FBC Morning Light – April 5, 2022

Well, good Tuesday morning to you. Today we're going to begin looking at the book of Esther and it shows up in our

Bible reading schedule. What I'm probably going to do is just stick with the book of Esther in the next several days.

Normally we alternate back and forth between the Old Testament reading on one day and the

New Testament reading on the other. But the book of Esther is really an important book and there's a lot of,

I think, misunderstanding about it and a lot of improper emphases in relationship to teaching and so forth from the book of Esther.

So I want to take some time with that and make sure that we get a good understanding of what's going on in this book.

You remember yesterday we talked about 1 Corinthians 11 and the whole matter of the battle of the sexes and how that gets distorted in the secular arena, in the pagan world, where the idea of husband authority gets blown out of proportion and a guy becomes authoritarian and a wife doesn't like the idea of having to accept somebody else's decision and she wants to do her own thing and so she rebels against that authority.

We see that conflict played out in Esther chapter 1 where the king,

Ahasuerus, decides that he's thrown this fantastic mega party, if you will, that lasts for weeks.

He throws one for the men and then his wife, Vashti, throws a party for the women and everybody's just having a wonderful time eating and drinking as much as they want and just partying it up, if you will.

In the course of that party time the king has had a little bit too much to drink and decides what he wants to do is call his wife

Vashti, the queen, and bring her in before all the men and parade her beauty.

Now we don't know how much of her beauty he was willing to expose but it seems like it was going to be quite the display.

So the king sends a message to the queen, tells her to come before him so that she can show off all of her beauty before the assembled men so they can hoot and holler and they can get quite the thrill.

Well, Vashti, upon receiving that order from the king, says, no way, absolutely not.

I'm not going to participate in something like that. Now, by the way, referring to what

I said yesterday, here's a good example of, I think, a legitimate refusal to submit to a husband's demands.

In the first place, the king had no right to demand that his wife parade herself in front of other men like that, and she had every right to refuse to do that.

That was abuse, not the kind of physical abuse or anything like that, but it is a form of manipulation and so forth, and he had no right to demand that of her.

She had every right to say no. Well, that, of course, under those circumstances, brought about some consequences, and the consequence was she's kicked out of the palace.

She's no longer going to be taken care of by the king. She's no longer the queen and is utterly dismissed, and we never hear anything more from her.

But before we go on with that, I want to point out some parallels to our own culture, and one of them is the emphasis on outward beauty.

In chapters 1 and 2, you see this emphasis repeat itself over and over again.

The whole purpose of bringing Vashti before the crowd of men, it says in verse 11 that the servants were to bring

Queen Vashti before the king, wearing her royal crown, in order to show her beauty to the people and the officials, for she was beautiful to behold.

Well, there's one point of emphasis on beauty, but then after the queen

Vashti is dismissed and they set up this selection process to find the king a new queen, the emphasis again is on beauty.

For example, in chapter 2, verses 2 and 3, the advisors to the king said, the king's servants attended him and said,

Let beautiful young virgins be sought for the king, and let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of the kingdom, that they may gather all the beautiful young virgins to Shushan, the citadel, into the women's quarters under the custody of Hegai, the king's eunuch custodian of the women, and let beauty preparations be given to them.

Then, as the story unfolds, Esther ends up showing up in this harem of women, and verse 7 emphasizes her beauty.

It says, Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is Esther, his uncle's daughter, for she had neither father nor mother.

The young woman was lovely and beautiful. When her father and mother died, Mordecai took her to be his own daughter.

So she was lovely and beautiful. The ESV translates a little differently and says that she had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at.

This is the emphasis of the culture. Then in verse 12, all these women are gathered together to the king, and they're having this beauty pageant, really.

That's what it amounts to. Verse 12 points out that they spent a great deal of time in preparing for this audition.

There was this 12 months of preparation, according to the regulations for the women.

Thus were the days of their preparation apportioned. Six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with perfumes and preparations for beautifying women.

So the whole emphasis of the culture, and therefore the emphasis of this couple of chapters, is on the outward beauty of the women.

Now Vashti, when her beauty was to be exploited, she refused.

That set up the beauty pageant. That set up this whole beauty pageant. By the way, you should note also that this beauty pageant wasn't just like a

Miss America contest, whatever that is. It's even worse.

So not only was there this great emphasis on the outward beauty of the woman, there was also an emphasis placed on that woman's ability to pleasure the king during the night.

So chapter 2, verses 13 and 14 says, Thus prepared each young woman, and she went to the king, and she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the women's quarters to the king's palace.

In the evening she went, and in the morning she returned to the second house of the women to the custody of Shiashgaz, the king's eunuch who kept the concubines.

Do you get what's going on here? So the women are brought into the palace for this beauty contest.

One by one, they are brought into the king's bedchamber, and they spend the night with the king.

Then the next day they're sent to the harem.

They just become concubines to the king. The one that pleases him the most ends up becoming the queen.

It is to this condition that Esther comes.

One of the things I want us to understand in the book of Esther is that neither Mordecai or Esther are presented as paragons of virtue and spiritual integrity.

They're not presented as particularly godly people. You'll notice that God never appears, his name, he's never called upon in the entire book of Esther.

I'm going to set up here what is going to be understood as the emphasis of this book.

The emphasis of this book is not how great a person Esther is or how great a person

Mordecai is. That's not the function of this book. One other little point, let me bring out, and that is, well, you know what?

I'll save it for tomorrow. You have to come back tomorrow to get this next point in the book of Esther.

Nevertheless, I hope this gives you some insight into the kind of arrangement that Esther finds herself in this beauty contest.

Let's pray today. Father, we are thankful for your Word, because your

Word doesn't hide anything, doesn't gloss over the realities of the world, of life, and the behavior of your people, even when it's less than what it ought to be.

I pray that we can learn from this. We ask this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well, have a good rest of your