Wrong Man Out. Right Man In

The last time we, when we wound up last week, we were at the second banquet.

! You remember what happened in between the first and second banquet.! King Ahasuerus, made sure that Mordecai was honored throughout the kingdom when he realized from reading the Chronicles on that sleepless night that Mordecai was the one that had made it possible for his life to be spared when those other two people were seeking to put him to death.

Mordecai heard of it and, of course, told someone and that spared the king's life. But nothing had been done for Mordecai. And so, King Ahasuerus, remember, was going to be sure that he is honored.

So, the only one that was in the king's court at the time, you know, a king asked, who's in the court that he could assign that task to? And lo and behold, it was Haman.

He had come in to speak to the king about putting Mordecai to death. But then, King Ahasuerus asked Mordecai, remember, what is it that should be done to the one that the king wants to honor throughout the kingdom?

And, of course, Mordecai thought, I mean, Haman thought, he's the one that he was going to honor. So, he said, put on the king's robe and put him on the king's horse and put the king's crown on him and just march him through the streets of the city.

And so, King Ahasuerus said, that sounds great to me. You're the ones in charge of this. And so, you do so to Mordecai. And so, he relinquishes his thoughts and goes and does what he was told to do by the king.

Although, inwardly, no doubt, he's fuming about the idea that this has happened. But now, remember, Haman realizes something's up. He doesn't know what it is.

And King Ahasuerus still does not know, at that point, the character of this man, Haman. But, Haman knows there's a problem here.

And things are beginning to unravel, you realize. So, remember now, the second banquet then takes place. And the king asks Esther, what is it now that you really desire for me to do?

And she says, if I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me at my petition and my people at my request.

Oh, my people. That's something new flaring up here. For we, that's me and my people, are sold. I and my people to be destroyed, slain, and wiped out of existence.

Now, can you imagine? Don't you wish you could read the mind and heart of Haman? When he hears those words from the queen about us and we, my people.

He knows what she's talking about here. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I would have held my tongue. For our affliction is not to be compared with the damage this will do to the king.

And realize again, that at this point, it's not only the fact that Haman knows that he, she is pointing the finger at him.

I mean, that becomes quite determined here in a little bit. But he now recognizes these arch enemies of his, the Jews, that he despises and has signed the decree to put to death that Queen Esther is a part of them.

That dagger is pointed at the palace now. And so you begin, you've got to realize that Haman at this point is really beginning to worry here.

What in the world is going to happen here? He's still, he's still the favorite of the king, but not for long. No longer is he the favorite of Esther.

Now how's the king respond? Recognize again. Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he and where is he that durst presume in his heart to do so?

And Esther said, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen. And the king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath went into the palace garden.

Now, don't you, don't you imagine. Here's the guy, here's the guy that was the favorite of the king. The one that he trusted the kingdom to, placed his ring on his finger.

That now has been revealed that he is the one that has decreed this toward the queen and her people.

Oh. What anger now. Boy, get the picture here of what the human spirit, how it should react when it recognizes the reality of what the flesh is.

All right. We'll see more of that later. Haman stood up to make a request for his, no, wait a minute. Yeah. The king, rising from the banquet of wine in his wrath, went into the palace garden. And Haman stood up to make a request for his life to Esther the queen.

For he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king. That's chapter 7, verses 5 through 7 of Esther. Now, the enemy had been unmasked and that before the king.

And so the issues for the king are now clear. He's going to have to make a choice. And that choice is going to be between Haman and Esther. Sure. So, here's the moment of truth.

Just like it is for every soul that the Spirit of God brings the revelation to about what the natural man within us is. You know, the thing about us and God's dealing in our lives and our minds and our hearts, we always are going to respond.

Amen? Amen? Amen? You can't not respond. You're going to respond to some degree, some way or other, to what the Spirit of God shows you. And so, likewise, the human soul, that Spirit of God reveals the wickedness of the natural man, has to respond.

And we respond through the human spirit concerning the wickedness of sin and the sin nature that is there.

And we realize it's easy for us. It's easy for us to be acquainted with biblical truth and biblical language.

Amen? Amen? If we've been Christian very long, been in church very long, we know the language, don't we? Do you realize, though, we can be like puppets.

We can know the language. We can know the words. We can know the language. But still not have any real biblical revelation given to us by the Spirit of God.

Yeah. That's a dangerous situation, isn't it? But that's the truth of it. That can happen in our heart and in our minds and in our lives.

But God wants to bring us to that point where we then begin to see and discover the reality of what we are in ourselves, in the flesh.

And that's what the Spirit of God wants to bring us to. Now, so we can draw upon our soul the startling reality, as Romans 7.14 says in the Amplified, We know that the law is spiritual, but I am a creature of the flesh, carnal, unspiritual, having been sold into slavery under the control of sin.

