Esther's Requests

Series: Truth To Power: The Book of Esther

“Esther’s Requests”  // Esther 5,7

Message @ Jericho Ridge– Sun, July 18, 2021 (Series: Truth To Power)

 

Hello, friends. My name is Brad Sumner and I am part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge.  We are past the mid-point of July – how did that happen already?!!  Pastor Wally has been away for a few weeks of holidays, we are having summer sports camp this week and then poof… before you know it, summer will be over.  (sorry to rain on your parade).  

 

But I am excited for us to continue our study this month of the biblical book of Esther in the Old Testament which we have titled “Truth To Power”.  The story of Esther is a story about how a young immigrant woman moves from obscurity to the position of queen of the land and who, at great personal cost to her and her family, speaks a very difficult truth to power and saves her people.  

 

Today we are going to see a major advance in the plot because Esther finally makes her request to the king.  This is a fascinating and somewhat complicated story so let’s refresh our memory about who is who and where we are at.  This account is set in the ancient middle eastern empire of Persia in the 5th Century BCE.  

 

When we last met Hamman, who is the main villain in our story, he had just hatched a plan to eliminate all of the ancient members of the Jewish people scattered throughout the 5 Persian empire.  He tricked King Xerses into signing into law an unjust proclamation that every man, woman and child would be killed and that the people who murdered them could take their property.  

 

Then at the end of chapter 3, Haman sat down with the King to have a drink while the capital city fell into confusion.  

 

Then last week, Brady built the tension in the story by helping us understand the counter-plan that Mordecai and Esther hatched together to stand up to this evil plot.  Mordecai was pushing Esther to go into the king and try to change this bad Persian law.  But there is just one problem…

 

In chapter 4:11, Esther reminds her cousin Mordecai that “all the king’s officials and even the people in the provinces know that anyone who appears before the king in his inner court without being invited is doomed to die unless the king holds out his gold scepter. And the king has not called for me to come to him for thirty days.” 

 

In the ancient world, you did not just pop in to the king’s court to say hello or ask for a favour or anything like that.  You came when the king called you or not at all.  And if you appeared uninvited, you were executed.  So Esther invites Mordecai and all of the Jews in the capital city to fast and to pray – not eating or drinking for 3 days – so she can discern what to do.  

 

So we left our main antagonist, Haman, in high spirits drinking and pleased with himself.  We left our protagonist, Ester, kind of in low spirits because she is deeply aware of the challenges in front of her and her people.  But we also see in her a courageous resolve.  Look at 4:15 ‘Then, though it is against the law, I will go in to see the king.  If I must die, I must die”. 

 

This is Esther’s plan – pray first. Then act definitively.  But what is Esther’s big plan once or if she gets in front of the king?  We don’t know yet – but we do get this window into her courage.  Even in the face of all kinds of tumultuous circumstances around her, she is revolved to do what comes to her and to her community as a result of the focused time in prayer.  To speak truth to power.  To make an attempt to save her people.  And if it fails, well, at least she has sought the Lord, and at least she has tried.  Let’s read what happens.

 

Esther 5: 

On the third day of the fast, Esther put on her royal robes and entered the inner court of the palace, just across from the king’s hall. The king was sitting on his royal throne, facing the entrance. 2 When he saw Queen Esther standing there in the inner court, he welcomed her and held out the gold scepter to her. So Esther approached and touched the end of the scepter. 

 

3 Then the king asked her, “What do you want, Queen Esther? What is your request? I will give it to you, even if it is half the kingdom!” 4 And Esther replied, “If it please the king, let the king and Haman come today to a banquet I have prepared for the king.” 5 The king turned to his attendants and said, “Tell Haman to come quickly to a banquet, as Esther has requested.” So the king and Haman went to Esther’s banquet.

 

This is an interesting plan.  The fate of all of your people hangs in the balance and you choose to act courageously by… hosting a banquet?!  Really?!  Why not take the king up on the half the kingdom offer?  Well, first of all – that offer is a kind of hyperbolic saying.  Herrod says the same thing in the gospel accounts.  King Xerxes would not have meant that and certainly would not have acted on it.  The is kind of an ancient overstatement. 

 

But the king knows from this throne room encounter that Esther has a request.  What is it?  For whatever reason, Esther doesn’t tip her hand at that moment.  We’re not told why.  What we do know is that this particular king makes less than stellar decisions when he is drinking.  We saw that in chapter 1 and then again in 3:15.  So is this some kind of character flaw that Esther is exploiting? We are not told.  But the King and Hamman come to the banquet as requested.  

