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Esther 9:1-19

Well, we’re getting ever closer to the conclusion of our study of the book of Esther. So, let me invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to Esther 9. We’ll be camping out (here) in Esther 9 this week and next week, and then the last Sunday of the month will be our final sermon in this series.

1 Now in the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king’s command and edict were about to be carried out, on the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain the mastery over them, the reverse occurred: the Jews gained mastery over those who hated them. 2 The Jews gathered in their cities throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus to lay hands on those who sought their harm. And no one could stand against them, for the fear of them had fallen on all peoples. 3 All the officials of the provinces and the satraps and the governors and the royal agents also helped the Jews, for the fear of Mordecai had fallen on them. 4 For Mordecai was great in the king’s house, and his fame spread throughout all the provinces, for the man Mordecai grew more and more powerful. 5 The Jews struck all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and did as they pleased to those who hated them. 6 In Susa the citadel itself the Jews killed and destroyed 500 men, 7 and also killed Parshandatha and Dalphon and Aspatha 8 and Poratha and Adalia and Aridatha 9 and Parmashta and Arisai and Aridai and Vaizatha, 10 the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews, but they laid no hand on the plunder.

11 That very day the number of those killed in Susa the citadel was reported to the king. 12 And the king said to Queen Esther, “In Susa the citadel the Jews have killed and destroyed 500 men and also the ten sons of Haman. What then have they done in the rest of the king’s provinces! Now what is your wish? It shall be granted you. And what further is your request? It shall be fulfilled.” 13 And Esther said, “If it please the king, let the Jews who are in Susa be allowed tomorrow also to do according to this day’s edict. And let the ten sons of Haman be hanged on the gallows.” 14 So the king commanded this to be done. A decree was issued in Susa, and the ten sons of Haman were hanged. 15 The Jews who were in Susa gathered also on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and they killed 300 men in Susa, but they laid no hands on the plunder.

16 Now the rest of the Jews who were in the king’s provinces also gathered to defend their lives, and got relief from their enemies and killed 75,000 of those who hated them, but they laid no hands on the plunder. 17 This was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and on the fourteenth day they rested and made that a day of feasting and gladness. 18 But the Jews who were in Susa gathered on the thirteenth day and on the fourteenth, and rested on the fifteenth day, making that a day of feasting and gladness. 19 Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in the rural towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting, as a holiday, and as a day on which they send gifts of food to one another.

“We pray, gracious Father, that as we turn to some of these truths that stand unchanged, echoing down through the halls of time, events that took place so long ago and so far away, that they might instruct us and change us. Help us now, we pray, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to rightly consider these verses before us. For we pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

When you read the concluding words of chapter 8 and the opening words of chapter 9, if you’re not careful, you’ll assume that Mordecai leaves the palace in his new “royal robes of blue and white, with his great golden crown, and a robe of fine linen and purple,” to the cheers and rejoicing of the crowd only to prepare for a fight. Not so. Between chapters 8/9 there was a span of approximately 9 months. In fact, those Jewish wives that were giving birth around the time of Esther 9:1, well, let’s just say that the celebration of Esther 8:17 carried over into the bedroom.

You say, “How do we know that?” Well, Esther 8:9 tells us that the new counter-edict that Mordecai and Esther had drawn up was on “the third month, which is the month of Sivan, on the twenty-third day,” and Esther 9:1 tells us that it was “Now in the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, on the thirteenth day.” So, 9 months had passed. You say, “Ok, but what difference does that make?” I’m glad you asked, because that brings us to something we talked a little bit about last week, and it’s our first point of consideration this morning. The timing all points to a great reversal.

A Great Reversal

A great reversal. In fact, you’ll notice that the verb “reverse” is actually used near the end of verse 1. When they were expecting to master the Jews, the Jews mastered them, and so the author of the book of Esther says, “The reverse occurred: the Jews gained mastery over those who hated them.”

The author of the book of Esther is very specific about the occasion in which this took place. Back in chapter 3, that the author records for us that Haman and his friends – those who were so opposed to the Jews – took a long time determining what would be the best day to kill them. They didn’t just say, “Let’s arbitrarily choose a day.” No, no, it had to be the perfect day.

