Esther 9-10 | “Joy: Where Does It Come From and How Can We Maintain It?”

Deliverance from Death Creates Joy

Imagine for a moment that your life is in danger from an evil attacker who’s coming after you relentlessly.  They aren’t stopping or slowing down.  They’re coming at you armed with weapons designed to inflict maximum injury, pain, and ultimately death.  Imagine that you’re in a corner and have nowhere to go.  All you can do is wait for the inevitable to happen. 

Now imagine that someone steps in out of nowhere, rescues you, and takes down the attacker.  After you realize what’s happened, how would you feel?  What kind of emotions would come over your body?  More specifically, how would you feel toward the person who saved your life?

I think most of us would respond with sobs of joy.  We would be so overwhelmed with joy that we couldn’t do anything but weep.  We’d embrace our rescuer and say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”  We would never forget that person, never get over that moment, never lose that joy. 

As we learned last week in Esther chapter 8, this was the response of the Jews after Esther and Mordecai worked to save them from a decree of death.  Joy was the natural result of their deliverance from death (8:16-17).

This is what happens when someone becomes a Christian.  When God takes out our greatest enemies, delivering us from sin, Satan, and death, joy in God necessarily follows.  Christianity without joy in God is not Christianity. 

As we close our study of Esther, we’re going to look at a rather lengthy passage (chs. 9-10).  The main theme of this passage is that joy comes from experiencing the mercy of God and is maintained through regular remembrance of the mercy of God. 

The first part of this sermon will ask, “Where does joy come from?” and look at 9:1-19.  The second part will ask, “How can we maintain joy?” and look at 9:20-10:3.  We’ll close by talking about how we enter into the joy of God.

Where Does Joy Come From?

First, where does joy come from?  9:1-19 shows us how joy is the result of radical deliverance from death.  There’s a lot that I’d love to cover here, but our focus is on the result of what happened, rather than what happened.  The result of the Jews defending themselves against their attackers, and beating them, was joy.  This is found in verses 17, 18, 19, and 22.

You might say, “Well of course they were happy, they won the battle!”  But why did they win?  First, they only had a chance because Esther, under God’s providence, pleaded with the king to allow her and Mordecai to write a new law that would allow them to fight.

Not only did they win because God provided them a chance, but also because it appears that God was working against their enemies (vv. 2-3).  8:17 even says that many non-Jews were joining the Jews “for fear of the Jews had fallen on them.”  Why was fear falling on people who weren’t Jews?  And where was it falling from? 

Perhaps it was because Mordecai the Jew had replaced Haman (v. 5) or because the Jews were given a right to defend themselves.  But this doesn’t seem to explain how “all peoples” were now afraid of the Jews, with some even joining their cause. 

It seems more likely that the fear of the people was a result of the fear of God coming over the people.  The fear of the God of the Jews seems to have fallen on the enemies of the Jews, showing them the righteousness of the Jewish cause and convicting them that they were on the losing side.    

This means that God, who’s never named in the story, gets the credit for the Jew’s victory.  Their joy is a result of God moving Mordecai and Esther to issue a second decree and then filling the hearts of their enemies with the fear of the Lord.  They were happy because they knew they didn’t save themselves.  They were happy because causes greater than themselves were at work. 

Joy in God frees us from Slavery to Stuff

There’s a detail I want us to notice.  Verses 10 and 16 say that the Jews “laid no hand on the plunder.”  In the new decree, they were given permission to plunder their enemies (8:11).  But they forsook this right and didn’t add insult to injury. 

This would not have gone unnoticed in a culture where victors were expected to take spoil from those they defeated.  This would serve as a compelling witness to the nations that the Jews were different.  They didn’t need to kill their enemies and take their stuff.  Justice was served, so they could be happy.  Their happiness was in their God, in how he’d delivered them from death.  More stuff wouldn’t make them more happy.  Their joy didn’t depend on things.  Their joy went much deeper.  It was rooted in the Rock of their salvation, the Lord their God. 

In the same way, joy in God will set us free from slavery to stuff.  If what God has done for us in Jesus Christ has quenched our thirsty souls, then we won’t need the latest thing to be happy. 

Notice too that their joy spilled over in good deeds toward others (vv. 19, 22).  They were so happy that they wanted to share their stuff with other people!  This sharing was both an expression of their joy and increased their joy.  Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).  Their joy in giving to others rebounded back to them with the joy experienced by the one who received the gift. 

