Section 01 - Introduction to Esther

Firstly God does not appear anywhere in the book. You won't find the word God mentioned in this book at all.

It speaks about the Jews who were God's people, but it doesn't really even speak about the Jews serving God. It just speaks about the Jews generally.

There is only one place where there is a slight hint that God may be involved, but He is not mentioned by name. It is more like a reference to providence.

So you might wonder why the book of Esther is even in the Bible. Really the only answer we can give to its inclusion, is that it is an indication of how God saved the Jews during a time when they were in captivity.

Satan wanted to destroy them and God preserved them using Queen Esther. So it is kind of a historical book. The Bible says,

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine [or teaching], for correction, for training in righteousness.

Well tell me, how can the book of Esther, which is a story about a king who married a beautiful woman, teach me anything?

How can it reprove me or correct me in my spiritual life? How can it train me to serve the Lord better? Some people have questioned whether the book of Esther should even be in the Bible.

Like a Movie

So what do we do with this book? Well for a start it reads like a regular movie story. It's an awesome story that actually follows the exact movie pattern.

You have a central character; a man by the name of Ahasuerus. Next you have the protagonist, Mordecai and his adopted daughter Esther. She was the one who helped everyone.

Then you have the antagonist; a guy by the name of Haman. He has some helpers who consist of his wife and his ten sons.

The story really runs like a movie script. You see everything starts out great. The main character is having a great time and everything is going smoothly. Then suddenly things start to go wrong.

At this point the protagonist and the antagonist come in on the scene. I'm sure you know that the protagonist is the good guy who wants to make things go well.

The antagonist however is the bad guy. You always have a bad guy in the movie who is causing problems, stirring and fighting against the protagonist.

After a while it looks like the antagonist is winning. The poor protagonist is being pushed back and he is losing. Doesn't this sound like a movie?

The protagonist waits for the right moment before he appears. Finally it looks like the protagonist is coming in.

It looks as though things are starting to come right, but then comes the part of the movie that they call 'all is lost'.

It's hopeless. This situation has taken a turn for the worst and there seems no way out. If you watch any good movie it has all of these plots in it.

The story seems like it is going to end really badly. But at the last moment the protagonist comes up with a solution. There is a sudden change of events and finally the story ends happily. That is what makes for a good movie.

Some people have tried to make a movie out of Esther. I haven't seen them do a good job of it yet, because they have to change the original script. They put in things that were not there and didn't actually happen.

Don't you hate Bible movies? They never teach it the way the Bible tells it.

You know when I read a story in Scripture, I always try to visualize in my mind how it will go. Then some idiot, who thinks he is a great movie scriptwriter, will take that story and distort it.

He will add junk in it and make it go a totally different route. One day I would like to make a movie of the real story of Esther and bring some of the truths out.

In this first section we are going to look at the first two chapters of Esther. I am not going to share them here otherwise it will be too much. So you can go back and read them after you are finished reading this section.

Allegorizing the Scriptures

I want to ask this question now. How do you get truth from a book like the book of Esther?

There is only one way that you can do it, and that is to look for spiritual truth in what is a natural story. It is something known as spiritualization or allegorization. In other words you have to look at the story as an allegory.

That is how you interpret your dreams. You can't interpret them literally.

You have to look at the characters in your dreams, the places, people and things. You have to give them a symbolic or spiritual meaning. Then your dreams can make sense.

If you want to get the best out of the book of Esther, it is the only way you will be able to get it out. You need to take every part of the book, allegorize it and find symbols in it.

When we do that, suddenly this book is going to pop out at you and you are going to say,

"Wow, I never saw that before."

Getting Truth from Allegories

There is however a danger in using allegories. You can take a picture and make it mean whatever you want. So you have to be very careful not to build doctrine on allegories.

When you use an allegory, what you do is you take established doctrine; things that are taught very clearly in the Scriptures. You then use the allegory as a kind of a skeleton or framework on which to teach the truth.

