TiL- Esther 2:12-23

Welcome everyone. Thank you for watching. This is truth and love and we are so thankful that you Are choosing to spend time with us. Join us as we look at god's word. We want to link arms with you. To study god's word.

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All you have to do is type me. We'll see that and we'll pray for you then. But thank you for watching. I am blessed to be joined with dan again. I'm, so thankful that he's with me. He's the uh, He's a great help to me in explaining god's word and helping me understand god's word.

And I really appreciate his insights and what god is doing in his life and I appreciate his family. His wife and his children as they uh, allow him to spend time with us. And so pray pray for our families and pray for our ministries.

Um, dan, how you doing?

Good.

Good.

So.

The church was sick recently, huh? Yeah, our church was real sick this last week. Solid percentage of them, uh came down with uh, coronavirus. It looks like everyone's recovering, okay. Um, I don't want to speak for everyone.

It looks like everyone's recovering. Okay, so that's that's a good thing. So If y 'all could uh continue to pray for our church, uh, we'll we'll need it.

Yeah, and so you're involved with the church plant and also you have a a church that you had been attending right to.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, we're uh, we're members of the walton reform presbyterian church in walton, new york. That church is working to plant a church in oneonta new york about an hour or 45 minutes away from there.

Um, so we we live closer to the church plant. But we're we're members at the walton reform presbyterian church and we are uh helping plant the one in. Uh, in oneonta, um I don't really know what I do there as far as just help out and do what I can, you know, I don't have any official title or capacity or anything just.

Uh happy to be a part of it and see the work go forward.

All right, right. So, yeah, I would encourage you who are watching and listening pray for dan pray for his family and his church and the church plant. Uh with with the health issues with covet and and also the ministry that god is doing there moving forward.

Um, and I would encourage you to go.

Um.

Listen to dan and listen and or watch dan. Dan just posted a a video on truth and love network. Uh, he preached last sunday. So I would encourage you to go listen to dan sermon. I know that you will be encouraged By his sermon and i'm going to do the same thing tomorrow.

I thought I was going to listen to it tomorrow.

I've been trying to get you on some things. Endorse it before you listen to it. That may not be.

Dan I I trust you I trust you and I trust uh, your uh. How you handle the word of truth? So I can I I feel comfortable promoting you. Um, definitely definitely. Um, we spent a we spent a good bit of time together.

Um I know we were looking at it recently. Um, but we we're probably over a year now doing programs.

Yeah, I remember seeing stuff from from march of last year. Yeah, so and we didn't even celebrate an anniversary. So we need.

We need to do that.

Find some confetti. That's right.

Uh, so we're going to look at esther we're going to get back in the book of esther there's going to be a gap because Dan and I are going to be doing some other podcast coming up. Join us this thursday this this thursday is not going to be a Recording it's not going to be broadcasted publicly.

It's going to be on facebook facebook has video chat rooms. And so it's not going to be recorded not going to be broadcasted. So it's it's public but it's more private. We're not going to you know, share information out with the world.

Only those people who come in the pastor's panel is going to be there those those of us who can make it and we want to provide an opportunity for you to Um come to us with with minor counseling questions.

Questions about the bible questions about church, um things that you would like, um help with um answering uh, we will do the best that we can we want to Be a minister, um another source a trusted source for you so We've got that going on.

Dan and I are planning another interview. Dan and I are going to interview a brother who lives across the united states west of us. And I think it's going to be a really really good interview and more information to come on that and then we're going to restart The pastor's panel podcast next thursday.

The first thursday in may so I hope you will join us for that. So there will be a gap between uh, Another gap for dan and I looking at esther but tonight we hope to finish Esther chapter two. So if you have your bibles, uh, if I want to follow along with us, we're going to be in esther chapter two.

Uh starting in verse 12 trying to make our way to the end of verse 23 but before we do that just just some thoughts from Mine and our looking at esther. Um looking at esther in the context of the rest of scripture the whole of the bible the old testament, um.

You know if if you've been a christian any length of time. Uh, you know that esther is part of the old testament as part of the canon of scripture. And so we know that it's inspired by god. We know it's an important book um, but the way that i've always Known it to be handled.

Um and there's There's probably some background of reasoning for it. Um. One or two of those is that you know, the book of esther. We find out never mentions the name of god. Never uses a divine name and I think the only other book that that doesn't mention god's name.

Is the the song of songs or song of solomon? Um, and and I don't think um. For my studies, I don't think that esther even mentions the the law of god.

So.

So where does it fit in in in the whole context of Learning about god learning about israel learning about the old testament Pointing to jesus. Where does it fit in into this whole study in god's word and learning about him?

