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Esther 8:15-9:1
15 Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white, with a great golden crown1 and a robe of fine linen and purple, and the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced. 16 The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor. 17 And in every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict reached, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday. And many from the peoples of the country declared themselves Jews, for fear of the Jews had fallen on them.
9:1 Now in the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king’s command and edict were about to be carried out, on the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain the mastery over them, the reverse occurred: the Jews gained mastery over those who hated them.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
I invite you to open your bibles to Esther chapter 8. I just say I actually love hearing babies cry and scream during a service. Every time I hear a child scream, maybe when I'm preaching, I always think that that parent had every excuse in the world to not be here. And they have chosen to be here. And from those that child's very first breaths, they will know being part of a church community.
Joel Brooks:And that is a reason to rejoice. Esther chapter 8. We'll begin reading in verse 15. Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white with a great golden crown and a robe of fine linen and purple. And the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced.
Joel Brooks:The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor. And in every province and in every city, wherever the king's command and his edict reached, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday. And many from the peoples of the country declared themselves Jews for fear of the Jews had fallen on them. Now in the 12th month, which is the month of Adar. On the 13th day of the same.
Joel Brooks:When the King's command and the edict were about to be carried out. On the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain the mastery over them, the reverse occurred. The Jews gained mastery over those who hated them. This is the word of the Lord. If you would pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Father, I pray that you would honor the reading of your word and that even now through your spirit, you begin to open it up to us that we might hear from you, that we might be transformed and changed by your spirit to look more like Jesus. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:I hope you've been enjoying our series through Esther which comes to his conclusion this morning. This is now our 4th week in this book. And I've received a whole lot of feedback over the last few weeks, feedback ranging from why have you ruined Esther for me? To Esther is now your favorite book. And probably the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Joel Brooks:The most common feedback that I got though was right after I announced we would be studying Esther. And I said, we're gonna be looking at the gospel according to Esther. And I had quite a number of you come up to me and say, well, why are we studying such an obscure book in the Bible? And how in the world is Esther about the gospel? I mean, the gospel according to Esther.
Joel Brooks:I mean, it's even in the old testament. God's not even mentioned. How do you feel about Esther now? How do you feel about this book now after having gone 3 weeks through this book? Have you been able to see the gospel there?
Joel Brooks:Have you been able to see God's sovereign grace reaching out to a to a woman who's been morally compromised, who's living under oppression and in the midst of a sinful culture? Have you been able to see how Esther points to Jesus who also left his palace to be identified with his people who now lives to make intercession on their behalf. I mean, last week, as we got to look at the story of Mordecai and Haman, how could you not see the gospel? That was not just a moral story about pride and how those who are proud will fall. That is the gospel.
Joel Brooks:I mean for crying out loud, Mordecai was literally dressed in the king's clothes, and he was treated like the king. All all I could think of last week as Jeff Jeff was preaching that part was was the lines from solid rock, dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. And we see how Mordecai becomes this picture of the gospel and the transforming power of the gospel about evil wicked Haman and how he goes to the king and he tells the king his deepest desire. And he says, this is how you can honor a person. Have that person wear your clothes.
Joel Brooks:Have that person ride in your chariot. Basically, just have that person treated just like the king. And and after we heard that, I heard a number of us snicker. Like, we we started to laugh about that because it does sound kinda crazy that you want to just wear another person's clothes. You wanna be treated just like that other person, but Haman is a mirror to us.
Joel Brooks:If if we're honest with ourselves, he merely confessed out loud what every one of us desire, that we would be treated like a king, that we would be seen as royalty. That that's that's our heart's desire. And if you deny that, you're lying. He, Haman simply stated what all of us have tried to keep hidden. Even when Adam disobeyed God back there in the garden, he did it because he wanted to be like God.
Joel Brooks:That was the desire of his heart. The question is why was Mordecai honored or Mordecai honored in Haman was not. It wasn't because one was good and the other was bad. I hope Esther's kinda thrown out that for you. There really is not that much clear good and that much clear bad here.
