This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 12: “Esther and Mordecai”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The story of Esther and Mordecai is not a story of evangelism but of the Lord’s sovereign intervention.
- This lesson looks at Scripture as moral instruction instead of an account of God’s faithfulness to His own will, such as the completion of His commands against the Amelekites.
- Israel, unlike the church, was a nation serving Yahweh. The body of Christ, conversely, takes the Lord’s presence into the nations.
This lesson once again appropriates the word of God as an instruction manual for Adventist proselytizing. This week the lesson is based on the story of Esther and Mordecai.
Ironically, given Adventism’s eschatology that features a prediction of a universal Sunday law that will condemn Sabbath-keepers to death—a model that leads to terrifying role-playing including skits and games featuring “soldiers” threatening children and even adults with death at gunpoint if they fail to stay loyal to the Sabbath when taken by surprise and threatened—Sunday’s lesson actually posits this theoretical situation:
None of us, for instance, lives in an Adventist country where the principles of our faith are, to some degree, the law of the land. But before being deported, the Jewish people had been living in their own country, where the principles of their faith were also enshrined in the law of the land.
On one level, think how easy that should have made it to be faithful to God. After all, how much easier would it be to keep the seventh-day Sabbath if, in fact, keeping the seventh-day Sabbath were enshrined in the legal codes of the nation?
This thought exercise reveals that Adventists’ fear of legislated Sunday-observance is really the flip side of a wish that the law would mandate and protect Sabbath-sacredness. In fact, that this idea would find its way into the world organization’s Sabbath School curriculum reveals that Adventism really has no core understanding of trusting in the Lord Jesus for their salvation. Even their theoretical ideas of an ideal life include laws that would protect their Sabbath practices. They have no true understanding of a born-again spirit that knows and trusts the Lord. Protected Sabbath-keeping has no place in the new covenant gospel.
Jews In Persia
The story of Esther and Mordecai is not a story of how to win souls in a foreign culture. First, Jews didn’t “evangelize” as Christians think of the term—and certainly not as Adventists understand evangelism. Jews were promised blessings for obedience to the law and curses if they disobeyed. These covenant terms had nothing to do with seeking to gain more Jews.
On the contrary, the Mosaic covenant was established to organize the nation of Israel and to keep Israel separate from the pagans around them.
To be sure, they were to represent Yahweh. But they weren’t going into the world and telling the pagans about Him. They were supposed to represent Him by being obedient to the terms of their covenant with Him—including all His restrictions against socializing with gentiles. As they trusted God to keep His covenant promises to them, the nations would see that Yahweh was far greater than their gods, and they would learn to fear Israel and fear their God. They would acknowledge that Yahweh was the greatest God who could conquer enemies and deliver His people in spite of their enemies’ best efforts to destroy them.
If, however, the Israelites became disobedient and began worshiping pagan gods and indulging in pagan practices, God’s provision and protection would cease. Ultimately, God would exile them from their own land because of their lack of trust and obedience.
And that very scenario is how Jews came to be in Persia.
The nation of Judah had been exiled under Nebuchadnezzar, and the story is recorded in the book of Daniel. At the time of Esther, Babylon had been conquered by Medo-Persia, and Persia had risen to the position of prominence between the two powers. The Persian kings had already given the Jews permission to return to Judah, but many had stayed. They had established lives for themselves, and they simply didn’t return.
Mordecai was a person of integrity, according to the accounts in the book of Esther, but he was also politically savvy. It was a disadvantage to be a Jew; they were a conquered people, and they had become established and supported in a foreign land. Even though they were established, they were not “natives”. People still knew that Jews were the descendants of Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest. Furthermore, they were gaining influence and wealth—the conquered slaves were becoming indistinguishable from the citizens. It was a political liability—and a personal one—to be openly Jewish in the Persian court.
Esther’s becoming queen offered a political asset to the Jews—her ethnicity was almost like a trump card that could be played in the case of an emergency—and that is exactly what this book is about.
Esther’s becoming queen offered a political asset to the Jews—her ethnicity was almost like a trump card that could be played in the case of an emergency—and that is exactly what this book is about.
The underlying story the quarterly doesn’t tell, however, is the story of God’s perfect will bringing His commands to completion.
In 1 Samuel 15 we read the story of King Saul who had received a command from God though Samuel that when he went to war with the Amalekites, he was to kill every single one, including their animals. The reason for this order of total destruction was that the Amalekites were the first nation that attacked Israel on their march from Egypt.
The Amalekites were godless and cruel, and God said that when Israel had finally found rest in the land, they were to finish off the Amalekites. (See Deuteronomy 25:17–19). King Saul was given the opportunity to carry out this command of God, yet we read in 1 Samuel 15 that when he went to war with the Amalekites, he spared King Agag and the best of their livestock and spoils. Some Amalekites who were not in the battle survived as well.
