"God Reverses" Esther 6-7 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Well, as every good English major will tell you, there are three forms of irony.

There's more than three, but there's three major categories of irony.

And just the broad definition of irony is when the truth is the opposite of what is expressed.

That's the easiest definition of irony, when the truth is opposite of what is expressed.

But there's three different categories of that.

There's verbal irony, which is where somebody says something, then the truth is the opposite of what they said, even though their strict words are actually true.

Their strict words are actually true.

And I have a little bit of a political example of this, but you'll forgive me, because it works so well.

If you remember a few years ago when well, well before President Trump, when President Trump was haranguing President Obama at the time and told President Obama that he would be remembered as one of the worst presidents ever.

Do you remember President Obama's response to him was, at least I will be remembered as a president.

Do you remember that?

That is verbal irony.

Where the truth of it, which was not known at the time, the truth, the words are actually true.

The words he said were actually true, but their intended meaning is the opposite of what is true.

That's verbal irony.

It's important for you to know, I think, because it makes you a more well-rounded citizen.

There's situational irony.

Situational irony is when the outcome is the opposite of what is expected.

When the bad guy turns out to be the good guy at the end of the book.

And the most famous example of this, spoiler alert, but you all were required to read this in high school, so my conscience is clear, is to kill a mockingbird, Boo Radley at the end, turns out to be the one who rescues the kids.

Remember?

Where the whole book, the kids are terrified of him, and at the end he turns out to be the one that rescues them.

That's situational irony.

And the most complex form of irony is dramatic irony.

That's where the audience knows something that the characters don't.

Where everybody who's watching or reading is aware of a truth that the characters are oblivious of, and so the characters are acting in a way that brings the story to its appointed ending accidentally.

And the most famous example of that in all of literature is Romeo and Juliet.

Of course, as Juliet is fake dying, as she is only asleep, and the audience knows she's asleep, or the reader knows she's asleep, but the only person who doesn't know she's asleep is Romeo.

And so Romeo ends up taking his own life.

Again, spoiler alert, but my conscience is clear with Romeo and Juliet.

I mentioned those because there's something that makes irony in literature or in life such almost a wonderful thing.

It's it adds a beauty to a story that would otherwise be just a simple story.

Once irony is involved in it, it brings the whole uh the whole complexity to a whole new level and you're engaging it in a different way.

And in the Old Testament, there is no more ironic book than the book of Esther.

And these two chapters, chapters six and seven, is where all of the irony comes in together.

Those three kinds of irony, verbal irony, situational irony, dramatic irony, you're going to see them all on full display tonight.

We're halfway through the book right now.

The book has 10 chapters.

We've finished five of them.

And at this point of the book, it is really astonishing that all the pieces are starting to come together, but it's astonishing how little the characters know.

Do you remember Xerces or Art Xerces is the king, or Ahazarius of his Persian name, is the king of the Medo-Persian Empire.

It's the largest and most powerful empire in the world.

They were the ones that had defeated the Babylonians.

They were the ones the Babylonians had defeated before them, had taken over the capital there, and had taken the Israelites into captivity.

And Daniel was there in that place, and they were overthrown by the Persians, and now their king is reigning over the world.

They had many, many different territories, over something like 140 different territories.

They had scores of different languages they had oversight of.

It was a very vast and efficient empire.

And the emperor of this empire was brutal.

The emperor of this empire was dogmatic.

He ruled with an iron fist.

He had a whole network of messengers, a whole network of laws.

His word could not be crossed.

In fact, the queen, remember at the beginning of Book Esther, had crossed the king, had disobeyed the king's command, and she found herself stripped of the crown.

She was no longer the queen, and there was a contest to find the most beautiful and appealing woman in all of the Medo-Persian Empire to be the new queen.

And the contest was won by a Jew, Esther.

And nobody knew that she was Jewish.

The king certainly didn't know that she was Jewish.

Not that it would have mattered.

It's just an interesting tidbit to file away in the back of your mind that this powerful and influential country has a Jew as the queen.

And again, nobody really knows that except for her own family.

And her uncle, Mordecai, becomes one of the king's trusted advisors.

If you recall, he became one of the king's trusted advisors when there were some people in the king's court that were plotting to overthrow the king.