Now, that's what Romans chapter 7 speaks of. That's what it's about. Amen? Coming to that point of recognizing how much the flesh, the sin within, that principle of sin, exploits the soul.

And there's no better illustration of that than what we see here in the study of Esther. In particular, in the relationship of Haman to the king.

Now, Romans 7, verse 15, 17, 18, and 20 through 25, reading this out of the Amplified, simply says, For I, I say simply says, it just says, it's not simple.

Amen? But here's what it says. For I do not understand my own actions. I am baffled, bewildered. I do not practice or accomplish what I wish. But I do the very thing that I loathe, which my moral instinct condemns.

However, it is no longer I who do the deed, but the sin principle, which is at home in me and has possession of me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh.

I can will what is right, but I cannot perform it. I have the intention and urge to do what is right, but no power to carry it out. Now, if I do what I do not desire to do, it is no longer I.

It is no longer I doing it. That is, it is not myself that acts. But the sin principle, which dwells within me, that's fixed and operating in my soul.

So I find it to be a law that is a rule of action in my being. That when I want to do what is right and good, evil is ever present with me.

And I am subject to its insistent demands. For I endorse and delight in the law of God in my inmost self. That's with my new nature.

But I discern in my bodily members, in the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh, a different law. That rule of action. At war against the law of my mind, that is my reason.

And making me a prisoner to the law of sin that dwells in my bodily organs, in the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh. Oh, happy and pitiful and wretched man that I am.

Who will release and deliver me from the shackles of this body of death? Oh, thank God he will. Now, catch that. Amen? A lot of times we'll stop before we get to that point.

You know, well, Paul had the same problem. So, if I've got the same problem Paul had, we're just kindred people. Amen? But Paul finds the answer to the quandary here.

Thank God he will. So, here clearly defined is the dilemma of Christian living, as we've entitled our study.

How in the world do we get through all of that? Recognize again this idea of sin being a principle active within us.

I studied electronics for quite a while. When I was in the Air Force in particular, worked on radar sets. And, you know, you study about the currents and resistance and all of those things.

This is before the day of much transistorized stuff. So, we had a lot of things there that we had to deal with. The more you look at it now, the more modern day stuff.

And you look at that, and it still boggles my mind. You know, if I were to take this phone apart, which I'd never do. If I were to take this, what they call a smartphone.

iPhone for intelligence, I guess. I don't know. But anyway, if you take that apart, try to figure out how this thing works. How does it do what it does? When you talk to it, it answers.

You know, gives you answers to questions. You tear into it, and you're going to find some very small, little, seemingly insignificant things on a board.

So, how does that work? There's a principle at work inside of all of that. It's current. That has a principle of how it works.

Can't see it. Can't identify it. Unless you're a mathematician, you can go to a board and put it all on a board. And that tells you how it works. It's the same thing with the law of sin.

That's active within us. You can't put a finger on it. You can't really understand it. But it's there. Making you do what you don't want to do unless you're yielded to the Spirit of God.

Amen? Now, the Spirit of God is a person alive within us. So, that's a bit different than the law of the principle of sin that's within us. All right?

So, here clearly defined is that dilemma of the Christian life or Christian living. There is the inner witness of the Holy Spirit to your human spirit, to all that is good, right, and noble.

And every act and attitude of sin is an offense to your moral conscience, thus enlightened. This part of you says, as in Romans 7, 16 and 22, I acknowledge and agree that the law is good.

That's morally excellent. And that I take sides with it. For I endorse and delight in the law of God in my inmost self with my new nature.

Amen? I don't think there's anybody in here tonight that doesn't delight in the law of God, in the Word of God, in the things God has instructed us in His Word. We delight in that.

Yeah? The psalmist even said, blessed is the man, right, who walks now out in the counsel of the ungodly, standeth in the way of sinners, sitteth in the seat of the scornful. For his delight is what?

In the law of God. In the law he doth meditate day and night. So, there's the part of the dilemma, the first part. Now, that's the part of us that is represented by Esther.

Alright? The human soul. Now, there's the other part that's represented by Haman. Paul describes it as the sin principle that dwells within me.

Fixed and operating in my soul. Romans 7, 20. Question. Yes, ma'am. Fixed? As it never can be removed? You'll never lose the nature of sin until Christ comes for you.

Well, yeah. See? It's still there. It doesn't have to operate. Okay. See? And in reality, I wish I could remember what the passage was, but in reality, there's passage of Scripture that talks about the idea that when the Spirit of God comes in, of course, we know He dethrones that sin nature, but there's a gap.

There's a gap, chasm, if you will, created between the Spirit of God and that sin nature. And so that's why it's dependent upon us what we yield to.

