TiL- Esther 3

Hello, good evening. That abrupt stop gets me every time. It looks like we are streaming on YouTube, but we are not on Facebook. So what I want to do is I want to take just a second and welcome you as I go to YouTube and then share it on Facebook.

But thank you for watching. Thank you for joining us and being with us. And there's the video. I'm going to switch.

Woo!

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And there we go. Now we're back. Sorry about that. We're glad that you're with us. We're glad that you're watching. And sorry about all the confusion at the beginning. Tonight, we want to look at a few things.

I'm with Dan and I'm thankful for his faithfulness. I'm thankful for you. And I pray that you will be encouraged as we look at God's word, as we have this conversation together, as we try to meet as often as we can to talk about what God is doing in this world, what Dan is doing in this world and what we can learn from God and his word.

And then apply it to our lives, submit to him and live according to how he would have us to live. This is truth and love. And we get truth and love from Ephesians chapter four, verse 15, but speaking the truth and love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him, who is the head, even Christ.

And so we would ask that you would join us in doing that. With that being said, let me turn on the comments here. And we may not have many live comments tonight since Facebook is acting up. Not sure what's going on, but that's okay.

We will proceed, proceed with caution. There we have one viewer. All right. Yeah, let us know that you're watching. We're having some technical difficulties, but let us know that you're watching. If you have any questions, go ahead.

It may have been me.

Oh, that's cool.

If you wanna share it while I'm talking, that's cool too. But without any further ado, we do wanna hit on some relevant topics of today. And one of the most relevant topics of course is the tragedy that happened in Texas, the school shooting, which is, it's not the first one.

And I had this thought, Dan, I meant to look it up. I wanted to know when the first account of a school shooting was. I wanna say that it was in our recent history. I don't think this is

Well, there was, let's see. There was 63 fatalities. I think it was 63. Don't quote me on that. In the sixties, the seventies had a couple more. The eighties were roughly about the same. In the nineties, the beginning of the nineties, they made all schools gun-free zones.

And the number of school shootings and fatalities went up 123 in the nineties. And it's just continued to grow from there. So I don't know exactly when the first one was, but I know that we were having these sorts of issues all the way back into the sixties.

Right, right.

Wow.

And like I said, this is, well, we wanna use that word tragedy, right? But here's the thing. We wanna come at this from a biblical, from a Christian perspective, and we use the word tragedy, and everybody uses that word.

Everybody describes this as horrible, horrific, that it's a tragedy. But that is the Christian perspective. That is coming at this from a Christian perspective to use that verb to describe it as a tragedy.

One of the things that I've thought about is, is anyone else outside of Christianity has no point of reference to describe this event that happened. Because we can use that word tragedy, because the word tragedy comes from Christianity.

You kinda see where I'm going there? We're the only ones with a reference point. Outside of Christianity, there is no, there's no meaning to it. It's meaningless. It's neither good, there's neither good nor bad outside of Christianity.

And society can say, well, we get our morals from culture. And, but if that was the case, it would be so relativistic. There would be no consistency in morals that you couldn't claim morals because they would change so frequently, or they would be different from one person to another.

And there's 7 billion people on this planet, and everybody's morals would be different or slightly different. And so there would, there's no way that you could hammer down, nail down any one set of morals because everybody's would be different.

There's no objective standard outside of Christianity. And so the Christian perspective is that this was a tragedy. We're the only ones that can call this a tragedy. What are your thoughts?

Well, I don't know as if I'd say we're the only ones, but I would say that the other ones who could make that claim, for instance, Islam or even Jewish folks, once you press them down another couple of levels, you would show their inconsistency.

Yeah, I don't know if I claim us to be the only ones, but consistently we're the only ones who can show why this is a tragedy. I mean, if you just look at atheism or agnosticism, which is what is greatly taking over in our country.

Well, that sort of neo-paganism, but even so there is no grounding for morality in any of those worldviews. If you look at the atheistic worldview, usually it comes from an evolutionary perspective where no, there was nothing.

And then the big bang happened and it caused different things to explode and move and form and heat and cool down and different bacterias to form that turn into other things and turn into other things.

