Insight for Living

Guest (Male): There's a moment that many of us have quietly dreamed about. The day the tables finally turn. The day the person who hurts you, overlooked you, or tried to destroy you, is suddenly at your mercy. What would you do in that moment?

Guest (Male): Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll examines a people who had every legal right to unleash everything they'd stored up for months. What they chose to do instead will challenge you, convict you, and ultimately set you free. From his study of Esther, Chuck titled today's message: The Limitations of Retaliation.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: I want to ask you several questions, and I think without exception, all of us will have the same answer. You'll see what I mean. Have you ever lost your temper? Ever been so busy that your prayer life got squeezed out of your daily schedule?

Ever worried so much that you became ill at ease down inside? Ever eaten too much so that you put on weight? Ever find thoughts of envy and anger and materialism and lust come back even though you tell the Lord this is going to be the last time you'll have to come to Him with these things?

How about this one? Ever said too much? And then had to go back and try to make it right, even apologize, only to say too much again a little later on? All of these things could fall under the category of yielding to the temptation to go too far.

There isn't a person who can honestly answer those questions any other way but yes. Every one of us has gotten too angry and allowed our tempers to take over, only to regret it.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: Every one of us has allowed our schedules to get so overloaded that we, looking back over the week, admit to ourselves, if we're that honest, we've hardly stopped to pray even once.

Every one of us has eaten too much, even when we sat down at the table and swore we wouldn't do it. If we drank like we ate, every one of us would be alcoholics.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: And while we're on the subject, who hasn't fought and refought and fought yet again the old battle with lust or greed, or materialism, or anger, or envy? Every one has said more than we wish we would have said, would have liked to have cut our tongues out. Even though we apologize, we do that yet again, and we do it yet again, and yet again. I could go on.

It may not fit everyone, but there are other areas where we go too far. I know some who go too far in their fitness fad. Too far, too much, too often, too extreme. Some who go too far spending money. Out of control.

Go too far in getting into debt. Too far with perfectionism. Too far with work. We've even coined the word workaholic because of it.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: The list is virtually endless. This syndrome is described beautifully in Scripture in one verse. Romans 7:19. If you happen to have a copy of the scriptures, locate the seventh chapter of Romans. Romans 7, look at verse 19. Just the one verse.

Listen to this eloquent admission, and every one of us could cry back to Paul, "Amen! That's me. I've been there. I live there." For the good that I wish, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. The Living Bible renders it, "When I want to do good, I don't. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway." And the Phillips paraphrase, "I don't accomplish the good I set out to do. And the evil I don't really want to do, I find I'm always doing it."

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: We are an out-of-control people living in an out-of-control society. I've just begun to read "The 100 Yard Lie," which is the story of corruption of college football and what we can do to stop it, by Rick Telander. Rick played good ball for Northwestern University, made All-Big Ten, was a draft choice for the Kansas City Chiefs, and the lead sports writer for college ball for Sports Illustrated.

The book caught my eye. Before I was more than 17 pages into it, I came across this. I had material all over my office in Chicago. Piles of information, books, clippings, quotes, scrabblings, jotted insights of varying perceptiveness and naiveté, statistics, brochures, studies, charts, letters and notes that I'd been collecting for years, poems, photos, aphorisms, headlines. Even my own college helmet with its cracking leather cheek pads, and a couple of footballs I sometimes just held.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: That combined to tell me what I felt. Big-time college football is out of control, rotten from the foundation up. A game. A sport designed to bring cheer and enthusiasm and healthy competition to a university, out of control, corrupt.

Back to our lives. It's like our bodies don't cooperate with our minds. Our minds make great promises that our bodies don't fulfill. It's like the pianist that shouted to the soloist, "I'm playing on white keys, and I'm playing on black keys. So why must you sing in the cracks?"

My mind says, "I play on white keys, I play on black keys." My body answers back, "I play in the cracks." I live there.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: This thing we are agreeing on and laughing about to keep from crying about is simple to identify. It's called losing control. We haven't much patience with one who loses control with drugs or alcohol. We have great patience with one who has lost control of eating, or talking.

I never could figure that one out, though I have been guilty of both.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: There is an answer. There is a key to holding back, and it's found also in Scripture in a wonderful list over in Galatians chapter 5. If you will, turn further ahead. The fifth of Galatians, verses 22 and 23.

What is the answer to this daily dilemma that is so easy to identify, so hard to get our arms around? It is a lifetime project described in one hyphenated word at the end of the list of the fruit of the Spirit. May I read for you Galatians 5:22 and 23? "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace."

Normally at this point we say, "and so forth." Let's not do that. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fruit of faithfulness, gentleness, now the answer, self-control.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: Self-control, against such things there is no law. One authority has described self-control as follows: "Self-control is managing our attitudes, feelings, and actions, so they serve our long-term best interests and those of others."

