Babylonian.

Everybody had to learn the Babylonian language, everybody had to worship the Babylonian gods.

The Babylonians tried to eliminate other gods and other worship, proclaiming their own emperor to be a god.

We looked at that in the book of Daniel.

This is different.

The Persians, their approach to things was to let everybody do their own thing.

You could have your own language, you could have your own religion, you could have your own gods, but when the emperor spoke, you had better listen.

So that does not work if you allow the 127 different ethnic groups in this empire to petition the emperor to change his mind.

That's not going to work.

And they all understand that.

And so that's the dilemma here.

The emperor's edicts cannot be changed or broken.

And he has already decreed that the Jews could be annihilated on the twelfth, thirteenth day of the twelfth month.

And it's coming up.

It's only a few months away from this.

So Esther spoke to the king, verse 3 says.

She fell at his feet.

She wept and pleaded with him to avert the evil plan of Haman, the Agagites, and the plot that he had devised against the Jews.

Do you remember here?

She is before she was too timid to go into the king's presence and ask for a favor.

All she could get out was come to a feast I'm going to make to you.

Even at the feast, then she wimped out.

She couldn't bear herself to ask for what she needed, and in God's providence that was perfect, because that gave Haman enough time to build the scaffolding that he'd ended up getting hung on.

So now all of her inhibitions are gone.

She's at the king's feet, begging and weeping and pleading.

Verse 4 the king hold holds out his golden scepter to Esther, meaning that she can speak to him.

She's she's welcome in his presence.

Esther rose and stood before the king.

She said, If it pleased the king, if I found favor in his sight, and if the thing seems right before the king, and I'm pleasing in his eyes, notice how deferential she's being.

If this is this is the equivalent of praying, and you we end our prayers with, if it is your will.

That's how she's pleading to the emperor here.

If it is your will and I'm pleasing to you, and you still like me, and this is agreeable to you, and if you had one doubt about this king, I'll stop talking right now.

Whatever you want, but you can do whatever you want.

But if the slightest chance you would want this, please, please, please.

That's how she's asking it.

Let an order be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman the Agagite, the son of Hamadotha, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the provinces of the king.

For how can I bear to see the calamity that is coming to my people?

How can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred?

So that's the gist of the problem here.

This is why the story is not resolved yet.

Mordecai is elevated, Haman is dead, but the cloud that's overhanging all of this is what will happen to the Jews because the decree has gone out.

And this is the basic principle that God's laws cannot be broken or tempered.

God's laws have more in common with the laws of the Medes and Persians than they do in our own democracy.

And this makes it sometimes hard for Americans to fully appreciate the gravity of what God's word says.

When God decrees something, it cannot be undone.

It cannot be muted, it cannot be tempered, it cannot be altered.

God's decrees are inviolable.

They cannot be broken.

Not a jot or tittle will pass from the word of God.

Everything God says will be fulfilled.

Everything God says is true.

His word never gets undone.

That's a basic principle.

Now, where that comes in as a gospel principle is that God says he must punish the evildoer.

So if you die and you're a sinner, you'll be standing before the Lord.

The Lord cannot but punish you for your sin.

It's in his character.

His character is holy, his attributes are holy, he is separated from us.

He is sinless and undefiled.

We are sinful and defiled.

So when sinful people meet a holy God, there must be judgment.

So many people bank upon mercy when they die from God without understanding what exactly it is they're banking on.

When somebody thinks they'll die and they will stand before God and be able to explain to God that they're a good person, so they don't deserve hell, understand what's behind that assumption is really a disdain for God's word.

Because God's word says that sinners do deserve hell.

That we are children, by nature, we're children of wrath.

That's Ephesians 2, verse 3.

Ephesians 2:3

By nature, we are children of wrath.

We do deserve judgment.

And so when a person thinks that they are going to avoid God's judgment, they are actually calling God a liar, which itself is a sin.

