Binding the strong man
Esther 8:1–17
Esther is in the cockpit of the battle between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of Our Lord, and at this part of the story she is facing possibly the greatest part of the battle.
Hamaan, the antichrist figure, was hoist on his own petard. He has been trying to eradicate the Jews but he is caught in his own trap. Hamaan is a type of the great dragon in Revelation 12 waiting for the woman to give birth to the child when just as he was about to pounce, the child was spirited away.
Reversal of fortunes — poetic justice
Jesus’ being hung on the Cross spelled the embarrassment, the failure, the ridicule of all of His enemies:
He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. (Colossians 2:15 ESV)
In a prefigurement of this, Hamaan this antichrist figure is put to open shame. King Asheuerus has Hamaan hung on the guillotine which Hamaan had built to kill Mordecai. And the King gives Esther all the goods of the house of Hamaan. She was originally a nobody — an orphan taken as a sex-slave into the King’s hareem and sequestered from the world — and now she owns all of Hamaan’s wealth!
Esther tells the King what Mordecai was to her: how he had brought her up and earnestly cared for her even from a distance while she was in the hareem. This makes the king feel even more gratitude to Mordecai, so he exalts Mordecai to be his prime minister.
But the Jews were still in danger. The law of the Medes and Persians cannot be revoked, and the edict for the annihilation of the Jews still stands. Esther bravely takes another initiative: she falls at the King’s feet pleading for him to revoke the edict. She is under less tension because she herself is no longer in danger, so the dam bursts — she weeps. She intercedes with emotion… and the King reaches out the royal sceptre, giving her permission to speak. So she masters her emotions and use courtly language to beg for her people:
“If it please the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and if the thing seems right before the king, and I am pleasing in his eyes, let an order be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the provinces of the king.”
And with all her diplomatic courtly language, her passion still comes through:
“For how can I bear to see the calamity that is coming to my people? Or how can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred?”
Her intercession is successful; reversal of fortunes now comes to all the Jews, the people of God.
Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther and to Mordecai the Jew, “Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and they have hanged him on the gallows, because he intended to lay hands on the Jews. But you may write as you please with regard to the Jews, in the name of the king, and seal it with the king’s ring, for an edict written in the name of the king and sealed with the king’s ring cannot be revoked.”
So Mordecai composes another law, a law that contradicts the law which Hamaan had written. This law empowers the Jews to gather and defend their lives against all their enemies. At each point Hamaan’s edict is undone by Mordecai’s edict.
It is a picture of how the law of sin and death is undone by Jesus the Messiah.
In the light of a king’s face there is life, and his favor is like the clouds that bring the spring rain. (Proverbs 16:15)
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Posts in this series
Part 1: Liam Goligher’s sermons on the book of Esther (pt 1)
Part 2: Beauty and the Beast — Liam Goligher’s 2nd sermon on the book of Esther
Part 3: Of Plots and Kings — Liam Goligher’s 3rd sermon on the book of Esther
Part 4: If I Perish, I Perish — Liam Goligher’s 4th sermon on the book of Esther
Part 5: Battle Plans — Liam Goligher’s 5th sermon on the book of Esther
Part 6: Sleepless in Susa — Liam Goligher’s 6th sermon on the book of Esther
Part 7: Mission Impossible — Liam Goligher’s 7th sermon on the book of Esther
Part 8: Is this post.
Part 9: Holy War — Dr Liam Goligher’s 9th sermon on the book of Esther
Part 10: Celebrate: Come On! — Dr Liam Goligher’s final sermon on the book of Esther
A Cry For Justice 
What strikes me time and again while probing deeper into the book of Esther is how very real EVIL is. It really does exist. It did then and it does now. BUT, the fact that evil is all around us is not the end of the story.
As victims and survivors of verbal, emotional, financial, sexual, physical and psychological assaults we certainly can relate to the Haman’s of the world. Haman thought he was large-and-in-charge; didn’t go well for him. He was driven by his need to control and gain power and to be worshiped and bowed to. But the hand of God brings these Haman’s down to nothing. Even the throne of a tyrant comes to an end.
God overrules in all things. And as Dr. Goligher said, Jesus was HANDED over WITH the foreknowledge of God. It was God’s plan and no mere man could have brought about a different outcome.
For me personally, it is very comforting to always remember God sees and knows all things and in his perfect timing, tyrants will be destroyed and God will right all wrongs. So as we walk our paths as victims and survivors may we never lose sight, God is and always will be on his throne. We really can smile at the future!!
This is the one thing that gives me peace. God will right all wrongs. His justice is perfect. All things are in His loving hands.
From the original post:
^That.