Esther - Week 3: An Evil Plan

Erin Davis: Welcome back to the Women of the Bible podcast. I’m Erin Davis, and I’m joined by some of my favorite friends! We have a lot in common, but one of the things we have in common is that we all work for Revive Our Hearts. So, ladies, could you introduce yourselves to those listening and tell them how you are connected to Revive Our Hearts?

Betsy Gómez: My name is Betsy Gómez, and I work for the Hispanic—or Spanish—outreach of Revive Our Hearts that is called Aviva Nuestros Corazones.

Carrie Gaul: “ANC”

Erin: So what do you do with ANC?

Betsy: I am basically a cheerleader there. I manage the media team, so all the creatives. And I manage the content for the blog, so it’s pretty interesting work. Instead of giving, giving, giving, I think I’m always taking and drinking from the well. I think the Lord knew that I needed to be exposed to His Word, and He allowed me to do that!

Erin: I love that! I’m joined by another friend; tell them your name and what you do for Revive Our Hearts.

Carrie Gaul: I’m Carrie Gaul, and I work as the liaison for international outreach and staff care, which I like to say is the best job in the world! I get to connect with leaders across the world and encourage them, be a cheerleader to them, help them get back to the Word of God in the places in their own lives where they might be struggling.

And then I get to come alongside of our staff here in Michigan at the home base and just encourage and walk alongside them as well.

Erin: You are both in the right jobs for you! Betsy, you have been such a strong cheerleader for me; and Carrie, you have pointed me to the Word of God for many, many years. I’m grateful that the Lord has put you in the positions He has put you in.

I’m Erin Davis, and I’m the content manager for Revive Our Hearts. That means I get to do great things like help writers produce Bible studies and run our blogs, and I love that I get to do that! But for today, I’m wearing my “podcaster” hat!

Betsy: That’s something that we do here; we have a lot of hats! 

Erin: We do, we wear a lot of hats. And we have been walking through the Bible study Esther: Trusting God’s Plan. We’ve just been walking through it like friends (which we are) would walk through a Bible study. I hope every woman listening is involved in a Bible study with other women.

I don’t know about you, but it has just so impacted the trajectory of my life to open God’s Word with other women, and so that’s what we’re doing here. We really are friends. We really are walking through the book of Esther together . . . so you might hear us talking over to each other a little bit or laughing, just like we would be doing if we were in my living room.

We’ve made it all the way to Esther chapter 3. We read Esther chapter 3 together, and here we meet the human villain of the story, Haman, and he hatches this plot to annihilate the Jews! I know that you’ve read Esther before, but as you were reading it again does anything jump out at you about Haman or about this moment in the story when he decides that he is going to annihilate the Jews? 

Betsy: I think I see him as unquenchable. (Is this even a word in English?) 

Erin: Yes. What is it in Spanish?

Betsy: Insaciable. It’s like an unquenchable thirst for power and glory, and that leads him to all these crazy things, like being so violent and wanting to shed blood. Yeah, it’s horrible!

Erin: It’s so easy to “armchair quarterback” and distance myself from him, but I see in myself an unquenchable thirst for attention, an unquenchable thirst for praise. Haman is in many ways a cautionary poster child, because thattakes him down a path that I’m confident he didn’t intend to go down . . . as will our own sin patterns. So I am Haman in some ways.

Is there anything that jumps out here about his character or lack of character or decisions he makes early on?

Carrie: Yes, one of the things, Erin, is just how it’s never enough. He always wants a little bit more. So he’s in a relationship with the king and the queen, but that’s not enough. He’s really setting out to take out the people of God. That selfish inner longing and desire is never satisfied. There’s always something more that he needs in order to feel good about himself.

Erin: We should pay attention to that flag when it starts to wave itself in our own lives, that we can’t ever have enough . . . whatever! We can’t ever have enough money in the bank, we can’t ever have enough friends, we can’t ever have enough clothes in the closet, we can’t ever have enough “likes” on our social media account.

Whenever something starts to be unquenchable—what a great word!—I think that’s something for us to pay attention to. As we’ll learn from Haman’s story, it can take us places we didn’t want to go. You can just read it here in chapter 3 and not really understand where that drive comes from in Haman, but I wanted us to do a little bit of digging.