Do you follow the circular logic you find yourself stuck in if you rely on works righteousness for salvation?

If you think that when you die, you'll be able to appeal to God that you are a good person, and so you don't deserve hell.

The appeal in and of itself shows that you deserve hell.

The appeal in and of it, it'd be like this.

You go to traffic court, you get the speeding ticket of you know, of our night friend who got his traffic ticket, it goes to traffic court, and he appeals to the judge and says, Judge, I know that you're a good judge, so I know you're not going to enforce the law today.

It doesn't make sense.

Your appeal is undercutting his authority.

Your appeal is actually disdainful to him.

Your appeal is an insult.

That's the nature of mankind's relationship with God.

If our ground of our relationship with God is an appeal that he does not enforce justice, we are asking him to undo his own character.

Esther understands that problem.

This is why she's at the feet of the king, begging and weeping.

What can she possibly ask for?

What can she ask for?

Think of the rich man who's begging Lazarus, can you send a messenger to my family and let them know the truth about the Lord?

And he says, no, there's a great gulf fixed between heaven and hell.

Not only can I not send a messenger, but even if I could, they wouldn't listen.

And even if they did, what good is it?

There is a great gulf fixed.

That's the nature of our relationship with God.

He is holy, we are not.

There is a great gulf fixed, and that gulf cannot be bridged without God violating his own character.

This is the bad news of the Bible.

That we are sinners and we deserve judgment.

And make this personal in your own life.

Do you understand that you are a sinner?

That when you lie, you assault the God of truth.

That when you covet, you assault the God who provides your needs.

That when you lust, you assault the God who is holy.

And that all of those things that swirl in your heart mean that you deserve God's judgment.

When you worship yourself, you tear down, you bring God down.

When you pursue your own ends, as if that's what you were made for, to glorify yourself.

When you prefer yourself above others, it's really self-idolatry.

All of these things, they don't get erased.

It's like if you go ten years, God wipes them off your record.

There's a continuity with your sins until they're paid for.

They don't go away.

There's no statute of limitations on sinning against God.

You might be able to throw away your old tax returns after seven years or eight years or whatever.

I don't know what it is.

Don't take tax advice from me, but there's a statute of limitations about how far back the IRS can go and rifle through your misdeeds to find crimes to charge you of.

There's no such statute with the Lord.

If you think back to when you were a kid and you sinned, there's a continuity of your soul, your spirit, your being with those sins.

And they demand judgment.

All the way to the present day, all the way into the future, all the way into eternity.

Now, if you're honest, you don't have to think back to when you were a kid to think of sins that deserve judgment.

You can probably think of today or this week or this month.

But the point is, take your mind to some sin that you have done that you know requires judgment from God.

And God cannot simply not act on his own character.

There's no way to repeal God's holiness.

So that's the first point of this.

Well, Ahazarius has an idea.

And we find this in verse 7.

King Ahazarius said to Queen Esther, to Mordecai the Jew, Behold, I've given Esther the house of Haman.

They've hanged him on the gallows, because he intended to lay hands on the Jews.

But you may write as you please with regard to the Jews, in the name of the king, and seal it with the king's ring.

For an edict written in the name of the king and sealed with the king's ring cannot be revoked.

And so the king has a plan here, and he's playing off the nature of his commands that cannot be undone.

So he's telling Esther here, why don't you come up with a different decree?

You can't undo the first one, which is Esther's initial idea.

Let me undo the first one.

And the king basically says, you can't do that.

There's no way to do that.

However, what if you made a new decree that said something different?

Verse 9, the king's scribes were summoned in that time in the third month, which is the month of Sivan, on the 23rd day, this is summertime somewhere, and an edict was written according to all that Mordecai had commanded concerning the Jews, the satraps and the governors, the officials of the provinces from India to Ethiopia, 127 provinces, to each province in its own script, and to each people in its own language, and also the Jews in their own script in their own language.

And he wrote in the name of King Ahazarius and sealed it with the king's signature ring.

