Esther 2026

Take your bible and turn to Esther chapter nine, which is on page 507 of of church bibles if you're if you're using one of those.

And we're gonna read all the way through chapters nine and ten. Okay. Esther chapter nine starting at verse one. On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, the edict commanded by the king was to be carried out. On this day, the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them.

But now the tables were turned and the Jews got the upper hand over those who hated them. The Jews assembled in their cities in all the provinces of King Xerxes to attack those determined to destroy them. No one could stand against them because the people of all the other nationalities were afraid of them. And all the nobles of the provinces, the satraps, the governors, and the king's administrators helped the Jews because fear of Mordecai had seized them. Mordecai was prominent in the palace.

His reputation spread throughout the provinces, and he became more and more powerful. The Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and they did what they pleased to those who hated them. In the Citadel Of Susa, the Jews killed and destroyed 500 men. They also killed Parshandatha, Dalfon, Aspatha, Paratha, Adalia, Aridatha, Parmashta, Arisai, Aridae, and Vizatha, the 10 sons of Haman, son of Hamadatha, the enemy of the Jews. But they did not lay their hands on the plunder.

The number of those killed in the Citadel Of Susa was reported to the king that same day. The king said to queen Esther, the Jews have killed and destroyed 500 men and the 10 sons of Haman in the Citadel Of Susa. What have they done in the rest of the king's provinces? Now what is your petition? It will be given to you.

What is your request? It will also be granted. If it pleases the king, Esther answered, give the Jews in Susa permission to carry out this day's edict tomorrow also, and let Haman's 10 sons be impaled on poles. So the king commanded that this be done. An edict was issued in Susa, and they impaled the 10 sons of Haman.

The Jews in Susa came together on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar, and they put to death in Susa 300 men, but they did not lay their hands on the plunder. Meanwhile, the remainder of the Jews who were in the king's provinces also assembled to protect themselves and get relief from their enemies. They killed 75,000 of them, but did not lay their hands on the plunder. This happened on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and on the fourteenth, they rested and made it a day of feasting and joy. The Jews in Susa, however, had assembled on the thirteenth and fourteenth, and then on the fifteenth, they rested and made it a day of feasting and joy.

That is why rural Jews, those living in villages, observed the fourteenth of the month of Adar as a day of joy and feasting, a day for giving presents to each other. Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews throughout the provinces of king Xerxes near and far, that they should celebrate annually the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar, as the time when the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month when their sorrow was turned into joy, and their mourning into a day of celebration. He wrote to them to observe the days as days of feasting and joy, and giving presents of food to one another and gifts to the poor. So the Jews agreed to continue the celebration they had begun, doing what Mordecai had written to them. For Haman, son of Hamadatha the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them and had cast the purr, that is the lot, for their ruin and destruction.

But when the plot came to the king's attention, he issued written orders that the evil scheme Haman had devised against the Jews should come back onto his own head, and that he and his sons should be impaled on poles. Therefore, these days were called Purim, from the word Pur. Because of everything written in this letter, and because of what they had seen and what had happened to them, the Jews took it on themselves to establish the custom that they and their descendants and all who join them should without fail observe these two days every year in the way prescribed and at the time appointed. These days should be remembered and observed in every generation by every family and in every province and in every city. And these days of Purim should never fail to be celebrated by the Jews, nor should the memory of these days die out among their descendants.

So queen Esther, daughter of Abihail, along with Mordecai the Jew, wrote with full authority to confirm this second letter concerning Purim. And Mordecai sent letters to all the Jews in the 127 provinces of Xerxes' kingdom, words of goodwill and assurance, to establish these days of Purim at their designated times. As Mordecai the Jew and queen Esther had decreed for them, and as they had established for themselves and their descendants in regard to their times of fasting and lamentation. Esther's decree confirmed these regulations about Purim, and it was written down in the records. King Xerxes imposed tribute throughout the empire to its distant shores, And all his acts of power and might, together with a full account of the greatness of Mordecai, whom the king had promoted, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Media and Persia?

Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to king Xerxes, preeminent among the Jews, and held in high esteem by his many fellow Jews because he worked for the good of his people and spoke up for the welfare of all the Jews. Alex. Evening, everyone. Oh, am I on? I think I'm on.

