Sermon Tone Analysis

As I mentioned last Sunday, this morning we start a brief break from our time in the Book of Ezra to look at the Old Testament book of Esther.

Historically the book of Esther fits between chapter 6 and chapter 7 of Ezra and since we just finished chapter 6, I thought this would be a good time to look at Esther.

Esther is really an incredible book that I believe can provide a great source of encouragement for each of us.

There are many important lessons in Esther, but 2 that I found that just seemed to jump off of the page for me was the providential sovereignty of God, the fact that God is completely in control of this world He created.

The other thing is the fact that His timing is absolutely perfect.

I will readily admit that there are times when I am not a fan of His timing, but much of the time over the course of time, I have discovered that His timing was perfect.

That is the book in a nutshell, but we will look at these truths in more detail later.

As we start our journey through Esther, I want to introduce you to the 5 main characters in Esther, give you a brief history lesson of what was taking place leading up to and including the time of Esther and look at part of the first 2 chapters.

To begin with, Esther is one of only 2 books in the Bible that do not mention God, the other being Song of Solomon.

There is also no mention of worship, prayer or sacrifice in the book of Esther.

Yet the book of Esther is masterfully written in such a way that although God is never mentioned by name, He is the unquestioned theme of every page, in fact it appears the author deliberately refrained from mentioning God or any religious activities as a literary device to heighten the fact that it is God Who controls and directs all the seemingly insignificant coincidences to bring about His perfect plan.

We also do not know for certain who the authored the Book of Esther.

What we do know is that whoever wrote it was both an expert on Jewish as well as Persian culture.

Most likely a Jew that was raised in Babylon.

Could be Ezra, Nehemiah or Mordecai, but no one knows for certain.

Let’s look at the 5 leading characters of the book.

To start with we have:

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Character #1-Xerxes/Ahasuerus

Esther 1

Xerxes is the son of Darius who we were introduced to a couple weeks ago.

Xerxes had a furious temper as we will see in the first chapter.

On time when he was getting ready to do battle, he had a large body of water to cross, part of the Black Sea.

He had his army build a bridge across, but before they could cross a violent storm blew in and destroyed the bridge.

Xerxes was furious that the storm had destroyed the bridges they built.

He thought that they had been built inadequately by the engineers, so he gathered all the engineers together and chopped their heads off.

He then was furious with the water, so he sent soldiers into the water with whips demanding that they lash the ocean 300 times for its insubordination.

And then he sent soldiers who threw shackles into the water to bind the water and to stab the waves with red-hot irons.

He was a man with an irrational rage.

That rage is on full display in Esther chapter 1.

The next character in the story is: Next Slides

Character #2-Queen Vashti

Esther 1: 10, 11, 12, 15

Historians believe that Queen Vashti was the great granddaughter of King Nebuchadnezzer.

Her father was the last Babylonian King, King Belshazzar.

He was the king when Cyrus conquered Babylon.

According to the Jewish Midrash she was wicked and vain.

Jewish historians also portray her with a hatred for the Jewish people, so much so that she often would require her Jewish servant girls to not only work on the Sabbath, but also work minus any clothes.

Keep that in your memory banks as we get to chapter 1.

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Character #3-Haman

Now if you have watched the movie Aladdin, you have an idea of the role Haman played in the Persian empire, he has the same role as Jafar had in Aladdin.

He was 2nd in command to the king.

Esther 3”1-10; chapter 8, chapter 9; Duet.

25; 1 Samuel 15

According to John MacArthur-This is a man who had been exalted by the king, a capable man, a Persian man, a man who had been lifted up above other princes and other royal officials.

But there’s something very interesting about this man and this is key to the whole story.

He was an Agagite, It says that in 3:1-10; it says it again in chapter 8; says it again in chapter 9, it says, “Haman, the Agagite...Haman the Agagite.”

It keeps repeating that.

That’s not a small detail.

