God of Real Life

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Don Filcek; Esther 1 God of Real Life

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We're starting a new series this week, our first sermon in the book of Esther, and I think it's valuable for us,
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I like to introduce the message every week as we kind of come to worship, and I think it's valuable for us to remember that all of scripture is inspired by God, particularly as we come to the book of Esther.
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According to the Apostle Paul, he put it this way, he said, all scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, or training in godliness.
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But it's ironic that not everybody down through history has felt that way about all of scripture, even some godly individuals, for example,
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Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, not Martin Luther King Jr., but Martin Luther, the great reformer, actually said of the book of Esther, I wish it didn't exist.
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He had a pretty strong statement about scripture, I wish it didn't exist. He said it was too Jewish, that was his mindset.
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And so you kind of get down, and it's important for us to think of this and understand it as scripture, and I understand where Martin Luther was coming from, and we're going to see that, because part of the conflict over the book of Esther, you can read it from beginning to end, you can read all nine chapters, we're going to get through it, and we're going to study it, and we're going to pull it apart and dissect it, and you're not going to find the name of God in it, ever.
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The name of God does not appear in the text of the book of Esther. You don't see a lot of religious activity in the book of Esther.
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You don't see a sacrificial system in the book of Esther. You don't see people praying to God in the book of Esther.
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So all of a sudden, do I have your interest? Is it kind of like, what's going on in the book of Esther?
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And there's some reasons for that, and some people see that as a problem, but as I've studied it in preparation for this series,
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I've grown to appreciate the power of the absence of the name of God in this book. Because have you ever been in a place in life where you feel like God is absent?
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Have you been there? Any of you? Am I the only one? I've been in a place where life seemed kind of dark and down, and I was kind of like,
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God, where are you in this? And that's what the book of Esther is actually going to be communicating to us.
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Where is God in those times? And he is there, still working, moving things behind the scenes to get things accomplished.
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And that's going to drive our application over the next several weeks, actually 12 weeks, in the book of Esther. The title of the sermon series is,
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Esther, Encountering God in the Twists of Real Life. And you see, the book of Esther gives us an upfront example of God working behind the scenes in ordinary life to get a major thing accomplished, and we're going to see something major that he's accomplishing in the big, broad scope of salvation history through the book of Esther.
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He really ultimately is the unseen main character working in human affairs to accomplish his good will.
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So the story is full of twists and turns and irony, and the types of things that God is able to use to accomplish his will,
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I think we're going to find surprising at face value. Like for example, in our text this morning, we're going to see how
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God used an enraged, drunken, pagan king to get things lined up to save his chosen people.
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That might break some of our categories of what God is and isn't able to use, and who he is and isn't able to use.
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But I think one thing that we're going to see throughout this text as we read it, when we are lost and unsure of the pathway ahead,
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God is always there, able to work things out, and he is the one who is ultimately moving history towards his final redemption.
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And we're going to see that throughout the entire book of Esther. So I want you to open your Bibles to Esther, chapter 1. That's page 353 in the
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Bible that's in the seat back in front of you. If you grab that Bible out, it's 353 in there. And if you don't own a
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Bible, we desire for everybody to own a copy of Scripture, so we want you to take that one with you. We've got a box full of those to replace the ones that are taken this morning.
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So please take that one. If you don't own one, take it. Follow along as I read the entirety of Esther, chapter 1, before the band comes.
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Now in the days of Aesurus, the Aesurus who reigned from India to Ethiopia over 127 provinces, in those days when
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King Aesurus sat on his royal throne in Susa, in the capital, in the third year of his reign, he gave a feast for all his officials and servants, the army of Persia and Media, and the nobles and governors of the provinces were before him.
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While he showed the riches of his royal glory and the splendor and pomp of his greatness for many days, 180 days, and when these days were completed, the king gave for all the people present in Susa, the citadel, both great and small, a feast lasting for seven days in the court of the garden of the king's palace.
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There were white cotton curtains and violet hangings fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rods and marble pillars, and also couches of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother of pearl, and precious stones.
