"God Uses" Esther 3 Sunday Evening Worship Service

It's hard to imagine a White House where this is possible.

But Teddy Roosevelt used to let his tiny dog out every morning, would then go running through the streets of Washington DC to pick a fight with other dogs.

Over time, reporters began to be on tiny dog watch and watched President Roosevelt's dog get beat severely every day.

Finally, a reporter asked President Roosevelt about this.

He said, Your dog doesn't really know how to fight, does he?

And President Roosevelt said, Oh, my dog, he's a great fighter.

He's just a very poor judge of other dogs.

We see this tonight in Esther chapter 3.

Esther 3 · chapter mention

Both Mordecai and Haman are great fighters, you might say, but they have no idea who they are up against.

They are very poor judges of character and of opponents.

They both allow their pride to bring their people to the brink of ruin.

They both allow their pride to potentially undo their lives, their nations.

There is a lot going on in their conflict.

So far, through a book of Esther, we have been introduced to Queen Esther, Queen Vashti, King Ahazarius, and to others, Mordecai even, but we have yet to really understand the plot.

This is one of those movies with a long introduction here.

By the end of Esther chapter two, you would be forgiven if you thought things shouldn't be wrapping up.

After all, the conflict in Esther chapter one was what do you do with a queen that won't submit herself to the king?

What do you do with the queen who won't come when he asks?

And then you think the conflict is who's going to be the next queen?

And we find out in Esther chapter two that lo, it will be Esther, she will be the next queen.

God has providentially put a Jewish virgin and an exiled people as refugees in a foreign land, and she has risen to authority, and this is a very Cinderella kind of story.

And even the one who was watching over her, her uncle, who'd become her really adopted father, he is elevated in the kingdom when he spares the life of the king at the end of Esther chapter 2.

Esther 2 · chapter mention

And so Mordecai receives kudos.

He spared the king's life.

Esther is now the queen, and you're ready for the credits to roll.

But that's not at all the plot of the story, which is just a little reminder to us as we jump into Esther chapter 3 tonight that oftentimes we think we know what's going on, but we don't even have the right conflict in mind.

Esther 3 · chapter mention

We think we know who the antagonist is, we think we know who the protagonist is, we think we know where the conflict is.

But no, not quite.

We are introduced to the real plot of the book of Esther tonight.

Again, it doesn't all come to fruition tonight, but the real conflict that is driving this narrative we encounter tonight.

It's not about who's going to be queen, but rather what is happening with the Jews and their people.

Will they be able to survive?

It's helpful to remember that this book is taking place in the interlude between Ezra VI and Ezra 7.

And there was a time period decades long where the construction of the temple had been halted.

They were no longer allowed to build the temple because of an edict that was really stirred up by enemies of the Jews.

The Jews were building the temple and the governor of the province, there's 127 provinces in this empire.

The governor of the one that Israel fell into, objected to the building of the temple.

The emperor stopped the building, then war with the Greek empire happens, the Medo-Persians lost, and the temple building has been stopped.

This is the window where Esther takes place.

And so, in the background, as far as the global scale goes, the question from a biblical perspective is when is the temple going to get going?

Nobody in the book of Esther is concerned about the temple.

Although we're going to see that it plays in the background tonight.

Nobody is concerned about worshiping God in this book.

As we've mentioned many times, this book never mentions God.

Nobody prays in this book, nobody worships in this book.

Nobody sings songs to the Lord.

This is a book of people that don't seem to know the Lord.

That's taking place in the stage of God's providence.

In the background is what is God doing in Jerusalem?

Where's the temple?

Where's the Savior?

Where is the promised redeemer in the world?

That's in the background.

Again, the people in the book of Esther don't seem interested in that in the least.

But God is at work.

And we find tonight here just this basic reality that is throughout Scripture that God's people are persecuted.

God's people are persecuted.

This is a reality from Genesis to Revelation.

This is a reality with Abel and Cain.

Cain murders Abel because Cain doesn't can't bear to be around a worshiper, is the bottom line.

This Abel's presence was convicting to Cain.

God had told them what was required.

God had told them that blood was required for sacrifice.

We talked about that this morning.

That's the very heart of what it means to have redemption, to have your sins forgiven.

Cain didn't want to sacrifice.