Yep. Can you hear me? Fantastic. Yeah. Thank you, Paul.

And, actually, it's worth just taking a moment to appreciate this man. He's he can lead his church service. He can lead the singing. He can take a dozen Aggregant names without taking a breath, and he's doing it all in this heat, in jeans. I don't know if he noticed it.

You can see it here. Cool. A what a shift. But, actually, yeah, thank you to everyone who is pulling double duty or anything this week while we're a little shorter with Focal Way for Authentic. It is a pleasure though to have so many here with us.

Actually, you're my favorites. So yeah. But, yeah, we are wrapping up our series in Esther this evening. So if you haven't been here, apologies. There might be some unanswered questions, but it's all online.

You can go back and catch up. It may not make tons of sense, but, you know, it is what it is. But let's pray. Let's pray before we dive in and hear God speak to us through the scriptures. Father, thank you that you are a speaking God.

Thank you that tonight you speak to us through the scriptures. Thank you that you speak to us by your holy spirit as we open them, as we study your words. We pray that, particularly in this heat, while it's hot, that we'd be able to do that. You'd help us help us to cling on to what is true and useful and to to let go of any dross that I might say. Help us, we pray, to glorify you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Amen. Some stories, and we're finishing one tonight, some stories end once. But there are other stories that kinda just keep going for a bit. There's a bit after the end, kind of for untangling any of the threads.

It turns out there's actually kind of a proper term for this. It's called if and if you're a literary person or a film person, you might know this already. It's called a denouement, which I assume is French. Lately though, Sam and I, we've been enjoying watching our way through the the David Souche Poirot's. They've just come up on Netflix.

I don't know if you've seen. But Poirot doesn't tend to end an episode with kind of a car chase and screeching tires and gunshots and all that sort of heroics. Instead, you might get that in a thriller's climax, but instead, it generally involves Poirot getting all the suspects together, cutting through all the red herrings, sort of making sense of all those motives, and provides a resolution to the mystery that's been sort of going through the story all along. Another example, The Lord of the Rings. Great story.

It ends about seven times, even in the film version. Right? So the the ring gets destroyed, then Sam and Frodo get rescued. Aragorn gets crowned king. The hobbits return to the Shire.

Frodo eventually then leads to undying lands across in the West. If you don't know Lord of Rings, apologies. That makes no sense. But it's not just padding in the book or in the film, though. Because what comes in those last bits actually tells us what it already means, what victory means, who's changed, what's been restored, what problems or wounds kind of remain, What will life look like now?

Those threads, they're all gathered together, and they bring a sense of finality and emotional closure for the characters. And all the transition and change that's happened, they act as a message to the audience. And I'd like to suggest that the audience would be poorer for not getting that message in these denouements. Now the book of Esther that we're tying up tonight, it actually could have easily ended two times already. At the end of chapter seven, Haman's dead.

He's hanged on the gallows that he built for Mordecai. Ding dong, the villain's gone. Or it could have been the end of chapter eight. Haman had wielded the king's ring of power for evil and to condemn condemn those Jews to death. But then Mordecai in chapter eight, he gets the king's signet ring, and he and Esther issue their counter edict.

The city of Susa, it erupts with joy and gladness, and the Jews, there's there's honor and joy and and light, and Mordecai leaves the king's presence dressed in royal robes for the second time. Should be roll credits. Right? Except, no. We get this kind of long landing in chapters nine and ten.

And in these chapters, we get all that resolution and finality and emotional closure and change and transition. We get what Haman's defeat finally means. And all of that, all of those threads as they're pulled together, it adds up to a really important message for that original audience in particular that would have first heard this book of Esther. Now the author of the book of Esther, they spent the book being extraordinarily subtle up to this point. God has never been named.

His providence has appeared through sort of timing and sleeplessness and banquets and eunuchs turning up at the same right time and apparent coincidences and all sorts of things. And even in these chapters, God is still unnamed. But in another sense, that subtlety now has gone totally out of the window. There are verses in these chapters that basically are like huge flashing lights being like, this is what the book has always been about. Okay?

