21. Xerxes the Great and Queen Esther

so just briefly you most of you been in the class and so this is just the quickest kind of recollection because it's been two weeks since we've been together I just want to remind you of the main bullets we have cyrus the great best known most famously known for what what do we remember him for and the deafening roar of the response from the audience's knocks over the teacher he's the one who liberated the Jewish people over that all right this is why we like him he comes 5:39 defeats the Babylonians Belshazzar handwriting on the wall and then within a year or two authorizes God's people to return to Jerusalem and we begin rebuilding the temple there and her and Josephus tells us the reason he did that was because he saw his whole his own name there in the record the prophecy written by Isaiah so we have Cyrus the Great first of all he's followed by Camby sees his not so impressive son who spends most of his time in Egypt doesn't like the Jewish people so much and in fact impedes further progress on the work on the temple and so it more or less stalls out for a while and remains a half-built temple there in Jerusalem kind of an eyesore that continues to be the case under my favorite name pseudo shmurda pseudo smartest is also known as gamma taw who was a median is trying to recover the medo-persian empire to median control and more importantly reinstate the median religion which is known as Maji ISM but as it turns out he's not successful because within a few months of his career beginning as the ruler of the Medes and the Persians he's assassinated by our hero Darius the great who along with six co-conspirators get into the palace it's a wonderful story Herodotus tells it in all of its made four movies detail so if you're reading Herodotus you'll come to that at a certain point and you'll probably enjoy the story but that takes place in 5:22 Darius reinstates the policies of Cyrus and commits himself to the completion of the building of the temple in Jerusalem and in fact we have both Persian records and also biblical records to support that so the job is finished as you know the temple is is completed in 516 exactly 70 years after it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 and so we looked at the career of Darius last time and that brings us now to the character that's before us all these guys are great you notice that I try to sell that to my students at school you know gora the great they're not buying it I don't know I am but Xerxes does qualify as great gore the great not so much Xerxes the great yes indeed so from 486 to 464 he is our center of interest here there's two things about him in particular that we want to remember one is that he does appear to be the the character who is the husband of Esther in the biblical account and as I say the name a azureus which you read and Esther is essentially the Hebrew version of the Greek word Xerxes we call him Xerxes because that is the name that's most commonly used because a lot of what we know about him comes from Herodotus who's a Greek historian and we you know his Persian name is a little harder to say and so basically Xerxes is the name that we commonly will use to apply to this guy the other thing that is interest is that he fought and lost what's called the second Persian war so I want to look at both of those this morning the second Persian war and also this account of what took place in connection with Esther the final years of his reign are somewhat obscure we don't have a lot of Persian records to give us information about it nor does Herodotus tell us a whole lot except that he sort of implies that the latter years of this guy are not all that impressive and a certain amount of dissolute living if you you know it would be something like that now that may again be Herodotus he doesn't like Xerxes and so he may be spinning this just a little bit more in favor of Greek perspectives but we'll leave that at that so search sees the grade he inherits from his predecessor Darius this huge empire so if you can see the map you'll notice off to the right on the map the Persian Holdings go clear up and really are contiguous with India way off to the right to the left rather we have the Persians controlling Egypt can buy seas that actually successfully taken control of Egypt and Egypt remains under Persian control until Alexander the Great it was going to still be a couple of hundred years in the future up to the north and the west we have the Persian controlling all of Anatolia Turkey and actually having a pretty good sized toehold in Europe and so all of that gray area there represents the region that Xerxes is controlling Jerusalem has finished the temple as a 516 it continues in operation all through this period in fact the second temple as it's called continues uninterrupted the daily sacrifices all the way down to the end of that second temple which is when it's destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD with one exception there's about a three-year break which takes place in connection with what's called the Maccabee and revolt and so the Jerusalem operation is more or less shut down for a time under the Syrian intrusion there and we're going to look at the Maccabee in revolt in that entire Arab in this spring we'll be looking at it probably in about a month from now so otherwise the Jerusalem Temple continues all through this time Xerxes when he first took the throne has to put down some revolts this is not uncommon we know that a regime change always seemed to be an opportunity for those who were under the thumb of this Imperial control to try to seize this opportunity to get out from under that authority and so both we find in Babylon and also in Egypt there's an attempt to do so it is unsuccessful but it does take the better part of a year or two for Xerxes to deal with those rebellions and so that brings us then to 483 when things have quieted down Herodotus doesn't give us any of this account but the biblical account would say that it's at this time now that Xerxes begins to celebrate the Holdings that he now has full control of and this would take place in his third year the book of Esther tells us that he held a great feast in his third year now his third year is 483 we reckon his first year is 485 because 486 belongs to his predecessor so that's the way the chronology is generally reckoned so if 485 was his first full year then 483 would be in his