Bad Odds and Fixed Games - Esther 3

Cody Hale

Threads: The Subtle Glory of God’s Providence in Esther • Sermon • Submitted a month ago • Presented a month ago

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Introduction

A lot is changing in the Hale household right now. You know, when we came to Iron City, GK wasn’t even a year old yet, and in August she’ll be in junior high. We took the baby bed out of Josiah’s room this week, which is the first time in 12 years there hasn’t been a crib in our house. And, he’s starting pre-k in August. And, that means that for the first time in 12 years there won’t be daddy days on Fridays and I’ll be at the house alone.

You know, you bring these little creatures into your house and everyone tells you that they’re going to grow up, but it’s still hard to prepare for the sheer pace that it happens. And, quite honestly, it’s terrifying. The older my children become and the more than I have to send them out, and the scarier the world appears to me. I’m convinced that God gives us children to teach us how to pray. There’s bullies and bad influences. There’s drugs and car accidents. There’s hatred and injustice. There’s predators and aggressive atheism.

God’s Word

The book of Esther doesn’t attempt to conceal how scary the world really is. The Bible never attempts to bury its head into the sand of false utopia. That’s why Jesus came — because there’s really big problems in this world, problems that only God himself could come and deal with. No, Esther 3 shows us Why the Future is Scary (headline), and why we’re going to be okay anyway.

“Life is “unfair.”

Esther 3:1–5 “After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, and advanced him and set his throne above all the officials who were with him. And all the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman, for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage. Then the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate said to Mordecai, “Why do you transgress the king’s command?” And when they spoke to him day after day and he would not listen to them, they told Haman, in order to see whether Mordecai’s words would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew. And when Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage to him, Haman was filled with fury.”

When I was in around the sixth grade, we had an Olympic Day during the P.E. We had all known it was coming and had been getting ready for our various events. Now, I wasn’t very good at very much, but I could run and liked to run. And, there was going to be one lap race, which I signed up for immediately. And, when Olympic Day came and our coach said go, I ran like I was Jesse Owens at the 1936 games in Berlin. It was really magical, and I won the race. And, we had a podium and everything in front of the entire class where we were going to receive our medals. And, they brought me up, put me on the second place spot, and handed me a silver medal. Something had gotten confused and I was in the wrong place, and they might as well have just brought me in front of the school to say that I was a foot short and an academic underachiever. I was humiliated. And, I remember running home to my mom, and all I could say what “It’s not fair! It’s not fair! I won!”

Life didn’t get any more fair from there. And, that’s part of what scares us about the future, isn’t it? We know how ruthlessly unjust and unfair this world can be, and we worry about dealing with it.

Mordecai is dealing with that in Esther 3. Persian kings were known for how ruthlessly they dealt with dissension, but they were also known for how extravagantly they rewarded loyalty. We saw that in Daniel. And so, when you read at the end of chapter two how Mordecai saves the king’s life, the reader is meant to assume that the next page is going to speak of his promotion, like Daniel, to second-in-command. But, instead, it says “King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the Agagite.” That was supposed to be Mordecai’s promotion but it went to Haman instead. Not fair!

An “unfinished” war has a new “battle.”

But, there’s a clue that there’s more to the story than just a simple oversight by Ahasuerus. Notice that Haman said to be an “Agagite.” And, remember that I told you last week that Mordecai was from the same family as the former King Saul. Any bells going off? In 1 Samuel 15, Saul is told by God to completely annihilate the Amalekites, to kill every person and destroy every cow, but Saul saves the best of the livestock and spares the life of the king, a man named Agag. And, it’s that disobedience by Saul that led to his being deposed by God. You see, this is an old battle shown in a new light. The Amalekites were the first people to attack the nation of Israel coming out of Egypt, and God declared that He would always be at war with them until they were destroyed — because He was devoted to the protection of his people.

But now, there’s a new question, a new battle bubbling to the surface of this old war. Will God uphold his covenant to his people since they didn’t uphold their covenant with him? That is, the question that’s being asked — even magnified when Mordecai is passed over for an Agagite and is then ruled over by an Agagite — is: are God’s people who are under God’s discipline in Persia still safe because of God?

An “unfair” world makes us feel “unsafe.”

