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Esther for the Endtimes #4:
Haman's Gallows
And Haman told them of the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and all the things wherein the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king. Haman said, moreover, yea, Esther the queen did let no man come in with the king unto the banquet that she had prepared but myself; and tomorrow am I invited unto her also with the king. Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate. Then said Zeresh his wife and all his friends unto him, let a gallows be made of fifty cubits high, and tomorrow speak though unto the king that Mordecai may be hanged thereon: then go thou in merrily with the king unto the banquet. And the thing pleased Haman; and he caused the gallows to be made.
The Grand Reversal
Today we come to the fourth of our five messages from the book of Esther, and turn our attention to the grand reversal of the story. The book of Esther reaches its climax when Haman's plot to kill the Jews is reversed and he himself winds up hanging from the gallows he had caused to be built to hang Mordecai on. In the end, God's people are saved and their persecutor is hanged on his own instrument of death. Although our Lord Jesus is the "Prince of peace" (Isaiah 9:6), He came "not to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34).
Jesus came to unsheath the glittering edge of the gospel sword. Truth and error are arrayed in battle in the universe today--good verses evil--Christ versus Satan. Every conflict that we experience in our day-to-day lives is a manifestation of this unbreakable antagonism. All creation endures the devastating onslaught of two implacable ideologies--two irreconcilable moralities. In microcosm, the book of Esther records just this same conflict. All the villians of all the stories ever told originate in our adversary Satan. In the old western movies the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black. All these fictionalized Darth Vaders are really just cardboard echoes of the arch-demon himself.
And the arch-demon himself shows through the cartoon-cracks of Haman rather clearly. Here is an individual that Satan has ruined, cartoonized, and used as a pawn; he almost became the Hitler of his age--he almost killed a whole people. He is the villain in the story. His name "Haman" may have merely a foreign derivation, but it is interesting that the Hebrew word "haman" translates to meaning roughly "noise, tumult, crowd, wealth, riches, rumbling." In the original Hebrew, both of these words are spelled the same ("hmn," no vowels originally). Whether this has any significance or not, it certainly characterizes Haman at his essence!
Our Scripture reading shows Haman as he was, exceptionally pleased with himself, full of his own importance, but troubled because one individual had the temerity to refuse to bow down to him. "All of this does nothing for me," reported Haman, "so long as Mordecai refuses to bow down to me."
All of what Haman was was a not-so-sublime echo of the inward philosophy of Satan as captured in Isaiah 14:13-14: "For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High."
"I will ascend! I will ascend into heaven! I will exalt my throne above the stars of God! Yes, I will! I will sit on the highest throne! I will ascend above the heights of the clouds! I'll be higher than high! Hah hah hah ha hah!"
One can almost hear the campy, villainous laughter of a madman in a grade-B movie in the background.
Only Isaiah 14 was written long before any campy, grade-B movies.
How did he get this way, anyway? Ezekiel 28:16-17 shows us that, although created pure, Lucifer's craving for more and more glory, the flakey self-image he developed by dwelling upon what he saw as his own finer points, led him to lose his way and to corrupt his wisdom. He was the highest of all created beings; but he ruined himself in a frenzy of self-worship. And he fell headlong into futility, and dragged the universe along with him.
His obsession led him even to try to get the Creator of all that is to bow down to him. Remember, he told Jesus that if He would merely bow down to him, He could have all the world--that He could get it all without going to the cross. And at such a small price: to bow down to Satan for just a moment in time, to admit his supremacy, just in passing.
But it would have meant entire disaster for God's plan. Jesus wouldn't do it.
All that Haman had availed him nothing as long as one person refused to bow down to him. All of Haman's riches, his position, and his wealth was not enough. Even to punish just Mordecai was not enough; he had to kill all the Jews.
Is pride a form of mental disease? What is pride?
Pride Exposed
Pride reaches out and consumes others. It is never satisfied. It blurs what you are worth with what you derive your value from. Pride is part of a zero-sum system. You know what zero-sum is: I win, you lose; you lose, I win. Zero sum equations always work out to a finite total. Therefore, if I am very good, then you must be very bad. And if your personal value can be made lower in relation to me, then I am clearly better than you. Or so the reasoning goes.
