Esther 5: The Wise Woman and the Foolish Man

We are continuing our series on the book of Esther this morning. I hope you've been enjoying it. It's a fascinating story. It's got plot twists everywhere, and one major one is being set up this morning. We'll soon see.

It's a story of God's providence, of how God hiddenly, mysteriously works His sovereign power to save and protect His people, ultimately with the purpose of bringing about the life of Jesus and His saving work for us. But this is a wonderful book, and we continue it this morning in chapter five. Let's look at Esther chapter five, verse one. On the third day, Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the king's palace in front of the king's quarters while the king was sitting on his royal throne inside the throne room, opposite the entrance to the palace. And when the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, she won favour in his sight.

And he held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand. Then Esther approached and touched the tip of the sceptre. And the king said to her, what is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? It shall be given to you, even to half of my kingdom.

And Esther said, if it pleased the king, let the king and Haman come today to a feast that I have prepared for the king. Then the king said, bring Haman quickly so that we may do as Esther has asked. So the king and Haman came to the feast that Esther had prepared. And as they were drinking wine after the feast, the king said to Esther, what is your wish? It shall be granted to you.

And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled. Then Esther answered, my wish and my request is, if I have found favour in the sight of the king, and if it pleased the king to grant my wish and fulfil my request, that the king and Haman come to the feast that I will prepare for them, and tomorrow I will do as the king has said. And Haman went out that day joyful and glad of heart. But when Haman saw Mordecai in the king's gate, that he neither rose nor trembled before him, he was filled with wrath against Mordecai.

Nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home, and sent and brought his friends and his wife Zeresh. And Haman recounted to them the splendour of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honoured him, and how he had advanced him above the officials and the servants of the king. Then Haman said, even Queen Esther, let no one but me come with the king to the feast she prepared, and tomorrow also, I am invited by her together with the king. Yet all this is worth nothing to me as long as I see Mordecai, the Jew, sitting at the king's gate. Then his wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, let a gallows fifty cubits high be made.

And in the morning, tell the king to have Mordecai hanged upon it. Then go joyfully with the king to the feast. This idea pleased Haman, and he had the gallows made. This is God's word. Well, we know the story of the book of Esther revolves around four main characters.

Five, if you include the people of the Jews as a character. But four main individuals. Firstly, we have a king named Ahasuerus, or Xerxes in Greek, who ruled the Persian empire at its peak, a kingdom spanning from India to Ethiopia. We've seen Ahasuerus abdicating his role as a husband, being a gluttonous and money-hungry man.

His weak ego is hurt by his wife, his former wife Vashti, whom he subsequently banished and replaced with the second character, Esther. Esther is a beautiful young Jewish woman who was snatched up in King Ahasuerus's schemes along with hundreds of other women, being forced into the king's bed in a twisted beauty pageant in order to replace Vashti. Esther wins and becomes queen. Esther was raised by a third character, Mordecai, a Jewish man who raised her as his own when she was orphaned because she was his cousin.

Mordecai is a mid-level government official who during the story here is shown to be wise and prudent and honest. God then brings Mordecai into confrontation with our fourth character, a man named Haman, who is the embodiment of evil opposition to God's people. Haman is shown to be power hungry, vain, and murderously jealous. The terrifying problem to the story of Esther is that when Mordecai refuses to pay homage to Haman, Haman gets this pushover king to issue a genocide to kill all the Jews in his empire by the twelfth month of that same year. And today, we come to the part of the story where Esther attempts to stop this from happening.

The first thing we see here in this first sort of paragraph is Esther's wisdom: that position and courtesy is used by God for His purposes. Last week, we ended with Esther calling Mordecai and the Jews of Susa to a three-day fast in order to pray and prepare for this one moment with the king. Today, we see that Esther gets dressed in her royal best. She presents herself to the king in the throne room.

But we are told last week in the previous chapter that the in presence with the king without invitation is potentially liable to get you killed. Archaeologists have uncovered amazingly a depiction of something of the pomp and the ceremony that was usually involved in seeing the king on his throne. This depiction amazingly is something of this same time period, probably archaeologists say, King Darius, King Xerxes, King Ahasuerus' dad. And this is what some of this instance here would have looked like. We see the king sitting on his throne to the left of the screen here.