He didn't want to put his faith in the efficacy of blood, and so he turns around and murders his brother.

You want a blood sacrifice?

I'll give you one.

Here's Abel.

And that thread carries on.

God's people are continually persecuted throughout the Bible as the nations grow.

They turn, the, you know, the line of Cain turns against the line of Seth.

That's the basic play before the flood.

After the flood, the nations turn against God's people again.

Even Noah's own children have division and dissent, as some choose a life of sin and others worship.

And that plays all the way through to the New Testament.

We'll wrap up that thread by the end of this evening.

But just know in the Bible it just presents this basic reality that God's people are persecuted.

Deuteronomy 30, verse 7 says this will be the basic component of the nation, Israel.

Deuteronomy 30:7

They will be persecuted.

As God gives them the covenant and introduces them into their promised land.

He says, by the way, there will always be those who persecute you.

Deuteronomy 30, verse 7 alludes to that.

Deuteronomy 30:7

They will be different than the world, and this difference will have ethical implications.

God designs Israel to stand out, and because of that, the nations will hate them.

And so Esther 3 kind of gives us a little bit of a play about this.

God's people are persecuted because of their history.

I and I point this out.

I was on a flight a couple weeks ago, and I was sitting next to one of our country's ambassadors, and uh he had a State Department tag on and I on his bag as he got on, and I asked him what he did for the State Department.

He said he was an ambassador, and we had a long flight all the way to LA from here, and we we talked the whole flight, and he was a really neat guy, and uh he asked me as a pastor what I thought about our government's push to protect religious freedom around the world.

And I said, Oh, religious freedom is you know so important, so essential.

I just know from my own religious background, I'm looking for like a window here for the gospel.

So I'm like from my own religious backgrounds, uh, you know, we're Baptists and we understand that through world history, whenever one group of people is persecuted for their religion, the Baptists are always next.

And that's pretty much how the world history is played out.

In the church age, there's always excuses to persecute some group of religious people for some reason.

Baptists are generally in the background watching it happen, and if that's allowed to happen, Baptists always get it next.

Okay, that's basically how how church history is played out.

So I said that, and he said, Oh, so you guys are the second most persecuted group of people in the world.

I was like, okay, yeah.

And he said, I belong to the first.

And so I thought, I'm like, okay, where did I mess up?

Where did I mess up?

He's probably Catholic because they're the ones persecuting the Baptists.

I'm like, yikes, are you Catholic?

And he starts laughing so loud.

He's like, you think Catholics are persecuted more than Jews?

I was like, well, this conversation went off the rails.

Good thing I have four more hours to uh to claw it back.

Um this is a window into that world where the Jewish people have been persecuted ever since Abel, as I mentioned earlier.

Abraham is persecuted, some of it his own doing, by the way.

Isaac will be persecuted.

Jacob, of course, and again, Jacob, some of it is his own doing.

But when the Jews get in the promised land, they're surrounded by nations that are their enemy for no reason other than the fact they hate God.

And that plays forward all the way to the life of Christ, where Jesus was, of course, rejected by many Gentiles.

As the consummate Jew, Jesus himself was betrayed and crucified in an unjust death by the Roman Empire.

And of course, the early church got it from both sides.

The the Jews were persecuting them and the Romans were persecuting them.

But certainly through world history, there's been no one persecuted to the extent of the Jews.

And we see this tonight in chapter three.

So let me give you a couple reasons as we go through this that God's people are persecuted.

First, because of history.

And I went back and forth in my mind in this outline.

Should I say it's God's people who are persecuted as we look at Esther 3, or is it Israel that's persecuted?

And certainly it's Israel that is persecuted here in Esther chapter 3.

Esther 3 · chapter mention

However, the reasons Israel are persecuted here transfer pretty nicely to the church, which begins in Acts chapter 2 in the New Testament.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And so I went with God's people are persecuted, but know that in the Old Testament age, this is Jews we're talking about as Mordecai runs into opposition from the nations around him.

It's not because Mordecai loves Yahweh, he's being persecuted here.

It's because he's Jewish.

It's not about any actual worship because that's missing.

It's just about his ethnic identity.

And so you could say Israel is persecuted of for God's people.

I hope you understand it works both ways.

