Word of Salvation – Vol. 24 No. 24 – March 1978
The Worldly Prelude to God's Saving Drama Through Queen Esther
Sermon by Rev. J. de Kievit, B.D. on Esther 1:19
Scripture reading: Esther 1, Ephesians 1:15-23
Psalter Hymnal: 191:1,2,3; 389:1,2; 389:3; 319; 259
Beloved congregation in our Lord Jesus Christ,
What a strange beginning — isn't it — to a book in the Bible. A worldly beginning, we might almost say. With an Oriental feast of the most pagan kind!
What we'd expect, you see, is something upbuilding, with the Name of God mentioned fairly early in the piece. But yet, what we get instead is a story which on the surface at least reads more like something out of the "Arabian Nights" — with lavish feasting and sexual delights.
And, in fact, when you read right through the book you come to realize that the Name of God is not mentioned even once! So that through the centuries there have been questioning voices wondering what this book was doing in the Bible.
Martin Luther, for example, accepted it only hesitatingly, with the remark that he wished it had never been written.
And this is no wonder, really. For what could the Name of God possibly have to do with what plays itself off here, especially in this first chapter?
For what we find here is a whole catalogue of sins — almost everything the Bible warns against at one point or another.
There is King Ahasuerus, who apparently was one of the most cruel and moody of Eastern emperors. Human life meant nothing to him except apparently his own. And his courtiers could therefore never be sure from one day to the next whether they would be favourites soon, or whether their lives would come to a quick and violent end. For the King only had to snap his fingers and he could have whatever he liked: wine, women and song AND human life!
And intrigue — in true Eastern style — was the order of the day because everyone, of course, wanted to come out on top!
That was the setting of this absolute potentate and his court. So it's not surprising that in the swinging party which we find in Chapter 1, no cost and no effort was spared to magnify the name and reputation of the King.
He was no slouch! For 180 days long he showed off the riches of his royal glory and the splendour and pomp of his majesty to all his underlings! A good 6 months!
It did him good in his vain glory to really gloat in his pride, and from other sources we know that most likely at this time he was planning a military adventure into Greece. Again, to bolster his own ego at the expense of what he hoped would be a weak and defenceless people!
Well, if anyone's thoughts were with God therefore... they certainly were not Ahasuerus' thoughts.
No, for to top it all off, there was this great banquet lasting for seven days, with a sumptuous setting which would put any Hollywood production of "Arabian Nights" to shame.
"Tapestries", we read, "couches of gold and silver". These were not just mock-ups either for the purpose of some film. No, they were real!
"And drinks were served in golden goblets, goblets of different kinds, and the royal wine was lavished according to the bounty of the King." And there was plenty of that!
Mere words are inadequate to describe it all — brothers and sisters — but maybe you can imagine something of it, with day after day - and balmy nights — of endless feasting in the royal gardens, with all the pomp, ceremony and worldly delights which go with this.
It was a world — you see — surrendering itself to unbridled passion, to unrestrained lust, all in the lap of luxury.
And at the same time it was a hard world; a cynical world; a world full of power struggle and intrigue.
It was almost inevitable therefore — in this kind of world — that there also should take place the unwholesome confrontation between the Women's Libber Vashti and Male Chauvinist Ahasuerus, in which the woman was to lose her royal position.
It's hard to know who was right in this. It's possible on the one hand that Queen Vashti gave in to a rash mood of independence in refusing to come and be shown off.
But it is more likely that the King's 7 days of drinking hardly enabled him to have noble purposes in mind when he ordered her to come and join him in some orgy or other. She may merely have refused to become a sex object; a mere plaything!
In any case, it was the old story of sin debasing; of sin destroying; of sin disintegrating whatever good was still left in human relationships.
And as a consequence, in the Persian homes it looks as if the wives were being robbed of whatever little rights they still had — and little that was!
