Book of Esther - Part 23

Esther as a Picture of Spiritual Warfare

All right, we'll turn to the book of Esther, chapter 7. Esther, chapter 7, we see that there is a lot of types. There are a lot of types going on here, a lot of symbolism, where the physical story is teaching some spiritual truths.

And in this story, you have this powerful king who pretty much was over the entire world of his day, Ahasuerus, or some called him Artaxerxes. And he ruled the entire world, basically, most of the known world of his day.

And this little Jewish maid who became his queen, her name is Esther. The man who raised her was Mordecai, and there was a person named Haman who had worked his way up to the right-hand man of the king, and he is a type or a picture of Satan.

And if you watch the lives of these people, they picture these things. For example, King Ahasuerus pictures the groom, or the husband, and Esther pictures the bride, or the church, and Haman pictures the devil.

And it's interesting that Haman had arranged for the man who raised Esther, Mordecai, to be hanged. And he had already built the gallows and everything. He was gonna kill every Jew in the known world.

That was his plot. Satan put that in his mind, by the way. But that was his plan. And yet, the Lord, through orchestrating the lives of all these people, turned that totally around and thwarted it through this little young girl named Esther.

And so, you see here that Esther finally comes before her husband, the king, and she tells him, there is a man who wants to kill me and my father, the man that raised me, and every other Jew, and all I'm asking you for is my life and the life of my family.

And this made the king so angry when he found out someone would plot such a thing that he had to go outside into the garden. He was so furious. And while he went out there, Haman was scared to death because Esther had arranged a banquet with just the king, Haman, and Esther.

And Esther said, the king said, well, who in the world would do this? In verse six, Esther 7, six, it says, and Esther said, the adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen.

So she pointed him out, he's right there in the room, the only three people in the room other than the servants, and the king got so furious, he stepped outside. Well, when he did that, Haman was scared to death.

And that is a picture of Satan. And as we pointed out in this passage, that when you are under spiritual attack, all you have to do is walk up beside the king, Jesus Christ, and hold his hand, and he's gonna ask you, who is bothering you, and where are they?

Just like this king asked her, and she just pointed to him. And that's all you need to do, is you just point to the devil and say, he's messing with my life, he's messing with my family, and there he is right there.

And the king took care of it. In fact, what you find out in the last verse of that chapter, it says in verse 10, so they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified.

Well, the king is a picture or a type of Jesus, and Haman is a picture or a type of Satan. And so there you see the end of the story. Now, that sort of launched us out into a study of this one that Esther called her adversary, her adversary and enemy.

And we know from 1 Peter chapter five that the Bible calls Satan the adversary, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walking about seeking whom he may devour. So we began to do a little study on the adversary.

The Names of Satan and What They Reveal

And so here's what we've covered so far. He has several names in the Bible, and those names reveal a little bit about his character. He's called the adversary in 1 Peter chapter five verse eight and in the Greek, it simply means one who is against right.

He's against that which is right. That's one of his names. He's your adversary. Anytime you want to do right, you wanna live for the Lord, he's gonna be against that. Secondly, we see in that same passage in 1 Peter five eight, he's called the devil.

Well, the word devil in the Greek language, diabolos means slanderer. Now, you know what it is to be slandered. Any of you young ladies in the room on the school ground, when you were girls, you were slandered by the other girls, right?

They hated you because you were so pretty. Isn't that the way it works? And they slandered you and made things up that weren't even true. Well, there's just one example, but Satan, that is his name. His name is the slanderer.

And then we see also in 1 Peter five eight, he's called the roaring lion. That means he is a destroyer, all right? He destroys nations, he destroys families, he destroys homes, he destroys churches, he destroys institutions.

That is his job description, the destroyer. Then the next thing we talked about is the fact that in Revelation chapter 12, he's called the accuser of the brethren. Remember that one? He is the accuser of the brethren.

