LIVING FOR GOD IN A GODLESS CULTURE
WHY DO BAD THINGS TO HAPPEN BAD PEOPLE?
ESTHER 6:14-7:10
INTRODUCTION
-Have you ever noticed that people have philosophies about life?
-My dad is one of the greatest philosophers I know:
-“If you mess with the bull, you get the horn.”
-“The worm turns.” (What goes around, comes around)
-“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”
-My favorite…“if you’re going to be a turd go lay in the lawn.”
-You can see my ability for profound thinking is genetic.
-The people in the world also have philosophies and ideas about life. If you listen carefully you’ll hear what they think.
-They have ideas about God and good and evil and they are revealed in some of the things they say.
-The philosophical question we hear over and over again in our godless culture, I’m calling it the…
The Big Question: Why do bad things happen to good people?
-That’s what we’re talking about this morning in our Esther series.
-Today we are going to see how all of the things that Haman has done and how it finally plays out for him.
• Esther ha been preparing to ask for mercy.
-She chickened out at first & then asked for a second banquet.
• Haman was preparing to ask for Mordecai’s death!
-The very morning that Haman was going to have Mordecai killed, the providence of God intervenes and…
• Mordecai was rewarded instead, for saving Xerxes!
-The once proud and narcissistic Haman was now….
• Haman was humiliated.
-We pick up as the second banquet is about to take place.
Esther 6:14 While they were still talking, the king’s eunuchs arrived and quickly took Haman to the banquet Esther had prepared. (2nd banquet)
-Last night Haman dined w/Xerxes and Esther and bragged…
-Today he spent all day parading Mordecai through town on the king’s horse, wearing the king’s robe, and announcing how great and honored Mordecai was.
-Now he’s going back to dinner with Xerxes and Esther humiliated
-From a reader’s point of view we can see the walls closing in on Haman, he had sowed a bunch of trouble and it’s catching up.
-This second banquet starts out very similar to the first.
VS 7:1 So the king and Haman went to Queen Esther’s banquet. 2 On this second occasion, while they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, “Tell me what you want, Queen Esther. What is your request? I will give it to you, even if it is half the kingdom!”
-This is a rerun from two weeks ago so I won’t get into it much.
-He is essentially asking, “What can I do for you?”
VS 3 Queen Esther replied, “If I have found favor with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request, I ask that my life and the lives of my people will be spared.
-This probably put a screeching halt to the party mood that Xerxes and Haman were in.
-They had been drinking wine, eating good food, probably being waited on hand and foot, had some live music in the background.
-“My people and I are begging for our lives,” she said.
-This is like your daughter announcing at Christmas dinner she’s marrying a guy in Supermax she met through prison pen pals min
-This is like your son telling you at the Thanksgiving table that he’s joining the Hare Krishna’s and will selling flowers at the airport.
-It was a party, the king was having fun.
-And suddenly Esther says me and all my people are about to be slaughtered and I’m asking you to spare us.
-You can see the King maybe choking on his wine.
-Probably sat up straight. Killed the band playing in the background…maybe literally, he liked to kill people.
-She goes on to say:
VS 4 For my people and I have been sold to those who would kill, slaughter, and annihilate us.
(Can I just pause here and say that is really redundant. I am going to killed AND slaughtered AND annihilated! Any ONE those three sounds pretty fatal.”
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.”
-She’s talking about the genocide of her people.
-It’s happened in our lifetime. Rwanda and Bosnia.
-This is a great example of when people could rightfully ask, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
-When we see evil rulers, crooked politicians, murderers, thieves, those who harm children and exploit the innocent…
-People ask, “Why does God allow such evil?”
-You need 2B able to answer this with your non-Christians friends
-What should he do? God should just ZAP em!
What would happen if God zapped all the bad people?
-What if God wiped out all the evil people who committed adultery? Or those who had stolen? Or those who had lied?
-What if he destroyed out all the people who are in prison?
-What if he zapped all the people who had ever been violent?