And he overheard and he took action and saved the king's life from that revolt.

And news of that, you know, made it to the king, of course, but it's just a normal day if you're an emperor in that kind of empire.

Mordecai was not rewarded for his actions.

He was elevated, but he wasn't, never received a reward commensurate with what he did.

But he took on a new position of prominence in the king's court, Mordecai did.

Meanwhile, Haman, who was a villain, Hanan, who is evil, was the king's right-hand man.

He was the prime minister, so to speak.

He was the second in charge, and he was brutal, and he had it out for the Jews.

He hated the Jews for lots of reasons, going back to the days of King Saul and King Agag.

Haman descended from King Agag, one of the enemies of the Jews.

And Haman hated the Jews.

And he wanted them out of the, he wanted them slaughtered.

Mordecai, who hated Haman, wouldn't bow to Haman.

So Haman walks into a room, everybody bows.

The only person in the whole empire that didn't have to bow to Haman was the emperor himself and Mordecai.

And this drove Haman crazy.

Drove him crazy.

Everybody in the world bows before him except this one stubborn Jew.

So Haman has a plan.

I will slaughter all of the Jews.

Which to you does not sound like a reasonable plan, right?

Like, why not just kill, why not just kill Mordecai?

That would be easier.

Just kill Mordecai and be done with it.

Oh no, Haman's a global thinker here.

He wants to be done with the Jews.

And so he plans to slaughter them and he gets the king, he kind of tricks the emperor, if you remember this back earlier in the book of Esther.

He tricks the emperor to go along with it.

He tells the emperor there's a group of people that are plotting against you and they'll overthrow you.

He doesn't give them all the details.

What do you want done?

And I mean, the emperor, that's I mean, that's like signing a typical executive order.

Sure, get rid of them.

So Haman's plan went out.

It was sealed with the king's signet ring, which means it cannot be revoked by Persian law.

And we don't need to remember that part tonight.

That's going to be significant next week, but the edict that goes out to the Jews will all be slaughtered.

So that's the background.

Esther finds out that she is on the chopping block.

She finds out that her people are going to be killed.

Mordecai, her uncle, pleads with her and says, You've got to go to the king and undo this.

Esther says, You can't undo the king's edict.

And I can't just walk into the king's room.

You can't just do that because the queen will die.

The king would kill the queen if he just waltzed into his presence and asked for something, much less if he if the queen waltzed in and revealed that she was actually a Jew, the people that Haman, the prime minister, wants slaughtered, the queen is one.

Uh-oh, and now what?

Undo what you just did.

I mean, this would be this would be a very complex political knot to untie.

So the queen says no, and Mordecai tells her, Do you think you're gonna live?

You'll die.

All the Jews are gonna die.

You included.

So man up, queen.

Go talk to the emperor.

And Esther puts, I believe, puts her faith in the working of God.

She declares a fast.

The Jews fast for her.

And then she goes in and confronts the king.

But she does so in a very circumspect way, if you recall.

She decides to host a banquet.

She knows the king well enough to know what his love language is.

It is a banquet with lots of wine, lots of food, lots of important people.

Display your wealth to the world.

Let's do one of those things.

And the king grants it and says, sure, host the banquet.

And she says, I want Haman to be your special guest.

And so the emperor comes to the banquet with his wingman, the prime minister, who does not know what's afoot, walks right into the trap, and then, if you recall, at the end of chapter five, something happens.

The queen wimps out.

She doesn't tell the king why she called the banquet.

She doesn't, we don't know if it's a lack of courage, or I doubt it's stunning strategy.

I doubt she was planning this out like chess pieces here because you see, we'll see now, things are outside of her control.

This only happens because she was not the one orchestrating it.

Clearly, God was orchestrating it.

But so it appears the queen wimps out and says, I can't ask you tonight, but come back tomorrow for an even bigger, better banquet.

And then you'll find out the king's like, Oh, I'm all in.

Remember, this book ended with like a several began with a several week-long feast like this.

So this is, you know, a two-day banquet ain't no thing for this guy.

Do you remember as Haman was leaving, though, he came across Mordecai who did not bow?

And now, and now Haman can no longer wait.

