Esther 6:11

The gallows is set up for Mordecai. Haman's plan, cleverly put together, seems headed for sure success. Why, on this very same night, should sleep escape the king? Why should he think of having his book of annals read to him to soothe his sleeplessness? Why did the reader fall on the passage about Mordecai? … Why should Haman come, at this precise instant, to ask his master to execute Mordecai? … Why is Haman himself obliged to become the herald of the man whom he hates with all the strength of his soul?

He asked without limit. He suggested to the king the highest honours — honours higher than any subject had ever been given. … What horror must have filled the heart of this wicked man! The one he hated most of all men living was the very one he himself, as the chief noble of the empire, had to honour — and in the way he had suggested! But it was impossible to change the king's word.

He had come to get Mordecai hanged on a gallows. Instead he is made to clothe him with the king's robe and to set him on the king's horse. Like a footman, he leads him through the streets of the city. Like a mere herald, he announces his triumph. … Surely the finger of the Almighty was in all this.

So it is: the pride of the wicked blinds them to their own destruction, just as it drives them to hate the righteous they despise. He whose eyes are over all is slow to act, so that men may show what they are. In the end He accomplishes His purpose openly, to His own glory. Haman … fell into the pit he had made himself. That pit awaits those who ignore and defy Him who never forgets His own, however faulty they are. It awaits those who hate them and would injure them. But notice how everything seems to flourish brightly for the enemy, while His own seem to face danger they cannot escape — until the hour is about to strike.

To save the people, Mordecai must first be saved. What use is the gallows now, since the king has publicly recognised Mordecai as the man he delights to honour? One man must become the liberator of the people, and here again Mordecai is a striking picture of Christ. For that, after humbling himself to the lowest degree in sackcloth and ashes, he had to be raised to supreme dignity. … Yet all these honours do not stop Mordecai from keeping his place as a servant: he returns to "the king's gate." … Christ came to take the form of a servant — not under compulsion like Mordecai, but freely in love, coming to make Himself subject, to serve, and to lay down His life.

Haman, too, was the unwilling instrument of spreading the king's delight in Mordecai… And was it not Satan's own plot to get rid of Christ that brought about his defeat? That plot became the means of Christ being exalted on high. The very instrument of death, the gallows fifty cubits high that Haman put up to destroy Mordecai, destroyed him instead.

The king commands Haman to "hurry" (verse 10). Mordecai's deed was too great to allow any delay in honouring and exalting him. So with Christ: God not only wanted to exalt Him but to "glorify him" and to "glorify him at once" (John 13:32).