-What if he killed out all the people who ever got drunk, and all the drug users or the deadbeat dads who don’t pay child support?
-What if God simply zapped all the bad people?
-Some of your fathers would be gone. Mothers. Sisters. Brothers.
-Best friends would be zapped. Favorite teachers zapped.
-That person that doesn’t know Christ, the one you are praying for? Zapped.
-Your own children. The ones who are wayward and you’re working to bring them to faith in Christ. Too bad; zapped.
-Do you know what would happen if God zapped all the evil people and gave us all the justice we think we want?
-We would all say, “How could a loving God do such a thing?”
-People would have the same complaint against God as before!
-2 Peter 3:9 “No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.”
-If God zapped all the bad people they wouldn’t have a chance to repent and be saved. And that’s what God wants.
-It sounds like a simply thing to zap the bad guys…not so simple
-Notice that Esther stuck to her original plan.
-Mordecai said you have to ask for mercy!
-Everyone was fasting and praying to receive mercy.
-She came into this second banquet and asked for mercy.
-But then, God opened up a door of opportunity when the King asked a very specific question.
VS 5 “Who would do such a thing?” King Xerxes demanded. “Who would be so presumptuous as to touch you?”
-So many times we try to force a situation in a direction.
-But Ether didn’t do that. She came in humbly.
-She was with King Xerxes and Haman, the man who had signed the death warrant.
-He’s been plotting and scheming and conniving and suddenly the tides are about to turn. Since you asked…
6 Esther replied, “This wicked Haman is our adversary and our enemy.” Haman grew pale with fright before the king and queen.
-Haman has been downright rotten throughout his lifetime.
-He has been mean, rude, arrogant, and selfish.
-And you get the idea that he never thought any of this would come back to bite him.
-Why do we think that our sins will never catch up with us?
-Why are we so shocked when our sins come back on us?
Many bad things in life can be traced to someone’s sin.
-In the midst of bad things we should look for sin. Sounds crazy.
-How could he allow a plot for genocide against innocent people?
-There shouldn’t have been any Jews in Persian.
-They had the opportunity to go back to Israel where they were supposed to live and worship…but they stayed. Sin.
-Esther should have never been in a beauty contest that concluded with an audition in the king’s bed. But she did. Sin.
-Mordecai shouldn’t have disrespected the most powerful man under the king, especially since he was a mortal enemy of the Jews…but he did. Sin.
-When we review the record, those “good people facing bad things” don’t seem quite as innocent.
-Galatians 6:8 “Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant.
-And often times when we are crying unfair, we need to review our own track record and at least ask, “Is there any sin here?”
-Did I have any part in being fired from my job? sin
-Are any of my money problems linked to my $ management? sin
-Are some of my marriage problems partly due to my own sin?
-Are my struggles as a parent partly the result of my parenting?
-Are my struggles in life related to bad choices I made?
-Not always, but often times trouble is related to sin.
-Ever been proud and boastful and been humbled like Haman? Sin
-Ever been stubborn & rebellious & it cost you like Mordecai? Sin
-Ever been worldly and superficial and ended up married to a powerful & wicked king? (Probably not that one)
-Many times when people are asking why bad things happen to good people we find some little (or big) pocket of sin.
-Sometimes bad things happen because we’ve sown seeds of sin.
-That was Haman:
VS 7 Then the king jumped to his feet in a rage and went out into the palace garden. Haman, however, stayed behind to plead for his life with Queen Esther, for he knew that the king intended to kill him. 8 In despair he fell on the couch where Queen Esther was reclining, just as the king was returning from the palace garden. The king exclaimed, “Will he even assault the queen right here in the palace, before my very eyes?” And as soon as the king spoke, his attendants covered Haman’s face, signaling his doom.
-Nobody would have called Haman a good guy.
-And maybe nobody outside his family even cared that he was doomed. He was a bad man.
-People like to ask the question, “If there is a loving God, then why do bad things happen to good people?”