He sent the letters by mounted couriers riding on swift horses that were used in the king's service, bred from the royal studs, saying that the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, children and women included, and to plunder their goods on one day throughout all the provinces of King Ahazarius on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar.

So do you catch the plan?

It's kind of a brilliant plan.

The king decreed that the Jews could be annihilated, attacked, and if you attack them, you got their possessions on this particular day.

And so the new plan will be to allow the Jews to defend themselves, which they the old plan did not allow for.

And you might think, well, if they would defend themselves anyway, that's easier said than done, because defending yourself from a national onslaught of the Persian Empire would require some amount of preparation, which is not allowed.

You can't form their own militia to defend themselves.

That would be insurrection.

There's really no practical way for them to defend themselves.

But now there is.

Now the king says, on this day, how about this?

On this day, all the Jews can fight their enemies.

Well, how do you know who the enemies of the Jews are?

They're the ones attacking them.

So Nation A, or group A, attacks the Jews.

Group A is now subject to the second edict of the king, and they can themselves be defeated.

So this does not undo the king's edict.

It merely puts it into the game of war.

You want to take your chances with the Jews?

You want to go fight them and try to get their possessions?

Go for it.

They'll fight back now.

And if the Jews win, they can claim all the possessions of the people that attacked them.

This is how I would say this point.

The gospel can supersede wrath.

The gospel can supersede wrath.

The gospel has the power not to set aside God's wrath, but supersede, to take the place of, to come in right before.

Supersede is kind of a cool word.

It could almost even imply a logical, I mean a simultaneousness, a chronological simultaneous action, but logically it takes precedence.

So the other nations can attack the Jews, but at the same time the Jews can attack them, and this logically is going to trump the other one.

And you really see this come to life in the gospel because God has declared that every sin will be punished, and he cannot undo that.

But what can he do?

He can make another decree.

And in this decree, the sins of all those who are in Christ will be punished in Jesus Christ.

So that all of our sins are punished.

They are punished.

Because God, of course, must punish them as a holy judge.

But he punishes them by transferring them to Jesus.

And so he pours out his wrath on Jesus so that Jesus pays for them, actually bears God's wrath.

The word pays for them almost even sounds too minimalistic.

Jesus bears God's wrath that is appointed for sin.

He bears it all so that you don't have to.

And God becomes both just and the justifier.

He's just because he does punish every sin like he said he would.

He's the justifier because by punishing Jesus, he can now justify those who come to Jesus through faith.

This is what the king devises.

Let the Jews defend themselves.

Now, this might seem like a long stretch from the Jews to the gospel, but I think it's definitely the principle that's in mind.

Because the king's edict has gone forth, the Jews can be attacked.

That ferocity, that violence, that idea that you can take your enemy's possessions is being transferred now from the enemies of the Jews to the Jews.

The king's anger in that sense is being given to them, and they can now act on the king's anger and take the possessions and annihilate the peoples who attack them.

By the way, do you remember what even Haman's friends said when they realized that Esther was a Jew and Mordecai was a Jew?

They said they shook their heads and said, You're going against the Jews, you're going to lose.

I mean, there was a genuine fear that people had even in Persia, centuries, centuries after the Red Sea crossing.

I mean, it's like Rahab.

The fear of what happens in the Red Sea crossing to the Egyptians, it still reverberated.

It still even then reverberated.

They didn't want to go against the Jews.

And so they know.

They know.

The king's wrath is transferred now into the hands of the Jews.

They can act on it, they can take the property of those who come at them.

And this reminds me very much of Colossians chapter 2.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

Colossians 2, verse 13.

Colossians 2:13

You who are dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, it's Colossians 2 verse 13.

Colossians 2:13

God made alive together with him.

Very similar to the passage we read this morning in Ephesians 2.

You are dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive.

How can he do that?

By having transferred all of our trespasses, canceling the record of debt that sort of gives us with his legal demands, he set it aside, nailing it to the cross.

