Insight for Living

Bill Meyer: Most people understand that suffering is part of the human condition. But even so, we're often surprised and even shocked when the plot of our life takes an unexpected turn and we're forced to deal with an unsavory twist we never saw coming. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll points to a young adopted woman who was rescued by the king. Her story was unfolding like a fairy tale until now.

Chuck begins by reading the Bible passage for us. In his continuing study on the life of Esther, he titled today's message "An Evil Interlude".

Chuck Swindoll: If you were to look up the word 'life' in Heaven's thesaurus, one of the first synonyms you would find would be 'pain'. That's right, pain. You see, life is filled with sharp corners and hard floors and many falls. Try as we might to cushion ourselves from the bumps and brace ourselves for the spills, pain is inevitable and inescapable. It just comes with the territory, along with troubles and hardships, and I might add, enemies who seek to do us harm.

All of this brings us to Esther, an unspoiled flower in the King of Persia's garden. Lurking in the dark, however, are enemies of the king and of Esther. We pick up the story where two of the king's own men are plotting from the shadowy recesses of their evil hearts. I want you to listen closely today as I read their story, and I'll be reading from chapter two, verse 21, through parts of chapter three in the book of Esther.

Esther 2:21 begins: In those days, while Mordecai was sitting at the king's gate, Bigthan and Teresh, two of the king's officials from those who guarded the door, became angry and sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus. But the plot became known to Mordecai, and he told Queen Esther, and Esther informed the king in Mordecai's name. Now when the plot was investigated and found to be so, they were both hanged on a gallows; and it was written in the book of the chronicles in the king's presence.

Chapter three introduces an even more sinister enemy: After these events, King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him and established his authority over all the princes who were with him. All the king's servants who were at the king's gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman, for so the king had commanded concerning him. But Mordecai neither bowed down nor paid homage. Now drop down with me to verse eight.

Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, "There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of all other people, and they do not observe the king's laws; so it is not in the king's interest to let them remain. If it is pleasing to the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed; and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who carry on the king's business, to put into the king's treasuries."

Then the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. The king said to Haman, "The silver is yours, and the people also, to do with as you please."

Bill Meyer: You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the book of Esther on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook by going to insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message "An Evil Interlude".

Chuck Swindoll: Life and pain are synonymous. You cannot have one without the other. If you expect to exist on this earth without pain, you are hoping for a fantasy. We cannot escape it. We cannot get away from a month without it. We must learn how to live through it. In fact, the goal in life is not to get away from the pain of it; it is to learn the lessons pain can teach us. As one man put it, pain is inevitable, misery is optional. You cannot get away from the pain, but you can find ways to live above the level of misery, and indeed we must.

As far back as the 17th century, the New England Primer included these words: "Our days begin with trouble here. Our life is but a span, and cruel death is always near. How frail a thing is man." Even though those words were written over three centuries ago, they are not original to the Primer. They find their source in an ancient book, one of the oldest books of the Bible, the book of Job. If you have a copy of the Scriptures with you, turn to the 14th chapter and all you will need to see is the first verse. It says in another kind of poetry, a poetry that doesn't rhyme, the same thing we just heard from the New England Primer back in the 17th century.

This man writes, and he knew of what he wrote: "Man, who is born of a woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil." The Living Bible paraphrases this: "How frail is man, how few his days, how full of trouble." How frail, how few, how full. Job says elsewhere: "Man is born for trouble as the sparks fly upward." Same thought. Let's stop trying to find an escape from pain and hardship and affliction and suffering; rather, let's learn from these things. As old Ben Franklin used to teach: those things that hurt instruct.

Stop for a moment and feel with me the tapestry of life, and feel the underside where all the knots and those ugly threads are. Feel the suffering that is sort of woven through this fabric. Feel, for example, the natural world. We have lived through hurricanes in this great land of ours. I have a friend living in North Carolina about 20 miles from where the center of the storm hit. He said on his brother's acreage, no less than 1,500 trees were destroyed. Great, great oaks cracked in two, split, uprooted, thrown aside like pieces of cardboard.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, mudslides, freezing blizzards, awful killing droughts that strike our land for months and sometimes years at a time. There are physical afflictions: birth defects, disabilities and handicaps, horrible accidents that lead to debilitating injuries, and we've all grown through them. There are burns, diseases that bring death. Not a one of us today would be left out if I were to ask you to name a person you know dying of a terminal disease. We all could name one, and many of us could name a dozen.

Emotional trauma—I think sometime we overlook this. The horrors of the black hole of depression and discouragement and disappointment, danger, the whole problem of neuroses and psychoses and self-image struggles and a host of related problems that keep 80 percent of our hospitals full. Think of that. And the domestic world of disaster. A report that came out from the Rhode Island University several years ago said the only place a little less dangerous to live than riots and a war is the American home. Think of that. Riots and war, worst place, but just a cut above the American home.

