TiL- Esther 2:12-23

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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, 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 allow him to spend time with us.

And so pray for our families and pray for our ministries. Dan, how are you doing?

Good. Good. Good. So the church was sick recently, huh?

Yeah, our church was real sick this last week. Solid percentage of them came down with the coronavirus.

It looks like everyone's recovering. Okay. I don't want to speak for everyone, but it looks like everyone's recovering.

Okay. So that's, that's a good thing. So if y 'all could continue to pray for our church, we'll need it.

And so you're involved with the church plan and also you have a church that you had been attending, right?

Right. Yeah. We're, 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.

So we, we live closer to the church plant, but we're, we're members of the Walton Reform Presbyterian Church and we are helping plant the one in Oneonta.

I don't really know what I do there as far as help out and do what

I can. I don't have any official title or capacity or anything, just 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 with, with the health issues with COVID.

And also the ministry that God is doing there moving forward. And I would encourage you to go listen to Dan and listen and or watch

Dan. Dan just posted a video on Truth and Love Network. He preached last

Sunday. So I would encourage you to go listen to Dan's 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. Endorse it before you listen to it.

Dan, I trust you. I trust you and I trust your, how you handle the word of truth.

So I can, I feel comfortable promoting you. Definitely, definitely.

We spent a, we spent a good bit of time together. I know we were looking at it recently, but we were 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. 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 come to us with, with minor counseling questions, questions about the

Bible, questions about church, things that you would like help with answering.

We will do the best that we can. We want to be a minister, 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 another gap for Dan and I looking at Esther.

But tonight we hope to finish Esther chapter two. So if you have your Bibles, if you want to follow along with us, we're going to be in Esther chapter two, starting in verse 12, trying to make our way to the end of verse 23.

But before we do that, just some thoughts from mine and our looking at Esther, looking at Esther in the context of the rest of Scripture, the whole of the

Bible, the Old Testament. If you've been a Christian any length of time, you know that Esther is part of the

Old Testament, is part of the canon of Scripture. And so we know that it's inspired by God. We know it's an important book, but the way that I've always known it to be handled, and there's there's probably some background of reasoning for it.

One or two of those is that 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 doesn't mention God's name is the

Song of Songs or Song of Solomon. And I don't think, from my studies,

I don't think that Esther even mentions the law of God. So where does it fit 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 use it as a principle book, an application book.

So, 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 anything else in the

Bible. And so we, there's many women's Bible studies that are drawn from Esther, 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 things, in times, that Esther is a part of a group of books that play a large role in the context of Old Testament, 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, that we can, the only really use for it that we have is principles and application.

But 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 have done an episode previously.

I encourage you to go look it up on Ezekiel 37 and 38. But, well, let me list these off.

I mentioned Ezekiel. Ezekiel talks about nations coming against Israel.

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 command to rebuild the temple.

You know, everybody's looking for a rebuilt temple. Well, it happened. 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 there in with Ezra and Nehemiah as fulfillment of prophecy.

Dan, do you want to say anything? I did. Just in case anybody thought that you were out to lunch or didn't know what you were talking about.

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? The end of Luke, Luke 24, 27.

He's resurrected. He's walking down the road with what may have been his uncle. I'm not really sure the relation there.

Maybe it may have been his uncle, but they didn't recognize him. He was talking to them about the events that happened. He's like, why are you so slow?

And then he says this. And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in the scriptures, the things concerning himself.

So what is it that is being said in the Old Testament? The Old Testament is speaking about Christ.

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 who was 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. Jesus entered, went upon the cross, entered the grave, rose again, walked down the road and told his uncle,

Hey, guys, the whole Old Testament was just pointing to these events. You should understand this.

And then off to the races. Here we go. The kingdom of God moving forward over the earth.

Jesus telling us that we should pray that God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Yeah, the whole wonderful, beautiful, solid picture of God's working and dealing in time with mankind and our sin and putting it away.

Yeah. And I think the point that I wanted to drive home to 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 these these prophecies, according to how the original audience would have understood the context.

I mean. They were they knew about these nations, they knew about these people.

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 if those points of prophecy or the Old Testament wouldn't have made sense to anyone until the eighteen hundreds

B .C. or A .D. 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.

He's revealing himself to us. He wants to be known. He's speaking to us plainly.

It's amazing when you let the text speak for itself and you look at the greater context and see how it fits together.

You see how plainly the text speaks for itself. 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.

Except that Jesus is Lord. Keep that one. Keep that one. Exactly.

Let me phrase it this way. We all have 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, our glasses is the culture that we grew up in. The the pastors, preachers, prophets that that we've listened to and have influenced us in many other ways that influence us.

Our background, our. Even our race, you know, our people group culture, we we can be influenced in so many different ways in how we interpret scripture.

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 let it speak for itself in its plain.

How it wants to speak for itself. I think that will be an encouraging, encouraging journey for you.

