This sermon explores Esther chapter 6 as a pivotal moment, highlighting God’s sovereignty in turning sorrow into blessing. It emphasizes that while human sin brings suffering, God’s faithfulness and mercy ultimately deliver His people, culminating in the eternal turning point of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Transcript
Opening/Introduction
Please turn with me once again to the book of Esther. We are going to look at chapter 6 today. As we look at this, it is my prayer that this chapter will encourage us and bless us, that we are able to look to God in hope.
Esther chapter 6. Last week, in chapter 5, we looked at Esther’s courage as she entered into the very presence of Xerxes unbidden, breaking the law of the Medes and Persians, which could have resulted in her death. But God blessed in that circumstance. She trusted God, and her wisdom and her courage, her faith in God, resulted in her life being spared, and in the rest of this book as it unfolds, the life that is for the Jewish people.
Then the second half of that chapter has to do with Haman’s pride and foolishness, and the consequential deadness or death that results from that. The chapter ends with Haman making his plans to put Mordecai to death the next day. That is that book.
This chapter 6 is really, the commentators point this out, that this is one of the, this is the big turning point in the book. That is what we are going to be looking at today. I am going to go ahead and read it and then we will go back and look at this. This is God’s holy word. This is God’s word.
During that night the king could not sleep. So he gave an order to bring the book of records, the chronicles, and they were read before the king. It was found written what Mordecai had reported concerning Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs, who were doorkeepers, that they had sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus. The king said, “What honor or dignity has been bestowed on Mordecai for this?” Then the king’s servants who attended him said, “Nothing has been done for him.” So the king said, “Who is in the court?” Now Haman had just entered the outer court of the king’s palace in order to speak to the king about hanging Mordecai on the gallows which he had prepared for him. The king’s servant said to him, “Behold, Haman is standing in the court.” And the king said, “Let him come in.” So Haman came in and the king said to him, “What is to be done for the man whom the king desires to honor?” Haman said to himself, “Whom would the king desire to honor more than me?” Then Haman said to the king, “For the man whom the king desires to honor, let them bring a royal robe which the king has worn, and the horse on which the king has ridden, and on whose head a royal crown has been placed. And let the robe and the horse be handed over to one of the king’s most noble princes. And let them array the man whom the king desires to honor and lead him on horseback through the city square, and proclaim before him, ‘Thus it shall be done to the man whom the king desires to honor.’” Then the king said to Haman, “Take quickly the robes and the horse as you have said, and do so for Mordecai the Jew, who is sitting at the king’s gate. Do not fall short in anything of all that you have said.” So Haman took the robe and the horse and arrayed Mordecai, and led him on horseback through the city square, and proclaimed before him, “Thus it shall be done to the man whom the king desires to honor.” Then Mordecai returned to the king’s gate. But Haman hurried home, mourning, with his head covered. Haman recounted to Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had happened to him. Then his wise men and Zeresh his wife said to him, “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish origin, you will not overcome him, but will surely fall before him.” While they were still talking with him, the king’s eunuch arrived and hastily brought Haman to the banquet which Esther had prepared.
Let us ask God’s blessing on His word. Father, thank you for this precious chapter and for the joy it is to read it, especially in light of the darkness of your people as they were going through this, to recognize your hand of blessing. Please help us, Father. Give us encouragement and hope, and help us, Lord, as we look to you for grace, as we look to you for the ultimate turning point. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The World of Sorrow and God’s Sovereignty
I was thinking about all that Esther and Mordecai had gone through all their lives, all the difficulties and the sorrows. I expanded that to just everyone really. Sorrow and difficulty is common in life. Life is tough. Life is difficult.
Job said, “Man is born to trouble even as the sparks fly upward.” It is true for all of us. It is generally reflected. You can see that reflected in all sorts of things around us, in our common culture, in just ordinary things. People are continually having to deal with their sorrows and their difficulties. Back in 1926, a man by the name of Mort Dixon wrote the words to that old song, “Bye Bye Blackbird.” You might remember that song. In that song, which is really a ballad, the blackbird was a symbol for trouble and sorrow and sadness. As he is writing this song, it has that line, “Pack up all my care and woe, bye bye blackbird.” The idea of looking for the turning point, the place of change that takes me out of this place of sorrow where I am, to the place where you can see deliverance and hope and blessing.