Job is a perfect example of that because Satan came before the Lord and accused Job when Job really hadn't done anything wrong. So he slandered him and he accused him. And the Lord caused this to work out where Job's life proved to Satan that Job really was, that there was power in having almighty God as your father, that Job has power.

Because Satan said, he'll curse you to your face if you take everything away from him. And God took everything away from him and he never cursed God, did he? He never did it, even his wife told him to.

She said, curse God and die. That's a very positive wife, don't you think? See, that's the opposite of what a wife should be, but he didn't listen to her and he never did curse God and he held true through that.

So we see that's a wonderful example, the entire book of Job of how Satan will come and accuse you. Well, he does that with you too. He will slander you, he will accuse you, he will even accuse you to your own mind.

He'll have you thinking, well, how could I be a Christian if I just did that? Anybody ever experienced that thought? How could I be a Christian if I do that sort of thing? So he's accusing you in your mind and that's part of the role that he plays.

And then we came down last time in 2 Corinthians 11, 13, he's known as the deceiver. And we talked about that Sunday before last, how the Bible says that even his false apostles, false teachers who act like preachers, but they're not teaching the word of God, they're not teaching the Bible, they may give a snippet of it and then give a great speech.

And that's going on in many of the megachurches across the country today, where they use a snippet of scripture and then give a great speech to cause everyone to feel better. And they go home weak, they become such weak Christians, they have no meat because they don't preach the word verse by verse down through the Bible, they're not doing that nowadays.

And so the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 11, 13, that such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. They're not really that, but they make you think they are.

And then the Bible says, well, don't marvel at that because Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. And I can remember my mentor, Dr. Rocky Freeman. He used to be from Fort Worth, Texas before he went to be with the Lord.

But he said many times that people in their pride, Christians in their pride, a thought will pop in their mind and they'll say, well, that's from the Lord. And he said, how do they know? How do they know that that's not from the enemy?

Because he can put a thought in your mind and he can act as if an angel of light gave you that thought. So what's the only thing you can do? You have to hold it all up against the scripture. You have to hold everything against the scripture.

And if it contradicts the scripture, then it's not from the Lord. And so Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Don't ever let your pride think that you can tell the difference easily.

Now, the more in the word you are, where you're literally studying it, reading it, and meditating on it more and more, then usually you get a red flag when the devil puts a thought out there. You know what I'm saying?

You're more apt to have a red flag and realize that contradicts scripture and that's not from God. But a brand new baby believer or a believer who's been a Christian for 100 years, but they just don't study.

They're not in the word. They can't tell the difference. Many times, it's very difficult for them to tell the difference. And so they're led astray. And so we talk about the fact he is a deceiver. I don't think Eve thought she was sinning.

I think Eve thought she was doing what God wanted her to do because Satan interfered with her thinking and deceived her into thinking that that's what the Lord ought to want her to do. He said, Lord wouldn't withhold good and evil from you, knowledge of good and evil.

He would want you to know everything that we know, wouldn't he? And she thought, well, I guess he would. So she sinned. Now the Bible teaches that Adam, when he sinned, he knew exactly what he was doing.

He knew it was sin, but Eve didn't. So Satan is a deceiver and he's been that way from the beginning. And then last time in John 8, verse 42 and following, we talked about how Satan is the father of lies.

And a great long passage about that in particular, verse 44, when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. And so he's talking to the Pharisees and he told them, because I tell you the truth, you don't believe me.

You see, you take the true light of Jesus Christ and you talk to a person whose father is the devil and it makes no sense. They believe the truth is the lie. And Jesus told them that right to their face.

And he said, which one of you can convict me of sin? Have you seen me sin? And if I say the truth, why do you not believe me? He that is of God hears God's words, is what Jesus told them. In other words, implying you're not of God.

In fact, he said it. He said, you therefore hear them not because you are not of God. And so there we see that Satan is the father of lies. Now today we talk about something new. Turn to the book of Ezekiel, chapter 28.