 

And we see Esther as a strategist here. The kind is eating and drinking wine, and in verse 6 “while they were drinking wine, the king said to Esther, “Now tell me what you really want. What is your request? I will give it to you, even if it is half the kingdom!” 7 Esther replied, “This is my request and deepest wish. 8 If I have found favor with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request and do what I ask, please come with Haman tomorrow to the banquet I will prepare for you. Then I will explain what this is all about.”

 

Another banquet?!  How is this helpful, Esther???  The king knows there is an ask coming – why not just come out with it.  We don’t know.  But what we do know is that Haman takes something totally different away from this banquet.  He was verse 9 a happy man.  He is excited because he feels the privilege and exalted nature of his position is finally being recognized.  He and the king are the only two exclusive guests at the queen’s wine banquet.  He feels he has arrived.  

 

But the narrative tension in the text gets dialed up as the focus shifts back onto the conflict between Haman and Mordecai.  Look with me at 5:9 As  Haman is leaving the banquet, “he saw Mordecai at the palace gate, not standing up or trembling nervously before him, Haman became furious. 10 However, he restrained himself and went on home. Then Haman gathered together his friends and Zeresh, his wife, 11 and boasted to them about his great wealth and his many children. He bragged about the honors the king had given him and how he had been promoted over all the other nobles and officials. 

 

12 Then Haman added, “And that’s not all! Queen Esther invited only me and the king himself to the banquet she prepared for us. And she has invited me to dine with her and the king again tomorrow!” 13 Then he added, “But this is all worth nothing as long as I see Mordecai the Jew just sitting there at the palace gate.”



Let’s pause for a moment and consider how fragile your ego has to be if you are at the height of your success and power and yet you cannot enjoy it if this one guy defies you.  Haman is a petty, small man who has been promoted well above the place that his character can sustain.  He is easily provoked. He has huge emotional swings and he pouts very, very quickly and easily.  

 

While it can be easy to pick on Haman, lets’ be honest.  Many of us have fragile egos.  We walk into a room and we immediately begin sizing up every other person in there.  We want to asses where we stand socially, economically or in some other way to those in the room.  We orient ourselves too easily by our status – how many followers or friends we have on social media. What kind of cool job or hobbies we have. What kind of degree we have and the prestige of the institution it came from.  What kind of car we drive or phone model we have or any other number of reference points.  

 

But when we do this, we are placing our worth and our emotional state into the hands of something that can change or be taken from us.  Something that is temporary.  And so when our fortunes change or when ONE PERSON makes a slightly negative comment, we get thrown off our game.  

 

Intriguingly, we also meet Haman’s wife, Zaresh, in the pater part of this chapter.  And she calls a bit of a meeting of Haman’s supportive friends who commiserate with him about how horrible, awful terrible of a day he will continue to have if this Mordecai guy isn’t dealt with.  Remember, Mordecai is going to be dealt with in the elimination of the Jewish people in less than 11 months.  But Haman is in such a hurry, that he can not endure that kind of humiliation for that long.  He must have what he deems as ego justice.  

 

So his friends and wife suggest the following in 5:14 “Set up a sharpened pole that stands seventy-five feet tall, and in the morning ask the king to impale Mordecai on it. When this is done, you can go on your merry way to the banquet with the king.” This pleased Haman, and he ordered the pole set up.” 

 

We are going to revisit this pole at the end of today but it is worth noting that we are breaking up the flow of the story… Pastor Wally will be dealing with chapter 6 which is a bit of a sub-plot next week.  So we’ll jump over that and go to banquet #2.  But just hold space for the altering of the flow of time between this week and next week please.   

 

So let’s jump to banquet 2 which begins in chapter 7.  This is now Esther’s third opportunity for an ask so let’s pick up the narrative at 7:1

“So the king and Haman went to Queen Esther’s banquet. 2 On this second occasion, while they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, “Tell me what you want, Queen Esther. What is your request? I will give it to you, even if it is half the kingdom!” 

 

3 Queen Esther replied, “If I have found favor with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request, I ask that my life and the lives of my people will be spared. 4 For my people and I have been sold to those who would kill, slaughter, and annihilate us. If we had merely been sold as slaves, I could remain quiet, for that would be too trivial a matter to warrant disturbing the king.”

