Sermon Transcript
On the 3rd day, Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the palace palace in front of the king’s hall. The king was sitting on his royal throne in the hall facing the entrance. When he saw Queen Esther standing in the court, he was pleased with her and held out to her the gold scepter that was in his hand. So Esther approached and touched the tip of the scepter. Then the king asked, what is it, Queen Esther?
What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be given you. If it pleases the king, replied Let the king, together with Haman, come today to a banquet I have prepared for him. Bring Haman at once, the king said, so that we may do what Esther asks. So the king and Haman went to the banquet Esther had prepared.
As they were drinking wine, the king again asked Esther, now, what is your petition? It will be given you. And what is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be granted. Esther replied, my petition and my request is this: If the king regards me with favor, and if it pleases the king to grant my petition and fulfill my request, let the king and Haman come tomorrow to the banquet I will prepare for them.
Then I will answer the king’s question. Haman went out that day happy and in high spirits, but when he saw Mordecai at the king’s gate and observed that he neither rose nor showed fear in his presence, he was filled with rage against Mordecai. Nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home Calling together his friends and Zeresh his wife, Haman boasted to them about his vast wealth, his many sons, and all the ways the king had honored him and how he had elevated him above the other nobles and officials. And that’s not all, Haman added. I’m the only person Queen Esther invited to accompany the king to the banquet she gave, and she has invited me along with the king tomorrow.
But all this gives me no satisfaction as long as I see that Jew Mordecai still sitting at the king’s gate. His wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, have a pole set up reaching to a height of 50 cubits and ask the king in the morning to have Mordecai impaled on it. Then go with the king to the banquet and enjoy yourself. This suggestion delighted Haman and he had the pole set up.
We’re continuing our study of the book of Esther, and over the last couple of weeks, the plot has thickened, you could say. We’ve met our villain, a man by the name of Haman. Haman had a feud with one particular Jewish guy named Mordecai because Mordecai refused to bow in honor of Haman. Everyone else bowed to Haman, but Mordecai stood in defiance, which sent Haman into a rage, and he quickly escalated his hatred of Mordecai to all of Mordecai’s people. Haman schemes to kill all the Israelites living in the kingdom of Persia.
He does so by convincing King Xerxes that it was in his best interest to order a Jewish genocide. So the king at Haman’s request issues the decree and by the laws of the Medes and Persians it cannot be revoked. As a result understandably the people in Persia, both Jewish and non-Jewish people, are utterly stunned that state-sanctioned genocide is only a few months away. It seems like nothing Nothing will be able to stop the extermination of the Jewish people. But Haman has a problem that he doesn’t know about.
The king’s new bride, a woman by the name of Esther, is Jewish. But to this point Esther has kept her background secret, so even the king doesn’t have any idea that his decree will personally affect him and his queen. He doesn’t No, but we’re getting closer because last week we saw a change in Esther. We saw Esther begin to move from someone who lets others determine her future for her to someone who is fearless and courageous even in the face of danger. Before chapter 4, we never see Esther have a voice of her own ever, not once.
Mordecai had said keep quiet about your faith, she kept quiet. Xerxes says, come to the palace because I’m looking for a new queen. She went, and the king’s officials coached her on how best to woo the king. She did it. She always went along to get along.
Who knows why? Why’d she do that? Maybe she thought, you know, as long as I always do what everyone else wants me to do, no one will ever get mad at me. I don’t know, but that’s what she did. She went along to get along.
But now Because she and her people are facing this existential threat, something clicks in her and she’s not going along anymore. She’s willing to swim upstream. She’s determined. She’s brave, even to the point last week we saw her say famously, I’m going to stand on behalf of my people, and if I perish, I perish. That’s why she goes to the king, invites him to dinner.
She’s plotting how she’s going to speak to the king. She seems like a different person starting last week in chapter 4. Who she was doesn’t seem to be who she is. Something foundational has shifted within her. It looks like where she finds her confidence has changed. The things she trusts in to give her a sense of stability, to give her life meaning and purpose, the very roots of who she is don’t seem to be what they were.
In short, it looks like her own sense of identity has changed. She’s reborn as someone new, and of course that change makes all the difference in the world for her and for her people. But there’s another figure in Esther chapter 5, our villain Haman, who experiences no such rebirth. Haman remains stuck in who he was from the very first moment that we saw him. He finds no new sense of stability and therefore his life spirals more and more and more into chaos eventually ending in his own demise which we’ll see in a couple chapters.