Joel Brooks:It's because Haman was proud and Mordecai was humble. Haman didn't think he needed salvation. He actually thought he deserved to be dressed like the king. Deserved to have that honor. Where Mordecai, he only knew he deserved judgment and that he was currently sitting under it.
Joel Brooks:He was humble enough to know he needed a savior. The gospel saves those who are humble enough to admit to just say, God, I actually need saving. Those who are proud never understand the gospel. They never reach out to the Lord. Those who are humble, those who are humble and understand their need for a savior, they find him.
Joel Brooks:And so we see the gospel all throughout this book, and we're gonna certainly see it again this morning in this last section. Let's pick up where we left off. Where we left off last week, Haman had just been hanged on the very gallows that he had prepared. Both Mordecai and Esther are saved. The King's anger is abated, but now the question is, what about the rest of the Jews?
Joel Brooks:What about them? Because that edict is still out there. The law is still out there that all the Jews are to be exterminated in 11 months. I mean, can you imagine that law just kinda hanging over you, how you would have felt? Perhaps, you know the friends who you've known your whole life begin distancing themselves from you, whispering behind your back.
Joel Brooks:Perhaps you overhear conversations of neighbors arguing over who gets your stuff. Perhaps their children who've been bullied by certain people, now the bullies just kinda wait back and they just have this knowing smile counting down the days. This would have been a horrible thing just hovering over the Jewish people, but what can be done about it? The king doesn't seem particularly bothered by the decree. He doesn't understand why Esther would.
Joel Brooks:I mean, after all, he saved Esther. He saved Esther's only living relative. So so now that they're safe, who really cares what happens outside of these palace walls? Once again, Esther has a choice. Is Esther now gonna rest in her own salvation, or is she once again gonna do everything she has, leverage everything she has, use all of her power in order to save those currently sitting under judgment.
Joel Brooks:It's not hard for us as Christians actually to to readily apply that lesson for us. Those of us who are here in these this room, in these walls who've come to know Jesus, the question is now that we are saved, are we just going to rest in our own salvation? Are we just gonna keep going to a bible study to another bible study to another bible study? Are we just gonna keep coming here every Sunday and just staying in the safe confines of these walls? Or are we gonna leverage all that we have, use every bit of power we have to go and to reach those currently sitting under judgment?
Joel Brooks:It's a probing question. Esther decides to go and try to save her people. So once again, she does what she did before. She goes uninvited to the king. Once again, it's a capital offense, unless he puts forward his scepter, and this time he does.
Joel Brooks:I love it then when Esther is is deciding to do this where before there was all of this, she's like weighing pros and cons. She's really weighing this decision. This time, there's no decision to make at all. She's like, my people need help. She's resolute and she goes.
Joel Brooks:Once again, if she perishes, she perishes. It's actually the only time we see in this story that she shows any real emotion, but she shows it here as she weeps for her people. So the king allows her to come into his presence and the king is sympathetic to her please. There's just one problem though in his Persian law That when Persian law goes forward, it cannot be revoked. He can't just say, I'm sorry.
Joel Brooks:That edict no longer applies. So he as he's pondering what to do, he he takes off his signet ring and he gives it to Esther. He gives it to Mordecai and he says, y'all write up whatever law you think you need to write up to counteract the law that's already been sent. And so that's what they do. They write a law that says people don't have to kill the Jews on that date, and that the Jews will be allowed to organize, assemble armies, and they can defend themselves on that date.
Joel Brooks:The government's not going to stop them, and so they they put these laws in place to, so the Jews can defend themselves and that law is sent out in every language. It's translated in every language and it's sent to every corner of the Persian empire. One might say that this new decree was the gospel, and that's not a stretch. We've looked at this before, but the word gospel is comes from the Greek word euangelion where we get the word evangelize or evangelical. We translate it often good news, but the euangelian, the gospel originally just meant a royal decree.