So we're going to see some of those verses, but we're going to see them and try try and see them through the eyes of that original audience. Because understanding how the book of Esther spoke to those people is gonna help us understand how it speaks to us people. Right? So who were those people? Well, Esther speaks into the world of the Jews after the exile.

Some of them are back in and around Jerusalem at this point, but many of them are still sort of scattered around the Persian Empire. We know this because you can look in the in the book of Ezra, the couple of books before Esther. And in chapter six, it has the story of the Jews living in Jerusalem under the rule of king Darius, who's Xerxes' dad. Then in Ezra chapter seven, you see that story continue under the reign of king Artaxerxes, who's Xerxes' son. So if you want to place Esther on the timeline of the Bible, its events happen after the return of the exile has begun and after the temple has been rebuilt, but before Nehemiah comes, if you know that story, to return and build rebuild Jerusalem's walls.

But that term return from exile, it can sound so much neater and more tidy and complete than it it actually was in reality because not everybody had returned. I mean, in our story, Esther and Mordecai, they'd certainly not returned. Jewish communities, they they stayed scattered across this Persian empire. But even for those who had gone home, this was hardly the kind of glorious day of restoration that the prophets had told them to expect. They had a temple again, but they didn't have that old visible glory of God's presence with them anymore.

They were back in the land, but the land was ruled by Persia. Jerusalem remained weak and vulnerable, and decisions affecting the future of God's people could still be made hundreds of miles away in a city called Susa. They were restored, but not restored. They really were God's people. But when the Jews looked at their circumstances, looked around them, if this was restoration, why did it feel so unfinished?

Whose hands was their future really in? Why were they at the mercy of whoever happened to sit on the throne or or at least whoever had his ear? When enemies arose, who'd protect them? And if Persian kings could forget good deeds and hand their citizens over to destruction, was there a god like that too? But the danger wasn't only around them.

Their ancestors had rejected God and ended up in exile. So if this generation, this post exile generation survived, what kind of people would they even be? Would they repeat the same disobedience of their ancestors? Or actually, could they live differently this time? And if so, how?

Because more than just their survival was at stake here. If a scattered people disappeared if if this scattered people disappeared, what would become of God's promises to bless the world through them? How would the promised king of God's promise ever come? Now none of those questions, you won't see them printed on any page in Esther, but they hang over the head of every one of that original audience who would have heard and read this story through every banquet, every decree, every gallows, and every kind of apparently coincidental event in the story. And so as chapters nine and ten begin gathering up the threads and gathering up the answers, they do that for that audience, and they do it by first showing us what happens when the appointed day of reckoning finally arrives.

So have a look down with me at verses one to 16 of chapter nine. Verse then, the day of reckoning is here. Verse one. On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, the edict commanded by the king was to be carried out. On this day, the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, but now the tables were turned and the Jews got the upper hand over those who hasted them.

This, one of those flashing light verses. Okay? It almost gathers up the whole book in one verse, doesn't it? And notice what hasn't happened. The date hasn't been cancelled.

Haman is dead, long dead at this point, but the danger didn't die with him. Because back in chapter three, when Haman never intended to travel around the whole Persian Empire, the 127 provinces, personally killing every single Jew. He had used Xerxes' ring of kingly authority to send a decree around the empire, but it was always the plan to get ordinary people to do his dirty work. His decree gave people throughout Persia a date on which they could legally kill their Jewish neighbors and take everything they owned. Haman gave their hatreds legal permission.

He gave it financial incentive, and he gave it a date. And apparently, plenty of people were eager to take him up on this. Verse one calls them the enemies of the Jews who had hoped to overpower them. Verse two says that even the best part of a year later, they were still seeking the Jews' destruction. So for nearly a year, Jewish families have watched this date creeping closer and closer.

And for nearly a year, people in their same towns and cities have been sharpening the blades. One group has been dreading the calendar. The other has been counting down the days. And now, the day finally arrives. Same date, same empire, same unrevoked decree, but now a completely different verdict.