He's holding a sceptre, something like a sceptre that would have been extended to Esther, the one that she reached out to touch as a sign of reverence. We see here a visitor to the king, someone probably noteworthy because he has an entourage himself standing with him. He's leaning forward, seemingly coming up from a bow, and he blows a kiss to the king. In Persian culture of the time, men of equal standing would greet each other with a kiss on the lips.

If you were of a slightly lower standing, or if you wanted to show respect to someone, you would simply kiss them on the cheek. But if you were of a much lower standing, you would simply bow or blow a kiss to them. You were not worthy to touch them. Standing behind the king is who, what archaeologists believe to be a depiction of a Hazara, the crown prince, the one who we're dealing with today. Now, this wall, this carving is kept in a museum in Tehran, and it gives us a cool insight into the formality, the sense of all that Esther would have experienced as she entered the king's throne room that day.

She was walking into this environment, a woman in a man's world, approaching the king with all his guards and his advisers. We don't see it here, but here is the bigger section of the wall. There's the king, there's the visitor, there's perhaps King Ahasuerus, and here's all the king's entourage behind him: guards, a wise man, and an executioner, a man with an axe and a sword.

This is something of what Esther would have seen as she entered the king's room. The message is clear in this depiction: in the empire, a swift and crushing justice is never too far away from those who break the law. Here in the doorway of the palace throne room stands a trembling Esther. But when the king sees her with her beautiful dress on, we're told in verse two, she wins favour in his sight.

The language that's being used here of winning favour indicates that this was Esther's doing. It's not a passive thing. It was something that Esther had control over. It could have been the dress. It could have been the reverent, humble way that she approached the king.

But whatever it was, the king is aware of the enormity of the risk in appearing uninvited in his presence, and so he extends the sceptre to recognise her and to welcome her into his presence. He realises something important is troubling her. So he asks, what is it, Queen Esther? What is your request?

Then he adds, whatever it is, up to half of my kingdom, I will give to you. Now, that is an ancient figure of speech, probably not a literal promise. People didn't share fifty fifty in marriages in those days. It wasn't up to half his kingdom, but this is a phrase of generosity, a willingness to be generous to the person that you are offering this to. Esther, thankfully, has found the king in a good mood.

Now, I, recognising this, would have been very tempted to have simply blurted out my request if I was Esther. Esther would have said, you know, if I was her, there's a great scheme afoot, a genocide of the Jewish people, and I want you to stop it. Instead, Esther goes a different way. Why? Well, we don't realise it, but the request to stop this genocide would have posed a lot of problems that would have needed to be overcome.

In order to spare the Jews and to stop Haman's genocide, firstly, Esther would be asking for the reversal of an irreversible law. The law of the Medes and the Persians could not be revoked. Second, granting her request would cost the king ten thousand talents of silver, which Haman had promised the king, half of the annual income of the empire. Thirdly, the king would lose face in yet another public backflip caused by a woman.

First, it was Vashti, now it would be Esther. And then lastly, and perhaps most significantly, Esther's request would have revealed to the king that she was Jewish herself and that she had been keeping that secret for the past five years. She had been deceiving her husband for five years. Given these complications, Esther instead invites the king and Haman to a special feast that night. The king seems delighted with that idea, and he invites Haman immediately to come as quickly as he can.

At the end of the meal, we are told, during the drinking of the wine stage, the king asked Esther again, what is your request? Verse six. It seems Esther almost offers up that request, starting to say in verse seven, my wish and my request is. Now in our ESV translations, they stop that sentence with a colon to say that almost like she's saying my request is, will you come to my next feast? But the Hebrew structure of the sentence indicates an incomplete sentence.

It's as if Esther trails off as she begins to say what's on her mind. Instead of a colon, it should be an ellipsis, a dot dot dot, as she leaves the king hanging. Now, many people wonder whether Esther loses her nerve right here. She begins to ask for this favour and then changes her mind. But commentators like Duguid and Bush suggest that Esther is wisely and cunningly teasing the king, enticing the king.

She keeps him in suspense. And perhaps this is the reason why. Powerful people always get what they ask for. The king could name it and his people would get it for him. We've seen it before in the story.