 

This time, she goes for it.  Like right away.  Most people would be asking for prestige or honour or can you get my friend a cushy job… but NO. Esther jumps right into it… My request is my life.  If forced slavery was all that was going to happen, I would not have bothered you but this is a big deal.  

 

Esther notes that both her and her people have been sold - likely a reference to the money Haman had promised to put into the treasury – and that they are “to be destroyed, and killed, to be annihilated.”  This is the same wording used in the king’s public decree.  This appears to be public info.  The king gathers from her intel that there is a person behind this plot.  So he asks in verse 5 

 

“Who would do such a thing?” King Xerxes demanded. “Who would be so presumptuous as to touch you?” 6 Esther replied, “This wicked Haman is our adversary and our enemy.” Haman grew pale with fright before the king and queen. 7 Then the king jumped to his feet in a rage and went out into the palace garden.”

 

The king, who had not been bothered to get the details of the plot earlier, is so distressed that he leaves to the garden – we don’t know why or what he was up to.  Needed time to think? Confer with palace officials to determine Haman’s fate?  For some reason, he leaves Haman and Esther alone, which sets up the final turning point in the dramatic confrontation.  Let’s keep reading in 7:7 

 

“Haman, however, stayed behind to plead for his life with Queen Esther, for he knew that the king intended to kill him. 8 In despair he fell on the couch where Queen Esther was reclining, just as the king was returning from the palace garden. The king exclaimed, “Will he even assault the queen right here in the palace, before my very eyes?”

 

We see a dramatic reversal here… One commentator notes that “The man who was angry because Mordecai would not prostrate himself before him, now finds himself prostrate before Mordecai’s cousin” (Matthew Henry).  

 

But Hamman has also broken palace protocols, something Esther was loath to do.  He is near to or touching the queen while alone with her which is against the law in Persia.  So the king naturally flips out and construes this as an assault.  This is the end of the line for Hamman.     

 

“And as soon as the king spoke, his attendants covered Haman’s face, signaling his doom. 9 Then Harbona, one of the king’s eunuchs, said, “Haman has set up a sharpened pole that stands seventy-five feet tall in his own courtyard. He intended to use it to impale Mordecai, the man who saved the king from assassination.” (more on that next week). “Then impale Haman on it!” the king ordered. 10 So they impaled Haman on the pole he had set up for Mordecai, and the king’s anger subsided.

 

It’s pretty dramatic for a banquet!  But we have to pause and ask “what might we learn from this part of the story that we can apply in our lives today?”  While the circumstances of our lives are far different, I want to highlight four things that I see as important for us to understand and wrestle with in these two chapters.  

 

First, we see that Great Courage is possible.  Esther makes a BOLD move here.  Brady mentioned it last week and it bears repeating that before she makes this move, she adopts a pray first posture.  Her courage doesn’t come from 

 

I love the poem from 1921 by American author Karle Wilson Baker. She said “Courage is armor // A blind man wears; That calloused scar // Of outlived despairs; Courage is Fear That has said its prayers.”

 

Courage comes from somewhere, or more particularly, someone.  Many of you are facing challenging situations which require all kinds of wisdom.  Complex family interactions and relationships. Financial or business challenges as government subsidies come to an end.  Difficult conversations that you know you need to have.  

 

There are many things which can cause us to shirk away or stay silent.  But Esther models for us a kind of posture and pattern that is helpful.  When faced with a challenging situation, pray first. But then also act.  Great courage is possible.  Not because you have things all figured out, but because you have lived into the place of knowing that God is present and with you, giving you courage even in the face of challenges.  

 

The second thing we see here in this book is that Great Reversals are possible.  Esther goes from being an immigrant outsider to being queen. She has come very quickly from the bottom of the heap to the top.  Then Haman goes from the top to the bottom of the heap.  

 

In a very short period of time, we go from Esther being appraised of the plot to her praying to her acting and to the originator of the evil design being removed from the scene.  Hamman, who was at the very top of his career and power is instantly deposed.

 

Then there is a very public reversal where Haman’s body is publicly displayed / disgraced on that super high impaling pole, while Mordechai – who was the intended target of Haman’s hatred – is spared.  

 

What this can show us is that things don’t always stay as they are right now.  You might be looking at a situation that feels like it will never change and God’s invitation to you might be to open you heart and your mind up again to the possibility that with God, things can change quickly and in an instant.  