We’re told in chapter 3:7 that at the beginning of “the first month” in the year, “in the twelfth year” of the king, which was five years or so after the events in chapter 2, they began to cast lots every day. They conducted a kind of lottery every day, and they did it “day after day” and month after month, and that went on for twelve months as they tried to discover what they felt was the lucky day. They wanted to be sure that they chose the absolute correct day, and they investigated it, and eventually they decided on this day: the 13th day of Adar. Finally, that was the right day . . . at least it was in their eyes. But God took what they had planned and reversed it for His glory.

Let me show you another reversal. Remember back to Esther 5:9, we have the record of Haman emerging from the banquet with the king and Esther; and on that day, he went out “joyful and glad of heart.” And despite the fact that he saw Mordecai at the gate, he managed not to get derailed by that, because he was on top of the world looking down on creation. And you remember he went home, and he brought his friends and his wife, Zeresh, and he spent the evening letting everybody know how fantastic he was and how terrific everything was.

And, you remember, he “recounted to them the splendor of his riches, the number of his sons” (Esther 5:11). It’s interesting, isn’t it, the number of his son? When I read that in chapter 5, I said to myself, “Well, why does it say the number of his sons? Why not just say ‘his sons’?” Then, you get to chapter 9, and I just read the list for you. (Not an easy list to read, by the way! Some of you were holding your breath as I was reading that.) But Haman’s sons are actually listed there in the text of sacred scripture in order to make the point: “Hey, Haman, all this gloating and pride about you and your accomplishments and even your family, look at your sons. We just hanged them on a pole.”

And if you’re having trouble accepting the fact that they would kill Haman’s kids, let me just remind you that it’s likely they drank from the same well of hatred and animosity that their father did – not to mention the fact that they might have become even more embittered when the inheritance that would have been theirs as a result of their dad being the Prime Minister was passed on to Mordecai’s family. That’s a great reversal – from exaltation to devastation.

Here’s another one. Remember, back at the very beginning of the story (chapter 1) when Xerxes’ first queen, Vashti, refused to come show herself before him and his drunk buddies? Because she did that she was deposed, remember? Same chapter, right after that, the king’s counselors and advisors got worried that Vashti’s refusal to obey the king might catch on and all the other wives of Persia might refuse to obey their husbands. You remember this silliness? And what did they do? The drafted an edict, a law of the Medes and the Persians, that said Vashti was never allowed to come into the presence of the king again. They sent that out with the hopes that all their wives would read it and “all women will give honor to their husbands” (Esther 1:20).

Now, look at Esther 9:12. Xerxes is speaking to Esther and he says, “Now what is your request? It shall also be granted you. And what is your further wish? It shall also be done.” There was only supposed to be one granting of requests and wishes, remember. But ever since Esther revealed Haman as the bad guy, back in chapter 7, Xerxes has been answering to his wife. Talk about a great reversal.

But there’s at least one more in these verses and that’s Mordecai. Mordecai goes from obscurity and apparent irrelevance to the most powerful man under the king in the entire nation. He starts off (simply) as “a Jew named Mordecai who sat at the king’s gate” (Esther 2:5, 19). It doesn’t sound like much, does it? Yet, we get to Esther 9:4 and we read, “[And] Mordecai was great in the king’s house, and his fame spread throughout all the provinces, for the man Mordecai grew more and more powerful.” What a great reversal.

What we’re learning and seeing in all of these great reversals throughout the entire book is this: God can reverse things. God can fix the impossible. God can make right that which is wrong. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I didn’t guarantee that He would (at least in this life), only that He can. I know there are many of you that are hurting because you feel as though God let you down. God didn’t reverse your spouse’s cancer diagnosis. God didn’t reverse your situation at work and you were fired. God didn’t fix your marriage. God didn’t overrule this or overturn that, and I don’t have answers for why He did or didn’t in each of those situations. But I know one thing for sure. If you’ve placed your faith and trust in Jesus and repented of your sins, then God has already done the greatest reversal in your life that you’ll ever experience.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

“[W]e all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:3-7).