He cannot wait to slaughter the Jews for the date appointed by the king, which was far off, several months away still.

He cannot wait for that.

So he goes home and whines to his wife in chapter 5, and his wife tells him, Why don't you just kill him?

Come on.

You're going through this elaborate plot to annihilate the Jews.

Just kill this one guy and do it now.

Aren't you the prime minister?

Nobody's gonna care if you kill Mordecai.

And so he constructs these massive, and the ESV calls them gallows, but it's not really gallows.

It's a giant spear.

It's 75 feet in the air.

And the way they killed someone is they built this spear, uh, and they would usually do it on his family's property, and they would run him, run his body through the spear.

So he'd be up in the air like a toothpick, a horrible way to die.

This guy is dangling in the air, impaled on the spear, and his whole ground, the whole property where he is, is condemned.

That was the Persian way of killing people.

This is what, by the way, evolves into the cross later on.

The Greeks just made it more efficient, the Romans made it more efficient.

You know, why one spear?

Just crucify him.

So that's what Haman does.

He stays up late at night, builds his gallows to kill Mordecai.

But he is not the only one who stays up late that night.

And that's where chapter six begins.

Where I, like I said, we're halfway through the book, and nobody knows who what the other person is doing.

This Mordecai doesn't know Haman is the gallows son up, Haman doesn't know that Mordecai is a Jew, Haman doesn't know what Esther is up to, Esther doesn't know about the gallows.

I mean, they're just everybody, the king knows none of this.

The king is the most ignorant person in the plot so far.

There's the old saying, smile, things could be worse.

Well, Mordecai smiled at the end of chapter five and things got worse.

I'm gonna call this chapter sleepless in Susa.

It was restraint to not title the sermon that.

On that night, the king could not sleep.

Just providentially.

The king couldn't sleep.

You wonder why couldn't the king sleep?

Well, perhaps he he feasted too much.

The wine was too rich.

He's coming back from a major banquet here.

They didn't have roleades yet.

But we know it's the sovereignty of God that is keeping him awake.

So he gave orders to bring the book of memorable deeds.

This is hilarious to me.

And how memorable are they?

They're so memorable that when he wants to put himself to sleep, he's gonna have them read to him.

The book of memorable deeds.

What a humble title, by the way.

He named the chronicle of his deeds, the book of memorable deeds.

I mean, what a what a trip this guy is.

And he had them read before the king.

So he has one of his servants, bring in the almanac, you know, bring in the deed, the chronicle, the encyclopedia of all of his famous actions.

And by the way, this king has lost massive wars.

He's fought massive wars.

He invaded Rome with, I mean he invaded the Greek Empire with a hundred thousand soldiers, he'd lost a huge battle in Egypt.

I mean, this king, there have been memorable deeds in his reign, for sure.

Verse 2.

It was found written in this book how Mordecai had told about Big Thana and Teresh, two of the king's eunuchs who guarded the threshold and sought to lay hands on King Ahazarius.

This is back at the beginning of the book.

Remember when Mordecai heard of the people in the king's court, the two eunuchs that were conspiring against the king?

And so that wakes him up.

Didn't put him to sleep.

He gets he wakes up now.

Hey, those guys were gonna kill me.

Who saves me again?

And the guy reading the book says, Mordecai saves you.

Well, he knows who Mordecai is.

So verse 3.

The king said, What honor or distinction has been bestowed on Mordecai for this?

And the king's young men who attended him, you know, they're flipping to the index, Mordecai, Mordeco, Mordec, Mordecai, Mordecai, got it.

Nothing has happened.

Nothing happened.

There's no other entry here.

The king's young men who attended and said, Nothing's been done for him.

Nothing's been done for him.

Just then the king hears a noise outside of his door.

Haman coming back to the palace.

Haman, who was out building his massive gallows to kill Mordecai, coming back to the palace.

And the king said, Who's in the court?

Now Haman had just entered the outer court of the king's palace to speak to the king about having Mordecai hanged on the gallows that he had prepared for him.

This is, again, what we call dramatic irony.

The king's young men told him, Haman is here, standing in the court right now.

He's rolling in the king at midnight here at one in the morning to talk to the king.

So Haman is called in.

The king's young men told him, Haman is here.

