Book of Esther - Part 7

Park Meadows Church

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Let us turn to the book of Esther and chapter three this morning,

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Esther chapter three. And let's just, we've made our way down to verse first five or six.

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Let's go ahead and read them again and kind of get the, get the context as we move forward with Vigga, as president

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Kennedy would say so many years ago, after these things did

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King Ahasuerus promote Haman, the son of Hamadatha, the

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Agite and advanced him. I think he advanced him because he felt sorry for him because of his last name.

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And he set his seat above all the princes that were with him and all the

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King's servants that were in the King's gate, bowed and reverenced. That's the same as worshiped

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Haman for the King had so commanded concerning him, but Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence.

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That verse got us two months of Bible studies. We studied, why did he not bow down?

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Then the King's servants, which were in the King's gate, said unto Mordecai, why transgressest thou the

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King's commandment? Now it came to pass when they spake daily unto him, and he hearkened not unto him, that they told

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Haman to see whether Mordecai's matters would stand. Now that's a friend, isn't it?

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They were so friendly. Mordecai refused to keep the King's commandment.

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They said, well, why don't we just tell Haman and we'll see if Mordecai is right or not? I mean, they knew that it's probably the death penalty.

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For he had told them that he was a Jew. And when

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Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath.

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So he had let himself get caught up in his own title, hadn't he? He got promoted.

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Now all of a sudden he's believing that he is worthy of worship. And he's angry when he doesn't get it.

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That didn't take long, did it? To get to that point. So the new title corrupted him.

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And verse six says, and he thought scorned to lay hands on Mordecai alone.

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You see, Haman thought he was so big, so important that it wasn't enough just to kill this one man.

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He's going to kill the whole race. For they had showed him the people of Mordecai.

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In other words, he knew he was a Jew. Wherefore, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai.

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So now Satan puts in the heart of Haman to destroy a race.

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Why do you suppose Satan would be interested in that? Now, how do I know Satan did this? Does the scripture say it?

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Yes, it does. It says it over in the New Testament. It says, we battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places.

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So Haman was not the battle, was he? It was the one who was driving him to do these evil deeds.

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And that is Satan himself. Why do you think Satan would be interested in the destruction of the Jewish race?

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Because Satan is the world's greatest, the universe's greatest Arminian and humanist.

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You see, Arminianism is the theological side of what we call in the secular world as humanism.

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Arminianism teaches that man is in control and it is a false position to take.

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Satan is the father of that position, actually, because Satan believes that he can control things.

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Satan has even read the scriptures, I'm sure. He's read the last book.

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He sees how it says it will end and he doesn't believe it. Why? Because he's not a believer. He's an unbeliever.

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He doesn't believe God is who he said he is. He doesn't believe Jesus Christ is who he says he is.

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And therefore, he truly believes he can change the outcome of the sovereign

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God's plan. That's impossible, of course, but that's how he thinks and he's the father of that thought process.

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He is the father of secular humanism and of religious humanism as well. Keep that in mind.

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Now, that's not to say that there aren't errors on the Calvinist side. If you go all the way, swing the pendulum to that side, to the far right, we have what we call the hyper -Calvinist and that position is equally false.

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And that is a person who believes, I've heard them say before that, well, if you had someone out there in the deepest jungle who never heard the gospel but he was of the elect, he'd be saved anyway.

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You see? Now, they've allowed their position to make them be unscriptural because the

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Bible says that no one will be saved on this side of the cross without personally receiving

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Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. So, it's best not to be an

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Arminian or a Calvinist but to be a Biblinarian like Brother Otis used to say he was.

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Just take the scriptures and don't let any theological position cause you to become unscriptural.

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Let the Bible interpret the Bible and there are nine or ten other principles as far as proper

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Bible interpretation. Use them all and let the Bible be the instructor. I have something

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I've learned since I became a more mature individual. I'm 56 years old now, so I think it's time that I can think as a man and I've been doing that since I was approximately 45 years old.

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All the rest of time I was a boy. My wife will concur to that. She raised an extra child in the family until I turned 45.

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Then it clicked and I figured it all out. Not really. The one thing

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I did learn somewhere in the 40s is that I don't have to take the position of all my mentors, theological books, and all the things

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I've read. I don't have to take those positions. What I can do now is go to the Bible and start there and sieve everything else through that.

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The danger is what we tend to do is take the theological positions that we learned and let that be the sieve and we put the

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Bible through that. That is not honest. Start from the

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Bible and move out rather than coming back to the Bible through the books we've read. How's that for a mature way to study?

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Now, I know that the books help. Even the Apostle Paul had books. They help because they speed up the process of learning.

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You can take a theological book that once you've read it you may totally disagree with it, but you know what it'll do?

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It'll show you all the points of Scripture that were looked at in that discussion and it just saved you a bunch of time.

