August 10, 2003 Esther 3
“Do you care?”
INTRODUCTION
So far in the book of Esther, we have been introduced to four of the five main characters. In chapter 1, we met King Xerxes and his wife Queen Vashti. We discovered that the king loved to be in control and when he found that he could not control his own wife, he lost control of his temper and deposed her from the throne and banished her from his presence. At the advice of his counselors, King Xerxes held the first “Miss Persia” pageant to find a new bride. Chapter 2 is the record of how that pageant progressed and how Esther, a beautiful young Jewish girl who had been raised by her cousin Mordecai came to the attention of the king. Though it cost her a denial of who she was and what she believed in, Esther became queen.
Our first four characters – a former queen (Vashti), a controlling king (Xerxes), a behind-the-scenes cousin (Mordecai) and a compromising young Jewish girl (Esther). This morning, we will meet the 5th and final main character – Haman. His name will not be hard to remember, because all of his recorded actions are motivated by an emotion that sounds very much like his name – hate. Haman is the kind of character that you love to hate. Haman was ruled by that emotion. As we progress through Esther, we will find that it was Haman’s hate that eventually destroyed him.
Hate will always destroy the person that it controls. That person will get to the point that all that he/she cares about is destroying the object of his hatred. They don’t care about who else gets hurt in the process. They don’t care what they have to do or how they have to do it in order to achieve their goal. They end up caring about nothing but themselves. Do you know anybody like that? Are any of you headed in that direction? Let’s see how it came about in the life of Haman and what his hate prompted him to do.
THE STORY
The animosity (vs. 1-6) – bad feelings
The chapter begins with the words, “After these events.” The events that it is referring to happened in 2:21-23. We talked about them last week, but let me refresh your memory. Two of Xerxes’ officials were unhappy with him and were working on plans to assassinate him. Mordecai, who was Esther’s cousin, found out about the plot and told what he knew to Queen Esther. Then, she passed it along to the king making sure that the king knew that it was Mordecai who was responsible for discovering this information. The king investigated it, found it to be true, and executed the disgruntled officials. Justice was done. The bad guys were punished, and we expect that Mordecai will be rewarded since he had saved the king’s life. But like any good story, events often do not happen as we expect them to. Look at the rest of vs. 1. [read it]
Mordecai’s name should be where Haman’s is. Mordecai was the one who deserved to be elevated for his act of bravery and loyalty to the king. What had Haman done for the king? It’s not even significant enough to have been recorded. We might be able to understand his promotion if he was one of the king’s 7 advisers who had served him so faithfully, but he was not. Their names are listed in 1:14, and you won’t find “Haman” in that list. For Haman to be promoted over Mordecai or these 7 other guys makes no sense.
Last week, I told you that life is painful. Life is “also unfair”. Sin goes unchecked and unpunished. Goodness and kindness and loyalty go unrewarded. “… Why? Because of evil. When righteousness rules, justice reigns; but when evil lurks in a heart, injustice follows.” - Esther, by Chuck Swindoll, p. 62-73 Mordecai lived under the rule of an evil king. He couldn’t expect that king to behave according to godly standards.
Probably everyone here has endured some unfairness. Someone else got the promotion that should have rightly been yours. You have been faithful to your spouse for the entire length of your marriage, but you discover that your spouse has been cheating on you. You keep the secrets that your friend shares with you, but they do not exercise the same level of self-control and blab your secrets to anyone who is willing to listen. Injustice hurts. It is tempting to retaliate against that person who has hurt you. A word of advice - wait until the end of the story to see if justice is going to be done rather than basing your reactions on the first few chapters of your life. Remember that God said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, [says] the Lord.” (Rom. 12:19 KJV) It is also tempting to conclude that it isn’t worth it to do good if good isn’t going to be rewarded and decide that from now on, the only person that you’re going to look out for is #1. (Gal 6:9) Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Mordecai had been treated unfairly. That wasn’t the worst of it. Look at the first part of vs. 2. [read it] As bad as it was to be overlooked in the promotion process, the king ordered that all the other officials, including Mordecai bow down to Haman to honor him whenever he passed by! Mordecai was to humiliate himself before the man who had already humiliated him. It was more than Mordecai could bear. Look at the last part of vs. 2. [read it] He couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Though Haman didn’t notice Mordecai’s resistance to the king’s command at first, the other officials noticed. They couldn’t believe that Mordecai would be so brazen to publicly refuse the king’s order. Day after day, they counseled Mordecai to change his behavior and bow in the presence of Haman. And day after day, Mordecai remained standing up straight. The Bible doesn’t tell us the real reason Mordecai disobeyed the king’s order. The reason that Mordecai gave was that he was a Jew, with the assumption being that something about his faith prevented him from bowing to Haman. This was not true. Other great Jewish leaders – like Abraham (Gen. 23:7) and David (1 Sam. 24:8) had bowed in the presence of other men. Besides that, if the king ordered people to bow in the presence of Haman who was second in command, surely they also had to bow in the presence of the king. There is no record that Mordecai had ever refused that obligation. It seems that Mordecai was using his faith as an excuse for disobedience even though his faith had never been a very big part of his life. He brought up his faith when it was convenient or beneficial for him. It’s kind of like when I go knocking on doors in Bridgeport, and someone tries to get rid of me by telling me that they’re Catholic, or Methodist or Presbyterian even though they haven’t been to church in several years. I think that Mordecai’s reasoning had little to do with religion and a lot to do with plain old jealousy. From his perspective, Haman did not deserve his new position, so he wasn’t about to honor him in it. Mordecai had some animosity toward Haman. Rather than admitting to all that, it was much easier to just say that his actions were because he was a Jew.