 

You might be thinking about a family member for whom you have been praying for years who is estranged from you or from God.  And you’ve come to the conclusion that nothing will ever change about that person or situation.  But a great reversal can happen in an instant.  Those who are sick can be healed.  Those who are in power and actively opposing things which are good can be not in power.  God can work and does work miracles where things shift dramatically.     

 

AND At the same time, we need to acknowledge that when dealing with a complex problem, things may not change overnight.   This is the third thing we see in this part of the narrative.  Tension is to be expected – Esther has done away with Haman, but we’re going to see in the coming weeks that the problem still looms. The people of God are still, by law, scheduled for annihilation.  One part of the problem disappeared, the Haman part. But not all of it.  Esther is still living with a big, big challenge.   

 

Sometimes evangelicals are quick to jump to platitudes and what I call magic Jesus.  What I mean by that is that we can fall into thinking that when you have problem, pray and poof – magic Jesus will solve it for you!  No close parking sports at the mall today, just pray and presto – magic Jesus will get one for you.  Problem solved!!  You and I know, friend, if we are honest that life is just not often that simple.  Here Esther acts with great courage, wisdom and faith and while one aspect of the problem is gone, the larger issue is still an issue.

 

So you may be living through a challenge that feels like it is not yet over.  Nurses, you are still living through the effects of a hard season.  Teachers, many of you are still reeling from the strain of teaching both online and in person in ways that you didn’t expect to need to.  We are all still living with the after effects as a country, a community, individuals, of a massive event.  So some tension, some residual stress is to be expected.  COVID might be looking like it is in our rearview mirror but that doesn’t mean that all our challenges have poof – up and disappeared!  That kind of thinking can be unhelpful.  Most challenges we live with are complex, chronic kinds of challenges that are not solved quickly or easily.  

 

So let me ask you a harder question: How are you at waiting?  What does it look like to persist and stay in the fight for the long term when only part of the solution has come?  Most worship songs are not great at this, frankly, most Christians are not either.  Let’s learn to be those who live well in the in between spaces, in the tension and with mystery. 

 

The mystery to me is part of what makes this narrative so compelling.  Why did Esther wait till she did to make her ask? We don’t know.  But we do know, fourthly and finally, that Timing is critical.  Esther had a sense of when to make the move she knew she needed to make.  She had sought God in prayer but there were still a pathway of patience and continuing to discern ‘is this a good time for what I need to say?’  Wisdom in timing is also something that we can learn here.  And we are going to press into that more next week.  

 

So as we wrap up our teaching time today, let me pray for you.  That God would continue to give you great courage as needed.  That God would give you grate faith to see some great reversals in your life.  That God would give you the patience when those don’t always happen, and that God would give you wisdom to know when and how to speak and what to say when it is time to open your mouth.  Let’s pray together.  

 

Benediction 

 

Prayer for Others during the Pandemic

 

Loving and healing God,

we turn to you in prayer,

confident that you are with us

and with all people in every moment.

 

We stand before you as people of hope,

trusting in your care and protection.

May your faithful love support us

and soothe the anxiety of our hearts.

 

Generous God,

fill us with compassion and concern for others, young and old,

that we may look after one another in these challenging days.

Bring healing to those who are sick with the virus

and be with their families.

 

May those who have died rest in your eternal embrace.

Comfort their family and friends.

 

Strengthen and protect all medical professionals

caring for the sick

and all who work in our medical facilities.

 

Give wisdom to leaders in healthcare and governance

that they may make the right decisions for the well-being of people.

 

We pray in gratitude for all those in our country

who will continue to work in the days ahead

in so many fields of life for the sake of us all.

Bless them and keep them safe.

 

O God of creation and life,

we place ourselves in your protection.

May the mantle of your peace

enfold us this day and tomorrow.

 

~ from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kildare & Leighlin, Ireland. Posted at https://www.catholicbishops.ie/2020/03/16/prayer-resources-for-use-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

 

Invite you to join us next weekend, June 27 as Pastor Wally opens the story of Esther and in the afternoon, we will gather to celebrate our graduates.  I look forward to seeing you then!    

Esther now puts her rescue plan into motion. But what does a set of banquets and ancient royal protocols teach us about speaking truth to power?

Speaker: Brad Sumner

July 18, 2021
Esther 5:1-14

Brad Sumner

Lead Pastor

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