But when you get right down to it, why is what happens to one bit of matter any different than what happens to another bit of matter? But here's the thing that you won't find an atheist. Well, you may, but you won't find many atheists who would say, well, this is indifferent.

It doesn't matter. And who cares if people died in a school shooting? It doesn't matter because people are all just chemicals, chemical reactions and atoms bombarding each other. So it doesn't matter.

They don't believe that. The Bible actually says that they don't believe that, that they see the world around them. They know the God that created them and they basically borrow from the Christian worldview or they really, they recognize the truth of reality even when they deny the truth of their creator.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, and the same goes for Islam and Judaism when you press them another couple of steps because the God of Islam, for instance, doesn't have the same sort of moral, doesn't have the same sort of moral ideals in the way that he functions as the Christian God because he doesn't have to forgive in the sense where there doesn't have to be atonement for sin.

There is just his declaration of you're okay or you're not okay. There's no actual dealing with sin itself. So there's really no justice in Islam even though they claim to have a strong sense of justice.

Judaism is the same way because they deny the word, the word of God who became flesh so they don't even believe in the one true God even though they have his law given to them. They don't believe in him.

So yeah, well, I wouldn't say that we're the only ones who can claim it. I would say that we're the only ones who can claim consistently that this is a tragedy. And then I think just about everybody would claim that it is a tragedy because it is.

God created these people and created us and put us in this world in order to do well, to be fruitful, to multiply, to look over the face of the earth and cause Eden to spread. And we've done anything but that.

This is evidence that instead of bringing life, we as humanity have brought death to those who are some of the most vulnerable among us, which is just terrible.

Right.

And you make an excellent statement. And I think it's something that we should tap into. Using the word tragedy is borrowing from the Christian worldview, is borrowing from the Bible. And so that's what they're doing.

And you can take that as far as you want to go. All the other religions that you were talking about, they're borrowing from Christianity. When you have the debates about, people who interpret scripture in different ways, and they want to talk about people that lived in the ancient Near East, and they had ideas of, they had an understanding of flood stories or that their God was born of a virgin, different stories like that.

And they want to say Christianity borrowed from those ancient Near East. No, it's the other way around. All those cultures borrowed from Christianity. They borrowed from God and his history. And that's where they got their stories.

And to me, that brings legitimacy to the Bible, to Christianity and to God's history and what he did. And I'm sorry for taking that rabbit trail and getting off topic, but everything borrows from, if you're outside of Christianity, you're borrowing.

If you're speaking of morals, you're talking about history, you're using this type of language, using the word tragedy, you're borrowing from the Christian worldview. And I think there's so many different ways, directions that we could go, Dan, talking about responding as a Christian to this tragedy.

But I think this is really one good way that we as Christians could respond to this tragedy, probably never going to this small town ourselves to visit, how we hear where we are, where you are, and you who are watching where you are, how we can respond to this tragedy is to help others see that using the word tragedy borrows or comes from, we can only have that reference point from Christianity.

It's only a tragedy, why? Why is it a tragedy? Dan, I'll go ahead and let you take that over. Why is it a tragedy from the Christian perspective?

There's a couple different reasons. One is because part of God's creation has been destroyed by us. What makes it so terrible is also multifaceted. One, that they were so young, they were still learning life, not knowing which way to go, what was up or down.

I mean, they were still getting started. And there's something about the innocence or the innocent mindset of a child where they just don't know, they're just ignorant and they're under the care of people that when you look at a child, you see some of the, like my four-year-old, for instance, he is one of the craziest, most wild men out there.

He is just crazy, but he's also one of the sweetest, kindest, most gentle, big oafs I've ever seen before. He's just an incredible imaging or reflection of some of the goodness of God. And that's one of the things we talk about in theological terms about the Imago Dei, the image of God, that we're bearers of the image of God, that when you look at humanity, we are a picture or a, to borrow from our Eastern Orthodox people over there, icons almost of God himself, that what we were meant to do on the earth is to show the rest of creation, the God that they could not see.

And we've gone and snuffed out that little life, the life that God had brought into the world in order to bring joy and happiness, in order to work the earth and to bring glory to his own name. And we have destroyed that as people.

It's that against the children. It's that against our race as men. We have deprived creation of a specific aspect of itself. Mankind was supposed to be wonderful and good. And yet here we are killing people.