The king said, Let him come in.

Verse 6.

So Haman came in.

This is a lifeline here.

The king needs help.

So he calls Haman in.

The king said to him, This is the question.

The king, who seldom summons people, but Haman is his chief of staff or prime minister, whatever title you want to give him, is called in.

This is the middle of the night, by the way.

And Haman is asked a question.

What should be done to the man whom the king delights to honor?

This is what we call verbal irony.

What should be done for the man whom the king wants to honor?

What do we do for him?

Haman thinks to himself, whom would the king delight to honor more than me?

Man, his humility is just bleeding through the pages here.

If there ever was a picture of pride going before the fall, this is it.

You know, if you ever get called into your boss's office and your boss says, I've got a question, what should I do for the most exceptional employee here?

Don't assume he's talking about you.

But that's what Haman did.

Haman assumes, who would the king want to honor more than me?

And he's he's being sincere.

He really can't think of anybody else in the whole Medo-Persian Empire that deserves honor more than himself.

It's staggering.

Now, before we read his answer, you need to prepare yourself emotionally for his answer.

Remember, the question is, what should I get the person who has saved my life?

What should I get to the per for the person who needs to be honored?

You can tell a lot about something by what they some by somebody by what they get you as a gift.

I'm not talking about like the cheap gifts, although they reveal something about you too.

Talking about a thoughtful gift.

When somebody gives you a thoughtful gift, it's usually an insight into that person himself, isn't it?

It's usually a bit of a window into what they think is important because that's what they want to share, what they appreciate, that's what they're sharing.

You see that here with Haman.

The question given to Haman is what should I get the person who honors the king?

And Haman is going to answer by what he wants more than anything, because he thinks he's talking about himself.

You learn about Haman by how he answers this question.

He says, verse 7, for the man whom the king delights to honor, let royal robes be brought, which the king has worn.

That's kind of creepy.

Let the horse that the king has ridden, and on whose head a royal crown is set, and let the robes and the horse be handed over to one of the king's most noble officials.

Let them dress the man whom the king delights to honor, and let them lead him on a horse to the square of the city, proclaiming before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honor.

And what an epic scene, isn't it?

He says, not only, he wants the king's robes, that's obvious, that the king himself wore, which is weird, but maybe everybody would recognize it.

He doesn't just want the robes, though.

He wants the horse.

It's unclear even in the Hebrew if the crown belongs in the horse's head or the person's head, because you've got antecedent problems here, but one of them is wearing a crown.

And it's a horse that is recognized in all the city as the king's horse.

And that sounds weird to us, but we definitely understand that in the world of presidential motorcades.

You know, we we have cars everywhere, but you would recognize the president's car.

Ditto with the horse.

You would recognize the president's horse.

Haman wants that horse.

He doesn't want it for a day.

He wants it for an hour.

And look at the other details he puts in there.

He wants the king's most trusted, like the next person in the line, to be the one who dresses him.

So, in other words, like the second guy you like, king, the guy you like the most has to get the robe on him.

But the number two in this contest has to be the one that puts the robes on the number one.

You've got to actually see how important he is.

It's very clear in the pecking order, there, right?

I mean, the number the number two guy is not going to be confused that he's number two because he's dressing number one.

That's what he wants.

He wants them paraded around, not around the whole city.

That's what's staggering around this, just around the square of the city, where he doesn't want to go around the perimeter.

He doesn't want to be paraded through the streets.

He just wants a parade through the city square where the important people are.

And the one who dressed him has to become the herald, proclaiming before him, thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honor.

That is what Haman wants more than anything.

What a surreal request.

I mean, I made a list of other things that you could ask for.

Other things I would ask.

I thought, what if I what if that was me?

What if the emperor of the world's most powerful country says, what do you want?

And I'm taking Christianity out of this, okay?

So like missions to the edge of the earth.

I'm taking Christianity out of this.

I thought, well, what a normal, typical, aspiring person in the government position, how would he answer?

Wealth is the easy one.

Give me money.

Easy.

Maybe a governorship.

You know, instead of being in the capital, put me as the governor of one of the provinces.

I guess it's further away, but it's it's you have your own authority then.

You're away from the king, you have your own authority.