And in that world — somewhere — was tucked away a people who bore the Name of God; a people who had been included in His Covenant. These were the part of the Jews who had not — or perhaps not yet — returned to Palestine, like those under Ezra and Nehemiah. But in any case, they were so insignificant in that empire as not to be noticed by the big-shots of that world. They were simply bypassed by the rulers of that darkness. What were a few forcibly imported immigrants in an empire which stretched on the one side to India, and to Ethiopia on the other?
No! It was a world in which the Name of God was TOTALLY IRRELEVANT! And the change at the court, from one queen — Vashti — another, was going to make no difference to that whatever!
What occupied these people was their own interests; their own pleasures; their own standing and rank.
Now, brothers and sisters, this Eastern world with its fairyland banquets and power systems may seem totally different from our world of today.
And our position as Christians in no way compares with that of those Jews in that kingdom of the Medes and Persians.
But IS our world so totally different today? HOW MUCH MORE RELEVANT is the Name of God today than in the time of Esther?
It's not just that we too, in our age, can witness the unwholesome battle between the sexes, but don't you ask yourself sometimes where God is in all the goings-one in our time? Don't you ask yourself sometimes — maybe often — what He is doing?
Well, the recent hijack of urban guerrillas finished up reasonably well, as much as such a thing CAN finish up well. But where was God, say, in the life of Victoria during the long and bitter power strike?
What is God doing about our growing political crises, and the growing threat to our freedoms?
What do you see of God? NOTHING! Nobody honours God or EVEN THINKS of Him!
And how much do we as Christians COUNT in our society? It's laughable, isn't it?
Or how much support, to mention something different, how much support can we expect for our schools as Christians in the battle of bringing up our children in the nurture of the Lord? From our political leaders, say?
We all know how hard a struggle that is! And we'd better know that if this is to continue, then we'll have to do all the work ourselves. We'll have to pay for it all ourselves!
SO MUCH for the NAME OF GOD!
No, today too, we are surrounded by people whose sole thought is for their own financial interest, their own pleasures, their own positions of power.
In Esther's time — at least — most of the lust and corruption went on in high places where they could afford it. But today it is progressively pushed even into our very living-rooms!
Take almost any newspaper... Take almost any T.V. programme... The Box, Number 96, or even so-called fun programmes like Blankety Blanks.
It stares you in the face, and yet it has such underhanded and corrupting influence that we could easily be lulled to sleep and indifference towards such things.
We have seen them and we know what they are driving at.
Now, we are painting a very black picture indeed, are we not, brothers and sisters? BUT IS it altogether wrong?
NOT A VERY PROMISING World in any case, for the Lord to be working in; for the Lord to do anything with!
And really, how much can our community even SEE of our Christianity?
For aren't we often like those Jews there? The very fact that they had comfortably settled there in the East, and had not gone back to Palestine with the rest of their brethren, proved their DISOBEDIENCE to their Lord. They had felt no need to return to the restored Temple worship in Jerusalem. Nor to God's promise of a new beginning there.
If God could do something IN THAT WORLD, in other words; if God could do something WITH that world, then it wouldn't be BECAUSE of His people, but RATHER DESPITE them!
It really is quite fitting therefore — looking at it this way — that God's Name is nowhere mentioned in this book, for His own people weren't taking that Name all that seriously either!
And I wonder if THAT is so very different today?
But yet, despite all this, this is the great message of this book and THIS is the glorious message of the whole Bible, that it is exactly THIS WORLD with all its self-indulgence in which GOD OPERATES! That it is exactly THIS WORLD from which He seeks out for Himself a people AND PRESERVES them! In which HE operates by even using the world to defeat the darkness of the world.
And THIS is what makes our text so terribly important in all this darkness of which we read in our chapter.
For there we find the clue, “...let the King give her (i.e.Vashti's) royal position to another who is better than she...!" A ridiculous little clue. A chance happening we could say; a coincidence in that vast ocean of sin and worldly pomp.
But one which was to change the picture for God's people in that empire.