Lucifer the Musician and the Beauty of His Creation

How many of you knew that Satan was a musician? Did you know that? Isn't that interesting? So I'm gonna preach against music today. A lot of preachers do. But a lot of people don't realize that Satan, when he was created, his name was Lucifer, son of the morning.

And he was created as the archangel and he was in the closest proximity to God and he protected the holiness of God. He kept sin away from the throne of God. That was his job. But also he was created within, the day he was born, or he wasn't born, but he was created when he was spoken into existence, he had musical instruments in his hands.

And you'll see that here. Why, what does that tell you? Well, that tells you that the Lord loves music. It doesn't tell you that it's all of the devil because you have to remember, Satan was not the devil when God created him.

He was the brightest, most beautiful angel and the protector of God's holiness when God created him. And he created him with musical instruments, which means that God himself is in the presence of music.

Isn't that interesting? Now look at this, Ezekiel 28, I think it's verse 13. Does verse 13 say, the workmanship of thy tabreze? Maybe I started in the middle of the verse. Middle of verse 13, Ezekiel 28, verse 13.

The workmanship of thy tabreze and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that you were created. And so tabreze were sort of an ancient precursor of drums and pipes were like an ancient precursor of the flute or the pipe organ.

And he was created with these in the day that he was created. Isn't that interesting? Verse 14 says, thou art the anointed cherub that covereth and I have set thee so. Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God.

Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. You see, Lucifer was in the very presence of God when he was created and he was created a musician and with musical instruments in hand.

Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created until iniquity was found in thee. So when Lucifer was created, he was perfect. No sin whatsoever. And he protected God's holiness and he was a musician and played beautiful music on those instruments right in the presence of God.

And so this all took place up until the very time or the very day that sin was found in him, the scripture says. And in Isaiah 14, 11, we're gonna see more in Isaiah here in a few minutes. So you might wanna be turning there.

It says, thy pump is brought down to the grave and the noise of the vials. So that lists a third instrument, violins, in other words, stringed instruments. So Satan was created with pipes, which are the ancient precursor of flutes and pipe organs, things like that.

Tabrets, which was drums and vials, which was stringed instruments, like a violin. He was created with those in his hand. Don't you find that interesting? Now, what does that tell you? It tells you God loves music, doesn't it?

Tells you that when Lucifer was still the son of the morning before he fell and became the devil, he played beautiful music in the presence of God and the angels and filled heaven with it. It also tells you he's an expert in the field of music.

So let me ask you a question. After he fell and became the devil, do you think he could take that expertise with him still? And so what you will find is just like in every other good thing God creates, Satan will twist things and turn them into evil when he can.

So you do have to be a little bit careful with yourselves and your children about the music that you listen to because he's very subtle and he can use it for evil. I think everybody knows that. There's music that you just shouldn't listen to, right?

How do you know which it is? Because your preacher made a list? No, because what you do is when you're listening to it in your car, you ask the Holy Spirit, does this offend you? If it does, I'll turn it off.

And if he tells you to turn it off, turn it off. It's just that easy. Things that you cannot do in faith are sin, the Bible says. So if you can't listen to a particular music score or a particular musician, and while you are listening to that particular music or that particular song, you don't have peace in your heart, then you should just turn it off.

It's just that easy. No one has to tell you what's good music and what's bad. Music is neutral. Music is not good or bad, it's just neutral. Now, sometimes the lyrics, in and of the nature of themselves, is evil.

So that's a clear sign. I mean, you're not gonna sit there and listen to people talk in an evil way and feel that the Holy Spirit wants you to be listening to that. That's easy. And so you just have to place it all before him, just like everything else.

And you know, as far as who should you witness to is the same way. You should ask Holy Spirit, do you want me to witness to this person right now or not? Some people think you witness just to everybody, but Jesus didn't teach that.

He said, be careful. He said, don't cast your pearls before the swine unless they turn and rend you. So there's some people you don't witness to at a certain point in time. So how can you live this kind of life where you got people you're not supposed to witness to, you got music you're not supposed to listen to?