Up to this point in his life, Mordecai had kept it a secret that he was a Jew. At least, that’s what we assume since he had counseled Esther to keep her Jewish identity a secret (2:10). Mordecai must have felt that it was now safe to reveal his identity since he had friends in high places. If he got into any trouble, Esther would be sure to get him out of it.
Mordecai did get into trouble and a lot of it. Look at vs. 4. [read it] Tattletales! They told on him to see what kind of a reaction they would get out of Haman. They got more than they bargained for. Look at vs. 5. [read it] Get a picture of Haman coming through the king’s gate. He’s a proud man, elevated by the king to a position of great power and prominence. He’s sitting in his own throne of sorts that’s on top of a platform being carried above the heads of the crowd by four strong men. The proud man that he is, he keeps his head held high and does not look down at the lowly people around him to see them bowing down to him, but he knows that they are bowing because the king has commanded it. At least, that’s what he normally did. But today, he lowers his gaze to look down at the crowd. His information says that someone dares to not bow down in his presence. And sure enough, he spots Mordecai. He’s enraged, not because someone has disobeyed the king but because someone is mocking him.
Look at how Haman reacted to the situation – vs. 6. [read it] Talk about overkill! The balanced thing for Haman to do would have been for him to report Mordecai to the king since it was the king’s law that Mordecai had disobeyed. But evil people are never balanced people. He went way overboard. He wanted to kill Mordecai, but more than that, he wanted to kill all of Mordecai’s people, the Jews. He wanted to commit genocide. Ideas like that don’t just come from no where. There was something else going on here besides a power struggle between two men.
Back in vs. 1, we read that Haman was an Agagite. Normally, that would be just another one of those weird sounding names that we read as best we can and skip over as quickly as possible. But this one carries some significance with it. Being an Agagite meant that Haman was a descendant of Agag, a king of the Amalekites back in the days of Saul, the first king of Israel (1 Sam. 15). The Amalekites and Israelites were desperate enemies. Their relationship had been bad ever since the Amalekites had been hostile toward the Israelites when the Israelites first came out of slavery in Egypt. By the time of Saul, God had had enough and told Saul to take his army and totally annihilate the Amalekites – men, women, children and all their animals. Saul obeyed – to a point. According to his testimony, he killed them all, but he had actually spared King Agag and some of the animals. The prophet Samuel finished off Agag, but Saul must have missed a few others too, for here we have Haman, a descendant of King Agag. This should be a reminder to us that when God gives us a job to do, we must obey and obey until the job is completed. Haman had not forgotten what the Jews had done to his people. The story of the massacre had been passed down from generation to generation so that someone someday would be able to get justice. Haman must have taken great pride in knowing that he was going to be the one to finally get revenge for his people.
Parents, be very careful about the attitudes that you pass along to your children. No one is born with prejudice inside of them. They have to be taught that the color of another’s skin or their background or some other part of who they are makes them worthy of our hatred or avoidance. We teach them that through our attitudes and our statements. God created all people just the way that He wanted them. Teach your children that all people regardless of who they are and the choices that they have made have value and are to be treated with love and respect. Be careful.
Haman had not been taught well. He had been taught to hate. The Jews had tried to annihilate his people and failed. This was now his chance to annihilate them. He was determined that he was not going to fail. But he was going to need help.
The annihilation (vs. 7-11) – bad advice
Look at vs. 8-9. [read them] Haman knew that he would not be able to carry out his plan alone or without the blessings of the king. But he also knew that he could not go to the king and ask him to get rid of an entire nationality of people simply because of some personal vendetta that went back hundreds of years. So he decided to give the king some bad advice which he hoped would turn the king against the Jews and make the king favorable to his plans.