It is the origin of Haman’s hatred that we will see that he has for Mordecai and his hatred for the Jews.

To understand why it’s important to know that he was an Agagite, let’s go back a little bit.

Let’s go back a thousand years, or almost a thousand years, to the Exodus from Egypt.

The Israelites come out of Egypt around 1445 B.C., so were about nearly a thousand years before.

And they’re attacked in the seventeenth chapter of Exodus by the Amalekites, remember that name?

The Amalekites attacked them.

The Amalekites are descendants of Esau, the one who sold his birthright.

Because the Amalekites attacked the Jews, God curses the Amalekites and God’s curse in Deuteronomy 25 says, “One day they’re going to be extinct.”

God pronounces a curse on the Amalekites.

God, the God of Israel, pronounces a curse on the Amalekites.

Four centuries later, King Saul conquers the Amalekites—you remember the story in 1 Samuel—and he captures their king and his name is Agag, the Amalekite king.

Saul was supposed to kill Agag; he didn’t do it.

He let him live.

And Saul incurred the Lord’s displeasure, and for that and for other things that he did that displeased the Lord the throne was removed from his family and the prophet Samuel stepped in.

And you remember what the prophet Samuel did with Agag?

First Samuel 15, “He hacked him to pieces.”

Haman was an Agagite.

And though almost a millennium had passed since the curse, and hundreds of years had passed since the hacking of Agag to death, Haman knew his family history and he knew that it was a Jewish man, a Jewish prophet by the name of Samuel, who had hacked his royal ancestor to pieces.

(John MacArthur)He hated the Jews with a passion.

That brings us the the next character: Next Slides

Character #4-Mordecai

Esther 2:5; 19-23; chapter 3

Mordecai is a Jew and a descendant of Kish, chapter 2, verse 5. Kish is from the tribe of Benjamin, and Benjamin is the line of Saul.

Haman and Mordecai knew their history.

There was deep-seeded animosity between the descendants of Saul and the descendants of Agag for obvious reasons.

And though nearly...What?...550 years had passed, both Haman and Mordecai—Haman the Agagite, Mordecai the Benjamite—had not forgotten the tribal feud that was so ancient.

We will see this feud come to the forefront in chapter 3.

This brings us to the last main character of the book: Next Slides

Character #5-Esther

Esther is the heroine of the book.

A beautiful Jewish woman probably in her early 20’s.

She is an orphan and had been raised by her older cousin Mordecai since the death of her parents, in many ways he was like a father to her.

We will look more at her a little bit later.

For now, let me take you back in history.

Let’s go back in history to 490 BC.

At the time Darius is the Ruler of the massive Persian Empire.

A constant thorn in his side for much of his reign was the rebel forces of Greece.

He assembled an army that ancient sources estimated to be about 1 million soldiers, to once and for all put down a revolt from the once conquered Greeks.

In this instance the Greeks used their knowledge of their own land to outsmart Darius and his army and handed him a defeat in the famous battle of Marathon.

Darius promised to avenge the loss but died before he had a chance to make good on his promise.

Before his death in 486 BC, he made his son Xerxes promise to finish the task.

It took a few years for Xerxes to get things set to make good on his promise, but finally in 483 BC he assembled an army of 250,000 to exact the revenge.

Before heading to Greece, he calls a 6 month military summit to set the strategy for the battle.

This is where the book of Esther begins.

If you haven’t already, turn in your Bibles to Esther 1-page 519 in the pew Bibles.

Esther 1:1-8

So Xerxes ends the 180 day summit with a spectacular 7 day feast where alcohol and food flowed without limits.

According to verse 9 Queen Vashti was also giving a lavish feast, her’s took place in the palace.

Legend tells us that on the 7th and last day of the banquet, some of the leaders began to argue about who had the most beautiful women in the empire.

Some argued that the most beautiful women were the Medes, others argued the most beautiful women were the Persians.