You cannot set rules, you cannot have a list. You've just got to walk hand in hand with Jesus, and that's the whole point. And most people don't want to do that. They'd rather have a list. They'd rather make a bunch of rules.

You just follow the rules, and that way you still don't have to walk with Jesus, and you appear to be a better Christian. That does not please God, does it? So you have to walk more moments. Our walk with the Lord is a moment-by-moment walk.

You have to walk more moments filled with the Spirit. That'll help you know what music to listen to and what not to, and when. That'll help you know who to witness to. That's just one example. So music is very important, though, because since Satan was created an expert musician in the day of his creation, he can use that now to evil ends.

And so when you start having, talking about, Jeffrey's talking about babies being born. When you start having these babies, and they get up old enough to want to listen to music, you have to give them some guidance.

You don't just let them listen to whatever they want to. You need to know what they're listening to. And guess what, parents? You need to try to hear the words, which are hard to hear. And if the words are neutral, then fine.

If they're evil, then you say that particular song you can't listen to. You know, it's okay to make rules for your children. How many of you agree with that? I hope you do. All right. And so, you know, listen to the lyrics, and listen to the sense of the music.

Try to sense whether you think that's from the Lord, or whether it's neutral, or whether it's from the devil. It's gonna be one of those three. And guide your children accordingly. So I just thought you might find that interesting.

Satan as the Prince of the Power of the Air

Number eight, he is the prince of this world. So turn to Ephesians chapter two, verse two with me. Ephesians 2 .2. Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air.

Now there is a title Satan is given. The prince of the power of the air. The spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, that means the non-elect. That does not just mean lost people. We know that there are people around us who don't know the Lord yet, who will someday, correct?

I mean, we assume there's still some out there that'll get saved, right? So they don't know the Lord now, but they will someday. But there are also people out there that don't know the Lord and they never will.

Would you agree with that? So there are those as well. Satan is the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that works in the children of disobedience. And the children of disobedience predominantly are talking about those who never shall be saved.

And however, you have to realize that before you were born again, we were, in a sense, disobeying, weren't we? And we were walking sort of with those people. In fact, those are the people we hung out with.

Wouldn't you agree? A lot of times, that's who we hung out with. We didn't know better. We weren't saved yet. And so Satan is the one who works in their lives. Now, don't you find it interesting that it says he is the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience?

You know what that means? That even though most people think they're their own person, you know, I live my own life. I have my own guide. I do what I wanna do. And they think that they're designing their own life and planning it and all that, and that everything they do and every thought they have is their own.

The Bible teaches, contrary to that, that Satan himself is the spirit that works in the minds of these disobedient people. And so they're not free agents. They wanna argue with you about whether they have free will.

Well, I understand that they feel that they have free will and that they make their own decisions. I understand that they feel that way. But the scripture says that Satan's putting thoughts in their minds all the time.

So they are not having a free will. They're having a will that's dominated by something more powerful than their own will, and that's Satan. So they don't have free will. They think they do. They think that all of their thoughts are their own, and they're not.

And they, many times, act upon these thoughts that are placed there by Satan himself. And we have to understand, as born-again believers, we don't have genuine free will either. We do, we think we do.

I mean, we make our choices, and we're supposed to make the best choices that we can, and so we certainly are held responsible for them. But I wanna tell you something that every person in this room, one way or another, also is dominated by powers more powerful than you.

For example, the Holy Spirit would be a good example. He dwells within you, and your body is the temple of the living God. Do you not believe that the Holy Spirit influences your thoughts? Well, if he influences your thoughts, then you are not sovereign.

And that's what free will means. Free will means you make choices with no other interference. No human does that anymore, not after the fall. So what does that tell us? We're influenced. Yes, we make decisions.

We do make our choices, and we have our thoughts, and we're held responsible for them, but we're influenced. Our thoughts are influenced. And so you're either influenced by the prince of the power of the air or by God himself.

