Purim and the Cross

Welcome! Over the past two-and-a-half months, we have been exploring the book of Esther, line by line, chapter by chapter. Today I want us to look back at the story as a whole and also think about how the story can teach us more about the ultimate story, the account of God’s dealings with man as a whole, the story of the Bible, the story that has as its central point our sin and God’s solution, Jesus.

In general, the Old Testament points to Jesus. It does it directly, through prophecy, but more often, it does so indirectly, illustrating fundamental themes that are central to understanding and appreciating the gospel. Peter touches on this in I Peter 1:12:

It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told to you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. – I Peter 1:12

Over the past weeks we have on multiple occasions summarized the main events of the book of Esther. Rather than doing this today, I am going to zoom in on a few key portions of the story. Recall that the Jews were in exile from Israel and Judah as a result of generations of the Jewish people forsaking God and following false gods and worshiping idols. Despite repeated warnings to return to God or face destruction and exile, the Jews continued in their sinful ways, and at last the time came in which Israel and Judah were overthrown and its people scattered and carried off into exile. The Book of Esther takes place at the tail end of this exile. It is likely that the events of Esther take place shortly after the first remnant of Jews is allowed to return to Judah and try to reestablish temple worship in accordance with the laws of Moses.

The king at the time of the book of Esther is Ahasuerus, also known as Xerxes, and his kingdom is vast: pretty much the known populated world. The Greeks were one of only a few peoples who were able to resist the armies of this empire. Through events of the first two chapters of Esther, we learn that Esther is a young Jewish woman who is raised by her relative Mordecai. After Xerxes’ wife publicly stands up to her husband-king, he banishes her, and in a bizarre fashion, Xerxes holds something like a beauty contest to select the next queen. This is not a normal way in which a queen would be selected. Normally, the selection would be very political, often to forge new alliances or strengthen existing relationships with other influential people like kings of neighboring lands. Compared to these pragmatic approaches, holding a beauty pageant is foolish. But it seems to be clearly orchestrated by God, because it is the only way that Esther, a Jew, a member of a broken and powerless people, could become queen and wife of the most powerful man on Earth at that time.

Esther chapter 3 begins by telling us about Haman the Agagite, whom Xerxes has elevated to second in command. Others bow down to Haman, but Mordecai refuses to do so. Haman is furious when he learns of it, and he wants to punish not only Mordecai, but the entire Jewish people. He casts lots, likely through a pagan kind of religious ceremony, to choose a god-approved day (false god-approved, that is) to wipe out all the Jews. Then, he asks the king to let him do whatever he wants to the Jewish people, only he does this in such a way so as to not reveal that the real reason (his hatred of Mordecai) or who the people are. Instead, he implies that the people are general lawbreakers. He also offers to pay for the effort, in effect shaming the king, and the king refuses the money (which he must do by honor-shame cultural rules) but otherwise agrees to Haman’s request.

An edict then goes out from Haman in the king’s name to the entire kingdom explaining that on this selected date, people everywhere must kill the Jews, all of them, including women and children. From Esther 4,

In every province to which the edict and order of the king came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping and wailing. Many lay in sackcloth and ashes. – Esther 4:3

Let’s ponder this for a moment. The people face calamity. They face death. It is hard to imagine an entire country commanding that your people be wiped out, but this has happened again and again to Christians (and other ethnic groups) over the centuries. It is happening today at multiple places around the world. In North Korea, simply being a Christian is a crime punishable by imprisonment and slave labor that often leads to death. In China and other countries, it is not illegal to be a Christian but it is illegal to meet as a local church unless it is a government sanctioned, government regulated one. In multiple Muslim countries, it is illegal to share your faith and it is illegal to convert to Christianity.

Laying in sackcloth and ashes is not something we generally do today. Why did they do it? It was an ancient cultural tradition intended to show publicly to others (and more importantly for the Jews, to God) that you face calamity and repent and earnestly desire God to intervene. Fasting was done for the same reason.  These actions were also indicative of repentance. That is, they were communicating (again, most importantly, to God) that they would no longer follow false gods or pursue selfish desires but instead would seek to follow the true God and obey His laws. They likely made the connection between their many generations of sinful living and God’s right to give them the ultimate punishment for their sins. They knew that they therefore had no right to expect God to do something for them, but still, they came to Him, humbly, broken, fully aware that they had nothing they could offer God, nothing even really to say, except, “Please save us! Please show mercy! Please rescue us!”