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Drinks were served in golden vessels, vessels of different kinds, and the royal wine was lavished according to the bounty of the king, and drinking was according to this edict.
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There is no compulsion, for the king had given orders to all the staff of his palace to do as each man desired.
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Queen Vashti also gave a feast for the women in the palace that belonged to King Aesurus. On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded
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Mehumon, Byztha, Harbona, Bygtha, Abagtha, Zether, and Karkis, fun names to say, the seven eunuchs who served in the presence of King Aesurus, to bring
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Queen Vashti before the king with her royal crown in order to show the peoples and the princes her beauty, for she was lovely to look at.
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But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king's command delivered by the eunuchs, and at this the king became enraged and his anger burned within him.
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Then the king said to the wise men who knew the times, for this was the king's procedure towards all who were versed in the law and judgment, the men next to him, more fun names, being
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Karshena, Shethar, Admetha, Tarshish, Merez, Marsena, and Memukon, the seven princes of Persia and Media who saw the king's face and sat first in the kingdom.
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According to the law, what is to be done to Queen Vashti because she has not performed the command of King Aesurus delivered by the eunuchs?
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Then Memukon said, in the presence of the king and the officials, not only against the king is
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Queen Vashti done wrong, but also against all the officials and all the peoples who are in all the provinces of King Aesurus.
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For the queen's behavior will be made known to all women, causing them to look at their husbands with contempt, since they will say,
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King Aesurus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, and she did not come. This very day, the noble women of Persia and Media who have heard of the queen's behavior will say the same to all the king's officials, and there will be contempt and wrath in plenty.
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If it pleased the king, let a royal order go out from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, so that it may not be repealed that Vashti is never again to come before King Aesurus, and let the king give her royal position to another who is better than she.
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So when the decree made by the king is proclaimed throughout all the kingdom, for it is vast, all women will give honor to their husbands, high and low alike.
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This advice pleased the king and the princes, and the king did as Memukon proposed. He sent letters to all the royal provinces, to every province in its own script, and to every people in its own language, that every man be master in his own household, and speak according to the language of his people.
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It always requires setting the stage, like where are we at when we open the book of Esther in the scope of God's history, the scope of what's going on.
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And so you see, I think it's kind of important, the Bible starts with this dude named Adam, and he was created by God, and Adam and Eve, and they sinned.
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And many years passed, that whole Noah thing happened, everybody familiar with Noah, okay, that whole thing happened, and then
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God appeared to Abraham, and when you think about the Old Testament, this is a key character, like understanding what
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God said, his appearance to Abraham, you have a stretch of people rebelling against God, and then
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Noah, and then God appears to this guy Abraham, and ends up changing his name to Abraham.
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And that's a key central piece to the understanding of the entirety of scripture, like what God is going to actually start the process of redemption through a man named
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Abraham. The writing, when I say redemption, I'm talking about the correcting of the broken relationship between all of humanity and God, that was broken by Adam and Eve.
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And ultimately he promised, God met with Abraham and promised to him three things, he said, if you follow me, and let me be your
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God, I will make you into a great nation, I will multiply your offspring, and you'll become this amazing, large nation.
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And not only that, but I'll give you a land, and he ends up, through the book of Joshua, which we studied last summer, we see the giving of the land, the land of Israel, to the people of Israel, who have multiplied from the seed of Abraham.
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But the last promise is, I will give you one of your offspring, who will become a blessing to all nations, and that concept, that one promise to Abraham, is what blossoms into the entire doctrine, the entire understanding of a
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Messiah who would come and save his people from their sins. Well, we live at a point in history where we can look back and see the
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Messiah, but sometimes I think when you're reading the Old Testament, you have to get in the mindset, in the framework of where they lived at that time.
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A forward look towards the Messiah, a forward hope, a forward anticipation of God providing a way of salvation for them.
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So fast forward a few hundred years, God did multiply the people of Abraham, he gave them a law, and he gave them the land of Israel.
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But the people rebelled against God, worshipped idols, even to the extent of sacrificing their own children on altars to demon gods, and things like that.
