Poetic Justice Part 1

If you’ve ever devised a plan that backfired on you, then you know a little of how Haman felt in the story of Esther. Dr. David Jeremiah continues our journey through this dramatic Old Testament book, as God’s divine plan overshadows and overwhelms Haman’s wicked scheme. From the series: Esther: For Such a Time As This.

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

When your plan fails, that’s bad.
But when your plan not only fails but backfires on you, that’s infinitely worse.
Just ask Haman from the story of Esther today on turning point, Dr David Jeremiah returns to this dramatic Old Testament book as Haman’s Wicked Scheme is decisively flipped by God’s Divine Plan.
Listen, now as David introduces today’s thought provoking message, poetic justice. Well, sometimes the stories turn out right?
And sometimes even better than you can imagine.
This wicked man who was trying to take out all the Jewish people ends up getting hung on the gallows that he had planned for his enemy.
The story unfolds in the next two days as we open our bibles to the book of Esther and the seventh chapter, you say, Pastor Jeremiah, you gave it away.
Well, I just told you enough to keep your interest because the intrigue that brings all this to pass is truly amazing.
We’ll get to our study of poetic justice. Part one in just a moment.
But first, a couple of reminders, the study guide and CD package for this series is available from turning point.
That’s David Jeremiah dot org. That’s where you go. That’s the website. Also.
Uh during this month, we’re making available a very special resource uh from our friend Os Hawkins, his newest code book called The Promise Code.
And this is really a very practical volume because it’s 40 Bible promises.
Every believer should claim the book has a chapter on every one of these 40 promises that just makes the promise go alive in your heart.
This is something I’d really like you to have.
Here’s how you can get your copy, send a gift of any size to turning point and ask for your copy of the promise code.
We’ll send it to you right away and uh it will be a blessing to you going forward.
Well, let’s open our Bibles now to Esther chapter seven and part one of poetic justice, Esther chapter seven.
And as we open our Bibles to this important portion of this story from the Old Testament, let me just remind you again that Esther has come to the Kingdom of Persia for such a time as this promoted there by Mordecai to fill the vacancy that was created when Basti was deposed because she wouldn’t appear before her husband and all of his drunken friends.
Esther has now come to a position where she alone is going to be able to save her entire race.
The Jewish people, Haman, the Jew hater has gotten the king to give him his signet ring and he has passed a law saying that all the Jews were to be slain.
Actually through the slaying of the Jews money was to come into the treasury of the Persian government.
Mordecai reminds Esther that she alone stands between her people, the Jews and eminent death.
As you remember, Esther was afraid to go in and talk with the king because she had not been with him for 30 days and she had no invitation.
She sort of hung around out in the courtyard and got the king’s eye and went in to talk with him and he extended the septer to her, which meant she would be ok.
She invited the king and Haman to come to a banquet.
When she got to the banquet, the king wanted to know what indeed was her purpose in hosting this event.
And she said, well, I’ll tell you what my purpose in this banquet is to tell you that I’m going to have another banquet tomorrow and invite you to that banquet.
And then I’ll tell you what’s going to happen.
The king is now totally mystified and she has gotten his attention. Little.
Did he know that in the night that it would intervene between the two banquets?
The king would be sleepless and through his insomnia would remember that many years ago, a favor had been done to him that had not been rewarded when he seeks the chronicles and discovers that the one who had done that favor was Mordecai.
He summons Haman who is the Jew hater into his office? Because Haman has become one of his advisers.
And he says to Haman, what shall be done to the man who has so protected the king to reward him.
Haman thought the king was talking about him.
So he rolled out the red carpet for himself and he told the king that he should parade him around the city on a horse.
Someone should go in front of him and announce his coming. He should be treated with royal feet. Little.
Did he know that he himself would have to lead Mordecai around the city announcing that Mordecai was the king’s great helper and was the most embarrassing moment for Haman.
All of this had transpired in the 24 hours between banquet number one and the passage of scripture that we have open to us.
And we read in the first few verses.
So the king and Haman came to the banquet with Esther, the queen. This is the second banquet.
And the king said unto Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, what is thy petition?
Queen Esther? And it shall be granted the and what is thy request?