Food, drink, women, entertainment. When you have enough money and you have enough power, you get whatever you want. But here is Esther not giving the king what he wants. For a man whose life is marked by immediate gratification, for once he is being forced to wait, and this intrigues the king. In other words, far from being timid and needing to scrape together one more night of courage and prayer to go and give a second feast in order to soften him up.

She is actually, Esther is actually, moving the king to a position where he is virtually obligated to give her whatever she wants. Look again. Twice, he offers publicly whatever she desired, up to half the kingdom. At his second appeal, Esther makes known her wish, but that is cut short by an even more courteous and diplomatic suggestion. She doubles down on how good natured the king feels towards her by saying, if I have found favour in the king's sight and if it pleases the king, then adds, and if you are inclined to grant me my request, come to another feast I will prepare for you tomorrow.

If you read that initially, you may not realise it, but subtly Esther is saying, if you say yes to the next banquet, you are saying yes to whatever I ask of you. It's the hidden thorn in the rose. It's the steel gauntlet under the silk glove. If you say yes to my delicious banquet, you'll have to say yes to my request. Frederick Bush concludes, Esther is shrewdly and subtly pursuing a well-designed plan by which she has manoeuvred the king into committing himself in advance.

What I think God is wanting to show us here is the wisdom of Esther. Esther hasn't always been the most courageous. She hasn't always been the most sacrificial. But here we see Esther at her best.

Perhaps those three days of praying and fasting brought Esther back into alignment with her faith and with her people. But here is Esther showing a brilliant example of wisdom. Esther knows her husband. She knows that he likes eating. He likes drinking.

Esther knows that he has now twice in front of witnesses offered to give her anything she wants, up to half the kingdom. First, in front of his entourage in the throne room. Second, in front of Haman. The king is a man of ego. He doesn't like to look foolish.

So wisely does Esther choose her words that by the end of verse eight, have a look, she will position the king to think that all of this was his idea in the first place. Listen to how she ends: come to the feast I will prepare for you, and tomorrow I will do what the king has said. He's gonna think he's the one that saved the Jews. Do you know what wisdom, or why wisdom is consistently celebrated in the Bible?

It's because no matter what generation you live in, wisdom is always a scarce commodity. Doesn't matter how much knowledge the human race has accumulated at any given time, wisdom is always in short supply. Essentially, wisdom is knowledge lived out well. Wisdom is knowledge lived out well. Esther had a lot of knowledge about her husband.

She knew what her husband liked, but wisdom chooses the best path in light of that knowledge. If there is ever something Christians should aspire to live up to, it is to be a wise people. In a world where crude, shock and awe is celebrated, where Western thought says it is best to say exactly what is on your mind all the time, biblical wisdom actually often says the opposite. Tact, carefully guarded mouths, even silence are all distinguished traits of a godly Christian. So when you're tempted to post something dumb on Facebook or to be rude to your boss because you feel you are entitled to say what you think to him, consider Esther's wise handling of the king.

Even in married life, if you think your relationship with your husband or wife is tricky, consider Esther. Have you ever had to go through an intricate throne room procedure just to talk to your spouse at the pain of death? You might think tiptoeing around your wife while you're in the doghouse is awkward. Think again. Scripture holds out things like courtesy.

Courtesy as a mark of the Christian life. Titus three, verse two says, speak evil of no one, avoid quarrelling, be gentle, and show perfect courtesy towards all people. Ephesians four twenty-nine tells us, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. Wisdom is how we speak.

Wisdom is a good thing. Think before you say something, choose the best words to say what you are feeling. You can be honest, but you can be wise about how you say it. We will do well to be more wise in our lives. Secondly, and our last point today, we see Haman's foolishness.

And we see that position and power, even the likes of Queen Esther's position and power, does not satisfy the human heart. If you are ever tempted to be envious of Esther, and I know some family members in my life who think Esther had a great life (she won a beauty pageant, how amazing), if you ever attempted to think she had a great life, think again.

