Sermon: Esther (Part Four)
Plot Structure
#1363
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 11-Feb-17; 76 minutes
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transcript:
Well, I sincerely hope that these sermons I have given on the book of Esther have not given you terrifying flashbacks of your high school or college literature classes. But I have intended, purposely, to evoke memories of studying literature in school. We rarely tend to approach the Bible from the standpoint of literature or art, but we think of the Bible as something that supersedes literature and art, that it is greater in either of those categories, and so we do not think of it in those terms. As a matter of fact, we tend to think of the Bible as literature is somehow demeaning to it, that it is not just literature, it is something more. And obviously it is, it is the Word of God. He is the craftsman there, He is the artist, but art tends to follow certain rules.
So my purpose in approaching Esther in this way is to help you, if you can, add the literature tool to your Bible study toolbox, as it were. Maybe it can provide insights that you would otherwise not notice because you are looking at it from one perspective and it might just help to look at it from another. And Esther, I feel, provides a perfect example of how to do that, how to look at a book in the Bible from literature standpoint and by doing so, pull out deeper truths, deeper meanings.
My question today has to do with story. How much do you know about story, about how it functions? How aware are you of the nuts and bolts of constructing a convincing tale, one that will capture people's attention? What pieces and parts go together into an engaging, let us say, a short story? How do you grab someone's attention quickly and get them to follow the way you are thinking? How does an author craft a best selling novel?
Now, we might not think that somebody like James Patterson is a great writer, but he has come up with a system in which he puts out book after book after book, and they are very engaging and they are always at the top of the best seller list because he follows a certain formula.
Or what steps does a playwright or a moviemaker, a screenwriter take to make a blockbuster movie? And if you have watched movies, you know that there are some real dogs out there, and on the other end, there are some really great well put together films.
What I am saying is that a good story does not just lay itself out on a page. I mean, even people like J. K. Rowling, who said that the entire Harry Potter story flashed into her mind while she was riding on a train or something like that, I do not think that is true. I think she had a pretty good idea of the story in its general form and what she wanted to do with it. But she had to work for years to put that story into her seven books. It was not something that just came right out of her head and drooled onto a page and suddenly it was all there. No, she had to really work at it.
And this is the case too, I should just add here, this is true for even true stories. Like the Sully story that just came out in a movie or some of the war stories like Hacksaw Ridge or whatever. You notice that they all begin with the caveat, it is somewhere in there that it is "based on a true story" or even loosely based on a true story because stories, in order to be engaging to the viewer or to the reader, have to be crafted and there have to be certain things that are put in there.
So directors and screenwriters and such, they will put this little thing in here that it did not quite happen quite that way, but maybe, kind of, sort of, so that it ticks some boxes, as it were, in what we expect a story to do. So you have somebody's magnum opus that they wrote about their own lives and it is just wonderful when you read it. But when it goes on to the silver screen, it is something entirely different. Or it seems so, because they had to leave so much out or they had to put in things or change the order so that when people leave the theater, they come out with a smile on their face and feel satisfied.
With fiction, a readable, memorable story has to be crafted and sometimes it is agonizing to do so. Sometimes you have to start and restart and restart and restart because it just does not seem right. And then once you get the major elements in there, there are maybe dozens of rewrites of various passages or even whole chapters, even whole acts of the work have to be rewritten because something does not quite work. That is why literature, some literature, is art because there is a craftsman, an artist doing hard work to tell a truly good story. It takes real talent and it takes a lot of effort.
So what makes up a story? I am going to give you the most basic element. It is almost universal and that is (I have mentioned this before in other sermons in different contexts), a good story almost always has three parts. This model is called the Three Act Structure. Some critics tend to confine this to writing for stage or for the silver screen, but it clearly has its place in other forms of writing.
The three acts are very simple. Men, you learned this in Spokesman's Club. It is called the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. That is how it works in our speeches. That is how I made this sermon. It is called the beginning, the middle, and the end. That is very simple, almost simplistic.
Screenwriters would say it is the setup, it is the confrontation, and then it is the resolution. (I am starting to define things a little bit better here.) That is how stories are constructed. You have something at the beginning to set things up. You have something in the middle to make the action more dramatic and move things along. And then you have a climax and resolution at the end. If you do not have those parts in there, people will not read your story, people will not watch your movie, they will feel cheated. "He left something out," and now you will get lots of rotten tomatoes because people just will not enjoy it.
Because, like I said, it is instinctive. We know stories are supposed to have those things and that is because we are surrounded by stories all the time. We are either reading them or watching them or hearing them and so we instinctively realize how stories work.
The first act, when we come upon a story, sets the stage, it establishes the main characters. It describes the when and the where of the story, it lays the groundwork for the conflict that is to come. And the whole point of the introduction, or this first act, is to present two key events that have happened. And if you go and watch movies, watch for these.
The first event that is supposed to happen is called "the inciting incident." That is the event that propels the protagonist, your main character, to action. Some call it the catalyst. It is what makes him go, what makes him tick, what makes him decide to do what he is going to do.