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But God was ever so patient with them. He followed through, however, eventually, on the promise that he would have them conquered if they rebelled against him in idolatry, and they broke that covenant, they broke that promise that we will have you as our
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God, and accept these promises that you have given to us. And they broke that covenant.
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They were exiled to Assyria and to Babylon, but Assyria and Babylon were eventually conquered by the
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Persians. That's where we're at in history. As God had promised, the people of Israel were allowed to return to their land, but many of them chose to stay on in Persia.
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It was the only life by this generation that they had ever known. And so some of them, in the face of going back and starting a new nation in Israel, and starting from scratch, and rebuilding the walls, and rebuilding the temple, that was a really formidable thought in their mind, giving up everything they had known in Persia to go back, and some of them chose to stay.
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And that's where we get to the point of the book of Esther, is we are looking, in the book of Esther, at the
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Jews who chose to stay in Persia. Now at the same time in history that all this is going on, when you think of the book of Esther, the same time
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Nehemiah is back in Israel building the walls. That's the time frame that we're looking at. The entire book of Ezra is happening at this time.
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The temple is being rebuilt in Jerusalem, and Jews are flooding back into the promised land, so to speak.
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So at this point in history of Esther, there is still one of the prophecies that was given to Abraham, one of the promises that God gave to him that remains unfulfilled.
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That one of the Jewish offspring, a child would be born to a Jew who was going to bless all nations, and all people, and salvation would be found in him.
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So they're awaiting that birth. And so that comes to an understanding of the entire book of Esther, because what we're going to see is we're going to see the entire
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Jewish nation in jeopardy. We're going to see all Jews at this time in history live within the bounds of the Persian Empire, and by halfway, two -thirds to three -quarters of the way through this book, you're going to find that every single
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Jew is under a death sentence. Every single Jew, two -thirds of the way through this book, is going to be killed if things don't change.
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Now would that be significant towards this promise? God says, I'm going to send my Messiah, he's going to be a Jew, he's going to be born of a
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Jew. If all the Jews are annihilated, is that going to be? Are you seeing a dilemma there? Anybody see a problem with that?
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So God is going to defend his people, and I think sometimes here in America, I could get off on a little bit of politicking here for just a second, but I think sometimes in America we have this mindset, because we look at the
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Old Testament, that God is for the Jews, and God is only for the Jews, and that he's still defending them today, just like he was back then, and there's a reason for God's defense of the
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Jews in the Old Testament. He's bringing his Messiah through their line. No Jews, no Messiah.
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Are you getting what I'm saying here? So there's a reason why we see that in the Old Testament. We can be confused in the day and age that we live at, well, could the
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Jews be wiped out or whatever, and all of those kinds of things, and we're not going to get into all of that. But at this point in history,
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God is going to defend his promise, because his Messiah is going to come through the
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Jews. God's reputation and his faithfulness rests on the outcome of the Book of Esther, and that's where our understanding of this as Christians, that's why
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I think Martin Luther was wrong, this is an imminent book about God's preservation of his promises to his people. That's what we're looking at in the
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Book of Esther. So right away in the book we meet this guy, King Ahasuerus. He's the young king over the
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Persian Empire. You can see him mentioned all throughout the text here. He came to power at the age of 32.
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How many of us is 32 past? 32 is past for me. Some of you are still on your way there.
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Some of you might be right spot on on 32, I don't know. Age 32, he rises to power, he is the leader of almost all of the known world, the date is 486
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B .C., those of you who are history buffs can write that down, 486 B .C., 35 years old when we get to this text because we find that three years into his reign this whole
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Vashti thing happens. So this incident happens three years into his reign, 35 years old, he ruled over an empire that extended from what's modern -day
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Pakistan, now when it says India and then it says Ethiopia, remember that those were not nations or countries with the same geopolitical boundaries as we have today, and really
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India is basically modern -day Pakistan in the terminology that's used here, and then all the way to southern
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Sudan, a pretty big territory stretching from kind of middle North Africa all the way over towards modern -day
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India. Is that pretty big, expansive reign? That's his area, it's broken down to 127 districts we see.
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Most of us would be satisfied to be the head of a department or of a corporation at age 35. This guy is the ruler of basically the known world.