So God takes our debt that we owe for our sin and nails it to the cross, and that fulfills our debt.

It pays for our sin.

So God's wrath is propitiated, meaning it is held back.

The wrath of God is averted, it is, it is stymied, it is poured out on a different person.

And so Paul can say that the wrath of God is canceled because it is nailed to the cross.

This is very much what you see in Esther chapter 8.

Esther 8 · chapter mention

The wrath of the king against the Jews will be cancelled by being handed over to them, and that they are free to defend themselves.

And they'll defend themselves, by the way, in verse 11, by destroying and killing and annihilating any force of any people or province that might attack them.

Now a copy of this letter, verse 13, written.

It was to be issued as a decree in every province.

It would be publicly displayed to all peoples.

The Jews would be ready on that day to take vengeance on their enemies.

So this is not a peremptory strike.

They're not allowed to take the initiative here, but they are allowed to be ready.

So if anyone comes to them, they can fight back.

That's the plan.

They will bring out their own defense.

This leads to my third gospel principle here.

For the gospel to win, the strong man must be bound.

For the gospel to win, the strong man must be bound.

Jesus says this in a parable.

He says it in Mark 3.

Matthew 12, I believe, is the other place where he speaks to people in parables about the gospel.

And he says, for you to take over a strong man's house, you must bind the strongman.

You have to be stronger than him.

If you want to rob a house, you have to tie up the person who's in there.

And this is a parable, of course.

He's not comparing himself to a thief.

He's speaking in a parable.

It's almost an axiomatic fact.

If you want to rob a house that's guarded by a really big guy, you've got to find an even bigger guy.

This is the nature of how for God to for the gospel to supersede God's wrath.

He has to bind the one that is enacting God's wrath.

And so in Esther, it's very obvious the other nations are going to attack the Jews.

For the Jewish plan to work, the other nations must be thwarted.

They must be bound.

It's the threat of violence that binds them and holds them back from the Jews.

Otherwise, this whole thing is for naught.

But if the threat is effective, the strong man is bound.

This is Matthew 12, verse 27.

Matthew 12:27

Jesus says, If I cast out demons by Beelzebub, whom do your sons cast them out?

Therefore they will be your judges.

Do you remember people were saying Jesus must cast out demons by the power of the devil?

Which is just nonsense.

Does that even make sense?

Jesus, you are of the devil because you cast out demons by the power of the devil?

No, it doesn't work.

But that's what they accused Jesus of doing.

And so Jesus says, if that is true, if I do cast out demons by the devil, how do you and your Pharisees cast out demons?

Whose spirit is working in you?

How can someone, this is Matthew 12, verse 29, how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man?

Matthew 12:29

Then he can plunder his house.

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

This is what happens with the cross for our this wrath devoted to our sin to be transferred to Christ, the devil has to be defeated.

He has to be set aside.

The devil fulfills Judas and compels Judas to betray Christ, and the devil is ultimately thwarted because in the betrayal of Christ it brings about the cross, which brings about the enactment of God's wrath on sin, which brings about the resurrection.

Death is swallowed up by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The devil is thwarted because Jesus overpowered him through the cross.

It doesn't mean the devil is still bound now, of course.

He is roaming the earth free to go after people as he sees fits.

He asks the Lord for permission to do what he does.

The devil can only be obedient to the Lord.

He rebels against the Lord, but the Lord does not allow him to attack people without his permission.

But the devil is still roaming the earth, still seeking people to devour.

But the point is this: for the gospel to be true, the devil was overpowered at the cross.

He's overpowered.

And so we know that the gospel has more power than the grave, more power than the devil, because the devil was defeated through it.

And of course, the devil will rebel and be defeated again.

He does not learn his lesson.

He should have packed his bags at 1 Kings 18, you know, when fire came from heaven and Baal's idols were drowned in water and then burned by fire.

I mean, it should have been over there.