The second scene that has to be there in the first act is what is called "the turning point." It is the dramatic situation that changes everything for the protagonist because now he is committed. And this scene, this turning point, raises the main question that is going to be answered in the climax, in the third act, such as in a mystery, will our detective catch the murderer? That is the question because the inciting incident is probably a dead body. And the turning point is that this person, the detective, has come upon the dead body and he is determined now to solve the crime.
And so the question is, will he catch the killer? And that needs to be answered in the climax. In a love story it is, will he get the girl? Will she really like him? And then, let us say, in an adventure story, will the main character succeed in his quest? Will he drop the ring into Mount Doom?
Now, the second act, remember I told you this was rising action, this is when things are happening throughout the middle. The second act is full of escalating confrontation between the hero and the villain. And the protagonist, because he has gone through the turning point, he sets out to resolve the conflict, solve the problem, only to find that as he is moving toward his goal, the rug keeps being pulled out from under him. Things go badly and he usually ends up by the end of the second act in hotter water than he was before. It just gets worse and worse.
But it is in this period of time, in the middle of the story, where the protagonist learns what he needs to know; grows in wisdom or character or some sort of skill, and/or it could be all of these things, he gathers allies to help him succeed in finishing the job. But, like I said, this act usually ends up with a substantial setback so that when you are starting the third act, you think things are pretty hopeless. He is not going to get the girl, he is not going to catch the murderer, he is not going to fulfill his quest.
So the third act, which we go into next, the purpose there is simply to resolve that main question, resolve the story and resolve any of the minor subplots that have cropped up throughout the book or the movie. Its major scene is the climax of the story. That is where, of course, the hero finally achieves what he had set out to do. At the end of act one, the villain is defeated. The main question that was asked in the first act is answered by this achievement of the hero. The murderer is indeed caught. The girl says yes. And the quest ends in success. Hooray!
Then you have, depending on how the movie, how the director, how the writer decides to approach it, you have some final scenes called the "denouement." It is French word and it means "the unraveling." This is where all the tensions that have built up in the story are resolved. They are released and you are satisfied by the ending because a good writer, good screenwriter, whatever, he ties everything up in a nice bow and you shut the book, feeling very satisfied and want to read another done by the same author. Or when you are watching a movie that has been well done, you say, "Hey, that was really good!" You leave the theater with a smile and you want to see another one, the sequel.
So that is the Three Part Structure, the Three Act Structure. You see it in all the good movies. And I want to give you an example and that is George Lucas's Star Wars: A New Hope-Episode IV.
Just think this through. This is why this movie is, I will not call it great, but it is very memorable and it has made George Lucas billions of dollars because he constructed it along this Three Act Structure. And it works, and we want to go back and find out what happens in the next next episode and even the episodes before and the episodes after.
What he did, here, was he followed this structure. The first act introduces us to Luke and Leia, as well as to Darth Vader and several others, R2-D2 and C-3PO. And we thrust in the midst of a rebellion and the rebellion needs to get the Death Stars plans that are in R2-D2 to the rebel leaders. This is all part of the first act. You have the inciting incident. If you are thinking about what is happening in the movie, the inciting incident happens when Luke is repairing R2-D2 and he finds this holographic message from Leia on it saying, "Obi-Wan, you're my only hope." And so that is what gets him interested and he is going to go see Obi-Wan and figure out what this is.
And of course he does that and he comes back from Obi-Wan's place out in the desert to find his uncle and his aunt having been killed while he has been away. That is the turning point. He cannot go back. Everything is set at that point. He is now a member of the rebellion because people who killed his uncle and aunt are Storm Troopers, they are part of the Empire. And so he is now on his way to becoming a rebel hero. That is Act One.
Act Two starts in Mos Eisley but it takes place almost entirely on the Millennium Falcon and on the Death Star. And this is all the rising action that happens in that period, going through the movie where they are trying to get Leia out and get her back to the rebel faction and get R2-D2 out of there too. And so, Obi-Wan instructs Luke in the Force. Luke and his new friends find themselves in increasing danger, but they come together as a team during this time. However, just as they are about to get away—and this is where the end of the second act happens—Obi-Wan sacrifices himself for the team and things look really bleak, even though they get away.
Obi-Wan is gone. They thought as a Jedi Knight, he was going to be there, the one to really help them. Now he is gone. All of this comes down on Luke, who knows absolutely nothing compared to what Obi-Wan knew. That is the end of the second act. Things are worse than they were at the very beginning.
The third act, of course, is the Rebel Alliance's assault on the Death Star and it is a real long shot. But Luke uses the Force, the Death Star blows up, Darth Vader goes careening into space. He does not seem to have any support, so you think, wow, they vanquished him too. And the good guys win! That is the big climax of the movie. And you could just hear the music as that happened in the denouement. They have that scene where Luke and Han are given their reward there as heroes and all is right with the universe. You go out of the theater, "Yay, we defeated the Empire!" and you want to come back and find out what happens in Episode V.
Now let me just give you a bonus fact to tell you why George Lucas has done so well. Lucas structured Star Wars in three movie arcs in which each movie in the trilogy functions as an act in a larger story. And then the three trilogies are also three acts in the even larger story. So each movie is in Three Act Structure. Each trilogy is in Three Act Structure and each three episodes are part of a Three Act Structure of the whole. That is why we are engaged. It is a very well done story form that delivers punches, all the buttons ticks all the boxes that we want to see in a good story.