Man, the Bible is a treasure trove! If you start digging in it, you will find angles to these stories that you didn’t know where there. And we can get a little bit of a glimpse into the heart of Haman if we go back a little further. So, Betsy, will you read us Genesis 36:12?

Betsy: Sure! It’s a perfect verse for me to read! (laughter)

Erin: It’s got some tricky names in it; that’s why I had Betsy read it, not me! 

Betsy: “(Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, Esau's son; she bore Amalek to Eliphaz.) These are the sons of Adah, Esau's wife.” 

Erin: You did so good. The name I want us to hold on to is “Amalek.” That’s important. Now we’re going to fast-forward in Scripture to 1 Samuel 15:8.

Carrie: First Samuel 15:8 says, “[And] he [Saul] captured Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword” (NASB).

Erin: Okay, so Amalek—who we first are introduced to way back here in Genesis—becomes the father of the Amalekites. They are destroyed, but they are enemies of the Jews. So for centuries upon centuries there’s this generational hatred. 

I’m going to read us Exodus 17:16, “. . . saying, ‘A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.’”

Betsy: Wow!

Erin: So, we see him born way back early on in Genesis, then there’s this war, then there’s this command: “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” So there’s a generational hatred here, a generational feud.

And, ladies, I’m sure you’ve seen this in your own life or in the lives of women you know: those generational sins, those generational sin patterns, those generational roots of bitterness can be really hard to deal with! And so, our villain here--Haman--has heard this hatred towards the Jews. Maybe he heard it when he was sitting on his grandpa’s knee; I don’t know. 

But this has existed for a long time. Bitterness is the one that comes to mind. Can you think of any other generational patterns of sin that can be difficult to break? 

Carrie: I have a dear friend who is struggling with such deep anger. She loves Jesus with all of her heart and she does not want to have the anger rising up. In fact, she says, “It comes up so often, I don’t even know where it’s coming from!”

As we’ve started digging back into her history, it goes all the way back three generations of women in her family who have struggled with anger. So she’s learned it. It is a normal kind of response. Praise God, she’s breaking that generational sin and stronghold that’s been just a part of her life. She’s learning a new way of living—that we can be honest with God and tell Him where we’re at, but we don’t have to respond in that anger.

Erin: Yes. In our family, the women’s perception of ourselves is pretty warped. There’s a lot of dieting and talk of dieting and a lot of the way we talk about our weight that just isn’t God-honoring. I learned that from itty-bitty. My mama was always on a diet, and she learned that from my grandma, who was always on a diet.

And I have said, “I want to be the generation where that stops!” I would love to take back the ground that the enemy has stolen in our family. Unfortunately, Haman succumbs to this generations of bitterness, this generations of hatred towards the Jews.

I want us to listen to Esther 3:1–3 and find out what’s happening in the story: 

After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, and advanced him and set his throne above all the officials who were with him.

And all the king's servants who were at the king's gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman, for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage. Then the king's servants who were at the king's gate said to Mordecai, "Why do you transgress the king's command?”

And so, here is the situation: We know Mordecai is a Jew; we know he’s been removed from his homeland. And we know Haman has this thirst for power, and we know he’s been given power. And Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman. What we see in Haman and in Mordecai is this contrast between the things of God and the things of man, the life of righteousness and the life that is not lived to please God.

But we also see in Mordecai and Esther that they’re driven by a fear of God, and we see in Haman that he’s driven by pleasing others. He seems to constantly be needing the praise and attention of others. I wonder, in our own lives if we could think critically, what is the evidence in our lives that we’re living to please others? What does that look like?

Betsy: Wow, there are so many ways we can fall into that, and most of the times we’re so blind to it! I think when we want to please people, we’re always craving for their attention. So it’s basically like we’re seeing them as wells or pits. Sometimes we just want to have a right posture, we want to look right.

We’re stressed because we want our testimony to be perfect, because we want them to like us. So it’s basically when we crave people’s approval is when we fall into these things. But most of the times we’re blind to that.

Carrie: And when I do that, Betsy, what I find in my own life is it looks like I’m serving you, but I’m actually doing it for my own purposes. It’s to make me feel good about me.

Erin: I do think it is so hard to identify it in our own lives. That’s why you have to be surrounded by people who love you, people who have permission to speak truth into your life. For me, there’s just an agitation. I don’t how to describe it any other way than that I’m suddenly like the inside of a washing machine. . .

