Story time
So, several years ago, my family and I were spending part of our holidays at a beach resort in the Kenya coastal city of Mombasa. This resort had a very attractive looking swimming pool that my children delighted to swim in. One morning, although I do not know how to swim myself, for some strange reason that I cannot explain to this day I decided to jump into this pool. As soon as I did this I realised I was in very serious trouble because i began to drown. Now, fortunately for me, one of my sons happened to come to the pool just then. And seeing my very distressed situation in the pool, he quickly jumped into the pool and he saved me.
Now, you see, a person who finds themselves drowning in a swimming pool, as I was, does not need a lesson on how not to drown from a person who is safely standing on the edge of the pool. The drowning person needs someone who, seeing the impotence of the drowning person, identifies with their plight by jumping into the swimming pool themselves to intervene and to save the drowning person as my son did for me.
What the book of Esther is about
This is what the book of Esther is about. The story of Esther is a parallel of the gospel and is a very real picture of our spiritual redemption through Christ Jesus.
First, the book depicts our hopeless impotence and our inability to save ourselves from sin and death. Second, it reminds us of Christ’s identification with us through His incarnation. Third, it portrays Christ’s intervention, through His death and His resurrection, to save us from sin and death and to win for us God’s salvation and His eternal life.
In the three sessions of this teaching from the book of Esther, we are going to reflect on how the good news of the gospel announces to us that Christ’s identification with us and His intervention for us on the cross, in the face of our impotence to save ourselves brings God’s salvation into our lives. If we repent of our sin and place our faith in what he did for us on the cross.
It is my prayer that the three sessions of this teaching will reassure you of the great gospel good news of God’s salvation in your life. And if you have not already experienced this, that the Lord will use this teaching to help you to experience his wonderful salvation in your life.
Session 1
In this first session, we shall reflect on how the book of Esther reminds us that we are all born into this world saddled with a legacy of spiritual death that we’re completely impotent and unable to do do anything to change or to reverse.
The events recorded in the book of Esther are very very real historical events that took place in the capital city of the Persian Empire – early in the reign of King Xerxes – between 486 and 465 BC. At a time when the Jews were scattered in exile through the Persian Empire. The Persian Empire you see was a great super power of that time. It stretched all the way from India to parts of Africa including modern day southern Egypt and Sudan.
The book of Esther is the only book of the Bible in which the name of God is not even mentioned. Nor does it mention prayer. Yet in this book we see the undeniable sovereignty of God working quietly unseen in the background of national events to shape history and to protect His people. But more than this, as I noted earlier, the story of Esther, is a parallel of the gospel and it is a very real picture of our spiritual redemption through Christ Jesus.
Esther 1, 2 and 3
In the first chapter of the book, Queen Vashti is removed from being the Queen of Persia because she refused to be paraded before the king’s all-male party to which the king had invited important officials from all over his land to display to them his power, to display to them his wealth and to display to them his authority as he prepared to invade Greece. In the second chapter, we are introduced to Esther and Mordecai, they were descendants of the Jews who had ended up in Persian who had ended up in Persian captivity 100 years earlier. Esther was an orphan, Mordecai her much older cousin had raised her. In this second chapter, Esther is chosen as one of the virgins who was selected and prepared with a view to replacing Queen Vashti’s. Esther finds favour with the king and she is crowned as the new queen to replaced the deposed Queen Vashti.
In Esther 3:1-6, the king promotes a man called Haman to be his vice-president. This resulted in all the government officials bowing down to Haman with phony subsidence. But Mordecai refused to do this in Esther 3:5-6, we read that, “When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. Yet having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.” Esther 3:5-6.
So, Haman sought the kings permission to destroy all Mordecai’s people the Jews throughout the whole Persian empire. The kings permission was issued in form of a decree that was sealed with the kings signet ring, making it an official edict that could not be changed. From Esther 3:7-12, Haman then cast lots to determine the best day to carry out this decree. The day of the lot fell on March 7th which was almost one year away. Mordecai refused to kneel before Haman because Haman was an Agagite, a descendant of King Agag of the Amalekites who we discover in 1 Samuel 15:20 were ancient enemies of the Israelites. In fact, in Acts 17:16 and again in Deuteronomy 25:17 and 19, we discover that God had even commanded the Israelites to destroy the Amalekites. Mordecai, although a Jew in exile, recognised only God as being worthy of worship. So, he refused to bow bow before Haman – this descendant of the enemies of his people.
So, by the end of the third chapter of the book of Esther, we find the Jews in their Persian exile facing this genocidal fate from Haman that they were completely impotent to change or reverse.
Our Impotence
So the question now is this, how do these three chapters of the book of Esther relate to the gospel and to you and to me?
Well, in Genesis 2:16-17, in the garden of Eden, God said this to our first parent Adam, he said. “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
You see, God had created Adam and all his descendants to be in a covenant relationship of love and obedience with himself. In Genesis 3, we read about how Adam and his wife, with all of us inside them obeyed Satan instead of God and they ate from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. By doing that, our first parents introduced sin and spiritual death into the human race so that all human beings are born into this world under the curse of sin, under the curse of spiritual death and under the curse of spiritual separation from God.
No matter how good or how noble we may be. This is how the Prophet Isaiah describes this condition in Isaiah 53:6, he writes, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; …” Now in Romans the Apostle Paul reminds of this by writing, “… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23 And that, “…the wages of sin is death.” Romans 6:23. Now, the word death that Paul uses in these verses refers to our spiritual separation from God and the fact that because of our sins we face God’s wrath as we stand in utter condemnation before him.
So, we can summarise the main point of our first session by saying that like the Jews at the end of the third chapter of the book of Esther, who were impotent to do anything about their fate, by the end of the third chapter of the first book of the Bible – the book of Genesis, we discover that we are all born into this world saddled by this legacy of spiritual death that we are completely impotent and unable to do anything to change or reverse. All our good religious works will not save us and reconcile us to God. Neither will our education, and our expertise save us. We need a Saviour from outside ourselves to come and save us and to reconcile us to God. That’s what we need.