A weak person operates in a zero-sum environment. He thinks that he can't be a winner unless you're a loser. He wants you to serve him, because that's how he assures himself that he is better than you are. In Mordecai, Haman saw his personal value challenged. Mordecai wouldn't bow down; he would not give to Haman the reverence which he saw as being due only to God. That threatened Haman. Haman's self-value--his self-understanding of who he was and why he was valuable--wasn't fortified with the truth of God's love for him. He was not a worshiper of God but was a worshiper of himself. And all who worship themselves really have no idea who they are. They cannot see clearly. They can only see with eyes like Satan's eyes that say "I must be above everyone. Even God!" Part of the work of the gospel is to cure our pride. To make us safe to save.
The Gospel Sword
The gospel is a sword that cuts deep. Simeon made this clear when he pronounced that the infant Jesus was "set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel, and a sign which would be spoken against" (Luke 1:34). As the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6) for man, He was a living boundary; He came as the word of God enfleshed. He was the embodiment of all healing of mind and heart; He was a walking Scalpel, set upon the earth with love and deft wisdom to prune away the hate and the pride and the poison out of your human heart and mine. If we will let Him. He can heal us. He can make us whole. He can bind our wounds and repair our lives. And if we look back and feel that somehow we have managed to really foul-up most of our life, He can give us courage to go on, and remind us that the present is only a moment on the epic scale of eternity. He has promised to restore the years that we have wasted (Joel 2:25-26), and make our lives new...
Again.
The gospel makes us content where once we had been hard and unrestful. It puts man's pride in the dust, so that we can be healed. God knows all of our nightmares--all of our pain. He stores up all of our tears. He feels our pain with us. We may not always sense that He is near or that He cares, but then He never promised that getting to the end of the road would be only smooth sailing. There are bumps on the road of your life and mine because Satan has been wanting us to bow down; and so often we have done it. In some cases, our lives have spiritual craters, and cold, dead places, burned-out, crispened--scars and monuments to Satan. But Jesus will work for the wounded if we will but hold open the door of our heart.
We don't have to become like Haman. We needn't walk through this world with blinders on to all that is spiritual until we become cartoonized-echoes of Satan, burned-out shades going to and fro throughout the earth in a perpetual tumult on a goalless mission. Listen! Do you think that Haman was some kind of a hero to Satan? After all, he lived out Satan's plans and schemes, and forwarded his goals. Never, not on your life. Not in a thousand years! Satan saw Haman as a dupe, a patsy, a fall-guy, a zero, a tool. That's all. I mean, think about this:
Satan knew that God could and probably would intervene. He knew what Esther was brewing up, and he had provoked Haman to have the gallows built anyway. Do you think Satan didn't know, that he hadn't been updated on what was going down? He doesn't need a cell-phone. He could see what was going down. Who do you think put together the idea of the gallows? That was Satan's idea. He put it into the mind through Haman's wife and friends, and it sounded pretty good to Haman: a gallows fifty cubits high to hang Mordecai on; kind of has a ring to it, doesn't it? Fifty cubits translates to (do you know how much?)... to about 75 feet. Not only that, but Esther 7:9 adds that this gallows was set up in Haman's house.
Persian houses like his had an inner patio or court, and that's where they put it up. And they did it quickly too. The neighbors must have heard the hammering and sawing, and in no time, it was up. No one who passed by could possibly miss it. Its murderous and somber message broadcast to everyone that something was afoot. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want a gallows erected at my house at all, at any time, for any reason. But to murderous, zero-sum Haman, it was the cat's meow.
Haman's Gallows Symbolize an Alternative Gospel Plan
Jesus came to our planet "set for the falling and rising of many, and as a sign that would be spoken against." He didn't bring a gallows to hang the devil or anyone else on.
He brought a cross. And He hung on it for us.
See, He would pay an infinite price to buy us back and return to us the freedom of the gospel. No longer would people wonder what God's love was. No longer would injustice and the darkling horror of beings voluntarily controlled and dehumanized by Satan toil through their tumult and noise and sorrow. The promised hope would come. A Deliverer would deliver a race that needed delivery.
