Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

Bottom Line:

Decisions, good and bad, have a much wider impact than we usually know.

Read Passage: Esther 2:19-3:15

Mordecai discovers a plot to kill the king (2:19-23)

Mordecai hears about the plot by the 2 eunuchs and tells Esther so the king will be saved.

They write this down in the book of history, but Mordecai doesn’t receive a reward for it.

Modecai refuses to bow before Haman (3:1-6)

Haman, however, has been moving up the ranks and the king really likes him.

All of this power fuels the pride in Haman.

The king ordered people to honor Haman and Haman likes it when people bow down to him.

Everyone else is bowing down at the King’s Gate, except for Mordecai, so those with him want to know why he won’t do it.

They decide to pass the info along to Haman because Mordecai had made it know that he was a Jew.

But Mordecai isn’t willing to bow down, to show any honor to Haman.

There’s a lot of discussion as to why he won’t, but we simply don’t have the answer from the text.

Haman isn’t satisfied to just punish Mordecai, but he decides the entire Jewish people should be killed.

Haman decides to plot to kill the Jews (3:7-15)

The Jews would have been preparing for Passover, in the 12th year of King Ahasuerus’s reign.

After casting lots, the lot fell on Adar, as the month Haman would propose to eliminate the Jews.

Haman tells the king the Jews are up to no good and it’s not good for them to be in the kingdom and he’s willing to pay 375 tons of silver to help eradicate them from the kingdom.

The king approves.

The word is written up and sent everywhere.

The king and Haman sit down to drink but there’s chaos in the city as an edict has just been written declaring the destruction of an entire people group.

Application:

1.

In God’s providence, he’ll put us in places for other people’s good.

Mordecai was likely just concerned with Esther, yet his presence near the King’s Gate allowed him to hear of the plot against the king.

Question: How can we make the most of the opportunities God gives us?

Pray and ask God to help you know he wants you to do each day?

Look for opportunities to serve others.

Act when you have the opportunity.

Resist the excuses that will come (you don’t have time, you don’t know those people, it’s not your business, etc)

2. The decisions we make have ripple effects into other people’s lives.

Mordecai wasn’t willing to bow down and honor Haman.

We don’t know why, but we do know he refused.

The result of that was an order that declared all the Jews in the kingdom would be killed, young and old, women and children.

Haman, in his anger, decided this seemed like a reasonable course of action.

He was willing to eliminate an entire race of people because one man didn’t bow down.

The decisions we make, both good and bad, have an effect on other people’s lives.

The weight of this shouldn’t be paralyzing, but should serve as a check for us to take seriously the decision we make.

The directly impact our family, coworkers, neighbors, and sometimes people we don’t even know, etc

Questions: What filters do you usually use for decision making?

Here are some suggestions that could be helpful:

What decision will bring God to most glory?

Which choice is most loving to those around me (family, coworkers, etc)

Are there any decisions that are outright sinful?

Is there someone else I should consult before I make a decision?

Do I have any ulterior motives for the decision I want to make? (My own pride, selfishness, revenge, etc)

Knowing that, if I’m in Christ, Jesus has lived the perfect life, died the death I deserve and defeated sin and death on my behalf, so that I have right standing before him, no matter what happens in this decision, what’s keeping me from making a decision?

(I know I want to sin, I’m afraid of what people will think)

3. What is in our hearts will come out through our actions.

Haman hated Mordecai and Haman hated the Jews.

Mordecai’s decision not to bow allowed Haman’s hate for an entire group of people to be on display and he was empowered to act on his hatred.

Jesus is clear that it’s not what goes in a person that defiles them, but what comes out of their mouths.

Matthew 15:10-20

3. Haman’s heart was full of evil and if we’re honest ours isn’t as pure as we wish it was.

Question: When was the last time you took inventory of what your mouth reveals about your heart?

None of us is going to be able to look and find nothing out of sorts.

None of us is perfect and we’ve all missed the mark somewhere, but we can probably use this as a diagnostic question to see how we’re trending.

If you’d look over the last couple of months and you feel like you’re on the right track and your growing, use this as an occasion to praise God for the transforming work in your life.

If you’d look over the last couple of month and you feel like maybe you’ve taken a step back and use this as an occasion to turn back to the Lord, by confessing where you’ve missed it.

If you’d look over your and acknowledge that your heart indicates that you’ve never trusted Jesus, today is a great day to believe the Gospel.

When we’re willing to take the condition of our hearts seriously, we’ll put ourselves in position to see what God’s doing around us and how he might want to use us and we’ll be more inclined to consider why we’re making the decisions we’re making and how they impact others.

Challenge:

As we prepare to share in the Lord’s Supper, take a quick inventory of your own heart.

Praise where you need to praise, Confess what you need to confess.

Remind yourselves of the hope you have in Christ through Jesus life, death and resurrection.