Isn't that interesting? So that's why we have a moment-by-moment walk, and it needs to be spirit-filled. And as we grow in the word and walk closer to the Lord, we can have more moments like that during the day.

You could have a day where predominantly you were spirit-filled and walked with the Lord that day. And in that case, your thoughts and your mind is going to be predominantly influenced by the Lord himself, and then you'll have your own thoughts in there as well.

But the influenced thoughts will come from the Lord. And when we walk in the flesh, and when we let go of the hand of Jesus, and we just walk off on our own in this world, there are gonna be many moments when you have thoughts that are placed there by the evil one.

And you need to recognize them. How many times have you heard me say that a good Christian is a Christian who thinks what he's thinking about? No, he thinks about what he's thinking about. He thinks about what he's thinking about.

Because your mind is a brain that is an organ like your heart and your gizzard. And so it is part of the fallen part of you, your mind is. You're at least part of your mind. Your brain, let's put it that way.

It's the fallen part of you. And guess what? It has had a lot of input, both good and evil, if you're past one year old in here. So you've got to monitor that wonderful organ God gave you because it won't always think good thoughts.

Even if the devil didn't put the thought there, you've got your own bad thoughts that he put there 10 years ago. And it will come up, and so you have to control it. And the new man, which is the part of you that was born again, the new man that you really are, can control it and ought to every moment of every day.

But we don't do it every moment, do we? But our goal should be to do that more moments. That make sense? Because listen, if we don't, what's the alternative? Well, we can be influenced by our own evil thoughts or we can be influenced by Satan himself.

And the best is to be influenced by the Holy Spirit and be in line with him and to walk in fellowship with the Lord. So here we have this devil who is called the prince of the power of the air who is influencing the thoughts through his spirit.

He is spiritually influencing the children of disobedience walking all around you every day. How's that make you feel? The very people you're next to in the elevator are having their thoughts influenced by Satan.

How's that make you feel? Well, you better have some spiritual armor on, hadn't we? See, we're all too comfortable in this world. We just do not understand that we're behind enemy lines all the time. It says about this person among whom also we all used to have our lifestyle in times past.

So before we got born again, we were never totally like them, but we were still unbelievers and we were disobedient and we ran with them. And so he influenced us at that point. Among whom also we all had our lifestyle in time past in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature the children of wrath even as others.

But God who in his rich mercy because of his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, he has quickened us. In other words, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you are saved.

You know what that's telling us? We're just barely saved. We're not any different than everybody else walking around that doesn't know the Lord. The only difference is, and it's a big difference though, Jesus in us, Christ in us, the hope of glory.

God saved us. It's like he flipped a switch on. We could see Jesus for the first time in admiring. We never did before. All of a sudden the Bible comes alive and parts of it are interesting at first and then later more parts of it are and then more parts of it are.

Whereas used to is all boring. Remember that? All of a sudden we love church, being around other Christians. Whereas used to, man, we'd rather be anywhere than there. That's a great way you can know if you've been born again yet or not.

And so once that change takes place, then all of a sudden we are quickened. We are brought to life together with Christ even though used to we were dead in our sins. Isn't that an amazing, wonderful story?

In 2 Corinthians 4, 3, it also gives Satan another name. It's very similar to the prince of the power of the air. It says, but if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost in whom the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them.

Is that not frightening? We talked about witnessing a while ago. You talk to people about the Lord. Have you ever had them change the subject right in the middle of your sentence? That's more often what they'll do.

Why? Because the God of this world, little g God of this world, that's Satan, blinds their minds before what you're telling him can even soak in. He blinds the minds of them which believe not because if he didn't, the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God himself would shine into them and it would make perfect sense to them.

Have you ever wondered, you feel like you can perfectly, clearly explain the gospel and yet they don't receive Jesus and you wonder, did I do a bad job? Well, maybe, I don't know how good a job we do.

