The Great Deliverance

If you have a Bible go ahead and grab it. We’re going to be covering Esther 7-8 tonight and then Lord willing, we will be finishing the book next Wednesday. There is a lot to get through tonight as we look at these two chapters and the main theme that we will be looking at is the theme of deliverance. When I say the word deliverance, what comes to your mind? Some might think of delivering a package or maybe even arriving at a destination, you’re in a car and someone delivers you or drops you off at the airport, something like that. When I think of deliverance, I think of rescue. I think of rescue from something that on my own, I am totally unable to rescue myself from. I think of the book of Exodus and how God delivered His people out of Egypt. I think of the book of Judges where God sends men and women to deliver His people out of oppression. I think of movies like Avengers Endgame when Captain America is about to face Thanos on his own and all of a sudden, the portals open up and here come all the other Avengers or maybe Star Wars where Han Solo shows up at the end and helps Luke to blow up the death star. These are moments where no matter how strong or talented you are, you cannot be your own rescuer. You cannot be your own deliverer and when you look at the book of Esther and the events that are taking place, you see a great need for deliverance. You see a great need for someone with power and authority to come in and rescue those that are totally powerless to save themselves. Really, we get a look at our lives because we all are facing a foe that we are powerless to rescue ourselves from and that is what we are going to talk about tonight. What do we need to be delivered from? We’re going to talk about three things that we need to be delivered from that we can gather from these two chapters and those things are: 1. We need to be delivered from death. 2. We need to be delivered from wrath and judgement. 3. We need to be delivered from the temporary. I’m going to go ahead and read for us Esther 7 and then after we talk about that, we will summarize what happens in Esther 8. Esther 7 says

Esther 7 ESV

So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. And on the second day, as they were drinking wine after the feast, the king again said to Esther, “What is your wish, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me for my wish, and my people for my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have been silent, for our affliction is not to be compared with the loss to the king.” Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has dared to do this?” And Esther said, “A foe and enemy! This wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen. And the king arose in his wrath from the wine-drinking and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg for his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that harm was determined against him by the king. And the king returned from the palace garden to the place where they were drinking wine, as Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was. And the king said, “Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?” As the word left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face. Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, “Moreover, the gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, is standing at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.” And the king said, “Hang him on that.” So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the wrath of the king abated.