The enemies of the Jews expected to overpower them. Instead, verse one says, look, the tables were turned. The day of reckoning becomes a day of reversal instead. The people who intended to to turn their hatred into Jewish bloodshed now actually face the consequences of the violence they willingly wanted to come and carry out. The day appointed for the destruction of the Jews actually becomes the day of those seeking their destruction to be defeated themselves.

Haman had been dealt dealt with, but now the people who'd taken up his courts were facing their very own day of reckoning. So those enemies turn up to carry out Haman's decree, but the balance of power is nothing like what they expected. They thought the Jews would be easy prey, but instead, the Jews assemble to defend themselves. And verse two says that nobody can stand against them because fear of them has fallen on all peoples. Then verse three widens the picture as well.

Fear of Mordecai has fallen on the royal officials, so all the satraps, the governors, the administrators throughout all the empire now help the very people who had previously been exposed to destruction by the structures of that same empire. Now those those governors and things, they probably haven't all suddenly experienced a spiritual awakening. No. They they know which way the wind's blowing, don't they? They've worked out where the power now lies.

Once Haman had the king's ear, the king's ring, and the might of the whole Persian empire working for his means, but now Mordecai has the ring. Mordecai's fame has spread, and the same imperial power is being turned towards the protection of God's people. That changed balance of power determines what follows, because in verses five to 10, they report the first ace fighting in Susa. 500 men are killed in the citadel as well as Haman's 10 sons. So the household at the center of this plot to destroy the Jews has now fallen with him.

In fact, Haman's boast of glory, do you remember it back in chapter five verse 11, his boast of his many sons and his riches, actually, ultimately becomes the sign of curse and shame as their bodies are later impaled on poles for old to see. Then though comes a phrase we'll hear again. Have a look down at verse verse 10. But they did not lay their hands on the plunder. Put a pin in that.

We'll come back to that. Then in verse 11, the king initiates initiates conversation with Esther. He tells her what's happened, and he asks, what is your petition? It will be given to you. What is your request?

It will also be granted. This is what a moment worth clocking, isn't it? The woman who once didn't know whether she could enter the king's presence and live, now has the king coming to her off his own back. In an empire where access to the king seems to be the highest form of currency, Esther now has it in absolute spades. It's the same king, the same enormous, easily influenced power.

But now all that power is being channeled towards the welfare of God's people rather than their destruction. What Esther does with that influence is is also where the passage becomes a bit uncomfortable. She she asked for the defensive decree to continue for another stay in Susa. And so the following day, another 300 enemies are killed in Susa. And then the narrator says it again, but they did not lay their hands on the plunder.

Finally, verse 16 pulls the camera back from the capital and shows the rest of the empire. The Jews throughout the provinces assembled to defend themselves too, and 75,000 of their enemies are killed. That's an enormous number. But again, for the third time, but they did not lay their hands on the plunder. Three times we've heard that phrase as we've gone through.

So this isn't just a throwaway detail, is it? Now Haman's original decree permitted the attackers to plunder the Jewish property. The counter decree that Esther and Mordecai wrote that we looked at last time permitted the Jews to take the property of those who attacked them. So the Jews had legal rights. They had legal permission to make themselves rich from the defeat of their enemies, but they don't.

They fight to live, not to loot. They defend themselves, but they refuse to turn their rescue into a raid. But there's another layer to this. Throughout Esther, Haman has been called the Agagites. On the other hand, Mordecai, when we got introduced to him, there's a big point made that he's from the tribe of Benjamin and is pointedly called a son of Kish, which again, flashing light time, is another big sign for us to see that Mordecai belongs to the family tribe of the first Israelite king, Saul.

Now we haven't got time to go into in tons of details, but back in one Samuel chapter 15, God commanded Saul to deal with Agag, who was king of the Amalekites, who even then, even way back then, were ancient aggressors against Israel. So God commanded him to deal with Agag and to totally destroy all that belonged to them. But Saul dissipates. He actually spared Agag and kept the best of the plunder for himself. And so in that moment, in those acts, came one of the worst, most tragic, and most rebellious moments of God's people in a string of events that tumble out of each other and eventually leads to the people's exile.