And since Some of these parts are missing for folks I think for some people it's It kind of floats around on its own. And so What I've. Just just my observation what folks have done with esther is.

Um.

Use it as a principle book an application book. So and and we can do that and we'll probably do some of that tonight is make application and look at the principles that we find in esther but that's. That's all it is just because it has no relationship with with anything else in the bible.

Um, and so we. There's many women's bible studies That that are drawn from esther. And and it's mostly, you know application devotional principles. But what we found out as we've been studying God's word we've been studying eschatology the study of in in things in times.

That.

Esther is a part of a group of books.

That.

Play a large role in the context of old testament. Um, old testament prophecy and so I think that needs to be made clear as we continue to look at esther. So it's not a book that is just floating around on its own um that we can the only really use for it that we have is principles and application but.

It it it has its place in the bible it has its place in the context of scripture. It has its place in eschatology of prophecy as well. So where do we get that? Well, dan and I has have done an episode previously.

I encourage you to go look it up on ezekiel 37 and 38 but uh, well. Let me list these these off. I mentioned ezekiel. Ezekiel talks about nations coming against. Um, israel.

Um.

And it also has a strong connection with esther in chapter 39, especially you have Daniel who talks about these the 70 years that's prophesied that they will be in exile and he's telling them this 70 years.

It's coming to an end and just like daniel said it ends. And then they start they are allowed to go back to jerusalem and haggai and zechariah you have the the Prophecy or the or not the prophecy, but the the command to to rebuild the temple.

You know, everybody's looking for a rebuilt temple. Well. It happened it was it was Commanded to rebuild it's prophesied that it will be rebuilt and it was rebuilt. And we find all these things from ezekiel daniel haggai and zechariah in ezra nehemiah and esther.

So those things that we see in ezekiel that were to be fulfilled. We don't take them out and throw them 2 000 3 000 4 000 years into the future because They were fulfilled and happened in esther in ezra in nehemiah.

So esther's group, uh, esther's group there in with ezra nehemiah as as fulfillment of prophecy dan, do you want to.

Say anything I did, uh, just in case anybody thought that you were uh out to lunch or didn't know what you were talking about. Um, the new testament says that that method of interpretation is 100 valid because.

That is the way that jesus read the old testament. How do we know that in the end of. Luke luke?

24.

27 he's he's Resurrected. He's walking down the road with what may have been his uncle. I'm, not really sure. Um the relation there maybe it may have been his uncle, but they didn't recognize him. They were talking he was talking to them about the events that happened.

He's like, why are you so slow? And then he says this Uh and beginning with moses and all the prophets he interpreted Uh to them in the scriptures the things concerning himself. So what is it that uh is being said in the old testament.

The old testament is speaking about.

Christ right.

So.

When we look at the prophecies when we look at the historical portions when we look at the different Laws and everything all of that in some way shape or form points to jesus christ so it doesn't necessarily point to a point Far off in our future.

But what it does point to is it points to the plan of god in jesus christ to bring salvation to mankind to redeem the world. And call the people to himself. So when you see esther you see a story that is just beautiful because even though the name of god isn't mentioned The people of god were in great peril about to be completely destroyed wiped off the face of the planet.

And that would have made god a liar because his covenant with them would have been broken. And yet, you know his name isn't mentioned. He used a young girl, which I know I just gave away the whole farm here.

But he used a young girl. Um, who's just being faithful in the place where she was called.

To.

Speak wisely and with boldness. True things. And god saved his people. He preserved them alive. He kept his covenant with them that they wouldn't be fully destroyed but that Through their bloodline the christ would come sins would be forgiven.

You know, jesus entered the went upon the cross entered the grave rose again walked down the road and told his uncle Hey guys, that whole old testament was just pointing to these events. You should understand this.

And then off to the races. Here we go the uh kingdom of god moving forward over the earth, uh, jesus telling us that you know, um, That we should pray that um God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Yeah, the whole wonderful beautiful solid picture of.

Um.

God's working and dealing in time with mankind mankind and Our sin and putting away putting it away.

Yeah.

And I think the point that I wanted to drive home too was instead of Listening to modern day prophets don't take. Don't take these old testament scriptures out of context and apply them in places that they weren't intended to be applied.

Read and understand these these books and these um, these these prophecies according to how The original audience would have understood the context. I mean. They would they knew about these nations. They knew about these people.

Uh.

Read it how jesus Would have read it. Read it how jesus intended for them to understand it. And how he wants he wants us to understand it the way he was trying to teach them to understand it that. It fits together.

It's it fulfills. It fulfills prophecy that was prophesied and then it ultimately like dan was telling us Points to him it points to jesus christ. And uh.

