Sermon Tone Analysis

As we begin this morning, would you please turn in your copies of God’s Word to the Book of Esther.

If you are using the pew Bibles, you will find it on page 354.

We will read the first 8 verses shortly, so please have them marked and ready for that time.

This morning we take 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.

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Timeline

In looking at the timeline on the projector as well as in your bulletins, you can see where it neatly fits between the 2 sections of Ezra.

You may want to keep that timeline handy in your copy of God’s Word, as we continue through Ezra, Esther and Nehemiah.

That way you can keep track of the timeframe of what is taking place.

It kinda gives you a picture of the history of these key events.

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 just seemed to jump off of the page for me, first was the providential sovereignty of God, the fact that God is completely in control of this world He created.

The second 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 is always 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.

As we do, I do want to point out that much of what we know concerning most of these 5 leading characters, do not come from the pages of God’s Word, they come from the pages of recorded history.

They are not a part of the inspired Word of God, but are widely accepted by both secular as well as Biblical historians.

To start with we have:

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Character #1-Xerxes/Ahasuerus- Esther 1

Xerxes was 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.

Historians tell us that there was a time when he was getting ready to do battle against Greece.

On the way to Greece, he came upon 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 bridge they built.

He thought that the designs by the engineers were inadequate, so he gathered all the engineers together and chopped their heads off.

But he was also 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 in and they 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.

There is one other event from his life that I want to add that comes into play in the events of chapter 1.

As they prepared to head to Greece to do battle, one of his officials approached him with a special request.

This official had 5 sons who were all getting ready to head to Greece.

The official requested that his 4 youngest sons accompany Xerxes to the the battlefield, but he asked that his oldest son remain behind to care for him, his remaining family, property and possessions.

Xerxes was livid at the request.

He reminded the official that as the king, he himself was heading to battle, and this man had the nerve to ask that one of his sons remain behind!

I guess you could say he did let the oldest son stay behind, although it was in 2 pieces.

He had the oldest son cut in half, placed one half on one side of the road, the other half on the other side of the road, then he proceeded to march his massive army on the road between the 2 halves of the eldest son, delivering a vivid and clear message to the entire army.

Keep this story in mind as we move forward.

Needless to say, his 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

Some historians believe that Queen Vashti was the great granddaughter of King Nebuchadnezzer, if so, her father would have been the last Babylonian King, King Belshazzar.

He was the king when Cyrus conquered Babylon.

You can find more about him by reading the Biblical account in Daniel 5. 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 their 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

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

25; 1 Samuel 15

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.

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 to his brother Jacob.

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.

Since Saul refused to put him to death, 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, we read that in 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.