third year and that would be indeed when he would be having such a celebration and in fact we have some indication that he did have the celebration what we don't hear from Herodotus but we do hear a from Esther is that it's at that time for some reason he wants Vashti to come and sort of display her beauty I don't know exactly what that meant and some people put a rather you know kind of negative view of what all of that entailed I don't know but anyway that's the way the story reads there in Esther chapter one as a result of that Esther I'm sorry Vashti is deposed and that's the end of the account from Esther for the time being the next big event that takes place in the career of Xerxes is the first Persian war what takes places in 481 after mustering a huge army he marches across Turkey and arrives in Sardis now Herodotus tells us this is a 1 million man army probably not most historians who look at that say that would be not only unprecedented in history but almost unimaginable the logistics of keeping a 1 million man army going in this long march and actually carrying them over into the greek peninsula seems outrageous and so most historians who believe this does happen I mean obviously the 2nd Persian War took place but put the size of the army probably more in the range of two or three hundred thousand maybe four hundred thousand at the most and so that's what we'll assume Herodotus is spinning this story a little bit because he's a Greek and this is the classic David and Goliath situation that he wants to portray for us here's little Greece facing this gargantuan attack by the Persians but what happens the Greeks win and Herodotus is very proud of the Greeks and so he tells the story and clearly you see that Greek bias coming through but nevertheless most of what he gives us is regarded as pretty accurate so here comes a huge army they arrive in Sardis the Persian capital really in Asia Minor there in 481 from that point they send emissaries out through the Greek Peninsula seeking for the standard symbols of submission and what would happen is they would request earth and water earth and water stood for the fundamental resources of a particular region and by sending samples of each back it was a symbol of saying we submit to you and we're submitting our resources to you so these guys go all through the Greek Peninsula most of these cities they come to freely surrender earth and water they're not going to pick a fight with the Persians until these guys get to Athens in Athens these emissaries are some early executed and thrown down a well so the Athenians don't submit quite so readily and of course that is picking a fight big time then with the with the Persians as a result of that the Greeks know they have a problem they have bowed their back they're not the least bit willing to surrender but at the same time they know that they have a major fight on their hands because they know there's this huge army over there in Sardis and that the following year undoubtedly they're going to be facing them they have a big debate among themselves as to whether they should meet the Persians primarily at sea or on land the Athenians are arguing more for sea the Spartans are arguing more for a land defense they have a big debate and as it turns out they decide they'll do both the Athenian evil Admiral Themistocles is assigned the responsibility to handle the naval forces and the spartan king leonidas is assigned the task of Randall II the the land forces of course Bora both forces are much much smaller than this imposing Greek presence but nevertheless they're going to do their best so this is the these are names I know you're familiar with the mystically is Leonidas these two are the great champions of the second Persian war 480 the army crosses over from Asia into Europe it's a great kind of bridge that's created quite an engineering feat and the army marches over this the fleet of the Persians hugs the Greek coast so they're coming down more or less together to attack Athens and to attack the cities of the Peloponnese and that's of course what launches them the second Persian war well as this force comes along Thrace the first region immediately submits Thessaly immediately submits Macedon is not is not mentioned directly but presumably they didn't put up a fight and so the Persians marched through more or less unopposed what the Greeks decide to do is to post themselves at two strategic locations one of them is called Thermopylae literally means hot gates or gates of fire and the other is Artemis ium which is a little Peninsula out on the sea and so they're going to post their forces respectively at the land pass known as Thermopylae and the sea access there at Artemisia so what happens you kind of see how they're forming a defensive barricade at that point and what happens is the Persians come down and they encounter the Greeks then at those two locations the most famous Battle of the second Persian War is the battle at Thermopylae and there was a movie that was made a few years ago you may recall called 300 anybody see that 300 it was great special effects not too far off the actual historical event they do portray Xerxes a little bigger than life and you know Leonidas who knows but it's a wonderful movie and lots of fun if you don't mind a lot of bloodshed and kind of spraying guts all over the place but otherwise it's a great you know kind of entertaining experience what really happened was the Persians are coming down the Greek Peninsula and they're being funneled into this rather narrow pass now the Spartans were by far the most powerful efficient warriors of the ancient world everybody knew that and kind of a fair Oh let's say game would be all one Spartan for every ten Persians that was essentially what was expected one Spartan per ten that's a fair fight you know that's how good these guys were but it was you know one Spartan versus a hundred is a little over the top well the Thermopylae Pass was a good way to sort of reduce the overall numbers of the Persians into a fairly narrow kind of ravine there in a sense so that the Persians would be faced with you know in other words the Persians could only send a certain rather finite number of people through this pass and that was how the Greeks thought that they could hold them off they were hoping they could hold them off indefinitely so that the Persians would eventually turn around and go home well they did hold them off for a while it