The first reason, though, we see in the first six verses, God's people are persecuted because of their history.

After these things, and there is several years, again, a several year gap between the end of two and three, probably four years between the end of chapter one and chapter two, and then probably another four or five, even six years, some people guess between the end of chapter two and chapter three, depending on how long it took for to find Esther as the queen.

Um, many, many years have gone by.

And remember, these years have gone by, and Mordecai is climbing the ranks in the king's household.

He's becoming a more and more trusted advisor in the king's household.

He had found a plot to murder the king, and and the king knew about this.

Mordecai was not rewarded.

It was recorded that he should be rewarded.

That's how chapter two ended, but he was not rewarded.

Meanwhile, Haman, we meet him in chapter 3, verse 1.

Haman the Agagite, he was promoted.

And so he is leapfrogged here in Mordecai in the pecking order of the king's people.

It doesn't seem like either of these two are around in chapter 1.

When the king fired the queen, none of them were advisors.

They didn't benefit from this.

They were not advisors to the king when Esther was chosen.

So the whole royal council that decided to have the contest to see who would be the next queen was, Mordecai and Haman were not involved in that.

But after Esther has become queen, she positions Mordecai at the gate.

He discovers the plot to kill the king.

Mordecai now is climbing through the ranks of the king's structure, his political structure, and he is leapfrogged by Haman the Agagite.

He's the son of Hamadatha, and he's advanced and he's set in his throne above all the officials who are above him.

And so he comes out of nowhere.

He's the young up-and-coming politician and he leapfrogs everybody else.

Who perhaps, maybe this isn't a worthy appointment.

Maybe it is, we don't know.

But it seems unjust to Mordecai.

After all, Mordecai is the one who found out the king was going to be killed and defended him, and yet now this new guy has passed him over.

But there is a lot of baggage that is brought along with this.

He's designated here as the Agagite.

And this means that he's it says that he's an Agagite here instead of an Amalekite because it's rendering it with a pun that when you say it this way, the Agagite, it sounds like the word for bully, which is supposed to be funny, that the Amalekites were bullies to Israel.

And the the Jews would laugh when they heard this read because it's calling the Amalekites bullies.

And the main plot of this book is now going to revolve around this tension between an Amalekite and a Jew.

And the Amalekites go back to Esau's grandsons.

That's where their lineage is traced out.

They lived in the promised land.

They were one of the nations that was supposed to be driven out by the Hebrews when they entered Israel.

They're one of the nations that sacrificed their children to the fire.

They practice infant sacrifice, and when their evil had reached a climax, the Israelites were supposed to push them out of the land.

They were supposed to annihilate them.

This is partially because of their evil in the land.

It's also partially because of the way the Amalekites opposed the Israelites when they were in the wilderness wanderings.

This is the war in Exodus chapter 17, when the Israelite people were fighting against the Amalekites.

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

The Amalekites were blocking their path into the promised land.

This is a battle where Moses sent Joshua out to attack the Amalekites, and Moses realized that as long as he had his staff up, the Israelites were winning.

But Moses, who is very elderly at this point, you know, over a hundred years old, is having a hard time holding his staff up.

And so he makes, it's kind of a humorous scene.

He makes a pile of rocks to rest his arm and hold the staff up.

And through that, the Israelites have victory.

And because of that, God says the Amalekites seem to be pushed out of the promised land.

We see them again in Deuteronomy 25, right before the Israelites make their final push down to Jericho to enter the promised land, the Amalekites do a surprise attack from behind.

That's Deuteronomy 25.

They attack them again.

And so God tells Moses that when you enter the land, get rid of them.

But the Israelites never did that.

Judges chapter 6, a little foreboding word here, that the Israelites would plant their crops, and as soon as their crops began to get ripened, the Amalekites would swoop in like a bunch of locusts and devour all the Israelite crops.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

And the Israelites were too scared and too disorganized to mount an army to defend themselves against the Amalekites.

This is all in the background.

It comes to a head in 1 Samuel 15.

And you know the story where Saul is the king and he is supposed to do what God has been commanding them for 400 years now to do, and that's push the Amalekites out of the land.

Saul refuses to do that.

He goes to war.

Instead of conquering the Amalekites, he takes Agag, their king, captures him.