That was the little opening which prepared the way for that other queen (Esther) who was to be God's instrument in preserving His people from extinction.
There were to be many more coincidences like that to form a chain of events in which the Lord worked His purposes.
For He didn't NEED a strong army, you see. He didn't need a people who were politically powerful or heavily armed like present-day Israel, in order to break through that mighty wall of sin and corruption in which also His people had become entangled.
No, so UNNOTICED did He bring about His victory that the King didn't even realize the importance of his decision to rid himself of his queen.
He even thought he was doing himself a favour!
Yes, even God's own people wouldn't recognize until much later how He HAD been present, ALL THE TIME! They wouldn't realize until much later how He had been working out His Covenant promises, even in this case, for His disobedient people!
But He was there all the same, leading this King with his pomp by the nose, and guiding His people at the same time by the hand!
And that's the way God works, brothers and sisters. It wasn't a very promising world either which saw the Lord Jesus come to this earth. It persecuted Him! It put Him to death! For the very same reasons of self-interest, of self-indulgence. Because He disturbed it in its pleasures and powerplay.
And where was God then? When He cried, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
But God was there too, and especially there!
For, ironically for the world and for the ruler of darkness, God turned this cowardly deed by the world; this seeming defeat into the Great Victory which still echoes around the world today and will forever! "God was in Christ", says Paul, "reconciling the world to Himself.” He used the strength of the world darkness against itself to bring salvation out of sin and death, as He also did at the court of Ahasuerus in the days of Esther.
For yes, He made this seemingly little opening for Esther come about so that His Covenant purposes might be fulfilled. So that He might preserve His people, and so that ultimately the GREAT MESSIAH might come without fail and win that total Victory.
And yes, brothers and sisters, this world is still the same as it was in the days of Ahasuerus — with the strikes of today, with its political upheavals and immoral pressures and pleasures.
But are we therefore to creep away into our little corners because we cannot see God at work? Or because we fail to see how His Name could possibly be relevant to our world of today? Or because we cannot see how He could possibly work in such a mess?
For no, we may not always be able to sense Him, as people continue to laugh at Him and disregard His will. But not only the times, but ALSO HE, is the same, still working out His purposes of salvation until the Victory has been brought to its ultimate completion!
And nothing can stand in His way, therefore — neither the wickedness at King Ahasuerus' court nor the things we fear today, nor the things which are yet to come.
Indeed He will use if He sees fit — the very deeds by which the people of this world seek to gain their ends; by which the defeated ruler of this world seeks to beat God's people into submission.
He will use even these to turn them into victory for Himself and His people. Little things maybe, that no one pays any attention to but which make the march of the Church of Christ unstoppable towards that victory which the Lord Jesus has prepared for her; for us — also in our present circumstances.
For somewhere in our world; somewhere in this mess is THE CHURCH, God's people.
Sometimes disobedient like those Jews in Ahasuerus' realm. And often seemingly insignificant.
It's for that reason that we often feel helpless in our mess, don't we? We feel everything is going wrong and EVIL IS WINNING!
But as Paul writes in Ephesians, "...He (that is, God) has put all things under His (that is, Christ's) feet and has made Him the head over ALL THINGS FOR THE CHURCH, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all."
Often we cannot see that — or sometimes not until much later. But that's our strength. Or rather, He is our confidence if we HAVE any confidence.
Let us NOT be disobedient, therefore, in our world, brothers and sisters, failing to name the Name of the Lord. And let us certainly not become discouraged when the forces of evil still seem to have the upper hand.
For our God has triumphed; our God is triumphing; and He certainly will triumph. And therefore the work we do in His Name will never be in vain, as Paul tells us.
No, let us instead be confident then in Him. And let us be obedient IN that confidence. So that we may speak to the world. So that we may take the Name of God and show it to the world in our lives, in our words and thoughts.
So that we — confidently — may be instruments in His hand in our time; for His glory; for the welfare of His Church; and for the true good of this world.
Amen.