was about ten thousand Greeks fighting here versus the forces of Persia which were many many times larger than that but then somebody betrayed the Greeks with a kind of backdoor around the pass of Thermopylae so the Persians were able to come around and attack them both from the front and the rear and that made an impossible situation when Leonidas realized what had happened he dismissed most of the Greeks to go and fight another day saving their just the 300 and so that's this famous occasion where the 300 Spartans faced the huge huge forces of the Persians and even at that they're able to hold them off for about a week and that gives the Greeks a chance to run down to the Bay of Salamis where the major battle of this conflict would take place so the Battle of the 300 Spartans takes place there this is what Thermopylae looks like today you'll notice that it's actually a pass that's right on the edge of the sea so you've got mountains on the one hand on the left of the image you don't see the sea on the right but the sea level was higher in the ancient world and so it created this sort of narrow pass where you could only have a few hundred Persians coming through at any given moment if you drive through this region today you'll find this great monument that's there Leonidas and his famous 300 fighting off the Persians so that's what it looks like the major battle that takes place in the second Persian war is at the Bay of Salamis which looks like this if you can see there that little era the area that's right between the Greek mainland and the Peloponnese is called the Bay of Salamis and what happened was the Greeks were able to induce the Persians larger ships into that Bay the more light Greek triremes than just batter away at them it's kind of a route in which the heavy Persian ships are not able to maneuver effectively and so that's the end of the story Herodotus tells us a funny little anecdote about Xerxes that he was sitting up in the liked in the grandstands you know he'd set up this nice little bleacher where he could eat popcorn and you know hot dogs and watch the what he thought was going to be destruction of the Greeks and he gradually becomes more and more alarmed as he sees that the Persians are losing and he knows that if they really do lose the way it looks like they are he himself might be at risk so finally he decides enough of this and he quickly packs up and heads for home and leaves his forces there to do the best they can but they do indeed lose this battle and so it's a big embarrassing black eye for the Persians and a wonderful moment of glory for the Greeks and second Persian war the mop-up operations took place the following year in Plataea on the Greek Peninsula and makayley over in Asia Minor and that's basically it that's the story of the second Persian War I may have taken more time on it than I should have but hey we love ancient history don't we isn't it fun it's good stuff has really nothing to do with biblical history but you know there it is and so we'll just include it in our little narrative the second Persian war takes place from 481 to 479 as we say Xerxes returns home and according to the book of Esther the events recorded in Esther take place in his seventh year which would be precisely the year that he would be back in town after the second Persian war so again no distinct records of this from Persian sources but it very much is compatible with the chronology that we otherwise understood took place so in Esther chapter 2 we have a record then of the replacement of Vashti taking place there and of course in that process Esther is chosen in this wonderful story that unfolds at that point that's all in 478 then in 472 we hear about this plot by a sinister character in the Persian court named Haman H a ma n Haman is said to be an a kite anybody recall who a gag was it was a gag that name ring a bell a gag better recall what he was where does he pop up do you remember who's yeah okay this is a gag is an Amalekite and he's mentioned in the story of Saul which is many years earlier and you may recall Samuel had told Saul to go and get rid of the Amma Amalekites they were the perennial enemies of God's people they had been hostile to them all along it was kind of like a holy war situation go eliminate these people get rid of them Saul goes off obediently and makes war against the Amalekites but in the process says you know these are fairly nice people and they have a lot of nice livestock and so Saul kind of compromises the command that had been given to him by God through Samuel and saves the best spoils of war and of course it's a great incident you recall it when Samuel comes in finding out what how the war is gone and he says what's the bleeding of sheep that I hear in the background and what is this you know kind of deal and Saul is making all sorts of excuses but that begins to be the time when Saul's fortunes begin to change Agag was the king of the Amalekites who was spared by Saul at that point and Haman then many many years later is said to be an egg a gite he's a descendant of these who Saul spared and of course the the lesson that we might learn from that is you know if Jesus says there's something in your life - you need to get rid of and get rid of it you know don't just compromise with it make a deal with it get rid of it and so anyway here they are the Amalekites coming back once again more ferocious than ever and mounting this huge attack really and a threat to the Jewish people so Haman is the one who is able by a kind of trickery to get the King to sign off on this order essentially that would be genocide against the Jewish people that is said to take place in the 12th year of the reign of Xerxes and so that is the moment when then we have this story that we just read up here in in the book of Esther in which of course Mordecai directs his niece now Queen in she at the risk of life and limb is prepared to go in and confront Xerxes and if you know the story of Esther you know that she invites him over and Haman is exposed and eventually hanged and the Jewish people are liberated through all of that and we have the feast of Purim as it's called and in Jewish festivals to commemorate that moment the shrine to Esther and Mordecai is found in Iran it looks like this and inside you'll find these two kind of coffin sort of Affairs that are presumably the remains of Mordecai and Esther so it's interesting there's some indication the rest