That's what Paul says in the book of Romans. You know, whoever we yield ourselves to, we become the servants of that person, whether it be the flesh or whether it be the Spirit of God.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's fixed. Now, not that it can't be inoperable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not that it demands and you can't get away from it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's still, it's always there.

Okay. Fixed and operating in my soul. That's why, again, Paul says, you know, do you think it, the Scripture says in vain, that the Spirit of God lusts to envy?

And the idea is there, found in Galatians, that the Spirit of God and the flesh are at odds with one another, continually fighting for the control of the life of the believer.

So, the moment of truth will come, like with Esther, when you quit exchanging courtesies with the flesh and repudiate it to its face.

Amen? That's a nice way of saying it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. Exchanging courtesies with the flesh. Do we ever do that? I don't think I use courtesies.

Yeah. Yeah. Naming it for the treacherous, wicked, worthless thing that it is, without any salvageable content, and fixed only for, or fit only for, the gallows.

Got to see it as that. Amen? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny, since we've been going through this, it's been quite a while since I taught this. So, it's refreshing to go back through this, but since we've been doing that, it's amazing how many people, even in Sunday school class, and other places, that, you know, I want to burst out and say, uh-huh, is Haman in control again?

You know, is it Haman? Get people to understand. Of course, people won't understand that unless they're going through the study. But the idea that Haman is trying to, trying to fight all he can for, for, for survival.

I'm going to hear that myself. Yeah. All right. At this stage in our Christian life, we realize there can be no compromise with the flesh, and that peaceful coexistence with the principle that's satanically hostile to the law of God, and to the reestablishment of a sovereignty within your soul is now beyond the bounds of possibility.

I want us to pick up on that statement, that it's a principle that's satanically hostile to the law of God. Remember, Haman created laws of his own for the kingdom, for his own benefit.

One of the things that he used to persuade the king to sign, or to sign that decree to make, to extinguish the Jews, was that they have a law that are diverse from our laws, and it wouldn't be good for the kingdom.

All right. We've got to realize that the principles that the sin nature wants to produce within our lives is from Satan. It's satanic.

All right. It's from the devil. Paul says in the book of Ephesians. All right. You realize that it was never God's purpose to improve the flesh, to re-educate it, or to tame it, let alone to Christianize it.

Amen. Can't dress it up. God never intended that to happen. It's always been God's purpose that the flesh condemned, sentenced, and crucified with Jesus Christ might be left buried in the tomb and replaced by the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

All right. Now, I know, I know, good possibility that in our minds we're saying to ourselves, boy, this thing, this thing is hard, this idea of the sin nature being crucified.

But if we'll turn it around and not worry so much about the sin nature being hanged and concentrate more on the resurrection life of Christ that we share and focus on living that resurrection life, I think will be a help to us.

Now, Christ has to wear the ring upon His finger and once more exercise control in the area of your mind, will, and the emotions, expressing Himself through our own personalities.

Now, Paul described this in his desire that he wrote about the Christians in Ephesus. In Ephesians 3, verses 14 through 17, Paul says, For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ might dwell in your hearts by faith.

Here again, the inner man represented by Esther as the human spirit, strengthened and encouraged, that should be the human soul, I'm sorry, and strengthened and encouraged by Mordecai as the Holy Spirit.

Your hearts represented by King Ahasuerus in his place as the human soul. I think I've got those backwards. I'm sorry. I'm confusing you, aren't I?

I'm confusing myself. Now, Esther chapter 7, verse 7 and 8, the king, arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath, went into the palace garden, and Haman stood up to make requests for his life to Esther the queen, for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king.

Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine, and Haman was falling upon the bed where Esther was.

Now, we don't know why he fell on the bed. He might have stumbled, gotten dizzy, probably his heart failure from what's happening. Trying to kiss her feet. He got, well, maybe. But he fell on the bed.

The king comes in. In his wrath, he had gone out there. Maybe he had settled down a little bit until he came in and saw Haman stretched out on her bed. Then the king said, will he force the queen also before me in this house?

As the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. Now, I love this. Haman recognized how deeply the influence of Mordecai had penetrated the palace.

The arrogance of the would-be murderer was turned into the sulky sentimental pleadings of a frightful coward. Haman, the agagite, was proving true to his breed as the flesh itself to the spiritually discerning must always bear the stamp of his satanic pedigree.

Now, Haman's in deep trouble, no doubt. Remember the time when King Saul fell prey to the suave persuasions of the deceptive charms of Agag, the king of the Amalekites, and the fact then that God rejected him because he had rejected the word of the Lord.

And so, Samuel comes on the scene and announces against Agag the sentence which God had passed upon him and that Saul had given him as well, but spared him for some reason.

1 Samuel 15, 32, Then said Samuel, Bring ye hither to me, Agag the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came unto him, I like this, delicately, and Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past.