Their generosity also increased the joy of the community as it ensured that everyone was able to take part in the celebration.  Poverty or lack of food would not be allowed to hinder anyone from entering into the joy of their deliverance.  When our joy in God’s deliverance overflows in generosity, the joy of others and the joy of the community increases.  So if you truly want to make the world a better place, start by pursuing your joy in God. 

How Can We Maintain Joy?

The result of the Jews’ deliverance was joy.  But what would happen when they went back to their normal, mundane lives?  How could they maintain their joy in God?  9:20-32 tells us.

The way that they would remember what God had done, the way that they would maintain their joy in him, was through regular remembrance.  Repetition is one way to ensure that we don’t forget things.  Through Mordecai and Esther’s leading, God gave the Jews a holiday that would cause them to remember on a yearly basis what he’d done to deliver them from death.

The holiday would be called “Purim” and it’d be on the same day each year, the same day that the Jews had defeated their enemies and been saved, the fourteenth and fifteenth day of the month of Adar, our month of March.  Many Jews still celebrate this holiday today.  They’ll read the book of Esther and remember how God saved their people from extinction 2500 years ago.

They say, “When Adar begins, we increase in joy.”  It’s considered the Jewish Mardi Gras.    

What Haman thought would annihilate the Jews actually became a reason to unite them.  Purim, like other Jewish feasts and the Sabbath, have helped the Jews to rejoice together in their common experience of deliverance and given them a sense of solidarity despite being scattered all over the world.

This reminds us that God also gave us regular ways to remember what he’s done to deliver us and thus maintain our joy in him.  One is what we did last week, the Lord’s Supper, where we remember and rejoice in Jesus’ death that delivers us from sin.  One is the regular meeting of the church for worship and prayer and fellowship and the hearing of the Word of God preached. 

Mordecai Points Us to Jesus

This remembrance was made possible for the Jews by one who sat at the king of Persia’s right hand (10:1-3).  What else but God could explain how an insignificant Jew became the king’s right hand man?  At just the right time, God elevated and exalted Mordecai, the one who did what was right in saving the king’s life (2:19-23).  The righteous one who was exalted now sat with the king and ensured that his people had everything they needed and spoke peace to them. 

Mordecai of course points us to One who also came out of nowhere, only to be exalted for obeying God and doing what was right.  One who now sits at the right hand of God and rules over God’s kingdom.  One who makes sure that God’s people have everything they need.  One who listens to them and speaks peace to them. 

Jesus, an insignificant Jew, has been exalted to the seat beside God because he perfectly obeyed God and died for God’s people and now lives to intercede for them, to make sure they always have direct access to God and thus always have a fountain of joy to drink from.

How Do We Gain Access to this Fountain of Joy?

I’ve talked about where true joy comes from and how we can maintain it, but how do we gain access to it?  How does it become ours?  The simple answer is through conversion to Christ.   

The reason I don’t just say “by believing in Jesus” is because lots of people say they “believe in Jesus” and yet remain unconverted.  Drug dealers “believe in Jesus.”  People who haven’t been to church in decades “believe in Jesus.”  They say that Jesus is their Savior.  But everyone wants to be saved from hell.  Not everyone truly wants to be with Jesus.  A person who truly believes, who’s been truly converted, will say with Paul, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:8).

God created us for his glory.  It is therefore the duty of every person to live for the glory of God.  Yet all of us have failed to glorify God as we ought.  Therefore, all of us are subject to eternal condemnation by God.  But, in his great mercy, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to save sinners by dying in their place on the cross and rising bodily from the dead.  The benefits purchased by the death of Jesus belong to those who repent and trust in him.

This repentance and faith is summed up by the word “conversion.”  It’s what happens when God makes us a new person in Christ.  Jesus says that we must be “born again” to enter the kingdom of God (Jn. 3:5).  We must be given a new life, a new heart, a new disposition toward our sin and a new love for Jesus and his people, a new joy in God and distaste for the world. 

True joy comes as a result of true conversion.  It comes when we understand what God has done for us in Jesus.  It comes when we finally understand that Jesus stepped in and rescued us from the enemies of sin, Satan, and death, when we finally feel the weight of what was coming for us and the weight of what Jesus did to rescue us.  And it results in unending joy in the One who did it.  It leads us to feel a deep satisfaction and contentment in all that God is for us in Jesus Christ.

The most important question for you to consider today is: Are you converted?  Have you been born again?  Do you have joy in God because of Jesus?  Are you longing to be with Jesus forever, or just trying to avoid hell?  Do you love Jesus or the stuff he can give you?  Do you follow him or do you just want others to think that you’re following him?

In Jesus, God has “made known to us the path of life; in his presence there is fullness of joy; at his right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11).  May God give you a heart to trust him.