So, as Esther roots herself somewhere new and is saved, Haman doesn’t and he collapses which tells us where we root ourselves really matters. It makes the difference between handling circumstances with confidence and poise and falling into utter ruin. It made the difference between Esther and Haman, and it will make the difference in our own lives. So as we study Esther chapter 5, we’ll see— we’ll start with Haman’s identity, where he rooted himself. Then we’ll look at Esther’s identity, where she rooted herself.
And then And then we will see how to switch from one to the other, which is probably the most important question any of us can ask. Haman’s identity, Esther’s identity, then how to switch. So first, Haman’s identity is worldly and therefore fragile. We don’t really need to guess what Haman values most, what gives Haman a sense of self, a sense of worth, what makes him feel like everything in the world is going to be okay. Hey, we don’t have to guess what that is for Haman because he tells us starting in verse 10.
It reads, he calls together all his friends and his wife, and Haman boasted to them about— what? What did he boast about? What does he value most? What makes him feel like he’s really something? Is it how much God loves him?
Is it how God’s work on his behalf gives him assurance that he’s safe no matter what? What? Is that what he boasts about? No, of course not. He boasts of his vast wealth, his many sons, all the ways the king had honored him, how the king had elevated him above all the other nobles and officials.
And then continuing, verse 12, and that’s not all, Haman added. I’m the only person Queen Esther invited to accompany the king to the banquet. That’s his boast. His identity is in his wealth, his children, having higher honor than any other noble, special invitation from the queen. Queen.
Those are the things that give his life purpose and meaning, make him feel like he matters, that he’s safe. There’s probably other people in the kingdom wishing they could be Haman. There are probably other officials studying Haman’s career path to see how did he get there with so much honor. There are probably other people who believed, right, if I had what Haman has, then nothing would ever get me down.
Is there anyone that you look up to like that who you say, if I had his or her career, if I had that kind of recognition, if I had children who were as successful as his children, if I had that, then I would be set. I could rest. I’d never ask for anything again if I had what that person has. You ever catch yourself envious of someone like Haman? It’s easy to do because people like him certainly look like they have all the significant satisfaction and security in the world.
They look like that. But actually, they don’t often feel like that. And in the case of Haman, we know it. We know he doesn’t feel like that because we have a window into his heart that shows us he doesn’t feel stable. At all.
Haman instead feels like a wreck. He even says, verse 13, all that I have, all the fame, wealth, children, honor, prestige, all of it, you put it, combine it all together, it gives me no satisfaction as long as I see that Jew Mordecai sitting at the king’s gate. The only thing it takes for Haman to destabilize, the only thing it takes for Haman to lose his sense of security and significance, for him to feel like his life is falling apart, the only thing it takes is for one guy in the whole kingdom who refuses to honor or recognize him. That’s it. 99.9% of people tell Haman how great he is, one guy refuses to bow to him and it crushes him.
He’s so fragile. One criticism. He can’t stop himself from worrying about it, and he’s filled with rage. Verse 10, it serves as a warning to us if we root ourselves in the things of this world, even good things. I mean, Haman roots himself in good things— career, recognition, children.
Those are fantastic. There’s nothing wrong with desiring those things or loving those things, valuing those things, but Haman goes further than that. He needs those things in order to have a sense of security and stability in the world, and therefore he is fragile. Because when one of those things gets poked, and they will, they always do, when it gets poked, we will feel like our world is coming down. Can you relate to that?
From the outside, maybe your life looks pretty good. You have a job, you have a place to live, maybe you have children, you get some recognition sometimes, but then there’s one guy who doesn’t like you, one friend who didn’t like your post on social media, one critical email you received, or, you know, or your annual review with your boss went great overall, but one out of 37 categories wasn’t as glowing as the rest of them. And now it’s all you can think about. You fixate on it. Nothing else you have can bring you any satisfaction.
You feel like a failure even though you aren’t. It doesn’t matter how much else is right in your life, you can’t sleep until this one little piece of your world is resolved. Can you relate?
When you notice that within yourself, when you realize you’re obsessed with something and you can’t have any peace, you can’t have any satisfaction, when you notice that, it’s an indicator. It tells you something. It tells you where you have rooted your identity, and it could be anything. It might not be recognition like it was with Haman. It could be health, body image, some opportunity, you know, a rift in a relationship, anything.
But if you find yourself in a death spiral because you now— and now you don’t have the thing, now you know that’s where you were placing your ultimate hope. If you weren’t placing your ultimate hope there, then you wouldn’t be so utterly crushed. If you could still enjoy other things in life, then that’s not where your identity is. If you’re going to have— if you have a healthy desire for it and you lost it, then of course you would be sad, you’d feel disappointed, you need someone to comfort you, but you wouldn’t feel totally ruined, right? If you can face criticism, for example, you get that one critical email and you respond by— of course you’re disappointed, but you also seek to learn about yourself, how other people see you, and most importantly, you don’t wanna attack the person who criticized you, right?