He should have considered different life choices at that point.

But he didn't.

He tempts Jesus in the wilderness and fails.

He goes after Jesus through Judas and succeeds only to fail.

He will he roams the earth now, seeking people to devour.

He will fail.

He will eventually be bound up again and cast into angel prison with the other demons from the days of Noah.

And the Lord will reign on the earth for a thousand years, then the devil will be released and will rebel again and ultimately be cast into hell.

But the point for the gospel is that for the gospel to win, for the gospel to advance, you understand that the Lord has to be stronger than those opposed to it.

Certainly that's true of the Lord versus the devil.

Finally, the fourth point.

Those in the covenant shall inherit the earth.

Those in the covenant shall inherit the earth.

And there's a fifth point after this.

It's not quite finally.

Those in the covenant shall inherit the earth.

Point 15, Mordecai went out from the presence of the king with royal robes, blue and white, with a great golden crown.

This is the second time that day he's been wearing these robes.

A robe of fine linen and purple, and the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced.

You know, where the where a righteous reign, the people are happy.

You think people liked Haman ruling over them?

No way.

But now that Mordecai is in charge, they are happy and they are rejoicing.

The Jews, meanwhile, had light and gladness and joy and honor.

In every province, in every city, wherever the king's command and his edict reached, there was gladness and joy among the Jews.

Remember, the Jews are in the dispersion here.

It's not like they're only in Israel.

The Jews are scattered throughout the empire.

The situation in which we find them even during the life of Christ.

Many from the people of that country declared themselves for Jews for fear the Jews had fallen on them.

That is just a hilarious line to me.

People were so afraid of the king's edict that many people started pretending to be Jewish.

They aligned themselves with the Jews.

I don't know what that looked like.

They didn't work on Saturday.

I don't know how.

They faked their Jewishness.

They spoke with in Hebrew.

I don't know what the Hebrew accent.

I don't know what it looked like.

But they aligned themselves with the Jews.

I'm sure many of them maybe even genuinely converted to Judaism.

Remember, much of Judaism during this time, though, even as apostate, it's not a godly religion.

Even during this time.

So they aligned themselves with it.

Perhaps they converted to it.

Perhaps they just associated with the Jews.

Perhaps they said, hey, let us fight with you.

Maybe they were so convinced the Jews were going to acquire more property that day from their enemies, they wanted in on it.

Who knows?

But the point is everything's been reversed.

Now people more, you know, Haman wanted to stop the Jews, and now he's increased the Jews.

Isn't that how God works with persecution with the church too?

Every time the church is persecuted, you think it would reduce it or squash it, and every time in church history it grows it.

I mean, without exception.

And that's what they experienced here.

The fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom.

Well, here, the fear of the Jews is the foundation of Judaism, it seems.

And they join in.

This is a great reversal.

As I mentioned, Haman wanted to annihilate the Jews instead.

He ends up growing them.

This is poetic justice, this reversal.

We see this even in the New Testament.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

It just sounds nonsense to us.

Those who are meek, those who have their strength under control, those who are not seeking to advance themselves or their own kingdom, they're the ones who will inherit the earth.

All of the people who see themselves as powerful and influential in the world, their kingdoms will come to nothing.

And it is the meek believers who exist in the background that will ultimately end up inheriting the earth.

What a rebuke to the Pharisees when Jesus gives it in the Sermon on the Mount that the meek will inherit the earth.

What a rebuke to their own power structure in our worlds.

You know, it's the Hannah that's elevated through Samuel.

It's the same way God always works.

Yahweh reverses things.

He finds the humble and he grants them favor.

He finds the proud and he breaks them down.

This goes all the way into the future, into the kingdom where Jesus will reign on the earth.

It's all the gold and treasure in the earth will come to Jerusalem.

This is Haggai chapter 2, Hebrews chapter 12.

Haggai 2 · chapter mention Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

Man's conniving will come to nothing.