We have deprived creation. And not only that, we have at least tried to rob God of his glory and that he created us. So we have sinned against many different people, against the little ones who've died, against ourselves and against our God, our creator.

I kind of forgot what your question was, but I started on a vein and I kind of went with it.

You were right on target. Just thinking about all the different ways that we could respond to this as Christians, coming at this from a Christian perspective. And I think this is, without tackling all the different things that we could do, all the different things that we could say, this is one thing that I think you and I could say for tonight is how to approach this with anybody.

Helping them understand that this is a tragedy because we have a Christian worldview. And so what makes it a tragedy from the Christian worldview? And you were, that's what you were describing, that these were children, innocent children and two adults, yet that God created us in his image.

God created man in his own image. So we as man are killing image bearers, people God designed to bear his image, to bring him glory. And so that's how we know this is a tragedy, that we're destroying God's handiwork and their purpose on this earth, their ultimate purpose, which is to bear his image and to bring him glory.

Right. Yeah, so I guess the way that we as Christians should respond is twofold. Number one is to grieve with those who grieve. And when people are in, I mean, it's a tragedy. So you're there for them.

If we hear of a need, the families need meals or they need this, that, or the other thing, they're having trouble with burial expenses, anything that comes up, we should be the first ones there to help out.

Or we can also pray, because we know that only God can calm hearts and souls, can calm minds and emotions. But also we need to recognize that the reason why all of this happened is because of sin. It's not a sin that's out there.

It's a sin that dwells in each and every one of us that is part of our humanity. We have sin around us that calls us to do horrible, terrible things, and God restrains that really from being worse than it could be.

So people wanna know what a solution is and maybe a practical solution, and I'm not gonna get into a gun control debate or anything like that, but if there are certain gun laws that just don't make sense, fix them.

I'm not saying there are or aren't. We can do that practically, but one of the things that we need to remember to fix the problem is to know the root of the problem, and the root of the problem is sin.

So if we as a nation and as a human race want to see this sort of thing end, the only way that it can end is through the forgiveness and the shed blood of Jesus Christ to change the hearts of men, to restrain our evil, to change us from something wicked to something beautiful, to redeem us, to regenerate us, and then the Spirit to guide us on through into eternity.

Because without that gospel, without the good news that Christ forgives sins, that He changes what is dirty and rotten into what is good and pure, without that, without the dealing with sin, we will continue to see these sorts of things happen, whether it be at school, or if you look back over the last 100 or 120, 140 years, you saw us doing it in all sorts of situations.

We were horrible to slaves. We were terrible as humans to, you think of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. You think of, you know, Venezuela, all over the world, people doing rotten, terrible stuff to one another.

The only way that that's going to stop is for God to take away our sin. So if we really want to make a change, we as individuals need to take ownership of the sin that is within us and plead with God to forgive us of our sin.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, and I think that's where, outside of the people directly affected by this, the conversations that we had, I think you're exactly right. That's where these conversations need to lead to, is, you know, the gospel message.

And I don't think it's insensitive to have a conversation about this tragedy and tie it into, like we were talking about, Christianity is the only one that has a reference point for what a tragedy is.

You brought up grieving. For what grieving is, why we grieve. Outside of Christianity, like you said, you know, other religions have their ideas, have their thoughts, but outside of Christianity, the truth, we have no reference point for grieving.

Why grieve if we're just, and this is something that you brought up a few minutes ago, why grieve if we're just byproducts of evolution? We have no meaning and purpose except for the meaning and purpose that scientists give those who are in the process of evolution, which is survival of the fittest.

And so in that worldview, this kind of thing makes sense. You know, you're weeding out people. And I apologize, I don't want to sound insensitive, but that's the truth of the matter. That's the ideology that comes with, you know, the theory of evolution.

Right.

So only in Christianity do we have a reference point for grieving. And then those conversations that we have at the water cooler with our friends and family, and we bring up what is tragedy? What is grieving?

Where does it come from? And then it can lead to sinful man and lead to the gospel like you're talking about. Yeah, so we definitely, as Dan said, we want to continue to pray for those families. We want to pray for all those who were directly affected by this.

All those who, I would say, just because of personal experience, teachers all over the United States, I don't want to give, I don't want to talk too personally, but I believe this is hard for all teachers.

