Where Would We Be Without Our Mothers?
In God’s providence, we’re starting our study of the text of Esther – one of two books of the Bible named after a woman, on Mother’s Day. This wasn’t planned by me. But it was planned by God.
Our mothers are one of God’s best gifts to us. God gave us mothers to nurture, comfort, console, instruct, encourage, discipline, and guide us. Where would we be without our mothers?
Why I Hesitate to Even Mention Mother’s Day
I hesitate to even bring up mother’s day because many won’t see this as a day to celebrate. Many didn’t have the opportunity to grow up with their mother. Many had a mother who didn’t fulfil their God-given role. Many had abusive and controlling and disengaged mothers. Many are at odds with their mothers, struggling to forgive and reconcile with them. Many want to be mothers but are not able to be at the moment. Many have lost their mothers recently and are struggling through the grief of losing someone who’s irreplaceable.
Let me just say one word to those who fall in any of the places I just mentioned. God sees you. He understands your pain. In Christ, he’s experienced the full range of human emotion and heartache. He sees you and he understands. He is able to sympathize with you, even if no one else can (Heb. 4:15). Cry out to him. He will hear your cries just as he heard Hagar’s cries when Abraham sent her and her son away (Gen. 21:15-20). “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18).
I hope you can understand why I hesitate to make a big deal out of mother’s day and father’s day. Nonetheless, it is good and right for us to honor our parents. The Bible commands us to in the fifth commandment (Ex. 20:12). We can do this on a special day like today. But we can also seek to cultivate a posture of honor toward them that lasts throughout the year.
Good Counsel, Bad Counsel, No Counsel
God puts people in our lives, like our mothers, to shape us into who he wants us to be and to guide us in the way he wants us to go. God aims to use our parents, especially when we’re children, to point us in the right direction, to help us know where to go and how to get there and what we should take for the journey. But their help is only as good as our willingness to accept it. When we’re young and we choose not to heed their counsel, we can’t expect to enjoy the blessings that it can bring.
God puts people in our lives, people like our parents, pastors, teachers, coaches, mentors, friends, and spouses, to guide us in order to keep us from doing dumb things. Their counsel isn’t inerrant and infallible. But if its godly, that is God-oriented, based on principles from God’s word, then it should at least be considered and at most applied. If we don’t listen to good counsel, we won’t make good choices.
The opposite is also true. If we listen to bad counsel, we will make bad choices. If we follow counsel from the wrong kind of person (i.e. someone who doesn’t love the Lord and know his word), then we can’t expect things to go well. They might still go well. But we shouldn’t expect them to.
What we’re perhaps most prone to do is to make big decisions in isolation. We decide to go it alone and not seek counsel from anyone, assuming that God has gifted us with the ability to flourish apart from community. This doesn’t mean that you need to run every decision you make by someone close to you. But it does mean that you should run the big ones by several trusted people. Proverbs 11:14, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.” “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisors they succeed” (15:22). “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice” (12:15).
No matter how old or experienced or educated or great we think we are, we’re all susceptible to doing regretful things if we don’t seek good counsel. Position or age or wealth doesn’t exempt us from making bad decisions if we don’t seek good counsel.
A Great King
Great people do foolish things all the time. This is what we’re going to see in Esther chapter 1. As we begin our study of the book of Esther, the first thing we’re going to see is that a great king makes a great mistake because he follows some really bad advice. In verses 1-9, we’re going to meet this great king. Then in verses 10-22 we’ll see the great mistake he makes as a result of bad advice.
First, the great king (vv. 1-9). Verse 1 introduces us to the great Persian king Ahasuerus. His Greek name was Xerxes (NIV). He was the son of king Darius – the Darius that the prophet Daniel served under (Dan. 6), and grandson of Cyrus the Great – the Cyrus who unified the Medes and Persians in order to defeat the Babylonians in the 6th century BC. Cyrus is who allowed the Jews to begin to return to Judea in 539 BC.
Ahasuerus ruled over the greatest empire the world had ever seen from 486-465 BC. He is best known in history for leading the mighty Persian army to Greece only to be defeated by the Greeks twice. We’ll talk next week how his great military defeat leads to the rise of Esther.
Ahasuerus ruled over the entire known world at that time. This is what “from India to Ethiopia means” (v. 1). “India” refers to the Indus river valley in modern day Pakistan. “Ethiopia” (or “Cush,” NIV) refers to the land beyond Egypt in modern day Sudan.
His “royal throne” was in “Susa, the capital” (v. 2). Susa is in the southwest part of modern day Iran. It was one of several capital cities used by Persian kings. The word for “capital” is better translated as “citadel.” It was a fortified palace complex in the center of the city, elevated 120 feet higher than the city. It was the high ground in the middle of the city, offering protection to the king, but also exalting the importance of the king. If you lived in Susa, you had to literally look up to see where the king lived.
Verse 3 says that Ahasuerus gave a “feast for all his officials and servants” in the third year of his reign (483 BC). The armies and all the leaders of the empire are paraded before Ahasuerus. This is like what some countries do even today when they parade their military through the capital city. It’s a way of flexing their national muscle, of reveling in their own greatness.