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By the way, we have Ahasuerus, it's a Hebrew name, it's a Hebrew transliteration of the name
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Xerxes, this is like that Xerxes, again if you're into history, Xerxes I is this guy.
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It's pretty well documented, and Ahasuerus is the way that they would say his name. In the third year of his reign he holds this huge feast, and he's going to get in trouble with this feast.
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The feast, however, corresponds really interestingly with the timing of what is known in secular terms about his reign.
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So five years into his reign he's going to attack Greece. Now a military campaign in those days wasn't like a military campaign today.
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How many of you know we can launch airplanes and drop bombs on somebody within four hours, did you know that? Our bombers can reach just about any place on the face of this planet in four hours.
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You didn't do that in these times. So a military campaign usually had a huge build -up, massive time went into the campaign, getting your troops together, showing off your bravado and having people come through and tour the capital and all this stuff, and many people and scholars think that that's what's going on when we see this feast.
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He's getting prepared, he's getting his military prepared, he's ramping up the entire country for a huge military campaign to go attack
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Greece where they're going to get whipped and they're going to come back with their tail between their legs and that's what happened in history.
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He doesn't know that at the time. So five years into his reign, sorry, three years into his reign, he is ramping up for what's going to happen a couple years down the road where they're going to try to take it to Greece and Greece is going to in turn take it to them.
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So note in verse five, all of his officials, his servants, his army officials, nobles, people from all over the country, all over his nation, his empire are invited.
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That will make some sense for the need for a six -month feasting in verse four. If you look at it, it's 180 days feast, banquet.
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Does that sound like a long time to be eating? Okay, I think we can kind of misunderstand that. Even when
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I read it, I was like, 180 days, I circled that. I was like, question mark? For real? 180 days of feasting?
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But as I got thinking about it and as I studied and scholars understanding, if you have an empire that stretches all the way from India to Africa and you're inviting all of your governors and the leaders of that, how long is it going to take them to even get there?
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How are you going to coordinate all of them arriving at the same time? It's not going to happen. And so I think what you have here is very similar.
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When my wife and I were missionaries in England, we were there over what was called the Queen's Jubilee. It was her 50 years of reign, the
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Queen of England. And it was a full year, I would say, of festivities and banquets. And any given day during that entire year, there was some kind of a banquet, some kind of a feast held in honor of the
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Queen. That doesn't mean that they just sat, you know, for a whole year, we sat down and ate. So that's what's going on here.
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It's a six month festival that's going on. And it's going to culminate in seven specific days of feasting in the capital of Susa.
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But look at the pride and arrogance that's displayed in verse four. Look at the words that are used here.
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We're meant to just understand this King Xerxes a little bit better by what's said in verse four.
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While he showed the riches of his royal glory, and the splendor and pomp of his greatness for many days.
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Does that kind of look like he's got, does that boost his ego a little bit? Does that sound like he's a big deal?
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Everything in the text points towards Xerxes being a man of great power, great authority, and great glory.
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And that's going to prove to heighten the irony that we're about to find out that he's really a drunken party boy who doesn't even know how to care for his own wife.
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There's an irony that's meant to be in this text. And we're going to see all kinds of twists and turns in this book with intention.
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It's really well written. It's an amazing story. And things just twist and turn. And he's not quite what he appears to be in verse four.
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And we're going to find that out. So after 180 days of showing his own glory, he throws the finale in the courtyard of the palace for everyone present in Susa.
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He invites even the commoners to the seven -day festival or feastival,
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I guess. And violet and purple, you'll see different things that are mentioned here. Violet and purple were very expensive dyes.
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You notice that they're solid gold -framed furniture, solid silver frames on some furniture.
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Marble, precious stones were used to make mosaics for the pavement to walk underfoot. Do you use precious stones and mother -of -pearl to walk on?
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This is opulent, right? Everything here is meant to just speak of his immense wealth and means.
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The drinks were served in golden chalices, unique and different. Not like mass -manufactured gold cups, but these things, each one was unique, it says.
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This is a partay that's going on here. The wine flows freely, it says in the text.