The anxiety that this could happen in any school, the thought that this, the relationship that they have as a teacher with those teachers and them losing their life, them losing their children, just the relationship of being a teacher and their compassion, their empathy for them.

It's got to be hard for all teachers all over the United States. We want to pray for the police officers and all that they're having to deal with now. The investigations, the people who were directly involved there and what they could have done, what they didn't do, what they did do, all the questions.

We want to pray for them, everything that has to do with that tragedy. And of course, we want to pray that God will not allow this again. But of course, that falls into part of our responsibility as far as sharing the gospel and sharing the kingdom of God.

And so, any last words on that?

No, only because I was looking ahead at what we're going to talk about in Esther. And we're going to kind of unpack everything that may have gone into this dude's head while we look at what's going on in Haman's head.

Gotcha. Well, I'll let you bring that up when we get to it. So let's jump into Esther chapter three. And I told Dan that I wanted to try to hit on a relevant topic before we get started so that we're not, we're kind of breaking it up.

So each video, we want to try to talk about something that's going on in our culture and talk about that, see what's going on. And from a biblical perspective, Christian perspective, let's jump into Esther chapter three.

Before we jump into Esther chapter three, I want to do something that we didn't do. If you go back to Esther chapter two, verse five, if we're studying this, we want to know the characters. And in verse five in chapter two, it says, now there was at the Citadel in Susa, a Jew whose name was Mordecai.

And I don't think it's later on, maybe in chapter three, that the people in this actual story who were present there, they don't start calling him, or they don't know that he's a Jew and they don't start calling him, they eventually start calling him Mordecai the Jew, but not at first, not until it's revealed.

Yeah, chapter three, verse four.

Chapter three, verse four. Here, we're given the information that he's a Jew, but the characters, they don't know that yet. But once they find out, they begin to label him. But Mordecai, the son of Jire, the son of Shammai, the son of Kish, of Benjamite.

So it gives us lineage there. And I think it's purposeful that his lineage is given. I think it's documented that if you follow his lineage, you can follow Mordecai, you can follow Esther, all the way back to King Saul.

And what's significant about Mordecai being a Jew, being a descendant of King Saul, is that King Saul was given orders by God to eliminate all the Amalekites, all of them. He wasn't supposed to leave any soul alive.

But Saul did. He was dethroned. And those that were left behind, them and their descendants, there became this extra or added tension because they've been enemies forever. If you go all the way back to Exodus chapter 17, you have Moses fighting the Amalekites.

And they've been enemies forever. The Lord even says, I didn't look up the reference, but God says that since Amalekites, they lifted up their hand against the Lord, the throne of the Lord, he will be at war with him from generation to generation.

So you have this animosity between the two. You have Saul given orders to eliminate every single one of them. He disobeys, he doesn't do it. And now generation after generation, you finally get to Mordecai, the story of Esther.

And then now in chapter three, you get, he's already been introduced, but we learn more about Haman. So let me read, let's see, first three verses. After these events, King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, the son of Hamed, I can't even say it, I can't do it.

Hamedatha, there you go. The Agagite and advanced him and established his authority over all the princes who were with him. All the king's servants who were at the king's gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman for so the king had commanded concern of him, but Mordecai neither bowed down nor paid homage.

Then the king's servants who were at the king's gate said, Mordecai, why are you transgressing the king's command? One of the things noted here that I hear people talk about is in the context, we just finished looking at chapter two and what did Mordecai do?

Mordecai saved the king's life. Mordecai's hanging out at the gates, he's hearing the gossip, he gets word to Esther that there's this plot against the king and Esther gives credit to Mordecai for saving his life.

And then you get to chapter three, verse one, the king advances Haman and not Mordecai. I don't think that the text actually dives into that, but it's just interesting to note that there was, what we think should have happened didn't happen.

So what's going on here in these first three verses, Dan?

Well, Haman had done something, I guess, either that or he was just really good looking or something nice to the king, I really don't know.

Yeah.

And he was honored, he was given something, we don't know if it was a feast or a title or a robe or a crown or what, we don't know exactly what he was given, but he was honored in some sort of way. He was elevated in the kingdom, his seat was higher than other people's seats.