Now Esther, again, it doesn't have a footnote in the margin saying, please turn back to one Samuel 15. But the connections, like we said, there's flashing lights to that first Jewish audience, an Agagai enemy, a descendant of Kish. And this time, repeated three times just so we definitely don't miss it, God's people do not take the plunder. Where Saul plundered what God had forbidden him to take, now the Jews refuse what the Persian decree permitted them to take. Here, at least in miniature, this generation does not repeat the mistakes of their ancestors.

They don't sin and disobey in the same way. Because remember, one of the big Jewish questions, if not the big Jewish question for this life after exile is, how can it go better next time? And the repeated answer we get in this chapter is, live as the holy, obedient, covenant people that God has called you to be. When power comes into your hands, use it differently. Receive your deliverance without allowing your enemies' greed to become your own.

Don't repeat those same mistakes that your ancestors made. You might remember Haman had turned Jewish distinctiveness into an accusation when he was trying to convince Xerxes to plot their destruction. He he had that line, their customs are different from those of everyone else. And here, the story says, do you know what? Yeah.

Yeah. So let their victory be different as well. And so this is that denouement stuff working in full flow. Right? It doesn't merely just show who survived after this day of reckoning.

In the flashing lights that we sort of paused over, it tells Esther's first listeners what this victory means for them. Those those listeners, they're asking, can evil win against God's people? Well, it could borrow a king's ring. It could write a decree. It could choose a date even.

It could recruit thousands of willing volunteers spend eleven months looking totally unstoppable, but it could not have the final words. And was the Jews gods like Xerxes, forgettable and or forgetful and changeable? No. Xerxes forgot Mordecai. Remember?

Here we see God has not forgotten his people. He delivered them to relief from their enemies even after they were marked for certain destruction. Xerxes first handed his ring to Haman, and then he handed it to Mordecai, but God's covenant promises never change on a whim. By preserving this this weak and unimpressive people, God was carrying forward his ancient promise, the promise that blessing would come to the whole world through this family and that this and his promised king would one day come. Now it it is worth hitting pause just for a moment because, rightly, we we read verses like one to 16 of chapter nine, and we get uncomfortable at the slaughter and the death toll in this chapter.

I mean, it's seventy five thousand eight hundred and ten people who get recorded as being put to death here. Even if they're enemies, that should make us wince. Right? Now there are three things that we need to bear in mind as we handle these verses, and there's so much we could say here. You could spend an entire sermon and still not get through all of it.

So we won't cover everything, but I think these three things will help us to at least begin grappling with it. Firstly, the Jews were acting in response to the actions of their enemies. There have been nine months since Esther and Mordecai's counter edicts being issued in chapter eight and then the events of chapter nine, and it was public knowledge to all the peoples throughout the Persian Empire that the Jews were authorized by royal decree to arm themselves. And so the people who still come to attack them, they must really hate the Jews and be really determined to attack them. These aren't 75,000 random Persians who are hunted down because they're Persian or any other race for that matter.

These are people who've actually turned up to carry out Haman's decree. The narrator calls them enemies, haters, and people seeking the Jews' destruction. Now I'm not I'm not pretending that this is neat or easy. And, of course, you know, across all the Jews, across all the empire, may well have been some who were acting with less than pure motives. And and we touched on it before, but Esther's request for a second day in Susa, it makes her morally complicated, if nothing else.

Right? Yet we don't get much of a why from the narrator. But the fact that there are another 300 enemies that are killed in Susa, it suggests that there's a serious threat that remains. But we mustn't lose sight of the fact that fundamentally, the Jews are responding to their enemies' actions. This is an act of self defense.

Secondly, we have to deal with the fact that although we might take issue with the morals of chapter nine, the book of Esther, the tone as you read it through, it holds it up as an unmistakably positive thing. The tone you read is not squirming or apologetic. There's something proportionate and right about the person whose heart says, I want you and your people wiped out from the face of the earth, themselves being wiped off the face of the earth. And so we do need to wrestle with this. We need to accept that the the way the god of all time meets out ageless justice may not be exactly according to the standards of my time and my place.