We can see now that story structure can be very important to understanding the story itself and what the meaning is. And it could be really crucial, the structure that is, in digging out a deeper and fuller meaning because you see these things in their proper spots.
The story of Esther is no different. In fact, we can say that it is more important because this story is one that God has included in His Word for our learning. So when He constructs a story, He does not do it haphazardly. He constructs it in a way that we are going to get the most out of it.
If you would, please turn to Romans the 15th chapter. I just want to pull this one verse out of here just to tell you what God has packed into the stories that have been written as part of the Bible. Paul writes here,
Romans 15:4 For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we may through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.
So those stories are there in the Old Testament not just to entertain us. As a matter of fact, that idea is pretty low on the list. But first, He wants to instruct us, to give us instruction in His way of life and the way He works. But in doing so, He also gives us intangibles like hope and comfort, and He teaches us patience through these things. So we can understand that, as we move on our path toward the Kingdom, He is going to act in certain ways, just like He acted toward those people who were doing the same thing in Old Testament times.
These were real stories. These are true stories that He gave. But they are stories that are full of instruction that are going to uplift us, they are going to instruct us, that are going to give us the tools that we need to move forward in our own times of distress, as happens from time to time.
I know I have taken a long time on this but it is important to understand this because structure is very important to Esther so that we get out of it what we need to to get out of it.
Now, before we go on any further, we just need to understand one crucial thing. And that is that Three Act Structure is a Western tradition and the book of Esther is not Western. The book of Esther is Eastern, Middle Eastern, Oriental you might call it. That is what they used to call it. In fact, the whole Old Testament is not Western, it is Oriental, it is Eastern.
The New Testament is a little different. It has a bit of both because it takes place in both East and West. But knowing that the Old Testament stories have this Oriental or Middle Eastern approach, we can assume that the plot of Esther will not strictly adhere to the Three Act Structure that we just saw. That is for us in the West. They look things at things a little bit differently in the East.
However, we can see it in that light. It will work as a three act play, as it were. And that is how it is commonly presented in film. If any of you have seen One Night With the King, that is a three act presentation of the book of Esther. And it works very well. It was a pretty well done movie and I would recommend it for the most part. I think they did a pretty good job of presenting the story.
But let me just quickly give you Esther as a three act play. So we have the first three chapters, that is Act One. The author describes the setting of the story. It is in the court of the powerful and wealthy king, Ahasuerus of Persia. And we find out right away that court intrigue is the rule there and they do a lot of feasting and drinking and that starts to lay some themes out. That is chapter 1.
Chapter 2 introduces Mordecai and Esther and it tells us how Esther has been inserted into the Persian court because of Queen Vashti's rash disobedience, let us just put it that way. And at the end of chapter 2, we have Mordecai uncovering a plot, telling Esther, and she in turn tells the king, and the assassination plot is diverted. And Mordecai, supposedly; you come away with it saying Mordecai comes out looking very good.
And then chapter 3 introduces the villain, which is Haman. And the first thing that we are told about is that he has a problem with Mordecai because Mordecai will not bow to him. And that, of course, is the inciting incident, that Haman is elevated to vizier and Mordecai refuses to bow. And the turning point comes at the end of the third chapter in which Haman maneuvers the king into granting him pretty much dictatorial powers and he then uses that power and the money to exterminate the Jews; they put out the edict to exterminate the Jews. That is the end of Act One.
Act Two, remember that is the middle build in the story, that is where all the conflict starts to take place. In Esther, it is only two chapters long. It is very short, even though it is normally a longer part of the whole. Chapter 4 relates how Mordecai tells Esther of the Jews' plight. And she says she desires to help and then they come up with a plan to go before the king to request some mercy.
Here, we learn that even though Mordecai up to this point has seemed to be the main character, we find out that Esther is really the protagonist. She is the heroine of the story. At the end of chapter 4, Mordecai is said to do what Esther tells him.
Chapter 5 contains the drama of Esther's successful appearance before the king against his command. Remember, she had to go and touch the golden scepter before she was allowed to go in. And if he had refused that she would have died on the spot, I guess. But he says, "Come forward, ask me what you want, up to half the kingdom." And she says, "I want you to come to a banquet, you and Haman." And he says, "Oh, great! I love drinking parties!" And so he and Haman decide to go and it ends on a very solemn note with Haman talking with his wife and she suggests that he make a gallows for Mordecai to be hanged on the next day. Because he is just full of it. He has been with the queen and the king in a private banquet. He thinks his star is on the rise. And she says, "Hey, while you're so happy, why don't you build that gallows? And you can go to the king the next day and suggest that he hang Mordecai." And he just goes to bed and he is just exalted inside. He just feels great that everything is going right.
But from the reader's standpoint, looking at it from Mordecai's point of view, things look really grim. This is the part in the story where everything is worse than it ever was before for the main characters.
Then Act Three starts and in Esther, it is the longest of all. It is half the book, from chapter 6 all the way through chapter 10. Chapter 6 though opens up with the king being reminded that Mordecai had not been honored when he foiled the assassination plot. So he asks if anybody is around to help him with that and guess who was there? Haman. And so Haman ends up honoring Mordecai, to his shame and regret. So Haman is humiliated. The climax quickly follows in chapter 7, when Esther reveals Haman's plot to the king during that second banquet, and Haman is executed on the gallows that he had built for Mordecai.