Instead of having inner peace, that if my motivation for the day—whether it’s my “to do” list for that day or what I prioritize that day-—if it is motivated by pleasing somebody else, man, I just get so stirred up on the inside.

Carrie: Great example!

Erin: But if my motivation for the day is to please the Lord and to honor Him (and honestly, the tasks can look identical), I don’t feel that agitation and that weight on my shoulders. So that, to me, is a test that something is off—when I’m stirred up.

Betsy: If we’re doing something for the glory of God, out of fear for God, then we will leave the results to Him. But when we’re doing that for another person, to be liked, it’s like the unquenchable problem of Haman. We will want more praise or we want to be liked more and more and more. Yeah, it’s a trap.

Erin: Maybe you’re onto something there; maybe it’s that ability to be satisfied. If we’re living to please man, that is absolutely a bottomless pit. But if we’re living to please the Lord, He’s pleased. He adores us; we’re His beloved children. It’s not a scale that we put things on to earn more love on the day and takes things off to get less.

So maybe, if there’s that sense of satisfaction, that might be some indicator of our heart motivation. I think that Haman seems a little bit far off—he’s a man, he’s in this Old Testament story. So, I wonder if you have a woman in your life that portrays the Mordecai or the Esther?

Who is a woman in your life that you know—beyond a shadow of a doubt—her motivation is the fear of the Lord, and what does her life look like? How does it looks different from the Hamans?

Carrie: I have a friend, Debra is her name, and her hospitality! When she welcomes us into her home, it’s not about the food, and it’s not about all of the details of everything being right and perfect. She welcomes you into her home, and you know she’s really interested in you. Immediately she’s asking questions and drawing you in and welcoming you. It’s just such a beautiful picture to me.

Erin: I think you could be hospitable to please man, and it wouldn’t have the same impact on the heart. 

Carrie: And it’s evident, I guess, that she’s not seeking to please man because often things aren’t right, you know? Something’s burning on the stove, or she forgot to put the brownies in the oven. But it wasn’t about that to begin with. It was about relationship, and so that’s what’s beautiful!

Erin: I’d rather eat the brownies raw anyway! (laughter) What about you, Betsy? Can you think of a woman that you think, Man, she fears the Lord!

Betsy: Yes, I think about my “aunt.” I call her my aunt; she’s my mother’s friend. Her name is Medri, and she took us in, my mom and me, when my mom divorced. She’s adopted us. She cared for us. She never married. She focused on caring for us throughout the years. I’ve seen her putting her life aside to care for us!

Everything she does, she has our good in mind all the time. She loves the Lord and everything she does is out of that love for the Lord instead of doing that to receive something from the Lord. So when I think about somebody like that, she’s the first person that comes to mind.

Erin: I think of our Mimi, who’s Jason’s (my husband’s) grandmother. She’s eighty-nine years old and she lives to serve. I mean, she picks my little guys up from school in the afternoons to help me. 

Betsy: How old is she!? 

Erin: She’s eighty-nine years old! 

Carrie: Oh, I love that!

Erin: And she has little snacks for them in the car. And if the flag is out at our gas station, that means the St. Louis Cardinals have won, and you can get cheap sodas. And she takes my little guys in there. (I don’t even take my little guys in there!) Her motivation is to serve them, to love them. She serves her local church; she serves her neighbors.

She’s unsinkable, because she’s not motivated in any self-centered way. She wants us to feel loved, but that is not her core engine. Her core driving force is to please the Lord and to love people well. I want to “be Mimi when I grow up.” You just can’t phase her! So it’s that contrast, again, of those insatiable appetites versus an ability to just be satisfied because, “I live to serve the Lord.”

Let’s look at Esther 3:5 and see what happens: “And when Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage to him, Haman was filled with fury.” That’s Haman’s reaction, and I think that failing to rest in the providence of God makes us reactive people. Rather than responding to our circumstances, we become reactive. We may not respond in fury like Haman did, although sometimes we do. 

Maybe we respond in extreme despair; that’s the sin-ditch that I drive myself into personally. I mean, I just drive myself into discouragement every day of my life. It’s ultimately a faith issue; it’s ultimately an, “I don’t trust that the Lord is working it to my good.” It could be any number of ways, but I think if we don’t rest in God’s providence, we become reactive rather than responsive.