We probably don't ever do the best job we could at witnessing, right? But that's not the reason they didn't receive him because I'm gonna tell you something. Your bad job is not gonna keep people from heaven.

But what happened was Satan blinded their eyes. They couldn't even see the light. For we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness when he created everything that is out of nothing has shined in our hearts.

So you see, God likens your salvation the moment you were born again to the moment of creation. Think about that. He puts them in the same sentence. The moment of creation when there was nothing but God and perhaps God, I don't know, you know, it's debatable whether it created space and then stuck something in it or whether he just made the stuff and it created its own space.

I don't know but I know this, that there was nothing but darkness and he spoke into existence everything that is. And he said, just like that, just like that day when he commanded the light to shine out of darkness, he shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

So your salvation was just as miraculous as everything that is being made out of nothing. Now you know in your way of thinking that can't happen. You can't think of anything you've ever experienced in your life in this world where you had nothing and something came out of it.

But that's how God made everything that is and he said, that's how you got saved, just as miraculously. So there's nothing natural about salvation. There's nothing that you yourself can do to get saved.

There's nothing any man can do to save you. It's any more than any of you could create a star. You see what I'm saying? It has to be from the hand of God, period. Salvation is from his hand. Doesn't come from anywhere else.

Doesn't come from religion, doesn't come from the Romans road, doesn't come from a cool slick spiel that you can give. It is a miracle where all of a sudden this blinding force of Satan is stopped and held back by a more powerful hand than his and that eye is open and that ear can hear and those crippled legs can walk and those hands can now do something for God.

Pride, Beauty, and the Original Sin of Lucifer

It's just that miraculous. So be thankful if you've had that happen and be prayerful if you know people to which it has not happened. The next thing that I had to talk about was his sin. What is Satan's sin?

Why did he cease to be the angel of light and become the devil? Look at Isaiah 14, 11. It says, thy pump is brought down to the grave and the noise of thy vials, his violins, his instruments, is brought down to the grave with you.

The worm is spread under thee and the worms cover thee. Now this begins to tell you the end of Satan, how he's gonna end up. So when he has victory in your personal life or family and he's attacking, you might wanna pray and say, dear Lord Jesus.

Now do it this way, do it just like this though. It's the only safe way to do it. You say, dear Lord Jesus, would you please remind Satan of Isaiah 14, 11 and how he's going to end up for me right now.

Just please remind him of his end. You see, that's legal for you to pray that way and I'll promise you this. If you make it a practice, gentlemen, to pray that, I call that spiritual warfare prayer. To pray that way, Satan and his demons would much rather leave your house and go find someone that doesn't know how to pray that way.

You know what I'm saying? So practice this. The worm is spread under thee, the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations?

For thou hast said in your heart, I will ascend up into heaven. This was his original sin, by the way, pride. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north.

That leads us to believe that the third heaven may be somewhere beyond the north star, towards the north, who knows, but it comes from that scripture. People that believe that. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will be like the most high. You just heard sin come into the universe right there. That was the moment it came into the universe. And then Ezekiel 28, 12 says, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus and say unto him, thus saith the Lord God, thou sealest up the sum full of wisdom and full of beauty.

Now this whole passage is using a king as a type of Satan, and it's giving us information about Satan himself. And it says here that Satan in nature is full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. That's Satan.

On Halloween, we like to think of him as an ugly creature with horns and a pitchfork. That's not how he looks. It says he is full. In matter of fact, he is perfect in beauty. He is full of wisdom. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God.

Satan, you've been in Eden, the garden of God. Well, who was it that tempted Eve? It was him. He's been there. Every precious stone was your covering. Now it uses figurative speech to try to picture how beautiful Satan is, and it pictures him as beautiful stones like emeralds and diamonds.

He's resplendent. He's shining in his glory. And it tries to give us a picture of how beautiful Satan was. He's precious as the stones of covering, the sardius, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, the carbuncle, and gold.