This is only the end of chapter 7. We still have 8, 9, and 10 to go and it is 8, 9, and 10 that are a very long denouement, where everything, all the plots and subplots, are unraveled and things are tied nicely in a bow. We have Mordecai being raised to Haman's position. You see the king, the queen, and Mordecai coming up with the scheme to counter Haman's plot to kill the Jews. We have the Jews defending themselves and prevailing over their attackers and we have the celebration of the first Purim, a big feast that they do because they were victorious. And finally, at the end, in chapter 10, we have Mordecai being exalted almost to the level of the Persian king.
That is your three part way to look at Esther. A moviemaker would tell it this way because that is what works for us in the West. But you would probably leave the theater pretty much theologically and spiritually unenlightened. It really does not get across the point that God in His Word and the way that He constructed it there wanted it to be understood.
But I want to give you a shorter example, another place in the Bible where we can see the structure of Esther, just in a different context, so we see it in a small bit rather than in the longer story of Esther. So let us turn to Psalm 64. We are going to use Psalm 64 to show us the structure of Esther because we can see it much more clearly there. Let us just say their structures are parallel. I looked in the hymnal. Our hymnal does not have Psalm 64, so it is probably relatively little known. But I want to read these 10 verses to you and I want you to think about how this is structured, these 10 verses. Remember, Esther has 10 chapters, this has 10 verses. It is not going to be exact in chapter to verse, but I want you to look at the way these 10 verses go together and see if you can find structure.
Psalm 64:1-10 Hear my voice, O God, in my meditation; preserve my life from fear of the enemy. Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked, from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity, who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows—bitter words, that they may shoot in secret at the blameless; suddenly they shoot at him and do not fear. They encourage themselves in an evil matter; they talk of laying snares secretly; they say, "Who will see them?" They devise iniquities: "We have perfected a shrewd scheme." Both the inward thought and the heart of man are deep. But God shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly they shall be wounded. So He will make them stumble over their own tongue; all who see them shall flee away. All men shall fear, and shall declare the work of God; for they shall wisely consider His doing. The righteous shall be glad in the Lord, and trust in Him. And all the upright in heart shall glory.
Ten verses. Did you pick out a pattern?
This psalm is considered a lament. You can see it. David is in dire straits, again, seems to have a lot of problems, a lot of insurrection is the word he uses here. People trying to take over his throne, people trying to undermine what he is doing. And he is asking for deliverance from God.
This is where things start to get a little bit technical. The structure that we have here is called a chiasm. It is pronounced the way it is because it is taking after the Greek letter chi. Now, I do not know if you know what the Greek letter chi looks like, but it is an X, what we call an X. Now, if you note, the X—one slash forward, one slash backward, superimposed on one another—it has a kind of symmetry, does it not? It is symmetrical.
Maybe the best way to understand the Greek letter X is not as two slashes that cross, but as a V on the top and an upside down V on the bottom. You could draw it that way. You do not have to use the slashes, you could do a right side up V and an upside down V and where they meet in the middle is the crossing point. That is the symmetry. You have starting at the top, it goes from broad to a point. And then at the halfway point where the two V's meet, they go from narrow to broad at the bottom. So we have two symmetrical parts of it. The top part goes to the center and then the center goes out to the bottom. That is the idea you are supposed to have when you think of a chiasm: two parts, one on top of the other but in exact reverse.
So what we have with the chiasm, in the chiastic structure, is an exposition of points in the first half of a passage that come to an axis, we would say, comes to a point in the middle of the story where things make a turn, where things change. And then after that point, it goes from the narrow to broad. It takes those same points that we started with but turns them around until you get to the end and you are back to pretty much the same place you were at the beginning but things have totally flipped over.
Now, if you would look at this in terms of, let us say, a literary guide or whatever, and they would show you actually this structure using letters. You know how some poems go AA, BB, CC, DD. Or maybe it will go AB (in the lines of the poem that is), they would end in the same sound. That is what AA would be. The ending of those lines would be the same sound. And then BB would be a new ending and CC would be a new ending. But you could also have it where it was AB, AB.
Chiastic structure in this particular psalm goes A, B, C, D and then D, C, B, A. That is chiastic structure; where the first element and the last element are the same, the second element and the next to the last element are the same, the third and the sixth or whatever, they are the same, fourth and fifth, they are the same. In this particular one, there is a middle one that we will talk about in a minute. So this is A, B, C, D and then we will say D superscript 1, C superscript 1, B superscript 1, A superscript 1. All the ones with the superscripts are reversals of the first four.
Let me show you how this works in Psalm 64. A is verses 1 and 2.
Psalm 64:1-2 Hear my voice, O God, in my meditation; preserve my life from fear of the enemy. Hide me from the secret council of the wicked, from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity.
Now this is reversed, turned totally upside down in verses 9 and 10.
Psalm 64:9 All men shall fear, . . .