A military appointment.

Make me in charge of the military.

Or some special task.

Like, is there something that needs to be done in the empire or you're having a hard time doing it?

Give that responsibility to me and let me do it well.

Those would be good answers.

And Haman blows it all on robes the king worn and a horse in an hour-long parade in the city square.

It's surreal.

But not as surreal as verse 10.

So the king said to Haman, hurry.

This is the middle of the night, remember?

Hurry, take the robes and the horse.

It's going to take some time to organize this, as you have said, and do so to Mordecai the Jew.

Who sits at the king's gate.

Now, obviously, the king has already signed the death edict for the Jews, but the king is not aware that it's for the Jews.

Remember, Haman tricked him and said it's people that are rebelling against you.

He didn't tell him it was the Jews.

The king knows he signed the death edict, but didn't know it was for the Jews.

He's obviously aware of Mordecai as a Jew.

He identifies him where there's Mordecai the Jew, who sits at the king's gate.

Leave out nothing you have mentioned.

Man, that last sentence is just a knife, isn't it?

Man, leave out nothing you'd mentioned.

So Haman took the robes, verse 11, and the horse, and dressed Mordecai.

Oh, how humiliating.

And led him through the square of the city, proclaiming before him, Thus shall it be done to the man.

Whom the king delights to honor.

The king obviously doesn't know that Mordecai doesn't bow before Haman.

Everybody in the court knows it.

We learned that earlier in the book of Esther.

Everybody in the court knows that Mordecai refuses to bow.

It's so obvious.

But nobody has told the king that.

He is ignorant of what a kid playing in the city gate would know.

But how could he know?

We know what Mordecai is going through his head.

Do you think Mordecai likes this even?

What you know about Mordecai, probably not.

Mordecai's not into this kind of thing.

He doesn't bow before Haman.

He's not trying to climb the ladder.

He probably thought the whole thing was a little surreal.

This is happening to you.

We're going to give you a parade to the city square for something you did years ago?

What was Sitzi supposed to think about that?

Thanks, I guess.

Okay.

So Mordecai is done and goes back to the king's gate.

Just a little tidbit the author puts in there.

He goes right back to where he would be beforehand.

So this is daytime, and we'll see what time it is in a few verses here, but it's the middle of the day now.

It's happening in the day.

Mordecai just goes right back to where he's posted during the day, doing the king's work, taking care of the king's business at the gate, being a faithful worker.

That's what Mordecai does.

Goes right back to his job.

Haman goes home, on the other hand, hurried to his house, mourning with his head covered.

Could not have gone any worse.

Haman told his wife Zeresh and all his friends, remember, they're all hanging out.

They're expecting him to come home with Mordecai and hang Mordecai on the gallows.

Instead, he comes home with his head covered, tells them all that happened.

His wise man and his wife Zuresh said to him, If Mordecai, before whom you've begun to fall, is of the Jews, you will not overcome him, but surely will fall before him.

The lights start to go on for them.

Oh, you're taking on the Jews.

They know the story, certainly of the Red Sea crossing.

They're not ignorant of this.

They know that Daniel was a Jewish leader, became prime minister of Babylon.

They know this stuff.

And now they're fearing.

Now they're fearing for their friend, for their husband, while they were yet talking with him.

Verse 14, the king's eunuchs arrived and hurried to bring Haman to the feast that Esther had prepared.

He didn't hardly get to mourn properly, and the king's eunuchs are back there to yank him back to the palace.

So now it's getting the feasting time, it's the afternoon here, back to the palace for day two of Esther's feast.

Remember, Mordecai, just think about what's going on how?

Haman doesn't know Mordecai's connection to Esther, does not know that Mordecai is Esther's uncle.

Esther does not know that there are massive gallows built for Mordecai.

Nobody in the whole city knows of Haman's humiliation, not a single person except his wife and the friends that he just told.

Nobody knows how humiliated Haman has been.

Probably not even Mordecai.

Nobody knows what the point of dinner is that night.

Probably not even Mordecai either.

I mean, Esther was supposed to do this last night.

And the king knows nothing about any of this at all.

He's just on his way to a banquet.

So at this point, if everybody put their guns back in their holsters and walk back home and go to bed, there would be a happy ending.