If if the if those points of prophecy or the old testament wouldn't have made sense to anyone until the 1800s bc or ad. Yeah. It's probably not a correct interpretation. It should have made sense to everyone along the way because god's not speaking of riddles and Mysteries and he's revealing himself to us.

He wants to be known. Yeah, he's speaking to us plainly.

Yeah, it's amazing when you let the text speak for itself and and you. Look at the greater context and see how it fits together. You see how plainly the text speaks up, you know for itself.

Yep.

And we don't have to pull things and make things up and make puzzle pieces fit together that don't necessarily fit together and we say all these things to be an encouragement to you to. You know. Wipe all the presuppositions off the table.

Well, except for jesus's lord. Keep that one.

Keep that one exactly. Let me phrase it this way. Um we all have. Um, many of us have been told and understand that We are influenced in how we interpret scripture. They call it our glasses our lenses.

And so we we're affected by that. But what we want to do is realize that We have them. And we don't want to be influenced by our our lenses. And what I mean by our lenses are our glasses is the culture that we were we grew up in um the um.

The the pastors preachers prophets that that we've listened to and have influenced us.

Um.

In many other ways that influence us our our background. Um our Even our race. You know our our people group culture. We we can be influenced in so many different ways in how we interpret scripture and and the point of it is Just to remember that we have those biases.

But we don't have to when we recognize that we have them and we can take those glasses off. You know wipe those things off the table. And just put the bible down on the table. And and let it speak for itself in in its plain.

Um how it wants to speak for itself. And I think that will be encouraging. Encouraging journey for you. It's been encouraging for me. Um as I began to Say I didn't understand things but now as i've let scripture speak to me and um Tell me what it says then.

As I begin to understand things it's been a great journey. So you're ready to jump into esther chapter two. Let's do it. All right.

Um.

Just a little bit of introduction on chapter two. Um. We we know that it's been. About two. Is it two or four years?

Um.

I think it's. I think it's two, right? Two-ish years. In chapter one, we learned that basti disobeyed the king. He he.

So.

Someone's heard to come to him. Uh, he wanted to show her off or whatever in front of all his guests. It is this huge party that went on forever and ever. And um, she didn't want to do it and she didn't so he said you're no longer queen anymore and so there was this span of time between That event.

And what we have here in chapter two because of verse 16 verse 16 kind of gives us a timetable. What we're looking at here. Um, and we know that there's a gap and we're looking at looking at history. We also know it within that gap uh, they The persian empire here, um, and the king they were fighting a battle that they lost they were fighting the greeks and They they lost that battle and they were they were seeing that Greece was becoming stronger and stronger as a nation and I I think Um without Putting too much into it or um, I can't think of the word that i'm looking for Speculating too much.

I think it may be one of the reasons behind some of the motivations of some of our characters seeing how um, these other nations like greece are becoming stronger and stronger and it may be some of the motivation of why they make The decisions or the reason they think the way they do but Obviously after this loss the king comes back and it says that he uh, his anger subsided so obviously he's pretty upset about this loss and To make and he begins to think about bastion.

She's not there. He's well, I guess he's wanting the comfort of his queen. She's not there. He remembers what happened. So he's um, given some.

Um.

Recommendation uh to someone's. Many many beautiful women and uh. What was your guess? On the number.

And it's just a complete guess uh, but you think if he's gonna pick a solid number, uh from From the community you'd think you know 20. But you don't know he's a king. I mean, maybe he wanted one for every day of the year and he was just gonna pick one from out of the year.

So, I don't know we're looking at 40 to 700 something uh different women over the course of a couple years, I mean really we don't know we're not told but um, it's feasible that somewhere in there maybe even more I don't know.

The dude was a Hound dog.

Well, and his kingdom stretched out pretty far. Oh, yeah. He had a pretty big kingdom.

Yeah, maybe maybe he hadn't tried any from that province over there and he heard some stuff about the beautiful woman over there. We'll bring some of those over. Yeah, and that's the thing when you have uh limitless power.

Yeah, um.

And you don't have many people who will say no to you the amount of evil that your heart can conceive and get away with.

Is.

Incredible.

Um.

The.

The I heard one that I forget from where but the difference between my heart and hitler's is resources. Um, he had the resources to allow his his the sinful inclinations of his heart to Run amok. He didn't have much resistance.

And what happened? Killed a lot of people a lot of Delving into witchcraft and we don't even know what else he was into.

Um.

But the difference between him and me is Resources. If I would have had that and not the restraining hand of god on my life I'd be right there in the same boat. Um, so yeah, we're looking at a guy who had looked like a Small amount of restriction and a lot of resources.