Joel Brooks:When a king would write up a decree, he would send out the gospel, the the royal message, and it would go to to all the corners of the lands. It'd be translated in all the languages so everybody could understand it. And because the king was good, his decree would be good news. It'd be good news. So that's the picture of the gospel we have here.
Joel Brooks:The gospel going forth in every language to every corner, proclaiming the good news that they are no longer sitting under judgment. It's a beautiful picture of our own condition, our own condition and how we currently right now sit under a irrevocable law, the law of sin and death. It's out there. You sin, death applies to you. Death is coming.
Joel Brooks:That law cannot be revoked. But then god and his mercy sent forth another law. He sent forth the gospel in the form of Jesus, which counteracts that. This decree, that that new royal decree actually became flesh in the person of Jesus who saves us. I mean, that that this isn't even my sermon, but man, I could land there a while.
Joel Brooks:You could absolutely land there a while and talk about what a beautiful picture these two decrees are of our state and how the gospel saves us. We gotta move on. 11 months go by. The day of the massacre comes. The tables are turned.
Joel Brooks:The Jews are saved. We read about it in verse 1 of chapter 9. Let's read it again. Now in 12th month, which is the month of Adar, on 13th the day of the same, when the king's command and edict were about to be carried out, on the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain mastery over them, the reverse occurred. The Jews gained mastery over those who hated them.
Joel Brooks:Now I'm sure you've noticed as we have been going through this story of Esther that it's pretty exciting. It's a pretty suspenseful exciting story. I mean the story last week, I mean it had all those Shakespearean elements. It is fantastic literature. When you pick it up and you start reading through it, it's hard to put down because it seems like every chapter actually ends with a cliffhanger, and you have to keep going.
Joel Brooks:For instance, chapter 3 ends with the entire capital. All of Susa is thrown into confusion because the king's edict is thrown out there saying that all the Jews are to be killed. And then the chapter ends. Chapter 4 ends with Esther agreeing to go to the king even though she has not been invited. So we have these words, if I perish, I perish in chapter 4.
Joel Brooks:It's like, dum dum. You're just waiting. Yeah. You have to come back. You have to stay tuned.
Joel Brooks:That's, it's binge worthy Bibles what this is. We we don't have TV where you have to come back the next week, but you're gonna watch the next episode. You have to find out what happens. Chapter 5 is full of suspense. It's when Esther's before the king and he asks her, what do you want?
Joel Brooks:She says, I would just like to have another dinner date with you. So they have another dinner date. What would you like? I actually would like to meet with you again. The suspension just keeps building.
Joel Brooks:And when the king finally comes to that final time, we realize at this moment, Haman has been building this 75 foot gallows, waiting just to kill Mordecai in the morning. Insane. All of Esther reads like this. It's agonizing. It's suspenseful.
Joel Brooks:It's full of drama. And now that we're at the conclusion, we're finally arriving at the day all of Esther has been leading towards this whole time. We expect for this story to be told just like all of the other stories have been told, full of drama, full of suspense, very engaging. So we expect the author to tell us this. Perhaps he's gonna tell us how how the Jews started organizing themselves in defensive little armies, or maybe he's going to zoom the lens in on one particular family and talk about how they survived this day, or maybe he's going to zoom in on the, the enemies and how they are plotting and what they are doing to try to exterminate the Jews on this day.
Joel Brooks:There's lots of different angles that the author could go. There's lots of ways he could write about this drama. We're not sure what he's gonna do, but we certainly expect this final climactic scene to be filled with all the suspense and drama that has preceded it. But then we just get this. The reverse happened.
Joel Brooks:The reverse happened. I mean, I mean, the verse we read is it's like the reverse occurred. The Jews gained mastery over those who hated him. And then there's there's a few more clean up details given after that, but they're told in a very sterile matter of fact way. The question is why does the author write it this way?
Joel Brooks:Why is there no drama? Why is there no suspense? It's actually a really deliberate literary device. The author wants you to know at the end, there's no suspense, there's no drama, because the outcome has always been certain. It's always been certain.
