Sermon: The King's Jealousy (Esther 7-8)

The King’s Jealousy Sunday, March 9th, 2025 Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA Esther 7:1–8:17

Prayer

Father, we thank you for your inscrutable wisdom, and that by your wisdom, you work for our good all things, including the evil actions and intentions of the forces of darkness. Please help us to trace in our own lives, and to know in our souls, that you are that God who is fore us and not against us. We ask for this all in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Introduction

In Exodus 20, when God’s voice thundered from Mount Sinai, He delivered through the Prophet Moses the Ten Commandments, and in the explanation of the 2nd commandment God explains to His people why they must not worship other gods. He says, “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.”

• You shall not worship idols because I am a jealous God.
• What does it mean for God to be jealous? Is jealousy a name worthy of the Divine Creator, who is omnipotent, all sufficient in Himself, who needs no others and to whom none can be compared? In what sense if any can God be called jealous? Why does He name Himself so?
  • A few chapters later we read in Exodus 34:14, “For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”
  • And again, in Deuteronomy 4:24 it says, “For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.”
  • And again, in Nahum 1:2 the prophet says, “God is jealous, and the Lord avenges; The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies.”
• So the picture of God that Scripture often paints for us is that of a burning mountain of fire that consumes whatever comes near it. God is like an active volcano. Molten lava is pouring down the hillside to destroy the wicked.
  • Be holy as I am holy, God says. And so, David asks in Psalm 15, “Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? [Who can live on that volcano?] Only he that walks uprightly and works righteousness.”
  • And again, David asks in Psalm 24, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart.”
• The church fathers Origen and St. Augustine, both reflecting on God’s jealousy, conclude with one voice that the jealousy of God, far from being harmful to our health, is actually our whole hope of salvation. And to that conclusion we might wonder, uhm how? How is God’s volcanic jealousy in any way good news for us, least of all, our whole hope of our salvation?
  • The answer to this question is actually found here in Esther 7-8. For it is in the very reality of a husband’s love for his wife, and of a king’s love for his queen, that God’s jealousy for you finds its soil.
  • Where there is no jealousy, there is no love, St. Augustine says. For what husband who loves his wife, would not be enraged if she became a harlot? Or what king who loves his queen, would allow her to be assaulted and the assailant go unpunished? A husband without jealousy for his wife, is a husband who does not love his wife, and so it is with God.
  • It is this metaphor of marriage, of a solemn covenant between man and woman, that God takes up and uses to explain His jealous love for His people, and the wrath He reserves for those who assault His bride.
    • “Marriage is a great mystery,” Paul says in Ephesians 5, “but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”