Darkness to Light

Scripture Reading

Well, why don't we go ahead and turn into God's word this morning, Esther chapter 7. Esther chapter seven, the last of the historical books. So if you're turning in your physical Bibles with me, so you're ready to go past Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, so past the Pentateuch, go past Joshua, go past Judges, go past 1st and 2nd Samuel. If you're in 1st and 2nd Kings or 1st and 2nd Chronicles, keep going, you'll find Ezra, Nehemiah, and then you'll find Esther. But if you get to Job, if you get to Psalms, you've gone a little bit too far, so Esther. Esther chapter 7, and this morning we'll be looking at the full portion of Esther chapter 7.

And as we do that, we're going to be looking at how God takes the dark things of this world and uses them for light. This is the amazing thing that God does. is he uses death, darkness, trials, and tribulations to bring about his glorious end. God loves this type of irony. God loves this type of way of turning the world on its head.

So why don't we go ahead and turn in our Bibles to Esther chapter seven, and we'll just take this chunk by chunk together as we go through the book of Esther. So Esther chapter seven. verses one and two, you'll remember that Haman has just found out that, or has just paraded Mordecai through the streets because he's thought in his heart that the king, Ashuarius, wanted to exalt him, when in reality it was Mordecai.

And his wife has said, eh, buddy, it's not gonna be too long. This ain't gonna go well for you. And so after he's paraded him around, the servants come and they immediately take him and they take him to the banquet, the second feast that Esther has made. And there we find ourselves in this situation.

So the king and Haman went to dine with Queen Esther. And on the second day at the banquet of wine, the king again said to Esther, what is your petition, Queen Esther? This is now the third time that the king has said this to Esther. He said this to her multiple times. And this is just kind of a saying of the day, a colloquialism that's just, what do you want to ask of me and I'll give it to you. It's not literally saying you'll give up to half the kingdom, but the point is I'll be generous with you, ask whatever you want.

But Esther's walking a fine line. See, what Esther is about to do is to put herself between the commander-in-chief, Ashurarius, and his top general, Haman. Esther is about to step into this place and try to put a wedge in between the relationship between two of the most powerful men in the known world. Esther is in a difficult place. Esther finds herself in a place where she has to wrestle with, does she really have the favor of the king?

She has to wrestle in her heart with, is he actually going to listen to me? Is he going to show me favor, or is he going to treat me just like he did Vashti? You remember that. I mean, we've been going slowly through the book of Esther, but in Esther chapter one, it started with Ashurias knocking off his first queen, Vashti.

What's to say that as he comes in, or as she comes in and she talks to Asherah, he's not gonna just do the same thing with her? Or we also know that she's gotta worry not just about how the king's gonna receive her, but what's Haman gonna do? I mean, Haman is a crafty man. Haman is a guy with all sorts of schemes.

And so she's hidden this Jewish identity and she's been wrestling with her soul for what this has happened. And we've already seen her do that heroic moment where she stepped out and she said, if I die, I die. And she went into the king's presence. hoping to find favor before him, hoping that one of his axmen wouldn't slay her where she stood. But as she sits there before the king and he asks this to her a third time, she has to ask herself, am I really favored? I mean, before this, the king hadn't seen her for 30 days. Before this, the king hadn't wanted her to come into his presence. I mean, the king's a playboy. He's got lots of women in his harem. Does she really have favor with him?

Listen how she brings up this point at this climactic point in the book of Esther. Look with me at verse three. Then Queen Esther answered and said, if I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, Let my life be given me at my petition and my people at my request. Notice what she said there in verse 3. If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king. That same terminology had been used before when she went in and pleased the king and she found favor in his sight for that first night. And then again, she found favor in the sight of Asherah when she walked into his palace and she walked into the throne room and he extended his scepter towards her. Here she's saying, if I've actually found favor in your sight, give me my life back.

If I'm actually favored in your eyes, give me my life and the life of my people. For we have been sold, my people and I, and here she quotes Haman's decree, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. You can see the tears flowing from Esther's eyes as she's sitting there saying, please, please, we're going to be killed, we're gonna be destroyed, we're gonna be absolutely annihilated. Give me and my people our life back.

And then she says in the middle there of verse four, had we been sold as male and female slaves, I would have held my tongue, although the enemy could never compensate for the king's loss. What she's saying, she's like, I wouldn't even trouble you. Ashley Warris, I wouldn't come to you and bring this petition before you. I wouldn't ruin this party that I've made for you if it had just been we were sold into slavery. But we're gonna die. We're all gonna die. So the king, Asuarius, answered instead to Queen Esther, who is he, and where is he, and who would dare presume in his heart to do such a thing? Asuarius is upset, who?

Who has put this mark on my queen's head? Who is it that did this? Now it's interesting what Esther had said. Had we been sold as male and female slaves, remember that Haman had paid a huge bounty into the king's treasury to kill all of them. And somehow Asher, whether he's got a ton of decrees he signs like this, or for whatever reason, he asked this question. And Esther said, the adversary and enemy is this wicked man, Haman. And she points out her finger to him. You can imagine her saying, it's him. He's my adversary. He's the enemy.

And all of a sudden, the top general and the king are put on opposite sides. So Haman was terrified before the king and queen. Then the king arose in his wrath from the banquet of wine and went out into the palace garden, but Haman stood before Queen Esther." Now this is interesting. The king raises up in rage, he's infuriated, he just drops his wine, he walks out the door, he goes to his palace gardens, and what would typically happen when the king walks out of the room, his entourage follows him. but instead Haman now finds himself aghast, desperate, knowing his hours are numbered, and he stays in the room with Queen Esther. But he doesn't just stay in the room. He doesn't just violate protocol by not following after the king, but he does something even more audacious, What does he do?

