Esther 3:1-15 The Feud June 5, 2016am

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1 We kind of sit back and joke at the idea of a family feud today. We probably got our first taste of the idea in high school literature class when we studied the Capulet and Montague feud in Shakespeare s Romeo and Juliet. Or maybe, you have a more refined taste for art and remember the dreaded Wakefield and Carter feud that first aired in 1960 on The Andy Griffith Show. As is the case with art, it is usually deeply-seated in history or facts. There have been a number of disastrous feuds that involved individuals, families, towns, or in the most infamous of cases whole states. The life of Alexander Hamilton has begun to gain more popularity with Lin- Manuel Miranda s play Hamilton. This founding father of our nation had a well-known feud with New York Senator, Aaron Burr. After losing his governor campaign to one of Hamilton s friends (that Hamilton viciously campaigned for), (Slide 1) Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel where Hamilton was shot in the stomach and died the next day. Perhaps the most infamous of American feuds (especially considering its proximity to us) is the feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families.(slide 2) It was a vendetta that spanned nearly three decades and included regular kidnappings and beatings. It quickly escalated to murder fifteen murders in total. Among the dead were two small children. At its peak, the feud resigned both Kentucky and West Virginia governors to deploy their state s militia, thinking that these families would usher in another war between states. What sparked the whole feud? Aside from Civil War tensions between the two families, the bloodshed began after a debate over the ownership of a pig. 1 of 13

2 The account of Esther that we have in the Old Testament is actually one that has deep roots in a family feud, much bloodier and much more important than a pig or even the Civil War. In order to fully understand what will be unveiled in Esther chapter three, we first have to turn to hear the story of the Israelites vs the Amalekites found in Exodus 17. Soon after their emancipation from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea and God providing water from a rock for them, the Israelites found themselves embroiled in their first battle. Their mission was to take back the land that had been given to their father Abraham, and as you can imagine, the people who inhabited or gained from the land they were trying to take back did not want anything to change. The first nation to try and stop the Israelites were the Amalekites who ambushed them on their way to the Promised Land. This is the battle that Moses chose Joshua to gather an army and fight while he went and stood on top of a overhanging mountain with his rod in his hand. Very soon into the conflict, Moses found that when he raised his staff (the symbol of God s affirmation of leadership), the Israelites pushed back the Amalekites, but when he lowered the staff, the Amalekites began to prevail. Because the battle was not quickly won, Moses s arms grew tired. Two men, Aaron and Hur, were dispatched to help Moses by sitting him on a rock and holding up his arms until the Israelites won the battle. Because of their treason against the Almighty and their hatred for the Jews in becoming their first militant enemy, Exodus 17 records: (Exodus 17:14-16) 2 of 13

3 14 Then the Lord said to Moses, Write this for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. 15 And Moses built an altar and called its name, The- Lord- Is- My- Banner; (Jehovah Nissi) 16 for he said, Because the Lord has sworn:the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. Fast-forward about five centuries. The Jews have their land. They have been governed by Levitical law with (depending on how you count them) fifteen judges who would gain special rule over the tribes and lead them for a short period before dying. The people were restless, and they go to Samuel (the current judge and prophet) and demand that he choose them a king. Despising their covenant with God that they would be a peculiar people they tell him that they want to be like all of the other nations around them. Samuel warns them that a king will institute a military draft for their sons, he will make their daughters his slaves, and he will tax them uncontrollably. But still, they long to be considered normal among the nations. Saul, son of Kish, is chosen to be king. He is handsome and tall. Scripture records that he was head and shoulders above the crowd. Saul looked kingly, but he was a horrible king. In fact, just a few chapters after his coronation as king in 1 Samuel 10, chapter 15 holds the story of his first military campaign. God fulfills His promise to make war on the Amalekites for their battle against Moses so many years ago and all of 3 of 13

4 their terror they had continually wreaked on the neighboring nations. He tells Saul to utterly destroy them. Kill everything even the animals. Saul wins the battle, but instead of destroying everything, he keeps the animals alive and allows the men to plunder the goods of the Amalekites. What is worse is that he leaves Agag, the Amalekite king, alive. Upon coming close to the Saul s tent to praise him for his victory, Samuel hears the bleating of the Amalekites sheep and realizes that Saul has disobeyed God. Upon entering the tent, Samuel tells Saul that God has stripped the kingship from his hands for his disobedience and his work as a mercenary. Saul basically saw war as a means to get rich, and that was not the purpose for God s commanding him to fight Agag. Samuel has Agag brought before him, and he kills him with his own sword. However, Scripture seems to indicate that in keeping Agag alive, Saul also saved his family alive. Even with Agag dead, his descendants live on because Saul disobeyed God. At this point, you might be thinking, Okay Corey great Intro into Israeli History 101 class, but what does this have to do with Esther? Read with me Esther 3:1. 1 After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him and set his seat above all the princes who were with him. Did you catch that? Did you hear the lineage of Haman? He is introduced as Haman the Agagite. This Haman is one who comes from the lineage of the Amalekites. He is not just of that nation, though; he is an Agagite. He is from the house of Agag himself. 4 of 13