Did you watch the docudrama on television of the battered wife as she survived the horrors of her crazed husband who finally brought out all of his emotions in multiple stabbings and stomping her virtually to death? She lives today with partial use of her limbs. It happened in America. It happened in Connecticut, in the land of the free. And the docudrama concluded every 15 seconds, there are those kind of domestic conflicts. It's inescapable.

People don't live happily ever after, not even Cinderella. I'm convinced in my heart. I think she probably got to be a fat little frumpy old woman. She didn't live happily ever after. She got married. How frail is man, how few his days, how full of trouble. I could spend 15 minutes and more delineating specific examples that life is synonymous with pain. You can't get away from it. Now, the only way we can learn from such experiences is to know the theological root of the problem. Listen to this: it is the presence of evil.

Plain and simple, though that may sound simplistic, it is the presence of evil. Yes, I believe that Adam and Eve would have lived forever and not only lived forever but would have lived disease-free had they not sinned. But with the coming of sin came the presence of suffering. God cursed the woman with pain at childbirth. He cursed the man with thorns and thistles in his work, with the sweat of his brow, with struggles with people, with relational problems, with personal problems. He would earn a living, and he would do it with gritted teeth.

How pleasant the garden was before sin invaded like the shores of Alaska gathering black oil. It ruined it. And with the presence of sin has come the presence of sorrow and pain and death. It's lurking in the shadows. You may today feel that life is pretty well handled. You finally got a way to put it together. You're fairly well cared for. You're pretty healthy. You're aging, but you're not sick. You have family relationships that are fairly well healed, and you are right now just about to sit back on your haunches and think, "I think I can make it through the rest of my days." Don't count on it. Aren't you glad you came today?

You will not leave on cloud nine. You will leave riveted to Planet Earth when I'm through. Ours is an evil society, and it's not because the other guy is wrong. It's because I, you and I are wrong. And as a result, we live in the backwash of it. It fractures relationships. It paralyzes great goals and dreams, and it anchors us like nothing else—this presence of evil. Even in the lovely, almost idyllic story of Esther, here it is again. How dare it interrupt this wonderful story?

We finally got this hometown girl Queen of Persia. We finally applaud the placing of the crown on her head. We finally have a mate for King Ahasuerus. Finally things are going to turn out right. Mordecai's pleased, Esther's thrilled, the nation rejoices, Ahasuerus is delighted. But there comes that evil interlude, and it comes time after time after time. It appears rather inauspiciously at the beginning of verse 21 in those days—Esther 2:21. In what days? In days when they were having banquets, when they were rejoicing, when everybody seemed so satisfied and pleased and at peace with one another. In those days.

In those days, while Mordecai was sitting at the king's gate, Bigthan and Teresh, two of the king's officials from those who guarded the door, became angry and sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus. Isn't that the way it is? I mean, why couldn't they have just forgiven the king? Why couldn't they have shrugged off the fact that he did something or said something that ticked them off? Why couldn't Bigthan have said to Teresh, "Oh, don't let it bother you. The guy's got a lot on his mind." Whatever it was, it wasn't worth a conspiracy. It wasn't worth a planned assassination. But that's the way evil is.

When it isn't checked, it grows, and when it grows, it leads ultimately to rage and finally murder. It isn't their problem; it is our problem, I repeat. We don't cluck our tongues at two unknown names out of the book of Esther; we shake our heads at ourselves because when those kind of things grow, they make us into people of conspiracy, myself certainly included. Their imaginations got the best of them. And before long, their anger led to a plan, and the plan of all things was to kill the king. The plot became known to Mordecai, and he told the queen. And Esther informed the king in Mordecai's name.

Now when the plot was investigated and found to be so, they were both hanged on a gallows; and it was written in the book of chronicles in the king's presence. End of chapter, but not end of that particular plot. Just keep it on the back burner. We'll come back to it later on in our study of Esther in days ahead. But remember now, it is because they yielded to evil imaginations. It is because man is born for trouble as the sparks fly upward that these two unknowns got themselves involved in a plot that finally resulted in their lives being taken.

I don't want us to study this section of Scripture and the chapter that follows thinking how wicked they were in the days of Persia. I want us to remember that latent within every heart are thoughts of murder, and rape, and greed, and abuse—the seamy, ugly side of life. You and I have it to the maximum. And were it not for the power of the living God, it would be true of every one of us, and we would finally kill ourselves off this planet. You feel like sort of slapping your hands together and saying, "Good, we took care of that little evil interlude. That's great. The sadness is over, the heartbreak. Those two bodies hanging on the gallows, that was a reminder for people not to do such a thing. You won't get away with it."

Well, you ain't seen nothing yet. The third chapter is the story of a planned extermination of a race. Again, because a man wouldn't forgive and wouldn't forget a long-standing grudge. Follow along: after these events. Isn't that interesting how these sections and how these chapters tie together in rather innocuous ways? That's the way it is in life. Days don't begin with a great announcement from heaven: "Today will bring trouble—bad trouble." The morning begins like every other morning. You have no idea it's coming, and out of the blue, it strikes. Maybe from yourself or from someone else, and you find yourself in the midst of this ancient struggle with wrong.

