Justice

 

“The one who digs a pit will fall into it; the one who rolls a stone – it will come back on him.”  Proverbs 26:27

 “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” Says the Lord in Romans 12:19b. Why does He need to say this? Because hurt people hurt people. It is in our nature, our sin nature, when we are hit, to hit back. “Revenge is a dish best served cold” says the Klingon proverb. When we are injured by someone, it is likely that we will either consciously or unconsciously seek to hurt them in return. But that’s not what God wants us to do. He’s not asking us to just put up and shut up though, He’s asking us to trust Him that He will bring everything together as it should be. Esther and Mordecai got to witness this, along with all the Jewish people living in exile.

 Haman was a vile man. You can see this not just in what people say about him, but in his actions. Somewhere back in history, he, too, was hurt. We don’t know Haman’s back story, but from the history of the Amalekite people, and within them the Agagites, they harbored a hatred for the Jews. In 1 Samuel 15:1-9, God had ordered King Saul to utterly wipe out the Amalekites because of how they had ambushed the people of Israel when they were making their way up from Egypt. This may seem harsh to us, but God had very good reasons. He knew the hearts of the people and how there were no redeeming qualities in them. He knew that, if left alive, they would seek to continue to injure the Israelites, known in Esther’s time as the Jews. But King Saul didn’t obey God. He was greedy and kept for himself everything that was of value, including the Amalekite king, Agag. He only chose to slaughter everything that was despised and worthless. This moment of selfishness would come back to haunt the Jewish people when Agag’s descendant, Haman, worked his way into a position of influence and power in the Persian kingdom.

 The last few days, we’ve read the story of Haman’s evil being made known to the king in Esther chapter 7. Haman is shook by the revelation, and when the king storms out of the room in a rage, he takes the opportunity to throw himself on the mercy of the queen. Unfortunately for him, he does this quite literally, throwing himself on the queen’s couch, and when the king returns at just the right moment to see this, he thinks that Haman is attacking the queen. Less than 48 hours before, Haman had been seething in anger against the Jewish people and asked his advisors about how to deal with Mordecai in particular. They had advised him to set up a gallows, some versions read a spike, 75-feet high and ask the king to have Mordecai killed on it. Now that’s extra! In divine poetic justice, the king’s eunuch, Harbona, shares this information with the king and Haman is killed on the very dramatically evil device he had intended for Mordecai.

 I have a strange habit of feeling bad for the villain in a story. My favorite Marvel character? It might be Kingpin. I think it’s the gift of mercy God gave me, but I empathize with their back story. I see how they think they are doing the right thing. They’re wrong, of course, but they don’t know that. As I read the story of Haman, I wonder if I would have been tempted to give him another chance if I had been Esther. I mean, technically he hadn’t actually harmed anyone yet, he had just put in place a plan to. But God knew his heart. God knew that he was not going to change his ways and become a better person. Some people can, take Saul in the New Testament for example. He had stood by and approved of the Christians being arrested, beaten and killed. He was on a mission to carry this out further when God stopped him on the road to Damascus and confronted him with the truth (Acts 9). Why was Haman killed, and Saul allowed to live? Because God knew what kind of people they were on the inside. He knew what they would do when given a second chance. He knew the lasting influence Saul, also known as Paul, would have for good, for the building of God’s kingdom. He also knew Haman’s heart and how it was wicked through and through, that he would only continue to seek out harm for God’s people.

 I think I empathize with the bad guys because I see myself in them. I can’t remember a time where I intentionally set out to do evil or to be wicked, but I also can’t count high enough to number all the times I have done evil or wickedness in my life. I see a bad guy like Kingpin, and I see a man who wants the best for his city and thinks he knows how to bring it about. He doesn't see himself as a villain, in fact, he thinks he’s the hero. The problem is, he’s trying to get to a good place by doing bad things. He’s trying to bring about good in his own power, instead of trusting God to have a good plan. Yep, I’ve done that too. I’ve stepped out of God’s will to try to bring about something I thought should be - in my own way, and it flopped terribly. Now, I wasn’t running around killing people to make it happen, but I still wasn’t walking in God’s will, so it was sin – and sin is sin.

Here's the Thing: Thank goodness for Esther that the choice was not left up to her, but God put things together perfectly so that the king would choose to end Haman’s evil. And because the story was in God’s hands, vengeance was His and He did repay.