Things are changing. Things have changed by the time we get down to verses 9 and 10. See, before they were against David. But now in verses 9 and 10,
Psalm 64:9-10 [they are in] . . . fear, and shall declare the work of God; for they shall wisely consider His doing. [And now, instead of the righteous being under attack] The righteous shall be glad in the Lord, and trust in Him. And all the upright in heart shall glory.
Things have been totally reversed from verses 1 and 2 so by the time we get to verses 9 and 10, the situation has totally resolved. The good guys have won. The bad guys have been put down, and everything is hunky dory.
Now, if you want to look at it, the B section is verse 3.
Psalm 64:3 Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows.
This is mirrored in reverse in verse 8.
Psalm 64:8 So He will make them stumble over their tongue; all who see them shall flee away.
C section is verse 4.
Psalm 64:4 That they may shoot in secret at the blameless; suddenly they shoot at him and do not fear.
Now C superscript 1 is verse 7.
Psalm 64:7 But God shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly they shall be wounded.
You see how everything has been flipped over here.
And finally, we have D and D-1, that is verses 5 and 6. This one is kind of interesting.
Psalm 64:5-6 They encourage themselves in an evil matter; they talk of laying snares secretly; They say, "Who will see them." [Now if you read verse 6 straight up, it sounds like it is saying the same thing.] They devise iniquities: "We have perfected a shrewd scheme." Both the inward thought and the heart of man are deep.
That does not sound like there is any reversal, but there is a hint of reversal in there because what is being said in verse 6 (see the quoted a line in there, "We have perfected a screwed scheme."), they are saying essentially we have plotted the perfect plan. But the comeback at the end of verse 6, "Both the inward thought and the heart of man are deep," in the Hebrew that means something like Jeremiah 17:9. That, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?"
What is being said in verse 6 is even though they thought they have come up with the perfect plan, they have deceived themselves. Already we are beginning to see that things are going to reverse here. So that is the central axis of this chiastic structure in verses 5 and 6, where we see things beginning to turn and everything is going to get a whole lot better from that point on.
This is the structure of Esther, the same chiastic structure. Setting out a series of elements or events or statements and then, as we work through them later on the second half, all the elements are reversed. Chiastic structure is a reversal structure. Negatives turn into positives. God brings all the schemes of men to nothing. And that is exactly what we see in Esther. This psalm really parallels Esther amazingly! It is almost like a prayer that Mordecai or Esther would have made in the midst of going through what is in the book of Esther.
So let us see this in Esther. Once we see this in the book of Esther, we can bring out the spiritual points that this chiastic structure makes very clear. Maybe another way to explain it would be to give you another letter of the alphabet to help you to understand how this works. That is the letter U or we could use the letter V. V would work as well. But the events of the first half of the book plunge downward, they are going to the proverbial hell in the hand basket. That is how things in the book of Esther seem to be going. Mordecai is in trouble; Esther is in trouble; all the Jews are in trouble, and it looks like Haman is going to win. It is just terrible. What is going on? There is no way to stop it. The law of the Medes and the Persians says that once this edict has been promulgated, it cannot be brought back, it cannot be dis-enacted, it has to go forward. So it looks like it is terrible.
But then at the bottom of a U, things begin to turn around, do they not? You finally hit the bottom of the U but then, once you hit bottom, things start to look up on the other side and it soars up the other side and things are better. And by the time you get to the other half of the U, everything is wonderful. That is what happens in Esther. The events are mirrored in reverse order in the second half from what they were in the first half. So as events unfold, the situation is reversed and this reversal is the key to understanding Esther. (For those of you who are math nerds, whoever you may be, you can graph out this chiastic structure as the parabola Y equals X squared. Think about that. I just know that there are a few math nerds out there that will get a kick out of that—Y equals X squared.)
Let us look at Esther then from this standpoint. We will go to Esther 1. We are going to read the first eight verses of this chapter and we are going to get points A and B out of these first eight verses.
Esther 1:1-8 Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus (this was the Ahasuerus who reigned from India to Ethiopia over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces), in those days when King Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the citadel, that in the third year of his reign he made a feast for all his officials and servants—the powers of Persia and Media, and the nobles, and the princes of the provinces being before him—when he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the splendor of his excellent majesty for many days, one hundred and eighty days in all. And when these days were completed, the king made a feast lasting seven days for all the people who are present in Shushan the citadel, from great to small, in the court of the garden of the king's palace. There were white and blue linen curtains fastened with cords of fine linen and purple on silver rods and marble pillars; and the couches were of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of alabaster, turquoise, and white and black marble. And they served drinks in golden vessels, each vessel being different from the other, with royal wine in abundance, according to the generosity of the king. In accordance with the law, the drinking was not compulsory; for so the king had ordered all the officers of his household, that they should do according to each man's pleasure.
This is A and B. A is that the author describes the power and wealth and majesty of King Ahasuerus, and just shows what splendor there was in his court and just how great he was; and he threw money and food and wine around like they were nothing, and had all these people eat at his expense, eat and drink at his expense. And that is B. B is that the Persians, in this great amount of wealth and splendor that they had, celebrate two sumptuous drinking feasts. First, the one of the king's officials and then another for the men of Shushan. And verse 9 said that the the queen also made a great feast for the women. So everybody in Shushan was able to have this feast for seven days at the king's expense.
