We conclude our series on the Book of Esther with a focus on the power of the written Word — God’s Word — and its continuing force always in the life of His people.

Laughter at the slaughter of 75,000 souls? How are we to look at this part of the Book of Esther? Hint: it might have something to do with Jesus … and 1 Samuel 15 and the whole Saul and Agag thing … and maybe Genesis 3, while we’re at it. What if this is a picture — in miniature — of God reversing the tide of history since the Fall: the wiping away of all tears?

Unable to take back his first genocidal edict, the Persian king grants Esther and Mordecai permission to issue a second edict into the realm. On the surface, it merely grants God’s people the right to fight back. However, the effect is more on the order of triumph and exultation. Why? And how is the picture of a world with edicts—one of judgment and one of hope—ultimately a picture of our own Christian reality?

It all comes crashing down for Haman this week in a big bad way, as Esther uses the favor she has in the eyes of the king on behalf of her people. How is she like Moses in this moment, and how does the whole story paint a picture of Christ’s death as that which brings peace to God’s people?

Things begin to turn for our heroes, as we continue our sermon series on the Book of Esther, looking at chapter 6, where the greatest of all reversals — in a book full of reversals — takes place. Haman’s world is turned upside down by a series of coincidences and miscalculations that suggest the hidden hand of God at work for His people in the world.

We continue our sermon series on the Book of Esther, looking at chapter 5. So much is going on here, but we focus on our villain, Haman and the particular shape of human sinfulness that he represents. How is he a kind of figure for fallen humanity, the prototypical picture of which is the humanity of Genesis 3-11?

We continue in our sermon series on the Book of Esther, looking at chapter 4. Having introduced the key players and the threat to the heroes from the villain, chapter 4 shows our heroes responding by … crying and weeping and making bad fashion choices?

How is Mordecai’s (and the rest of God’s people’s) response not only right and proper but a picture of how Israel should have responded in the Land? How is what Esther is about to do for her people not only dangerous and heroic, but an echo of Moses no less in the face of an existential threat to God’s people? And how is everything in the chapter a picture of Christ even (or especially) in the deafening silence of God here?

We continue in our sermon series on the Book of Esther, looking at chapter 3. If last week, we considered Esther as a figure for the beauty of God’s beloved, Israel, God’s people, even in her orphaned, exiled, humiliated state, this week we’ll approach Esther 3 as an inner-biblical reflection on the hatred of the world for God’s people.

We’ll consider Mordecai and Haman as figures, respectively, of Israel/kingship/King Saul and Amalek/the nations/King Agag. How does the book seem to be setting up the unfolding story as part of the pattern of the life of God’s people in the fallen creation that they are part of God’s plan to restore? And how is that battle fulfilled completely in what Christ has done on the Cross?

We continue in our sermon series on the Book of Esther, looking at chapter 2: we’re introduced to our story’s hero and heroine admidst the Persian court’s “auditioning” potential new queens for the king. It’s both an absurd and disturbing story, but one wherein Esther emerges as a figure for Israel: orphaned, exiled, but beautiful in the eyes of the “King,” with everything that means figurally for us too as God’s people.

We kick off a new Trinity season sermon series on the Book of Esther, a literarily brilliant, funny, and incredibly relevant book for our times. In this first sermon of the series, we look at the first chapter: King Ahaseurus’s 187-day party, the firing of his queen for refusal to come, and the absurdly opulent, sadly vapid world that God’s people will have to overcome as the story unfolds.