It's been encouraging for me as I began to say I didn't understand things.

But now, as I've let scripture speak to me and 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. Just a little bit of introduction on chapter two.

We know that it's been about two. Is it two or four years? I think it's

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

He summoned her to come to him. He wanted to show her off or whatever in front of all his guests.

This huge party that went on forever and ever. And 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 of what we're looking at here.

And we know that there's a gap and we're looking at looking at history. We also know it within that gap that the

Persian Empire here and the king, they were fighting a battle that they lost.

They were fighting the Greeks and they lost that battle. And they were they were seeing that Greece was becoming stronger and stronger as a nation.

And I think without putting too much into it or 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 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 is anger subsided.

So obviously, he's pretty upset about this loss and to make and he begins to think about Vashti and she's not there.

He's I guess he's wanting the comfort of his queen. She's not there. He remembers what happened. So he's given some recommendation to someone's.

Many, many beautiful women. And what was your guess on the number?

It is just a complete guess. But you think if he's going to pick a solid number 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 going to pick one from out of the year.

So I don't know. We're looking at 40 to 700 something different women over the course of a couple of years.

I mean, really, we don't know. We're not told. But 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. And that's the thing.

When you have limitless power 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.

The the I heard one that I forget from where, but the difference between my heart and Hitler's is resources.

He had the resources to allow his his 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. 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.

So, yeah, we're looking at a guy who had 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.

And that's that's part of the process of drawing in all these virgins, all these young women to the king.

So that's kind of where we are as we approach verse 12 of chapter two.

We know that a Jewish girl and her cousin, Mordecai and Esther, are brought into the picture.

Our main characters are announced. And so we begin to learn more about their story.

So let me read verses 12 through 18 for us. And Dan's going to give us a little commentary.

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 Sheshgaz, 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, when 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 Hagar, 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 tenth month, which is the month

Tebeth, 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 he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.

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 provinces and gave gifts according to the king's bounty.

I'll let you take it over. Yeah, I was checking on something because the first few verses just kind of tell you what they were doing, 12 through 14, just kind of move the story forward.

Esther was to go before the king. The king would have basically a lady per night brought to him.

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 beauty, with either oils or different perfumes or whatever, which,

I mean, if you think about it, can be kind of nerve wracking if you take a whole year to make yourself beautiful and then you develop a pimple the night before.

I mean, you put in all that work and then here's the plumage. I don't know.

That would be tough. But the king would then send 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 he couldn't remember her name, she was out.

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 it changes for Esther. And this book of Esther is in the section of the

Old Testament called the Ketuvim, which is the wisdom literature or the writings.

So you have some poetry, a little bit of history.

It contains Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Esther, Book of Daniel, and some other books like that.

So what you're looking for 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.

A lot of times people will think that they know what they're doing. All right, I'm going to try to win the contest.

I'm going to try to become queen. Not me, personally. I'm not going to be a queen. I've got enough men out there trying to be queens today that I'm not going to be one of them.

But these women were trying to become queen. And so how do you win the contest?

How do you get inside the 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, the daughter, to come, 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

Haggai, the king's eunuch, who had in charge of the women, advised.

In other words, she relied upon the wisdom of experts. She 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. I mean, it's kind of like going on a sales call and thinking, hey,

I'm just going to go in there and womb with my personality. There's an episode of The Office. I don't know if you all know

The Office. I'm going to tell you anyway. The sales staff pairs up into twos and they go out. One of the teams goes out and just,

I don't even think they actually make it to the sales call. Another one is

Jim and Dwight, and they kind of do their old thing. And then there's one where Phyllis, this older lady, and I can't remember, maybe

Karen. Anyway, they go out. But before they go, Phyllis takes

Karen, her partner, to a 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 Phyllis gets back in the car, and Karen's in the car. Phyllis is 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.

Then Karen looks around, and 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.

He dressed them up like the women that he loved, and sure enough, they made the sale.

Think about that when Esther's going, she'd never met this guy before. 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 going to go in, and I'm going to 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.

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.

I think it's amazing that one of the things here in one of the writings, one of the wisdom literatures, is somebody just doing something smart.

You got a game in front of you, play the game. Figure it out. Get your help where you can. It was just beautiful to me.

We also found out that she's listening to the wisdom of Mordecai. Yeah. Don't tell anybody you're a

Jew. Esther goes in armed only with her wisdom and her good looks, which she was a beautiful woman.

He said, this one, that's the one that I want. She had something special going on because he could have and did have any woman that he wanted coming through 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 moved on from there.

One of the good things that makes my conservative heart happy, he granted a remission of taxes to the provinces.

Hey, I just got married. Everybody have a tax break. That just sounds great.

I'm going to pray for Joe Biden tonight that he has some great cause of celebration where he will cut all of our taxes.

