Every secret thing must reach its day of manifestation. The word which Mordecai told the king about Teresh and Bigthana, the chamberlains, though hitherto forgotten or neglected, must now be remembered. The tears and the kisses, and the spikenard of the loving sinner in Luke 7, and the corresponding slights of the Pharisee, are passed in silence for a moment; but they are all brought to light before the scene closes. For there is nothing hid that shall not come abroad. God lets nothing pass. Mordecai’s act shall not always be forgotten. It shall be recognized, and that, too, in the very face of his great adversary; as the sinner’s loving acts were all rehearsed in the hearing of her accusers (Luke 7:36-50).
The night after queen Esther’s first banquet was a sleepless one for Ahasuerus. For, as God gives His beloved sleep, so does He at times hold the eyes open to them by thoughts of the head upon the bed. By sending instruction through meditations in the night season, He deals with the hearts of the children of men. So here with the Persian. The sleepless king calls for the records of the kingdom, the depository of the acts of Mordecai; and he there reads about the act which had now happened some years before. And as it is true of man, that all that he has he will give for his life, so now the king, on the sudden, unexpected discovery of the act of Mordecai, by which his life had been preserved, deems nothing too high or honorable for him.
God, Unseen and at Work
Here, however, we may pause for a moment and consider the wonderful interweaving of circumstances which we get in this history. There is plot and underplot, wheel within wheel, as the expression is, circumstance hanging upon circumstance; and each and all formed together to work out the wonderful works of God.
There is in this story the marvelous reappearance of both the Jew and the Amalekite. Strange phenomena indeed! Who would have thought it, as I have said before. The Jew and the Amalekite reproduced in the distant realms of Persia, and in diverse places of favor and authority around the throne there! Then there is Vashti’s temper and Esther’s beauty meeting at the same moment. There is the fact of Mordecai’s being the one to overhear the plot against the life of the king. There is the lot deciding on a day for the slaughter of Israel, eleven months distant, so that there may be time for counsels to ripen and changes to take place. There is the heart of the king moved to hold out the golden scepter to Esther. And then we see the king’s sleeplessness and his thoughts guided to the records of the chronicles. Now again, we see Haman entering the court of the palace at this peculiar juncture.
What threading together of warp and woof in all this! What intertwining of circumstances, and the production of a curious texture of many colors! Yet, as we have seen and said already, God all the while is unseen and unnamed.
Very blessed! Pleased with the work of His own hand, and in the counsels of His own mind, the Lord can be hid for a time, unpublished, uncelebrated. And we are called, in our way, to that which is like this. We are to prove our own work, to have rejoicing in ourselves alone, and not in another, without uttering our secrets or gathering the regards of our fellows. And truly great this is, to work unseen, to serve unnoticed. Deep counsels of that wisdom know the end from the beginning and wondrous working of that hand which can turn even the hearts of kings as it pleases.
The Judgment of God
Haman falls. What a day may bring forth, we commonly say, who can tell? We see it to be so in his history. Zeresh and his friends have to receive, ere the second day’s banquet begins, a different Haman from him whom they had greeted after the close of the first. Haman falls, and falls indeed. But over this we must tarry for a little, that we may take knowledge of the character of this great fact, so important is it in setting forth the judgment of God:
1. Haman’s greatness was allowed so to flourish and ripen, that he might fall in the hour of highest pride and daring.
This is very instructive, for this has been God’s way, and is so still. The builders of the tower of Babel were allowed to go on with their work, until they made it a wonder. Nebuchadnezzar was given time to finish his great city. The beast of the Apocalypse will prosper until the whole world wonders after him. So here Haman is borne with until he sits on the pinnacle. Then in the moment of proudest elevation, the judgment of God visits all these. Herod, as another such, was smitten of God and died as the people were listening to him and saying, “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man” (see Psa. 37:34-36).
2. He is caught in his own trap. The honor is given to Mordecai which Haman had prepared for himself; and the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai he hangs thereon himself.
This still instructs us; for this has been God’s way, and will be so still. Daniel’s accusers are cast into the den which they had prepared for him. The flame of the fire slew those men who took up the children of the captivity to cast them into the furnace. And so it is foretold of the adversaries and apostates of the last days in this world’s history: “Their own iniquity shall be brought upon them” (Psa. 7,9-10,35,57,141and so forth). Satan himself, who has the power of death, is destroyed through death.
3. He falls suddenly.
So with the last great enemy. The judgment of God is to be like a thief in the night, like the lightning that cometh out of the east and shineth to the west. “In one hour,” it is said of the Apocalyptic Babylon, “is she made desolate.” The judgments on the world before the flood, and on the cities of the plain, were such also: “like figures,” with this fall of the Agagite, of a judgment still to be executed.
4. He falls completely: utterly destroyed.
So with the great enemy, and the course of this present world with him.
The children of Judas cut off (Psa. 109), the little ones of Edom dashed against the stones (Psa. 137), Haman’s sons all hanged after himself — these illustrate for our learning the utter downfall and annihilation of all that now offends; the clearing out of all by the besom of divine judgment. The “millstone” of Revelation 18 tells us this, and prophecy upon prophecy long ago announced it.
Full of typical significance in all its features is the fall of the great Amalekite. We live in such an hour of the world’s history as renders it specially significant and instructive to us. We are, day by day, seeing the Lord allow the purposes of the world to ripen: gradually to unfold its marvelous and varied attractions, and its whole system to make progress, until it again, like the tower of Babel of old, draws down the penal visitation of heaven; and that, too, in a moment, suddenly, to do its work of judgment completely, when (blessed to tell it!) not a trace of man’s world shall remain: his pride and wantonness, with all their fruit, shall be withered and gone. And such a world as is fit for the presence of the Lord of glory shall then shine.