Now in his own persuasively deceptive way, Agag, the Amalekite, tried to bluff his way through as though it would be quite unfair of God to be as merciless to him as he had been to others.

And so, 1 Samuel 15, 33 said, Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women?

And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgad. Now, how quickly the boastful swagger of the flesh in the day of ascendancy can be reduced to the sobbing cry of self-pity.

Doesn't take long, does it? When the moment of truth has come. So, we've got to beware of that subtlety. Don't be sorry for yourself. Just be sorry for your sins.

If your pride is hurt, you feel like you've been misjudged, you become sensitive, begin to sulk, you become bitter, all those things, you can be quite certain it's only Haman groveling in the dirt and sobbing for the mercy that he doesn't deserve.

Amen? Haman's still there and he wants to take over but he's only fit for the gallows. Now, take notice. Here's the part I like. They covered Haman's face.

This was a sign of his being devoted to death because the attendants knew that the king was angry and that he had set Haman for destruction.

Now, catch this. When a criminal was condemned by a Roman judge, he was delivered into the hands of the sergeant with these words. And here's the words I love. I lector kaput, unabito, arborei, and felici, suspendito.

Can you catch that? Suspendito? Yeah, you're going to hang. I like the words kaput and suspendito. Yeah, which means go sergeant, cover his head and hang him on the accursed tree.

Yeah, he's gone kaput. Now, Esther chapter 7 verses 9 through 10. Harbona, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman.

Then the king said, Hang him thereon. And they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified.

Isn't it interesting that the king had put on Mordecai the robes, the crown, put him on the horse that Haman stipulated in his own mind that were reserved for him.

And now, the king hangs Haman from the gallows that Haman expected Mordecai to hang from. Amen? Yeah.

Is that a little bit of divine justice there? Yeah. That he shows us here. now. 1900 years ago, it was a Roman gallows.

And of those who put him there, the Lord Jesus said in John 8, 44, You are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.

He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. Boy, how Satan must have just rejoiced when it came to the point of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus.

Amen? The thing he had sought to do for centuries. Now, he was happy for three days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, with what ecstatic delight he must have incited the crowd as they looked and stared upon him shouting, he saved others, he cannot save himself.

This was to be the hour of his triumph but one thing he didn't know, there's sterner business to be accomplished upon the cross that Satan never guessed. Greater things to be accomplished.

This was not just the sentence of death upon a man by fellow men nor a spectacular public execution nor the untimely end of a noble martyr who drifted to disaster because he lived before his day and generation.

Die as die he did as men must die whose blood is spilt but it was not the son but Satan himself who bore the mortal blow of God's relentless wrath as the Savior takes to death for every man.

Hebrews 2.14 says, For as much then as children are partakers of flesh and blood he also likewise himself took part of the same that through death he might destroy him that hath the power of death that is the devil.

Romans 8.3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh.

When Jesus died for us he not only paid the price for our redemption but there was identified with him and nailed to his cross that old sinful nature which for so long dominated our soul frustrated our hopes.

That's where it's now fixed. Do what? That's now where it's fixed. Yes. Very good. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Nailed to his cross.

There's something which God wants us to know. Romans 6.6 says, For we know that our old unrenewed self was nailed to the cross with him in order that our body which is the instrument of sin might be made ineffective and inactive for evil that we might no longer be the slaves of sin.

So this is the truth that is expressed for us here in the book of Esther. When Haman was hanged on those gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.

No longer might he exercise the executive powers of government and abuse the king's authority nor bring disrepute upon the kingdom through his malicious evil influence over the behavior of his people of this people throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Now I want you to catch that. When Haman hanged that put an end to every ounce of influence on the people of the kingdom throughout the land.

Do you remember what the kingdom stands for? What it represents? The body.

Yes. It represents the body. The sin nature of being hanged. That's what Paul speaks of. We might get to that here in a minute. In the book of Romans. We don't have to yield our instruments or bodies as instruments of unrighteousness.

Because when he hung that sin nature and nailed that to his cross that took care of that for us. The kingdom representing the human body was no longer to be the instruments of his evil acts.

But by his death it would become ineffective and inactive as far as evil is concerned. As Haman hung by the neck so the stage was set for the radical change of government which would produce so great a change of government and would produce so great a change in behavior that from one end of the country to the other everyone would knew that something very wonderful had happened in the palace of the king.

You remember some of you have to go way back but you remember when you first got saved? Do you remember the sensation you felt? I don't like to go a whole lot on feelings but there are a lot of times most of the time is some sensation there that things are different.

That burden that you carried that you really didn't know what it was was gone and that was the burden of trying to work this thing out yourself carrying the load of sin that you carried because of the nature of sin.

That was gone because Jesus bore that for us and freed us from all of that. Now the wrong man was out the right man then was in.