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Episode 691: In this episode, we dive into the thrilling narrative of Esther chapter 7, where the stakes are high, and the tension reaches a boiling point. We witness the culmination of Esther's bravery as she reveals her true identity and pleads for her life and the lives of her people. The king's reaction to her revelation is explosive, leading to Haman's downfall in a dramatic twist of fate. We reflect on the themes of divine justice and the idea that God can turn dire situations around for good, as seen in the ironic fate of Haman, who is impaled on the very pole he intended for Mordecai.
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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Welcome Back Esther. Chapter seven is all about the showdown. The Queen risks everything and justice hits hard man. So it's going to be a wild one. I'm super excited about today. I'm Jeff and this is Wesley. Yeah. Good to be bad and we are so glad to have you Wesley. Before we jump into the Bible study part of it today, Desiree gave us a really interesting moment here in this first piece, and it's I can't believe that actually happened. And here's what it says, Welcome back Wesley. To get to know Wesley a little better, let's have him tell a story that's so weird or random people think it's made up. The weirder the. Home man, I've got so many of those. What's going well? I would imagine just crazy things that have happened. I remember some years ago we took a trip to. New York. It was with a tour company, and literally everything on that trip was a disaster. The bus looked like am I get in trouble for this? But you know the Rosa parks and not sitting on the back of the bus. That's what the bus looked like. Old. This bus was a yeah, and everyone's looking like are we really getting on that? So we get on this bus and it's just it's old. Halfway through the trip, the engine goes out. No, he got it back working, but now the AC doesn't. Work, so we've got all the windows. It was one thing after the net. We get to we were going to New York. We get to New York. We're sitting there in front of the hotel. They have no record of us and the tour company arranged all this, no record of us being there. It was a complete disaster. No, yeah, so it was some kind of discount trip man. Yeah, we're just guy in the seven eleven parking lot selling the yp to New York City. It was not good yet, Like everything was a disaster about that trip. Okay, note to self, don't go on trips so Leslie. Or that tour company unless you like ancient buses. It's funny. So for those listeners who don't know Wesley Woods and I we get to work the other long Chris, he works with us. We all work at the same church, Heritage Church. And you've been in ministry a long time. How long have you been? Yeah? I first became a minister in ninety eight, wow, nineteen ninety eight, and then I went from minister to I think assistant pastor, then to lead pastor, and then I came over to Heritage. H Yeah, Well it's been great man. Wesley and I we have a. We try to team up against our executive pastor, Chatty as Man as often as possible, and we tried to hold Chris about back as much as possible for just running amoket right. So yeah, that's great, man. We're great allies together. It's a lot of fun to work together. Okay, So that was one story. Do you have another story? Do you have another crazy one? Oh? Man? So that was that the New York story. Then also related to New York, you meet some of the most random stars. In New York. Oh. Yeah, So we've. Met a lot of stars, like in Uh, there's a guy who's an actor producer. We met in the elevator. In the hotel. We met an x NBA guy at a theater before. I mean just you bump into But in New York, it's no big deal. You know here, it's like, oh my goodness, that song. In New York, it's like whatever, there's another celebrity. Yeah. Yeah, it turns out they're just normal people. Yeah, there's just normal people and. Just way richer and expect better service. Yes, well, talking about way richer and expecting better ner, we're talking today about the king and the queen and one of the King's advisers, a guy named Hayman. So to catch everybody up, we've been going through the Book of Esther and a couple of interesting things. Esther is the only book in the Bible that never says the name of God in it, which is interesting. But you see God's hand through the whole thing. You see people of faith trusting that God is in control even though his name is never mentioned, and it's telling the story. We've been kind of going through that. All of the Israelites have been in exile for quite some time. God it said you're going to be in exile for seventy years. Some of the kings began to allow them after that seventy year period to go back to Jerusalem if they wanted to, but some stayed, and Mordecai is one of those. In his families. One of those that stayed along with his what was his adopted daughter esther she was a niece and her cousin whatever, And then she winds up winning a beauty pageant because the king gets mad at his queen and he makes her the queen. She's incredibly powerful. But then Hayman gets more and more impressive, he gets more and more elevated in the kingdom and more full of himself, and at the same time, he hates Mordecai because Mordechai is and Israelite. He's a Jew. He won't bow down, he only bows down to God, and Hayman hates it. So he finally gets the king to say, all right, let's just kill all the Jews. They don't respect us. Let's just kill them all, and we're gonna have this massive genocide. And then after that, the king winds up discovering that Mordecai had saved his life from an assassination plot. So he's talking and he goes, what did we ever do for Mordecai? He said