-As Christians we have to challenge the premise of that question and ask this, “Who says they’re good?”
-What if the good people really aren’t so good?
-Nobody wants to ask that question. Non-Christians hate this.
-Nobody wants to accept the premise of that question.
-Romans 3:10-12 “As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.”
-Every single person who has ever lived has sinned, except for Jesus Christ the Son of God.
-That means every single person has sinned.
-Every single person in this room has taken part in wickedness.
-All your relatives, all your friends, your parents, your dearly sainted grandmother…everyone has done evil things. Me. You.
-People act like this Big Question is the only roadblock they have to faith. I’d like to believe in a loving God but…why do bad things
-What if we asked “why do bad things happen to bad people?”
-The Bible says every one of us has an incurable problem with sinful, evil, wicked...thoughts and behaviors.
-That’s what we believe. And no amount of good you do can cancel out the bad you’ve done.
-Strictly speaking, Biblically speaking, there no good people.
-Haman was no worse a sinner than Esther or Mordecai or you or I
-He was a sinner whose sin finally caught up with him.
-Haman was on the top of the world for quite a while, but when he fell he fell quickly.
-He’s begging Queen Esther for mercy, just as the King walks in and Xerxes thinks he’s assaulting her. Love this part…
VS 9 Then Harbona, one of the king’s eunuchs, said, (you know…) “Haman has set up a sharpened pole that stands seventy-five feet tall in his own courtyard. He intended to use it to impale Mordecai, the man who saved the king from assassination.” “Then impale Haman on it!” the king ordered. 10 So they impaled Haman on the pole he had set up for Mordecai, and the king’s anger subsided.
-You have to feel sorry for those caught up in their own sin; even when they are bad people. That’s another answer to the “BIG Q”
-The “bad things” are deterrents for sin.
-In our next section we see a turning of the tables.
-All the people that were on Haman’s side and plotting against the Jews suddenly have a change of heart.
-Somehow, after seeing Haman stuck on a sharp pole, they decide they don’t want to kill, slaughter and annihilate the Jews.
-See bad things, which are often the result of sin, serve as a warning to people who are sinning.
-I remember in 3rd grade that there were some 6th graders using drugs on the playground at school. Two girls.
-They had to sit outside the principal’s office wearing signs around their necks that said “I use drugs” and everybody who passed by saw the crying and being shamed. (U can argue if that’s good)
-School district would be sued for that now.
-But I knew right then I didn’t ever want to use drugs.
-Hebrews 12:10 “But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness.”
-Part of why God allows trouble in our lives is to keep us away from sin. God loves us and disciplines us.
-What would happen to this world if people never had consequences for their behavior? Chaos and destruction.
-Sometimes of the toughest things in life serve as a warnings to us
-If you were to think back carefully, I bet you can recall key moments in your life, when you changed your mind/ways because of the trouble you saw happening in someone else’s life.
-Two last thoughts on this BIG Question:
-God is working out part of his master plan.
-(Esther 8:17) Result of Haman’s death many people became Jews
-There are things that God is doing that we’ll never understand
-We can’t possibly know how our little lives fit the big picture.
-In Rom 8 it says…All thing work together for the good of those…
-No one looks at Haman’s life and asks, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
-When you review his life; it seems as though Haman was a really crummy human being.
-Most of us probably think he got what he deserved.
-But what about us? What about the people we know?
-What if the people who have bad things happening are Xians?
-What if there really was no sinful stuff going on?
-There is no one to be zapped. No lessons to learn.
-What do we say when something awful and needless and tragic happens for seemingly no reason? What do we say?
-Sometimes bad things just happen.
-It all started in the Garden of Eden. Hurricanes, floods, earthquak
-Adam and Eve brought sin into paradise and the world changed.
-People don’t like to hear that. We live in a fallen world.
-In a fallen world bad things happen.
-And it stinks. And we suffer. And we never get an answer.
-We die wondering why? We carry it around our whole lives.
-But we don’t have to carry it alone.
-John 16:33 “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”
