24 Nov Recap | Esther | Justice Served

This week, Matt taught from Esther 7. In this passage, Esther finally asks King Xerxes to spare the lives of the Jews, and Haman is punished for his evil actions. This story demonstrates the big idea that you can control your actions, as Haman did, but their consequences will spiral out of your control.

This chapter begins with a huge banquet at which Xerxes, Esther, and Haman are present. In verse 2, King Xerxes promises Esther anything she wants, up to half the kingdom. In this promise, she sees the opportunity to save her people. She asks that “my life and the lives of my people will be spared” (v. 3). In this simple request, she makes a massive disclosure: she is a Jew. Her people have been condemned to death, and he is the only one who can save them. In verse 4, she claims, “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.” For her, slavery and oppression are bearable, but genocide is a different matter.

After Esther paints this grim picture, Xerxes is roused to anger. As he has demonstrated throughout the book, he is slow to understand the situation. He asks, “Who would do such a thing?” (v.5). In a tactful and brilliant statement, Esther distances herself from Haman and moves closer to the king. She answers, “The wicked Haman is our adversary and our enemy” (v. 6). She portrays Haman as “wicked,” “adversary,” and “enemy,” while siding herself with the king.

Upon hearing this, Xerxes storms out of the palace in a rage. Haman stays behind to plead with Esther for his life. This produces some satisfying ironic justice. In the beginning of the book, Haman contrives a plot to kill all Jews because Mordecai, a Jew, would not bow down to him and show him respect. Now, because of this evil plot, Haman is bowing before a Jewess and begging for his own life.

Haman collapses in grief on Esther’s couch. Just as he does this, Xerxes returns to the palace to see the guilty man compounding his sin by appearing to assault the queen. Xerxes misinterprets this collapse as an attack on Esther, and Haman’s doom is sealed. The randomness of this event – Haman falling on the couch just as Xerxes enters the palace – is another instance of God’s providence appearing in this book as a seemingly random occurrence.

With darkly ironic comedic relief, one of the king’s eunuchs informs Xerxes that Haman had set up a massive impaling pole to kill Mordecai. Xerxes orders Haman to be killed upon this contraption, and Haman is thereby destroyed by his own evil plot.

This chapter illustrates the idea that the consequences of our actions are beyond our control. Haman clearly controlled his own actions in hatching a plot to kill the Jews. However, his evil spiraled out of control and ended up swallowing him. This idea of uncontrollable consequences is illustrated throughout the Old and New Testaments, in characters such as Adam, Moses, David, Judas, and others. It is illustrated most prominently in the case of Satan, who wields the power of death. However, Jesus, who became man to die as a man, used death to defeat Satan. Hebrews 2:14 says, “For only as a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death.” Satan was defeated by his own weapon as Jesus died on the cross to take the punishment for all sin.

Matt closed the sermon with a reminder of the reality of this death. Hebrews 2:15 states that Jesus died to “set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.” Many of us are not afraid of death because we are young. Others do not fear death because our culture makes it easy to escape the imminence of death with technology and busy schedules. However, there will come a time when the distractions are eliminated and the reality of death is made clear to us. If we have lived an unreflective life, this moment will terrify us. As Christians or non-Christians, we must embrace the inescapable nature of our mortality and consider the incomparable offer of life that our Creator offers to us through Jesus Christ.

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Worship Songs from the Weekend

• Found: Philippians 3:8-9, 1 Corinthians 15:43
• Man of Sorrows: Isaiah 53, 1 Timothy 2:5-6
• Great Are You Lord: Psalm 104, Ezekiel 37:1-14, Psalm 98
• Sovereign Over Us: Genesis 50:20, Jeremiah 29:11, Isaiah 55:8-9, Romans 8:28
• God of the Redeemed: Psalm 10:17-18, Ephesians 1:4-6, Romans 8:23, Romans 9:4
• I Will Look Up: Psalm 57:7-11, Isaiah 26:1-8, 2 Samuel 22:26-31