nothing, Oh, we should do something fancy. So right then Hayman's walking in. He goes, hey, man, what should we do for a guy that I'm just think is the best guy in the world. He goes, Man, you should give him a fancy robe, put him on your own horse. You should send somebody through town in front, saying this is what the king does for the people he likes. And he says, great, then I want you to call that out while you're walking Mordecai through the town. So this is just like the greatest humiliation. He's so mad and it makes Hayman even more angry. Well, during that time, Mordecai found out that Hayman was trying to kill all the Jews, and he goes to esther and says, hey, don't think that because you're the queen, you're gonna be able to hide. You know, nobody knew she was Jewish, but she was trying to hide that. But he said, eventually they're going to find out. They're going to catch you. Yeah. So he said, maybe God put you in this position for just such a time as this, And she said, all right, let's praying fast about this for a few days, and then I'll go see what I can do for the. King with the king. And then she said, hey, King, we're going to have a party. And he said, great, the party sounds great. So that's where we kind of ended. Last time, which was great wisdom of her approach of how she tried to do. You couldn't just go before the king and different things like that. So yeah, so. We just caught everybody up and just like three minutes caught him up a whole week's with it. You know what, if if you haven't listened to the other ones, I just caught you up on everything we talked about the last all last week. I saved you. I saved you five days worth of listening to the Bible guys in three minutes. Or they can just watch the veggietail version. Yeah, rot, that's what I said that last week. Yeah, I kept talking about the vegetail version. So here we are now in Esther chapter seven. So so the King and Hayman went to Queen Esther's banquet and on the second occasion, remember she threw two parties. While they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, tell me what you want. Queen Esther, what is your request? I will give it to you, even if it's half the kingdom. Queen Esther replied, if I have found favor with the King, and if it pleases the King to grant my request. I asked that my life and the lives of my people will be spared for my people and I have been sold to those who would kill, slaughter, and annihilate us. If we had merely been sold as slaves, I could remain quiet, for that would be too trivial a matter to warrant disturbing the king. Who would do such a thing? King Xerxes demanded, who would be so presumptuous as to touch you? Esther replied, this wicked Hayman is our adversary and our enemy. Hayman grew pale with fright before the King and queen, and then the King jumped to his feet in a rage and went out into the palace garden. Hayman, however, stayed behind, de plete for his life with Queen Esther, for he knew that the king intended to kill him. In despair, he fell on the couch where Queen Esther was reclining. Just as the King was returning from the palace garden. The King exclaimed, will he even assault the queen right here in the palace before my very eyes? And as soon as the King spoke, his attendants covered Hayman's face, signaling his doom. Then Harbono, one of the king's eunuchs, said, Hayman has set up a sharpened pole that stands seventy five feet tall in his own courtyard. He intended to use it to impale Mordecai, the man who saved the king from assassination, then impale Hayman on it. The king ordered, so the impaled Hayman on the pole he set up for Mordecai, and the king's anger subsided. Yeah, well there you go, Wesley. Yeah, that's good. People tell me man. Sometimes I have a hard time reading the Bible. I can't track along. It's not very interesting. This is very interesting. We've got ups and downs and yeah. One of the things that just comes to mind just as we get to the end of verse ten is the fact of how God can make all things work out for your good. Yeah. And in the case of Mordecai, this looked bleak. I mean, Haman is after him, wants to take him out. But the very what does it say that Haman has set up a sharpened pull that stands seventy five feet tall in his courtyard. He intended to use it to impale Mordecai. So essentially, God took that situation and turned it upside down and worked it out for his good. And all the times it won't make sense. A lot of times we try to make sense out of how or why God will do what he will do. But we have to just have faith and trust that God will do what he said and stop trying to figure out God and how God's going to work it out. Sometimes I think we're just nosy. We just need to stay out of God's business. Let God be God. You have the faith, let him be God, and let him do what he needs to do. Yeah. I have found myself praying this often in my life. In the last I think the. Older you get, the more maybe mature you get with regard to how you view things hopefully and in things that in the past perhaps I would have been nervous or worried about. Now I just find myself saying, God, I'm going to do what I can do, and You're God and I'm not. Yeah, and that phrase God your God and I'm not I'm going to trust you. Jesus said it, your will. Be done right, not my will, but your will be done And that's really that idea is when I recognize, listen, I'm doing the best I can, and God expects me to do the best I can. But ultimately he's in charge, and so he's God and I'm not. And then there really is interesting. God's sense of justice is pretty phenomenal. Here Hayman is planning to impale Mordecai on a seventy five foot pole in his own courtyard, and instead guy goes, no, I think that's how I'm going to dispose of Aimen right for wanting to wipe out his