The Bible cautions us with the thought of a sad reality of a man named Haman, who was perhaps only second to the king in terms of position and power. And for all his power, Haman is a case study in what a life ravaged by idols looks like. We know, don't we? And we say it often at Open House or talk about it, that there is a consistent theme in the Bible of God's battle against idolatry in the hearts of people. Far from the stereotyped image of people bowing down to little statues, idolatry is a psychological and a spiritual issue of the heart.

Essentially, it's taking a gift that God has given us and making it the purpose of our lives, the object of affection of the heart. For this reason, an idol can therefore be nearly anything in life. It can be your car, your house, money, fame, popularity, relationships, family. And in Haman's case, was image, public recognition. Haman's image was Haman's idol.

Public recognition was Haman's idol. And this chapter spells it out for us. As long as Haman is receiving adulation, he's a happy man. He leaves that first feast thrilled. Me and the king and Queen Esther, it was just us three having a great old celebration together.

How special am I? However, a single moment of disrespect when Mordecai doesn't stand up for him, doesn't tremble before him in fear, it instantly ruins his mood. Rage sweeps over him. And in the closing verses of the chapter, see him coming home to his wife, calling together his friends to firstly tell them, wow, I am so great. I have so many sons.

I am so wealthy. I have been raised to the highest position in the empire. He recounts to them, verse 11, the splendour of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honoured him, and how he had advanced him above the officials and the servants of the king. Then in verse 12, he says that he is thrilled to be invited to yet another feast the next day. But then his idol, his heart's great purpose giver, is clearly revealed in verse 13 when he says, yet all this is worth nothing to me so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate.

Now, this has got nothing to do with the hatred of one man. That's not it. We can see it's Haman's truest idol because this Mordecai refuses to give him the one thing that he loves most in life: recognition, respect. Idols are the thing we worship instead of worshipping God. The Bible shows that our hearts were made to worship, but they were made to worship just one thing, the living God.

But because of our innate rebelliousness, we want to love everything other than Him. The tragic thing for Haman is that his friends and his wife have no knowledge of God to correct him. They don't give him the advice that I am about to give you. And that is that when you recognise an idol in your life (and it's a case of when, not if), when you recognise an idol in your life, the only way to deal with it in a healthy way is to squeeze it out of your heart.

Like a pus-filled pimple, it needs to be squeezed out. It needs to be driven out of your heart with a deeper and a clearer love for God. Think about it. Only worship can replace worship. Only worship can replace worship.

And so here is the very good advice. When you find yourself wrestling with an idol, you need to come to church more often. You need to study the Bible in your Bible study groups more often. You need to listen to sermon podcasts, you need to read Christian books. You need to put on Christian worship music.

You need to worship God more often. You need to fellowship with like-minded Christians more often. And I can tell you on the flip side how you can identify your idols the quickest. Nine times out of ten, the things that keep you away from church, from Bible studies, from fellowship with other Christians, nine times out of ten, those things are your idols. The things that are keeping you from that.

The love for your idol only withers, can only wither and die when that space in your heart is being filled with an all-satisfying love for your good and gracious God. Instead of being given this advice, however, Haman's wife and his friends advise him the way the world advises us regarding our idols. This is the world's advice. In order to eliminate your negative feelings of your idol being tampered with, you simply double down on your idolatry. They tell Haman, go and build the largest, most ostentatious gallows ever built so that you can go and hang that man Mordecai on it and make a public spectacle of his life and his death.

We're told that these gallows to be built were to be fifty cubits high, which is about twenty metres tall. That's this building stacked three times on top of each other. It's over the top. A gallows twenty metres tall for one man. It's a giant-sized vengeance, and it reveals a giant-sized turmoil of a heart enslaved by an idol.

You see, when our idols are threatened, almost nothing will get in the way of us destroying what might take it away. The world's advice is never to squeeze the idol out, however; it is to double down on it, to worship it, revere it, and protect it even more. At the moment, I'm reading a very interesting book called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman. He's a Christian guy and he writes about a study on Western society ending up in the social phenomenon of needing to affirm everyone's sexual identities. It's a historical look of, over the past hundred and fifty years, how we've ended up here, where we have the LGBTQI agenda completely enslaving the Western thought to this idolatry of sexuality.

