Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Hope in Times of Horror | The Writings | Esther 3

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

Where do you turn when life falls apart? Where do you find hope when tragedy strikes and there's no end in sight? In today's episode, Jensen shares how Esther 3 encourages us to look beyond our circumstances, to a God who keeps his promises. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Esther 3

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. One of my all-time favorite movies is Legally Blonde. The movie opens with a montage of the protagonist Elle. She's getting ready for the day, and it pans back and forth between her friends all joyfully signing a card that they made for her. Everyone is happy. Everything is going right, and it's all overlaid by the song Perfect Day. I won't sing it for you, but it says, it's a perfect day. Nothing's standing in my way. Perfect day.

Nothing can go wrong on this perfect day. It's a classic. And the day is perfect because Elle has a date with her longtime boyfriend Warner, who she believes is going to propose. It's the perfect day. Everything is going Elle's way. Nothing could go wrong. But then, what do you know? Everything goes wrong. Warner does not propose. He ends their relationship, and Elle is left devastated. Her perfect day is ruined. It's a reversal of fortunes. Now, why am I telling you this? I swear, I have a point. We are in Chapter 3 of Esther today, and if you've been following along, then you know up into this point, things have been going relatively great for our protagonists. Esther has won the ancient Babylonian version of The Bachelor, and Mordecai, with her help, saved the king from an assassination

plan. You would expect Chapter 3 to open up with the king honoring Mordecai for saving his life, maybe thanking his new wife for relaying the important information to him. Clearly, God has provided for them. Things have been going well for these two. Why would they not continue? And then, chapter three begins this way. After these events, King Xerxes honored Haman, son of Hamedatha, the Agagite, elevating him and giving him a seat of honor higher than that of all the other nobles. All the royal officials at the king's gate knelt down and paid honor to Haman, for the king had commanded this concerning him. But Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor. So I expected King Xerxes to be honoring Mordecai, but he doesn't. Instead, we're given a new,

person in this plot, Haman. We aren't told why the king is honoring him and giving him power. All we are told is that his name is Haman and he is an Agagite, which turns out is an important piece of information. You see, Haman is a descendant of Agag, king of the Amalekites, the ancient enemies of the Israelites, and we learn in chapter two that Mordecai is a descendant of King Saul, who defeated King Agh, hundreds of years prior, which sheds some light on the people. on the following verses when we learn that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor. From the moment Haman is introduced, we are primed to see him as the bad guy. He's honored rather than Mordecai, although Mordecai deserves it, and he's an agagite.

Mordecai refuses to honor him. And as we continue, we quickly see how dangerous he is, skipping ahead to verse five. When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. Yet, having learned who Mordecai's people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead, Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai's people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes. So Haman is mad, and we can see how deeply this hatred between the Jews and the Amalekites run, when Haman, angry at Mordecai, decides he doesn't just want to kill Mordecai, he wants to use this as an opportunity to destroy every Jew.

And the scary thing is, he has direct access to the one with the power to do so. Where we once thought that maybe Esther could do some good for her people as queen, maybe Mordecai will be honored for saving the king's life, we now see Haman honored, and in verse 8 we see him wielding his power for evil. Then Haman said to King Xerxes, there's a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves separate. Their customs are different from those of all other people, and they do not obey the king's laws.

It is not in the king's best interest to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will give 10,000 talents of silver to the king's administrators for the royal treasury. So the king took his signet ring from his finger and gave it to Haman, son of Himedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. Keep the money, the king said to Haman, and do with the people as you please. So can I just say first, we are seeing a pattern in King Xerxes. He seems to lack initiative.

Rather than take control and rule, he sits back and takes the advice of those around him, allowing them to rule and make decisions in his place. And when he does this, it always comes with catastrophic events. Here, we see Xerxes take Haman's word when he tells him of the people who are causing him trouble, who are disobedient, who need to be destroyed. And without even knowing who these people are, how vast they are, or if the claims made about them are true, Xerxes just hands over his power to Haman. And his power is immense.