Did you notice the three things that Haman said about the Jews in order to get the king to think in the same prejudicial terms as Haman was thinking? He described the Jews with three “d’s”. Pay attention to these three d’s because prejudice almost always has elements of all three. He called them:
different – They think differently than we do. They have different holidays, different gods, different customs, different values. They eat different foods than we do, and they dress different too. They’re not like us. One of the practices of the Babylonian Empire was to capture many of the people from lands that they invaded and disperse them among other parts of the empire. In this way, they hoped that the people would assimilate into the rest of the Babylonian culture, lose their distinctiveness and lose their desire to rebel against their invaders. The Jews had been residents of this new land for over 100 years, and still they maintained their distinctiveness. They were different – and there’s something about the quality of differentness that makes people afraid of one another.
disobedient – This was not true. Not all the Jews were disobedient to the king’s commands. But truth rarely matters when people want to be prejudiced. Haman was basing his assertion on the actions of one man – Mordecai. But that’s how prejudice works. You have one experience or know one person or a small group of people from a heritage that is different from your own, and you judge all the people in that entire group by that much smaller group. It’s easy to turn one group of people against another group. All you have to do is to point out that the crime statistics are much higher in a particular part of town where a particular type of people live. And then when people of that type start moving into your neighborhood, just watch the fear level escalate. Regardless of whether or not it was true, Haman knew that it would catch the king’s attention.
destructive – Because of these two things – the fact that the Jews were different and disobedient – Haman forecast that the Jews were going to create real problems for the king and the kingdom in the days ahead. They were a homeland security threat. If we allow them to stay, they’re going to become a threat to our way of life. They’re going to steal our jobs and join up with our enemies against us. It was not in the king’s best interest to keep them around.
With great skill, Haman had set the king up for his proposal. He presented the problem, and he followed it up immediately with the perfect solution. “King Xerxes, let’s just get rid of them. And to show you how loyal I am to you, I’ll even pay the salary and expenses of the soldiers who will carry out this plan.” Haman offered to pay 10,000 talents of silver out of his own bank account. A talent was a measurement of weight much like pounds and tons are today. 10,000 talents equaled 375 tons of silver! That should have tipped off King Xerxes that more was going on here than Haman was telling him. But it didn’t.
The king went along with the plan. Look at vs. 10-11. [read them] If this was the first time that Haman and the king had ever discussed the Jewish problem, and the indications are that it was, then it shows the callousness and barbarism of the king. It appears that he put no thought into his decision and required no evidence supporting Haman’s accusations concerning them. He didn’t seek the counsel of those advisers that had been so important in chapters 1 & 2. The king made his decision based on the advice of a prejudiced, self-seeking counselor and based on what he thought was in his own best interest regardless of how it affected other people.
Once he had made his decision, the king handed Haman his signet ring. This ring was basically the equivalent of a rubber stamp with the king’s signature on it. With that, Haman had access to the wealth of the empire to finance his plans, could make whatever law he wanted, stamp it with the king’s signature, and it would be so. With the king’s help, Haman now had everything he needed to carry out his plan to get rid of his enemy.
There was one major problem. Haman and Xerxes’ plan, if carried out was going to have consequences that neither one of them had thought through or even could have imagined. It was going to have consequences in the kingdom. Jews were spread all throughout the kingdom. They were merchants, judges, farmers, and businessmen. The loss of all these people – some of them in important and influential places was going to have a great impact on the stability of the kingdom. It was going to have consequences in Xerxes’ own home. Esther was a Jew. In authorizing this law, Xerxes was unknowingly authorizing the murder of his own wife. Most importantly, this extermination was going to have consequences for eternity. It wasn’t just the Jews in the capitol city of Susa who were being threatened. It was the Jews in all the provinces. That included those Jews who had obediently returned to the land of Canaan because Canaan was still a province of the Persian Empire. Have you ever been in a situation where you were being unjustly threatened or persecuted because of the evil actions of someone else? All Jews were being threatened with extinction because of the prideful actions of Mordecai and because of the hateful attitude of Haman. This was exactly what Satan wanted to happen because if there were no Jews, then there would be no Messiah and no possibility of salvation. Do you see how the actions of one selfish person can go much farther than they ever intended and impact more people than they ever imagined? There are always unknown and greater than anticipated consequences to evil. The robbery that results in the store clerk getting shot and dying; the bored teenagers that get involved sexually – maybe even resulting in pregnancy; the husband who begins sharing problems that are going on at home with a female co-worker. “We never meant to fall in love with each other. “We didn’t mean for that to happen!” Regardless of how far you intended to go, sin will always take you further.
With Xerxes’ blessing, Haman had enacted a law that would cause the annihilation of the entire Jewish people.