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In verse 8, we find out that the king relaxed the rule. Is anybody else confused when you look at this rule in verse 8?
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There is no compulsion? Does that confuse anybody when it comes to drinking? But don't worry, the rule by the king is you're not compelled.
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It sounds like you're not compelled to drink, right? Well, actually, there was a rule in Persia that when the king drinks, you drink.
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If the king has a golden chalice in his hand, you do too.
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And when he drinks, you drink. And when he's not drinking, you don't drink. And he relaxed all of that rule and gave instructions to the servants, serve as people desire.
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If they want to drink, they can drink. If they don't want to drink, they don't need to drink. And so that's what's going on there in that rule. That was a little bit confusing to me.
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No limitation, and the booze is flown freely. Notice how understated then verse 9 is.
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What do you get up to verse 9? Do you get an idea of this opulent, amazing, decked out party?
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And then what do we find out about the ladies' party? Look at verse 9. Queen Vashti also gave a feast for the women in the palace that belonged to King Aesirs.
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Like, really? That's all the nod she gets for this party? She's having a party, he's having a party, and apparently his party was pumping.
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It's like the author says, oh, by the way, Queen Vashti had a little shindig, too. Probably, I mean,
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I'm picturing by the way that it's underplayed, it probably was one of those pampered chef things or one of those candlelight party dealios that you ladies do.
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You think that might have been it? I don't know. Buying and selling stuff. At this point, when
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Vashti is introduced, I think it would be valuable for us to take some time to think about how we are to think about these biblical characters as we get into the text.
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Because I think we can misunderstand things pretty quickly and fundamentally, and I think that some pastors have been guilty of this, too.
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What we want to do, and it's common and it's misguided a little bit, is we want to take and identify who is good in the text and who is bad in the text, and then say you need to be like the one who is good and not be like the one who is bad, and make it nice and black and white and cut and dried.
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Do you understand what I'm saying? We have a tendency to do that and be like, well, she's a good example and she's a bad example, and boom, we'll just sew this all up and this is nice and neat.
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But that's not the way real lives are, are they? Would you be willing to admit that maybe it's not so cut and dried in your own life?
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Maybe there's some good in there. Maybe there's some bad in there as well. I would love to be able to stand up and say, follow me and do what
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I do, but only what I'm letting you see me do. You know what
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I'm saying? Isn't that reality about us? And so we need to be very careful, because I think we're on very shaky ground if we attempt to draw our moral compass from the behavior of sinful people.
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And they're all sinful. Not just they are all sinful. We're all sinful. And so drawing our moral compass from people is not necessarily a great idea.
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Particularly regarding Vashti, she has been, depending on your view and your understanding of what she's about to do, she's actually in some circles been held up as a heroine, as this great woman who was principled, and yet she was historically vengeful according to documentation that is out there in history.
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I'm pretty convinced that most of us would not have liked her were we to meet her face to face.
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And most likely she wouldn't like us. We see many morally ambiguous decisions made throughout the book of Esther.
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Things that I don't believe Scripture is giving an endorsement to, but it's just the reality of what happened. And so we have this difference in Scripture between what
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I would call prescriptive on one hand. We do see Scripture telling you, go do this, right? Can you think of some examples like this?
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Or don't do this? Like don't murder? That's prescriptive. Don't murder. Everybody okay with that one? But then there's some things that we see that are descriptive.
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Where Scripture is just describing what happened. Like we know that Jacob married two women, right?
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Is that prescriptive or descriptive? Descriptive. Good. Okay, you guys got that one right.
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If you got it wrong, get a ticket, go to Utah. Okay. Gotta be careful here.
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That was not in my notes. I get in trouble when I get off my notes here. But yeah, so you get this prescriptive, descriptive thing.
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Are you getting that? You're understanding? And we see things, many, many things in the book of Esther that I think are not descriptive.
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The point of the story is really driving us towards an ultimate understanding that God is working behind the scenes.
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That is the overarching theme in all of these texts. God is working through sinful, corrupt humanness, through the messes of real everyday life, twists and turns and junk, and he is still able to accomplish.