That's something they would do back then, is they put the kings on display.

Sometimes they would even cut off the king's thumbs so they couldn't hold a sword anymore and make them wait on the tables of the kings and his other advisors.

That was a punishment they would do.

And it seems like that's what Saul wanted to do.

Rather than killing Agag, he was keeping him along with the best sheep.

He was supposed to devote them to destruction, and he takes the sheep and the king, Saul does, for himself.

And Samuel, in the very funny scene in 1 Samuel 15, confronts him on it.

Says, why didn't you do what the Lord said?

And remember, Saul says, Of course I did.

And Samuel says, Why do I hear sheep bleeding from the back of your carriage there?

You know?

The veggie tales really nails that episode.

You know, where the sheep sticking is set up, bah.

What's that?

Nothing, nothing.

There's no sheep back there.

Certainly no king hidden away.

But he did.

He had taken the king.

So remember, Samuel stops the whole caravan and says, You won't listen to the Lord, you lose the kingdom.

And then Samuel takes out his sword, takes it out, and Agag, it says, rejoiced, because he thought the moment of bloodshed had passed.

And then Samuel says, You want a picture of what obedience to the Lord looks like?

And he hacks Agag to pieces.

And it's a very graphic scene there.

He's hacked to pieces.

That's what obeying the Lord, when you go to fight against your sin in your life, that's what obedience looks like.

Obedience doesn't look like keeping some of the sin in the back of the carriage, keeping the best sin that you like in, you know, in your closet every now and then, just to have as a pet.

Obedience to the Lord is radical, and that's what Samuel demonstrates.

So that is the conflict between the Amalekites and the Israelites.

Now notice that it does not say that Haman was an Amalekite.

He says, it says he was an Agagite, which is changing the word to make it sound like bully, but also it's tracing his lineage directly back to that king.

This lets you know that Agag was not the only Amalekite that Saul left alive.

Because he had relatives.

Haman is now on the scene, descending from Agagite.

Now, there was something you read in chapter 2, I said we didn't have time to talk about, we would get back to it later.

But it is in the genealogy of Mordecai.

When you meet Mordecai chapter 2, verse 5, there was a Jew in Susa, the citadel, whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimeah, the son of Kish, a Benjamite.

You probably did, this is not one of the Awana verses, so you might not have this memorized, but the son of Kish, that was Saul's dad.

And so Mordecai, we learn, descends from the line of Saul, and Haman, we learn, descends from the line of Agag, those same two people that were on the showdown, or Haman descends from the line of Agag, those same two people that we had at the showdown in 1 Samuel 15, we find again here in Esther chapter 3, just hundreds of years later.

Esther 3 · chapter mention

What a coincidence, huh?

What a coincidence.

What are the odds?

Well, of course, in God's economy, there are no coincidences.

This is what God brings.

And Mordecai and Haman, they don't understand this.

I doubt they were having their devotionals in 1 Samuel 15 ever.

They're just actors on the stage, but there is so much baggage.

These two families hate each other, their lines hate each other, and they probably couldn't even explain why.

Well, all the king's servants, verse 2, who were at the king's gate, bowed down and paid homage to Haman, because he was elevated above everyone else.

The king had so commanded concerning him.

So the king commanded, this is not optional.

The king commanded everybody to bow before Haman.

Everybody.

However, Mordecai would not bow, it says in verse 2.

He wouldn't pay homage.

He refused to do so.

Now when you walk into the king's court, you would find yourself under these 60-foot-tall lions.

It's massive.

They're staring down on this marble floor.

It has ivory trim.

Some of it was described in Esther chapter 1.

Esther 1 · chapter mention

This is a very intimidating place.

When Haman walked in, everybody was supposed to stop and turn and bow.

It was as if the king himself had entered in.

Mordecai wouldn't do so.

Now, a lot of people have tried to defend Mordecai in this by saying it's not right for Jews to bow to other people.

And that's just, I think, silly.

The Bible doesn't command that.

In fact, the Bible commands you to show honor to whom honor is due.

And if it's a culturally appropriate expression of honor to bow to someone, then you bow to someone.

It's not worshiping them, it's not somehow honoring idols.

It's just a proper way to show respect.