This disobedience—and Saul’s attempt to say he had spared the spoils for the Lord when the Lord had commanded that he destroy them—resulted in God’s removing Saul from his position as king.
Now hundreds of years later, Mordecai is in Persia, and he is a descendant of Kish, Saul’s father, of the tribe of Benjamin. Haman, the man who plotted to kill the Jews because of his hatred for Mordecai when the king honored him for a previously forgotten act of loyalty, was a descendant of Agag, the Amalekite.
As this story unfolds, Haman’s treachery against the Jews was exposed by Mordecai and Jewish Queen Esther, and the king ordered his death. Haman the Amalekite was executed on the gallows he had built to hang Jewish Mordecai, and the king gave Haman’s position at court to Mordecai. He also granted Mordecai the authority to write a new law that allowed the Jews to defend themselves on the day of the planned attack against them.
The Jews overpowered the Persian soldiers when the attack came, and they won such a decisive victory that the nation was amazed. The lesson says that many Persians became Jews after that because the Jews had represented Got to them, but this analysis is inside-out.
God revealed Himself to the Persians as He protected and empowered the Israelites to defend themselves. The victory is still celebrated today in the annual Feast of Purim, and the Bible says that many Persians became Jews because of their fear of the Jews.This was not an evangelistic thrust or an example-led harvest of souls. This event was entirely an act of God, and the Persians recognized this fact.
This was not an evangelistic thrust or an example-led harvest of souls. This event was entirely an act of God, and the Persians recognized this fact.
God completed His orders that Saul had refused to carry out, and He defeated the last of the Amalekites (all of Haman’s sons were killed as well) by using the wisdom and integrity of Mordecai the Benjamite, the descendant of Saul’s family line. This event marked the completion of the centuries-old incomplete campaign against the Amalekites that God had ordered, and He used the same bloodline to which He had first given the assignment.
The lesson’s attempt to use the story of Esther and Mordecai as examples of cross-cultural evangelism is an egregious misuse of the book of Esther. This book reveals God’s sovereignty over the nations and His faithfulness to His own commands and promises. Esther and Mordecai did not model evangelistic integrity that resulted in people choosing to become Jews because of their winsome example.
No! Persians became Jews because it was evident to them that the Jews had the most powerful God. They feared the Jews, and they felt their lives would be safer being allied with the Jews than with the Persians.
Israel is not the same type of entity as the church. They were a nation; they were not evangelistic. The Great Commission, to go and make disciples of all nations, is a new covenant command. The church is NOT a nation; it is made up of individuals, one at a time, who trust the Lord Jesus, are born again, and are sealed with the Holy Spirit. God sends His body into the nations to take His presence and His gospel to the people.
The model of the church is completely opposite of the model of the nation of Israel. People came to Israel on the basis of God’s faithfulness to His covenant promises to them when Israel obeyed. They didn’t go to the nations to get converts. Rather, they were to honor God where they were, and God would bring the people to them.
Adventism claims to be spiritual Israel, but this claim is false in two primary ways. First, Christians are not a replacement Israel. The church is something completely NEW based on the new covenant in Jesus’ blood on His finished atonement for sin. The church’s job is different from Israel’s, and our mandate is to make disciples. Israel’s mandate was to trust God and obey Him and He would bring the nations to her.
Second, Adventism is not part of the church, either. Adventism does not teach the biblical gospel. It has a false model of humanity, and it teaches a false Jesus who could have sinned, could have failed, and who gave up His divine attribute of omnipresence—ideas which render Him not God.
Adventism pretends to be a true “church”. It pretends to follow the Bible, but in reality it uses the Bible to cover the fact of their great controversy worldview.
Adventism pretends to be a true “church”. It pretends to follow the Bible, but in reality it uses the Bible to cover the fact of their great controversy worldview. Adventism has an unbiblical model of reality, and its moralizing is powerless. It generates guilt and anxiety among its members, and these reactions tend to keep Adventists trying hard to please God and do right.
What is needed, however, is the real gospel. Adventists need to know that they are born literally spiritually dead in sin. They need to trust and believe that God the Son, incarnated in human flesh, took their sin to the cross and suffered the wrath of God before dying and being buried—and then breaking the curse of death on the third day according to Scripture.
God is sovereign over history and over us. Adventism will not always get away with the deceptions of their religion. God sees and knows, and, just as He saw and knew that the Amalekite problem had not been resolved and used Mordecai the Benjamite to finish the command to eliminate the last of the Amalekites, God will one day expose and judge Adventism as well.
He is calling us all to submit to His word and to allow His Spirit to teach us the truth about the Lord Jesus.
Trust Him today! †
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