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Even with as much as we can try to mess his plans up, he still is moving. There are occasions
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I might cast a moral judgment on the text. Like even just this issue of drunkenness, just real quick in the text here.
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You kind of look at it. It was prescriptive, descriptive. Okay, the dude's going to get drunk and he's going to make some bad decisions and kind of blow up his dignity and different things like that.
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But when it comes down to it, we also see things in Scripture in the New Testament about do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the
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Holy Spirit. So I think that there are times when you look at the behavior and you're able to filter it through the lens of other
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Scripture and see how behavior is not great. Do you see what I'm saying? So there's also a principle there of letting the lens of Scripture filter out what is good and bad by other
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Scripture. But check it out. So after a seven -day bender, verse 10 tells us that the king's heart was merry with wine.
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Okay, do you see that? I don't think it uses the word bender in there. Let's see, what verse is that?
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Verse 10, on the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine. He's intoxicated.
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Okay, that's what that text means. He's blitzed. He's three sheets to the wind. I was told this week that I'm not allowed to use the word crunked, okay, at this venture, because that is so totally two years ago.
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So I'm really grateful to have some younger guys around me to kind of crack me on things like that.
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But he commands these seven eunuchs. We're going to see eunuchs throughout the text, and I don't even want to go there.
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It's what you think happened to them. But he commands the seven eunuchs who serve in his presence to go get his queenie.
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He's paraded everything he owns before the people, and he has saved his best possession for last.
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And I really believe he thinks of it that way, thinks of her that way, his best possession for last.
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He wants her to come and be one more thing on display. Now, she was apparently attractive, and he's drunk, and he's like, bring out the queen.
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But verse 12, look at verse 12. Boom, she refused.
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Again, I want you to be careful. Be careful ascribing dignity and honor to her decision.
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Does the text give any? Does it say why she said no? Does it say that she morally had the upper ground, or boy, she just had such...
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I'd like to believe that it was her self -respect. Wouldn't you kind of like to believe that there's something about that in there?
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That there's something about self -respect or not wanting to be treated like a thing that causes her to say no? But it is quite likely, and some commentaries pointed this out and some scholars pointed that out, that to rise to the place of queen of Persia, she had probably likely done some undignified things to begin with.
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Don't quickly say Vashti is a heroine in the text. Well, the king flies into a drunken rage.
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He was not used to being told no. So he's on fire. And he's not only been told no, but he's been told no by his wife, and he's not only been told no by his wife, but in front of everyone, and not just in front of everyone, but in front of everyone who matters to him in the kingdom, and not just in front of everybody who matters to him in the kingdom, but in front of commoners, too.
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Pretty big deal. He's been told no in front of everybody at his big party.
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So the king gathers his advisors, makes this an issue of national concern. The king's dealing with this serves to show how inept he really is.
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So everything drives towards his inability. He's drunk. He's making bad decisions. It's meant to be comical in the way that things go down.
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His wife tells him no, and he proceeds to gather experts in the law to see if there's legal precedence for dealing with a wife who says no.
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Like, has this ever happened before? Like, what do we do? Get out the scrolls and the laws, man.
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We've got to sit around and study this. Has this ever happened? And it's like he calls out his advisors. Do you see the humor in it?
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It's meant to be kind of funny. One of these seven advisors, Memucan, speaks up and lets the king off the hook, agreeing with the king.
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Of course, if you want to keep your head, you're going to agree with the king. And this is a big deal, he says.
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Yeah, you're right. Oh, yeah, king, you're right. This is a really big deal. He's probably drunk, too. And he basically says, this has the potential to affect everybody in the entire
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Persian Empire. Verse 17 shows that these powerful men are fearful that their wives might begin to learn to say no, too.
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Like, oh no, what's going to happen? But at the end of verse 18 is a statement that really snaps me back to one significant reality that we as Christians in 2012 need to kind of take into account and think through.
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At the end of verse 18, it says this. Let me read the whole verse. Memucan is speaking. This very day, the noble women of Persian media who have heard of the queen's behavior will say the same to all the king's officials, and there will be contempt and wrath in plenty.
