Esther Lesson 16: The Feast of Purim :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: April 27, 2021 by RR7

Chapter 9: 18-32

“But the Jews who were at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth day, as well as on the fourteenth; and on the fifteenth of the month they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness. ¹⁹Therefore the Jews of the villages who dwelt in the unwalled towns celebrated the fourteenth day of the month of Adar with gladness and feasting, as a holiday, and for sending presents to one another.

²⁰ And Mordecai wrote these things and sent letters to all the Jews, near and far, who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus,²¹ to establish among them that they should celebrate yearly the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar,²² as the days on which the Jews had rest from their enemies, as the month which was turned from sorrow to joy for them, and from mourning to a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and joy, of sending presents to one another and gifts to the poor.

²³ So the Jews accepted the custom which they had begun, as Mordecai had written to them, ²⁴ because Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to annihilate them, and had cast Pur (that is, the lot), to consume them and destroy them; ²⁵ but when Esther came before the king, he commanded by letter that this wicked plot which Haman had devised against the Jews should return on his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.

²⁶ So they called these days Purim, after the name Pur. Therefore, because of all the words of this letter, what they had seen concerning this matter, and what had happened to them,²⁷ the Jews established and imposed it upon themselves and their descendants and all who would join them, that without fail they should celebrate these two days every year, according to the written instructions and according to the prescribed time, ²⁸ that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city, that these days of Purim should not fail to be observed among the Jews, and that the memory of them should not perish among their descendants.

²⁹ Then Queen Esther, the daughter of Abihail, with Mordecai the Jew, wrote with full authority to confirm this second letter about Purim. ³⁰ And Mordecai sent letters to all the Jews, to the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, with words of peace and truth, ³¹ to confirm these days of Purim at their appointed time, as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther had prescribed for them, and as they had decreed for themselves and their descendants concerning matters of their fasting and lamenting. ³² So the decree of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim, and it was written in the book.“

More than 2,500 years have passed since the events that we discussed in the last three lessons, and the Jews are still celebrating the Feast of Purim. This year, 2021, it was celebrated from sunset on February 23 to sunset on February 28th. The Bible continues to show itself to be the truth, even in the small things like the Feast of Purim. The events that led to this feast are harrowing to read – the hatred of Haman and the plans devised to kill thousands of Jews in one day. The month that the attack took place was called Adar on the Jewish calendar, but in our time, it is February. As we can see from our text, the events took place on the 13-14th of Adar, and then on the 15th, they all had rest.

A Time of Celebrating verses 18-19

The Jews in the capital rested from defending themselves. If you recall from our previous lessons, they killed 800 men who were the enemies of the Jews in Shushan the capital also. I do not know if this number included Haman and his ten sons. But it is clear that a great fight in the capital and even the death of Haman and his sons did not thwart the hatred of the others towards the Jews.

Time and time again throughout history, we have seen this kind of hatred expressed by many peoples and governments. And, as we get closer and closer to the return of Jesus, this hatred for the people of God, both the New Testament church and the Jews, the chosen of God, will begin to expand exponentially. By the time we get to the book of the Revelation, there is global hate led by the Man of Sin and his cohorts in hatred for the Jews, and he attacks the city of Jerusalem and even defiles the Temple that will be rebuilt (see Daniel 9:26-27 and Revelation 13, most of the chapter).

But on the 15th day, the fighting was over, and the celebration began. They sent gifts and letters to each other, hosted great feasts, and enjoyed the rest and peace. This celebration began what we know today as the Feast of Purim. This was not one of the original feasts given by the Lord to Moses in Leviticus 23. But as we can see here, it was added long after Moses was dead and gone, and it remains one of the most celebrated feasts in the Jewish calendar each year.

Everyone Gets to Celebrate, verses 20-26

As you will recall, the kingdom of Persia ruled by Ahasuerus comprised 127 provinces and stretched from what is modern India to the north shore of Africa and all in between. Mordecai, now in the position that Haman held before his death, sends a letter to all of the provinces, backed up by Queen Esther, and instructed the Jews everywhere to celebrate this new feast, the Feast of Purim. These letters instructed the Jews to celebrate the deliverance that had been given them through the reversal of the order that Haman had sent out. Esther had put her life on the line and stood for her people; now everyone knew that she was a Jew. No more secrets here.

And as we see in the book of Nehemiah, the Persian kings still had Jewish men as their leading stewards many years later. Nehemiah was the right-hand man to the king, and he was well trusted and a senior advisor to the king. Mordecai set an example and then passed on these lessons to others.