Thirdly and briefly, I don't think that this chapter is in any way either an endorsement or a license for any possible parallels that people might take between so called enemies of Israel, the sort of secular state, the Jewish people, sort of ethnically, or God's people in any way, shape, or form. It's no endorsement. It's no license. And to do so is a really clumsy handling of of the bible. Now those are all really important issues to pause over, and it may well be that there's more to talk through.

But let's acknowledge, it is a pause by the main road of this passage. Right? The author doesn't stop to give us a long moral essay on violence here. So it I I think for the sake of time, if nothing else, let's step back into the flow of the main passage. Because from verse 17, the fighting is all over.

The Jews rest, and the author turns to the thing he actually really wants to linger over, the fact that this deliverance must never be forgotten. So have a look down at at verses 17 to 32, because here, we see that the festival of is established. And if verse one of chapter nine was one of those huge flashing lights for us, chapter the end bit of chapter nine gives us a whole row of them. Why is the festival of Purim establish established? Well, the author tells us extraordinarily clearly, and verse 22 gives us that the reason from three different angles.

First, because the people of God received relief from their enemies. The Jews had been marked for death, but instead they survived. The people who who spent nearly a year living beneath a death sentence reached the other side of this appointed day of reckoning alive. It's amazing. Second, because their sorrow was turned to joy.

Just think about how the earlier chapters in in Esther make this really visual for us. You had Mordecai who's in sackcloth down in the gutter, eventually in royal ropes at the right hand of the king. And third, verse 22, because their mourning was turned into celebration. The weeping and wailing at the beginning of chapter four became the joy and feasting and gift giving and charity of chapter nine verse 19. That is the emotional meaning of Purim.

Evil was defeated. God's people were delivered. Their grief was transformed to joy. And that is why the these become days of feasting and celebration celebration, of sending food to one another and giving gifts to the poor. Purim is not just a vague annual reminder of something nice that something nice vaguely once happened.

The feast is tied to a very particular story. Haman, the enemy, tried to destroy us, but his evil plan returned upon his own head. Therefore, we remember. And verses twenty seven and twenty eight pile phrase upon phrase to make sure that this remembrance includes everybody. Have a look at it with me.

Have a look down at it with me. The Jews take it upon themselves and their descendants and everyone who joins them. It must be observed every year, in every generation, by every family, in every province, in every city. These days must never cease to be celebrated. Their memory must never die out.

It's almost as if the author runs out of ways to say it. Right? Every June, everywhere, forever. And that is especially significant for that first audience, isn't it? Because Persia has them scattered across the map, but Purim gathers gathers them together on the calendar.

They may never meet each other, but wherever they live, they will share this date, this feast, and this story. Now in in these verses, in in the sort of tail end of of chapter nine, we get the full process of of how the festival is established. It's recorded in verses 20 to 22. It's accepted in verses 23 to 28, and then it's confirmed in verses 29 to 32. But we don't need to get lost in all that letter writing tonight.

The point that the author is making, and again, shining at us in bright lights, is permanent. This event must not remain just a spontaneous celebration of one relieved generation. It must become a part of the shared identity of God's people. Perhaps though, perhaps, the greatest flashing light of all is the name of the festival itself, Purim. Verse 26 tells us that these days are called Purim after the word pur.

Now I don't know whether you've noticed all the way through Esther, whenever you see that word pur, it gets explained for us. It means lot because that is a foreign word in the Akkadian language as opposed to Hebrew that the rest of the book is is written in. And so every time you you get purr, it gets translated, Lot. Back in chapter three, Haman cast the purr to select the day on which the Jews would be destroyed by we don't entirely know what he's doing, but presumably appealing to some sort of pagan gods or chants or at least some sort of higher power. But now the pur becomes Purim, and that is another victory in and of itself because the Jews don't merely survive the date selected by the pur.

They take the word itself and turn it into a Hebrewified name of their feast. Purim is Hebrew. It's in the Hebrew language because chance did not own their future. Their enemy did not own their future. The God who saves owned their future.

The thing which appeared to announce their doom becomes the yearly byword for their deliverance. Haman cast the Purim so that one particular date would mark the disappearance of the Jews. Esther and Mordecai established Purim so that that same date will ensure that that deliverance is never ever forgotten. His lot said, you will be gone. Their feast says, we're still here.