If that’s how you handle the criticism, then you know, oh hey, my identity is not all wrapped up in approval from others like it was for Haman. But if you can’t let it go, if you can’t be comforted, then that tells you something else. So self-evaluate, how are you doing? Are you all wrapped up in approval like Haman? Or are you okay in that area?
And if you’re not all wrapped up in that, are you all wrapped up in something else? What can make you say like Haman said, I can’t even enjoy all the other good things in life because I don’t have It’s probably something, and if you don’t know what it is right now, you will find out in the future when you lose that thing, when you find yourself in a death spiral. That will happen, and then you’ll know, oh, that’s where I placed my ultimate hope, and now that’s why I’m so because I rooted myself in something of this world. That’s Haman. Now what about Esther?
Esther’s identity is in something stable, extremely stable as a matter of fact, because Esther is in a terrifying situation, but she doesn’t appear to be terrified at all. She walks into the king’s throne room uninvited, which means she could be killed right there. The rule was everyone needs to be summoned to that place in the palace, and if you just show up on your own without an appointment like Esther does and the king doesn’t extend his scepter— as it’s like an act of mercy, it’s so pretentious on his part, you know, you need an invitation to come to my presence, I need to have drawn you here because that’s how important I am. That’s what the king thinks. If he doesn’t extend his scepter, then she’s killed on the spot.
But she walks in anyway, and she not only walks into that terrifying situation, she does it with poise. She’s smooth and she’s patient. She doesn’t blast into the king’s chamber hysterical, like demanding that he do something about this law or all her people will— and she will die. She’s not frantic and wild. She’s at peace, she’s cool, she’s measured, she’s not in a hurry.
She knows how to approach the king in a way that he’s more likely to listen. She just invites him to dinner, then invites him to dinner again. She plots her course carefully because she knows she’s about to tell the king that the decree he issued earlier to kill all the Israelites was a mistake. And that’s tricky because this king is someone who thinks everything he says is infallible. That’s why his laws can’t be revoked.
Everything I said was perfect the first time, don’t need to revoke them. My voice is like the voice of a god. And she’s going to tell him that he’s wrong, and she’s doing it without being invited. It is pressure-packed.
But she’s patient. She’s steady. She’s so steady, in fact, we heard last week, chapter 4, she approaches the situation thinking, I will stand on behalf of my people, but if it doesn’t work and I perish, then I perish. I’m going to be okay no matter what. Whether I live or die, I’m Okay.
Now, what could give you that kind of confidence where you have poise even when you’re facing death? Where could she be rooting herself? We’re not actually explicitly told, but it’s a good assumption that she has rooted herself in God, in his plan for her, in his plan for her people. That’s a good guess because for one reason, like Steve mentioned last week, she asks for everyone in the kingdom kingdom to fast on her behalf as she goes and talks to the king, chapter 4, verse 16. And she wouldn’t ask people to fast on her behalf if it weren’t God that she was hoping in for salvation.
I mean, fasting doesn’t help in some other way that’s unrelated to God. It had to have been in God. That alone makes it a pretty good guess she was rooting herself in God and his plan for her and her people. But another reason is that she really doesn’t have anything else to hope in, in this moment. At this point in the story, she has nothing else to stand on.
She has nowhere else to look for confidence. Think about it. She certainly couldn’t have been finding her confidence in her marriage, for example, At this point in the story, Esther hasn’t seen her husband, uh, in a month, and he spent the last 30 nights with not her.
So if she were the type of person who thought, you know, marriage will make me feel whole and wanted— if she thought that, she would have found out pretty quick it wasn’t true. She can’t get her confidence from from being treasured by her husband. She wasn’t treasured, so marriage wouldn’t give her confidence. Neither could she get her poise from her position as queen because her royalty really actually means nearly nothing. Xerxes at the beginning of our book has already thrown away the previous queen just on a whim.
So, Esther knows she could lose her status status in an instant. Her crown would give her no stability, provided no protection. Neither will her community, her people. She can’t rely on them because no one can have her back here in this moment. No one is going to be able to help her, support her.
When she walks in to talk with the king about the genocide of her people, she’s going in there alone. And she knows she may not come out of the meeting alive.