Deliverance from Death

Let’s talk about that which may be the most obvious thing of which we are powerless to deliver ourselves from and that is death. Death comes for everyone. The author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 9:27 “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” There is no escaping death. Death is an appointed moment for each and every one of us unless Christ returns first. We know that no matter how healthy you are now, no matter how great medicine or doctors can be, no matter how old you might become, there will be a time where your body wears out. There will be a time where you will be confronted with death. No matter how great the doctor, no matter how great the diet, no matter how great the amount of money in your bank account, you will not be able to buy more time than what the Lord has allotted to you. While you may be able to delay death so to speak, you cannot totally avoid death or deliver yourself completely from it. When you look at the book of Esther, the shadow of death is hanging over practically the entire book. There’s Haman’s desire to kill not just Mordecai but the entire Jewish race. There’s the assassination plot that is foiled at the end of chapter 2. We see the death of Haman in what we just read and there is still more death to come. Notice Esther’s language in verse 4, she said that her and her people had been sold to be destroyed, killed, and annihilated. You would think that just one of those words would be fine to describe what Esther is afraid of but she uses all three to stress the certainty, severity, and utter helplessness that the people are facing. Esther understands that to be delivered from death requires an outside source. Esther is queen but that alone does not remove the threat of death. You can be the most powerful man in the world and death is as certain for you as it is for anyone else in the world. You can sometimes delay the inevitable but the inevitable will always come. What we see in this chapter is that we cannot escape death on our own. It is a complete and total impossibility to deliver ourselves from death. Now I will be the first to admit to you that when I was your age, the last thing that I thought about was death. Why? Because when you’re young you feel like you’re invincible don’t you? You feel as if you have so much life ahead of you that death seems so far off that it would be crazy to think about it at 12, 13, 14, 15 and so on. Why is it important for us to think about it? Because it is universal! Young and old, everyone must confront this foe at some point! In history, death has hardly ever been seen as a good thing but as the great enemy that we must confront at some point. Dylan Thomas, had a poem back in the late 1940’s that had the famous line, “Do not go gentle into into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light.” If you have seen the movie Independence Day with Will Smith, the president quotes this line right before the attack on the alien ships. What Thomas was emphasizing here is that when death comes, we should rage against it. Death is not natural and the only way to confront the dying of the light so to speak is to confront it with a greater light that never goes away. Look at Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus and you see a righteous rage directed at death. One thing that I think I am grateful for about the pandemic is that it caused a lot of us to confront mortality. We all know someone that died during the pandemic and I think that God used this pandemic to remind us that we are finite. That all have an expiration date! Since death comes to all of us, one thing that we need to emphasize is what we do with our time. Paul says in Ephesians 5:15-16 “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” When you think about time, you probably think about the time in the day, you think clocks and hours, but Paul does not use the word in reference to a 24-hour cycle but he uses a word that involves a set period of time. The time that he is referring to is what we do with the days and years that the Lord gives to us. On a positive note, we can look at death in this way: In God’s perfect sovereignty, a sovereignty that extends over death itself, we know that death cannot touch us until the exact moment that God allows it to. Death can do absolutely nothing unless God allows it to. It is God who gives man the days and the time in which he is living so what you need to do is decide what you must do with the time that God has given you. You must figure out today if you are going to waste the time you have or if you are going to maximize the time that you have for the glory of God. Once time is spent, it cannot be given back. Jonathan Edwards understood that no amount of years can make up for lost time. He said, “If we have lived fifty, or sixty, or seventy years, and have not improved our time, now it cannot be helped. It is eternally gone from us. All that we can do, is to improve the little that remains. Yea, if a man have spent all his life but a few moments unimproved, all that is gone is lost, and only those few remaining moments can possibly be made his own. And if the whole of a man’s time be gone, and it be all lost, it is irrecoverable. — Eternity depends on the improvement of time. But when once the time of life is gone, when once death is come, we have no more to do with time; there is no possibility of obtaining the restoration of it, or another space in which to prepare for eternity.” In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo tells Gandalf that he wishes that he had never received the ring of power and that none of these things that came with that ring would have ever happened to him. All of the evil and suffering, all of the trials and tribulations, all the death that seems to connect itself with the ring, Frodo wishes that it never happened. Gandalf, very wisely says to him, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.” What does this mean for you then? You are living in this time and a moment will come when you won’t be anymore. But until that time has come, God has given you time to work. He has given you time to live a life that truly matters and makes a difference. It is remarkable to me how there are so many that claim to be alive that are truly dead. Some of you are so afraid of dying that you have yet to truly live. If we are powerless to deliver ourselves from death, what can we do? Outside of Jesus Christ we can do nothing. It is by the death of Christ that the power of death is disarmed. Isaiah 25:8 says: “He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” Even more than that we read in 1 Corinthians 15:24-26

1 Corinthians 15:24–26 (ESV)

Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Charles Hodge said, “Death shall reign until the resurrection. Then men shall never more be subject to his power. Then death shall be swallowed up in victory.” Where does all of this leave us? We cannot deliver ourselves from death. There is only One who is able to do that and unless we do it by that One way, death will always be our conqueror. It is only through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we can be delivered from death. It is only through what our King has done that we can be delivered from that which is to come. Have you truly been delivered from death by Jesus Christ or are you still trying to deliver yourself? And if you have been delivered from death by Christ, true eternal death, what are you doing with the time that the Lord is giving to you?

Deliverance from Wrath and Judgement

The second deliverance that we need to be aware of is deliverance from wrath and judgement. Notice Haman in chapter 7. He’s been caught, he’s totally powerless to do anything to rescue himself so he throws himself down at the feet of Esther pleading for his life. Again, we see here a picture not just of the life of one man but really the entire human race. There is a day of judgement that awaits all. This is what the author of Hebrews said back in Hebrews 9. And when that day comes for you, how are you going to stand? What are you going to plead? Because we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We all lie guilty before the King of all Creation. Now on that day, you can go to the King, you can go to the Judge and you can lay out all your deeds, all your merit, all your kindness and love shown to others and on that day you will discover that all the goodness you may have performed will not make up for all the sin in your life. Should we not be concerned that on the day of judgement that there will be several who say to the Lord, “Lord did we not prophecy in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty works in your name? Only for the Lord to say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” You need to look at your life and your soul right now. If God were to decide that today was your day to stand before Him, what would you say? You are guilty in His sight with your own righteousness and your own merit and no one will receive an unfair trial. God judges as perfectly as He does anything else. If I were to stand before God today on my own and if He were to ask me how I would plead, I’d have to plead guilty. I have sinned, I have crucified the Son of God, I have nothing that I can offer to change the mind of God at all. But I don’t have to stand on my own because my guilt and my sin has been placed on another. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2:5-6 “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.” When I stand before the Lord one day, I know that another stands in my place. I know that Jesus stands in my place having paid the debt of sin that I owe in full. Hebrews 2:17 says of Christ: “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” To make propitiation for sin means that Jesus has turned away the wrath of God towards your sin and my sin and has appeased God and paid in full the debt that is owed. If you truly belong to Christ, you need no other argument, you need no other plea, it is enough that Jesus died and that He died for me. Martin Luther said, “So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!” What Paul said to the Thessalonians can partly be applied to us when he said in 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 “For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.” It is Jesus that we wait for, it is Jesus that we have turned to, and it is Jesus that delivers us from the wrath that is to come.