And it shall be performed even to the half of the kingdom.
This invitation to the second banquet is going to unfold a story. We have called poetic justice.
A reminder that sometimes God must smile at the events that transpire on earth.
I’m reminded that in the AA Indian tragedy many years ago when the Aa Indians took the lives of those five martyred missionaries.
They apparently thought they had stamped out the gospel forever.
But you know, the story of Rachel Saint who went back to that place of death where she had given up her husband for the things of God.
And she literally lived with that group of Indians teaching them how to read and write and ultimately sharing with them the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The law of inevitable consequences is written into the universe.
Lord Byron, the English poet discovered this law in his own life.
And on one occasion after he had thrown his life away in immorality cut short in his thirties, he wrote these words, the thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted, they have torn me and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. Did you hear what he said?
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree that I have sown? Poetic justice.
Coming again to the place where you intended destruction for another only to be destroyed there yourself.
The dinner to which the king and Haman were to come was the dinner that saved the Jews.
This spinal banquet which we read about in verses one and two probably took place in a room which overlooked a garden.
The garden lay in between the Harem complex where Esther lived and the king’s private apartments.
The hour of the party is not given to us in the text.
It must have been in the afternoon rather than in the evening because so much happened later on that same day, it could hardly have taken place at night.
Later on that day, Haman is hanged.
Mordecai is personally received by the king, all of which would have taken a great deal of time.
So we assume that perhaps this event, this banquet took place perhaps around our lunch time.
And Esther must have known all that had happened before this.
She was in daily communication through her chamberlains with her aged cousin.
And there were scarcely any questions that she did not know the answers to.
So she must have come into that banquet that day, that second banquet without a sense of hesitancy or fear for.
She had known that God had been working through the hours of the night, setting up the events that would prepare the way for her to make her statement when she arrives in the banquet place.
The king once again addresses her.
And it is interesting that this time he addresses her by the term Queen Esther, he was giving emphasis by doing that to the fact that she was in a royal position.
In other words, he was not treating her like some subject or ordinary person.
He treated her with respect and dignity.
And when he asked her as he had done at the first banquet. What is thy petition?
And it shall be granted the and what is thy request?
And it shall be formed even to the half of the kingdom.
Once again, he renews his complete promise to Esther that whatever she wants, even if it means giving away half of his kingdom, he will give it to her.
I’m sure he had no idea what Esther’s request was about to be.
But he had painted himself into the corner. He had said whatever you want I will do.
And that was of the Lord.
The Lord had put those words in his mouth to assure Esther that she need not fear to present her petition to the king.
Well, that’s the dinner that saved the Jews verses one and two, but verses three and four, tell us the disclosure that shocked the king.
Then Esther, the queen answered and said, if I have found favor in thy Sidal king and if it pleased the king, let my life be given me at my petition and my people at my request for we are sold, I and my people to be destroyed, to be slain and to perish.
But if we had been sold for bondmen and bond women, I had held my tongue.
Although the enemy could not counter avail the king’s damage.
The first shock that the king is about to receive is something he had not known up until this time.
And that is that his queen, Esther was herself a Jewish.
He had no way of knowing that up until this moment when she admitted that it was her people that were in danger.
She identified herself for the very first time with her people.
The Jews Mordecai had told her not to do that early on in the story.
But now she has come out and made herself known to the king and the king is now aware of the fact because of her nationality, that the plot that Haman has talked him into being party to is going to jeopardize the life of the woman that he loves.
The woman who is in his harem, who is his queen when she had been entered into the beauty contest when she had become the queen.
Remember that Mordecai said, don’t tell anybody that you’re a Jewish. He saved it for this very important moment.
And now the king is aware of her situation. She identifies herself with her people.
And the king realizes that the plot that he has actually allowed is going to jeopardize the life of someone he cares about very much.
He also realizes that the Jews are the ones that are sentenced to die with boldness, which I’m sure had been boisterous by her desperation.
Esther states her petition for her own life and for the life of her people.
Notice the exact wording of the king’s question in verse two.
It says here and the king said again unto her on the second day at the banquet of wine.
What is thy petition? And it shall be granted the and what is thy request? And it shall be performed?