There are some questions in this week’s study that I just thought we’d chew on a little bit here as a group. I’m going to give it to us rapid-fire, and I’m interested in your thoughts:

What people or situations am I seeking to control?

How am I grasping for power?

When others don’t do things my way, do I get bent out of shape?

I think it would be easy for us to read Esther’s story and distance ourselves from Haman and say, “There’s no Haman in me.” But then we think of who we try to control, how we try to get power, and what bends us out of shape. For me, it’s convicting. Is it convicting to you? How would you respond to those questions?

Carrie: Oh, so convicting! Just last week I was recounting to a friend some interaction that Dennis [her husband] and I had had, and just seeking some input and some wisdom. And this dear friend said to me, “Carrie, it sounds like God is really at work in both of your lives—in your life and in Dennis’ life! Is it okay with you if God’s at work in Dennis’ life, and you really don’t have to understand that or necessarily get a response from him?” I’m highly relational, and Dennis is my engineer, logical husband that I love dearly, but we’re like black-and-white-different.

So I’m always going after him to pull him into conversation and relationship. And in this case, God was doing some incredible things. But when I tried to draw it out, he wasn’t ready to come out . . . so I just went harder after him, to try to get it out of him, because that’s what you do, right?

Erin: Sure, it’s the bee and the bear. Bzz-bzz-bzz-bzz-bzz. 

Carrie: The bee and the bear . . . And so my friend said, “So can you just be okay with that and let it go and say, ‘Let me know if you need anything. All is well!’?” You know, my first response was, “Well, of course I can do that.” And then I’m thinking, No, actually, I cannot do that!

Erin: “I don’t want to!”

Carrie: There’s that drive to be in control, I guess.

Erin: Or at least be in the know. Sure.

Carrie: In the know, that’s it! To kind of know where the puzzle pieces are going to fall. So, we’ve had great conversation about that and are on a journey of learning that, “It’s okay, Carrie. It’s okay to just be okay.”

Erin: I think that’s hard in marriage, I think it’s hard with our kids, I think it’s hard with our friends—where we know God’s at work because we trust Him but we aren’t privy to what He’s doing. It is very tempting (I’m glad I’m not the only one) to at least partner with the Lord in that or to try to manipulate it or accelerate the process. 

I think the Lord can use that to expose pockets where we are trying to have control. Can you think of any examples in your own life where you think, Oh, there’s a little bit of Haman in me there!

Betsy: Oh, totally! I remember when our boys were little; we were really struggling financially, and I really wanted to control that. Even though I knew the Lord was at work in us and using that situation to reveal things in our character and to reveal things from His character.

I remember one morning telling Moises [her husband], “I need to buy this.” It was some very important things for the boys. And Moises was like, “I can’t do anything. Let’s pray.” I was so mad. I was so mad! I was like [yelling], “Who wants to pray right now!?” Those are things that you don’t like to admit, but in the situation, when you’re in the midst of wanting to get control, it’s crazy.

It’s like I’m bipolar. I know that God is in control, but at the same time—because I don’t understand some of the things that He’s doing—I’m frustrated, and I’m mad! That same day, I remember that Moises smiled, we prayed; I didn’t tell him that I was so mad.

Erin: He probably knew!

Betsy: Well, maybe. I remember, the first thing I did when he left was, I opened the Revive Our Hearts podcast. Nancy said that day, “If you haven’t read your Bible, go read your Bible, because you need your Bible more than you need this podcast.” I’m like, “Okay.” And the verse I had to read that day was that verse that says, “If He gave us Christ, He will give us everything we need!” (see Rom. 8:32).

So I’m like, “Lord, You’re going to deliver us from this situation, or You’re going to provide. I’m going to trust the Lord.” Can you believe, that same moment somebody knocked on the door and said, “Oh, I was walking by and I felt like I have to give this.” It was the exact provision! 

And it was just like a reminder: “You’re a fool! I’m God and My hand is all upon your situation, even though you don’t see it. You just need to surrender that control because I am God and you’re not!”

Erin: I love that!

Carrie: There is no one like our God!

Erin: I know that you both are a lot like me, and we have a lot of coffee shop conversations with women—whether it’s a child that’s not walking with the Lord or a financial situation or relational stress, often I’ll listen to that woman. 