Mordecai is not interested in a proper way to show respect to Haman.

Part of this might be his family tree.

Part of this might also be that Haman is in Mordecai's job.

Mordecai wants that job and he was passed over.

And perhaps you understand what that's like.

You've been passed over, and then the person who was unjustly promoted above you the next day comes in and you know wants to shake your hand, and you're like, yes.

I would love to shake your hand right now.

Nothing more than shaking your hand, showing you honor.

Gr.

That's the scenario.

But Mordecai is not gonna man up and bow and shake his hand.

He's not going to pay him homage.

He's upset about this.

This is not an I refuse to sin situation.

He is Mordecai is not Shadrach, me, Shakira, Abendigo.

In a bad light, he's not giving to honor to whom honor is due.

In a less bad light, he's dying on the wrong hill.

At the very least, this is a gray area.

There's all kinds of examples in the Old Testament of Jews bowing before other people, beginning, by the way, with Jacob, who bowed seven times to Esau, and the Amalekites descend from Esau, by the way.

Jacob had no problem bowing to Esau.

Joseph's brothers bowed before him when they thought that he was Egyptian, when they thought they didn't know who he was.

They came and bowed before him.

That's Genesis chapter 42.

Genesis 42 · chapter mention

David and Jonathan bowed before each other three times in 1 Samuel 20 alone.

I mean, it was a typical way to show respect to people.

If Mordecai is using religious justification for this, then this is a picture of straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel.

I'm just saying don't gargle gnats when you're eating camels.

And that's what he's doing here.

He's gonna risk the entire nation of Israel over his issues.

With Mordecai.

Verse 3, the king's servants who are at the king's gate said to Mordecai, Hey, question.

Why did you transgress the king's commands?

Do you catch what's at stake here?

The king's servants notice this and go and ask him.

It's not about Haman.

It's about what did the king say and why aren't you doing it?

And when they spoke to him day after day, he wouldn't listen to them.

He's not responding to the king's servants.

They told Haman, I mean, finally, these servants don't know what to do.

It's their job to make sure everybody in this massive hall is bowing.

There's one person who won't.

The servants try to reason with Mordecai, they don't get anywhere.

So they go to Haman and say, What should we do?

in order to see whether Mordecai's words would stand.

For he had told them that he was a Jew.

So at some point in this, it is outed that Mordecai is a Jew.

Again, I don't think he's saying I won't bow to a human because I'm a Jew and we only worship God.

I think it's more likely he's saying that I don't bow to an Amalekite.

Regardless, I don't like Amon.

Deal with it.

Now, when two schoolyard kids fight, there's no real consequences.

But when two generals fight, there are.

And that's what you're going to see here.

When you hear the phrase you don't know who you're messing with, it's usually a time where you pause.

If you're in an argument with someone and the person says, you don't know who you're arguing with, you usually stop and go, hmm, who am I arguing with?

What's going to happen here?

Let me know all the implications of this before I go any further.

And that's this kind of scene right here.

Mordecai doesn't know who he's messing with.

Haman doesn't know who he's messing with.

Verse 5.

Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage because the servants told him.

Haman was filled with fury.

Haman was furious.

Which is not the right response either.

I mean, nobody is righteous in this.

How do you have a how are you the most powerful under the king?

You're the second most powerful person in the empire.

You're in this marble hall with giant lions and marble floor and ivory trim, and everybody in the empire is bowing to you, and you're fixated on the one guy who's not.

That's a little weird.

But he was filled with fury, verse 5 says, He disdained, verse 6, to lay hands on Mordecai alone.

Very interesting verse right there.

He could have walked over and killed Mordecai on the spot, and nobody would have batted an eye.

But he didn't want to hit Mordecai by himself.

There's some psychology behind this.

Killing Mordecai would make Haman look petty.

So you need something even more over the top.

That's one suggestion.

We don't really know what's going on in his mind, except you didn't want to hit Mordecai alone.

But I think you don't really need to know why.

You don't need to know the psychology behind it.

You just need to understand that God is providentially building this fight.

He's providentially working these two people against each other so that their anger rises for the showdown that you're going to see in a moment.

This is God who is at work behind the scenes providentially.

Verse 6, the second part of it.

So they had made known to him the people of Mordecai.

Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahazarius.

That is what we will call an overreaction.

One person won't bow to me, so let me wipe out an entire race of people.

But again, this isn't an isolated incident.

This has been the conflict for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Well, the first reason people hate God's people, that God's people are persecuted, is because of the history.

There's been conflict through the years.

The second reason is because of holiness.

And we'll see what.

Yeah, holiness.

Second reason is because of holiness, verses 7 through 11.

In the first month, which is the month of Nisan, in the twent in the twelfth year of King Ahazarius, they cast per.

That is the lots.

Per is just the Aramaic word for lots.

They cast them.

This is the way you would, it's kind of like rolling dice, and it's to determine what month is very different than the Jewish form of casting lots.

This is more of a dice form where they'll turn up and they'll tell you which month it is, and the lot falls on the last month.

Before Ham and day after day, they cast it month after month until the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar.

And the idea of casting lots here, you're saying, should I attack the Jews now?

Should I attack the Jews now?

Should I attack them in January, February?

And these dice will give you a yes-no answer.

So it's not going to be the process of elimination.

It's not like you get to have a 12-sided dice in whatever month lands, that's the month you attack.

No, it's a yes-no kind of roll here.

And he is doing this.

He's rolling the dice for a long period of time, day after day, month after month, and trying to find a time that he can attack the Jews to avenge Mordecai not bowing before him.

And finally, the dice turn yes in the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar.

And the Persian calendar doesn't line up with the Jewish calendar.

This is the month of, we would call it March or April.

It's the Passover month.

Haman said to King Azarius, There's a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples and the provinces of your kingdom.

Their laws are different from those of every other people.

They do not kink to the king's laws, so that it's not to the king's prophet to tolerate them.

If it pleases the king, let it be decreed that they should be destroyed.

Though this is the plan.

Obviously, this is a graphic overreaction.

But the plan is to eliminate the Jews.

Notice how he describes the Jews.

A group of people that don't keep your laws, they don't follow your customs, they're spread everywhere.

He doesn't use their name.

He doesn't say they're Jews.

He doesn't say they're the people of Israel.

He doesn't say they're the ones with the temple project.

And remember, uh, it's likely that Ahazarius had come by that temple, had even seen the work in progress on his way off to fight the Peloponnesian War.

That historians say that likely happened, so he would have been familiar with them.

But Haman doesn't say the name of the people.

He just puts it in the most villainous light possible.

There are people spread everywhere that hate you and your traditions.

They don't honor you.

They're a danger.

Their laws are different from those of every people.

That is in the middle of verse 8.

And that, brothers and sisters, that is the real reason.

That is the heart of the matter right there.

That they have different laws, different worship.

They are a different kind of people.

And this was God's design back in Deuteronomy chapter 4.

Deuteronomy 4 · chapter mention

You're going to have laws that make you stand out.

Jews are not supposed to be able to blend in.

So obviously, this is irony upon irony in the book of Esther because Mordecai and Esther were both blending in quite nicely.

Thank you very much.

If Mordecai didn't add himself, nobody would have known.

But the Jews are supposed to grow out their hair differently.

They're supposed to have the tassels.

They're supposed to keep a different calendar.

They're not supposed to eat certain foods.

They're not supposed to work on the Sabbath on Saturday.

Their whole structure is different.

They don't wear the same clothes.

They should be obviously standing out.

Deuteronomy 4, God says, I want you to stand out so the nations of the world recognize you're not like everybody else.

And then they will see the justice and the mercy and the love that the Jews have for one another and the love they have for the poor, is what's called out in Deuteronomy 4.

And they will come and they'll say, How did the people of Israel live so differently and so righteously?

And they'll come and they'll learn about Yahweh.

That's how it was supposed to work.

You'll see how different they are, and you'll come and explore it for yourself, and you'll be convicted of your sin and the righteousness of their God, and you'll put your faith in their God.

That's how it was supposed to play out.

That's how the queen of Sheba came to faith.

That's one example of it working.

And I can't think of any examples after Solomon married a thousand women.

That window shut right there.

But the persecution remains.

They do not fit in.

That's the objection.

Now, when you think about the Jews not fitting in, is it bad?

In the Old Testament, they don't fit in.

Of course not.