We all go through times of multiplying sorrows, and when we do that, we long for that turning point. Here Israel, the opening of this chapter, we covered it before, but just to reflect on it, Mordecai and Esther were born into a world of sorrow. It was a difficult thing. It was a difficult thing not because of any particular sin that they had committed. It was because of the results of God’s judgment on the sins of His people that happened long before that. God had warned Israel in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus that if they turned their back on God, if they started to pursue idols, if they would not listen to the prophets of God and the word of God, that He would bring judgment upon them that would ultimately culminate, if they persisted in it, in being put under rulers who hated them. They would suffer great, great loss. They would be scattered among the nations, while the land in Israel lay fallow, taking the Sabbath rests that it had not enjoyed while they were there. That is what it tells us in Leviticus 26 and in Deuteronomy 28. That is exactly what happened as it unfolded, and prophet after prophet, before the events happened, explained what was going to happen and why.
It goes on to tell us that when Israel plunged into idolatry, first the northern nation, they began their idolatrous practices and began to worship other gods. God took them away. The Assyrians came down, carried those ten tribes of Israel off, took them into captivity. The Bible also tells us that when that took place, Assyria is described as the rod in the hand of God to bring that judgment about. Even though the king of Assyria was the last thing in his mind to do anything pleasing for the Lord. He was not a servant of God in any way. Yet God used that nation. In a similar way, it is similar with exactly the same, God is in charge when Babylon comes in and takes the southern kingdom in 586 BC and begins that migration that resulted in them being carried away into Babylon. Then when the Medes and the Persians attack Babylon, and Babylon falls, the Medes and Persians, God had predicted that that would happen. He would bring Cyrus. He names him hundreds of years, years and years before Cyrus is ever born. He names Cyrus and calls him His servant.
God’s hand is in all these things. But look what happens to Mordecai and to Esther as they are born in a land that is not their homeland, born far away from the temple. In fact, at this point there is no temple in Israel. There is no king in Israel, and there is no protection for the Jewish people. They have been scattered abroad. They are scattered throughout all the provinces of Persia, and they are a people under persecution, really. They are people who have been marginalized. They are forced to appear to assimilate. You have Mordecai, they are not telling people that they are Jews because it did not go well for Jews. They have taken Persian names, Mordecai and Esther, so that they seem to fit in. But those are not real compromises, those are just surface. Because these people, as Haman so accurately described them when he is making his appeal to Xerxes in the first place, “Here are people who are a law to themselves, who do not obey the laws of the Medes and Persians.”
No, they did not assimilate. They would not assimilate. Because they did not assimilate, they were ostracized, and they were persecuted. They were marginalized as a people. They did not have freedom of speech. When Mordecai refuses to stand for Haman, that results in Haman deciding to put him to death, and not just him, but all of the Jewish people whom Mordecai had there identified with.
That is the world that they lived in. It was the kind of world that practiced immorality all around them, and they were caught up in all of that in ways that they could not predict. It was a world where women were like chattel, and the king could select from all the women of the world to bring them in, slaves, into his as his concubines. That is exactly what happened to Esther. She is brought in essentially as a slave, going to be one of the concubines of the king. You know that had to be heartbreaking for her. It is not what she wanted. It could not have been what she wanted. Yet that is what happened, and she had no choice in it. There was nothing she could say or do about it. There was nothing Mordecai could say or do about it. That is what happened. Yet even there, God worked to elevate Esther to the place where she became the queen of Persia, a place of some influence.
The True Turning Point
That is the place, sorrow upon sorrow, and it got worse. With the decree that the king authorized with his signet ring, sealed with his signet ring, Haman’s decree, their days were numbered. They were only going to live a few more months, maybe ten more months from where we are here. They would be put to death, and not just them, but every Jew throughout Persia, and that includes the land of Israel, which at this point is a province of Persia. All the Jews were going to be killed, destroyed, annihilated. They had no means of defending themselves against the power and might of Persia. They were a small, marginalized group. So it is miserable. It gets more miserable. Then we come to chapter 6. As the commentator says, “Here is a turning point.” Here is a turning point.
The commentators say this is a turning point, and obviously in a sense it is really true. This is where God begins to become visible in His actions. But the true turning point took place back in chapter 4. The true spiritual turning point took place when that decree was issued, and the Jewish people throughout all of Persia fell on their knees and humbled themselves before God. The true spiritual turning point was when they recognized their true dependence on God and knelt to Him, yes, in sackcloth and ashes. They were broken and humble before God. That is exactly what Mordecai does. At the end of the chapter, when Esther appeals to Mordecai for a fast, and all the people in the citadel of Susa, all the Jewish people, fast and pray for three days, anticipating what Esther is about to do. Esther herself and her maids fast. That is the turning point. When they humble themselves before God, stop trusting themselves, looking to themselves and their circumstance, but looking completely to God. God brings us through difficulties to cause us to be even more dependent upon Him, and helps us, sanctifies us in such ways. That is part of what has happened here. They humble themselves before God, and so God hears, and He is already beginning to answer them, though they do not know it.
We get to chapter 6, and we begin to see that God’s answer to their prayers becomes something that we can recognize very readily as we read this chapter. Such a remarkable thing. It begins with the king’s sleepless night. He cannot sleep. Orders the reading of the royal chronicles. That is an incredibly ordinary event, is it not? Not sleeping at night. There are lots of times when you do not sleep at night. I was thinking about it, in the Bible, there are lots of times when God interrupts people’s sleep. In fact, back in Genesis, you might remember that Laban’s sleep was interrupted in a miraculous way by God, because He gave him a dream and warned him not to harm Jacob. Similarly, like in Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar is given these dreams from God that require an interpretation. His sleep is interrupted. In Psalm 77, the psalmist Asaph says to God, “You are holding my eyes open.” The King James says, “You holdest my eyes waking.” He is awake that night, and he cannot sleep because God has his eyes awake.
God is using this to work on Xerxes. He is going to change Xerxes’ heart. Last week we talked about how Esther must have sensed that it was not the right time the day before at the banquet when she intended, to ask Xerxes to deliver the Jewish people, to point out Haman’s wickedness. He was not ready. God had to make him ready. So she holds off, says, “I will give another banquet tomorrow, then I will make my request.” She does not know that the king is going to have a sleepless night. But God does. The king cannot sleep. He needs something to do. Sometimes when I cannot sleep, on rare occasions, I might get up and do some reading or something. The king decides that he would have, because he could not read, he asked to have the chronicles read before the king, his history, history of his reign, and all the details, the diary of the events that took place. He is going to have the chronicles read, and it probably worked before. I do not know. Put you to sleep maybe.
It just so happened that when they opened the chronicles that night, when they pulled that scroll open to read from the chronicles, they came to this place, something that had taken place about six years before, a good while before. It had to do with Mordecai. Mordecai had reported concerning Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs. They had plotted to murder Xerxes. By the way, the end of Xerxes’ life ended that way when one of his chief bodyguards and another official decided to put an end to his life, and they actually killed him. Here, that probably is fairly common for people who want Xerxes to die. These two people who had access to the king because they were the doorkeepers, they plotted against Xerxes. Mordecai heard of it. He informed through Esther. He informed the king, and as a result, this conspiracy was found out. These two characters were put to death, and the king’s life was saved.
The king, when that took place, I am sure he absolutely intended to reward Mordecai. But it was also the time when he was prosecuting a war. There was a lot going on then. For one reason or another, he forgets. He forgets. He does not remember it at all. That is probably not uncommon for human kings. To be faithful and loyal to a person. Can you imagine what that looked like from Mordecai’s perspective? Here is six years later, and what has happened? Not only did he save the king’s life, but it appears as if he was rewarded by Xerxes signing this decree to put him to death ultimately. You can see how bitter that must have felt for Mordecai. I wonder if it crossed his mind, “Maybe I should not have said anything back then.” But Mordecai was faithful to Xerxes. Xerxes had overlooked it. That is true for human beings. It is true for a husband sometimes to forget the kindness his wife shows him. It is true for us in all of our relationships. We fail because we sometimes are just too feeble and weak in our minds to be able to do what we really ought to be able to do. Hebrews 6, though, reminds us that God is not like that. Not for any good act of faithfulness that we do to Him, He will remember it. God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, it says. Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we do not faint.” Trust God. You can trust God. He always remembers His people, His children.
Haman’s Arrogance and God’s Reversal
The king realizes, he asked them, “Has he been rewarded? What did he get for doing this great deed?” They say, “Nothing happened. Nothing happened.” Then we come to this second part. There they are in the morning. It is morning. Xerxes has not slept all night. He has just learned this incredible truth about this man Mordecai, a Jew who sits, he is one of the lower officials in his court. He is like an accountant. He sits and works at the gate. He realizes that he has not been rewarded. So he says, “Who is standing in the court?” Guess who is standing in the court? It is really early in the morning. But Haman is there early. Oh, because this is going to be a great day for Haman. Haman must have been really full of joy as he entered the court that morning. Because just the day before, he had received this highest honor. He had received great honors from Xerxes, but the day before was like the pinnacle of all the things he had received from Xerxes, because he and Xerxes alone were able to dine at the banquet that Esther had given them. He was just absolutely thrilled with such glory. There was only one thing that bothered him. He had troubles too, and his trouble was all caught up with one man who would not give him the honor that he thought he deserved, and that ruined everything for him. He explained that to his wife. They came up with a plan.
He comes to the king that morning. Haman comes to the king, fully intent on having the greatest day of his life. What he is going to do, he intended to pack up his cares and woes and say, “Bye bye, Mordecai.” Have him impaled on a 75-foot pole. The king, he comes in, “Who is standing in the court?” Haman is in the court. Says, “Have him come forward.” He asks him a question, “What is to be done for the man whom the king desires to honor?” Haman, here is a perfect example of arrogance. You remember that passage where Jesus instructs you, if you are going to a banquet, a place of honor, “Do not sit down in the first seat because you are going to be embarrassed if they come and tell you you have to sit in the last seat now.” Sit in the last seat, and then look at the honor you receive if you get to step up to the first seat.
Here Haman thinks, “Oh, what is to be done for the man whom the king desires to honor?” Haman thinks, “This is going to be a better day than I thought. Who would the king delight to honor more than me?” So he thinks to himself, “What would I really like? What is it that I really want?” He says, “I would love, I would love to be paraded through the streets, dressed in the king’s own robes, wearing one of his crowns, riding his steed. Let everybody in the city know that this, this is me. I have the highest place in the kingdom next to Xerxes himself. So that all the people who see me will honor me. So that all of them can see how glorious Haman is.” The king says to Haman, “Take quickly the robes and the horses that you have said, and do so for Mordecai the Jew, who is sitting at the king’s gate.” That must have been an incredible shock. “Do this for Mordecai. All this that you have said, everything that you have said, you do it. You are the king’s official, you are his highest noble. You go out and lead Mordecai through the streets, dressed in the king’s robe.” Haman, he says, “Do not neglect anything you have said.”
This is one of those moments. It is like Psalm 2, where the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, “Let us burst the bands apart and cast away the cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs. That is exactly what has happened here. This is just a spectacle that, it is hilarious to read. It is incredible. Here, this is how Mordecai’s day begins to be ruined. Haman’s day begins to be ruined. Mordecai, I should say, at the end of this little parade, Mordecai is Mordecai. He is back at the king’s gate, doing what Mordecai does every day. His routine is not really disrupted all that much. Haman is devastated. Goes his way home, his face covered with shame. In the next chapter his face is going to be covered again. This time his face is covered in shame. He meets with Zeresh, his wife, and she is such a bundle of encouragement to him, as always. But this time the message is a little different. She says, “You know, if this man Mordecai is of Jewish origin, then this probably is not going to go well for you.”
Lessons from the Turning Point and Conclusion
Maybe that was just rational thinking. It is hard, why does she say such a thing? Why does she flip on this to have this kind of prophecy of Haman’s doom? Maybe these people were superstitious, and maybe they saw that as an omen. But maybe it is a lot more practical than that. Maybe she thinks, “You have had this decree against all Jews, and you are going to kill all Jews. Now here is a man that Xerxes loves, wants to honor.” He is raising him up right now. “Who is he? Well, if he is Jewish, and he is going to be put to death, this might not go well for you, Haman.” That could be what she is thinking. I do not know what she is thinking. I do know, it gets interesting here because what she literally says, to translate it a little more literally, is that she says, “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish seed.” It is interesting, is it not? Jewish seed. That probably did not mean anything to her. It means something to us. He was, Mordecai was a child of Benjamin, ultimately. He was a Benjamite. The Benjamites had that long quarrel with the Agagites, whom Haman represented. But even before that, the seed of the woman. God is going to send and protect the seed of the woman. That is being fulfilled through the Jewish people. So there is something, a great insight with that.
Yet I should say, turning points come for God’s people. Turning points come from time to time. We go through times of sorrow. But turning points come for wicked people too. That should be a warning to us. A warning to anyone who is not part of Jesus Christ, who has not trusted Him as their Savior, or are not a child of God, because turning points come. You can, people in this world prosper sometimes through their own wicked acts. Lots of people prosper through acts of wickedness. They seem to never be caught. You can wonder. You can wonder, as one of the psalmists did. But the point of that psalm and the point of reality is that the turning point comes. God brings judgment to the wicked.
When I was talking about Mordecai and Xerxes, it was not like there was any particular sin that brought all these sorrows upon them that they had committed personally. There are a lot of lessons just right there. We should reflect on before we close this, because first of all, when somebody sins, like the people of Israel, that sin affects other people, even people who are not necessarily guilty of any particular sin like that, not tied with that particular sin. Sometimes we think, “I can sin, and I keep my sin all to myself. What does that bother anyone?” I will tell you who it affects, it affects your family. It affects your community in some way. What you do or don’t do, if you are not used for any good in this world, if you respond in some negative way because of your sinful attitude that resulted in that closet sin, you cannot get away. We do not live as hermits on a mountain, totally isolated. We live in communities, and our sins affect other people. That was true here.
The other side of that is that sometimes we think, “How can I be delivered of all this trouble that I am in? Maybe I need to do better and be good, and I can earn this change from my goodness.” We should be good, and we should strive to please God. But that is not the issue here. I mean, back when Rabbi Kushner wrote that book, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?, that book is full of all sorts of difficulties. But the difficulties begin with the title, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? Do you know, Esther and Mordecai are not really good people, not in any ultimate sense. Jesus told the rich young ruler, He says, “Only God is good.” Paul says, “I know that in me dwells no good thing.” He says, “We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” If this judgment had been carried out against Mordecai and Esther and all the people of Israel, it would not be that a gross injustice had happened to the Jewish people, because they were sinful. That kind of a judgment is deserved in itself. Do you know why it does not happen to the Jewish people? Because God had given His promise to them. God is always faithful, and He deals according to His goodness and His mercy with us.
If you oppose God, then you are going to experience a lot, you are going to experience a reversal one day that is terrible. But if you are a child of God, even though you go through many, many sorrows, long periods of difficulty, God will bring the turning point. He will bring it. He may not bring it exactly when we want to. The next book over, the book of Job, that entire book is about Job’s suffering, except for the very closing chapters, in fact, not even the chapters, the last paragraphs is where the change came and Job’s blessing returned. The turnaround will come. You can be absolutely confident that God will bring it, but He will bring it in His time. He will bring the turnaround on His schedule.
We have a lot in common with Esther and Mordecai. We live in a world as aliens, just like they did. They were brought into Persia, what was then Persia, not because of anything that they willed, but because of what had taken place before. Mordecai’s family had been taken into captivity, it tells us in chapter 2 of 3. We have something similar, because we are aliens living in a foreign land. If you are a believer, if you are a Christian, your citizenship is in heaven. We belong to the kingdom of God. We have to live in this world under the authority of a tyrant who hates us, really, in a sense. Because Jesus said that Satan is the prince of this world. But he is a prince of this world a lot like Xerxes was over Media-Persia. God is sovereign. God changes the king’s heart. God is in control ultimately. Because God is good, we can enjoy and know that with certainty, our sorrows will turn. We can enjoy the turning point. It will come. We can be certain of it.
Life is hard, and it is part of human existence in this sin-filled world. We go through times of sadness, as all people in the world do. 40 years after Mort Dixon, I thought it was interesting, 40 years after Mort Dixon wrote his song, “Bye Bye Blackbird,” Paul McCartney must have taken some inspiration from Mort Dixon when he wrote his song, “Blackbird,” because blackbird in the song symbolizes the same thing. People going through times of trouble, longing for the turning point. Those words go, “Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly. You were only waiting for this moment to arise.” That is the longing of the human heart going through sorrow. It is the normal longing of a human heart going through times of sorrow. When Christians experience sorrow and sadness in this life, we can look with certainty that that turning point will come. No one else has a promise like that. We can look with certainty that God will bring that turning point to us. Do not expect it because of our own goodness. We do not have it in ourselves. But we can absolutely expect it because Jesus Christ is our good shepherd. His goodness, His mercy will follow us all the days of our life.
Let us pray and thank God for His goodness. Father, we thank you that every good thing comes from your hand. We thank you even, Father, for the times of difficulty and sorrow you bring us through, because there is nothing that we experience in this life of pain or sorrow that you do not use ultimately for our good, for the good of your people. We thank you, Father, that we can trust you. We receive not what we deserve at all, but we experience your great mercy and kindness and your blessing as you take us from our times of sorrow and usher us into the times of blessing. We praise you and glorify you. Father, we thank you that we have an eternity, which is the ultimate turning point, ahead of us. A time when we will be able to rejoice and praise and get to know you and love you more and more forever and ever, and experience all the joys of your presence. We thank you, Father, for salvation in Jesus Christ. Thank you that He is our Lord, our Shepherd. Thank you for all the goodness that He brings us. We pray in His name, asking, Father, for His deliverance to your glory. Amen.