The announcement (vs. 12-15) – bad times
A law has no impact until you publicize it. And this law had a dramatic impact as soon as it was announced. On the 13th day of the first month of the Persian year, Haman wrote the law and had it immediately publicized throughout the empire. Look at the wording that Haman used in his crafting of this announcement – vs. 13. [read it] Do you hear the hatred that Haman’s words portray? “destroy, kill, annihilate” Chapter 4 verse 3 gives the reaction of the people when they read those words. [read it] Haman wanted them to suffer emotional anguish, and then he wanted them to suffer death. This annihilation of the Jewish people was to happen all on one day – the 13th day of the 12th month. Haman didn’t just pick this day out of the thin air. In vs. 7, it says that Haman cast lots or threw dice in the 1st month to find the perfect day for his plan to be carried out. The dice said that his lucky day – the day that would be blessed by the gods - was not until the 12th month. That was almost a whole year away! At first, Haman was disappointed. He wanted it to happen as quickly as possible. But the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. That would be 11 months that the Jews would have to squirm, mourn and be terrified as they anticipated the day of their death, and it would be a year for Haman to anticipate his victory.
There’s one more thing that I want you to see before we close out our look at this chapter of Esther’s story. This announcement that created such anguish in the empire created a totally different reaction in the king’s chambers. Look at vs. 15. [read it] Apathy, indifference, callousness. While his kingdom was in shock, the king was perfectly relaxed, drinking his favorite cocktail with the pre-cursor to Hitler sitting across the table from him.
How does a person get that way – where they can ignore pain and suffering all around them and continue about their normal routine as if the world is at it should be? The same way that it happened in Xerxes’ life. You get so wrapped up in pleasure and making sure that your own little world is as comfortable as it could be that you forget about the people all around you who are hurting and who need something that only you can offer. It happened in Xerxes’ life. It can happen in yours.
That brings us to the end of chapter 3. Haman’s plan for revenge is coming together. The empire is in chaos. And Xerxes is sitting in his easy chair, unaware of the pain and indifferent toward it. It looks like a hopeless situation. It looks like God is out of control. It looks like evil is going to win. But that’s just because no one sees how God is working behind the scenes to accomplish His plan. We’ll learn more of that plan next week. For now, I want to ask you some questions based on what we have looked at today.
THE LESSONS
1. Do you care about truth?
Haman didn’t. If he faced the truth, then he would have to give up his prejudice. Prejudice is always based on lies – lies that say that one person is more valuable than another because of race, culture, background or whatever other reason. The truth is that every person is equally valuable before God and needs to be equally valued by us. The truth is that every person is loved by God and needs to be loved by us. And loving someone is more than just not hating them. It is caring about them; it is refusing to listen to the lie that everything is okay in the lives of the people around you so that you can excuse your indifference to their needs. Do you care about the truth, or would you rather ignore the truth and hold onto your prejudice and indifference?
2. Do you care that your actions are affecting others?
The actions and attitudes of Haman’s parents had taught him to hate Jews. Parents, the prejudices you express today determine how your children will treat others and the attitude that they will have toward them tomorrow. Mordecai’s actions and Haman’s actions had a far greater impact than they ever intended. So do yours. You can’t sin or live a rebellious lifestyle and expect that the only person that it will affect is you! Your actions are like ripples in a pond. They start small, but they spread out in ever-widening circles touching more and more lives. Some of you are paying the consequences now for decisions that your parents and grandparents made many years ago. Be careful. There is no such thing as a small decision and definitely no such thing as a small sin.
3. Do you care about anyone other than yourself?
4. Do you care about a confused world?
Xerxes didn’t care what was going on in the kingdom of Persia or even the city of Susa that surrounded him even though they were confused and really needed him at that point. As long as he was comfortable and safe, that was all that he really cared about. But before we go judging Xerxes, can I suggest that vs. 15 of this chapter could just as easily read a little bit differently. Let’s see how you like this version. [read the verse inserting pairs of names from the congregation and city names (i.e. Bridgeport and Clarksburg according to what cities the people live in)] All around us, there are people who are confused – confused about the meaning of life, confused about how they can be in right relationship with God, confused about where real joy and satisfaction comes from. And these people, like the people of of Susa and the Persian Empire, have a death sentence hanging over their heads. Do you care about that? Prove it! What have you done lately to show that you care about people who are lost, confused and going to hell? Have you prayed for them? Have you invited them to church? Have you gone out of your way to show them that you are thinking about them? Unlike the Jews, we don’t know the day or the hour when their time will be up. We have to care now, or the opportunity will pass us by.
King Xerxes didn’t care maybe even didn’t know that his people were hurting. I tell you that King Jesus does know and does care that His people are hurting. He knows and cares about what is going on in your life. When it seems that everyone else is going on with business as usual while you’re dying, take comfort in the fact that Jesus does care. He cares so much that He died for you.