But nobody is capable of that in this book.

Chapter 7, the King and Haman went into feast with the Queen Esther, with Queen Esther.

On the second day, this is the day two of the feast, as they were drinking wine after the feast.

The king said to Esther, What is your wish, Queen Esther?

It'll be granted to you, and what is your request?

And let me just pause and say the concept of wine has been sprinkled liberally through here.

Make of that what you will.

Sobriety is not a virtue in this culture.

So the idea is that the king and Haman are intoxicated, for sure.

That's going to be important in a few verses when you see how people respond.

Even half the kingdom, it'll be fulfilled.

Verse 3, Queen Esther answered and said, and here's where it's all going to explode.

If I have found favor in your sight, O king, if it pleases the king, let my life be granted me for my wish, and let my people for my request.

This is almost, this has echoes of Ruth and Naomi, doesn't it?

Your people are my people.

My people are your people, is what Ruth declared to Naomi.

This is what Esther is echoing here.

Let my people be granted life.

Esther is identifying herself with the Jews in front of the king, in front of Haman.

She's saying, I am a Jew, and my people are gonna die.

Verse 4, we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, to be annihilated.

This is the feast.

This is happening.

They're sitting back after, so most of the guests have gone.

It's the king, and it is Haman, and it is Esther, and it is the servant and the eunuchs.

And Esther stands up and she's begging for her life to the king.

Nobody saw this coming.

This is not what the feast was for.

The queen is pleading for her life, saying, We have been sold.

Notice how this would be humiliating to the king.

The king let his queen get sold to be executed.

How powerful can the king be if he's gonna let the queen be executed?

She's begging for her life.

And she's doing it in such a wise way.

She says in the middle of verse 3, if we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have been silent because our affliction is not to be compared with the loss of the king.

She's so wise, isn't she?

If we would have just been sold to be slaves, I would have kept my mouth shut because the king would get his money for it.

That's fine.

You can sell who you want to be a slave, O king, I understand that.

But it's my life.

It's the life of my people, she says.

Verse 5, King of Hazaria says to Queen Esther, Who is he?

Where is he who's dared to do this?

Oh, what a providential question.

Who is the one who's going to kill the queen?

And you see, picture secret service running into the room.

Someone's going to kill the queen.

There's a credible threat on the queen's life.

They're all there.

Esther verse 6 says, A foe and an enemy.

It's the wicked Haman and points at him.

Well, of all the people who didn't see that coming, Haman was definitely last on the list.

Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.

This is a plot twist he did not see.

Haman, who wants nothing more than to be the apple of the king's eye, has now been accused in front of the king of trying to kill his own wife.

Haman is in an impossible situation now.

An impossible situation.

The king is in an impossible situation.

How can he undo the edict?

How can he let the queen go free without undoing his own commands?

How can he do this without losing face?

No, that's a problem.

It's about to take care of itself.

Verse 7.

The king arose in his wrath from the wine drinking.

Notice wine drinking, again, this is not a sober event.

The king arose in his wrath from the wine drinking and went into the palace garden.

So the king steps outside, like into a little courtyard there.

This puts Haman in a bad situation because a man cannot be alone with the queen or with any member of the king's harem.

The king has a whole harem there.

There's scores of women.

No man can be alone with them, only the eunuchs can.

And now Haman is there.

There's guards, of course, and there's the eunuchs there, but the king is left, and now Haman is alone with Queen Esther, which is a big no-no, but what can he do?

Can he run out the door?

Can he, Joseph style, flee?

No, because then he looks guilty.

He can't just run for his life.

Should he stay with the queen?

That has his own risks.

That's what he chooses, and it's going to be the wrong answer.

Haman decides to say, to beg for his life from Queen Esther.

Again, another twist.

Esther was just having to beg for her life.

Now Haman is begging for his life from Queen Esther because he saw that harm was determined against him by the king.

Haman's piecing this together.

The king returns from the palace garden to the place where they were drinking wine again, as Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was.

So the scene, Esther is now seated down.

Who knows how long the king has been inside the garden?

Esther is seated.

Haman has been begging on his knees for his life, and now he's taken to grabbing Esther's legs, perhaps, climbing on top of the couch.