Haman's gallows was altogether a "self" gospel--an alternative plan. Haman would save his pride and through his "craftiness" would make an object lesson of Mordecai. He would "hang-em' high," for refusing to bow low. Who would benefit from Haman's gallows? That's an easy one: Haman.
But Satan comes to us. And he's very sophisticated. And he offers us, instead of a cross, a gallows: an alternative kind of gospel that will benefit us.
Discreetly, of course.
The false gospel will justify your course of action at someone else's expense. The true gospel will lead you to the true cross, where you will pay a price; where you will sacrifice some unworthy thing, seeming to become momentarily less than you are but in the denial of self enlarging your heart, and making you more like Jesus.
Put simply, you can take up the cross in your life, or you can set up a gallows. You can subscribe to God's plan for life, or to Satan's plan for death.
The Story of Haman's Gallows
All that Haman had amounted to nothing so long as his personal valuation was threatened. As long as Mordecai refused to bow down, Haman's pride was impacted; he felt that his importance in the eyes of others was imperiled. So Haman had persuaded the king to let him embark on a murderous scheme to destroy all the Jews in the kingdom. And he had caused a decree to go out under the king's signature and authority commanding that on a certain day upcoming, all the Jews would be slain. But Mordecai, learning of the plan told Esther what had been devised, urging her to intervene, at the risk of her life. If the king refused to receive her, she having not been called into his inner courtyard, she would be killed. But if he did receive her, she might make her request and try to stop the genocidal slaughter.
Esther went in to the king and the king agreed to come to her special feast that she promised to prepare for him. But she had added to her request that Haman be present at the feast. When Haman returned home with the news that he and only he had been invited by Esther to the feast with the king, he waxed bombastic with his family and friends about how great he was. But he mentioned how it all amounted to nothing to him so long as Mordecai refused to bow to him. So his wife and friends suggested that he build a giant gallows and ask the king to have Mordecai hanged on it the next day. It seemed exactly what was called for, and he immediately put to work a group of carpenters who erected it in the space of several hours.
But while the hammering and sawing was proceeding, and (no doubt) Haman was up late relishing the construction of the fiendish device of death, the king was trying to sleep, and without success. Funny how it just worked out that way. Finally, instead of counting sheep, he asked that the royal records be brought in before him and read out. And the records that were read recounted a recent plot to murder him that had been stopped when Mordecai had learned of it and told queen Esther who had told the king. And so Ahasuerus asked his scribes what had been done to reward Mordecai, and looking it up they discovered that he had received no reward or recognition.
By now it was morning, and bleary-eyed but beady-eyed Haman was off to the palace early, to ask for permission to kill Mordecai. And Haman was arriving in the court of the palace just as the king, pondering how to reward Mordecai asked, "Who is in the court?" (Esther 6:4). The answer came back, "Haman," and they sent him in immediately. And the great reversal for Haman began...
So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour? Now Haman thought in his heart, to whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself? And Haman answered the king, For the man whom the king delighteth to honour, let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head. And let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king's most noble princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth to honour, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour. Then the king said to Haman, make haste, and take the apparel, and the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king's gate; let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken." (Esther 6:6-10).
And Haman did so. But when it was all over he made his way home quickly in utter humiliation. Hastening to the doorway of his house, covering his head in anguish, he passed under the looming shadow of the gallows. And as he recounted the events of the morning to his wife and friends, I suppose that whatever party and festivity was underway was broken up, and the friends and hangers-on began to quietly slip out through the back door, and off into the quiet halls (and maybe out through the windows). Then word arrived from the king to come at once to the feast of Esther.
At the feast, Esther served the king and Haman a special banquet. But the king's curiosity about what her request was could wait no longer, so he again asked, "What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even up to half the kingdom" (Esther 7:2). And she responded,
"Let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish"...Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so? And Esther said, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman!" (Esther 7:3-6).
The king, shocked , arose in wrath and went out fuming into his garden . But Haman remained in the room with the queen and threw himself down before her plead ing for his life. In the moment when the king returned it appeared to him that Haman was attacking the queen.
Then said the king, will he force the queen also before me in the house? As the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon (Esther 7:8-9).
