Esther 7:8-10; 8:1, 2 Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine… Human life is well likened to the river which glides smoothly and evenly along from the spring where it rises to the sea into which it falls. But it is also well compared to the wheel which takes to the bottom that which was at the top, and to the top that which was at the bottom. There is much of orderly and regular procedure; there is much also of change and reversal. Seldom, indeed, does human life present before our eyes the picture of so signal and complete a reversal as that told in the text. Haman, the favourite, the prime minister of state, the all-powerful courtier, the wealthy and strong noble, hanged on the gallows; Mordecai, the despised Jew, whose life was seriously threatened, and likely to end most ignominiously, promoted to highest favour and greatest influence with the king. These reversals were not mere accidents; they illustrate the truths - I. THAT, SOONER OR LATER, SUCCESSFUL SIN WILL BE OVERTHROWN (vers. 9, 10). We all "see the prosperity of the wicked," as the Psalmist did, and, like him, we are grieved and troubled by it. But we must be like the patient patriarch, and wait to see "the end of the Lord." If we wait long enough we shall find that sin meets with its due award. The guilty empire founded in usurpation and bloodshed, and maintained by violence and corruption, goes down and goes out in ignominy and disaster. The guilty adventurer rears his head for many years, but misfortune and misery overtake him in time. Haman goes to the gallows at last. "The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small; With patience he stands waiting, but with exactness grinds he all." The truth is, that sin carries in itself the seeds of its own discomfiture; these must germinate, and grow, and bear fruit in time. "I have seen the wicked in great power," etc.; but wait awhile, and "lo, he is not: he has passed away" (Psalm 37:35). II. THAT, SOONER OR LATER, PERSECUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS WILL TRIUMPH (Esther 8:1, 2). Haman has gone to the gallows, and now Mordecai takes the chief chair of state. Honesty proves the true policy in the end. Purity, uprightness, integrity, kindness - these have in them the power and prophecy of ultimate success. Let the godly man who is oppressed by iniquity bear his burden, and also his testimony; let him patiently pursue his course, looking, up and looking on, and somewhere in the. future the crown of a pure success awaits him - if not here, hereafter. "Weeping may endure for a night" - possibly a long night - but "joy comes in the morning." It may be the morrow of the distant future, but it will then be the beginning of a cloudless and endless day. III. THAT SIN CONTINUALLY SUFFERS FROM ITS OWN HAND. "They hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai" (ver. 10). Into the very trap he laid for another his own foot fails. We learn - 1. That sin frequently brings on itself the very evil it designed for others. A man bent on ruining another (by legal measures, or unfair under-selling, etc.) often impoverishes himself. A man in his wrath goes out to slay, and is himself the slain one. The accuser of others is condemned by others, and suffers general reprobation. 2. That sin invariably suffers as the consequence of the evil which it does. If it does not endure the very evil it designs, it does bear its penalty. No man can hurt another without being hurt himself. The chief victim, the principal sufferer from sin, is the sinner. Every act of evil, every thought of sin, inflicts a damaging wound, more or less obvious, in the breast of the evil-doer, in the heart of the sinner. Contrast with this stern truth the obverse - IV. THAT GOODNESS ALWAYS BLESSES THE AGENT AS WELL AS THE OBJECT. It is not mercy only, but every kind of work, that "blesses him that gives and him that takes." "Give, and it shall be given unto you." "He that watereth shall himself be watered." - C. Parallel Verses KJV: Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the bed whereon Esther was. Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the house? As the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. |
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