Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale · Transcript · · Updated
He Will Not Bow | Doug Sauder | Esther 3-4:3 – Transcript
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Summary
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- King Xerxes elevated hmon, giving him the seat of honor higher than all other nobles, but morai would not kneel or pay him honor.
- When hmon saw that morai would not bow to him, he sought to destroy all the Jewish people throughout the kingdom of Xerxes.
- Dispatches were sent by couriers to order the destruction, killing, and annihilation of all Jews young and old on a single day.
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so when I was young my my dad taught me this three-word phrase about life see if you know it son life's not oh you met my dad or maybe your dad talked to my dad and my dad talked to other people's dads and this is what moms and dads tell their kids all the time life is not fair because as young people we need to know
that as young people we need to know that sometimes uh when it's right and wrong sometimes wrong wins and right loses sometimes in in areas of justice injustice is is winning and Justice is losing and this is very disorienting to us as we grow up and even as we get older it still sort of Catches Us off guard like wait that's that's not right that's not fair and and that's where we are in Chapter 3 of Esther you know
we've said all along Esther is is not a fairy tale it's not that they lived happily ever after it's a real story of real people rooted in history where there's these ups and downs of Life how many even know there's ups and downs in life in chapter two things are going great Esther is the queen she wins the beauty contest a Jewish orphan becomes the most powerful woman in the nation of Persia we we introduced you to the first
four characters in The Book of Esther uh first was King Xerxes who deposed his wife Queen vashy Esther became the new Queen she's the third character and her adoptive uncle morai was the fourth character and today we are going to be introduced to the fifth character the villain in the story and this villain has a great name everyone say hmon hmon that sounds like a good villain name and hmon is going to wreak
havoc in this story and so where we are in the story Esther won the beauty pageant she's the new Queen and and morai Saves The King's life because he uncovers a conspiracy and and everything is good everything is gold and everything is great but life's not always going to stay in that upper trajectory and life is not always fair and we're going to look Injustice in the face today and this this is really good news for all of us because if right now
you're experiencing something in life that doesn't seem fair or right and you wonder what to do with that well we're going to see in this ancient story that that God has a way to help us to do something with that other than just quit or give up because this is the middle of the story and God always has some good things that happen in the middle of our stories and so we're going to pick it up
in Esther chap 3 verse one everybody ready that sounded like a 9:00 a.m. response we'll try that again everybody ready okay here we go Esther chapter 3 verse one after these events King Xerxes honored hmon the son of ham the agagite leaving or elevating him and giving him the seat of Honor higher than all the other Nobles and all the Royal
officials at the king's gate knelt down and paid honor to hmon for the king had commanded this concerning him but Mori would not kneel or pay him honor then the Royal officials at the king's gate asked morai why do you disobey the King's Command day after day they spoke to him but he refused to comply therefore they told hmon about it to see whether mori's Behavior would be
tolerated for he had told them he was a Jew now when hmon saw that morai would not kneel down or pay him honor he was enraged yet Having learned who mori's people were he scorned the idea of killing only morai instead hmon looked for a way to destroy all of mori's people the Jews throughout the whole Kingdom of Xerxes
what What's Happening Here well we find out in chapter 3 that it says after these events this is four years after Esther has been Queen Esther's been Queen for four years and now the king elevates not a Persian but a a Canaanite an agagite the the the agagites were the sworn enemies of Israel if you remember all the way back to the Exodus Exodus chapter 17 when Moses was leading this
vulnerable nation of people out of 400 years of slav y the amalekites attacked them and attacked them when they were vulnerable and they became the sworn enemies of Israel and Saul hundreds of years later got to destroy the amalekites and he he decided not to destroy them all King AAG that's where the word agagite comes from he he spared and then eventually Samuel killed him but in some way that that agagite amalik
Offspring continued to live now 500 years later this man wants to destroy not just one Jew but every single Jewish person and Mori well he's there and he realizes this this guy is wanting people to bow down and and he chooses not to bow down and you can see this conversation that the officials are having there they're saying day after day why aren't you bowing Mori just bow down what's what's the big deal don't
you know what's at risk the King has elevated this man the King has commanded people to bow down to him and if you don't bow down things are going to get bad and Mori refuses to Bow and he even reveals to them something he told Esther not to reveal to the king he reveals that he's Jewish you see Mori knows that anti-Semitism has been around for a long time and now thousands of years later
anti-Semitism still exists to this day this sort of hatred for the Jewish people for for whatever reason we're going to talk about why that still exists a little bit later but he realizes that but he he Reveals His secret that I'm Jewish and that's why I'm not going to bow down and and and Mori knows what's at stake because in the previous chapter he he uncovered this conspiracy of these two men that tried to kill the king and and here's how these men died they were impaled on polls and here's what the ancient
release of Assyria and Babylon and Persia look like they would take a person and they would put them on a pole and this was a slow and excruciating death it was meant to be a publicly humiliating it was meant to bring Terror to everyone when when xerx Dad Darius conquered the Bab Empire he put 3,000 soldiers on polls and they slowly suffered and died in a public way and you're like wow these these Persians they were cruel people and and and they