Verse 3 says they were “before him,” indicating obeisance and reverence. Everyone knew who was in charge. Here is the man who gives orders being revered by the men who give orders. The powerful people in the empire are revering the most powerful person in the empire.
Verse 4 says that Ahasuerus showed off the glory of all his stuff for 180 days. He’d inherited an untold amount of wealth from his father Darius. When you have taxes and tribute coming in from every part of the known world, you’re going to need half a year to show it all off! The length of time likely indicates that this was also the time when Ahasuerus called together a war council and started planning his attack on the Greeks. The armies and all the leaders were probably in town for more than a good meal and an exhibition.
Verse 5 says that this was followed by a seven day banquet where everyone in the citadel was invited. It was an outdoor event, “in the court of the garden of the king’s palace.” This was likely what we’d call a large pavilion. It was an open structure lined with columns, a large outdoor banqueting hall. Perhaps you’ve eaten at a place similar to this at an outdoor wedding.
Verse 6 tells us, however, that none of us have really experienced this kind of place. This verse paints a picture of lavish luxury. One of our family’s favorite things to do is eat dinner outside on the patio and enjoy the cool evening breeze, trees, sunset, birds chirping, and flowers in bloom. But our backyard meals don’t come close to this!
Everything about this party and this palace was meant to reveal Ahasuerus’s greatness. Even the cups people were drinking out of were made of gold and were all different (v. 7). The guests got to drink the king’s wine in the king’s cups. Wouldn’t you love to drink the world’s best wine in a golden goblet in the shape of your favorite animal or your favorite Avenger? Ahasuerus made sure people remembered this party.
Verse 8 can be a little confusing. Normally it was expected that the guests would drink as long as the king did. Naturally some would want to drink more or less. The NIV translation probably best summarizes the meaning of the verse, “By the king’s command each guest was allowed to drink in his own way, for the king instructed all the wine stewards to serve each man as he wished.” People could drink as much or as little as they wanted. This wasn’t just a nice gesture. It was another way the king made sure everyone knew how great he was. As one commentator says, “The more lavish the king’s hospitality, the greater his claim to supremacy.”
Verse 9 says that during this banquet another banquet is happening indoors for the ladies. This is perhaps because the queen was often excluded from social occasions where drunkenness and licentious behavior was going to happen. But the author of Esther makes sure that we don’t forget whose palace it was, “in the palace that belonged to King Ahasuerus.”
Everything in these nine verses is meant to paint a picture of the king’s greatness. Ahasuerus rules the world, is revered by the greatest army in the world and the greatest leaders in the world, has the most glorious treasures from all over the world, has the most magnificent palace in the world, and serves the world’s best wine in the world’s coolest cups. Ahasuerus is at the pinnacle of success and luxury and wealth and power. No one compares to him. He is great and he has no equals. But he’s about to make a huge mistake, as we see in verses 10-22.
A Great Mistake
Verses 10-22 show us the great mistake that Ahasuerus makes. The essence of his mistake is that he lost his wife because he listened to bad advice. I call this a mistake because I doubt that Ahasuerus woke up that morning thinking, “By the end of the day, I’m going to make a decision to divorce my wife and never see her face again.” But the combination of his huge ego, quick temper, too much alcohol, and bad advice resulted in him doing just that. In just a matter of hours, the king of the greatest empire on the earth had lost his queen.
What the king does is actually really funny if you think about it. The man who controls the world can’t control his wife, and then he imposes on others what he can’t even do himself. This is funny. The dude who ruled the world couldn’t rule his house and then agrees to publicize his failure through a law that commands husbands to do what he can’t do. It’s hard not to laugh at this. It’s like watching someone slam a hammer down as hard as they can and miss completely!
The author of Esther isn’t just beating up on Ahasuerus, but rather showing us that his power is not absolute and it doesn’t compare to the power of the God of the Jews. This theme runs through the book: Ahasuerus does not have as much control as he thinks he does. He makes a great mistake that led to losing his wife because he listened to bad advice.
Verses 1-9 impressed us with Ahasuerus’s power, but verses 10-22 show us that, then as now, power is often in the hands of the incompetent, and that power and wisdom are frequently unconnected.
The Objectification of Women
I want to make two comments here that aren’t the point of this story, but they’re part of the story and so worth mentioning. First, women have always hated being objectified. We don’t know exactly why Vashti didn’t come when called by the king. But it’s not easy to guess why. Verse 11 says that Ahasuerus wanted to bring Vashti to the party to show off her beauty. Commanding your wife to get dressed up and come before a crowd of drunken men for their enjoyment is not only not nice, it’s downright degrading to her as a woman. He was treating her like an object, not a person.
To show off his power, Ahasuerus wanted to show off his “trophy wife.” But Vashti refused to be a victim of his lust for power and the crowd’s lust for her flesh (v. 12a). As one commentator says, “The law might be able to compel people to drink as they wished, but it could not ultimately compel the king’s wife to be treated like a sex object.” The king’s reaction is the same as every man who doesn’t get what he thinks he’s owed from a woman (v. 12b).