Is this not a picture of our position before God? We are all sinners, we are all guilty, we all deserve death. As it says in Romans 6, the wages of sin is death. Romans 3:23 tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Our condemnation is deserved. As Christians we understand this. But I had a conversation this week that reminded me that non-believers often neither understand nor accept this at all. There are people who believe that the only reason people do bad things is because they are damaged by previous traumatic experiences with other people who do bad things. They argue that if a person managed to avoid such trauma, they would be consistently good (perfect) people. One problem with this view (apart from it being wrong) is that it can lead to people refusing to “own” any of the bad things they do; everything is always someone else’s fault, the fault of someone who hurt them when they were younger, even a small child or infant.

I am sure Satan loves it when people adopt such thinking (and he helps them right along towards adopting this view) because it produces people who can sin and do the most horrible things all while blaming someone else for everything they do. Although there is no question that experiencing trauma can absolutely have lasting effects that include causing people to become more vulnerable to committing certain types of sins, it is absolutely false that people would never do anything wrong if it weren’t for the trauma they have previously experienced. Adam and Eve are prime examples. They didn’t experience trauma (no, the serpent did not traumatize them, it only talked to them), and yet, they sinned when they took the forbidden fruit.

I am also reminded of Ezekiel 18, which says,

The word of the Lord came to me: “What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel: “‘The parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?  “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For everyone belongs to Me, the parent as well as the child—both alike belong to Me. The one who sins is the one who will die. – Ezekiel 18:1-4

The proverb is specifically talking about the idea that the trauma parents inflict on their children causes their children to do bad things. God does not deny that this can happen, but He rejects the use of this proverb to absolve people from the guilt that is on them for the bad things they do.

Coming back to the Esther story, we see the people in sackcloth and ashes, mourning and fasting. They are availing themselves of God. It is likely that the death sentence is wake-up call for them, that, suddenly facing death, they see themselves honestly, that they are indeed sinners.  You see this kind of response again and again in Scripture. And if you are a believer, you have come to understand that you too are a sinner, that you too deserve the punishment of death, and that you too, like the Jews in Esther, are powerless to rectify your situation.

Let’s turn our attention to Mordecai. We simply don’t know his motivation for refusing to bow. It may have been for good religious reasons (to refuse to bow to anyone other than God) or it may have been because of personal or racial enmity with Haman. In any case, I suspect Mordecai felt responsible for this calamity on the entire Jewish people. It is hard to imagine the weight of being in a situation like this. If it were me, it would be tempting to seek out Haman and offer apologies, bow to him, etc., even offer my own life in exchange for the Jewish people. But there was no point in doing this, because the kingdom had this ironclad rule that once an edict went out in the king’s name, it could not be revoked. Still, I would try. Regarding Mordecai, we read,

When Mordecai learned of all that had been done, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the city, wailing loudly and bitterly. – Esther 4:1

Esther learns of Mordecai and, through a servant, learns what has happened. An intermediary is required because Esther cannot leave the royal complex, and Mordecai, dressed as he is, cannot go beyond the king’s gate. He tells her to go to the king to beg for mercy. But she reports back that a person cannot come to a king without being summoned, and those who violate this rule face death. The king has not called for her in a month.  Mordecai, again through a servant, tells her that she will not escape the fate that awaits the Jewish people. He asks her to consider that perhaps she has come to be queen for just this situation.

Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.” – Esther 4:15-16

In chapter 5 we see that Haman again sees Mordecai, and again, he does not bow to him or approach him at all. This of course infuriates Haman. It also somewhat surprises me. I think if I were Mordecai, I would have tried to reason with him. Would it have worked? I doubt it. But I think I still would have tried.

Haman complains about the encounter to his wife and friends, and out of this conversation comes the idea to erect a huge pole for the purpose of impaling Mordecai. Haman loves this idea and puts people to work setting up the pole.

This is a good place to stop and think about parallels to the purpose and life of Jesus. One comparison we can make is between Mordecai and Jesus. If you take the view that Mordecai did nothing wrong by refusing to bow to Haman, and that, indeed, it would have been wrong to do so, then Mordecai is a kind of Christ figure in how he refuses to compromise, refuses to tell people what they want to hear. If you think about Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, He too refused to placate them but instead called them out on their hypocrisy and wrong thinking. Mordecai’s second refusal to bow to Haman led to the building of a wood structure on which to kill him. Similarly, Jesus’ refusal to abide by the Pharisees’ and teachers’ wishes ultimately led to the cross.