It is seen most clearly in the agenda not simply to legitimise personal sexual affinity, but the demand for everyone to celebrate it. What do we do on Sundays when we come together? We celebrate God. The book traces a complicated and fascinating journey of philosophical thought battles which the Church has incidentally been losing steadily. And yet, even as we have lost the battle for people's hearts and minds, even as the Christian voice on sexuality is marginalised, the underlying truth is just so clear.

We ferociously love and protect our idols. We have drunk the Kool-Aid, so to speak, of building our happiness around sexual gratification so much so that when someone questions whether we should be identified by our sexual inclinations, when someone dares not to bow down to a certain identity, that idol is threatened and the only recourse is to crush the opposition of that idol. We build gallows fifty cubits high to string up those who oppose the idol. And if you think about it, it is exactly here. You think, Haman, how vain?

It's just one man. It's just one guy not standing up for you. And yet sex, which is such a small part of the human life, is centre stage. We've taken a simple little gift of God, we've made it the ultimate thing, and lawmakers across the West are building gallows for the naysayers, the rebels who dare to question the centrality of this idol in people's lives.

We are not dealing with flesh and blood. We are dealing with spiritual matters. If you are sympathetic to the LGBTQI cause, I wanna say to you, be warned. Your idols will never save you. That is also what we see here with Haman.

God will flip the script on Haman so completely that Haman himself is hung up on his own gallows. Here is the truth of the matter, that when we seek to deal with our idolatries by feeding them rather than by starving them, we end up emptier than ever, in an even greater enslavement than before, and it's only a matter of time before those very idols steal our souls from us forever. So in finishing this morning, what is it that would have saved Haman? What would have saved Haman?

You might say it would have been the recognition that God is God, for Haman simply to have known that a God exists and that He is the one to be worshipped. That's true. You could say that knowing that God is the King of the universe and therefore King over your wife is a good place to start. But the second action is the thing that would have saved Haman, and that is for Haman to have asked God to transform his heart.

It's not a mistake that the best gift the Bible tells us we get is not money or wealth or recognition. The best gift we get is the Holy Spirit. It is God living in souls. Above all things, He is the thing, He is the one we need the most.

He works to reorientate our hearts back towards God. It is His work to lift up Christ in our hearts, to fill us with a desire to know Him and to love Him. His work in us actualises the slow and steady work of sanctification so that we do become living sacrifices to Him, not sacrifices to idols that will destroy us. Living sacrifices.

A sacrifice that continues to live and grow in life. It's only when the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts and when our minds are fixated upon the glory and the goodness of God that any insult or slur on our way out of the throne room will not leave a lasting impression on us. If we truly understand how much the King of the universe has favoured us, who cares what the world thinks? Who cares what the world does? Friend, do you understand just how favoured you are?

That the Son of God, the crown prince that stands behind the throne, would come to you, would come for us so that we may be granted free, unhindered entrance to the throne room of our God. So favoured are we that we don't fear death. At any time, we can go and see Him on His throne. At any time, we can feast with Him in the garden. What else compares to this when we truly understand that nothing is withheld from me.

Why would I allow my heart to pursue and be captivated by anything less? And so friends, may we, with wisdom like Esther, understand this. May our mouths and our tongues be seasoned with that grace in how we speak. May our hearts be untainted by vile and bitter feelings because our egos or our idols are damaged. And may we avoid the foolishness of Haman of fixing our hearts on anything less than God Himself.

Let's pray. Lord, we approach Your throne room of grace. And we do so, Lord, even though our fleshly sides may tremble like Esther did, our spirits are confident that we may approach You with confidence, that we may petition and request of our great King that He will grant us the one thing that You desire for us: lives transformed as we are fixated upon Your grace. Help us, Lord, when we take our eyes off that.

Help us, Lord, when we forget or ignore or purposely circumvent that understanding. God, cause us to be rectified, cause our hearts to be realigned. And where there are idols in our lives, the things that will take us away from You, the things that will come in between us from worshipping our true and living God, the things that will take our attention away. Please, God, identify those things by Your grace. Cause us to feel sadness about those things, shame, embarrassment.

And then, Father, again, give us the grace to know, to believe, to understand what You have given us in Jesus Christ: full and free access to the God of the universe so that we lack nothing. Move us, oh God. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.