And so Purim becomes almost a new Passover shaped festival, because at Passover, God rescued his people from threatened death in Egypt and gave them an annual feast to remember that deliverance throughout every generation. At Purim, God rescued his scattered people from threatened death in Persia. And again, that that deliverance becomes an annual feast to be remembered by every generation. Passover remembers deliverance, the deliverance through which Israel was brought into being as a people. Purim remembers the deliverance through which that post exile reformed people were preserved as a people.

And there's a wonderful symmetry too of of where those festivals fall, because Passover, it comes right in the first month of the Jewish calendar. Purim comes right in the twelfth month, the back end of the calendar. So in the first month, they remember the gods who brought them out of Egypt. In the final month, they remember the gods who refused to let them be wiped out in Persia. Because the God who rescues his people right at the very beginning of their their history as a nation had preserved them again in this strange, scattered, unfinished world after exile.

The manner of that deliverance, it it looks very different, but the message is the same. They have a god who delivers people from first to last. God saves, And that is why this memory must never die out. On the second, third, and fourth of March this year, all around the world, in Jewish communities and families, this story of Esther was read aloud again. We've already mentioned a few times in in this series how whenever the reader of that story reaches Haman's name, children and and plenty of adults too, They spin rattles, and they stamp their feet and make noise to drown out his name.

Then they feast. They eat hamantaschen, which Tom told me the other week. They're little victory pastries that are known as Hayman's ears. That's great, isn't it? And then they they send food to friends and give gifts to the poor.

That memory of deliverance, it becomes noisy and edible and shared and generous. They don't just think about the deliverance, they inhabit the story and celebrate it together. And you can see why. Right? It's not hard to imagine a child who who sees all this going on and asks, you know, dad, why do we do all this?

Unless dad takes him on the knee and goes, well, son, sit down. Let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you about the enemy who wanted us gone. Let me tell you about the day where everything turned, and let me tell you about the god who saved us. And so they lived happily ever after.

Right? Well, let's see. Have a look down at chapter 10 with me. Verse one. King Xerxes imposed tribute throughout the empire to its distant distant shorts.

What's the saying again? Nothing certain except death and taxes. Right? Chapter chapter 10 verse one. It's it's a wonderfully blunt way to bring us back down to reality, isn't it?

Because you've got the Jews, they've been delivered. Haman is dead. Purim's been established. There's been joy and feasting and celebration, and then the tax bill arrives. Persia is still Persia.

Its empire still stretches to distant shores. The the big cogs of the machinery are still running. Xerxes is still sat on the throne, but something has genuinely changed. Verses two and three tell us that that Mordecai is now second in rank to Xerxes. He's preeminent amongst the Jews.

He and Xerxes, they seem to do all sorts of great deeds together recorded in annals, and he's held in high esteem because he worked for the good of his people and spoke up for the welfare of the Jews. So, like, Xerxes hasn't changed changed, but he has been redirected, at least in part. But Mordecai being second in rank, it it is it's both a triumph and a limitation. Right? Because this Jew, he's risen from obscurity to become the second most powerful man in the empire.

That's amazing. Right? But he is still second. Xerxes is still first. This end of Esther that we've been looking at tonight is certainly not that day promised by the prophets, is it?

It is not the day where God dwells openly with his people. God's king is not sitting on the throne. This is definitely not the day when when swords are beaten into plowshares and spears are beaten into pruning hooks, is it? The salvation in Esther, it it does save real people from real death. It gives them relief and rest and joy in the future, but it's not ultimate, is it?

But it does unlock the way to that ultimate deliverance because through it, God preserves the covenant people through whom it will come. Haman's plan threatened the people through whom God had promised to bless the world, but the Jews survive. God's promises remain. The promised king can still come through them. Esther doesn't bring that promised aid that the prophets told of, but it keeps God's people and God's promise alive until that day finally comes.

And so that's where their story kind of opens into us because Esther's first listeners remember, they lived after exile, but before the Messiah. We live after the Messiah has come, but before he returns. They look forward to the coming king. We look back to the the cross and the empty tomb, but forwards to his return. And that's hard.

Right? We don't see him. It's been two thousand years. The world around us can make it really difficult to to trust. They were restored, but not restored.