So she can’t be rooting herself in her marriage or in her career, her royal position, or in her community because none of those would have actually provided any stability in that moment. So where’s it coming from? What did she find?
It’s something rock solid, and it’s a good guess that something is God.
Do you have anything that stable?
Do you have your identity rooted in a place that can survive and remain strong even in a situation like hers? When you can’t count on your marriage, when you can’t count on your career, when your status gives you no advantage in When you can’t count on your community, when you are alone, when no one is going to be there for you, when it’s all crashing down, when you’re there— and we will all be there at some point in our lives— do you have an identity that can survive that?
If you don’t, don’t fool yourself that you are rooted somewhere stable. You are not.
And it may not have crashed down yet, but it will crash down. And when it does, you’ll need to know how to get to where Esther had rooted herself.
Which brings us to probably the most important question any of us can ask: how do we change our identity from one to the other? How do we move move from someone like Haman to someone like Esther? Answer: stress, outside input, and buy-in. Stress, outside input, and buy-in. And to be clear, there’s probably one more— there are probably more than one path of how we change the most, you know, fundamental structures of our heart.
Probably more than one way to get there. So I’m certainly not saying this is the only way, but it’s what we can observe from this text, we see stress, we see the role of outside input, and we infer there must have been buy-in. We’ll look at those one at a time pretty quickly. First, stress. We often need some kind of forcing function that compels us to reevaluate where we have rooted ourselves.
Something has to force us. I hate to tell you, but like we see in this account, more often than not that forcing function is pain. Something we’ve counted on, something we believed would always be there to provide us security, satisfaction, significance has now failed us, and as a result, we’re disoriented, we’re hurt, we’re forced to look for stable ground elsewhere. Interestingly, both Esther and Haman experience a forcing function. Esther is obviously facing the genocide of her people, which will include her.
That’s about as stressful as you can get. But it was the catalyst that pushed her away from being the go-along-to-get-along kind of person to the type of person who would defend her people with confidence and poise. Because her old way of dealing with the world wasn’t going to work anymore. Her old way of handling stress is inadequate now. I mean, if what she used to think was, you know, as long as I always do what everyone wants me to do, then no one will be mad at me and then I’ll be safe.
If that’s how she used to look at the world, it’s not going to work anymore. If she does that now, she and all her people are going to die. Her old way of handling the world wasn’t strong enough to deal with her new situation, so she must find something new or crumble to pieces. Pain forces her to reevaluate. Haman is in a similar boat.
His situation is comically not as severe, but he’s freaking out about it as if it were. He’s rooted himself in, you know, recognition and approval from others, and now there’s someone who won’t give it to him, so he feels an enormous amount of stress. And like Esther, his established way of feeling safe in the world is not strong enough to deal with his new situation. So he, like Esther, will need to find somewhere, somewhere else to stand or crumble to pieces. And that’s often how it works.
Something pushes us away from where we previously rooted ourselves. It’s why in the New Testament we have these principles. Romans 5:3, not your favorite verse: suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, character hope. Right? So where does hope start?
Well, it starts with suffering. Or similarly, 1 Peter talks about how suffering serves as a refining fire for our faith. It’s suffering that puts us on a path eventually resulting in unshakable faith in Christ. I won’t say that’s always the way it must work. I mean, there might be some way to find rock-solid confidence in Christ without pain.
That could be out there maybe, but at the same time I don’t think you’ll find an example of anyone in Scripture who developed a deep-rooted faith in Christ by breezing through life. All the big faith people experienced some kind of massive challenge, so that’s probably how it’ll work for us as well, which means when you pray something like, and you should, God, draw me closer to you, or if you pray, God, bring me to the place where I feel safe and secure in you regardless of my circumstances, if you pray that, and you should, he’s most likely going to accomplish it by taking you through a refining fire, some kind of loss, disappointment, stress, pain, pain. It’s part of the process. It’s part of the process, but it’s not the only part of the process. Studying Esther and Haman side by side show us that suffering by itself doesn’t always result in faith.
A fire might push us toward God like Esther, or it might push us the other direction like Haman. So there must be more to it than suffering alone. Alone, which brings us to outside input. What do the people around us tell us about our suffering? What advice do we receive?
Who counsels us and what do they say when we’re going through a fire? Haman gets terrible advice. His wife and his friends unanimously tell him, Haman, you’re upset that Mordecai won’t praise you? You’re down about that? Well, let us tell you what you need to do.
Build a gallows 75 foot high, hang Mordecai on it so everyone knows, including him, that you, Haman, cannot be defied. That’ll solve your problem, then you’ll feel back on top. Essentially she says, Haman, you were counting on recognition and approval to make you feel whole? Which failed you. So, what you should do, what you should count on instead is how much power you have.