An edict sealed with the king's signet ring cannot be revoked. And Xerxes is not just king of a tiny kingdom. He's king over the known world. The enemy of the Jews has the power of the king, and he uses it. Verse 13. Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king's provinces with the order to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, women and children. On a single day, the 13th day of the 12th month, the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods. A copy of the text of the edict was to be issued as law in every province and made known to the people of every nationality so they would be

ready for that day. So with this decree, every Jew from Susa to Jerusalem, man, woman, and child, is to be murdered and plundered for all they have. And Haman made sure that every person in the known world knew they had the authority and power to perpetrate this evil. And the really interesting thing is that the final verse of this chapter tells us, while Haman and the king drink unbothered by their decree to commit genocide, the people in the city of Sousa, were bewildered. This is shocking. It's unexpected. The Jews were not what Haman had made them out to be. We know this because the people who were given the power to destroy them are bewildered, wondering why. This piece of information tells us that these actions are unjustified, but they don't give us true hope for the Jews.

While some are bewildered, there are others, like Haman, who will have hatred for them, who will do not. desire to use this opportunity for their own gain. Instead, we are left like the people of Susa, bewildered. This is not what was supposed to happen. See, in 15 verses, we have a complete reversal of fortunes. We see hope replaced with horror, goodwill replaced with evil intent. And we're left with a question, where is God in all of this? The hard part about Esther is that we aren't given a clear answer to this question, ever. God isn't mentioned in the book of Esther, but his absence in the text does not mean he is absent from the events. An interesting detail I didn't point out while we were reading was the use of timing in this chapter. When Haman decides

to destroy the Jews in verse 7, we're told he hatches this plan in the first month of the year, the month of Nissan. In the Jewish calendar, that means that this is happening in the spring, at the time of Passover. Now, if you aren't familiar with Passover, this is a celebratory holiday when the people of God remember what he's done for them in the past. Specifically, they remember the time when the people of God were delivered from the hands of the Egyptians and given their freedom. They remember a time when their God saved them from death to life, when he protected them from evil and gave them gifts of plenty instead. And so, while the text does not explicitly give us reason to hope, it does prompt us to tweak our question in all of this. Rather than asking, where is God

in all of this? Not a bad question, but instead we can ask, will God rescue his people again? It's similar in nature, but instead of focusing on the bad, instead of being overwhelmed by the reversal of fortunes, doubting whether God is good in the midst of so much evil, we ask, is this an opportunity for God to display his power and might by providing salvation for his people? It's a question that recognizes who God is and what he has promised his people. There's no reason for joy in Chapter 3, no reason to rejoice, but there is reason to look to God. Even when we have trouble seeing where God is in the brokenness and in the mess, we can ask the question, will he continue to be faithful to his people, to rescue them, to redeem them, to provide for them?

Yes, Haman, the enemy of the Jews, has power, he has authority, and he has evil intent. But so did Pharaoh, and we know that God is the one with ultimate power. He has authority not just over kingdoms, but over all of creation. And he is always faithful to his promises. God has gone to great lengths to rescue his people before. He's made a covenant with them to preserve them, to make them into a great nation to establish a king from the line of David who will reign forever. And so, while it may look hopeless now, the people have reason to hope, have reason to trust, not because the situation looks good, but because of who their God is and what he has promised them. Now, much like the Jewish people, we have low points in our stories as well, times where it feels like the enemy has power.

and has the means to destroy us. First Peter tells us that our enemy, the devil, is like a roaring lion, prowling around looking for someone to devour. He's not tame, he's not safe. He's creating evil and discord in our world. We experience these hopeless moments of life too. And yet, when things were hopeless, the Jewish people could have hope in the promises of God and you and I can do the same. Our promises are different than theirs. We actually have a more complete picture of the story. Spoiler alert, God was faithful to preserve the line of David, to preserve his people so that the son of God, the true king, the Messiah, Jesus could come and rescue his people once and for all. Through his life, death, and resurrection, he established his kingdom, and scripture tells us

that the power of death of the devil was defeated. Hebrews 2.14, Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Our hope is in the fact that God did not leave us unprotected from the lies, power, and evil of the devil. He rescued us from his grips and made a way for us to live in safety in his kingdom forever. So even when it feels like the powers of this world are bent against you, when it feels like evil reigns, remember, God has already rescued you from the grips of evil. No matter how dark

today looks, you can have hope. Fix your eyes on God. Look to him, remember his promises, remember what he did for you, to rescue you, to redeem you, to make a way for you to live with him forever.