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You know where the Scriptures are that are pertinent to that thought process. You can go study, but what

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I'm saying is study those Scriptures first, then go back and read the book and judge the book by the Scriptures rather than judging the

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Scripture by the theological books. Does that make sense? You come out way closer to the truth that way.

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I'm convinced that if any group of people were to take the 10, 11, 12, depending on how you divide them up, proper principles of Bible interpretation and they all use those diligently, that as they walk together their positions will come closer and closer to agreeing.

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They'll never agree on every little jot and tittle, but certainly on the major points and on many of the minor ones they'll come together, be very close in agreement if they use proper

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Bible interpretative methods. So anyway, here we have

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Mordecai refusing to bow down. His friends say, well we'll see the end of this, we'll just tell

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Haman. And Haman begins to try to destroy the entire race of the

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Jews because Satan had placed that in his heart. Now why would Satan place it in his heart?

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Because Satan is a being who believes he controls things.

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He believes that God is not sovereign, that there's a lot of wiggle room there.

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And so he theorizes that if he could destroy the race, the book says the

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Messiah would be born of the Jews. If he destroyed the Jews then it couldn't happen and he would win. Now think about that thought process because that's what we tend to move into.

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I believe that every Christian who is saved, when you're first born again, you are an Arminian.

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You believe you did it. You believe that you went out and decided to receive

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Jesus and that that thrilled him so much that he saved you. And to be honest it did thrill him and all of heaven, that part's true.

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But where you're a little bit off and you'll find that out later as you mature as a

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Christian and you grow and you read and study the scriptures is that the truth is God knew you before the foundation of the world with love and he adored you and he was tracking you the whole time.

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And you were going to be saved and he brought you to the place where you saw Jesus for the first time and he became totally irresistible at that moment.

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And you begin to learn as you study the word more and more who is in control and you're so thankful for it.

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God is in control. What if men were? What if men really were in control? Where would we be? And so Satan though thinks that men can be in control.

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He thinks that he can be in control. So he attempts to change God's plan or to intervene and cause it to be different by his own will.

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Does that make sense? You see that is the father of that false thought process.

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And the further we move from that but what we understand is as we grow we always have to be careful of reverting to that because we grew up thinking that way.

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All humans grow up, they're born that way thinking they're in control. The littlest babies in this building think they're in control more than any of the rest of us.

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Correct? You young couples that have little ones. The younger they are the more in control they think they are and then as they progress they're better psychologists than we are and all to control us.

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They don't believe you're sovereign in the home. Parents they don't believe you're sovereign they think they are.

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So we all grow up that way. Theologically most the most prevalent doctrines in the world today among Christianity are

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Arminian oriented so that man is in control and we cause everything and God just sits up there with his arms folded and watches in hopes that it works out okay and when we mess up he responds.

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You know that sort of thought process and we grew up thinking that way.

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So as we go into different crises and things in our lives we have to be reminded that it's not that way and we can comfort in the fact that it's not.

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That God is in control. Listen isn't it good that God was in control and not

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Haman? Isn't it good that God was in control and not Lucifer?

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And so you they cannot stop God's plan but they try and they revel in the thought that their own free will changes things so that God's plan will not come out like it would have.

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Therefore now I'm king. Now I'm sovereign. Now I'm in the center of the universe. It makes me feel so much better.

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You see how we have to battle that even in our own lives. Now Haman let's look at this man for a moment see what his background is.

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He is an Amalekite. He came from one of the most famous ones in his lineage was

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Agag who was a king of Amalek in the time of king

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Saul actually and this man Haman came to be one of the favorites of king

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Artaxerxes for whatever reason. We're not totally sure how he came up to that point of favor but he did and all of the king's servants were commanded to pay reverence to him to bow down to him and all of them obeyed the king's order except for one man and he was a

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Jew his name was Mordecai and he happened to be sitting at the king's gate which is where apparently he lived in close proximity there maybe even on the king's well of course everything was the king's property that's just how it was in those days but he lived very close there maybe even inside the grounds of the palace and he didn't pay reverence to Haman when he passed by and he never bowed down to him.

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It exceedingly displeased this man and he didn't want to lay hands on this man only but he wanted to destroy the entire race as we've seen now there was a time picked for this in fact

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Haman went to what do you call it like a seance you know a person who deals with familiar spirits and tried to get this fortune teller to tell him the best date to do this on so that he would be lucky and he actually it's recorded in scripture that he did this and so he you know he had a very long and deep hatred of the

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Jews going all the way back to his lineage and that's what's interesting about it now his lineage was not the

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Arabs he actually came from Esau and so there's always been a battle there between Esau and Jacob's lineage so on the first day of the first month which is the month of Nisan he called together his diviners these witches and warlocks and people who could supposedly talk to the people on the other side and he wanted to find out what day would be the most fortunate or luckiest to put his plan into execution and they met together and did all the things that they did