It's God's design.

What about now?

What about now?

Should the Jews be better assimilated into their cultures?

And I would say the answer is no, because God's Old Testament provision for them, they still, in a sense, are honoring outwardly.

Now Jesus says that you can't, there's no way to the Father except through him.

So I'm not saying that Jews are saved because of their adherence to Old Testament regulations, of course not.

Nevertheless, when you think about those regulations that they adhere to, they're not immoral regulations.

In fact, the motive behind it was to produce a kind of generosity and charity inside of Israel.

And so it's not a coincidence that, you know, the nation Israel today is the place in the Middle East where women have rights, where they can do crazy things like drive, for example.

And there's some semblance of democracy there.

That doesn't mean that they are inheriting God's promise at this moment.

They're cut off because of their apostasy from Christ, but they will be restored in the future, of course.

Romans 11 describes that.

The Savior will come in return.

They'll look upon him who they're pierced, and they will be saved.

That's Zechariah 11, 12, and 13.

All describe the radical and complete conversion of Israel in the future.

But in the meantime, their distinctiveness is not immoral.

They're distinct on things that are very moral, in fact, and Haman is bothered by it.

Why does Xerxes roll along with this?

Why does Ahazarus give in to this?

Well, he has 127 different provinces.

He's delegated authority, and here's his chief advisor who comes to him and says, hey, there's one people that are a problem.

Let's deal with them.

And also, verse 9, I will pay 10,000 talents of silver to the hands of those who have charged the king's business, so they can put it in the king's treasuries.

So Haman says, you're gonna get a billion dollars out of this.

I mean, this is just such an extreme amount of money.

A massive amount of money.

So I'll make you rich.

And he needed money.

So why is the prime minister, I mean, to use a modern analogy, it'd be like Vice President Pence going to President Trump and saying, I'll give you$10 million if you give me one favor.

That's this kind of scene right here, where the Prime Minister is coming to the president and saying, I'll give you$10 million if you let me wipe out these people.

Just let me annihilate them and you will get rich.

It's weird to bribe the emperor, but that's what's happening.

So, verse 10, the king took his signet ring from his hand.

You've never seen someone sign paperwork so fast right here.

The king took his signature ring from his hand, gave it to Haman the Agagite, the son of Hamadetha, the enemy of the Jews.

And there it is.

The king said to Haman, The money is given to you, the people also, do with them as it seems good to you.

Notice what he says.

It's yours.

Where are they gonna get this amount of money?

Well, they're gonna steal it from the Jews, of course.

Go get them.

So you recognize behind this all Haman's presentation is a collection of truths, half-truths, and lies in that order, and the emperor falls for it and gives him what he wants.

Contrast Mordecai, who came to a position of power in chapter two and used it to defend the king.

Haman comes to a position of power and uses it to defend himself.

This leads to the third reason.

God's people are persecuted because of history, because of holiness, thirdly, because of hatred.

Time gets away from me, so we'll go through this very quickly.

The date they choose.

Verse 12, the king's scribes were summoned on the thirteenth day of the first month in edict, according to all Haman commanding, was written to the king's satraps and the governors and all the provinces and the officials and all the peoples to every province in his own script, every people in its own language.

This is the same words from the end of chapter 1 about how the new queen would be found.

It was written in the name of King Ahazarius.

It was sealed with his signet ring.

That means it was officially from the king.

You cannot violate it, the laws of the Medes and the Persians and all that.

Letters were sent by couriers to all the king's provinces with instructions to destroy, to kill, and annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth of the month, of the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods.

A lot going on right there.

Let me just rattle through some of it real quick.

To destroy and annihilate.

That's language from the book of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 28, where God says, if you reject the covenant, I will raise up enemies who will destroy and annihilate you.

And so the language that's used here in Haman's decree is borrowed, or at the very least, fulfillment, of what God said would happen to Israel if they rejected his covenant.

And that's just the reality behind this kind of massive persecution.

In many ways, it comes back to Deuteronomy 28, where God said, Listen, if you don't worship and honor me, you will have this affliction to you.

And so if you're reading Esther for the first time, it's a very real possibility this will happen.

It's very real because God prophesied it in Deuteronomy 28.

Another point about this: the date is 11 months after this.

