•        Introduction

Do you think God has got a sense of humour?

Now, it’s one thing to say that human beings have a sense of humour … but God?

I mean, why WOULD He?

The World Economic Forum meets in Davos this week … it’s been on the news … and you’d think from the coverage of that Forum they’d be a fairly humourless lot.

But their website has an article which got me thinking.

It tells us that as far as human beings are concerned “Studies have shown that a sense of humour can improve your mental and physical health, boost your attractiveness, and improve your leadership skills.” 

(https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/why-humor-is-an-essential-life-skill/)

Now, there are three basic sorts of things that people think are funny.

Relief theory argues that laughter and humour are ways of blowing off psychological steam, a way to release tension. 

That's why jokes told at funerals are often met not with the silence that a sombre occasion like that would merit but with uproarious laughter instead.

Superiority theory was originally formulated by Plato and Aristotle to explain a specific kind of humour: why we laugh at other's misfortunes. 

In this theory, humour is a means of declaring one's superiority over others.

Incongruity theory argues that humour arises when two contrasting, distinct ideas are mingled. 

So humour often subverts expectations, and punchlines are often the result of an unexpected reversal.

It’s that LAST one we’ve got going on here in Esther 6.

Now humans do need humour … but does God?!

·       For people it guards against depression and improves people’s quality of life … it’s like a psychological immune system.

But it’s not just a cheering effect that it produces.

·       Research has shown that humour can actually improve your physical immune system. 

·       Another physical health effect of laughter is that it can also improve cardiovascular health and lowers heart rates, blood pressure, and muscular tension.

·       But wait … in human beings, aside from improving your health, laughter can be a productivity tool as well.

A study from Northeastern University found that volunteers who watched a comedy were measurably better at solving a word association puzzle that relied on creative thinking as compared to control groups that watched horror films or quantum physics lectures. 

·       And it’s not just in the mind it’s measurable physiologically!

New know that laughter lights up the anterior cingulate cortex, an area of the brain associated with attention and decision-making, and make it buzz with activity and energy.

Yup.

So humans really do benefit from having a sense of humour … but why on earth would you think GOD could need one?

Does HE need His anterior cingulate cortex lit up to be able to pay attention and make decisions better?

Of COURSE He doesn’t!

But He knows you and He knows that YOU need humour to function well psychologically, physically and cognitively.

And He knows that because He made you.

So does God have a sense of humour?

Yes of course He does!

NOT because He needs one, far from it, but because YOU do …

And that accounts for why we have an example of incongruity theory humour here in Esther 6.

You see, it is the way things get totally reversed that makes Esther 6 that so beautifully stimulates your anterior cingulate cortex.

Here’s how it pans out …

1) A debt of gratitude re-discovered, vv. 1-3

Esther 6:1-3: “That night the king could not sleep; so he ordered the book of the chronicles, the record of his reign, to be brought in and read to him. 

2 It was found recorded there that Mordecai had exposed Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s officers who guarded the doorway, who had conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.

3 “What honour and recognition has Mordecai received for this?” the king asked.

“Nothing has been done for him,” his attendants answered.”

Hard to see how a sleepless night could be a good thing, isn’t it?

But the whole reversal of the dreadful situation the Old Testament people of God were in stems from a brutal despot having a bad night’s sleep.

Here’s where the tables start to turn.

Now, the Hebrew text here says … “and the sleep of the king fled.”

But in place of the rather innocuous comment of the Hebrew text, the LXX reads here, “And the Lord removed the sleep from the king.”

The Greek text thus understands the statement in a more overtly theological way than does the Hebrew text, although even in the Hebrew text there may be a hint of God’s providence at work in this matter. 

After all, this event is crucial to the later reversal of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jewish people, and a sympathetic reader is likely to look beyond the apparent coincidence.

The mighty Haman the Agathite (and therefore a hereditary enemy of God’s Old Testament people) is cut down from his ever so lofty position by the direct outcome of this apparent chance event’ when the King just happens to have a dodgy night’s sleep.