But Haman stood before Queen Esther pleading for his life, and he saw that evil was determined against him by the king. But when the king returned from the palace garden to the place of the banquet of wine, Haman had fallen across the couch where Esther was. Then the king said, will he also assault the queen while I am in the house? I mean, who knows what King Ashuarius is doing?

Why he went to the palace garden? Did he go there because he was going to go talk to his advisors? Did he go there because he needed to punch a wall because he's found himself between a rock and a hard place? Did he go there as he's trying to figure out how to quell his wrath that he could go back in there and sort things out between the two of them? But as the king makes his walk down that echoey hall, step by step, Haman is there. not just standing before the queen anymore, but he has fallen across her couch.

And in the Persian law, as well as in the Assyrian law, anyone found within seven steps of one of the king's concubines or wives was to be killed. And here it's Haman, the strong, proud man who has been brought to groveling at the feet of Esther. And in his groveling and pleading for his life, as the door opens and Asherus walks in, he finds Haman touching the king's wife. As a word left the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. Now Harbonah, one of the eunuchs, said to the king, look, the gallows, 50 cubits high, which Haman made for Mordecai, who spoke good on the king's behalf, is standing at the house of Haman. Then the king said, hang him on it. So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the king's wrath was subsided. The tables have turned. The roles have flipped. Everything is backwards from what it once was.

Haman, that man full of pride, who was so quelled up with anger because Mordecai, the Jew, wouldn't bow down to him, who saw himself exalted above all the other princes, now finds himself groveling at the queen's feet, breaking court protocol, and the king's words cover his face as he's realized his fate is sealed, his death is imminent. And the eunuch, as they're on in that palace, looks over there, and what does he see? the gallows, the tree that Haman himself had built to try to destroy the Jews. And Haman himself is hung on it and the king's wrath is subsided.

Now this isn't the final piece. Not everything's okay yet. Actually, we still have a few more chapters to go through. Chapter eight and nine, there's still problems to be had. There's still a death decree over the rest of the Jews, but there is, at this moment, a hope of peace and reconciliation, that maybe everything won't be as bad as it was once thought.

Here, finally, the adversary, the enemy is done away with. But now isn't it interesting? Isn't it interesting that this is the way the Lord likes to do things? That the Lord doesn't do things in a linear path that we might imagine. But there's some things here that are so interesting. Esther wasn't a good Jew. Esther was not a good Jewish girl. Esther was sleeping with a pagan king. Esther was not a good Jew. She was not following the dietary laws. The threat of death hung over Esther's head also.

And yet God used her, God loved her, God saved her. God uses Mordecai, this fallen and feeble man. often and easily forgotten to save his people. God works in mysterious ways. And when we look at our own lives, we see trials and we think, what in the world is the Lord doing? And the Lord has a plan. We go in our lives and you might look at your own life and you might see affliction and trouble. Brothers and sisters, the Lord is working all things out according to his glorious purposes. We can trust our king that he knows what he is doing. We can trust our master of the universe that he knows everything that is happening for it's according to the counsel of his own purposes.

He's working through sinful people and sinful institutions to accomplish a glorious end. King Asuarius cannot thwart the will of God. Haman the Agagite cannot thwart the kingdom of God. Indeed, even the Romans and those Jews who thought of themselves as righteous cannot or could not stop the kingdom of God. See, it was Jesus Christ It was Jesus Christ who was the just one who died upon a different gallows, on a different tree.

Haman, the enemy, the adversary, would once dress himself in the clothes of a Jew, of the leaders of Israel themselves, even of the high priests. And there they would nail our Savior Jesus Christ onto a tree and there they would mock him. But a different king's wrath was subdued that day. It was on that day that God's wrath that was justly deserved by you and justly deserved by me was satisfied. The roles were turned with the gospel, weren't they? That it was Jesus Christ, the righteous one who would suffer death and indignation for the unrighteous, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. Our adversary, the devil and Satan, our adversary death itself was conquered upon a different tree outside of Jerusalem.

God always has a plan. Peter didn't like that plan when Jesus told it to him. His disciples didn't understand that plan when Jesus told them. Indeed, even as they were at the foot of the cross and John and the Marys and his mother were looking up at Jesus, you have to think, were they thinking, oh man, God's got all this taken care of? No, they were weeping. This was Mary's son, this was Jesus's savior, and there he is hanging upon that tree.

But yet, God has a way of turning darkness into light. God has a way of making sure that we are never outside of his love if we believe in him, if we hope in him. And so I don't know what it is in your life right now, I don't know what trial or tribulation you're going through. I don't know. Maybe you're one of those who are watching online and you're in a country where persecution is real.

There is hope. Do not think that you could ever be pulled out of God's love, for nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing could separate Esther. Nothing could separate Mordecai. for they had hope that God would save. And he does it in amazing ways all through history, even through sinful people, people like you and people like me. God is accomplishing his plans.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this great message that you have given to us from your word, a message of hope that you bring light out of darkness. Father, we pray that you might apply these words to our hearts, that we would have comfort. Father, we pray that you would let us forget any dross that was here, burn it away, and let the pure gold remain. Father, we pray that you would give us hope for today and for all eternity in Jesus' name.