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Now, it's a little bit farcical that he's actually bringing this as a state, like a national issue, and he's going to bring the law to bear and all of these things.
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But there is a reality. Memucan is concerned of the effect that family breakdown will have on the nation as a whole.
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And there's some kernel of reality underlying that that I think we've allowed to slide in our culture where we live.
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The understanding that family and the values of the domestic quality of families matters to the security and the benefit and the blessing of our nation.
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Would you agree with that? Good families equal a healthy society. Bad families equal an unhealthy society.
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And so there's a reality here. Good domestic health is of great value to a country. The breakdown of family relationships is a danger to any society.
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It doesn't matter what it is. Memucan, I think, was rightly concerned about the breakdown of families, even if he was very misguided in the advice that he's about to give about how to avoid the slide.
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He's going to give some advice on how do we avoid this moral decline in families, what are we going to do, and so what's the solution to good marital relationships?
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Well, legislate it. When in doubt, make it a law. And I bet that helped.
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So we see the king ultimately issuing a law from personal conflict that in effect tells men to rule their families.
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Let each man be master of his household. Really? You're going to make a law like that and that's going to work?
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I like the advice better of the New Testament in the book of Ephesians, that every man should love his wife as Christ loved the church and laid his life down for her.
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I somehow think that that is going to go further towards a healthy society and healthy marriages and healthy families than let each man be the master of his household.
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How does that work? The king follows, of course, Memucan's advice. He was not much of an independent thinker and that's going to become a growing theme throughout the text.
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I get the impression that if he was filling out his bracket he would have Memucan fill it out for him. He doesn't really think on his own.
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But he ends up deposing the queen. Deposes her, banishes her from his presence.
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It's ironic, and I think it's intentionally ironic that the punishment fits the crime. Did you think about this?
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She refuses to come into his presence upon request so she will now never come into his presence.
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Period. Do you see the irony in the way that the punishment fits the crime on this? What most likely happens to Vashti, you watch the little cartoon, any of you ever seen a cartoon or whatever of the book of Esther or read a little children's story about her?
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She gets the boot out of the kingdom, right? That's very unlikely what happened to Vashti.
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What's most likely is that she got relegated to what would have been called the second harem. We're going to see the second harem occur later in the text.
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A group of women who have spent a night with the king in various settings and have now been relegated to a harem, a very unfortunate place where they are only either called up to the king or left alone.
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And that would be a very, very, very sad place for Vashti to end up. I'm sure she faced a lot of grief from the other ladies in that harem, and I'm sure it was not a pleasant existence, although she had food provided for her and things like that.
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The edict is sent out through the legendary Persian postal system. This was kind of an interesting thing.
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I mean, you've got an empire that stretches all the way from Africa to India. How is this going to get communicated?
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And really, can you communicate to that degree? 127 different districts and things like that. Our mail carrier's creed, actually, that we have in English that you're familiar with, at least probably part of it, is a direct translation from the
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Persian languages into English. I mean, we've taken it wholesale.
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It's the whole neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night. Any of you ever heard that before?
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That's Persian. It comes from this postal system that delivered this edict.
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It was legendary, and it was actually kind of like the father of all postal systems in the Persian empire.
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And it's funny that the king was afraid that this was going to get out to everyone, so he sends out a letter to all of his constituents, everybody in his entire kingdom, to the effect that this has happened.
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Do you see? I mean, he's drunk, okay? Because he's using his own postal system to disseminate his own inability to handle his own household.
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And there's a little bit of irony in that. The Persian empire is so large that even though it goes out in many languages, the text ends up with the injunction to make sure that this language, this edict is communicated even with the smaller local dialects and languages.
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So what sounds confusing, like if you read the very end, it sounds like he's commanding everybody to speak according to their own language, which would be weird because you probably naturally speak your own language.
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That every man be master in his own household and speak according to the language of his people. The thing would have come into a country, like, say,
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France, and one letter comes into the capital. I mean, you talk about these districts, 127 districts, just picture 127 countries in modern day.
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So it comes in, but then there's different, or in Spain might be a better example because how many of you know there's different dialects in Spain?