people. So there's that. So there's a few things here. One Esther has tremendous courage, and we saw this last week when she went into the king without being invited. So even though she was a queen, he had you know, many many many many many concubines, all those things. He did whatever he wanted. She was a queen, she was the most favored woman in his life, but she still had to have permission. As a matter of fact, she was supposed to be summoned by the king, but if she needed to meet with him, she'd have to apply for a meeting, and then he would grant this meeting with her, but she didn't do that. Instead, she prayed him, fasted for three days, and then she just walked into the king's. Hall, which could have been very dangerous. Yeah, if he raised his if he refused to lower his scepter, she would have been executed. So the courage of that was phenomenal. But then here she throws two parties. The first party, they throw it and the king says, I'll give you half my kingdom and she goes, you know what, the only thing I want is for you to come back for another party, both of you, you know, and he goes, oh, okay, parties are great. So then in the second party, it says that they had you know, drunk well, and then she had the courage to now admit who she was for real, Hey, my people are about to be executed by this guy. Meaning now, if the king preferred Hayman over her, or if the king felt like he couldn't reverse his ruling on this, she was going to die with her people and maybe she would have been able to preserve it. So this courage, right, she. Risks everything in front of an extraordinarily powerful and then I think we've seen an outrageously unpredictable King, what this guy does just spur the moment. Stuff is very unpredictable. And so she shows a tremendous amount of courage in that. It's inspiring to me. Yet one of the themes here with that is the courage to do what's right when no one else is with you. And I think about that, how just in our personal lives, it can be in a job situation, it could be anywhere. The courage to do what's right when everyone could be doing the opposite. Or when no one is with you. You got to make the decision that, you know what, I'm going to have the courage to do what I know is right, no matter the cost. And that's exactly where Esther was. You know, you know, she didn't wait for the perfect moment. She created it. She created it with prayer and fasting and with the tools in her hands. Right, she was the favorite of the king. She was a beautiful woman. She threw a party as she would have done as a courtier. Anyways, Yeah, she used what she had and then guts. Right, So prayer, fasting, what she has in her hands, and guts, and she didn't wait for the perfect moment. She she created it well. She was trusting God. And I love that kind of initiative. And I love the point that you just made. There's no perfect moment, No. I think oftentimes we like to wait for the ideal circumstance, and that circumstance will never come along. There never is an ideal circumstance for anything. You got to just do it right. Yeah. Yeah, And I love the fact that she had the guts when he says, who would do something like this to you? And she goes that wicked Hayman. She called him out there, right, She called a spade of spade in that moment. And you know, here's Hayman. He's playing political chess, maneuvering and trying to, you know, be slick. And sometimes we can get way too clever for our own selves. Yeah, and then we get trapped in our own traps. Do you ever play chess? Did you? Did you grow up playing chess at all? No, it wasn't. I was a checkers guy. With chess. Well, checkers. You can do the same thing in checkers, but in chess. I love, I loved chess, and I still do. I like to play. Sometimes it's the strategy, but yeah, and you have to be way out ahead, right, and you're always planning ahead. And there have been many times where in my plan. I thought I was out ahead, and and then I find out my opponent knows where I'm going. Yeah, they see my plane, and then they back me into a corner, and my own plan gets me in trouble and defeats me. Right, And this is what happens. He's playing political chess, uh, and and he forgot who's really in control. God was many steps ahead of him, backed him in his own corner and impaled him on his own pole. Right, And that's uh, that's pretty amazing. So he goes from being honored to hunted literally one conversation. And then how weak of a man is he? When the King gets mad and he goes out into the courtyard just to think about cool off a little bit, and Hayman falls down on her couch. Dude, he shouldn't be that close to the. King's but I can just picture and have mercy on me, please. Yeah. Yeah, but he's on her couch, he's on her bed, begging her. When the king comes and goes. You're gonna assault her in front of me? It's literally checkmate. At that point. Yeah, but what's funny about that? Esther didn't even correct it, She just let the king go and oh my, yeah, that's the funny part. And so I think a lesson to be learned from Hayman, quite honestly, is pride always overplays its hand. Yeah, And you know, Chris and I have talked about this several times in talking with our staff. We've been on this run over the last and you know this, it's been a decade rocket ship, just riding a rocket ship at Heritage Church. And then we've seen thousands of people come to faith, and we've baptized thousands of people, and we don't have any room on Sunday mornings, and we've had to launch new locations. Our new location we launched like five how many how many months ago? Six months ago, seven months ago? September is yeah, yeah, had over seven hundred people this past weekend. Right. It's just it's phenomenal and so on a regular basis, And you've been in many of these meetings when