And the queen answered and said, if I have found favor and I sio king and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me at my petition and my people at my request, she actually uses the same two words petition and request and responds to the king as he has asked her.
And then she mentions in her request to the king that if it were anything other than the life of her people, she would not have asked.
In fact, she uses some words that were actually written in the decree to destroy the Jews.
She said we are sold and my people to be destroyed, to be slain and to perish.
How could the king have forgotten that these were the very words he had caused the scribes to write and send out to all the provinces that the Jews were to be destroyed to be slain and to perish.
Esther uses those words. I am sure to draw the memory of the king back into the seriousness of this moment.
And she said, we wouldn’t have troubled the king except this is more than a mere change in social status.
This is the very life of our nation. The Jews are sentenced to die.
The king knows that his wife is a Jewish. The plot is now thickened.
The moment of truth has come.
You can almost see the anger rising up on the neck of the king when he realizes that he has been sucked into a plot in support of it.
And that very plot could mean the death of Esther and all of her Jewish nations.
So we come thirdly after the dinner that saved the Jews and the disclosure that shocked the king to the discovery that sentenced the enemy.
Notice verses five and six. Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther, the queen, who is he?
And where is he that dust presume in his heart to do so?
And Esther said, the adversary and enemy. Is this wicked Haman?
Can you imagine the look on his face at that moment?
Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen.
You see King Xerxes, the eu of Pers, you couldn’t imagine that anybody he knew would be responsible.
And of course, the question we have to ask is, where is your memory? King?
You are a part of this? Have you so forgotten?
Or is this all a play all a parade of your own innocence?
When in reality, you’re just as guilty as was Haman?
It’s interesting that first, the king’s life was threatened back in the second chapter.
And now the queen’s life is threatened in this chapter and King Xerxes is filled with anger.
The question has been asked, who is he?
And the answer according to Esther is that the adversary and the enemy is the wicked Haman.
And before she ever mentions his name, she used three strong words to describe him. Look down at your Bibles.
He is the adversary. Isn’t it interesting? That’s a term that is used for Satan in the Bible.
He is as a roaring lion walking about seeking whom he may devour first Peter 58.
And Esther said he is also the enemy or one who hates the people of God.
And as the wicked one, he is the very antithesis to goodness.
All of these phrases are used to describe Satan and we know do we not that Haman was a tool in Satan’s hands.
I was reading again the passages in the book of Revelation where it talks about the woman who gave birth to the man child, the woman being Israel, the man child, being the Lord Jesus and the persecution against the woman.
Satan has hated Israel from the very moment that it was brought forth that Israel would be the means by which the redeemer would come into the world.
It is no accident that the Jews are the target of assassination attempts, annihilation attempts.
Everybody wonders why is that true?
It’s been true from the very beginning because the Jewish people were the nation that brought Jesus into the world.
And Satan has hated the Jews and he has always found a Haman or someone who can come along to do his work to stir up the hatred toward the Jewish people.
And now the enemy of the Jews has been identified.
The man who without a twinge of remorse could devote a nation to destruction.
Is now filled with distress at the thought that he has been found out.
Well, that brings us fourthly in the story, the dinner that saved the Jews, the disclosure that shocked the king, the discovery that sentenced the enemy.
Number four, the delay that sealed the sentence.
Very interesting thing happens in verse seven, we’re told that the king at this very shocking moment arises from the banquet table.
And according to the text, the king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath, went into the palace garden and Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king.
Sometimes the Bible has a way of very, very wonderfully understating a crisis.
He saw that there was evil, determined against him.
That’s a wonderful way to say that he was in big trouble and he knew it.
I don’t have any trouble understanding why the king got up and walked out into the garden.
Any of you who have ever lived in stressful situations, know that there are some times when you’re better off not to say what’s on your mind, but you just need to walk out in the cool of the night air and get your thoughts together.
What a stressful moment this was for the king.
He could have said the wrong thing, he might have just said kill him right now, take his life.
But in order to control himself, remember now, the king had endeared himself to Haman and Haman to the king, they become trusted friends and the king was really torn as to what he would do here was his life who is telling him that his best friend is responsible for a plot not only to kill all the Jewish people to ultimately take her life.
