Then (Haman’s) wise men and his wife Zeresh said to him, “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of the Jewish people, you will not overcome him but will surely fall before him.
Esther 6.13b
The backdrop to the second of Esther’s Banquets is now very different. Haman has been humiliated and Mordecai honoured in ways that, as the account has unfolded, could not have been imagined in anyone’s wildest dreams.
Nonetheless Haman, even with the warning from his wise men and his wife ringing in his ears goes, when summoned, with the king to the second banquet, still we might assume, with some confidence that he could rise above the humiliation and even now defeat his enemy. He still thinks this is possible for he has not taken into account the status of the Jewish people who were, as we know from other scriptures, the apple of God’s eye.
The banquet proceeds as normal and as the wine flowed at the end of the meal the king again asks Esther the key question.
What is your wish Queen Esther? It shall be granted to you. And what is your request? Even to half of my kingdom it shall be fulfilled. Esther 7.2
Now Esther gently and tactfully pleads for her life and the lives of her people.
If I have found favour in your sight, O King, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me for my wish and my people for my request. For we have been sold , I and my people , to be destroyed and killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have been silent, for our affliction is not to be compared with the loss to the king. vs 3-4
The ground has been carefully prepared and the plea presented with this response from the king
Who is he, and where is he, who has dared to do this?
Haman is named, and terrified. The king is furious and Haman begs for his life and his posture in doing this further infuriates the king and Haman is hanged on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai!
Where is God in all this?
I pray that as you have followed this account you have rejoiced to see God caring for and working for his people in the challenges, trials and tribulations of everyday life and remembered that he is the same yesterday today and forever.
The God of then is the God of now so in the upheavals of life
take heart and trust!