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So if it comes into Madrid and then it starts to be disseminated, he's saying make sure that this gets communicated in all of your local languages.
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Speak this edict out so it reaches the grassroots of every dialect and language. Does that make sense?
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So that's what's going on there. The text is a little bit hard to understand at the very end, but that's the gist.
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So King Xerxes gets drunk, calls for the queen to display her as a trophy. She says no, and he banishes her from his presence, ultimately sends out this edict to everyone saying men should be masters of their own homes, and ultimately he comes out of this looking like a drunken, power -hungry buffoon, really.
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Now, it would be easy to take this text as a case study for women's liberation, and believe me, it has been used that way.
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That's been one application of this down through history is moving in that direction. But in the context of the entire scope of scripture,
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I'm not convinced that that's the primary intention of this. That's not why God recorded this. It was primarily about women's liberation.
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I think the bigger application comes in showing that God uses the little things to accomplish his bigger purposes.
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And for this reason, I'm going to steal my own thunder every week. I think it's important that we understand the entirety of the book of Esther in order to apply these texts as we go along, because we don't even understand what the bigger picture really is.
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I have to spoil the ending of the story to get to the application of each text. You see, in just a couple of chapters, as I said earlier, a plot is going to be discovered to destroy the entire
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Jewish race, every single Jew under a death sentence, partway through this book.
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And God will, by that point, have promoted a Jewish woman in the empire to the position of queen by the time the plot unfolds.
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See how that's significant? God is working. Now, did the people in this story see it that way?
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Did they understand that God was working behind the scenes to pull Vashti off the throne and to raise up Esther so that when his people had a plot against them, there was a spokeswoman in the actual palace to thwart this plot against the
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Jewish people. Did Xerxes know any of that? You see, it's important that God isn't mentioned in the text because that's how they felt.
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That's how they experienced it. And isn't it often how we experience it? Isn't that how our lives go?
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God doesn't often come down and speak to us and tell us his plans for next week. Does he? That's how we experience real life.
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He doesn't write out on our agenda exactly how things are going to go and what he's going to be doing. Well, here's my agenda next week, says
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God. I would love to see that, but we don't get that. And they didn't then either. It is ironic.
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In verse 19, it mentions that Memuchon, not even speaking things he didn't even know, he says, look, find a better woman than Vashti to occupy the throne.
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And Esther will turn out to be that replacement. So what we see in our text is
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God orchestrating a stream of everyday messes to get the person he wants on the throne. Crash.
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See, God knew that was going to happen. So God can use the selfish rage of even a drunken king.
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But I think it's valuable that we realize that Vashti didn't have any sense of God's work. King Xerxes didn't have any sense that God was working in these events.
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Memuchon's silly advice is not prophecy. He didn't have an angel tell him what to say.
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And nobody in the text we saw prayed for wisdom. God is still at work.
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So a fundamental question I want all of us to consider is when it feels like God is absent, is he?
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When life delivers a huge pile of mess on our front door, is
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God caught off guard by that? I assure you that he's there.
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And he is working things out for his greater purpose, his good purposes. I take encouragement that God can use angry drunken kings to get his good will accomplished.
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And that gives me hope. He can use me. Not that I'm drunk.
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I can be angry at times, though. Also, lastly, I want to contrast the human pomp, the human glory, the human splendor that we see in the text to true glory.
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You see, we meet a king, a human king, a very powerful human king over a vast empire in our text.
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He throws a banquet, makes a fool of himself, loses his wife and some of his dignity. But compare that, compare that majesty, compare that kingliness to the king of all kings, to the
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Lord of lords, the one who possesses all majesty, the one who is worthy of all glory, worthy of all praise.
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Scripture speaks of him. His name is Jesus. And it speaks of him as providing a banquet for all who have bowed their knee before him, all who have submitted to his lordship and his leadership.
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And at that banquet, there will be no more pain, the text tells us. There will be no suffering. There will be no more sin.
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There will be no more death. And that party, that festival will not last seven days.
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That festival will not even be limited to 180 days. That festival, that glorious kingdom will go on forever and ever and ever and ever.