Husbands, do you see your wife as a person or an object? How are you dishonoring her? How are you perhaps using her? The wise man doesn’t show off his wife. He blesses and praises her (Pro. 31:28). Single guys, do you desire marriage so that you can parade around a beautiful wife? Or do you desire to cherish and honor and protect the beauty of a woman made in God’s image? All men, do you understand that when you look at pornography, you’re doing what King Ahasuerus is doing in this text? Do you understand how you’re abusing and degrading the women you watch, many of whom are being trafficked through the sex industry? Let’s not be quick to beat up on Ahasuerus when we’re doing the same thing he was.
The Danger of Alcohol
The second thing I’d like to point out is that Ahasuerus’s lapse in judgment occurred in the context of the consumption of too much alcohol. The best wine in the world was flowing freely for days on end. The king was drinking too much when he made the fateful decision to banish his wife. The man who controlled the world was controlled by fermented grape juice.
This is not to say that the consumption of alcohol is necessarily wrong or sinful. The Bible never says that. We shouldn’t make rules where the Bible doesn’t. But the Bible does tell us to not drink too much: “Do not get drunk with wine” (Eph. 5:18). Having a drink of alcohol and drinking too much alcohol are two different things.
I can tell you that some of the worst decisions of my life came after drinking too much alcohol. I know many of you have had the same experience. May we never underestimate what too much alcohol can do to us. You’re not the exception. Not even great kings escape the disorienting effects of alcohol. Some of the best counsel my mother gave me and my brothers in our high school years was, “Five minutes of pleasure can change your life forever.” She was referring to sex, but the principle applies here as well. Foolish decisions made after drinking too much can alter your life forever. The great king made a great mistake because he listened to bad advice after drinking too much. May this be a lesson for us.
Was This a Great Mistake?
I’ve been saying that King Ahasuerus made a great mistake. But did he? In one sense, yes. He decided to banish his wife on a whim. But we have to read chapter one in context of the whole book. Chapter one is setting the stage for the ascendency of Esther as queen. For Esther to be queen, Vashti has to not be queen. So from God’s point of view, what happened wasn’t a mistake. It was exactly what needed to happen to make room for the savior of the Jews to come forward.
God’s Providence in Esther
This is one of numerous examples in Esther of God’s providence. I said last week that God’s providence is his work to make sure that everything that needs to be done to bring about his purposes is done. God providence means that God sees to it that everything happens that needs to happen in order to accomplish his goals in the world.
One of the main themes of Esther is God’s providence, of God’s presence in and behind normal everyday events. This is all the more interesting when we realize that the name of God is never mentioned in Esther. God appears to be absent in Esther, but the way that events unfold make it clear that he is everywhere present. Providence is how we understand the presence of God even in the absence of God. When God appears absent, he’s not. He’s governing the normal course of events to accomplish his purposes.
God Leads through the Ordinary, Not the Extraordinary
This is very important for us to grasp. God does not normally lead us through supernatural means, but through ordinary means. Yes, God led the people of Israel out of Egypt and through the Red Sea through an incredible supernatural act of God. But that shouldn’t lead us to expect God to normally use supernatural events to lead us. I don’t expect to ever see a Sea parted or hear God’s audible voice through a burning bush. But I do expect, and have experienced, God’s leading through a thousand normal, everyday events.
Listen to how one scholar puts it: “Although we live in a day without…extraordinary visuals of God’s power, we should not be fooled…The Lord works in the life of his people in subtle yet powerful ways. (Our days are) more like the days of Esther. He is there; he is always there, even if we don’t see him. During those times in life when it is difficult to discern his presence and we thus wonder about his providence in our lives, we are to remember the book of Esther and bear in mind what it teaches us – he is there, he is always there, and he is always working for our good, even if we cannot see him, even if no one mentions him.”
The Truly Great King Makes No Mistakes
Esther teaches us that God will accomplish his purposes in the world and in our lives, even when we can’t discern his movement. He will “unite all things in Christ” (Eph. 1:10). To do this, he had to save the Jews from genocide at the hand of the Persians. To do that, he needed a Jewish queen to intercede for the Jewish people. To do that, he needed to remove Vashti from office. To do that, he ensured that her husband have a huge ego, a quick temper, a drinking problem, and a bunch of foolish advisors who encouraged him to do something really stupid.
God’s providence is why a great king made a great mistake. But it was no mistake at all. All of this moved God’s plan one step closer to completion. It may’ve been sin on Ahasuerus’s part. But it was no mistake on God’s. His plan to exalt the true King of all the earth and host an everlasting banquet in his eternal kingdom would not be thwarted. The truly great King makes no mistakes. His will is always accomplished because his orders are never refused. He can therefore be trusted. And he should therefore be worshipped and adored.
Do you struggle to trust God even though you can’t see him, hear him, or feel his presence? Take heart, “he is there, he is always there, and he is always working for our good.” The gospel tells us that “he who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will with him graciously give us all things” (Rom. 8:32). Remember the gospel and take heart. God is there, even if you can’t see him.