He's pleading.

There's nothing improper with his conduct towards the queen, that seems clear.

I mean, this would be a very strange place for him to try that right now.

But the king walks in and sees him all over the queen.

Okay.

If the king was on the fence, like, do I let the queen die or do I let the prime minister die?

I don't know which one.

Let me go in and look at them over real quick here to see which one I'm gonna kill.

Oh, one of them is assaulting the other.

So the king shouts.

The place where they're drinking wine keeps being repeated.

The king says, Will he even assault the queen in my presence?

In my own house?

As the word left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman's face.

So the soldiers, the secret service is there, just watching, like, which one do we take out?

You know?

Making sure their guns or safety is off, you know, they're ready for action here, and they just don't know who to kill.

And once the king shouts, he's assaulting the queen in my own house, I mean, they they cover his head.

They put a bag over his head and yank him out the door.

Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, By the way, king, I have some more news for you here.

The gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, who, if you recall the story time last night, whose words saved the king, they're standing at Haman's house, 50 cubits at 75 feet.

That's huge.

I mean, it's to the ceiling.

It's massive.

It would require scaffolding to get the body on top of it.

He built these massive gallows, he says.

You're standing 50 cubits high.

The king said, hang him on that.

How fortuitous.

So they hanged Haman, and hanged, is the word for impaled.

They pierced is the way it's translated elsewhere.

They put him, pierced him, hung him on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.

Only then was the wrath of the king abated.

This is a final set of ironies, isn't it?

Sin is so self-deceptive.

It's so ironic.

This story started with Haman hating Mordecai because Mordecai wouldn't bow to him.

It ends with Haman bowing at a Jew's feet.

Specifically, a queen, a Jewish woman.

This whole thing started.

We remember with Mordecai refusing to bow for Haman, Haman being so upset, and it ends with Haman groveling for his life at Esther's feet.

God always punishes his enemies because justice demands it.

Evil people will be punished by God, and usually, evil people are punished by their own evil deeds.

That's usually sufficient in this life.

That's the way the world works.

Evil people generally die as a result of their evil.

Jesus said it this way if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.

Haman, if you live by the gallows, you will die by the gallows.

Evildoers are often proud and arrogant, spinning a web of sin and a web of conflict, and then they get stuck in their own sin and stuck in their own conflict.

Adulterers get exposed because they can't keep their lives straight.

Thieves get caught because they finally steal more than they get away with.

This is the typical way that sin works.

Violent people will often die violent deaths because they finally pick a fight with someone that they can't win.

This is the story of Haman's life.

Sometimes the self-deceptive nature of sin comes back on you like a boomerang in this life, and sometimes it takes until the next life to come at you, but it will always come back.

And this should cause us to think about what side of this run.

I mean, this is a these two chapters are great reversals.

Everything is flip-flopped and flop-flipped from the start of chapter six to the end of chapter seven.

Esther went from being on death's door to being rescued.

Haman went from being the most powerful person in the empire to being condemned.

Mordecai went from being the obstinate Jew at the city gate to being paraded around the city.

Everything is switched.

And so it is worth asking yourself, whose side exactly are you on?

The side of sin or the side of the Lord?

For Haman, death was to be feared at all costs.

For Esther, death was unavoidable, and so she embraced it.

She was going to die anyway, so she just went full steam ahead.

Haman needed approval of others for any kind of security and stability in his life, and he loses it all.

Mordecai couldn't care less about approval of others, and he gains it all.

How different it is for Mordecai and Esther, who needed nobody's approval.

They were the same if they were honored or dishonored.

Esther was secure if she was an orphan or if she was a queen.

This chapter is filled with these kind of ironies.

And at this point, I think it is so helpful to jump from here to the cross of Christ.

Because I do think this is so foreshadowing the cross of Christ in lots of different ways.

As I mentioned, very literally, in a literal sense, this method of death is what was adopted by the Greeks, and then ultimately the Romans that they use as crucifixion.

In the stories, in many ways, Esther's story foreshadows the story of Christ.

Here's somebody who was, in this sense, an orphan, who ends up a queen at the end of her life, Jesus born to a virgin, eventually older, has no father, from nowhereville, Nazareth, but dies as a king.

