“Go and get all the Jews in Susa together; hold a fast and pray for me. Don’t eat or drink anything for three days and nights. My servant women and I will be doing the same. After that, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. If I must die for doing it, I will die.”
Help me to understand and act accordingly concerning fasting, Lord (Luke 5:33-39).
On the third day of her fast Esther put on her royal robes and went and stood in the inner courtyard of the palace, facing the throne room. The king was inside, seated on the royal throne, facing the entrance. When the king saw Queen Esther standing outside, she won his favor, and he held out to her the gold scepter. She then came up and touched the tip of it. “What is it, Queen Esther?” the king asked. “Tell me what you want, and you shall have it—even if it is half my empire.”
The decisive moment. Esther put all the odds in her favor. Help me to do the same, Father – particularly when it comes to appearances.
Esther replied, “If Your Majesty is kind enough to grant my request, I would like you and Haman to be my guests tomorrow at another banquet that I will prepare for you. At that time I will tell you what I want.”
Esther created quite the sense of anticipation! Me, I do everything immediately to get it off of my plate. Transform me, Lord, please.
When Haman left the banquet he was happy and in a good mood. But then he saw Mordecai at the entrance of the palace, and when Mordecai did not rise or show any sign of respect as he passed, Haman was furious with him. But he controlled himself and went on home. Then he invited his friends to his house and asked his wife Zeresh to join them. He boasted to them about how rich he was, how many sons he had, how the king had promoted him to high office, and how much more important he was than any of the king’s other officials. “What is more,” Haman went on, “Queen Esther gave a banquet for no one but the king and me, and we are invited back tomorrow. But none of this means a thing to me as long as I see that Jew Mordecai sitting at the entrance of the palace.”
How sin eventually takes everything away – even pleasure.
So his wife and all his friends suggested, “Why don’t you have a gallows built, seventy-five feet tall? Tomorrow morning you can ask the king to have Mordecai hanged on it, and then you can go to the banquet happy.”
Haman thought this was a good idea, so he had the gallows built.
It would be Ahab’s passing joy (1 Kings 21:1-16). Thank you, Jesus, that our joy endures (John 16:20-22).
That same night the king could not get to sleep, so he had the official records of the empire brought and read to him. The part they read included the account of how Mordecai had uncovered a plot to assassinate the king—the plot made by Bigthana and Teresh, the two palace eunuchs who had guarded the king’s rooms.
Was the reading of this passage “by chance” (Acts 8:26-40)? Or did Esther pray for this and whispered to the guards to prepare this specific passage, knowing that Mordecai had never been compensated for his good deed?