“Providential Irony” – FBC Morning Light (10/4/2024)

Faith Baptist Church

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Well good Friday morning to you. Wrap up this first week of October and looking forward to a good weekend.

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I hope you are. I trust you'll be together with God's people on the Lord's Day and worship

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Him together, and that will make for a great weekend if nothing else does. Well today we're wrapping up the book of Esther, reading chapters 7 through 10, and I want to just point out two examples of how

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God can completely flip things, turn things completely around.

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One of them has to do with the plan of Haman regarding Mordecai.

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You remember that? He was so jealous of Mordecai and angry with Mordecai that he wanted to impale him on a beam, hang him on a gallows if you will, and again that's how we should view this.

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The gallows wasn't like, you know, he was gonna put a noose around Mordecai's neck and hang him like, you know, we would think of as a gallows.

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This was a beam in the ground that had a sharpened point at the top, and the individual was impaled on it, and they...

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Okay, it's nasty. This was Haman's plot for Mordecai, and through the course of these couple of banquet, these meals that Esther planned for the king and for Haman, she finally reveals to the king that Haman wants to destroy her and all her people as Jews.

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The king is furious, he's mad about this, that he's gotten so tricked into such a plot, and he storms out of the banquet hall, but when he comes back in, he's finally just, you know, he's coming back in to deal with Haman, comes back in and Haman is pleading with Esther for his life, and it doesn't look like that's what he's doing, it looks like he's trying to assault her on her couch, and we read that the king came in and sees this in chapter 7, verse 8, and he says, will he also assault the queen while I'm in the house?

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And the word left the king's mouth, and they covered Haman's face, so the word of execution came to Haman.

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And then, here's the irony, here's how God turns things around in his providence, now

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Harbonah, one of the eunuchs, said to the king, look, the gallows, or this pole, 50 cubits high, 75 feet high, which

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Haman made for Mordecai, who spoke good on the king's behalf, is standing at the house of Haman.

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And the king said, hang him on it, impale him on it. So, verse 10, they impaled

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Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai, and then the king's wrath subsided.

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Now, he said the other day, the book of Esther is not about Esther, primarily.

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I mean, she's a player in it, obviously. It's not about Mordecai. The book of Esther is a story of how

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God, in his sovereign providence, preserves his covenant people, and how

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God, in his gracious providence, preserves his undeserving people.

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And here is an example of God's sovereign providence, where he takes this evil intended for Mordecai and completely flips it, so that it ends up being the means of destruction of the one who wanted to destroy one of his covenant people,

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Mordecai. So that's one example. The other thing

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I wanted to point out is that, well, I thought it was rather interesting, by the way, that Harbona knew about this gallows and what it was intended for, and it's only been in conversation for a matter of, what, 24 hours or so, and yet he knew all about it.

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Isn't that interesting? Well, another example of God's providence, but this time his gracious providence.

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So in this turning of the use of the gallows is an example of his sovereign providence to preserve his covenant people.

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In chapter 9, verses 18 through 22, you get to the end of the story here, and what you see is that God, in his mercy and in his gracious providence, he turns the time of anxiety and fear and mourning into a day of victory and peace and joy.

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Listen to this in chapter 9, verse 18, "...the Jews who were at Shushan assembled together on the 13th day as well as on the 14th, and on the 15th day of the month they rested, and they made it a day of feasting and gladness.

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Therefore the Jews of the villages who dwelt among the unwalled towns celebrated the 14th day of the month of Adar with gladness and feasting as a holiday and for sending presents to one another."

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That was to be the day of execution. That was to be the day when

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Haman's plot was going to be fulfilled and all the Jews would be destroyed. But God in his providence so worked to preserve his covenant people that the edict was moderated, couldn't have been completely retracted, but another edict was sent forth that said all the

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Jews can protect themselves, and the Jews protected themselves, and they had very few people who were willing to stand up against them, and those who tried lost their lives in the process.

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That resulted in days of great feasting and celebration and joy and merrymaking and gift -giving.

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It became the basis for the Jewish Feast of Purim, the

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Feast of Purim, still celebrated today. But how ironic, how providential that God in his grace takes a time of anxiety and fear and mourning and he turns it into a season of victory and peace and joy.

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Let's not lose sight of the big picture of the book of Esther and what it means to us as God's people in the

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New Covenant, the New Testament era. God still providentially, sovereignly works to preserve his covenant people.

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Even as we mentioned earlier in one of our earlier devotionals that Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

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The church is his bride, and he will preserve his bride. Then the other big picture lesson,

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God in his gracious providence preserves an undeserving people. Did Mordecai and Esther deserve all

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God's grace that was bestowed upon them? No. Did all the people in the province deserve the

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Jewish people in the province deserve what gracious providence God worked in their behalf?

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Arguably no. They didn't deserve it, but God in his grace preserved an undeserving people, and he still does.

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He still does. Do you and I deserve all of the gracious ways

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God providentially works in our lives? Do we deserve it? No, we don't.

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We are a needy people. We are a people who fail. We are a people who sin.

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We need God's grace, and he graciously provides that mercy and grace and forgiveness, and he turns even our times of anxiety and fear and mourning into days of victory and peace and joy.

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Let's thank him for it. Our Father and our God, we do thank you today that you are a God of sovereign power, gracious providence.

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You work in behalf of your people, your covenant people, who really don't deserve the grace that you give us.

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Thank you for your amazing grace. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, again, well listen, have a wonderful weekend.

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Get with God's people on the Lord's Day and worship him, praise him for all that he is to us.