And, this gets down to why the future looks so scary to us. The world isn’t fair and an unfair world makes us feel unsafe. And, an unfair world makes us wonder if God is actually going to protect us. So, how can I know that I’m safe, and how can I know that my kids are safe? Maybe even drilling down further. One of the reasons that I know the world isn’t just and the world isn’t fair is because I’m not always just and fair. So, there’s two questions the come up here: what if the world deals with me unfairly? What if my child is assaulted? What if I’m passed over for the promotion that I deserve? What if my husband dies at 30 or what if my friends betray me? And, there’s a second question here. It’s not just what if the world treats me unfairly, but what if God treats me completely justly? That’s in view. They’re facing an Agagite because Saul sinned and didn’t kill them. They’re in exile because they abandoned God. What if you reap every bad thing you’ve sown? What if you’re treated as unfairly and unjustly as you’ve acted? What if every skeleton in your closet comes back to haunt you? You know that God knows, and you know that if God calls you to account you don’t stand a chance.

So, how in the world can we not be scared? How in the world can we know that we’re safe?

Our “faith” is “unpopular.”

Esther 3:4 “And when they spoke to him day after day and he would not listen to them, they told Haman, in order to see whether Mordecai’s words would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew.”

Esther 3:8 “Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not to the king’s profit to tolerate them.”

In Esther 2, Mordecai had instructed Esther to conceal her identity as a Jew, and he had done the same. But, now in 3:4, Mordecai has told them that he’s a Jew, and he’s explained that this is why he refuses to bow down to Haman. Now, Israelites were commanded by Jeremiah (29) to honor those among whom they were exiled, and they were able to down to kings without worshiping them. But, Haman is an Agagite, an enemy of the Jews and an affront to God, and Mordecai doesn’t believe it is appropriate to honor him.

So, Haman is incensed, and he doesn’t just want to take down Mordecai but everyone like him. He has his own Final Solution for the Jews and presents a plan to King A to annihilate them all. And, I want you to notice how he frames up his case. First of all, he doesn’t even tell them specifically who it is. It’s easier to hate people without names and faces that you’ve met — just “a certain people.” But then, he says: “Their laws are different from those of every other people.” You see, Persia, much like the US, accepted pluralism. They were fine with the gods of other peoples that were a part of the empire insofar as they didn’t interfere with the Persian agenda. They were all for pluralism so long as it advanced their plans and served their own needs. And, that’s the point that Haman is making. “They have a strange God with a strange law, and that puts them at odds with the king.”

We look “weird.”

That is, they’re weird, and they refuse to change. The monotheism of the Jews always made them a fringe religion to the other nations. In Rome, early Christians were called atheists because they didn’t accept the Roman pantheon of gods and only worshiped the triune God of the Bible. And, provocatively, their weirdness is tied to their relationship with the God’s word. They related to their God through his Law, and it was a Law that actually commanded them to be good citizens! But, God’s word always looks weird to those who reject it.

Our faith is weird to our world, too, isn’t it? They say about us what Haman said about the Jews: “They’re weird, and they refuse to change.” Now, I don’t think Christians should go out of their way to be weird. The gospel is at home in every culture, and we ought to be adaptable, too. But, when the decision is between what is normal and what God has said, we must, by faith, choose what is weird because we trust that God is right. And, you know, when you come to think of it, is normal really working for everyone? The Christian sexual ethic is weird, but has the sexual revolution really made people happier? The Christian view of marriage is weird, but has the redefinition of marriage led to a more flourishing society. Princeton did a study, which I’d be happy to share with you, and they discovered from a secular viewpoint that the clearest predictor for emotionally and relationally healthy children was that the child lived at home with his or her two biological parents. That would be a weird thing to say if it wasn’t data, but God has already said it!

We’ll be “antagonized.”

But, being considered the weird ones is what makes the future scary. Because the world antagonizes those who refuse to embrace it. Notice that Haman exaggerates and lies about Mordecai and the Jews so that the king will hate them, too. He says, “they don’t keep the kings laws” and yet it’s only the law regarding Haman they haven’t kept. He says that it’s “not to the king’s profit to tolerate them,” and the king wouldn’t even be alive if it weren’t for Mordecai! And, there’s an interesting parallel here. The avowed atheist, Richard Dawkins made headlines this week when he declared that he was a “cultural Christian” and did not appreciate Muslim Ramadan being celebrated. He said: “I find that I like to live in a culturally Christian country, although I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith…."It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not." And, this is, of course, in spite of the fact that he wrote in 2006: “"To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird.”