So we have these two points and both of them show how powerful Persia was, how powerful the king was, but also that they had this weakness as well. But they were joyous. I am sure they were having a good time but they tended to like these drinking parties and they had their own way of doing things there. And they did not seem to have any problem feasting for 180 days. I do not know how that happened. But they could go to quite an extent with this.
There is A and B. The power of Ahasuerus and his wealth and all that, and then the two feasts of the Persians, that is B.
Let us go to chapter 2. We are going to skip over all of that with Vashti because I want to get to another point. That is C here starting in verse 10.
Esther 2:10-11 Esther had not revealed her people or kindred, for Mordecai had charged her not to reveal it. And every day Mordecai paced in front of the court of the women's quarters, to learn of Esther's welfare and what was happening to her.
Now it goes and talks about the women going before the king and being prepared for him. Let us drop down to verse 15.
Esther 2:15-20 Now when the turn came for Esther the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her as his daughter, to go in to the king, she requested nothing but what Hegai the king's eunuch, the custodian of the women, advised. And Esther obtained favor in the sight of all who saw her. So Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus, into his royal palace, in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign. The king loved Esther more than all the other women, and she obtained grace and favor in his sight, more than all the virgins; so he set the royal crown upon her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. Then the king made a great feast, the Feast of Esther, for [here they are feasting again] all his officials and servants; and he proclaimed a holiday in the provinces and gave gifts according to the generosity of a king. When virgins were gathered together a second time, Mordecai sat within the king's gate. Now Esther had not yet revealed her kindred and her people, just as Mordecai had charged her, for Esther obeyed the command of Mordecai as when she was brought up by him.
Verse 10 and verse 20 bracket this whole thing about her going before the king and being made queen. And what we find out is that before she entered this process and even after it was finished, she hid her identity as closely as she could, as much as she could. We could say she identifies as a Gentile throughout this whole process. She hides her Jewishness. So Esther identifies herself as a Gentile for her protection. That is C. That is a big point in all of this that we need to understand and we are going to see all of these things reversed.
Let us go to chapter 3, verses 1 through 6. This is D.
Esther 3:1-6 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. 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. Then the king's servants who were within the king's gate said to Mordecai, "Why do you transgress the king's command?" 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 told them that he was a Jew. When Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow or pay him homage, Haman was filled with wrath. But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had told him of the people of Mordecai. [So now it is spreading out to not just Mordecai but his people.] Instead, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus—the people of Mordecai.
So this is D. Haman is elevated to vizier with all the powers that a vizier of that realm would have, although we find here that the king must command Haman to be honored. And then Haman immediately shows his hatred of Mordecai and the Jews. His anti-Semitism comes out. So that is D. Promoted to vizier and Haman's hatred toward the Jews.
Let us drop down to verses 12 through 15. This is E.
Esther 3:12-15 Then the king's scribes were called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and a decree was written to all that Haman commanded—to the king's satraps, 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.
What we find is this decree goes out to all the places throughout the empire in all the languages that the Jews are to be killed on this certain day. So this is bad news. Remember, once this edict goes out, it cannot be rescinded. So that is E. Haman publishes his anti-Jewish edict.
Now, the whole of Esther 4 is F. This is a conversation, a very crucial conversation that takes place between Esther and Mordecai. It is actually run with servants between them. One of them says something and a servant goes out and tells the other one and then the message comes back, and they talk through these intermediaries. But this is a very crucial conversation between Esther and Mordecai where they plan their strategy. So let me pick this up here. I just do not want to read the whole chapter here. It begins with Mordecai in mourning because of what the edict has said. Esther finds out and says, "Why are you mourning?" And then she tells him and gives a copy of the decree to her to find to what is going on.
Esther 4:10-14 Then Esther spoke to Hathach, and gave him a command for Mordecai: "All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know that any man or woman who goes into the inner court to the king who has not been called, he has but one law: put all to death except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter, that he may live. Yet I myself have not been called to go into the king these 30 days [which may give an indication that she was somewhat out of power, out of favor at that point, maybe, maybe not]." So they told Mordecai Esther's words. Then Mordecai told them to answer Esther: "Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king's palace any more than all the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from some other place, but you and your father's house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
Now, we are obviously getting intimations here that God is working things out and Mordecai knows it. So he is saying that God is going to work this out somehow, that his faith is really very strong here. But he said, you have been put in a position where you can really do something effective. You could not be in a better spot.
Esther 4:15-17 Then Esther told them to return this answer to Mordecai: "Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!" So Mordecai went his way and did according to all that Esther commanded him.
This is the big conversation, the crucial conversation that sets up the strategy that Esther and Mordecai take to solve the problem. And what really comes out here is that Mordecai and Esther are both very faithful. They are devout, they do the right thing. They pray, they fast. Obviously it does not say that they prayed to God or whatever. But you know that when you fast, that is what you do. You pray as well and who do you pray to? You have to pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And so what we see in the story here is that they are doing something that is required in all these situations from the people of God. That they have to take stock of the situation. They have to come up with a game plan, but they can never forget God, that He is working. And if He does not work with us, He is going to find some other way to get His will done. But it would be better if we did it because He has put us in the position to do this thing the right way. And so we have to have faith, we have to fast and pray to God for the deliverance, for His help in what we need to do. And so, like I said, this is very crucial conversation here. This is F.