Those who live for the praise of others, like the Pharisees, have more in common with Haman, really.

Those who live for the fear of the Lord have no problem in humility, have no problem in anonymity, just doing the work of the Lord.

God has his people as queens and kings, God has his people as counselors, God has his people as orphans, he has his people at every strata of society, he has his people everywhere.

And the thread they all have in common is their desire to be pleasing to the Lord.

There's a grand contrast, Augustine says about these chapters, there's a grand contrast between the city of God and the city of man.

The city of man even has rulers in it that belong to the city of God, that's for sure.

But kings can be manipulated.

Edicts are so-called irrevocable by kings, but they're ridiculous.

The kingdom of God is true.

Its teaching is just and straight.

Think of the cross of Christ.

Think of all the ironies in the cross of Christ.

They're just like the ironies in the book of Esther, only more extreme.

You have verbal irony.

Because remember the sign they put on Jesus' cross?

Behold, the king of the Jews.

They meant it ironically.

They meant it, they didn't mean it legitimately.

There was a dig at the Jews.

This is your king, Jews.

Look how worthless you people are.

This is your king.

They put a crown on his head.

They called at him, they taunted him on the cross.

Behold, hey, look at all you Jews.

Behold, your king, they said.

Mocking him.

The truth is the opposite of what they meant, but exactly what they said.

Remember the crowd to Jesus when he was on the cross?

You saved others, but you can't save yourself.

Which is exactly true.

He did save others.

The crowd's own language condemns themselves.

Jesus is the Savior.

He did save other people.

And we continue to save other people.

In fact, as a result of that comment, he's going to turn and save one of the two thieves next to him.

But he himself needed no salvation.

The soldiers call Jesus the King of the Jews.

There's, of course, situational irony that the end of the story is the opposite of what you expected.

Jesus was the king, rode in Jerusalem on a donkey, and yet ends on the cross only to be highly exalted.

There's dramatic irony, of course, as well, is they're looking at Jesus on the cross and saying, Where are your soldiers?

Where's salvation for you?

And the other thief looks at him and hurls insults at him.

But the one thief says, Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Everything is reversed.

And Jesus will come into his kingdom.

And Jesus says to him, Today you will be with me in paradise.

That's how the story ends.

Look at the other irony that Jesus cries out, Eloi, Eli, Lama Sawakhtani, my Father, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

When really the only person there who wasn't forsaken by God is Jesus.

And the thief will be rescued and the centurion will be saved because of their faith in Jesus who bore their sins in his own body.

Everything totally reversed.

Esther chapter 7 ends with a criminal hung on a gallows, and the last verse is then the wrath of the king was abated.

Esther 7 · chapter mention

What a picture of the gospel.

The final irony of the cross is that Jesus ends executed on the cross as a convicted criminal with our sins on him, standing actually guilty for us.

And it is in the cross of Christ that the wrath and anger of God is abated, is poured out, is propitiated.

Obviously, there will be no resurrection for to eternal life for Haman because he died for his own sins.

And obviously the story of the cross does ultimately end with Jesus' resurrection.

Nevertheless, I hope these ironies cause you to appreciate the cross in a new way.

Lord, we're grateful that you gave your life so that we might live.

The author of Life Killed on a Cross.

The one with the power to forgive, who was nailed to a cross, the one who's a savior for others who needed no saving himself.

The one forsaken by God, who of course is the only son of God with whom he is well pleased.

Soldiers raffling off your possessions as if that was all of value you had.

The crowd ignorant to what was in front of them.

The centurion, the one overseeing the execution, recognizing your righteousness.

Everything turned upside down.

The holy Lamb of God becoming a sin for us.

And so we're thankful, Lord, that you gave your life so that we might live.

We're grateful for the resurrection because we see in that our promise of eternal life.

We see in that that you did conquer the grave.

We see in that that the mock and the shame and the scorn of the cross would not be final.

But just a passage, just a doorway to eternal life, much like the grave was.

We know the same fate awaits us.

For those who desire to live godly lives in this world, we will bear shame and ridicule, perhaps even martyrdom.

But we know through that, it's only following you.

We're grateful for you, Lord.

We give you thanks.

In Jesus' name we pray.

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.