But, do you hear it? Even Richard Dawkins, though he thinks we’re weird, has to acknowledge that God’s way leads to human flourishing in a way that is incomparable. Yet, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, the civilized world increasingly antagonizes our faith, doesn’t it? Last Sunday was Easter Sunday, the most sacred of Christian celebrations. And, just days before it, President Biden declared it as Transgender Day of Visibility. It’s a clear shot across the bow of those Christians who uphold the historic tenets of our faith. It’s an antagonization.

And, that’s what scares us about the future, isn’t it? We don’t want our children to have to feel weird. We don’t want to be labelled as bigots and hateful people. We don’t want to be on the outside looking in, but our faith is increasingly unpopular. And, we aren’t sure what the costs will be or if our children will be willing to convert or if our church will stand.

The “odds” are “uneven.”

Esther 3:7 “In the first month, which is the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, they cast Pur (that is, they cast lots) before Haman day after day; and they cast it month after month till the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar.”

Esther 3:10 “So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews.”

Esther 3:12–13 “Then the king’s scribes were summoned on the thirteenth day of the first month, and an edict, according to all that Haman commanded, was written to the king’s satraps and to the governors over all the provinces and to the officials of all the peoples, to every province in its own script and every people in its own language. It was written in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed with the king’s signet ring. Letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with instruction to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods.”

Well, the decree is issued, and it passes all over the empire giving a license to kill to the neighbor of every Jew. They are to kill their Jewish neighbors and to plunder their goods. And, nothing unites people so much as a common enemy. You’ll notice that it’s stated three times to add the greatest intensity and severity. They are “to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate ALL Jews.” So, the most powerful empire in the history of the world is united behind the singular task of killing a tiny, scattered nation that it’s already conquered. The situation could not be more dire or the future more grim.

This wasn’t a fair fight, and that’s how the future looks to us, isn’t it? Did you know that overwhelmingly more Christians have won the Nobel Prize than atheists? Yet, Christians are characterized as anti-intellectual and atheism as the way of the learned. It seems like one of the clearest pathways to career or political suicide is a robust faith in the historical faith of Jesus. Anti-Christian worldviews are being canonized in the curriculum of higher learning, and the Christian is being increasingly characterized as hateful and unreasonable.

And, it scares us to believe that we’re heading into a future where the odds will be increasingly stacked against us, our families, and our values. But, can I tell you what Esther is really about? Can I tell you what chapter 3 is really about? It’s about the fact that God prefers the odds stacked against him. For it’s in the face of the greatest odds that He gives the clearest testimony that He and He alone is the sovereign king reigning over the universe.

God prefers bad “odds.”

You see, there’s a wink here from God that lets us know this is going to be okay. Notice what it says in verse 7. How did Haman decide when he would present his proposal to the King? He case Pur, or lots. He left it up to divination. The fall of the dice. Well, notice in verse 12 how the timing worked out, “the thirteenth day of the first month.” Now, y’all aren’t Jewish, so I’m just going to tell you what day it was, and it was a day not a single original reader would’ve thought was an accident: It was the eve before Passover. They’re supposed to die in Persia the day before they celebrate being saved from Egypt. You see, the Passover celebrated the Exodus, and it was in the Exodus that the Amalekites (WHO BECAME THE AGAGITES) first attacked Israel. And, it was in the Exodus that God said that the fight against the Amalekites was a fight He would fight on their behalf.

So, do you see the point? Oh, the odds are stacked against them, but the game is fixed! God has hedged his bets. You see, Mordecai didn’t get the promotion so that he would be in the right position for an even greater work. He was coming to save his people, and He was going to do it through this passed over Jew, Mordecai.

The game is “fixed.”

How can we face the future with hope? How can we see how scary it is and not flinch? THE GAME IS FIXED! God is sovereign, and He’s hedged his bets. God is with us. God is for us. And, God will win. So, we can cope with the disappointment of injustice, knowing that justice will reign. We can face the antagonization, knowing that we can will be vindicated. We can look to the future, knowing that we will be safe.

You see, God stacked the odds against his Son, Jesus, too. He was dealt with unfairly and antagonized by his culture. And, He was crucified because God had to deal justly with your sin. And, He was crucified because God wanted you, a sinner, to have a reward instead. But, He was triumphant. He was always going to be triumphant. The resurrection was always coming. Because the game was fixed. You see, Jesus verifies what Esther teaches: You can embrace the overwhelming odds with God because this story isn’t finished, and this story is going to be good.

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