Next is G. Let us drop down into chapter 5, verses 5 through 8. G is Esther's first banquet with Ahasuerus and Haman. Obviously, in the first verses of this chapter, she goes in and the king grants her an audience, so she does not die. The fasting is very effective. God backs Esther and He has the king hold out the golden scepter to her. And she is not just welcomed, but he says, verse 3, "What is your request? It shall be given to you—up to half my kingdom!" So the king was in a very generous mood here and he loves Esther and she was not out of favor, that he had just probably been very busy. Verse 5. This is G.
Esther 5:5-8 Then the king said, "Bring Haman quickly, that he may do as Esther has said." So the king and Haman went to the banquet that Esther had prepared. At the banquet of wine the king said to Esther, "What is your petition? It shall be granted to you. What is your request, up to half my kingdom? [this is repeated] It shall be done!" Then Esther answered and said, "My petition and request is this: If I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my petition and fulfill my request, then let the king and Haman come to the banquet which I will prepare for them, and tomorrow I will do as the king has said."
So she puts him off but asks them to another private banquet. And this is very important because it gives the story another day but it gives the king a reason to wonder, "What is it that she is going to ask me? Here I've said I'll give her up to half the kingdom." Why is it so important that she has to do two banquets in order to what, impress him so much that he will be really willing to give her something really, really big? Or is she really nervous or what is her angle on this? Because remember, we started out this entire book talking about all the court intrigue and stuff that happens around the Persian court. So he has got to wonder what is going on.
And then of course Haman, in the next section, he just thinks that his star is on the rise and he has been given this great honor of banqueting with the king and the queen and he must be doing really well. And by the end of the chapter, his wife says, "Hey Haman, why don't you build a gallows for Mordecai because the next morning, you could go ahead and ask the king to kill him for you." And that is how chapter 5 ends. So that was G. Esther's first banquet with Ahasuerus and Haman where we have Haman swelling with pride thinking he is going to get all the spoils.
Chapter 6. The whole chapter is what I will call H. It is the point of the two arrowheads, the V's, the point of the two V's. We could call this the axis point. This is when the story is in the bottom and things start to turn positive. Mordecai in chapter 6 is honored instead of Haman, because the king figures out that they had not honored Mordecai for the assassination plot thing. And who do they find there to honor him but Haman, and Haman has to take Mordecai around the city, dressed up in the royal robes and on the royal horse, telling everybody this is what happens to the man whom the king decides to honor.
So by the time we get to the end of this chapter, Mordecai is starting to look really good and Haman is starting to very quickly feel that things are going wrong. In fact, by the time you get to the last two verses, his own wife and his wise men are telling him that if Mordecai is indeed one of the seed of the Jews, you have had it, you are going to fall.
This chapter 6 contains two "coincidences" (and I put that in scare quotes). These coincidences are actually signs of God's intervention. They are signs of God's sovereignty as He begins to take a hand in the matter. The first coincidence is that the king cannot sleep. The Hebrew literally says that his sleep "fled away." It is like he could not catch it. He was troubled in mind and he calls and says, "Hey, bring in the chronicles, I need to go to sleep." And so, you know, probably his flunky is brought in and he starts reading the chronicles in this dull voice, but he still cannot sleep. And they come across the point where the chronicles had mentioned that Mordecai had not been honored. Well, it said what he had done. And then he asked, "Has he been honored?" And the guy says, "No, it's been four years or so. Nothing's been done for him." And he says, "We've got to do something," because it was his honor to be able to do that for Mordecai.
And so he says, "Hey, who's about of my princes that will help me do this?" And it just so happened (this is the second coincidence) that it was Haman who was out in the court. He said, "Hey Haman, come on in here. What would you do to the person whom the king delights to honor?" And he said, "Oh well, this is a great honor, king. Um, let me see. I would have them wear your royal robe and have them ride on your royal horse and put a crown on the horse and let everybody know it's your horse (and have me paraded), or have this person paraded around the city by a guy who's saying, 'This is what happens to the person who the king delights to honor.'" And the king says, Oh, that's great, Haman! Do that for Mordecai." And so this happens to Mordecai and of course, Haman is mortified. He is very humiliated.
Esther 6:12 Afterward Mordecai went back to the king's gate. [Mordecai is like, "Ok, off the horse. I've got a job to do." So he goes back and does what he does.] But Haman hastened to his house, mourning and with his head covered.
So he was showing signs of deep distress and then it is in this next verse that he tells his wife what is going on and they say, your goose is cooked, Haman. Things are turning around very badly.
Now we are getting to the reversals. I am going to go through these quickly because I do not have much time. But in chapter 7, verse 1, we have G-1, or the reversal of G, which was the first banquet that Esther had. Now there is a second banquet and in this banquet Haman, instead of being proud is now subdued. F-1, F superscript 1, is in verses 2 through 6 of chapter 7. This is a very crucial conversation between Esther and Ahasuerus and this is where she exposes Haman's plot. Things are turning around here. Everything is starting to go Esther and Mordecai's way. This is also the final outworking of Esther and Mordecai's strategy, which they came up with in F with their conversation. So F-1 reverses F in chapter 8, verses 9 through 14, after Haman has been hanged on the gallows that he had made for Mordecai.