We don’t know WHY he was having a dodgy night’s sleep.

It could be that he can’t sleep wondering about what happened at the intriguing events of the banquet Esther just held for (only) him and Haman where she set up the situation for a proper high-level talk about something then asked simply for another banquet tomorrow.

But in any event Xerxes can’t sleep so he decides to review court business … which seems a bit like reading old committee meeting minutes in its level of intellectual stimulation.

But far from putting him off to sleep what Xerxes hears read stirs the man up quite a lot.

In such politically volatile times, and especially after his string of defeats and debts incurred by his armies in the Hellenic wars, Xerxes has got to be very careful about his own safety and making sure he honoured those who kept him safe when plots were in the offing was a very important thing to take care of.

So Xerxes is mortified to find that nothing has been done to honour Mordecai publicly.

In a court full of intrigue, Xerxes won’t feel safe with a man like Mordecai about nursing a grudge because Mordecai had foiled a plot against the King’s life and not been rewarded.

Worse, those events happened five years previously so Xerxes is going to reckon that something BIG needs to be done for Mordecai … and rapidly.

2) Pride comes before a fall, vv. 4-9

Esther 6:4-9 “The king said, “Who is in the court?” 

Now Haman had just entered the outer court of the palace to speak to the king about impaling Mordecai on the pole he had set up for him.

5 His attendants answered, “Haman is standing in the court.”

“Bring him in,” the king ordered.

6 When Haman entered, the king asked him, “What should be done for the man the king delights to honour?”

Now Haman thought to himself, “Who is there that the king would rather honour than me?” 7 So he answered the king, “For the man the king delights to honour, 8 have them bring a royal robe the king has worn and a horse the king has ridden, one with a royal crest placed on its head. 9 Then let the robe and horse be entrusted to one of the king’s most noble princes. Let them robe the man the king delights to honour, and lead him on the horse through the city streets, proclaiming before him, ‘This is what is done for the man the king delights to honour!’”

So to summarise, the King couldn’t sleep, discovered that Mordecai (who had saved his life) had been overlooked for the last five years and in a flat funk about the perceived risk of leaving this Jewish guy Mordecai unrewarded for so long, reaches out for the first person who can be called upon to resolve the problem IMMEDIATELY.

And ‘by some strange coincidence’ (a phrase that is going to crop up frequently as God’s providence is increasingly a work for those who can see it) Haman has just strolled into the court.

Haman has come in to get Xerxes to order Mordecai to be impaled on the 75-foot-high pole that Haman has set up for him.

But before Haman can broach the subject Xerxes (eager to work out how to appease Mordecai FAST) says to Haman ““What should be done for the man the king delights to honor?” (Esther 6:6) and we’re told immediately in the same verse Haman reasons: ““Who is there that the king would rather honour than me?”

And here’s where Haman really sets himself up to meet his very own personal Waterloo!

It is SO ironic … and we’re in on it because WE (the audience in this West End farce type scenario) know exactly what’s going on here but crucially the baddy Haman DOES NOT!

So Haman … who is second only to the King so can’t dare ask for more honour than being 2 i/c  (because that would be treason) gets as close to asking for royal honour as he can …

Haman asks to be paraded with a

“royal robe the king has worn and a horse the king has ridden, one with a royal crest placed on its head. 

9 Then let the robe and horse be entrusted to one of the king’s most noble princes. Let them robe the man the king delights to honour, and lead him on the horse through the city streets, 

proclaiming before him, ‘This is what is done for the man the king delights to honour!’”

As we look on, Haman thinks that’d be amazing … and so does Xerxes … but they both have something very different in mind.

That’s what we the audience know, and we can see this is DEEPLY ironic!

The most enormous reversal is about to happen, and we the onlookers are the only ones that are actually in on it.

It is precisely what is funny about 20th century farce.

And it’s all the funnier because this section where Haman rubs in the honouring bit (at five verses) is easily the longest section in this chapter.

Which ensures that the hilarious humiliation gets well rubbed in. 