Joel Brooks:There could be no other conclusion. God was always going to rescue his people. That's that's the point of Esther. In the end, God wins and there is no surprise. There is no drama.
Joel Brooks:There is no suspense. He always keeps His promises despite how we feel or despite what we see, And this is true of our stories as well, not just of the people of Israel. There is no suspense to how our story ends. Despite all of the daily drama and tension that we go through, despite all of this, the terrible things we often feel and we see, the end of our lives, it's inevitable. The outcome is certain.
Joel Brooks:It's fixed. It's secure. God will win. God will deliver us. God will save us.
Joel Brooks:Period. This fact, your eternal future with God is certain. It's the point of Esther. The Jewish people, after they're delivered here, they they wanna set up a feast or a celebration in order to remember this fact. God always comes through.
Joel Brooks:God does indeed save his people. So they set up this feast named Purim to commemorate this time to remind them of God's deliverance. So every year, they could be reminded of the story that no matter what they feel, no matter what they see, no matter what drama is before them, in the end, God always wins. So they set up Purim. The word Purim means dice.
Joel Brooks:It means chance. It's kind of a crazy name for, for a festival, for a holiday. And it's just such a minor detail in this story when Haman rolls the die to to see what day that he should execute the Jews. And the Jewish people, they decided to call this day chance, not because they thought they were lucky. They're making fun of it.
Joel Brooks:There is no chance. The certainty was never in doubt. They didn't just get really lucky. Now they look back at the story and they see there were no uncertainties that God, although he was working behind the scenes, he was in control all of the time. Even when Hanan decided to cast the die, that was in God's hand.
Joel Brooks:Do you know what day he cast that when he cast that die? It was 10th of Nisan. That was the day that the Jews were to select a lamb to be killed on Passover. So as he's rolling the die to determine the time to gather the Jews to kill them, they on that day are picking a lamb that they would later kill. When the edict went forward, it went forward on Passover Eve.
Joel Brooks:So as the people were preparing to kill the lamb, they get news that they are about to be killed. What are the chances? God was certainly in that and he's reminding his people, hey, just as I delivered you out of Egypt, just as I delivered you that Passover night, deliverance is coming again. When you look back at it all, it makes perfect sense. Hindsight is 2020.
Joel Brooks:Look at all the coincidences in Easter or in Esther. The king, he just happened to get rid of his queen and just happened to be searching for a new one 4 years after he got rid of the queen, so Esther would be of age. Esther is brought in for the competition, and she just happens to win both the favor of this servant who just happened to be Jewish there, and she also just happened to become the king's favorite and to become queen. Mordecai just happened to be working for the king and he just happened to overhear a plot to assassinate the king and tell Esther about it. The king just happens to have this heroic event written down in a book of memorable deeds, but then he just happened to forget to actually honor the man who did it.
Joel Brooks:And that clerical oversight is really important. Esther just happens to find favor with the king even with all the signs leading up to that moment pointed to her losing that favor and not being accepted in his presence. The king just happened to not be able to sleep one night and then he just happened to say, bring me a book, and they brought the book of memorable deeds. Then he just happened to read about Mordecai and say, what have we done to honor him? Well, let's honor him now.
Joel Brooks:And then it just so happened that Haman was there to ask, how should we honor such a man? But then the king just so happened not to mention Mordecai by name. He just kept saying, what should we do to honor this man, this man, this man? So Haman tells all of these extravagant ways to honor him. It just so happened that Mordecai was honored just mere moments before he was to be executed.
Joel Brooks:And later by pure coincidence, the king walks into the room right as Haman is holding on to Esther pleading for his life, and so he walks in and sees Haman touching the queen and says, that's all I need to see. Off with him. I mean these are a lot of coincidences, and that's not all of them. But hopefully, you get the picture. You're God behind the scenes always in control.