So we don't know how many women he had coming through but it could have been a lot. Yeah.

So we we know that part of the goal was comfort, you know. Making the king happy but also ultimately the goal that they wanted him to pick a queen. Um, and that's that's part of the process of drawing in all these um Virgins all these young women to the king.

So that's kind of where we are as we approach.

Um.

Verse 12 of chapter 2, uh, we know that. A jewish girl and her cousin.

Um.

Mordecai and esther Are are brought into the picture. Our our main characters are announced. And and so we begin to learn more about their story. So let me read uh, verses 12 through 18 for us and and dan's going to give us a little commentary.

Um now when the turn of each young lady came to Came into the king Ahasuerus After the end of her 12 months under the regulations for the women for the days of their beautification were completed as follows.

Six months with oil and myrrh and six months with spices and the cosmetic for women the young lady Would go into the king in this way. Anything that she desired was given to her to take with her from the harem to the king's palace.

In the evening she would go in and in the morning she would return to the second harem to the custody of seshgas The king's eunuch who was in charge of the concubines. She would not again go into the king unless the king delighted in her.

And she was summoned by name now with the turn of esther the daughter of abahel the uncle of mordecai Had taken her as his daughter Came to the king. She did not request anything except with hey guy. The king's eunuch who was in charge of the women advised and esther found favor in the eyes of all who saw her.

So esther was taken to king Ahasuerus To his royal palace in the 10th month, which is the month tibet. In the seventh year of his reign the king loved esther more than all the women. And she found favor and kindness with him More than all the virgins so that the so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of ashti.

Then the king gave her a great banquet esther's banquet for all his princes and his servants. He also made a holiday for the province provinces and gave gifts according to the king's bounty. I'll let you take it over.

Yeah, I was checking on something, um because Uh, the first few verses just kind of tell you what they were doing 12 through 14 just kind of moved the story forward. Esther was to go before the king. Uh, the king would have Basically a a lady per night brought to brought to him.

Um.

The understanding is that he would then sleep with them and then send them on their way. This is after they took a whole year to prepare themselves with with beauty. Um with you know, either oils or different perfumes or whatever which I mean if you think about it um can be kind of nerve-wracking if you take a whole year to make yourself beautiful and then you like develop a pimple like the night before.

You put in all that work and then. Here here's the plumage. Um, I don't know that would be that would be tough. Um, but the king Would then send uh the the lady away into his harem and he would never see her again speak to her again unless He said I remember that one.

What was her name? Then he'd call her by name. So if you couldn't remember her name she was out. Uh, but he would call her by name and then she would come back to him as a concubine not as a wife. Now here's where where it it changes for esther.

Um, and the this book of esther is in uh, the section of the old testament called the ketamine. Which is the wisdom? Um literature or the writings so you have some poetry.

Um.

Some a little bit of history. Um, it contains job psalms proverbs esther uh book of daniel, um. And some some other. Um books like that. So what you're looking for in in this book is a bit of wisdom some wisdom in this case in action because it's not a Prescriptive type of thing.

It's not telling you what you ought to believe. It's telling you how these events happen and the wisdom is really important because Esther does something brilliant here that I don't think the other girls did um a lot of times.

Uh people will think that they they know what they're doing. All right, i'm i'm gonna try to win the contest i'm gonna try to Become queen. No, not me personally. I'm not gonna be Got enough got enough men out there trying to be queens today that i'm not gonna be one of them.

Um, but these women were trying to trying to become queen. And so how do you win the contest? How do you? Get how do you. How do you get inside the head of a head and heart of a man that you've never met before and look at verse 15 it says When the turn came for esther of the daughter uh to come.

Um.

She asked for nothing. They were able to take anything from the harem to try to win the favor of the king. She asked for nothing except What hegai the king's eunuch who had in charge of the women advised.

In other words she didn't. She relied upon the wisdom of experts. Knew somebody who knew something about the king. This is what the king likes if you want to win. If you want to find the favor in the king's eyes.

If you want to get into his heart, this is what you need to take. This is what he likes.

Um.

I mean, it's kind of like going on a sales call and thinking. Hey, i'm just gonna go in there and womb with my personality uh, there's there's an episode of the office, um, the Folks to say I don't know if y 'all know the office.

Anyway, i'm going to tell you anyway. The sales staff pairs up into twos and they go out. Uh, one of the teams goes out and just I don't even think they actually make it to the sales call um another one uh is jim and dwight and they kind of do their old thing and then there's one where.

Uh phyllis this older lady and I can't remember, uh, maybe karen, uh, anyway, they go out but before they go phyllis takes her to a takes karen her partner to a uh beauty salon and they get some of the Worst makeovers i've ever seen.