Psalm 2, why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain?

I mean, so much of human history is people trying to overthrow the Lord.

The kings of the earth set themselves, the rulers take counsel together against Yahweh and against his anointed.

What does that look like?

What does it look like for the kings of the earth to take counsel against God and against his anointed?

I mean, no king says, I declare myself to be an enemy of Christ and I'm taking an army against the church.

That doesn't happen.

Nevertheless, the kings of the earth do constantly conspire against the church.

They seek to make laws that inhibit righteousness and advance immorality.

They seek to make laws that inhibit worship and advance protests and atheism.

I mean, that's the normal course of the world.

The kings and the rulers of this world conspire against Christianity.

And you see this, I think, so flagrantly today.

I at the beginning of the COVID crisis, there was this idea that, hey, all these restrictions are just content neutral.

You know, this Spanish flu is breaking out and everybody's dying, so everybody has to stay home.

It's not just for the churches.

And then protests happen and suddenly the rules change, right?

When protests happen, it's like, oh, actually, COVID doesn't spread outside.

It only spreads in churches.

And they don't say it like that.

They say it only spreads in groups of people that where they're singing in close proximity to each other indoors.

Who are you talking about?

The high school glee club?

I mean, what do you that's what your science has showed you that the COVID is running a rampant through high school glee clubs and churches.

I mean, it's just ridiculous.

But of course, they would never say our goal is to shut down churches until November 3rd.

They would never say that.

That's just a small example.

But you see this throughout human history.

This is just the season that we're in, but it's a different season next year, and it was a different season last year.

It's always the same way.

The nations of the earth, the kings of the earth conspire, and I love the way David says it in Psalm 2.

They inspire, they conspire against the Lord's anointed, is what they're doing.

So will that work?

Will all of Haman's machinations against Mordecai work in eliminating the Jews?

Of course not.

They won't work.

They'll only seek to grow the truth.

They'll only seek to grow the truth.

Verse 3, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

That's what people say about the Lord in verse 4 of Psalm 2.

He who sits in the heavens laughs at that.

The Lord holds them in derision.

And they have a little committee on how to stop the church, and the people walk out so proud of the rules they've come up with.

And the Lord in heaven laughs.

He will one day speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury and say, For as for me, I have set my king on Zion on my holy hill.

Amos chapter 5, verse 4.

Amos 5:4

Thus says Yahweh, the house of Israel, Seek me and live.

But do not seek Bethel.

Do not enter into Gilgal or cross over into Beersheba.

So those are places where Israel had set up idols.

And God says, Seek me and live, but don't seek the place where your leaders set up idols.

Don't go there.

This is why not.

Amos 5, verse 5.

Amos 5:5

This verse is just an incredible verse, I think.

For Gilgal will go into exile, Bethel will come to nothing.

All of man's religions being built, even in Israel, all of man's religions being built up, and people seek peace in those religions.

They seek power through those religions.

It will come to nothing.

This is the great reversal.

The meek inherit the earth and the powerful are struck down.

The final principle from this chapter, news of this reversal, will travel the earth.

A couple verses we kind of glanced over just real briefly there.

Verse 9.

Everything was written according to the commands of the king.

It was translated.

Did you see this in the middle of verse 9?

To all the people in different languages, 127 different provinces from India to Ethiopia.

And it's made a point in their own script and in their own language.

It says that twice.

The end of verse 9.

Verse 13 that goes out to all of the world.

It will be displayed.

Look at the language in the middle of verse 13.

To all peoples.

There's global implications to this.

The news of this great reversal, the author makes it very clear.

That's language you don't see often in the Old Testament.

Old Testament has prophecies about the nations rejoicing, Psalm 96, Deuteronomy 4.

The nations will come to Israel and This is not the nations coming to Israel.

This is good news from a centralized place coming from the emperor to the world.

And when you take all of this together, I think it becomes pretty powerful.