Self-control comes to people who learn discipline and social skills. It increases in those who accept God's grace in their lives, and who seek to know and apply divine truth in a disciplined manner. The best synonym is discipline.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: If I interpret this correctly, I find the Spirit of God, if I may use the words, rolling up his sleeves, willing to go to the wall with us, to assist us in self-discipline. Interesting Greek word, comes from a combination of two words put together, strength in, power in, inner strength, inner strength. One who has power and gains mastery over his or her desires, or appetites.

Particularly sensual appetites, passionate appetites. Remember that one. Self-control frees us from slavery. Self-control stops habits. It checks us. It halts us.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: A car, no matter how beautiful, attractive, or expensive, if it lacks brakes, is a dangerous thing on the highway. A car without brakes is a life without control. It goes too far and it brings damage and terribly tragic hurts to other people. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: I have deliberately stayed away from one area until this moment because it ties in so well with our study in the ancient scroll of Esther. And it has to do with this matter of retaliation. Before you turn back to the book of Esther, Webster helps us understand retaliation. It's defined, "to repay in kind, to return like for like, to get revenge."

Let me repeat that. "To repay in kind, to to return like for like, to get revenge." We have the colloquialism, "to get even, to get back."

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: I was just a boy when the Second World War ground to a halt. Just a pre-teen. But I remember learning a lesson in character from Douglas MacArthur, now dead. I remember that he requested from the president the privilege of staying in the land of Japan to help bring back their dignity and assist them in putting their country back on its feet.

We had virtually leveled the main cities of Japan. I was in Tokyo 13 years after the war had ended, expecting to find still some of the remains. I found nothing of damage. It was phenomenal.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: There was something in the heart of Douglas MacArthur that was so grand, so great-hearted, when the surrender was signed, he stepped back into the place of devastation and helped them roll up their sleeves, keep their dignity, and get back on their feet. Did he ever, they're about to own us, aren't they?

I mean he said they need a government that works. They need their dignity, they need hope, they need to go on. That's the opposite of retaliation. One without that spirit would say, "Grind their face into the mud! Keep them from ever becoming a nation again! They will pay for Pearl Harbor."

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: Illustrated so beautifully again in the life of Corrie ten Boom, who lost her beloved sister, Betsy, in a death camp, and could never forget the face of that godless guard that made life so miserable for her and for her family. And she stood to speak one day of the love and grace of Christ, and she looked to her side and saw now free, the guard.

And as only that beloved woman could do, she described the enormity of feelings that floated up into her heart and into her mind. And she found herself preoccupied, wrestling as she spoke with rage. And finally, by the time she had finished, she had come to terms with that tendency to retaliate. And she spoke to the guard of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: Perhaps the greatest story would be Joseph, and it takes chapters of Genesis to tell us. His brothers sold him into slavery. They hated him. They made life miserable for him. They wouldn't have cared if he had died and fully expected him to have done so. He wound up prime minister of the land that had food when famine struck every other place.

And he looked down on his brothers when they arrived, not knowing that it was indeed the brother who was the prime minister. These men came with their shopping carts hoping to get food. And when they discovered it was Joseph, they fully expected death. But Joseph said, "You meant it unto me for evil. God meant it unto me for good."

He not only filled their lives with food. He invited his dad, his brothers, their families to come and live in the land of Egypt and to be neighbors and gave them the choice land of Goshen, which they occupied for over 400 years. Self-control.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: In the book of Esther chapter 8, we will read of a people who had been freed. These Jews, as we have discovered, who lived in the ancient land of Persia, had been living under the sword of Damocles for months. The death knell was ever closer with the turning of every page of the calendar.

Every day, no doubt, as time reached toward the end, they began to get the sneers and the cynicism and the remarks and the mistreatment and the anti-Semitism that came from Haman, their leader, as these Gentiles licked their chops looking forward to putting an end to the Jews. It was an extermination plot of the worst kind, even written into the law of the Medes and the Persians.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: They lived under the threat and the horror of the day they would die. I am sure families spoke of how they would go through it. Who would die first? How they would live beyond it? By the grace of their Jehovah God.

One day the tables turned. The power shifted from the king to the queen. Haman was killed, the anti-Semitic ruler, and Mordecai was given the place of prime minister. The edict that had been written against them was now written for them. Listen to the words. Verse 11, chapter 8.

In them the king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right. Get this. It's like giving concentration camp prisoners rights. It's cutting the barbed wires. It's feeding them rather than the guards. Look at it. He gave them the right to assemble, to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, to annihilate, the entire army of any people or province which might attack them, including children and women, and to plunder their spoil.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: I call that an unlimited edict. You have the rights. You are free. Over the years, remember now, there has been the buildup, the buildup, the determination, the strengthening of inner character, we'll stand and we'll die if necessary, and then of course the emotions, the frustrations of not being able to get back, to defend themselves. The entire land was turned against them until this edict.

And now they're free to retaliate. Did you hear it? To annihilate, including children and women and to plunder the spoil. Leave them devastated.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: Verse 13. "A copy of the edict to be issued as law in each and every province was published to all the peoples so that the Jews should be ready for this day to avenge themselves." Note the word, I've underlined it in my Bible. "To avenge themselves on their enemies."