If you can eliminate anyone who is critical of you, well, then you will always feel safe. Terrible advice because as I am sure all of us already know and we will see later with Haman, power is not a stable place to put your hope either. Haman will not always be able to control his situation through his influence and his leverage. He will never have enough power to eliminate all opposition.
And when that comes crashing down on him, it’s all over. Switching from one fragile identity to another fragile identity doesn’t make him any safer. So don’t make that same mistake. When your career is in jeopardy, don’t pivot your ultimate hope to relationships. When your health is in jeopardy, don’t trust a cure as your ultimate hope.
Not that relationships are bad or doctors are bad or treatments are bad. I mean, we should have all of those, but none of those are strong enough to carry us through the biggest challenges of our lives. None of us can support— none of them can support us when everything goes dark, not even if we combine them all together. If you’re someone who says, well, okay, I won’t put all my eggs in one basket, I’m going to spread my hope around between, you know, family, friends, health, career, reputation, power, etc., and then if any one of those fails, at least I’ll have all the other ones and then I’ll be safe, that won’t work either because there will come a moment like it did for Esther Where you are alone, all alone. You roll into surgery by yourself.
You lay awake at night and you think about your problems by yourself. You might walk in to confront a king by yourself. There will come a moment when nothing else can support you.
And you need to be prepared for that moment. So you need someone advising you the only place you can put your ultimate hope, the only place that is really safe even in death is Christ. We need someone telling us even if the relationship fails, even if the job fails, even if your health fails, even if there is no cure You’re still going to be okay because God has you. Whatever happens to you, you’re okay because you’re his.
Do you have that kind of counsel in your life? Do you receive that kind of outside input from someone?
Esther probably did, probably. Mordecai must have told her at least something close. Mordecai said, previous chapter last week, Esther, if you don’t advocate for us to Xerxes, deliverance will come in some other way, right? The unspoken implication is that God has them. They are— so they are secure no matter what.
No matter what Esther does, no matter what Haman does or Xerxes, even if the sun doesn’t come up tomorrow, they’re still going to be okay. That’s what Mordecai tells her basically, and it led Esther to believe the same thing. She says, whether I perish or not, either way I’m still secure. We need people telling us that. We need people pointing us to the only real hope.
We need it. It’s a factor in whether or not we root our identities in God. But that’s also not all there is to it. If we’re going to root ourselves in God, yes, we’re going to need a forcing function to get us there, probably. Yes, we’ll benefit from outside input, but ultimately we need to buy in ourselves.
Because some people choose to run toward God while other people choose to run away. Even if they have the same circumstances, even if they have the same outside input, some run toward, some run away. For instance, like we sang earlier, Jesus has been faithful through generations, so why would he fail now? He won’t.
Some people hear that and they are relieved, like Esther. They say, perish or not, I’m okay either way. God won’t fail. Even in death, God won’t fail. And they move toward God.
But other people hear, he’s been faithful through generations, so why would he fail now? They hear that, they harden, they scoff, they say, he’s already failed me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.
Same song, could be the exact same circumstances, different reactions. It takes buy-in from us.
So which are you?
When you hear that the God of the universe loves you, He knows you by name. He loves you so much that he suffered on the cross in your place. When you hear that he took the blame for all of your sin in order to reconcile you to him because he loves you so much, he wants to live forever with you. He wants to be with you, you know, he wants to live with you in a world that he will remake, a world without suffering or pain or death, a war where there is no disease.
A world that is forever, a world that is without corruption, and he paid the price so you could be part of it.
And you will be part of it no matter what happens today, tomorrow, or in 1,000 years. When you hear that, is it a relief?
Does it stabilize whatever you’re worrying about? About? Do you say, well, gosh, if that’s my certain future because I’ve placed my faith in Jesus, then I’m okay. Even if the market crashes, even if I lose everything, even if I perish, if that is my future, that remade world, then I’m safe. Is that how you react?
Or do you scoff at it as if it’s some fairy tale?
Some of you will run toward, some of you will run away.
It’s up to you whether you embrace it or not, but in Christianity you have the resources, they are available for a security that cannot be shaken.
That’s what Esther found.
And Mordecai— or Haman didn’t. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for being so good. Thank you for providing us stable ground.
Lord, I pray that you would get all of us there.
I know praying that likely means you’ll take us through fire, But Lord, if that’s what it takes to get to You, that’s what we want. Get us to You so that we really will be unshakable.
We pray all those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
