And look, it says in verse 7, "And the king, arising from the banquet of wine, in his wrath."
Now what is wrath?
Wrath is extreme anger.
So he's just enraged by this, and it says, "The king, arising from the banquet of wine,
in his wrath, went into the palace garden."
And as we keep reading here, we see that he's in the palace garden for some time, and then
he returns a little while later.
Now I think here we see that the king actually shows some wisdom here by being in very much
wrath and just stopping and just stepping outside into the garden.
Go if you would to James chapter one, keep your finger in Esther chapter seven.
Look at James one toward the end of the New Testament there.
In James chapter one, the Bible reads in verse 19, "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every
man be swift to hear, slow to speak," and look at the end of verse 19, "slow to wrath.
For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God."
So the Bible's telling us to be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.
So we should be quicker to listen than to talk and we should be slow to get angry.
Now the Bible does not teach that it is a sin to get angry because there are many times
when anger is justified and we know that the Lord Jesus Christ himself became angry while
he was on this earth multiple times.
We know that God is angry with the wicked every day and we know that often the Bible
commands anger.
The Bible says be ye angry and sin not, let not the sun go down on your wrath.
So although anger is not always a sin, usually anger is a sin.
Because if we look at all the verses on anger in the Bible, there are some positive mentions
when it's right to be angry and then there are a lot of negative mentions where it's
not right but there are more times when God's talking about anger not being right.
So yes it's right sometimes.
You know if we're mad at sin, if we're angry about wickedness and sin and iniquity that's
going on, you know that's a good thing to get angry about.
But a lot of times when we get angry it's not justified at all.
And we definitely don't want to be swift to anger.
We don't want to be quick to anger.
We want to be slow to wrath.
For example, let's think about the time that Jesus got really mad.
Remember when Jesus in John chapter 2 went into the temple and started flipping over
the tables of the money changers?
He was clearly mad and he's chasing them out of the temple with a whip.
He's dumping the money on the ground.
He's flipping tables.
I mean, he was angry.
You say, "Well, he lost his temper."
No, because the Bible is clear to tell us that he walked in and he saw what they were
doing.
He saw that they had turned God's house into a house of merchandise, which by the way still
goes on to this day in churches all over America.
People use God's house to sell merchandise.
And there will never be anything for sale in this church ever.
We will never sell anything.
Yo, you don't mean that because you sell the sermon tapes.
No, we never have and we never will.
The Bibles in the back on the shelf are free.
The videos, the CDs, Bibles, anything that's back there is free.
We don't sell anything.
Buy the truth and sell it not.
God's house is not a house of merchandise.
Go to the store if you want to buy merchandise, but God's house is not a place.
And by the way, don't sell your stuff here.
Don't show up here and try to pitch your business and hand out all your business cards and try
to use this place for advertising.
We want to keep God's house sacred and not use it as a house of merchandise.
But when Jesus saw what they had done, he didn't just blow his top right then and there.
The Bible is clear to tell us that he went out of the temple and he sat down and he made
a whip, of course.
Now making a whip, I've never made, has anybody ever made a whip before?
Anybody?
A couple people?
All right.
Well, I'm sure it takes time.
I'm sure it's not something that you just whip up in a few minutes, no pun intended,
but I'm sure it takes time to manufacture a whip.
To make a whip out of, you know, braiding the leather, cutting it, I don't know.
Like I said, I've never done it.
But I'm sure that making a whip takes time and that shows the calculation that Jesus
was not just blowing his top, flying off the handle, but rather he sat down and decided
to go in there and flip some tables.
He decided to go in there and change.
He didn't just see a whip laying around and just, you know, go nuts with it.
He made that whip.
He sat and made a whip, of course.
The Bible tells it.
And everything in the Bible is there for a reason.
That shows the fact that he was making a decision, not just acting on just a quick rage.
And remember, when he chased them out with the whip and flipped over the tables, then
the disciples remembered the scripture that said, "The zeal of thine house hath eaten
me up."
So Jesus was eaten up.
Jesus did feel great zeal, okay?
He was angry, but he stopped and would calmly decided how he's going to handle it.
And he handled it in a perfect way because he's the perfect sinless son of God.
So we can't find fault in what he did.
We can't criticize what he did.
He is perfect in every way.
And so we need to be careful that we're not quick to wrath, that we don't just hit the
drop of a hat, somebody says something and we just blow up and fly off the handle.
Now one of the best ways that we can do this sometimes is that when somebody does something
or says something that enrages us, to basically take a step back and just cool off.
And that's what we see the king doing here.
He steps out into the garden and he basically cools off and he wants to calmly think about
how to handle this.
I mean this is a pretty sticky situation.
You know he's already made this decree to destroy the Jews.
Now he finds out that his own wife is one of the Jews, it turns out his right hand man
who he's given all the power to, Haman, turns out is a traitor, turns out is a wicked person,
turns out there's a conflict between his number two in command in the kingdom and his own
wife.
So you know he's got to make a decision here.
I mean he's got his wife on one side, he's got his right hand man on the other side.
So he's in a situation where he's angry, he's mad, he's upset but the stakes are pretty
high for him making the wrong decision.
So he does what a wise person would do.
He steps out into the garden and thinks things through, he calmly processes what's going
on before he comes back in.
So while he's outside thinking things over, you know not being too hasty, and the Bible
warns about being hasty with your words, just saying whatever comes to mind.
You know it's better to stop and think and stay calm.
And you know a lot of times it's easier said than done, right?
You know it's easy to just blow up, because sometimes things just get you so mad.
Somebody says something that just gets your goat, and it's hard sometimes, but it's something
that we need to work on.
It's something that I need to work on.
It's something that everybody should work on, not having a short fuse, or blowing your
top.
Again, not saying that there isn't a time to blow your top.
But if you blow your top, you should decide to blow your top.
You know, and not just blow your top because of the spontaneous urge to lash out.