we're with our staff reminding them listen, God to doing something special. And we have to stay holy, we have to stay humble, we have to stay helpful, right, over and over and over again. God opposes the prout, but he gives grace and favor to the humble, and I think a lot about I remember one time Rick Warren talked about this. I was in a meeting out in California with him and a few other guys, and he mentioned and then later on I heard him teach this on video. He mentioned he tried to learn how to surf, and he said there's this big lesson in surfing that he just feels like it began to consume his life when he realized it. He said, I can go get training. I can practice. I can learn how to stand up and have my balance, and I can strengthen my muscles. I can learn how to swim really well. I can buy the right equipment. I can get on a good wet suit. I can learn how to swim way way out. I can learn how to ride larger and larger and larger waves. He said. I can buy the best board and I can polish it and prepare it. I can swim out until I'm ready to get on the largest possible wave. I can ride, but only God sends the wave right, so even then I can do all I can do but humility says, I'm not the one that's actually creating the opportunity. God is yeah, right, And. So I do all I can do, And I see, this is what you're doing with what you see with Esther versus what you see with Hayman. Yeah, Hayman's playing political chess, and he gets burned. He's so prideful, and pride pride always outplays its hand. But Esther uses all the skills and tools she has, but she's still fasted and prayed before this day, relying on God. I'm going to need you to send the wave. I'm going to need you to send the things. And that kind of humility God always responds to. And it's something about timing, like you mentioned, with catching the wave at the right time, she had the wisdom to know kind of like the party situation, Yeah, we're going to do another party. She was able to navigate the timing correctly so that the situation could come out to her benefit. Sometimes we do things and we have the wrong timing. So it can be a good idea, a good concept, but if you have the wrong timing, it just won't work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, timing is incredibly important. And Zaraba and I have talked about this a few times about the importance of diplomacy, and a big part of diplomacy is timing right, that you do the right thing at the right time, the right way. Yeah. And it's possible to do the right thing at the wrong time and get the wrong results. It's possible to do the right thing the wrong way and get the wrong results. But if you can do the right thing the right time, the right way, then you're gonna get good results. And that's what she did. So there's so much wisdom in this. You know, Mordecai should be proud as a stepdad, as a you know, I think they're cousins. He's an older yeah, and she's a young woman, but he helped raise her. He should be proud. And then how he challenges her through this book. He's encouraging her to do the right thing, he's encouraging her to be courageous. He's encouraging her all the time, and then he challenges her at the right moment to say, Hey, maybe God put you in this position just for such a time as this, And I think about that, you know, you might feel like, you know, the reality is this is a forced relationship. The king just went around and said, I'm going to pick the prettiest girl in the kingdom. All the girls have to come. She didn't have a choice. And then whether she wanted to be his wife or not, it didn't matter. He just took her. Right, So this is a pretty somewhat demeaning circumstance she finds herself in. Well, very demeaning circumstance she finds herself in. She's powerless, you know, she has the opportunity for the pearls and the silks and all those kinds of things. But hey, who wants to be just taken by some man, right, even the king. So there's this this situation that she could have been bitter about every moment in this. But Hayman said, maybe God allowed this in your life just so you could save all of us. Right, what if you weren't the one there, and what if somebody else was there who didn't care about us at all? If it would this queen? Yeah, yeah, right, you know what I mean, you would die too. Yeah, So so maybe God put you there. And I think about it that that she could have sat in the corner, resentful of everything that happened in her life up to that point, feeling like it was all a waste, like there was no purpose and angry at everybody, or she could take this challenge and step in. And I think there's there's a lot of people who say, well, you know, I don't know how I can serve God. I'm I'm an engineer, or I'm a business owner, or I'm a I'm a mom, or I'm a teacher, and I really don't see how my life is ministry. I don't know how I can serve. And and the reality is, what if God put you in that classroom for for these kids right now. So they could know Jesus? What if? What what if God's whole plan was that you, as a parent are raising the next Billy Graham? What what? What if? What if? Right? What if you're where you're at for just this time? And if we would look at our life that way, it would give. Purpose to so much more of what we're doing and then also have to do is I think we need the timing that you mentioned, We need boldness and courage and then trust that God's going to do what God's going to do. Yeah, and we can ask God for the courage. If you don't have the courage. Ask God, God, give me the courage, give me the strength to keep persevering and moving on, and he'll give it to you. That's fantastic. Well, I hope that this was interesting to you. We're going to keep going tomorrow on the Bible guys, but thank you for joining us today. We'll see you tomorrow