Deliverance from the Temporary

With the few minutes that we have left, I want to talk about something that you probably have not really thought about and that is deliverance from the temporary. What does that mean? Well, if we were to read all of Esther 8, we see that Esther pleads to the king that he would do something to avert the destruction of the Jews. Just because Haman is dead does not mean that the Kings original order is to be ignored. What King Ahasuerus does is he gives his ring to Mordecai and Esther and he allows them to write an edict in the name of the king and seal it with his ring and this command and law cannot be broken. So, what do they write? They send to every province that received Haman’s original law what is recorded in Esther 8:10-13

Esther 8:10–13 ESV

And he wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed it with the king’s signet ring. Then he sent the letters by mounted couriers riding on swift horses that were used in the king’s service, bred from the royal stud, saying that the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, children and women included, and to plunder their goods, on one day throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar. A copy of what was written was to be issued as a decree in every province, being publicly displayed to all peoples, and the Jews were to be ready on that day to take vengeance on their enemies.

The Jews are allowed to defend themselves against any attack and they are to be ready to take vengeance on their enemies. Then we read in Esther 8:15-17

Esther 8:15–17 ESV

Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white, with a great golden crown and a robe of fine linen and purple, and the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced. The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor. And in every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict reached, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday. And many from the peoples of the country declared themselves Jews, for fear of the Jews had fallen on them.

In these verses we see that Mordecai leaves the presence of the king with beautiful robes, a golden crown, and other gifts. We see the people of Susa shouting and rejoicing and the Jews have light and gladness and joy and honor. Those are great gifts but they are only temporary. The crown will fade, the robes will fade, the joy and sense of security is likely only temporary because the time will come in the future for the Jews where they will face persecution again. If your hope is in this life only and what this world has to offer, you will be disappointed when you find out that that hope is not enough. You need to be delivered from the temporary hope that this world has to offer and cling to the deliverance that comes from Him that is eternal. If you want to be able to go through all the troubles of this life with joy on your face and more importantly in your heart, you have to cling to Jesus Christ. It is Him alone that offers life after death, deliverance from the wrath to come, and deliverance from worldly hope and worldly pleasures that are only temporary. Gold is good, crowns are good, joy is good, but those things void of Christ will ultimately give you nothing. May you check your heart and ask yourself what you need to be delivered from because I promise you this, we all need to be delivered from something. Maybe its the fleeting pleasures of worldliness and sin, maybe it’s from death and you must be brought to a newness of life. But we never outgrow the need for our Deliverer. Remember, life is short, death is sure, judgement is coming, and God in His mercy has given you this time and this moment so what are you going to do with it? In this chapter we see a great deliverance of the Jewish people, but this is only a shadow of the greater deliverance that was secured by Jesus Christ as He delivered His people from death’s destruction and sin’s curse. Let’s go to Him in prayer and we will celebrate the Lord’s Table together.

Communion

As we come together to celebrate communion, I want to remind you that if you are a nonbeliever, this moment is not for you. If you are not a Christian, as the bread and the cup are passed around, just let it pass by you but take to heart what it is that we as the Body of Christ are doing. We are not here to remember a forever dead God, we are not here in this moment mourning the loss of a good and righteous man. No, we come together to remember and proclaim that Christ has died. We remember what He did the night before His betrayal as He gathered His disciples in the upper room, we remember how He passed the bread to His followers and told them that what they were seeing was a visual representation of what He would do for them and every blood-bought citizen of Heaven the very next day. He took the bread that was at the table and after giving thanks for it, He broke the bread, gave it to His disciples and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.” We remember Christ’s body which was beaten and torn, not for His own crimes, not because of His sins, but beaten and crushed for our sins so that we may be forgiven. Likewise, Jesus took the cup and He gave the cup to His followers saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” It is this new covenant with God that is sealed by the blood of the sinless Savior. It is through this new covenant that the many shall be made righteous. We remember that Christ died to not just make this covenant possible but to make it actual for every Christian in time and space. So, yes Christ died. We remember that. But we also remember that Christ did not stay dead and it is this truth that we must all proclaim. Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again and because we know this to be true, we come together to celebrate communion. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:26 “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” That is what we do now. As the leaders pass out the elements, spend time in prayer on your own and when the bread is passed, I will pray and we will take the bread together, likewise with the cup.