of the reign of Xerxes as I say is fairly obscure and what I'd like to do then and the time that we have is just return to the thoughts about Esther here and this is my Sunday School lesson for the morning so I'd like to have you think about this moment when Mordecai says to Esther that she needs to go in and confront Xerxes not confront him really but at least come in and represent intercede for the Jewish people and notice first of all in verse 14 Mordecai says to Esther if you keep silence at such a time as this relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter but you and your father's family will perish and then he says who knows perhaps you have come to the kingdom is the word there for just such a time as this it's one of the more famous remarks and you've of course heard it colloquially maybe you've come to the kingdom for just such a time as this there was nobody in the world who was in the same position as Esther she had by the providential care of God been brought to a position where she could do something nobody else could do it's very interesting the book of Esther never mentions God once he's never mentioned there's no mention to some sort supernatural providential care and yet Providence is breathing throughout the book all of the timing all of the close calls all of the little details show that while God has never mentioned he's in the machinery all the way through and I think that's part of the reason it said just that way and Mordecai says to Esther who knows maybe you've been brought to the kingdom for such a time as this there was nobody like Esther so my first point in my Sunday School lesson is that there's nobody like you there's nobody else who is you and there's nobody who's had the experiences the moments of Education the training the wisdom all of the things that have been accumulating to make you the person you uniquely are is shared by nobody else and there's nobody else in precisely your life circumstance and I just want to say to you who knows maybe you have been brought to the kingdom for just this moment you see where does God put you what conversation can you have that nobody else could have what possibilities are in your life right now that nobody else has access to what is it that's uniquely part of your situation right now that makes you like esker Esther a person who's come to the kingdom for just such a time as this because we are in God's kingdom you know God is building his kingdom he's building his temple and we are all living stones within it and there's no stone that can play the role that you can play you are unique in that great edifice so that's point number one ask yourself as God called you right now to the kingdom for just such a time as this number two again from the same text verse 15 then Esther said and reply to Mordecai go gather all the Jews to be found in souza hold a fast on my behalf and neither eat nor drink for three days night or day I in my maid's also fast as you do after that I will go to the king notice what Esther doesn't say hey Mordecai I got you I'm with you okay I mean the King likes me no problemo I'm going to go run right in there and we'll have a little chat Esther has a respectable amount of fear and hesitation and she understands what God had said to zerubabbel through Zechariah the last time we were together not by might nor by power but by my spirit so the balancing lesson here is there's nobody like you you were unique but don't think you can go it alone I don't care how many letters you've got after your name how many credentials how much experience how much wisdom how much anything jesus says without me you can do nothing and even Queen Esther as privileged and honored as she had been was not going to presumptively invade into this program without being reinforced by prayer and fasting and so whatever it is that you feel God may be calling you to do don't think you can do it without that strength that only comes by His grace pray fast whatever it takes you know make sure that is you are pursuing this course you're doing it with God's sanction and God's power and then our third little lesson that comes in this very famous comment right at the end after that I will go to the king though it is against the law and if I perish I perish it sounds a bit like resignation but it isn't exactly that is it it is the comment a person will embrace that will make them the most courageous if I perish I perish once you've reached that state of mind what is there to fear now if you're still hanging on hedging your bets worrying about outcomes you got some things to worry about but if you say by perish I perish well then the pressure is off Jesus says you want to be my disciple take up your cross not take up your bazooka take up your hand grenade take up your martial arts take up your this or that take up your cross and of course the disciples who heard that in the first century heard it somewhat differently than we do we've had 2,000 years to sort of sentimentalize that statement but they thought about the typical Roman practice of forcing people condemned to death to take up their cross and drag it out to the place of execution just as Jesus himself was required so to do you want to be my disciple grab your cross and follow me to what you must assume is the place of your own execution and if you perish you perish but the fact is if a man is going to hang on to his life he will lose it but the person who's prepared to surrender his life will gain it and so much more besides there is in the life of Christian faith and understanding a kind of self surrender Paul says in Romans chapter 12 present your bodies a living sacrifice sacrifices usually die you ever notice that sacrifices don't ordinarily survive and yet Paul uses an oxymoronic statement they're a living sacrifice if you perish you perish it's not so bad but every day there's an opportunity to once again take up that cross to once again go in before the key to once again know you're putting everything in risk but to once again know that God in His Providence may have brought you to the kingdom just such time as this so that we were desperate person God uses to accomplish his purpose you

Channel: Bruce Gore

Views: 87,011

Rating: 4.8299379 out of 5

Keywords: Xerxes, Great, Esther, Persia, Bruce, Gore, Persian, Wars, Thermopylae, Salamis, Leonidis, Spartans

Id: zKKaonre_Jk

Length: 31min 16sec (1876 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2015