The generations still followed these traditions long after Mordecai and Esther were dead and gone. The Jews had a very good way of passing on their ways to their youths as they grew up. Jesus would have celebrated the Feast of Purim in the years that He walked the earth as well. There is nothing wrong with celebration; it is that we do the celebration at the right time, after the work is done.

The Feast of Purim gets its name from the casting of the lot, or Pur, as Haman did to determine when he would orchestrate the attack on the Jews. He cast the lot and devised the evil plan, and the feast is called Purim not only to remember the bad but to celebrate the good. Not only did Haman plot, but Mordecai and Esther answered the call to do something, and God brought a great victory. Surely, if they had not stepped up, it may be that the vast majority of the Jews may not be here on earth today. The Lord had turned what would have been a time of mourning into a time of celebration. There is nothing wrong with celebrating and enjoying the blessings of the Lord. It is like they had Christmas in February with the feasting and sending gifts.

There are many Christians that balk at celebrating Easter or Christmas, as they were pagan holidays, and so forth. But here is a good example of how God took what was to be a day of pain and suffering and made it a day of celebration. Like Purim, we can celebrate the Lord’s birth and sacrifice without regret. The Lord has won the battle, and we can celebrate.

The Fall of the Enemy, verses 23-25

The lives of God’s people have been fraught with peril from the very beginning. Abraham was 75 years old and Sarai 65 years old when they were called out to begin the nation of Israel. They left their common surroundings and took on a journey to a place that they did not know. All the while, Abraham clung to a promise that he would have a son with Sarai and be the father of this new nation. Along the way, there were wars and attacks, and some kings tried to take Sarai from him for her beauty. Many years later with the sons of Isaac, there was infighting, then in the children of Jacob, even more infighting. Soon the Jews were a hated people in the nation of Egypt, and then lots of fighting in the book of the Judges, and on and on.

Many captivities and countless wars were part of life for the Jews. But through them all, God had preserved them and kept a remnant that He would use to bring back the population. By the time of the story of Esther, the Jews were accustomed to being attacked. Look at the story of Daniel in Daniel 6 with Daniel being in the Den of Lions.

Satan knew that the Messiah would come through the Jewish line, and he set about with all his power and minions to eradicate the Jews so that the Messiah would not come. He is still trying to eradicate the Jews so as to stop the return of the King to set up the new kingdom here on earth. Notice that the modern New World Order, now called for by the Globalists, is trying to bring in a Utopia that does not include Jesus. They want to solve hunger, poverty, and all the ails of man without Jesus. This is a part of the plan of Satan.

In the time of Esther, Haman was the tool to try and eradicate the Jews. He was just that – a pawn in the hands of Satan. Satan used his hatred to fuel his plans and to try to stop the Jews from being a big enough population to return to the city of Jerusalem and rebuild so that Jesus could be born in Bethlehem and travel in His earthly ministry through the streets of Jerusalem. The battle still wages on today, and the attack on the Gentile church is alive and well. Just yesterday, I saw pictures of Christians being shot in the head and executed in 2021. People still hate Jesus, and they hate His people. Satan hates Jesus and His people, and he always finds humans with the same proclivity.

In Genesis 3:15, God told us that Jesus, the Seed of the Woman, would kill the Serpent, crushing his head, referring to Satan. Thus, the fate of Satan is sealed. Yet today, he lives on and is the constant enemy of the Lord’s people. One day soon, Satan, the enemy of God’s people, will be put away for 1,000 years (see Revelation 20), and then he will be eternally banished to the Lake of Fire in Revelation 20:11-15. Then we will have complete rest from the evil one.

You can begin to have that rest in Jesus, hereby being saved; Jesus began the destruction of the kingdom of Satan at the cross and finished it with the resurrection. Satan is the walking dead. His fate is sealed, and his end is sure. If you have Jesus as Savior, then you can begin to experience the freedom that we have in Jesus. You can begin to experience the joy of winning the peace that comes from having the Savior of the world as your constant companion, being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. This is a reason to celebrate even as the battle still wages on.

We have the record of Esther’s great victory over Haman that was written down for the whole world to see and remember in the records of Persia. The Holy Spirit led godly men to write down the story of Esther in the Bible so that we would have an eternal record of what God did through her and Mordecai. In the same manner, godly men wrote the New Testament so that we would have an eternal record of what Jesus did for us on the cross, and then that He exited the grave alive and well.