He was, he finally becomes somebody. So he had a little bit of power to throw around. And I mean, if you think about it, going back into his history, he remembers exactly what happened between his people and the Jews.

His people and the Jews, his people was wiped out except for his family who was left there to basically mourn the loss of their whole people. If you remember that movie, The Princess Bride, and he says, it's towards the end, he says, I'm gonna fight you to the pain.

It's like, well, what does that mean? He said, well, first I'm gonna cut off your, I'm gonna cut out your eyes, I'm gonna get your tongue, I'm gonna chop your hands off and your feet off and make you look all funky.

It's like, then you're gonna cut off my ears. He's like, no, I'm not gonna cut off your ears. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna leave your ears perfect. So that way, every time somebody sees that hideous thing and then the children are like screaming and crying whenever they see you, it'll echo and ring in your perfect ears.

It was like, oh man, that's rough. So think of Haman's ancestors. His family alone was left alive to have, to hear and listen to the Jewish people the rest of their lives. We killed your folks, all of your family, all of your cousins, all of your people that you grew up going to the market with, all the people that you played sports with, that you fought with in wars, we killed them all.

Every single person that you ever knew and were close to, dead. And that has to be something that sticks with you as you're going on through your generations. Hey dad, why aren't you being nice to the Jews?

Well, they killed everybody but great granddaddy. And we're the only ones here to talk about it. We had a whole kingdom. You know, we were real people. We were somebody. And he finally gets back to a place of power.

The Agagites are on top once again. And then the people, hey Mordecai, why aren't you bowing down to this dude? You know, he's had a rough go of it. He's like, I know, we should have killed him back then.

I don't know exactly what Mordecai is thinking there.

Could have been what he was thinking.

It could have been, or it could have been, no, no. I should have, I stopped the king from getting killed. I'm a whole lot better than this dude. Or it could have been one of 100 ,000 other different things that we just don't know about.

But there was already some tension and animosity between them there. So at the end of verse three, Mordecai, he's just, he's not having any of it. He's like, no, I mean, it could have been, I don't bow down to anybody, but the Jewish king and my God, it may have been that.

It may have been, no, because we should have killed him a few years back. It could have been because the king didn't honor me. We don't really know. But since we don't know, I'd say probably a little bit of all of that rolled up into one.

Like Paul Harvey said, this is the rest of the story there. And he just, he was like, no, not Haman. Anybody else, maybe, but not him. It was just too much there.

Well, the text hints at those things. I mean, you're exactly right. You already have that natural animosity, but just what would be between men? I saved the king's life and here you're advanced. So the story tells us that these things happen.

And so we can imagine that natural animosity just between men and just between human beings that would be surfacing within Mordecai, because the story kind of hints at that. And I mean, it tells us what's going on.

So that's naturally what we would assume, I think. And I don't want to say that as a Westerner. I'm thinking that it would naturally be assumed by everybody reading it. But I think it's super important that we recognize the other things that you were talking about, the author of Esther, which you think it was Mordecai?

Yeah, probably.

Could have been Mordecai. We have the lineage of Mordecai so that the reader could understand his lineage, his history. And then here in the first verse of chapter three, we get the, he could just said it was Haman, but we have the history or some of the lineage of Haman.

We know that he was an Akkagite, which just like you were talking about, and we mentioned earlier, are descendants of the Amalekites or who were the Amalekites. And if you trace back, speaking of the original readers and what they would have understood that we may not understand as Westerners, separated, having this gap between when it was written, when it was originally read, there's a lot of missing information that we don't have or we wouldn't be thinking of because we're not in that context.

And so we have to kind of know the context of what was going on, know the history, know scriptures. And the author of Esther is giving us keys to look at it within history. And we have a lot of that history within the Old Testament that we can look back to.

So you have Haman, who was an Akkagite, who are the Amalekites, who we talked about earlier, fought with Moses in Exodus chapter 17, who Saul was supposed to kill. And we have that history all throughout the Old Testament.

And I believe that that's what the original readers, at least the Jews, the original Jewish readers, they would have recognized, they would have understood when they heard this, Haman's an Akkagite. We know who the Akkagites were.