5 We are not told why, but for one reason or another, Haman has worked his way up the ranks of the Persian Empire until he has reached as high as he can go. He is seated above all the princes. He is the Vice President, the second in command of Persia. Only Xerxes, himself, is before him and with that honor comes the king s implicit trust. Actually Haman is given more power than Esther. She must be called by the king in order to enter the court, but Haman is allowed to come and go as he pleases, as we will see in a later sermon. With this honor comes prestige among the palace workers and the citizens of Persia. We are talking about a society that held their political leaders as gods in their eyes. As decreed by the king, all of his royal court would be paid the respect of being bowed to. 2 And all the king's servants who were within the king's gate bowed and paid homage to Haman, for so the king had commanded concerning him. But Mordecai would not bow or pay homage. 3 Then the king's servants who were within the king's gate said to Mordecai, Why do you transgress the king's command? 4 Now it happened, when they spoke to him daily and he would not listen to them, that they told it to Haman, to see whether Mordecai's words would stand; for Mordecai had told them that he was a Jew. Everyone else is bowing. Everyone else is paying homage to Haman. Why not Mordecai? We are never actually given a reason in this passage of Scripture. We know that when the king s servants who were within the king s gate asked him daily about his reasoning for not bowing that he gave up some answer which includes his being a Jew. 5 of 13

6 The apocryphal verses of Esther (verses that were added much later by Jewish scribes) claim that Mordecai would not bow to any man because he only bowed to God. That may very well be the case, and I have no reason to contest that Jewish tradition. However, I believe Haman s being an Agagite has more to do with it than Mordecai s worshiping a human being. By the way, I am not sure you caught it or not a while ago. Did you hear the lineage of King Saul a few minutes ago? Do you remember whose son he was? Saul, the son of Kish. That name should sound at least vaguely familiar. We hear it when we are introduced to Mordecai in Esther 2:5. 5 In Shushan the citadel there was a certain Jew whose name was Mordecai the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite. This is a showdown that has been generations in the making. It is a family feud that has been passed down from one son to another for centuries. Haman the son of Agag an Amalekite vs. Mordecai the son of Kish a Jew. It is about to come to a head. The palace guards continuously go to Mordecai to try and convince him to bow, but he will not. Eventually they take the matter before Haman to see whether Mordecai s words would stand. The reason for this wording is that Xerxes, evil as he was, was not interested in obliterating the cultures of the people that he conquered. He did not necessarily even want to untie them under one flag and definitely not one religion. 6 of 13

7 The Persian kings were more interested in ruling over a menagerie than all one country. They allowed most of their conquered foes to retain their identity so long as they honored Persia and its rulers as their leader. When Scripture details that the palace guards came to Haman to see if Mordecai s words would stand, it is saying that they were careful to not infringe upon the rights of one of those subjugated cultures. Were it any other culture, allowances might have been made. Were it for any other reason, Mordecai might have been dealt with as an individual, but that is definitely not the case. 5 When Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow or pay him homage, Haman was filled with wrath. 6 But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had told him of the people of Mordecai. Instead, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus the people of Mordecai. Just over four years have passed in Ahasuerus and Esther s marriage (from the beginning of the book, it has been nine years), when Haman takes counsel from the Persian gods about when to annihilate the Jews. 7 In the first month, which is the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, they cast Pur (that is, the lot), before Haman to determine the day and the month, until it fell on the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar. Basically, Haman employs the Persian priests to throw dice (Pur) in a systematic way until he can come up with a day and month that would 7 of 13

8 best fit his plans to exterminate the Jews. We will find out that specific date in verse 13, but let s not skip ahead quite yet. 8 Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from all other people's, and they do not keep the king's laws. Therefore it is not fitting for the king to let them remain. You can tell just by how Haman speaks with Ahasuerus that he is a high ranking official. He has gone past the advice giving stage and into the forming initiatives and planning procedure stage. Notice what the Jews are being accused of. Their laws are different from all other people s. Basically, even in a kingdom that allows for different cultures, each culture must respect Persia, and the law of the Jews fundamentally disagrees with Persian law. Haman is not being entirely truthful with the king, however. While the Jews were directly opposed to this heathen government, they have proven to be some of the most loyal subjects of Persia. Daniel served the Persian government faithfully for years. Esther shares the king s marriage bed. Still, another has just protected the king in a plot to assassinate him. It seems as though, Haman has wrongfully connected the Jews to all that has gone wrong in his kingdom. You can hear Haman hint that the Jews were the ones behind the most recent assassination plot. Therefore, they must not be allowed to remain. 8 of 13