As we go through the book of Esther I am going to be using this as a framework. But what I am going to be teaching is shown very clearly in the Scriptures.

I am not going to be producing a new doctrine that you haven't heard before. I am going to be presenting to you doctrines that you probably already know, but in a way that you may not have seen them before. We are however going to see them illustrated in the story of Esther.

To understand and allegorize the book of Esther you need firstly to understand a bit about the nature of man. Because you see the book of Esther is a picture of the spiritual life.

The entire story of Esther is a picture of our spiritual life from beginning to end. You will see that as we carry on. However before we get into this book, I want to try and help you to see how I have chosen the characters and the allegories for them.

You need to understand some basic doctrine, and the first thing you need to know is this. God has created us as human beings firstly with three parts to our being. We have a body, a soul and a spirit.

With that in mind, I want to show you that the book of Esther takes all of these parts of our being. And when they are allegorized we will be able to see an illustration from each part of our being and how they function and work together in the spiritual life.

It starts with our life outside of Christ. It then leads to the salvation experience, the progress we make in the spiritual life and to our relationship with the Lord.

The List of Characters

Let's move on now to the credits. In a movie you have the names of the characters and who they are portrayed by. So in this story we have the following characters playing.

We have the Kingdom of Ahasuerus with all its pomp and wealth. This is a picture of the human body.

Enter the character played by Ahasuerus the king. This is a picture of the human soul.

Next, enter Queen Vashti, which is a picture of the human spirit outside of Christ.

We have the character Mordecai. He is a picture of the Lord represented as the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Then there is Queen Esther. She is a picture of our new spirit recreated in Christ.

There are a few more characters, but they won't appear in this first section so I am not going to mention them here. I will keep that anticipation so you can try and work out for yourself what the other characters are.

In this section, these are the characters that are going to star in this first episode of your spiritual life from the book of Esther.

Background to the Book

Let's look at the background to the main story, because in this section we are not going to get into the main story fully. We are just going to see the introduction.

Ahasuerus' Party

It starts with Ahasuerus having a huge party. He invites everybody in the Kingdom to come to his party and they go on for ages. They party on and on, and there is food, drink, pomp and ceremony and many amazing sights.

The book goes into such detail, and I'm sure if I wanted to sit down and allegorize each detail I could do it. Some people like to go overboard on allegorizing colors and numbers and they get into things like numerology.

You could have a field day in the book of Esther. They have all sorts of colors and objects, numbers, times and dates but I don't want to go into all that detail. If you have that kind of mind please feel free to give it a try.

In the beginning of the first chapter we have a very graphic description of everything. It describes all the beautiful colors, the curtains, the marble and all sorts of things. Everything is very visual, very awesome and exciting.

Living in the Flesh

You see this is a picture of our body; a picture of when we are living a life where our body dominates and controls. This is the life of a person outside of Christ.

Everything in the body is what counts. Everything that the body desires takes pre-eminence. There is unlimited pleasure without restriction. The king says,

"You can eat and drink whatever you want. I'm not telling you what you must do or mustn't do. Please feel free to let it all hang loose. Have a great time guys, it's all on me."

This is a picture of the life of pleasure that people live in when they don't know the Lord. That is the only joy they have in life.

This is what living is about. It is about having parties and having fun; about enjoying all the good things that this life has to offer and all the good pleasure that this body can possibly enjoy.

And so the party goes on and on. They are eating and drinking, drinking and eating and getting drunk. They are having a glorious time. Then an event takes place that changes everything.

A Change Needed

Imagine now if you had come to Ahasuerus in the middle of his festivities and his party and said,

"Ahasuerus you need to make some changes. Things are not right. This kind of life you are living and this party you are having is wrong."

Do you suppose he would have listened to you if you did that?

We look at the unbelievers who are having a glorious time. On Monday morning they come in to work and tell you the exploits they had over the weekend.

They tell you about the wonderful parties, the wonderful fun and the great time they had. Then you say,

"Well you should have seen what I did. I went to church."