It's going to be the day or two days before Passover.

That's the date that's selected.

And so it's almost a full year away.

So why the urgency to spread this word everywhere?

Why are they getting the word on the street very quickly?

To make the Jews live in fear for a full year.

It'd be like sending out an edict on December 26th.

That all Christians will lose their houses and their churches will be confiscated and all that on December 24th.

You've got a year to prepare, and the date is chosen.

It's right before the date that we would all know.

Christmas, December 25th, boom.

It's going to be the day before that.

In the Jewish mind, this is right before Passover, and it's a full year away.

The day set aside for them to worship at the temple and present the Passover lamb, they're not going to get to do that.

The Jews will be gathering together by the temple for the Passover.

They'll likely all be in one place, and so it's going to be easier to attack them and easier to plunder them.

And the people who do it will get rich.

Underneath this is just raw hatred.

Verse 14, a copy of the document will be issued as a decree in every province by proclamation to all the peoples to be ready for that day.

The couriers went out hurriedly by the order of the king.

The decree was issued in Susa, the citadel, the capital city.

The king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was thrown into confusion.

I just look at all the scenes there.

It's incredible writing here, verse 15.

You see the couriers running away, dust coming out the horse hooves and everything.

Meanwhile, the king and Haman are sitting down to drink, and there's just chaos because Susa had a lot of Jews in it.

Chaos everywhere.

Thrown into absolute confusion.

Never underestimate the diabolical nature of revenge.

What does this mean for us?

Remember, at this point of Esther, we don't know what's going on.

We don't know why God would allow this, why God would providentially orchestrate this.

Really?

Haman had to be descended from Agag?

You've got to be kidding me.

What is God doing here?

We find out more about that next week as we wrap up now.

Just know the New Testament teaches these basic truths still stand.

Matthew 10, 22, you will be hated by all for my name's sake.

John 15, verses 18 through 19.

John 15:18–19

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.

Because you are not of the world, I chose you out of the world.

Therefore the world hates you.

That's the bottom line.

Some of the hatred towards the Jews remains in this world where the Jews are severely persecuted because they're supposed to be a distinct people.

They were called to be distinct, so the Savior would come.

That, remember, is the reason.

Why did God want the Jews to be different from the other nations of the world?

So the Savior would have a place to come that could then draw the nations to himself.

He would be the fulfillment of the prophecies, the fulfillment of the ethical mandates given to Israel.

He would fulfill the law that made them different.

He could be holy as God Himself is holy by following a Savior who fulfilled the laws of holiness.

That was the point.

People hated Israel because of their holiness, and they hate Jesus because he fulfilled those commands.

Some of that hatred remains for the Jews.

Some of it really has fallen to believers in this world.

We're not identified by our ethnicity.

We're not identified by our clothes.

We're not identified by the food that we eat.

We're not identified by the kind of things that make the Jews distinct.

There's not what separates us.

We're not identified by our calendar or our diet.

We are identified by our love for each other.

We're identified by being saved by God.

Again, John 15, verse 19.

John 15:19

Because I chose you out of the world, Jesus says, just let that hit you.

Because I chose you out of the world, the world hates you.

Underneath even the objection to Providence is the hatred for the doctrine of election.

Because Jesus had chosen us, the world hates us.

But you know what?

That's okay.

Because behind the frowning providence is the hidden smile of God.

Lord, we're grateful that you have shown your grace to us the person of Jesus Christ, who's come to seek and to save the lost, the true descendant of Israel, the temple itself and human flesh.

We're grateful for the marvelous mystery of the gospel.

That from before the foundations of time you've revealed it now through the crucified and resurrected Savior in the church.

We do pray for the Jews in the world today.

We pray that their eyes would be open to the truth of the scriptures.

The truth that if anyone knows the Father, they know in Jesus Christ.

We know that, well, now they are cut off for the sake of the gospel.

We know one day they will be restored.

We heed Paul's command to not be proud or to boast because in our boasting we too might be cut off.

If God didn't spare the natural branches, why would He we think he would spare those that we're grafted in?

We know in the future, Lord, your promises will come to fruition as our Savior returns and reigns over the kingdoms of the world from his true kingdom.

We look forward to that day.

It's in our sons, your son's name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.