In Christ, we are saved, but we're not home, are we? We're living through that long wait between Christ's first coming and his second coming. In Esther's terms then, I guess, we're we're living between chapters eight and nine, not because every detail maps neatly on onto Christ, but that that shape of the story, it helps us locate ourselves, doesn't it? The decisive turn, it has taken place, but that appointed day has not yet come. At the cross, Jesus paid sin's penalty and broke its power, although sin's presence remains.

The son of God, he he appeared, and he appeared to destroy the devil's work. At the cross, he disarms the the powers and authorities. The empty tomb serves as as God's verdict on on everything that had happened on Good Friday. Sin had been judged. Death's defeat has been secured.

The people of God or rather, the people marked by sin for death receive eternal life. The victory has been won, but we've not yet reached that appointed day where the victory is visible everywhere. Chapter nine, if you like, is still to come, isn't it? And we do see that. We we get shown it in the Bible.

Revelation chapter 19, it gives us and shows us and tells us to look forward to the greater day of reckoning to come. Because there, the rider calls faithful and true a pierce. The enemies of Christ assemble, but there's scarcely a battle to describe. Christ simply wins. The final reckoning belongs totally, utterly, and completely to him.

And Revelation, as you read on, it it doesn't picture that future only as a battlefield. It's also a feast. They cry out, let us rejoice and be glad. And you get the wedding supper and the famous verses in chapters twenty one and twenty two of of glory. The day of reckoning in Esther, it ends with rest and joy and feasting and generosity after deliverance.

Absolutely. But the great day of reckoning ends with the great feast. Total deliverance, unspoiled joy, people finally free to do good without sin's corrupting power or presence. What Jesus' cross secured, his return will make complete. That's where the story's going, but we're not there yet.

For now, the the world still looks powerful. The news is still scary. Sin still clings to us. Grave's still open. So what keeps a delivered people faithful between the victory won and the victory secured to come?

We remember. What could that remembering look like for us? Well, before I speak mainly to Christians, perhaps tonight you're here and you're not a Christian. At the end of chapter eight, people from the surrounding nations identified themselves with the Jews as the day of reckoning approached, and the God of the Bible hands out an invitation to you tonight. And I wanna say that includes anyone who's ethnically Jewish here as well.

I don't know. There may be none. But take refuge in Christ. If you don't know him, trust him. Join his fulfilled people.

Come because it means you can join the great feast. But Christians, how do we keep living? Remember. Remember. And remember together because that last word matters.

Christian remembrance is not mainly about each of us trying to keep ourselves sort of spiritually afloat. I don't know about you, but some Sundays, we arrive to to church, either here or at Tiffin, struggling to summon much faith or hope or or joy at all. And so when our memory fails, what do we do? Well, actually, it's what do we do. The church around us remembers.

At the center of that remembering is the meal Jesus himself gave us. He says, do this in remembrance of me. Whenever we we eat the bread and and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. The supper, it holds that whole story together, doesn't it? It looks back to the cross.

It rests upon the empty tomb, and it looks forward as well to to the returning king, to that feast that he's gonna bring because of his death. We remember the final we remember the victory until that final victory comes. So remember together in all sorts of ways. Remember through those those key Christian celebration dates in the calendar. Remember through teaching our young people and our children.

Remember through performing and celebrating amongst us those good deeds which which God has prepared in advance for us to do as his covenant people. Because among us, that memory takes visible form as we do it. Every baptism we have says, this person has crossed from death to life. Every Lord's Supper says, his death has become our feast. Every Christian funeral says, death has taken someone that it cannot keep.

Every Easter says, the tomb is still empty, and every ordinary Sunday gathering says, the church, the church which Satan has spent two thousand years trying to destroy annoyingly is here again. Let's pray. Oh, god. Thank you so much for the book of Esther. Thank you that you are the god who saves from first to last.

Help us to remember who you are. You're the God who saves, the God who delivers, not just for them then, but thank you that you have done it for us in Christ. Help us to remember. Help us to remember so we can live as holy, obedient people of promise while we wait for the final victory, the final day of reckoning, the final feast. Amen.