What you see in Esther 8 is that the king's laws, God's laws cannot be avoided.

Nevertheless, God's wrath can be superseded when it is transferred to another.

For that to happen, the strong opponent of God must be bound.

And through the binding of the opponents of God, the weak and the meek and the humble will receive and inherit the earth.

I mean, this is preparing you for the gospel message.

And when all that happens, it will be translated into every tribe, every language, every ethnicity will be able to hear it in their own language, is the point.

And it will go through all the earth.

You do not see that language anywhere in the Old Testament except right here.

Then you jump to the New Testament and you see the same language all over the New Testament.

Note you, Matthew 28.

Go into all the world, preaching the gospel to all of creation.

Make disciples of all nations, Matthew 28, 19, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Luke 24, when Jesus is on the road to Emmaus.

Luke 24, 45.

Jesus opened the travelers' minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to him, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sin should be preached to all the nations.

And then you find this in Acts 2.

The first gospel message, the first church message preached in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

It's preached, accompanied by tongues of fire, representing the languages of the world.

Acts 2, verse 5.

Acts 2:5

They were there dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.

And at the sound the multitude came together.

They were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

They were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not the all who are speaking Galileans?

How is it that each of us hear in our own language?

This is what I mentioned this morning before the sermon.

This is the undoing of Babel.

This is the undoing of Babel.

That Babel represents the division as people conspire against the Lord, and the gospel represents the unity that Christ brings to the earth.

Where people hear the gospel in their own language.

I loved hearing the Bible read in so many different languages this morning because it represents that the truth of God is not confined to one ethnic group.

It goes out, we have a Jewish Savior, even here.

Do you see that it's translated into every language with Hebrew underneath?

I mean, how cool is that?

Every language is going to get a copy of this edict, every people in their own language, but with the Hebrew underneath.

We worship a Jewish Savior, but we worship him in every language in the world, the church exists, as it goes forward and the gospel is preached, and people come to faith in Christ.

Lord, we're thankful for the good news of Jesus Christ.

And we know the gospel does go through the world.

We're thankful that you have superseded your wrath by taking the deeds that we have done in the flesh and nailing them to the cross of Christ.

So that he dies for us, bearing the wrath and judgment that we deserved.

What a precious picture that is to us.

We think of the list of sins that we've done, written down on paper, read before us by the accuser, by the devil himself, in front of you, and we stand guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.

And yet you take that list and you don't sentence us, you don't banish us to hell, which we would deserve.

Instead, you take that list and you give it to Christ.

You nail it on the cross.

What an image of the gospel superseding wrath.

Lord, we receive that truth.

We receive it by faith.

We know that the record of our sins was nailed to the cross.

And we know that the devil was in many ways defeated at the cross.

What he thought was his greatest triumph turns out to be his greatest defeat.

As the grave is emptied, and the fear of death has lost its sting.

And so we look forward to the day of your second coming.

Today you return to earth to establish your kingdom.

You will bring the dead in Christ with you.

You will rapture those who are still awaiting your coming.

And you will reign over the earth.

The meek will inherit the earth.

The nations will turn their attention towards Jerusalem where you yourself will reign.

The ultimate reversal.

The kings of this world conspired against you, the Roman Empire crucified you, and yet you will reign exalted over the earth.

So, Lord, with this great reversal, how can we be silent?

I pray that you would encourage this congregation this week through conviction of apathy, through boldness of your Holy Spirit, that you would convict this congregation to be powerful witnesses to you.

That we would open our mouths this week with the gospel, that you would make us bold.

We're grateful for the privilege we have to support missionaries here at Emmanuel that are travel that are working all over the world in different language groups, planning churches and difficult, enclosed countries in the Middle East, in the Asian Pacific, and Muslim nations there, in Africa.

The translation work we heard this morning, there is so much going on to bring the gospel to every tribe and every nation.

We pray that we would be faithful to bring it this week in our own language to our own people.

Give us that boldness.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.