Study InEsther

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The Fall OfHaman

Chapter 7v1-10

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IntroductionSome years ago I watched a cartoon with our children. There was a battle going on between the forces of good and the forces of evil. The forces of good were to be vastly outnumbered and woefully ill equipped. But they triumphed in battle because they had a secret weapon.

They had someone on their side capable of neutralising all the weapons of evil as they rained down upon them. Arrows were turned into feathers. Cannonballs changed in mid flight into birds and flew away. Spears no sooner left the enemies hands than they became garlands of flowers. It was the kind of escapist make-believe that children and some adults enjoy!

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IntroductionThis picture of the neutralising of the enemy's weapons is something helps to introduce the passage before us.

Of course, several things are clearly different. We are dealing with a real spiritual battle and not with children's make believe.

And the remarkable thing is that the weapons of God's enemies are not simply neutralised but turned against them with consummate ease.

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Time Running OutTime was running out for Haman. It was with a very real sense of unease that he went to the queen's second party. He would have found it difficult to give his usual concentration to his role of fawning courtier. For running around inside his head must have been the last words his wife was ever to speak to him. Prophetic words, unnerving words, 'You will surely come to ruin‘!

All his plans had gone horribly wrong. The one crumb of comfort he had was that he still enjoyed the favour of the king and queen!

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Time Running OutHis private musing was interrupted by the king, who asked Esther to name her request. What was this petition that she had put off from making the previous day. The king's curiosity is aroused. What could this beautiful girl possibly want.

He professes a readiness to hand over to her half his kingdom. Was this offer simply a polite following of convention or does it reveal a genuine heart concern for his new young bride? He was certainly not prepared for her reply - that her life, and that of her people, might be spared.

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Time Running OutHis anger is aroused towards whoever would dare plot to take his wife’s life. He begins a more detailed interrogation. No longer is the issue one of granting a whimsical request. Did he think that anyone planning the destruction of his queen was also capable of attempting to seize his throne. ‘Who is he, how dare he challenge the royal person in this way?’ Haman must have choked on his chicken leg when Esther pointed to him and said, ‘The adversary and enemy is this vile Haman’. The noose is tightening, the prophetic words of Haman’s wife were being fulfilled, 'You will surely come to ruin'.

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Time Running OutHaman was gripped with a sense of terror he had never experienced before. Esther was a Jewess! He never knew! Well of course he didn't God had seen to that when he had put his agent for the deliverance of his people in place.

Only God is omniscient. This is an aspect of the divine character that the powers of evil always struggled with. They do not know all that God knows and for this reason they are constantly finding themselves outmanoeuvred. Time was truly running out for Haman.

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Time Running OutIn this emotionally charged atmosphere both men are struggling for control. The king storms out into the garden in a rage. Was he thinking;

‘This is the man I have trusted and shown preferment to over all the other officials in my court? This is how he has sought to repay me by plotting the destruction of my bride! He has wormed his way into my affections only to humiliate me. I will be the laughing stock of the palace guardhouse; "Haman persuaded the king to sign his wife's death warrant and the poor fool didn’t realise what he was signing!"'

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Time Running OutHaman, for his part, was beside himself with fear. He is a man who has lost all his poise and self-assurance. He is completely unnerved. The king was bound to order his death. He was clutching at straws as he threw himself upon Esther's mercy. He did so somewhat over-enthusiastically just as the king returned from the garden. The king assumed, wrongly, that he was trying to molest the queen. From that point on any hope Haman had of mercy vanished.

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Lessons To LearnThe story of Haman teaches some valuable lessons. First Satan views all his puppets as expendable. There is a popular saying that says ‘the devil looks after his own'. This passage of scripture contradicts that notion.

When will men learn that Satan has no interest in people no matter how compliant they are to his suggestions? Men and woman are of no more interest to him than disposable drinks cans, after they have served their purpose they are dumped in the garbage can.

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Lessons To LearnIf ever a man was instrument of Satan it was Haman. He had engineered the destruction of the Jews. If successful he would have frustrated God's purpose to bring the Messiah into the world through the Jewish race.

Haman had been one of Satan’s effective and loyal workers. But he’d overstretched himself by taking on God and his people. He discovered too late that he was always going to be on the losing side. He had been outwitted and outplayed by two of God’s unlikely servants!