I pray that you know the salvation of Jesus and that you are able to rest secure in Him.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

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Esther Lesson 15: When the Lord Is On Your Side, Pt 3 :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: April 20, 2021 by RR7

Chapter 9: 6-17

“And in Shushan the citadel the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred men. ⁷ Also Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, ⁸ Poratha, Adalia, Aridatha, ⁹ Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai, and Vajezatha— ¹⁰ the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews—they killed; but they did not lay a hand on the plunder. ¹¹ On that day the number of those who were killed in Shushan the citadel was brought to the king. ¹² And the king said to Queen Esther, ‘The Jews have killed and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the citadel, and the ten sons of Haman. What have they done in the rest of the king’s provinces? Now what is your petition? It shall be granted to you. Or what is your further request? It shall be done.’

¹³ Then Esther said, ‘If it pleases the king, let it be granted to the Jews who are in Shushan to do again tomorrow according to today’s decree, and let Haman’s ten sons be hanged on the gallows.’ ¹⁴ So the king commanded this to be done; the decree was issued in Shushan, and they hanged Haman’s ten sons. ¹⁵ And the Jews who were in Shushan gathered together again on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and killed three hundred men at Shushan; but they did not lay a hand on the plunder.¹⁶ The remainder of the Jews in the king’s provinces gathered together and protected their lives, had rest from their enemies, and killed seventy-five thousand of their enemies; but they did not lay a hand on the plunder. ¹⁷ This was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. And on the fourteenth of the month, they rested and made it a day of feasting and gladness.

We have been exploring this great story from the Bible over the past few months, and we are fast coming to the end. Today we will look at the final part of ‘When the Lord is on your side.’

As we finished up last month, the battle was just about to get heated up. Esther and Mordecai were able to get the message out to the Jews in the 127 provinces of Persia that they are allowed to defend themselves. They did so quite effectively. But make no mistake that this was the Lord who gained the victory and not mere men. But the Lord does use men and women to do His bidding; Esther, Mordecai and the Jews who stood to fight were used by Him to rescue the Jews from sure destruction. Now, the Lord does not need us men to fight battles; we are privileged to be used by God in His ways and in His plans.

A bloody day in Shushan, verses 6-16

One of the hardest things to learn in life is that you have enemies. We all long to be liked, and many of us spend our whole lives wanting to fit in. But more often than not, especially for God’s people, to fit in requires compromise. Mordecai was not one to compromise his principles, and he, as a good father figure, taught Esther the same. When you stand for what is right, then you will begin to see that you are not very popular among those that hate righteousness.

The Jews worshipped God, Jehovah, the God of Heaven, and in every little town they went to, even as slaves, they would either erect some sort of synagogue or meet on the Sabbath by a place to face Jerusalem and pray. In Psalm 137, we find a song that they would sing while they were slaves in Babylon. They passed on their faith and trust in God to their children. Like all Jewish men, Mordecai would have worn the blue fringe on his clothing, identifying him as a Jewish man (see Numbers 15: 37-41). This was how one was able to identify a Jewish man in any city anywhere in the world; Mordecai would have stood out.

The people in the Persian kingdom would have been constantly reminded that they were not worshipping the true God by the Jews. These weirdos refused pork and shrimp. They won’t eat stuff offered to idols; they are just different, and as we can see, they were hated. Some 75,000 men were killed in the two days that the Jews defended themselves. In the capital city of Shushan alone, they killed 800 men who attacked them, along with the 10 sons of Haman. Imagine that; Mordecai walked among 800 enemies each day as he stood in the gate and conducted the business of the kingdom. These men hated the Jews, and even though they knew the Jews were going to defend themselves, they still attacked.

In the same manner, as we stand for the Lord, we will see the enemies of the Lord come out. In our time right now, we are seeing the enemies of the Lord really show themselves. There is a real hatred for the things of God. We are surrounded by politicians and some of the public in general that hate the people of God. They hate that we won’t fall in line with the ‘woke’ mentality of the masses. We refuse to accept a myriad of genders, and we refuse to accept marriage between anyone but one man and one woman.

Just this week, I read where there are people in the state of New York who are suing for the right to marry their adult children. Yes, you read that right; research it yourself. The hatred for truth will grow and grow as sin takes an open stand in our society. Make no mistake; the world around us hates us. They hate our stand, and they hate our truths. We are the enemy of those that hate the truth. The truth may set you free in Jesus, but it will make you a target to those that hate absolutes.