A second comparison we can make is between Esther and Jesus. Mordecai, the father figure in her life, asked her to risk her life by coming to the king; that is, he asked her to risk her life for the sake of all her people. Similarly, Jesus’ Father asked Him to give up His life for the sake of all people, so that they would not experience eternal separation from God but instead could be reconciled to God through faith in His Son. There are additional parallels in some of the details. On his last night, Jesus asks His disciples to pray for Him. Similarly, Esther asks the Jews to pray for her before she risks her life by going to the king.

But here is where the stories diverge. Esther approaches the king, uninvited, and the king allows her to come; he does not demand that she die for doing so. This was an answer to prayer! God orchestrated this softening of the king’s heart. He was probably quite happy to see Esther, and the thought of having her killed did not even occur to him.

But in contrast, Jesus prayed on the Mount of Olives,

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” – Luke 22:42

For Jesus, God was not willing. He did not let Esther sacrifice her life in an attempt to save the people, but He did permit Jesus to do so. I would say that He did not let Esther sacrifice her life in this way because she was only a hint of things to come.

I think we find this idea again and again in Scripture. Perhaps the most vivid example is in Genesis 22 where God calls on Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. From verse 1,

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” – Genesis 22:1-2

The phrase “your only son, whom you love” brings to mind what God says about His Son, Jesus, at the baptism of Jesus.

As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.” – Matthew 3:16-17

We read more of the account starting at verse 9:

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.

“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to Him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” – Genesis 22:9-14

Abraham was inspired by God call the place “The Lord Will Provide” (future tense). Although God did allow the test to take place, both to build and test Abraham’s faith, and to give a kind of sneak preview of what God would Himself do with His Son, He did not allow Abraham to sacrifice his son because that was something that God would do Himself. Indeed, the Lord would provide. In a similar way, God did not allow Esther to die for her people. He made a way for the people to live without requiring the death of Esther. But to solve the deeper problem of the Jewish people, and indeed all people, the Lord would provide, through the depth of His Son.

Moving forward with the story of Esther, she invites the king and Haman to a feast. At the feast, she possibly gets cold feet about pleading for the Jews. She chooses not to bring it up but instead, she invites them to another feast the next day.

That evening, God orchestrates many things that lead to the redemption of the Jewish people. The king “just” cannot sleep that night, so he asks for someone to read to him from the accounts of his works. What is read, out of all the many possible things that might have been read, “just” happens to be an account of how Mordecai had years ago prevented an assassination attempt on the king from being successful. The king “just” happens to wonder what was done to honor this man. It turns out nothing was done. At that moment, it “just” happens that Haman is in the court. The king has him come in. The king “just” happens to not mention Mordecai’s name while asking what should be done to honor him. Haman, who thinks it is him, suggests a parade. The king tells him to do it ASAP for Mordecai the Jew! Haman, having no choice, does so.

At the second banquet of Esther, with Haman and the king present, she asks what can be done to save her people, who are decreed to be killed. The king is shocked and asks who is behind it – and she says it is Haman! The king storms off in anger, and Haman begs Esther for his life. Haman “just” happens to trip over Esther and basically look like he is making a move on her as the king comes back. At that point, a servant “just” happens to announce that the pole for impaling Mordecai is ready. The king decrees that Haman die on it instead of Mordecai.

So they impaled Haman on the pole he had set up for Mordecai. Then the king’s fury subsided. – Esther 7:10

And so we see that, like Isaac, Mordecai is spared from what seemed to be certain death. God did not allow Mordecai to die for his people, just as He did not allow it of Esther. The rest of the story is that the king raised up Mordecai to be second in command in place of Haman, and with the king’s permission Mordecai made a decree that gave the Jews permission to defend themselves. In this way the Jewish people were saved, and those people who hated the Jews so much that they attacked them anyway were defeated.

Thus God used history, the history of Esther and Mordecai, to hint once again at the coming Lamb who would take away the sins of the world, of the person who would in fact die a substitutionary death to redeem all people who would choose to accept the free gift of salvation, a gift that is received by faith in Jesus Christ.