At the very moment, when Satan hoped to gain the mastery over Jesus, the reverse occurred: Jesus gained mastery over the one who hated Him. A great and marvelous reversal. Next is…

A Great Restraint

A great restraint. Do me a favor. If you still have your Bibles open, look back over in Esther 8:11. If you don’t, just listen. Here’s what the counter-edict explicitly said, “[T]he king allowed the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, children and women included, and to plunder their goods.” Now, look at Esther 9:10, 15, and 16, “but they laid no hand on the plunder.” They had the freedom to take the spoils, but they didn’t. They defended themselves, but that didn’t go any farther.

The English words “avenge” and “vengeance” come to us from the French, and the French words are informed by the Latin word vendicare, which has the same root as “vindicate.” Now follow me here. “Vengeance” is passion out of control based on hatred. “Vindication” is what God claims to do when defending His people. Both words are from the same root vindicare. They carry contrasting messages, but the Jews displayed a great restraint not allowing their vindication to become vengeance.

Some of you (maybe most of you) will recognize the name Chuck Swindoll, former President of Dallas Theological Seminary and radio evangelist on Insight for Living. Back in 1997, he wrote a series of books called Great Lives from God’s Word, and one of the lives that he wrote about was none other than Esther: A Woman of Strength and Dignity. In that book, he devotes an entire chapter (18 pgs.) to the limitations of retaliation. Listen to what he writes:

The Jews were free to strike back without reservation, in retaliation. But it’s clear that they applied self-control. The Jews certainly defended themselves against their enemies, against those who attempted to wipe out their race, but the Jews resisted the temptation to go too far. They had been given permission to take material advantage of their enemies’ defeat, but they refused to do that. They held back. Think of it this way: Not only did the Jews gain mastery over their enemies [the great reversal], but they gained mastery over themselves.

Perhaps you’re here this morning and some things were said that hurt you. Maybe you’ve said some hurtful things to others. Or perhaps it wasn’t words at all, maybe it was deeds done and/or left undone. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t get some of those scenes to go away. They’re like paintings hanging in the gallery of your mind, permanently etched in the creases of your brain. And there are moments when the enemy of your soul (and mine) waits in the wings, ready to encourage you to proceed and not hold back.

With very persuasive suggestions he hopes to convince you – you’ve taken it long enough. You’ve graciously and unselfishly held back and gone the second, third, fourth and fifth mile. You’ve run out of miles and patience, so go ahead, “Get back. Pay back evil with a little evil.” Remember a great restraint. The example of the book of Esther says, “Although we’re allowed to take the plunder, we won’t take it.” Remember, Romans 12:17-21, “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Don’t carry out your own revenge. Lay down your arms. Take all the verbal bullets out of your weapon. Place your knife of revenge back into the drawer. Let God be your defender.

A great reversal… A great restraint… And finally…

A Great Rejoicing

We have to leave rejoicing for next week but let me just get you started on it. Essentially, what’s happened is that God has turned this curse into blessing. Somebody told me this week, “You know, the best psalm to summarize what’s going on with all these reversals is Psalm 30.” And I looked it up and I said, “You know, I think you’re right.” This is what Psalm 30:11 says: “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing Your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever!”

This is kind of like Mordecai’s psalm, isn’t it? “You’ve turned my mourning into dancing.” You’d see Mordecai and Esther, and they’re holding hands. They’re not gloating over the destruction of their enemies. They’re not hanging scalps up on the wall and saying, “Look what we did to those people.” No, they’re holding hands and saying, “You know, I used to sit at the gate of the king’s palace. I was dressed in sackcloth. I’m the prime minister! I’m in charge of this whole place! How in the world did that happen?” God flipped the script. Isn’t that amazing?

And Esther is saying, “Yeah, I used to be a young, orphaned Jewish girl. Now, I’m the queen of Persia. I stood up to evil and sought the preservation of my people, and with God’s help, they won. How in the world did all that happen?” God flipped the script. Isn’t that amazing?

Have you come to the One who can flip the script of your life – take you from spiritual death to spiritual life, remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, turn you from an old creation into a new creation? Have you given your life to Jesus? Have you acknowledged that you’re a sinner in need of a Savior? Have you confessed your sins to Him, and have you, by faith, received the gift of His marvelous and amazing grace and mercy and forgiveness and love? If not, would you do that today?