She’ll pour it all out, and then I’ll look her in the eye—with all the love in the world—and I’ll say, “Six months ago, if someone had said, ‘Do you trust the Lord? [with whatever this is], you would have said, ‘Yes!’ And now, here we are. And the Lord has used this to reveal that, ‘No, you do not. There are pockets of unbelief in your life related to this circumstance and you’re trying to fix it. You’re trying to manipulate it, and you’re trying to control it.’ But ultimately, this is a mercy, that the Lord is revealing, ‘Wait a minute! There’s a pocket there where you don’t trust Me with that!’”

I think we all have those pockets, and it’s good when the Lord reveals them. We don’t want to respond like Haman, in a fury, or trying to manipulate or trying to control. And so, ultimately Haman gains power. He is infuriated. He has this generational legacy of bitterness towards the people of God, and he uses it!

He issues this edict that the Jews are to be annihilated! It seems so final, so terrible.

Betsy: So dark!

Erin: It’s so dark! In fact, the edict says that every man, woman, and child are to be executed on the same day. I mean, it is devastating! And yet, the invisible hand of God is at work to bring redemption! As I was reading this chapter of Esther . . .

You know, I know that the whole Bible is about the gospel. I know that—Old Testament, New Testament doesn’t matter—the Old Testament points forward to Jesus, the New Testament points backwards to Jesus. It’s all about Jesus, but I feel like I got new goggles for that as I was reading this again. Haman was a real man; he really lived. He’s not just an allegory or a picture or something else.

But he does represent a bigger enemy, and that is the enemy of our souls! The enemy has hated the people of God for generations like Haman has. And I wonder, how do you see the gospel in this story?

How do you see, even at this moment where the edict is that the people of God are to be annihilated, what are the gospel threads that we can pull out there?

Betsy: I really like the fact that you went back so we can see why that hatred is in Haman. We see that this is not a story I am allowed to see with a microscope, but I need to see it with a telescope. I need to go and see the bigger picture.

This is not a battle between Mordecai and Haman, but this is God’s doing: God’s redemption plan in action, and the enemy trying to stop Him!

Something that came to mind is when, in Esther 3, in verse 13, it says, “Letters were sent by couriers to all the king's provinces with instructions to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate.” The first thing I thought was John 10:10, when it describes the enemy this way: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” It was like the same words!

So this is not Haman’s doing or like a little story of God redeeming God’s people in like a little short thing . . . no! This is the enemy’s doing against God’s plan, God’s redemptive plan. So I love how it sets the plot for redemption to come, for someone to intercede.

It’s amazing to see how this story gives us hope! Because even in the midst of darkness and desperation, we see men and women that are faithful—this remnant of people that trust God, they fear God even in the midst of this craziness.

Carrie: Yes.

Erin: I don’t know if you all do this, but when I read Scripture, I tend to want to think it’s about me—even though I know it’s about the Lord. So the “me application” here sends me to Romans 8:31–34: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (That’s that passage you mentioned earlier, Betsy.)

“Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised. . .” And it goes on and says that nothing can separate us from Him! We know what it’s like to be attacked personally by the enemy, and we have this hope that God is the shield and that He will spare us, that He fights that battle for us.

But I want us to look “bigger” than that. There’s hope that yes, God’s providence is at work when the enemy attacks us. That’s important hope. But let’s look bigger at, ultimately, the fact that this edict would be reversed (spoiler alert!), that God’s people would be spared. Such a mercy! It’s because the Savior was going to come through this line.

And, Carrie, as we were talking about this, you took us to Genesis. So, would you take us back there, to Genesis 12?

Carrie: Yes, it all reminds me, Erin, of the grand narrative of Scripture: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration. God has always had a plan to rescue His people, Genesis 12:2 says, “And I will make you [Abram] a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.

And in you all the [nations] of the earth [shall] be blessed” (vv. 2–3 NASB). 

So from the very beginning, Haman’s life is really just a small part. He’s being used by the Evil One in the Evil One’s plot to keep the Messiah from being born, right? His plot o destroy the Jewish people so that Christ cannot come . . . which we know is not going to happen, because nothing holds back the hand of God!

But it just brings me so much hope, that right there in Esther chapter 3 really is the gospel: that Jesus came, that He came for you and I, and that He’s coming for all of the nations, for all people! He desires that none would perish, but that all would come to repentance!

Erin: I love that!

All Scripture is taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.