I have a few final thoughts. First, Esther really is every bit as much the “savior” in this story as Mordecai. I am glad the book is named after her. I understand why Mordecai is celebrated so much at the end of the book, because he is the one in power. But the salvation of the Jewish people really would not have happened if Esther had not risked her life to tell the king her identity and what was about to happen to her people.

Of Esther and Jesus, I love what Tim Keller says:

“Jesus is the true and better Esther, who didn’t just risk losing an earthly palace but lost ultimately the heavenly one, who didn’t just risk His life but gave His life, who didn’t say if I perish I perish but when I perish, I perish for them… to save my people.”

Esther is hardly what you would expect in a savior. After all, she is a beauty contest winner, and we all know the stereotypes about the type of people that enter beauty contests. Yet, she is the one who God chooses to save her people. In a similar way, Jesus is hardly what the Jews expected in a savior, either. As Isaiah 53 points out,

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. – Isaiah 53:2

Jesus’ father was a craftsman, not a Pharisee, not a teacher of the Law, not a priest, not royalty. Jesus was from a backwater place, really two backwater places, born in the one-horse town of Bethlehem and raised in “redneck” Galilee. And when Jesus began His ministry, training His disciples, teaching the truth about God, confronting the lies and hypocrisy of the Jewish leadership, and healing people and performing miracles so as to prove His identity as the Son of God, people pointed out each of these aspects of His background. They judged by human standards, just as no doubt people judged Esther by her position. We still do this all the time today. But God was at work through her. Even today, God loves to work through those without beauty or majesty.

My second thought is that Haman, although incredibly powerful, is really a fool, and it is no big deal for God to defeat him.  Today we laugh at Haman, but in the days of Esther, Haman was absolutely no laughing matter. I believe the same kinds of things can be said of the ultimate adversary of all mankind, Satan. He too is a fool if he thinks he has any chance of thwarting the will of God. Yet this is the precisely the path he is on. He thought he could at various times wipe out the line of people from which the Savior would come, including the events of the book of Esther, but he was defeated every single time. He thought he could line up events, culminating with the betrayal of Judas, to orchestrate things so that this Savior could be killed, and he was right, but he was terribly wrong to think that this could happen unless it too was the will of God. He did not realize that he was being played like a fiddle. He really was and is a fool. The very thing he worked so hard to bring about, the death of Jesus on a cross, the most shameful, painful, terrible kind of death imaginable, a death on a pole, would be the very means by which Jesus became a substitutionary sacrifice for us. Jesus died so that we could live. The person who really died on that pole was Satan himself, just as the pole that Haman built for Mordecai ended up being the very pole that killed Haman.

My third thought from the book of Esther is that God is at work, even when He doesn’t announce His name. I love how Timothy Keller puts it:

“When you see one of the ten plagues, you know that’s God! But when King Xerxes gets drunk and starts bragging, you don’t say, ‘Wow. There’s God at work!’ But the book of Esther is trying to tell you, ‘Don’t make that mistake. God is at work.’”

This is true in our lives as well. God is at work in your life! But His work is rarely announced, and it often is behind the scenes. Yet you can be certain that your life has purpose. As Christ’s agents of reconciliation in a broken world, if you seek to follow Him, He will orchestrate events so that you can help fulfill His mission on Earth.

My fourth and final thought from the book of Esther has to do with revealing our identity. We are “of” Christ. We are Christians. We are members of His “tribe.” Our identity is in Christ. Esther initially concealed her identity as a Jew, at Mordecai’s request. But the time came for her to reveal her identity. She could not effectively plead on behalf of her people, that is, God could not use her in her position as queen to help save the Jews, unless she risked ostracism by revealing her identity. She finally did so, and it was in fact central to God’s redemption of the Jews. The king loved Esther, and the fact that Haman had set things up so as to lead to the death of her and her people changed in a moment Xerxes’ opinion of Haman from best friend to mortal enemy.

In a similar way, revealing our identity as Christians can also be risky, although it is far less risky for us in America than it is for many believers in countries that are openly hostile to Christianity. But even for us, it can sour relationships. It can affect job promotions. It can lead to being excluded from certain things. Yet the gospel cannot advance, people cannot come to salvation, unless we reveal our identity. Revealing our identity is the first step in sharing the good news that Christ died for us so that we could live through faith in Him. Let us be inspired by Esther. Let us remember that we are where we are not for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others. Let us tell those around us whose we are so that they too may be saved.