Joel Brooks:And despite all of the drama that you feel in your life, he's working behind the scenes, and he's in control. I I see this in my life. One of the reasons that I'm here preaching before you now is because I had a dad. He was, he was an amazing dad who made family devotions a regular part of our life growing up. Most of the time I hated them.
Joel Brooks:Alright? But we had these family devotions when I was growing up and I actually became a Christian at one of our family devotionals. My dad, he would get up at 4:30 every morning. He would pray for his family. This grounded me in my faith.
Joel Brooks:It, it really anchored these things in me early on, and actually I felt God's call to ministry at an early age. So the question is, how how did my dad come to know the Lord? How did he come to have such strong faith? Well, as it just so happened, he lived directly across the street from a small Methodist church in Jenkinsburg, Georgia, and his dad would make him go. He had no excuses.
Joel Brooks:They literally were about 20 yards away from the church. So how did they come to live right across the street from the church? Well, they just happened to be really poor. They used to have a large farm, but they had to sell it, and they had to buy the only place that was affordable, which happened to be this small home across the street from the church. Why were they so poor?
Joel Brooks:Well, my granddad was an alcoholic. He couldn't hold a job. He couldn't make ends meet. The only reason he finally did quit drinking and start going to church is because one night, he saw his dad get killed by his uncle when they were both drunk playing poker, and he saw what his life would be unless he quit drinking. Why did he start drinking in the first place?
Joel Brooks:Well, he used to live in California where he had a a large home there, but he lost his job, and that's why he had to move to Georgia, and he started drinking heavily in order to cope with his depression. Why did he lose his job? Well, just so happens on October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed and millions of people lost their jobs on what was black Tuesday. My granddad being one of them. So if I were so inclined, I could argue that the great depression happened for me.
Joel Brooks:I could argue that there would be no Redeemer Community Church if the Great Depression had not happened, that I would not be a Christian if the Great Depression had not happened. And that's a fact, but but it'd be pretty self centered and arrogant to think all of that happened just for you. The reality is God was doing 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of things, working his silent sovereign purposes through that event, things that we would never see, we can only trust in. God is orchestrating millions of plans. He's weaving them all together for his story.
Joel Brooks:And in hindsight, we see it. But at the time, we don't see it. All the time as it's going on, we just see drunkenness. We see alcoholism. We see farms having to be sold.
Joel Brooks:We see people having to move across the country. You don't see it, but you have to trust that God is at work through everyday things, through dark things. He's working behind the scenes. Purim reminds us of this. It reminds us that our darkest days are what God uses for our good.
Joel Brooks:Sorrow, he turns into laughter. Famine, he turns into feast. He's in control, orchestrating everything for his glory and for our good. And so to have this Purim, and it's it's it's kinda like the equivalent, the Jewish equivalent to Mardi Gras. If you've ever if you've ever seen, the Jewish people celebrate Purim, that's kind of what it's like.
Joel Brooks:It's crazy. In which there is dancing. There's there's drinking. There's feasting. There's all of this celebration in which they are mocking darkness and evil that has no power or control over them.
Joel Brooks:People, they write Haman's name on the bottom of their shoes just so when they dance, they're stomping on Haman's name. The kids, a lot of times, they make paper mache statues of Haman, and they begin hitting it like a pinata. It's a pretty fun festive day, and it should be as you remember how God delivers. But but let me ask you this. What about the times when God doesn't deliver?
Joel Brooks:It's great when cancer goes in remission, but what what about when cancer wins? What about the times when violence wins, when the drunk driver wins, when old age wins, how does Purim translate to that? For the Christian, Purim needs to be understood in light of the cross. It makes no sense apart from the cross. That's why it didn't make any sense for the Jews who held to it during the holocaust, and yet they were being slaughtered.
Joel Brooks:How do you make sense of this? Purim was the last holiday, the last feast that was established in the old testament. It's it's important to understand that that this is this is the last feast put there that should linger in our hearts and minds until Jesus comes. Because we need to understand the story of Esther if we want to understand the story of Jesus. Because another day was going to come in which it was gonna seem like darkness prevail.