He has not known this before, at least it hasn’t registered with him.
And so in that moment of shocking truth, he gets up from the banquet table and he walks out into the garden to collect his thoughts.
I don’t know what his motive was.
But while he was in the garden, Haman realized he had one last shot at perhaps saving his own neck.
I need to explain that the custom of the day was that when you banqueted, you didn’t sit up and hide back chairs like we do.
But in the Persian culture, they reclined as they banqueted.
In fact, one of the writers I read this week said that at banquets, they had very little solid food.
Mostly they drank wine and ate dessert and they would recline on their couches and they would linger long at the wine after the meal and they would talk in fellowship with one another.
And so when the king left to go out into the air, his Queen Esther was reclining on her couch.
And as soon as the king was out of sight, Haman realized that if he had any chance at all to be saved, he needed to petition the queen.
Little. Did he know that even that was to be his undoing? Read what it says happened.
And when he went over to where the queen was, he was begging her.
And when the king comes back in verse eight, then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine.
And Haman was fallen upon the bed where an Esther was.
Now, that doesn’t mean that he had tried to seduce her surely he was smarter than to do that.
But what it does mean is that he had come to the foot of the couch where she was reclined and began in an oriental custom to embrace her feet and to entreat her to stand in his place and to save his life and apparently in his intensity to try to entreat this woman to save his life.
He was in a situation where when the king walked back in, he saw this man who had threatened the life of his own wife and the lives of all the Jewish people.
He saw this man entreating the queen on her couch.
And there is a great deal of divergence of opinion as to whether the king really thought he was up to no good or he used this as an opportunity to nail Haman to the wall for his indiscretion.
But notice what happened, the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine.
And Haman was falling upon the bed where an Esther was then said, the king will he force will he rape the queen?
Also before me in the house, as the word went out of the king’s mouth, they covered Haman’s face.
You say, what’s that all about?
That means the last plea has been uttered when they put the sack over your head, you’re dead.
That’s what that means. He was about to lose is life.
And the king we are told realized that he had caught Haman in a violation of palace etiquette, which was the minor crime compared to what he had done.
And the covering of Haman’s face was the sign that he was doomed to die even though the king had not even pronounced death upon him.
When they put the bag over his head, that meant to everyone.
There was no chance for Haman to be saved. So that is the delay that sealed the sentence.
Now, I’m going through the story because there’s only 10 verses and it’s a very rapid fire sequence of events.
The dinner that saved the Jews verses one and two.
The disclosure that shocked the king verses three and four, the discovery that sentenced the enemy verses five and six, the delay that sealed the sentence verses seven and eight.
And now finally, the decree that settled the issue verses nine and 10 read what it says.
And Har Bona, one of the chamberlains said before the king behold also the gallows 50 cubits high which Haman had made for Mordecai who had spoken good for the king stand in the house of Haman.
Then the king said hang him there on.
So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.
Then was the king’s wrath pacified. Can you imagine?
Uh can you imagine that this is what would happen?
I’ve told you before that sometimes when I watch drama on television, I’m always very upset when we get to the end of the hour because they don’t resolve all the issues.
And you always wonder, well, what happened to that guy or what happened to them?
Or this story gets resolved and there’s still more to come tomorrow.
Part two of poet justice, we are so excited about the things that are happening at turning point and two very special events.
I want to tell you about one of them in April.
We’re going to be in Boise, Idaho in April on the 20th at the extra mile arena.
Now, as you know, Boise Idaho isn’t a hugely populous place.
We have a lot of people who watch us on television. And listen to us on the radio.
But it is not, uh it’s not as dense a population as many of the places we go, which means all of you who are part of what we do, you need to try to come and be a part of this event.
Um The first time we’ve ever been to Boise Idaho, we may not ever get there again, but we’re coming the 20th of April and we hope you’ll come and join us, get your tickets from David Jeremiah dot org.
And don’t forget we’re going to Alaska in July.
More information about that on our website as well and we’ll see you right here tomorrow.
For more information on Dr Jeremiah’s series Esther for such a time as this, please visit our website there.
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Join us tomorrow as we continue Esther for such a time as this on turning point with Dr David Jeremiah.