In Esther 8:9-14, this is E-1, Mordecai issues a pro-Jewish edict. Remember, earlier in the book, in E, Haman had issued an anti-Jewish edict. Here in verses 9 through 14, Mordecai issues his pro-Jewish edict and this all works out, we see the action that came from this edict in chapter 9. Also in Esther 8, we have in verses 1 and 2, it says that the house of Haman was given to the Queen. Mordecai was given the ring that Haman had. Let us read verse 15 and 16.
Esther 8:15-16 Now Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, with a great crown of gold and a garment of fine linen and purple; and the city of Shushan rejoiced and was glad. The Jews had light and gladness, joy and honor.
So this reverses the part in the earlier section of Esther where Haman is elevated to vizier. Now we have Mordecai being elevated to vizier. This is D-1. And he is given royal honors.
Now, I want to just note here that, remember when Haman was elevated the king had to say, everybody honor him. Well, here, when Mordecai is honored, he does not have to say that. He is dressed in royal robes, given a crown; all these things that happened to Mordecai are better than what happened to Haman. So we see not only a reversal, but an exaltation and an increase for Mordecai and for Esther.
But also I want you to note here in verse 16 that this went out to the Jews as well. Now they had, it says here, "light and gladness, joy and honor." So it went beyond just Mordecai and Esther. Now it went to the whole people.
Verse 17 is C-1, chapter 8, verse 17. Notice this:
Esther 8:17 And in every province and city, wherever the king's command and decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a holiday. Then many of the people of the land became Jews because fear of the Jews fell upon them.
This is a reversal of C. Remember in C, Esther identified as a Gentile for her protection, now, by the time we get to the end of chapter 8, the Gentiles are identifying as Jews, and they even convert to the worship of God. So the Jews go from a despised people to a respectable and even a desirable people. Things have really changed from the beginning of this book.
Esther 9, verses 17 and 19 is B-1. We find here,
Esther 9:17-18 This was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. And on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar, they rested and made it a day of feasting and gladness. But the Jews who were at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth day, as well as on the fourteenth; and on the fifteenth day of the month they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.
We could go on to verse 19, but this reverses, remember the Persians had their two feasts at the beginning? By the time we get to the end of Esther, the Jews are having two feasts of joy and gladness, not of wine and debauchery and whatever it was that was happening under the Persians. This has totally changed.
And finally, A-1 is found in the last three verses of the book. Chapter 10, verses 1 through 3. Remember, we started with the glory of King Ahasuerus and his majesty and his wealth.
Esther 10:1-3 And King Ahasuerus imposed tribute on the land and on the islands of the sea. Now all the acts of his power and his might, and the account of the greatness of Mordecai, to which the king advanced him, are they not written in the books of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia? For Mordecai the Jew was second to King Ahasuerus, and was great among the Jews and well received by the multitude of his brethren, seeking the good of his people and speaking peace to all his kindred.
So now we end the book with not only Ahasuerus being said, "Yeah, he's pretty great." But look at Mordecai! He was second to the king and he did wonderful things for his people. You could say that he is the reason now, because of his faithfulness, that the Jews can live in peace and prosperity in a foreign land.
Now remember, just recall that in earlier sermons I said that Mordecai is the one that stands in the place of God. And in this way, we could say that the last verses exalt God because it is Mordecai's faith in God that made all of this happen.
But this is how God works. I have gone through all this because it is a pattern that God uses frequently in His Word. Let us go in I Peter 5, verses 5 through 11. We are going to wind up really quickly here. But I want you to see that here in the New Testament we have further proof that this is how it works and how God works with us. When we are under persecution, we can look back at the book of Esther and say, this is how God works. We just have to hang in there until the U begins to flatten out and come up on the other side.
I Peter 5:5-11 [Peter says] Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." [Does that not sound like Haman and Mordecai? God resisted Haman, but he gave grace to Mordecai.] Therefore [this is what you need to do] humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
That is how He works with us. He takes the weak of the world. He stirs them into the boiling cauldron of this world. He turns up the heat and then He intervenes to pluck us out just at the right time to deliver us and bring Him glory. And we could say, to bring joy and peace and prosperity and honor to His people. That is the pattern. Wherever we happen to be, like Mordecai and Esther, living in exile, yet yearning for our true homeland. That is how He wants us to live, where we are, in the condition that we live in.
And finally, let us finish in Ephesians 2 because this is not just in terms of physical deliverance, but the way He is working with us spiritually.
Ephesians 2:4-7 But God, who is rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
So God is working this kind of reversal, spiritually, in us as well. He started with us as sinful and by His grace, He is turning all of that around. Even though we were the weak of the world and the most sinful of this world, He is going to make us rulers, and perfect. He is going to turn everything around.
Our path, if we, like Mordecai and Esther, overcome our traditional enemies in this world, that is, sin and Satan and the world itself, we will be exalted in due time to eternal life and high position in God's Kingdom. We just have to trust the invisible God, the hidden yet most important character in this book of Esther. If we do, He will bring us through in victory.
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