And I got a lot of my notes from, I wanna give them credit, a lot of my notes from Pastor Philip Kayser, who has a lot of good sermons on Sermon Audio, if you wanna check him out. He gives a lot of this history.

And so I get a lot of my notes from him. And if you look at the whole lineage, I mean, you can go back to Noah. Noah, Japheth, whose son was Magog, who from him come the Amalekites. And then eventually you have Saul and his blunder.

And then you have Haman here in Esther. So I really think that the inclusion of these details is important for us to remember to help us to know the history and what's going on. And part of that tension that you were talking about, also it references, which is the reason why we're coming back to Esther, is because we were looking at Ezekiel and we were looking at end times.

We're looking at prophecy. And everybody wants to talk about the war of Gog and Magog. And then you have Haman, Gog there and Ezekiel, which points back to Haman. And so it all ties together. And because, and I think that's where we mess up and go down these wrong paths and get our eschatology all mixed up is because we're not reading it in the context of the original author, the original reader and what they would have understood and what they would have seen in the Old Testament.

Right, because then in verse four, they just come out and they're like, hey, Haman, Mordecai is not bowing down. Oh, by the way, he's a Jew. Do whatever you want to with that information. He's a Jew. Why would that even be in the text?

Why would it matter unless it mattered?

Yeah, because it does.

Right, so they hit him on two fronts. Like, hey, we know that you're somebody now. This guy over here is not, he's not bowing down to you. He's not paying you the respect that you deserve. By the way, didn't his people kill your people?

Maybe you could do something about that now.

Yeah, and it's possible that Mordecai felt that, we're speculating from the text, but we're still speculating. He could have not bowed down and gave homage to Haman because he didn't want to disobey the Lord like Saul did.

Right.

They were enemies of the Lord. Pastor Philip Kaiser, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, he points out that there was no stipulation against paying homage, giving honor to the king or giving honor to a leader.

We can do that today. They were able to do that, but for some reason, in Mordecai's heart, he wasn't going to do it. And it could have been, he didn't want to disobey the Lord. Let me read verse four that you mentioned.

Now it was when they had spoken daily to him and when he would not listen to them, that they told Haman to see whether Mordecai's reason would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew. When Haman saw that Mordecai neither bowed down nor paid homage to him, Haman was filled with rage.

But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had told him who the people of Mordecai were. Therefore, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus.

I find that interesting. So it's, you know, we're looking at it from a natural response between this animosity between men who were striving for position and now it's gone beyond that. So it does seem that this history is in their minds because if it was just personal, he could have taken them out.

Yeah, it seemed like it was something personal where when he found out he was a Jew, he was like, oh, now I got something for you. Yeah. You hear it sometimes in movies. You should have taken care of me when you had the chance.

You know, something like that. Kind of what you got going on here. Yeah, Haman, it's really interesting because the book of Esther doesn't mention the name of God anywhere. And yet what you see is a battle between good and evil with God on one side and really the devil on the other, trying to destroy the entire Jewish nation, the entire Jewish nation, where if the Jewish nation was destroyed, God's promises are of non-effect.

That means that God would have been made a law and a liar, and he would have, I don't know, he'd still be God, but he wouldn't be holy. I mean, it would destroy everything. It would not be good. So since God is not a liar, obviously this was a plan that was going to be foiled.

But when you see that tension between God and Satan, you see the reaction of Haman is the reaction of the full force of a pagan God. How does he deal with his enemies? Well, they must die. How does God overcome his enemies in the long run?

He sent his son to die on the cross for the sins of men, to make those who were enemies friends. And the really interesting, the really cool part about that is that it was through the faithful efforts of one young woman where both of those situations came to fruition.

In Esther, you see Esther being faithful in the situation that she was in, just doing what she was asked to do, saying, hey, my people are going to be killed, King, please do something about this. And he does.

You think of Mary as she is spoken to by angels and she just faithfully does what's asked of her. She carries a child and raises him and walks with him, raises him, loves him as her son. And through her faithfulness, part of her faithfulness, Jesus Christ is brought into the world.

She's truly mother of God, bringing God into humanity, the union between God and men in the hypostatic union, the connection, the joining of flesh with God who took our flesh upon himself. It came through God's work in faithful individuals who were just doing what they were asked to do in a situation.