And that they did. Haman was hanged on his own gallows. Good triumphed over evil. And events thereafter took their course so that God's people were saved. And what can we say of it, but that both love and justice triumphed; both hate and injustice were defeated. God didn't forget His people in their time of duress and need. Jesus loves and protects those who love Him. He will love and protect us too. God doesn't need the great controversy for His help or understanding--it is to help us understand. It is all about preparing a place for us, and saving us from our implacable adversary. For Haman, the final movements were rapid ones. But justice and salvation were served.
Haman's Gallows is a Reflection of the Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan
On another level, Haman's gallows is a reflection of what is happening in the whole of the great controversy. The universe needs to see clearly revealed the contrast between God's unselfish government and Satan's selfish government. And so instead of destroying Satan and sinners in a nanosecond, our Father has let Satan live out his froth and hate for (what in the end will have been merely) a moment in time, thus enabling all to see its fruitage. When it is clear to the universe where all of that goes, then it will never rise up again (Nahum 1:9).
God is letting Satan build His own gallows upon which he is hanging himself. Like that wicked Haman, who winds up dangling in the wind on his own murderous gallows, Satan will also lose his last few strands of credibility because it will be seen that his way is murderous and hateful to any justice-loving, mercy-loving being. Haman's gallows is but a picture of what God is doing: He's letting Satan hang himself with a very long rope; but we may assure ourselves that in the end the universe will agree with God. When the whole tapestry of lies and poison Satan has generated and perpetrated upon Jesus and upon the angels and upon humanity and against God is finally viewed in its sum total, the universe will proclaim with God in one voice, "hang him on it" (Esther 7:9). The conflict will be ended. Sin and sinners will be no more. The universe will be ready to go forward living the unselfish essence of godliness and true god-likeness; it will become one vast beautiful kingdom "like its master" (Matthew 10:25); and its Master, God, "is love" (1 John 4:16)!
Conclusion
So that is where we are going: to the place where sin will never rise up again; to the place where the futility and pain that this creation has been subjected to reaches its fruition in a people prepared to live in God's way for eternity. God will come through for His people, and they will never be ashamed (Joel 2:26).
The book of Esther not only contains many parallels to our end-time setting, but it even has, in principle, included the outcome of the great controversy. Because God will reverse the trouble and the lie of Satan, and make all things new again, delivering His people. And we can be assured of that.
Because there is something on your horizon and on mine stands much taller than Satan's gallows; and that is the cross of Christ. Jesus was pierced through on our behalf, in our place, "that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil" (Hebrews 2:14). He became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). If it seems that our lives are sold into destruction--if it seems that we and our people are "to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish"--then let us call to mind the manner in which king Ahasuerus received queen Esther. God loves His church. It is His fortress which He holds in a revolted world. He purposes to preserve it, to make us clean, without wrinkle or spot (Ephesians 5:27). It is His good pleasure to give us the kingdom (Luke 12:32)! If Ahasuerus was ready to give Esther her request, even up to giving her half of the kingdom of Persia, then will our Father in heaven do less for us?! I think not.
No, my brothers and sisters. When we are in need, let us go to our Father. Let us approach our God. Let us "come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).
What seems like a very long road to us is hardly a blink to our God. But if we are faithful it will all soon be over, and we shall see the face of Jesus in glory. And then we will be able to say with conviction that heaven was cheap enough. And all of the poison and pain and junk and wickedness that we have left behind--that we have counted to be nothing in comparison to the love of our Saviour for us--will be something gladly put away. And the universe will rejoice with us, as all beings join in rapturous anthems of praise and glory to our Lord. Take courage little flock--the devil's time is short; But our time will be long--even an eternity.
Like it was always meant to be.
The shadow of Haman's gallows passes over us for but a moment. But the light of the cross will shine upon us through all eternity.
Oh God, do Your inscrutable thing. But it is not so inscrutable. You are not so un-knowable. Although we walk through the valley of the shadow of death--although we are born onto the battlefield of a great controversy that we did not start--we know that You will end it in triumph. Make our hearts receptive to Thee. The end of all things has come upon us. And that is OK with us. Use us Lord. Make us a faithful people, faithfully living and giving Your message, growing into the likeness of our Savior. This is our prayer. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Last Modified 23 March 2000