After these things, the king promoted Haman and advanced him and established his authority over all the princes who were with him. That's not fair. Now, I want to vote for Mordecai. I mean, Mordecai's the one who saved the king's life, right? Mordecai's the one who told Esther, who told the king, and justice finally finding its way to these two men who were leading a conspiracy. Haman didn't do that. See, I forgot to tell you, life's not only sorrowful, it's not fair. And you are thinking right now that you will be promoted because you have worked the hardest, you have come up with the big ideas, you are the one that's done the most for your boss; therefore, it's only right that you be given that special position that you've been looking for.

Well, lots of luck. It probably won't happen because life isn't fair. Why? Because of evil. When there's righteousness, there's justice. But when evil lurks in a heart, there is injustice. And you're going to see it in front of your own eyes. Haman of all people is advanced, is established, is promoted. And on top of that, the king's servants who were at the king's gates bowed down and paid homage to Haman, for so the king had commanded concerning him. Mordecai neither bowed down nor paid homage. You say, "Aha, he had a bad attitude." Wrong. Mordecai was a Jew. It was against the deepest section of his faith to do such a thing. He wouldn't bow down and pay homage to anyone.

Verse three, he's asked about why he wouldn't cooperate. He has this independent devotion to his God, and it's so surprising the king's servants who were at the king's gates said to Mordecai, "Why are you transgressing the king's command?" Now it was when they had spoken daily to him, he would not listen to them, that they told Haman to see whether Mordecai's reason would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew. Ah, remember that. Believe me, Haman will take notice of it.

When Haman saw that Mordecai neither bowed down nor paid homage to him, Haman was filled with rage and he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had told him who the people of Mordecai were. Therefore, Haman decided to forget it. Wrong. Haman sought to destroy all the Jews. Wait a minute. Now that's gone far enough. Why in the world would one guy's refusal to bow down to another guy cause this guy in authority to want to kill all the Jews? Well, it goes back to an old grudge.

See, I purposely left out mentioning his genealogy up in verse one. Go back to that verse. Ahasuerus promoted Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite. Oh no, not the Agagite. If you know your history, you know that way back, tucked away in the pots and pans section of 1 Samuel, is an interesting story about a king named Saul, who is told by a prophet named Samuel to go and to kill the Amalekites, the lifelong enemy of the Jews. And to make sure that he wipes them out, he leaves nothing standing. Saul goes, politician that he is, and he saves the best of the sheep, and he saves the king, Agag. Agag. Agagite. Exactly what I thought when I read that. And sure enough, this man is related to the king whom Saul didn't kill.

You say, "Well, why would he be filled with hatred toward all the Jews if Saul didn't kill that Amalekite?" Well, the rest of the story says Samuel came and confronted Saul for his disobedience. And after Saul fiddled around and rationalized, he finally confessed that he had done what is wrong. And Samuel rolled up his sleeves and cut Agag into little pieces. Now, that has a way of lingering in the minds of the people of Agag as time passes. They hated the Jews. How dare Samuel do that to Agag, especially if Agag is your great-great-great-great-grandfather. He has been nursing a grudge which has been taught him since childhood.

Bill Meyer: If you hold a grudge long enough, it becomes a monster. That's what Chuck Swindoll has shown us today. Haman's hatred wasn't born in a moment. It was inherited, cultivated, and carried across generations until it exploded into a plot to annihilate an entire people. Stay with us because Chuck has a lot more to say about this epic showdown. You're listening to Insight for Living. This is the fourth message in a 12-part series called "Esther: A Woman of Strength and Dignity".

We hope this glimpse of Esther has stirred your desire to dive deeper into her remarkable story. If so, our Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook was made exactly for that. It'll move you from simply hearing Chuck's teaching to uncovering truth on your own. This is your study, your encounter with Scripture. To purchase the Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook for Esther, call 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org/offer.

Today we met the villain in Esther's story. Haman wasn't just cruel, he was calculated, politically connected, and determined to wipe out an entire people. Esther knew it. She also knew that speaking up could cost her everything, including her life. What she did next has echoed across 25 centuries. In his book on Esther, Chuck Swindoll pulls back the curtain on one of Scripture's most riveting confrontations, where palace intrigue, personal courage, and the quiet sovereignty of God collide in ways that will take your breath away.

This is a story you won't want to rush through. To purchase Chuck's book on Esther, "A Woman of Strength and Dignity", call us at 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org/offer. Thanks for remembering that your gift, no matter the size, empowers us to share Chuck Swindoll's teaching every day on this station and the many other places you can freely access Insight for Living. To send a donation in the mail, write to us at Insight for Living, Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas 75034, or go to insight.org/donate.

I'm Bill Meyer, inviting you to join us when Chuck Swindoll continues his study of Queen Esther Monday on Insight for Living.