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Lessons To LearnHaman's master does nothing to help him. As far as Satan was concerned, Haman's usefulness was over. Satan’s plan to annihilate the Jews had miscarried and so Haman is tossed on the scrapheap. In today’s language we would call Satan, ‘a user!’ And those who are enlisted in his service discover this all too late. It is a sore lesson to learn.

In contrast, God never abandons his servants even when they fail. He does not view them as pawns to be used and indiscriminately sacrificed.

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Lessons To LearnIt is reassuring to know that God does not write off his failures. Think of poor blustering Peter. He was confident that even the others deserted their master, he would remain firm. He would stick with Jesus through thick and thin. Then came the arrest of Jesus, followed by Peter's first denial, then his second, then his third.

As the cock crew it was as though he looked in a mirror and for the first time saw what he was really like. He saw the character flaws and defects, he saw his pride and self-will. He began to write his epitaph, 'Peter the disciple - a first class failure'.

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Lessons To LearnPeter consigned himself to the scrapheap because he was sure that was where Jesus would toss him. He was ready to return to his former trade as a fisherman with dreams of what might have been. Then on the shores of Galilee after the resurrection Jesus asked him, 'Peter do you love me'. Jesus did not ask, ‘Are you worthy?' He wanted Peter to acknowledge was where his heart allegiance lay. Jesus recommissions failures.

If a Christian ends up on the scrapheap it is because he has been content to place himself there. God has not placed him there.

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Lessons To LearnSecondly, this passage teaches that men reap what they sow. 'Do not be deceived God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his own sinful nature from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit from the Spirit will reap eternal life'. Gal. 6.7

Paul is not suggesting that God operates in a petty and vindictive manner but rather that there is an ethical principle built into the universe expressed simply as 'you reap what you sow'.

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Lessons To LearnThis principle is clearly illustrated in Haman’s situation. In the past he had made use of the fickle impetuosity of his weak willed monarch, 'Sign this and I will make sure that it does not cost you a penny to get rid of a troublesome people'.

He played upon the king's weaknesses in order to achieve his own wicked ends. And now he falls prey to the impetuosity and fickleness of the king. This is what spelled his doom.

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Lessons To LearnOnly an impetuous weak-willed monarch would have acted so quickly. But Haman could not have it both ways. Previously ,it had suited his purposes to take advantage of the king's impetuosity, now he was on the receiving end of it. It is as if God said, 'I understand that this is the kind of royal behaviour that you like to exploit, very well you shall have a taste of it.'

And the whole thing boomeranged back upon him with terrifying effectiveness. The traits that he himself had encouraged in the king contribute to his downfall for, 'a man reaps what he sows.'

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Lessons To LearnThirdly, note that God uses the enemy's weapons against him. Haman was to be hanged on his own gallows, hoisted on his own petard. They had been built incredibly high to publicly shame his enemy. His victory over Mordecai was not to be a private affair. He wanted to bask in his enemy's humiliation and for others to see what happens when you try to cross an important man like Haman. And now his gallows instead of shaming his enemy would bring shame on his own head while exalting his enemy. The instrument of shame became an instrument that brought the glory of triumph to God and his people.

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Lessons To LearnGod takes the devil's weapons and uses them against him. Is there a better example of this than the cross? Satan viewed crucifixion as the means of bringing the greatest possible humiliation to the Son of God. Satan new his Bible and it taught, 'cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree!' He also knew that crucifixion was the cruellest, most barbaric, most shameful death a man could die. His great objective was to get Jesus on a cross at a time when his humiliation would be most widely publicised - when Jerusalem was full of pilgrims for the Passover feast.

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Lessons To LearnSatan had his puppets in place, a renegade disciple, a weak, vacillating governor, a band of fanatical, religious leaders. Nothing could stop the humiliation of Jesus. His triumph was complete. But his weapon backfired. To use C. S. Lewis's expression 'the deeper magic' of God turned the cross into a glorious triumph and it became the place of Satan's greatest defeat and humiliation.

How mad he must be for his ‘weapon’ has become the symbol of Christianity. For the Christian the cross has become a badge of glory.

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ConclusionAre we surprised that God could say to his people through Isaiah, ‘No weapon forged against you will prevail’, Isa.54.17.

Don't you find it tremendously reassuring to know that God is in such control of his universe and of every circumstance that surrounds our lives he can use. He can even take those things that are designed to harm and humiliate and shape them into blessing that will bring him glory. He can take the weapon that has been forged to defeat you in the field of battle and transform it into an instrument of victory. What a great God. Don’t you want to shout ‘Hallelujah!’ ?

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