were and you know the Persians perfected this form of execution they created a form of execution called crucifixion hundreds of years before Jesus would be crucified they were the ones that invented a way to create Terror to say if you defy our King and our laws not only will we kill kill you but we'll kill you in a slow and excruciating way that builds Terror in the Kingdom that com compels people to
comply to our orders but but Mori he would not bow how does hmon respond to that well hmon is filled with rage I mean he is the now the most powerful the second most powerful man in the Persian Empire but he can't get one old Jewish man to bow down to him so he is unable to enjoy anything that he has
it tells you something about hmon the sense of like pride and insecurity are sort of like twins and he he can't enjoy what he has unless this man bows down and so as the people are whispering to morai why aren't you bowing down you know you can get in trouble morai refuses because he's Jewish that same group of people go to talk to to hmon and say Hey you realize this old Jewish guy is not bowing down to you and hmon didn't realize it at first and then he
saw him maybe one day not bowing down and and and now he's filled with rage and and and I think these advisers are sort of like those kids who who boost up kids heads in Middle School you ever see a middle school fight like a middle school fight I used to be a middle school teacher all right so you got this kid over here and this kid over here and and they're starting to have like a little beef with each other and then and then the kids over here like man you know he just tried he just he just talked about your mom I'd swing on him and they push the kid a little little little closer and the kid like you going to let him talk to you like that they push the kid a little closer and these kids are like up against each other they
don't want to fight but the crowd wants to see the fight and they're boosting up their heads anybody know what I'm talking about a middle school fight go to go to middle school you'll see it it's every day it's that that's what's Happening Here the advisers are are are bringing these two opposing figures together and going are you not going to Bow what are you going to do about it and so now they're face to face in this moment and now here's here's how irrational here's how irrational Hon's thought process is I
don't just want to kill the one man who won't bow to me I want to kill every every person who's like him that sounds like a mad man a crazy person right and that's where this story is going to pick up let's look at verse 7 what's going to happen next so in the 12th year of King Xerxes in the first month the month of nysan the pur that is the lot was cast in the presence of hmon to select a day and a month and the lot fell on the 12th
month the month of Adar then hmon said to King Xerxes there is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves separate their Customs are different from those of all the other people and they do not obey the king's laws so it's not in the king's best interest to tolerate them so if it pleases the king let a decree be issued to destroy them and I will give 10,000
talents of silver for the king's administrators for the Royal treasury so the king took his signate ring from his finger and gave it to hmon some of hamadaa the agagite the enemy enemy of the Jews keep the money the king said to hmon and do with the people as you please what what's what's happening here well it's obvious that King Xerxes doesn't pick good advisors the advisers in chapter one told him to depose the
queen because she wouldn't come in front of all of his drunk friends and then to write a letter to all the provinces that every woman should be subject to her husband I mean I wonder how that edict went now this man is given the signant Ring of the king hmon and and what what what's this whole idea of the purr all right I want I want to explain what the purr is before hmon goes to the king he cast the purr the purr are like these ancient dice uh they they were in a Rel
used it in a religious ways to ask for God's Direction they were sort of maybe used in superstitious ways to go what should we do and so before hymon ever talks to the king he gets together with this little group and says I'm going to roll the dice and wherever the dice land that's the month that we're going to destroy every Jewish person person in the Persian Empire now now just to give you an idea because the king is going to have this conversation with hmon how many people are we talking about so I want to show you a picture again of the
Persian Empire the Persian Empire was made up of 127 provinces all right from India all the way to North Africa all right in this region in the entire region of what the Persian Empire controlled there were 15 million Jewish men women and children and this man just rolled the dice and said in 11 months the 13th day
of Adar we're going to kill 15 million people and so he has this conversation with the King hey King there are these people that live in your provin he doesn't name them he doesn't say how many there are but they're different than us they live separate they have different Customs they're not like us and it would be in the king's best interest not to tolerate them anymore so I'll take care of them and I want to give 10 10,000 tals of silver to the
Royal Treasury and you know it's kind of one of the things that you need to do as a leader so I'm making this recommendation the king sort of casually doesn't even ask who the people are and the people are sold and how much money is this 10,000 talents of silver it's 750,000 pounds of silver two-thirds of the annual income of the entire Persian Empire at this time and now we know that King Xerxes is sort of broke because he
fought this campaign in Greece he lost the battle the coffers need money so so hymon sorted suggesting hey I have a way that we can fill the Royal coffers and get rid of some people that you probably don't want to tolerate anyway and so he gives them the signant ring they they have this moment and it seems so casual verse 12 then in the 13th day of the first month the Royal secretaries were summoned they wrote out in the script of each province and the language of each
people all of Hon's orders to the king's satraps Governors and various provinces and the Nobles of various peoples and these were written in the name of King Xerxes himself and sealed with his own ring dispatches were sent by courriers to all the king's provinces with the order to destroy kill and annihilate all Jews young and old women and children on a single day the 13th day of the 12th