Esther 7:1-7 - Homilies By W. Clarkson

A crisis, a plea, and a deliverance.

We have here—

1 . A most serious crisis. "So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen" (verse 1). The culminating point in this great issue is now reached. The lives of the chosen people of God throughout all Persia, in all her provinces, hang on this interview between an arbitrary sovereign, his wife, and his minister. Except the wife shall prevail over the crafty and all-powerful statesman, the race must die by one cruel blow.

2 . A powerful plea. At the king's invitation (verse 2) the queen makes her appeal in simple but forcible language. She appealed

3 . A great deliverance (verses 5, 6). Having readily consented to the slaughter of thousands of his subjects, the king with equal readiness consents to their lives being spared. He appears to have been shocked at the idea of what was contemplated; but he had not reckoned on the sanguinary decree including his own wife in its evil range. We learn—

I. THE MYSTERIOUSNESS OF GOD 'S GOVERNMENT . Why the Divine Ruler should allow his Church to come into such terrible danger, barely escaping from utter destruction; why he should sometimes permit such fearful atrocities to be inflicted, not interposing, as here, to save them, but allowing the beheadings, burnings, burials alive, imprisonments, etc. on which so many skies have looked down in different centuries; why he should allow a Haman of ancient times, or an Alva or Claverhouse of more recent times, to wreak such cruelties on the people of God, and why he should choose such instruments to avert and overthrow as one woman's beauty—this we cannot tell. God does and suffers many things which we do not understand. He declines to interpose when we should have confidently expected his aid. The truth is that he is too high and too great, and we are too low and too small to understand him. "His way is in the sea, his path in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known." "His ways are past finding out." We are but very little children before him, and must wait awhile; we shall understand hereafter what we know not now ( John 13:7 ).

II. THE GOOD WORK THAT ONE WEAK VOICE MAY DO . Little did Esther think, when she was first accepted as queen, that she would do a good work for her race which should never be forgotten. But the hour came for her to make a great attempt; she made it, and succeeded. Her success was due to her courage and her charms and her address. But these were the outcome of a life of virtue and piety. By the exercise of these she had "bought up the opportunity" (redeemed the time), and "when the occasion came she was equal to the occasion." Wisely use the present, and when the hour of opportunity comes you will be ready to speak, to strike, to suffer, or to save.

III. THE UNENVIABLENESS OF RANK AND POWER WITHOUT WISDOM . Judging from the notion of mere worldliness, we should say that Abasuerus occupied the most enviable position in Persia. As king of that great empire, he held in his hand all that men usually desire. But judging from a distance, impartially, and in the light of God's truth, how little should we care to be such as he was. How unlovely the haste and passion of the man. Hungrily seizing the opportunity of reimbursing his treasury, he makes a decree which would have the effect of slaughtering a race, of ultimately weakening his resources, and of taking the life of his own queen. Happily, but accidentally, in the right mood when the chance is given him of retrieving his error, he turns with characteristic passion and precipitancy on his favourite minister, and wreaks vengeance on his head. Moral littleness in high places is very pitiable.

IV. THE UNSUSPECTED RANGE OF OUR ACTIONS IN THEIR EFFECTS . How amazed was Ahasuerus to find that in striking at the Jews he was aiming a blow at his own wife, and so at himself. All our actions, good and bad, stretch further and come closer home than we realise at the time when we do them.—C.

Esther 7:8-10 ; Esther 8:1 , Esther 8:2

Reversals.

Human life is well likened to the river which glides smoothly and evenly along from the spring where it rises to the sea into which it falls. But it is also well compared to the wheel which takes to the bottom that which was at the top, and to the top that which was at the bottom. There is much of orderly and regular procedure; there is much also of change and reversal. Seldom, indeed, does human life present before our eyes the picture of so signal and complete a reversal as that told in the text. Haman, the favourite, the prime minister of state, the all-powerful courtier, the wealthy and strong noble, hanged on the gallows; Mordecai, the despised Jew, whose life was seriously threatened, and likely to end most ignominiously, promoted to highest favour and greatest influence with the king. These reversals were not mere accidents; they illustrate the truths—

I. THAT , SOONER OR LATER , SUCCESSFUL SIN WILL BE OVERTHROWN ( Esther 8:9 , Esther 8:10 ). We all "see the prosperity of the wicked," as the Psalmist did, and, like him, we are grieved and troubled by it. But we must be like the patient patriarch, and wait to see "the end of the Lord." If we wait long enough we shall find that sin meets with its due award. The guilty empire founded in usurpation and bloodshed, and maintained by violence and corruption, goes down and goes out in ignominy and disaster. The guilty adventurer rears his head for many years, but misfortune and misery overtake him in time. Haman goes to the gallows at last.

"The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small;

With patience he stands waiting, but with exactness grinds he all."

The truth is, that sin carries in itself the seeds of its own discomfiture; these must germinate, and grow, and bear fruit in time. "I have seen the wicked in great power," etc.; but wait awhile, and "lo, he is not: he has passed away" ( Psalms 37:35 ).

II. THAT , SOONER OR LATER , PERSECUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS WILL TRIUMPH ( Esther 8:1 , Esther 8:2 ). Haman has gone to the gallows, and now Mordecai takes the chief chair of state. Honesty proves the true policy in the end. Purity, uprightness, integrity, kindness—these have in them the power and prophecy of ultimate success. Let the godly man who is oppressed by iniquity bear his burden, and also his testimony; let him patiently pursue his course, looking, up and looking on, and somewhere in the. future the crown of a pure success awaits him—if not here, hereafter. "Weeping may endure for a night"—possibly a long night—but "joy comes in the morning." It may be the morrow of the distant future, but it will then be the beginning of a cloudless and endless day.

III. THAT SIN CONTINUALLY SUFFERS FROM ITS OWN HAND . "They hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai" ( Esther 8:10 ). Into the very trap he laid for another his own foot fails. We learn—

1 . That sin frequently brings on itself the very evil it designed for others. A man bent on ruining another (by legal measures, or unfair under-selling, etc.) often impoverishes himself. A man in his wrath goes out to slay, and is himself the slain one. The accuser of others is condemned by others, and suffers general reprobation.

2 . That sin invariably suffers as the consequence of the evil which it does. If it does not endure the very evil it designs, it does bear its penalty. No man can hurt another without being hurt himself. The chief victim, the principal sufferer from sin, is the sinner. Every act of evil, every thought of sin, inflicts a damaging wound, more or less obvious, in the breast of the evil-doer, in the heart of the sinner. Contrast with this stern truth the obverse—

IV. THAT GOODNESS ALWAYS BLESSES THE AGENT AS WELL AS THE OBJECT . It is not mercy only, but every kind of work, that "blesses him that gives and him that takes." "Give, and it shall be given unto you." "He that watereth shall himself be watered."—C.