9 Not wanting Ahasuerus to grow a conscious over a genocide of a certain group of his subjects, Haman tries to sweeten the deal rather than just ask him to kill them all. 9 If it pleases the king, let a decree be written that they be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who do the work, to bring it into the king's treasuries. Haman promises the king 400 tons of silver to foot the bill for this purge of the Jews, but Ahasuerus does not even need to be bribed. He is so pliable in Haman s hand that he immediately complies trusting Haman with His signet ring even before he saw the paperwork for the law written up. 10 So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. 11 And the king said to Haman, The money and the people are given to you, to do with them as seems good to you. Without even understanding all that Haman has said or even asking him what group of people Haman has been talking about, the king signs off on a bill that will essentially usher in open season on every Jew in the kingdom, allowing anyone and everyone to murder a person and take their possessions just because of their nationality. This is the purge to end all purges. 12 Then the king's scribes were called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and a decree was written according to all that Haman 9 of 13

10 commanded to the king's satraps, to the governors who were over each province, to the officials of all people, to every province according to its script, and to every people in their language. In the name of King Ahasuerus it was written, and sealed with the king's signet ring. 13 And the letters were sent by couriers into all the king's provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their possessions. Remember I told you you to pay attention to the date that is set for this holocaust to take place on? The thirteenth day of Adar is the day before the Passover for the Jews. Passover is the day they celebrated God s deliverance from Egypt and His passing over their children on the last plague. Passover was the celebration Jesus was observing with His disciples in the upper room when He instituted the Lord s Supper the night He was taken, tried and ultimately crucified. The Jews in Persia were tasked with Passover preparation all the while knowing in the back of their minds that there has been a one-day open-season law taken out against them. 14 A copy of the document was to be issued as law in every province, being published for all people, that they should be ready for that day. 15 The couriers went out, hastened by the king's command; and the decree was proclaimed in Shushan the citadel. 10 of 13

11 Listen to the feeling of hopelessness in the next sentence. So the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was perplexed. Everyone in Shushan realizes that if Ahasuerus and Haman can do this to one nationality they can do it to any other nationality that they like. The story is a sad one of the deep-seated troubles behind a tyrannical ruler. He implicitly trusts the wicked to give him counsel. Haman has allowed bitterness to root so deeply in his heart that he does not bat an eyelash at his request to murder thousands of innocent lives. There are a ton of How not to run your life principles that we can glean from this. If Esther 3 teaches us anything, it is two principles. What you do directly affects your children. Parents get blamed for everything these days, and I am not trying to use Freudian psychology to dismiss Haman s hate. However, Haman and his devilish plan is a direct result of centuries of bitterness being passed down from one generation to the next. Racism does not even come close to describing what bitterness has twisted this man into. It is on you, mom, dad, to raise your children for Christ. They see past the hypocrisies that we have so carefully crafted in front of others. We most often take our mask of spirituality off when we get home from church. The second and most important principle we learn from Esther 3 though is that you cannot stop God s redemption plan. There is a much deeper battle that is going on here than just a family feud between Jews and Amalekites. It was never just a battle over land (Exodus 17). It is not even a battle of vengeance (1 Samuel 15). It is a 11 of 13

12 battle forged before even the first human beings were created. Jehovah vs. Lucifer. God created the world and all that is in it for His glory and for His pleasure, and Lucifer (Satan) hating God and all that reminds him of God is Hell-bent on destroying His creation. Since God had created man in His own image, Satan s crosshairs zero in on those first humans Adam and Eve. He succeeds in calling into question in their minds both the power and the love of God. They eat forbidden fruit. They usher sin into paradise, but in Genesis 3:15, God makes a promise that he would redeem Adam s race. In order to satisfy God s holiness through justice, God did not just wave a wand and give every sinner a free pass to Heaven. A righteous Judge will not deal so lightly with rape, murder, hatred, etc. No, the sin of all mankind must be paid for. An innocent Man, Who committed no sin, must die for all of those whose sin was killing them everyday. There was one problem by being born into this world through Adam every human being was guilty of sin. There was no perfect/innocent man to be found. So God, Who cannot sin, told Abraham that it would be through his family the Jews that He would send this Messiah. Satan made war with the Jews, hoping to extinguish them from off the face of the earth. When the Jews were in captivity in Egypt, the Pharaoh commanded that all Jewish boys be killed (but Moses survived). As time progressed, God revealed that He would send the Messiah through the tribe of Judah, Abraham s great-grandson. Queen Athaliah, Jezebel s daughter, married into the tribe of Judah, and after her husband died, she longed to keep the throne for herself; so she had all of her 12 of 13

13 children and grandchildren killed. Except Joash survived, and he returned to the throne, broke down the statues of Baal, and repaired the Temple. That long-awaited, long-expected Messiah would one day come through Mary, a young virgin girl, but Herod sent out a decree that every boy under the age of two should be killed. Yet, Jesus survived to die. He lived that He might be sacrificed. Satan tried to stop it from happening, but you cannot stop God s redemption plan. The feud still rages though the war has already been won. It is no longer a feud between Satan and the Almighty (as if Satan were ever even a match for God). The feud reigns in every heart that will not confess Christ. It rears its head every time we choose our will over His will our desire over His desire. That feud, as is the case with Haman s against Mordecai, will not end well for you. We stand no contest against the Creator of the Universe. All that is left for us then is surrender, waving the white flag of our lives, for it is only in surrender that we win. Every spiritual battle is won through surrender. Philippians 2 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him [Jesus] and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 13 of 13