3) A hilarious humiliation gets well rubbed in, vv. 10-11

Haman’s advice about honouring the one that the King desired to honour was to send for a robe and a horse and …

“let the robe and horse be entrusted to one of the king’s most noble princes. Let them robe the man the king delights to honour, and lead him on the horse through the city streets, proclaiming before him, ‘This is what is done for the man the king delights to honour!’”

That’s vv. 8-9, and although Hanan thinks that this plan is going to exalt him, we can see this disaster working out before our eyes because it’s going to turn out to be the exact bubble-pricking opposite.

Even when directing human history to preserve His people against genocide and extermination, God acts in such a way as to heal human hearts, minds and leadership qualities with a huge display of deep, ironic humour.

Esther 6:10-11: ““Go at once,” the king commanded Haman. “Get the robe and the horse and do just as you have suggested for Mordecai the Jew, who sits at the king’s gate. Do not neglect anything you have recommended.”

11 So Haman got the robe and the horse. He robed Mordecai, and led him on horseback through the city streets, proclaiming before him, “This is what is done for the man the king delights to honour!”

That was a very big slap in the face for the haughty Haman.

It’s a reversal bringing with it enormous consequences.

4) A reversal in destiny declared, vv. 12-14

Esther 6:12-14:

“Afterward Mordecai returned to the king’s gate. But Haman rushed home, with his head covered in grief, 13 and told Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had happened to him.

His advisers and his wife Zeresh said to him, “Since Mordecai, before whom your downfall has started, is of Jewish origin, you cannot stand against him—you will surely come to ruin!” 14 While they were still talking with him, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried Haman away to the banquet Esther had prepared.”

Now that’s been a huge turn-around for Haman.

We spoke about the reversals in Esther way back before Christmas as we set out on our series of sermons in this book.

The big theme of this book is the way God works behind the scenes to reverse the situation that looks hopeless for His people to not just preserve but to honour and exalt them.

Yes, it’s funny because the reversals of the proud and haughty do often pan out like that.

You can’t read Proverbs or the Old Testament prophets without noticing God opposes the proud but exalts the humble and meek.

This account here in Esther 6 is the first of a set of reversals that are now going to take place to glorify the God Who in His providence reverses hopeless-looking situations to protect … not just protect but bless … His holy people.

Let’s come to a conclusion here with ‘lessons learned’.

Conclusion: lessons learned

Esther 6:1 seems like a small thing: in the Greek (LXX) text … ““And the Lord removed the sleep from the king.”

An unseen power controls the destiny of all people.

And that power isn’t a power but a person.

A person with a pledge to His people.

A pledge to protect and to save and to redeem.

A commitment to His covenant and His cause.

Beneath the surface of human decisions, actions and circumstances there is an unseen, all-powerful One at work … Who cannot be explained, out-performed or thwarted.

As Karen Jobes puts it:

“Regardless of how circumstances appear, God is ruling history according to the ancient covenant

He made with Israel at Sinai.”

(p. 197)

That NEVER gets said out loud in this book of Esther.

It is ever, only and always for those with eyes of faith to see it happening.

Previously in Israel’s history God used mighty miraculous events to deliver His people and His promises.

Here in the ordinary events of life (a sleepless night and a boring book) God keeps His covenant promises once delivered to His people.

See it like this:

Any deity worth the title can do a miracle now and then.

Even the Enemy of Souls does ‘lying wonders’ (says 2 Thessalonians 2:9).

But our God, the God of the Bible, is so powerful that He can (if He wishes) work without ‘wonders’ through the ordinary events of the lives of billions of people, across millennia in time, to both fulfil His ancient promises and accomplish His eternal purposes.

And that providence is also at work in His very own people’s lives.

Reversals are very well within His repertoire.

Now what EXACTLY are we praying that He’ll reverse, to deliver you?

And are you consequently totally ready for Him to fulfil His own reversed-up purpose with your very own life?

May God bless you … in His providence … have a very good week!