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I guess they boiled a few frogs and put some roots in there and stirred it up or whatever they did and they they also cast lots is another thing they would do and so they began to cast lots for each month and that's how they determined that the 13th day of the 12th month which was called

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Adar would be the day that would be the most lucky so that was the day that they picked to do this and so they went to great detail to figure out how to accomplish this so let's continue this as we go

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I think it would be interesting to kind of take a look at the things we've been through already we see the sovereign god working in the life of of Esther to bring her to the right place at the right time and she has been selected as the most favorite of all of the young women in the entire kingdom and he chose her to be his wife

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King Artaxerxes did if you remember and all of these things had happened before this now what's interesting about it was

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Haman was lifted up high to be the highest among the people and the people were required to worship him and Mardukai refused to do it and yet there's a lot being set up here to to cause

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Esther to be able to have some influence and God would work through her in this as we'll see a little bit later now if you go if you continue to look at this man

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Haman you can go back into many places in the Old Testament Judges chapter 6 is just one place where you can see his lineage and you see the hatred how it built over the years hundreds and hundreds of years and it's kind of interesting to go back to Judges 6 and look at this where the children of Israel had trouble with these people before it says the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the

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Lord and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years so they became servants for seven years and the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel and because of the

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Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains and caves and strongholds and so it was when

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Israel had sown that the Midianites came up and the Amalekites now the

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Amalekites is the lineage that Haman came from and so here you can picture that Israel would go out and sow the fields and right when the crops were coming up of course this was their pretty much most of their economy along with the animals they had then the

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Amalekites and the children of the east even they came up against them and they encamped against them and destroyed the increase of the earth so they would come in and burn their crops at night they would sneak out and find places where the crops were coming up and they would burn

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Israel's crops till they came unto Gaza and left no sustenance for Israel neither sheep nor ox nor ass so they came through and destroyed their crops killed their animals or stole them and just butchered the land in the economy of Israel now think about this these are called the

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Amalekites and what's interesting about it is you trace them back to Esau and Esau very clearly the scripture says is a type or a picture of the flesh if you talk about the world the flesh and the devil our three enemies

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Esau was a picture of the flesh and this is his lineage and so here we have this picture of the flesh coming through and destroying all of the prosperity of Israel now isn't there a lesson there for us if we allow our flesh to rule rather than our new man we allow the flesh to rule it will come through it will destroy our crops it will destroy our livelihood it can destroy our families it can destroy our nation and we see this pictured here so vividly for they came up with their cattle in their tents and they came as grasshoppers for multitude for both they and their camels were without number and they entered into the land of Israel and destroyed it and Israel was greatly impoverished because of the

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Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord so they were brought low by their own flesh could that happen to us today yes we get off into sin we get off into the flesh we don't allow the new man to walk hand in hand with Jesus and control this body this body gets out of hand gets in trouble and the trouble can be very deep it can even be the point where it impoverishes a whole family lineage you know you can look at one particular sin and i don't really mean to be picking on it but you took you if you look at a family that's had problem with alcohol where maybe the grandfather was an alcoholic and and maybe one of his sons became one and then you find the children in that family and a lot of times they don't even have shoes to wear isn't that true you know they just don't have anything and and it comes from that sin of the flesh that just goes down to the second third generation in that family lineage and it's pictured so much here by this and so when

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Israel became so impoverished because of this enemy that destroyed their crops and everything that they had which is a picture of our flesh they finally cried out to the

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Lord and began to pray again they drew closer to God again and it came to pass when the children of Israel cried unto the

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Lord because the Midianites that the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel so we see this picture through here

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Haman was a descendant of Agag in the 16th generation and so he was an

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Amalekite the Malakites are not Arabs but they're a stock related to the

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Edomites which means they're kin folks to the Hebrews and it's concluded from scriptures in Genesis 36 12 and first chronicles 136 and so forth but Amalek was a son of Esau's firstborn son

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Eliphaz so it takes it all the way back there and that's where they the people got the name for their very nation he was the son of Esau's firstborn son

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Eliphaz and his concubine Timnah and so this whole race of people sprung up from there and therefore they are a picture of that enemy that we have called the flesh so that's kind of interesting so now we see that Haman came from that lineage and that his entire family lineage has always hated

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Jacob and the Israelites do you see so it's a long time hatred he had been taught to be prejudice against the

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Jews he had grown up hating him so when he saw this opportunity to destroy them he was delighted now we pick it up here in Esther 3 verse 7 in the first month that is in the month of Nisan in the 12th year of the king of Ahasuerus they cast poor that is the lot that's just the word they use for casting lots before Haman from day to day and from month to month to the 12th month that is the month of Adar and Haman said unto king

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Ahasuerus there is a certain people now listen to this this is how the enemy talks about you being a

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Christian okay this is how people will treat you who are moved by Lucifer himself to treat you this way watch this because these principles will come back upon us and our children it says here's how he discusses to the king