They had watched the heart of the king change. They had watched the power in the palace change. They had watched the personnel change. They had read of the edict changing. This was their moment. Someone has said the most dangerous human being on earth is a prisoner who gets a hold of a weapon.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: "This is my chance." And we have seen and read of accounts where that kind of retaliation, when the frustration is vented, the brutality that comes from the human heart. I'm intrigued by the words "avenge themselves." Track with me for a moment.

The English words avenge and vengeance come to us through the French. And both of us got it from the Latin "vindicare," which interestingly, is the same root as vindicate. It is actually a Latin word. Isn't that curious? Vengeance, which is passion out of control based on hatred, and vindicate, which is what God claims to do when defending his people, are from the same root, vindicare.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: They carry contrary messages. In order for there to be some kind of stoppage of vengeance, self-control must be applied. I'm prepared to say today that that is exactly what we read in Esther chapter 9, in spite of what you may have read or heard from other books or teachers.

As a matter of fact, I frequently read the word bloodbath, and I hear the word bloodbath as people speak of the last part of Esther. It sounds like rage out of control. It sounds like revenge gone to seed. All these thousands of people killed, and it is almost as if the Jews at will picked them off from their windows of their homes with delight. No.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: I want you to remember they were free to kill everyone, women and children as well as take the spoils of the avengement to themselves. One of my, uh, volumes that has helped me in the study of Esther writes this: "Though in the book of Esther the tables had been turned on those who would have killed the Jews, the Jews had behind them all the theological conditioning provided by their scriptures. And their understanding of permission to avenge themselves would have been adjusted accordingly.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: "Instead of having to endure slaughter without any means of self-defense, the new legislation permitted them to fight for one day against those who attacked them and to kill them."

Guest (Male): Chuck Swindoll has given us a vivid illustration today. The Jews of Esther's day held in their hands an unlimited edict, legal permission to annihilate, to plunder, to take full revenge on every enemy who had made their lives a living nightmare. But they didn't take it, because the scriptures had shaped their conscience. So when the time came, restraint won the day.

Guest (Male): The same word of God that shaped them generations ago shapes us today. And Insight for Living has prepared a special bundle of Bible study tools that will help you explore this extraordinary story. This bundle includes the Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook, the full-length biography of Esther written by Chuck, and the complete collection of 12 sermons on CD.

Guest (Male): To access these resources right now, go to insight.org/offer. You can also call 800-772-8888. And now, here's Chuck.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: I came across a quote not long ago that I haven't been able to shake. It was from a man named John Allan, a Salvation Army saint, who was near the end of his life. John made this shocking statement: "I deserve to be damned. I deserve to be in hell, but God interfered." That last part is worth repeating. God interfered.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: Wow, I love that more than I can say. Because that's the story of the cross. We were running hard in the wrong direction, and God stepped in. He didn't send a memo, he didn't offer a suggestion. He hung on a cross and bled and died and rose again. That's not a metaphor, that's history. And that interference has changed every life that's ever truly reckoned with it.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: Here's what keeps me up at night. Millions of people are still running the wrong direction. And they don't know it. They're busy, they're sincere. Some of them are sitting in church every Sunday. But they've never had a real, personal, life-altering encounter with the cross we proclaim. That's the whole reason Insight for Living exists.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: And here's what I want you to understand as we approach June 30th. When you send a gift to Insight for Living, God's Word doesn't just sit in a quiet studio, it goes through radio, through the internet, through social media, through printed resources, into homes and hearts all over the world. You are the one who sends it. Your generosity is your ministry. Someone, somewhere is about to have their own God-interfered moment. The cross is going to reorient their entire life. Your gift makes that possible. Please don't wait. Give today and give knowing that what you're investing in is genuinely, permanently, eternally important.

Guest (Male): Thanks for responding to Chuck Swindoll today. Your gifts truly make an impact. Recently, we heard from one of your fellow listeners who said, "Dear Insight for Living, yours is the voice I run to when life in this world becomes too much. Thank you for grounding me and pointing me back to the cross."

Guest (Male): These moments are made possible through the generous gifts from friends just like you. Today we'd like to say thanks for your contribution by providing a brand new booklet from Chuck. It's called, "The Cross We Proclaim." You know, there are probably mornings when you wonder if you have anything left to give. In "The Cross We Proclaim," you'll be reminded that you were never meant to do it in your own strength. When you give a gift to Insight for Living, we'd be pleased to send you a copy.

Here's our mailing address: Insight for Living, Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas, 75034. That's Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas, 75034. You can also call 800-772-8888 or give online at insight.org/donate.

Guest (Male): Are you looking to even the score with someone who's hurt you? I'm Bill Meyer. Don't miss Chuck Swindoll's message on The Limitations of Retaliation. Tomorrow, on Insight for Living.

Guest (Male): The preceding message, "The Limitations of Retaliation," was copyrighted in 1989, 1990, 1997, 2005, 2018, and 2026. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.