Nobody is going to listen to you though. What do we have to offer that can possibly compete with such pomp and luxury and pleasure?

You know sometimes we think that evangelization is simply going to the lost and presenting the gospel to them. It means showing them that the life they are living is a life of sin. It is going to lead to judgment and damnation and problems later on.

But you will find that most people are not interested in hearing that. They don't want to know that.

Before we can even begin to present the gospel and to bring the change that is needed, they need to reach a place where they realize that things are not right.

They must know that something is wrong. Things are not the way they should be and something is lacking.

Before a person is ready to hear the gospel and to commit themselves to the Lord, something has to take place in their life. Their eyes need to be opened to the fact that everything is not well.

Calling for Queen Vashti

Change is needed and this is illustrated very well in this story. Everything was going well and the king was ticking nicely after having lots of alcohol. But after a while the party kind of gets boring.

You have eaten the food and drunk. Perhaps you had the dancing girls and did the whole show, but what do you do next? How do you improve this party? It is kind of lacking.

Well the king came up with a brilliant idea. He said,

"Why don't you get the queen? Bring her out here and put her on display so that I can brag about what a beautiful queen I have.

The queen was having her own party in the inner part of the palace. She had all the women while Ahasuerus had all the guys.

It is quite typical isn't it? All the guys gather for their party and they talk about what they want to talk about. The women go to their party and do the same thing. Then in the middle of it the king says,

"Hey, I'm the king. I'm the boss here. We need a change, so bring in the beautiful women. Bring in my queen so that I can brag a little bit and show you what I have."

Confusion Begins to Reign

Suddenly things take a turn for the worst. Queen Vashti says,

"I'm not coming."

How dare she do that! He is the king. Plus he's a man of course, and men are superior to women aren't they? Well that was certainly part of the culture then, so how dare she say to him,

"I'm not coming out."

Conflict and confusion now took place in the Kingdom. The party was raring. It was going good until that moment, and then there was silence. King Ahasuerus said,

"What! The queen won't come?"

All the men who are sitting with King Ahasuerus now know that they are in trouble because their wives are in there with the queen.

If the queen refuses to submit to the king, what do you suppose their wives are going to do to them when they get home? They will say,

"We are just following the queen's example. From now on cook your own food, wash your own clothes and iron your own shirts. I'm not doing it anymore."

There was conflict and problems. They needed to do something and do it fast. That state of affairs could not continue.

The Allegory So Far

Where is the spiritual application here? Let's look at the full allegory.

A life outside of Christ totally emphasizes the desires of the body. The body passions are given full license and these are allowed to run our lives. Then there comes a time when the person realizes,

"There is a part of me that is not satisfied here. I need more than this. There is something deep down inside of me that is wrong."

You see we are living this life in the body. We are living life with our desires and thoughts, but deep down inside of us is a part that we are not always conscious of.

Sometimes we ignore it and think we can live without it. But actually that is the part that affects us the most. It is the human spirit.

There comes a point in a person's life where suddenly they realize that this very important part of them is not responding. It is not doing what they want it to do or what they need it to do.

There is something wrong in my spirit. I don't know what it is, but there is something deep inside. And when I try to call on it and say, 'Come out and help me,' it refuses to respond.

This is the state of the human spirit outside of Christ. The Scripture says that because of sin we are dead towards God.

That doesn't mean that our human spirits no longer exist. And when we try and call upon our spirits to respond and produce what we need, our spirits cannot respond because they are dead. They have lost the power that they should have.

Something is wrong. What are we going to do about it?

This is the first event in the book of Esther that starts the main story. It is the first event that takes place in the life of an unbeliever, before they are even ready to begin entering into the spiritual life and coming to know the Lord as their Savior.

Very often you have to wait for a person to reach this stage in their life before you can offer them anything. You may have to do this before you can come in from the outside, present the gospel to them and draw them into the Kingdom of God.

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