I'm talking about big hair loud ugly makeup. Just hideous looking. And you can tell uh phyllis gets back in the car and karen's in the car. Phyllis is y 'all happy driving down the road and karen's over there like what is going on?

Why do I look like this? They go into the sales call. And they start talking they see then karen looks around she sees pictures of the family and phyllis Had been there before. Saw the pictures of his wife and daughters who all had that sort of makeover look as their everyday look.

Well, he dressed them up. Like the the women that he loved and sure enough they made the sale think about that when um Esther's going she never met this guy before. Yeah, let me listen to the people who know something.

Let me pay attention to those who are experts the people who know the king's heart. Let me listen to wise counsel. And then i'm gonna go in and i'm gonna woo the king now, of course. The heart of the king is like water in a pipe god directs it wherever he wants to go so god had a big hand in it, but part of god's hand I believe is causing Esther to do something incredibly wise to pay attention to somebody who knew what they were talking about which We should all do that.

Just makes sense. If you know somebody who's an actual expert in the field. Pay attention. I mean, obviously we check everything against the word of god, but God's given us pastors and preachers and wise men in order to Help us see and explain things that maybe we wouldn't have known on our own so I think it's amazing that um one of the things here in one of the writings one of the wisdom literatures is uh.

Somebody just doing something smart. You you got a game in front of you play the game, you know figure it out get your help where you can. It was just it just beautiful to me, I don't know.

Um.

And so we also we also found out that she's listening to the wisdom of mordecai. Yeah.

Um, so don't tell anybody you're a jew.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um.

So esther goes in With armed only with her wisdom and her good looks which she was. She's a beautiful woman and uh he said This one That's the one that I want. So she had something special going on. Because he could have he he could have could have and did have any woman that he wanted coming through his his room.

He got to her and she was something special. He immediately put the crown on her head Called her queen gave her all the rights and responsibilities of queen and then Uh moved on from there.

Um.

They had a little little party, uh, one of the good things that I don't know. It makes my conservative heart happy.

Um.

He granted a remission of taxes to the provinces. Hey, I just got married. Everybody have a tax break. Like that just sounds great. I i'm gonna pray for for joe biden tonight that he has Some great cause of celebration where he will cut all of our taxes.

That there's an acceptable form of celebration if we cut our taxes so that's.

One that sounds fantastic. I'm with you on that one. Absolutely.

Um, so that moves us forward to that part of the story that is how esther becomes queen in the house of A foreign land like she's she's there on exile um, which is incredible. She's there on exile and now she is Uh hanging out in the king's palace.

It almost makes me think of that proverb that says He probably did just that comment.

Um.

Yeah. He probably did.

Yeah.

Um.

There's.

Go ahead. Go ahead. There's a proverb that says that uh lizards.

Are.

Everywhere but. And they can be caught easily in the hand, but they're also in king's palaces. Um, you know jews were a dime a dozen and you could take one out whenever you wanted to but Hey, look, there's one sitting in the king's palace.

God's people are everywhere. I don't I doubt that's a Really good application of that proper, but it kind of fits.

Right.

Speaking of that topic of being impregnated, um, one of the things that that I well I guess it may be partly speculation or and maybe historic as well but you look at the um. The time that they had to um spend in that beautification that 12-month period of beautification um, one of the things that I read was that it was a time to Make sure that they weren't, you know going to have any children that weren't the kings that they were, you know, truly versions.

Um, Just making sure everything was legit on their end. That could have been part of the process. Um, and of course you were talking about the 12 months of beautification, uh, the same commentator also said that They probably didn't have the greatest.

Smell. So they spent a lot of time taking care of themselves a whole year to take the stank off. Yes.

Uh, somebody's gotta smell pretty bad, uh. Take the whole year. Oh goodness. But I mean that's I mean that could have been part of the reasoning behind. The 12 month, you know was the environment part of it and then making sure that you know.

The child wasn't going to you know. Have any children there. That wasn't his they were actually virgins.

So yeah, also you think that he's he thinks pretty highly of himself as a king. So need to make these Common folk worthy of uh being with the king. That's right. That's right. Yeah, probably a whole bunch of of all that worked in together.

Yeah, and you know another thing about this whole situation is.

Once once they become a part of this group of women. It wasn't just this this 12 month period that um, their life was put on pause.

Um.

They they went into to be with the king. He didn't like them enough for them to be queen. Um. They went into the like I said, they went. They went into the second harem, which is just for the concubines but.

They couldn't marry anyone else. Right. Um, they were his from then on. That was their life.