Joel Brooks:Another day was gonna come in which it seemed like all was lost. That evil had won. A day was gonna come in which there seemed to be no hope at all no matter how you looked at it. I mean, the disciples, what were they thinking as Jesus was arrested? What were they what were they thinking as this was happening?
Joel Brooks:They thought Jesus that he was the light of the world, that he was the messiah. They thought he was gonna be God's answer to the promise of their salvation, And now he's arrested, and and maybe they're holding out at this point. They're thinking, well, you know, Esther's taught us this. Purim has taught us this. They just finished celebrating Purim.
Joel Brooks:God's gonna come through and reverse things in the last possible minute, but then Jesus actually dies. He actually dies. What are they to do with that? The next day, they wake up into a world in which Jesus is in the grave. They had they had all the same questions that we would have.
Joel Brooks:I don't understand. How how how could this have happened? I I thought God was in control. I thought God would win. I thought we were gonna have the great reversal, that things were gonna were gonna change, and they weren't.
Joel Brooks:And we've all been there before. We've all been to the place where we feel such terrible loss, and this is how the disciples felt as they looked at the grave on Saturday. And it's here we are to remember Esther and we're to remember Purim and that feast day. As it just so happened, last Good Friday last year, and Purim fell on the same day. What are the chances?
Joel Brooks:Often, they're just a few weeks apart, but occasionally, they occupy the same space, and perhaps they should always go together, because they do shed light on one another. We are to be reminded that even when we are staring into the darkness of a tomb, that not all hope is lost. So in the story of Jesus, what we see is not just a reversal, but we see the greatest, the ultimate reversal that's ever been seen. Jesus isn't just delivered from the threat of death. He's delivered from death itself.
Joel Brooks:Death turns to life. Death which thought it could vanquish him instead was vanquished. So God did keep his promise. He did bring salvation, but not by keeping Jesus from the tomb, but by saving him through the tomb. You see, as great as a deliverance for the people, the Jewish people had during this time of Esther, their peace, it was short lived because yes, they they secured some sort of peace but it was temporary.
Joel Brooks:Once again, they quickly fell back into oppression. And the ultimate enemies were always out there. Sin and death were still always out there and they were always going to win. Death always wins. It's the ultimate enemy and it has to be conquered.
Joel Brooks:And so Jesus, he goes to the grave to conquer it. And this it's so important for us to understand this as Christians, because what we see now is that the tables for us are not turned before the tomb, they are turned in the tomb. The tables for us are turned in death. There there are times in our lives where we're gonna experience a degree of deliverance. You know, a time when we don't lose our job when we thought we were going to.
Joel Brooks:A time when our cancer does go in remission. But all of those are gonna be short lived. All of them will. And the times when we are not delivered, the time when cancer wins, violence wins, drunk drivers win, old age wins, that's when we remember that just like Jesus, the tables for us do not turn before the tomb, but they turn in it. And that we will be delivered from death itself.
Joel Brooks:It's the ultimate reversal. Esther 8 speaks the same language as Paul when we come to Romans 8. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? We can add to that list, shall disease, shall loss jobs, shall loss of promotions, shall depression, shall anxiety, shall abuse, shall loss of family or loss of spouse, will those separate us from Christ?
Joel Brooks:Paul says no. In all things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, for I'm sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Our outcome is certain. God wins. The great reversal happens.
Joel Brooks:Our eternal destiny with Jesus is secure no matter what we see unfolding before us now. Pray with me. Our father, we thank you for the story of Esther and how it points us to Jesus to where we see the greatest reversal of all, death become life. There is our hope, And in Jesus, we we understand, we see you. You are the hidden God as well as the revealed God, just like Esther.
Joel Brooks:You're literally God in the flesh, but you look so much like us. And you worked in such mysterious ways that we often miss you. May we not miss you now in this moment. Jesus, through your spirit, come speak to us, and come bring life. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen.