Simon Bowkett's Podcast

Esther 8 - pressing the advantage

February 11, 2023 Simon Bowkett
Simon Bowkett's Podcast
Esther 8 - pressing the advantage
Show Notes Transcript

Twenty-one minutes from https://twitter.com/WelshRev at https://www.facebook.com/TyrBugail for https://www.facebook.com/Grace.Wales.online , https://welshrev.blogspot.com/and https://yGRWP.com

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https://welshrev.blogspot.com/2023/02/diy-sunday-service-kit-12022023-esther.html



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Introduction

The battle’s often not won when you think it is, you know.

You might think Esther’s battle was won by the end of chapter 7, but it actually, very clearly, was not.

There’s a military doctrine about the appropriate response to being under attack that I think goes something like this:

Identify, isolate, eliminate … and press the advantage.

In Esther so far, the enemies of God’s purpose and people (the two ‘P’s that we’ve seen already are intimately connected) have been 

·       identified (it’s Haman), 

·       isolated (Esther told the King the person threatening both her and her people were ‘this wicked Haman’) and 

·       eliminated (the King had him impaled on the pole he’d set up for Mordecai).

But in ch. 8 Esther now goes in once more to the King uninvited and pursues the advantage for the rescue of God’s people.

What has Esther 8 got to say to us?

1) Taking care of family business, vv. 1-2

Esther 8:1-2 “That same day King Xerxes gave Queen Esther the estate of Haman, the enemy of the Jews. 

And Mordecai came into the presence of the king, for Esther had told how he was related to her. 

2 The king took off his signet ring, which he had reclaimed from Haman, and presented it to Mordecai. 

And Esther appointed him over Haman’s estate.”

‘That same day’ is the same day that (7:10) they impaled Haman on the pole he’d set up for Mordecai.

That was a HUGE reversal brought about by the direct (and still absolutely unmentioned) intervention of God in response to His people’s bold actions in defence of His people and purposes.

Reversal and irony hang thick across the account in chapter 8 of Esther as God’s deliverance of His people in pursuit of His cause gets worked out.

It IS as big as that, because His eternal plan and purpose as we mentioned last time is to end the brokenness in His relationship with His people that was caused by sin, and the resulting brokenness that has plagued creation ever since.

To put it fairly plainly, the big purpose (see Ephesians 1:10) is to bring all things together again under the headship of Christ and if Haman had not been stopped in His tracks the people from which the Messiah would come would no longer have been there for Him to come from … ruling out the fulfilment of God’s promises to the patriarchs and the prophets right up until Esther’s initiative.

If she hadn’t done that, there would have been no Jesus and you would have no Saviour.

But this great reversal, taking out Haman who was too wicked to cure at that time, enables your salvation to be effected by the incarnate Jesus.

And it’s what happens in ch. 8 that sees this deliverance of God’s people in Persia … and of you … get protected.

And God fixes this with a huge amount of irony.

Ironic reversal is His plan for this.

Now, Xerxes is still thinking like a Persian … thinking of sorting out Esther and her guardian Mordecai with lashings of patronage from the King.

·       Esther gets Haman’s estate.

·       Mordecai gets Haman’s status at court.

·       Esther hands the estate over to Mordecai to run it for her.

And for people with ordinary priorities and motivations in the court of Xerxes, that would be the end of it.

So please especially notice that sorting her family out was not Esther’s exclusive … not even her primary … objective.

Esther and Mordecai have now got it made by most people’s evaluation of things!

But Esther and Mordecai don’t think so.

Look what Queen Esther immediately sets about doing …

2) Taking care of God’s people’s business, vv. 3-6

Esther 8:3-6 “Esther again pleaded with the king, falling at his feet and weeping. She begged him to put an end to the evil plan of Haman the Agagite, which he had devised against the Jews. 

Esther really sticks her neck out again!

There she goes, entering into the presence of Xerxes uninvited again … once again putting her life on the line, because death was the penalty for entering the King’s presence uninvited unless he immediately held out his sceptre to you in clemency.

So how do you explain this behaviour from Esther?

Blood has been brutally shed already that day in the court of the godless Persian King.

And Esther has pushed her luck like this by marching in to see the King once before just recently … 

Surely, it’s palpably more risky the second time as Xerxes wouldn’t want this impudence to become a settled habit?

Xerxes has put an end to Haman’s evil plans for Esther (as one of the people threatened by his edict) … but Esther goes back into the red zone and puts herself at mortal risk specifically to plead for the relief of her people, GOD’s people, the Jews.

Xerxes has been very generous to her.

She puts it ALL on the line again for God’s people.

It is bated breath time again for the reader … how is old Xerxes going to respond to this woman whose back and being a mess on the floor, throwing herself down at his feet weeping and pleading?

Doing it again.

The scene is dramatic … more dramatic than last time because this is the second time she’s taken this huge risk, and this time not for herself but for her people.

There’s a loyalty there that no Persian courtier of the time would have anticipated.

Quick, tell us … what became of her risk -taking?

4 Then the king extended the gold scepter to Esther and she arose and stood before him.

Phew!

Everyone can breathe again!

Of course, it’s not just for Esther we should be relieved, but for the people and cause of God across the ages … here comes the actual deliverance NOT just of Mordecai and Esther, but of God’s people which old Xerxes hasn’t thought of yet.

Xerxes was quite content to leave the Jews under the awful edict of annihilation … he’d just had to deal with Haman because of the affront that’d been given to Xerxes’s royal dignity both by the decree that had been issued against the Queen and the falling on the couch thing that really insulted King Xerxes.

That’s all that he’d been concerned about.

So Esther had needed to put her life on the line again to decree the deliverance of God’s people from the decree, and to secure the lineage of the Messiah, and our salvation.

So up stepped Esther, and now up speaks Esther:

5 “If it pleases the king,” she said, “and if he regards me with favour and thinks it the right thing to do, and if he is pleased with me, let an order be written overruling the dispatches that Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, devised and wrote to destroy the Jews in all the king’s provinces. 

6 For how can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? 

How can I bear to see the destruction of my family?”

Esther presents her request to the King in the most persuasive manner possible.

He’s promised her previously up to half his Kingdom.

Now she’s just asking for a bit of legislation, a decree that protects her family and her people from an edict the King’s presumably already been paid to deliver.

It’s hard to see what Xerxes has now got to lose by pleasing his Queen in this matter.

So, vv. 8-9, Xerxes magnanimously extends his royal patronage.

3) Xerxes extends his patronage, vv. 7-8

Esther 8:7-8 “King Xerxes replied to Queen Esther and to Mordecai the Jew, “Because Haman attacked the Jews, I have given his estate to Esther, and they have impaled him on the pole he set up. 

8 Now write another decree in the king’s name in behalf of the Jews as seems best to you, and seal it with the king’s signet ring—for no document written in the king’s name and sealed with his ring can be revoked.”

You know what, I think there’s something a little bit fishy going on here.

Now, I know a number of commentators make out that there’s nothing to say that the laws of the Persians and the Medes were irrevocable.

They’re the sort that go easily to Herodotus the Hellenic historian (no friend of Persia) who doesn’t mention this.

They’re not the sort that go to Daniel 6:8, 12 & 15.

It may be a bit of cunning here that Xerxes hands the job to Mordecai.

Mordecai is now the top servant of the King.

The King needs a potentially state-shaking thing done … to revoke an edict made under the irreversible laws of the Persians and Medes.

So instead of summoning the decree-drafters and doing the thing himself, Xerxes hands the job off to Mordecai … and if it back-fires leaving a can that must be carried, it all comes down on the head of poor Mordecai.

I reckon here comes Mordecai’s moment of ‘and if I perish, I perish’.

He doesn’t hesitate.

He doesn’t flinch.

He does his duty to God and God’s people most diligently.

Look at this …

4) Mordecai presses the advantage, vv. 9-14

Esther 8:9-14 “At once the royal secretaries were summoned—on the twenty-third day of the third month, the month of Sivan. They wrote out all Mordecai’s orders to the Jews, and to the satraps, governors and nobles of the 127 provinces stretching from India to Cush.

Two sets of instructions for two parties to the problem … to the Jews and to the government officials across the Persian Empire.

Distributed right across a massive and widely flung Empire.

Really - it was the biggest Empire that had been known at that time and the reference here is to it stretching from India to Ethiopia and Sudan on the east coast of Africa that lay around the southern parts of the river Nile all the way to India (the lands on either side of the River Indus).

This is a description of widespread, thorough and decisive action.

Mordecai is pressing the advantage very hard here.

And as we get down to the specifics, the determination with which the advantage is pressed is once more emphasised:

V. 9

These orders were written in the script of each province and the language of each people and also to the Jews in their own script and language. 

10 Mordecai wrote in the name of King Xerxes, 

sealed the dispatches with the king’s signet ring, and 

sent them by mounted couriers, 

who rode fast horses especially bred for the king.

There’s no messing about in the delivery of the advantage God’s people have got here!

But there’s more.

Will you just LOOK at the extent of the sanction procured and granted to God’s people for the absolutely safety of God’s people and purpose through them:

11 The king’s edict granted the Jews in every city the right to assemble and protect themselves; 

But it doesn’t stop there.

They are empowered to assemble to protect themselves, but that isn’t pressing the advantage the Almighty has afforded to His people.

They are granted firstly the right to assemble for their (passive) self-protection.

But they are given a much bigger warrant and advantage than that:

v. 11: “to destroy, kill and annihilate the armed men of any nationality or province who might attack them and their women and children, and to plunder the property of their enemies. 

The language is almost exactly the same as that of Haman’s earlier vile edict that aimed at the annihilation of God’s people.

God has turned the whole situation around.

It’s a huge reversal of the situation.

But there’s more.

12 The day appointed for the Jews to do this in all the provinces of King Xerxes was the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar. 

The specifics were spelled out clearly and decisively.

The date given means business and gives reality to this warrant and commission.

Again, the language chosen reflects the language of Haman’s genocidal edict.

God has turned the whole situation around.

And the nations receiving this edict had the situation totally spelled out for them for the avoidance of doubt and to assert resistance to God’s people and purpose would be futile:

13 A copy of the text of the edict was to be issued as law in every province and made known to the people of every nationality so that the Jews would be ready on that day to avenge themselves on their enemies.

This is exactly what had happened with the edict to annihilate the Jews.

God has turned the whole situation around.

14 The couriers, riding the royal horses, went out, spurred on by the king’s command, and the edict was issued in the citadel of Susa.”

By now you don’t need me to spell this out … the language is really similar to the things said around Haman’s evil edict that would have resulted in the annihilation of the Jews all across Xerxes’ empire, and with them the ancestors of God incarnate as a son of David … Jesus our Saviour, the Messiah.

But the day is saved, you see, because Esther and then Mordecai have pressed the advantage for God’s people and purpose.

There’s no surprise in the things this book of Esther tells us next …

5) A time of joy and gladness, v. 15-17

A time of joy and gladness breaks out:

“When Mordecai left the king’s presence, he was wearing royal garments of blue and white, a large crown of gold and a purple robe of fine linen. And the city of Susa held a joyous celebration. 

16 For the Jews it was a time of happiness and joy, gladness and honour. 

God has turned the whole situation round.

This is a time of great reversal.

17 In every province and in every city to which the edict of the king came, there was joy and gladness among the Jews, with feasting and celebrating. 

That’s what come when God comes.

Joy and gladness.

Joy and gladness that gets expressed in the enjoyment of God’s good things.

Now THAT’s something the people of our age and generation don’t realise about the Lord!

A large part of the problems we have in communicating Christ in our culture is that the people around us don’t realise God is good news … and a large part of the reason for that is that we don’t regularly realise it either.

And very often we don’t realise this through our lived experience is because we have simply not sought Him in the way He’s sought us.

Let that sink in a minute … we HAVEN’T sought Him in anything like the way He’s sought us.

And there’s why the last sentence of this chapter’s almost alien to our experience too.

“And many people of other nationalities became Jews because fear of the Jews had seized them.”

That thought is going to bring us to our conclusion …

Conclusion

I read on Friday in my daily devotions a description in 2 Chronicles 16:7-9 of an interaction between the prophet Hanani and Asa King of Judah:

“At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him: “Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand. 

8 Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the Lord, he delivered them into your hand. 

9 For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”

Now there’s a thing.

There’s a principle we see illustrated throughout this episode in the Book of Esther where God’s imperfect people don’t stop at identifying, isolating and eliminating the enemy, but show the full commitment required to press the advantage for God’s purpose, a purpose which is always tied up with God’s people.

He always graciously - sometimes, you might think, incomprehensibly - fully involves His people in His greater purposes.

But here you see Mordecai and Esther do NOT stop at getting off the hook, getting THEMSELVES away from the danger.

They are totally committed to seeking God’s purpose through His salvation of His people.

They look to the Lord to identify, isolate and eliminate the enemy of God’s people and purpose (but PLEASE remember that ‘eliminate’ part now is all about fighting God’s spiritual battles with the spiritual resources God provides for us … check Ephesians 6:10-20 in last week’s sermon!)

But having looked to God for it all they commit to the task which is not confined to identifying, isolating and eliminating but goes on at further personal risk and with further personal effort to press the advantage for God’s cause and Kingdom.

I have an inkling we’ll need to remember that at some point in the next few weeks that we (still) live on earth to serve our God, His purpose and His people.

Let’s pray for one another with these thoughts of Esther 8 today in our minds.