The sons of Haman, verses 10 and 14

If you go back and take a look at 1 Samuel 15:1-3, we find that God commanded Saul the King to kill ALL of the Amalekites.

“Samuel also said unto Saul, The Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now, therefore, hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

These events in the life of Esther were never supposed to happen. God told Saul to kill ALL of the Amalekites, but he did not. About 400 men escaped, and over the years, Haman was the offspring of the survivors. They had passed on the hatred for the Jews for generation after generation, and Haman’s actions were the culmination of Saul’s disobedience. God knew the future, and He was cutting the head off the snake before the snake ever existed. But disobedience always has consequences; for Saul, it cost him his life, the life of his sons, and the kingdom of Israel. For Esther and Mordecai, hundreds of years later, they had to go through these harrowing events.

Esther, Mordecai, and the Jews who stood up and fought finished the job that Saul was supposed to do. They killed the enemies, and in particular, they killed the 10 sons of Haman. There would be no hatred passed on in this time, no constant looking over the shoulder wondering when the next attack would come. No, they decided to end it all here and now.

There comes a time in our lives, our homes, and yes, even in our societies that require the hard decisions. While we are supposed to be meek and lowly, we are not to be doormats. The Apostle Paul stood up for his rights as a citizen of Rome when he was wrongly arrested and was about to be flogged.

Acts 22:25 “And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who stood by, ‘Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman, and uncondemned?'”

It is essential that we know our rights and stand for them, or they will be taken from us and our children. Somewhere along the line, we need to stand up and say enough. Will we be marginalized? Yes, but that is the nature of true Christianity. We are never going to be mainstream; and as the majority of society goes farther and farther away from absolute truth, we will be hated all the more. The people whose eyes have become accustomed to the darkness hate the light. These people, who have built their lives on truth and have bullied society into believing that they are right when everyone knows they are wrong, hate those that tell them they are wrong. We are they who are supposed to stand up and stand out. They will do all they can to silence us.

Not long ago, I was having a conversation with an acquaintance, and she pointed out that a lot of what is happening today is similar to what happened to the Jews in Germany during WW2. Many of the railway tracks transporting the Jews to the gas chambers ran past churches, and she has once asked how they did this without the Lord’s churches standing up. Some had told her that the churches sang louder as the trains passed by so as to drown out what they knew was happening. This is not true Christianity.

I hope that, like Esther and Mordecai, I will stand and fight. As I have told you before, I am actively praying that the Lord will help me to stand and not shrink when the fight comes to us. I pray the Lord will give me the power to stand and not lay down, the power to maybe not kill my enemies as in the case of Haman and his sons, but to silence them with God’s truth; shut up their mouth with godly wisdom as the Holy Spirit gives me speech, and if need be, to die for the truth. I know that my flesh is weak, and I need Him. But what we do learn here is that our enemies are beatable if we would stand. All it takes for evil to prosper is for God’s people to do nothing.

They rested, verse 17

Resting comes after the fighting, not before. For too many of us, we have been at rest for too long, and now the desire to fight is gone.

We have stood by as they allowed gay marriage, but we did nothing. We just let it go. When guys like me told us it was a slippery slope and that this was just the beginning, they called us fearmongers and conspiracy theorists. But now, they are people actively looking to marry animals and even their own kids. They began teaching sex education, not just the mechanics of the body, but pushing agendas like sexuality and diverse sexual deviation. And we sat silently, only to find out that in Ontario, for instance, the man who helped design or oversaw that sex education curriculum was a pedophile. He was not educating; he was grooming our kids. But we stood silent and rested. We had openly gay persons run for public office, and rather than vote no, too many Christians stayed home and did not vote, effectively voting for the enemy. We rested rather than stand.

There is a time for resting, and now is not the time. When we have won the victory, then we can rest. Right now, we have a Gospel-preaching church in Edmonton, Alberta, that is barricaded by the government so that they cannot meet to hold worship, and they are using the COVID restrictions as a means to do this. These are not laws, and they are not even consistent in their message. But that dear pastor led his people to assemble and worship outside at the facility, and they worshipped there. They refused to rest; they stood and obeyed God.

We are not at the time for rest here in Canada and the free world; we are the last bastion of freedom. And if the Lord’s churches rest, we will lose the freedoms we have. The time for rest will come, but now it is the time to stand.