That is an acceptable form of celebration is to cut our taxes. That sounds fantastic.

I'm with you on that one. Absolutely. That moves us forward to that part of the story.

That is how Esther becomes queen in the house of a foreign land. She's there on exile, which is incredible.

She's there on exile, and now she is hanging out in the king's palace.

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

He probably did. There's a proverb that says that lizards are everywhere.

They can be caught easily in the hand, but they're also in king's palaces. Jews were a dime a dozen, and you could take one out whenever you wanted to.

Hey, look, there's one sitting in the king's palace. God's people are everywhere. I doubt that's a really good application of that proverb, but it kind of fits.

Speaking of that topic of being impregnated, one of the things that I, well,

I guess it may be partly speculation and maybe historic as well, but you look at the time that they had to spend in that beautification, that 12 -month period of beautification.

One of the things that I read was that it was a time to make sure that they weren't going to have any children that weren't the king's, that they were truly virgins, just making sure everything was legit on their end.

That could have been part of the process. Of course, you were talking about the 12 months of beautification.

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. Somebody's got to smell pretty bad to take a whole year.

Oh, goodness. I mean, that could have been part of the reasoning behind the 12 months, was the environment part of it, and then making sure that the child wasn't going to have any children there that wasn't his, that they were actually virgins.

Also, you think that he thinks pretty highly of himself as a king, so you need to make these common folk worthy of being with the king.

That's right. Probably a whole bunch of all that worked in together. Another thing about this whole situation is once they become a part of this group of women, it wasn't just this 12 -month period that their life was put on pause.

They went into being with the king. He didn't like them enough for them to be queen.

Like I said, they went into the second harem, which is just the concubines, but they couldn't marry anyone else.

Right. They were his from then on. That was their life. Here goes thinking about it practically, thinking about principles, thinking about application.

I mean, it just causes me to think about my life and the tough situations that I go through.

And, you know, the pity parties that we have. And here in this day and time, their life was done.

Their life was over. They were his, period. Even if the king never called them back, they were his.

A lot to be thankful for.

So, verse 17 and 18, are you ready to move on to 19 through 23?

Yeah, let's do it. Okay, 19 through 23. When the virgins were gathered together the second time, then

Mordecai was sitting at the king's gate. Esther had not yet made known her kindred or her people, even as Mordecai had commanded her.

For Esther did what Mordecai told her, as she had done when under his care. In those days, while Mordecai was sitting at the king's gate,

Bikhtun and Teresh, two of the king's officials from those who guarded the door, became angry and sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus.

But the plot became known to Mordecai, and he told Queen Esther. And Esther informed the king in Mordecai's name.

I think that's important to remember. In Mordecai's name, she told him, giving him credit.

Now, when the plot was investigated and found to be so, they were both hanged on a gallows.

And it was written in the book of the Chronicles in the king's presence. Some dirty dealing over there.

Well, I thought it was interesting. It shows you a lot, really.

If you look at verse 19, it says, Now, when the virgins were gathered together the second time. Now, it doesn't say that his first queen was chosen by a gathering of young virgins together, and then he picked the best one.

In fact, this was a new idea once he put his queen away. So likely what you're seeing here is that the second time refers to a second round of young women that he had gathered together in order to basically add them to his list of concubines.

This is after Esther had become queen. So when you set the scene in your head, you have to think that Esther becoming queen, you'd think that she'd have some sort of special privilege that maybe the king would stop being so much of a hound dog.

He'd quit trying to bring in new wives, but he wasn't really satisfied.

His lust wasn't satiated. So what he was doing is he's just bringing in more and more women.

I mean, think of how that'd make Esther feel. It took a whole year to get ready. I did everything

I was supposed to. I listened. I was wise. Now I'm put over here with all these other ones. I've got some special privileges in name, but what do

I really have? All I do, I'm married to a guy who sleeps around.

He goes and finds other people to be with. He's kind of a sleazeball. So it's gotta be a tough situation knowing this is my life for the rest of my life.

This is my life. And Mordecai, his wonderful cousin who he raises, his own daughter, he's trying to take care of her.

She gets caught up in this. She gets put in as queen. And now this scumbag's up there treating my pride and joy, my young lady that I've raised up since she was young, he's treating her like that.

I don't know, man. These guys want to take him out. Maybe we'll let it slide.

I'll keep quiet about that. I'm not going to do it myself. Sorry, my computer went crazy.

No, I'm not going to write it myself, but I'll sign my name to it if you put it in front of me.

But Mordecai didn't do that. It looks like Mordecai had a fear of God in him that he knew exactly that God put kings in charge, that God put rulers on the throne.

And so a king was to be respected as a king, even if you couldn't respect the man as a man, even if he was a scumbag, sleazeball, cheated on your pride and joy baby girl over there.

Since he was a king, when he operated in the office of a king, you respected that kingship.

It was not going to be good to have a king of the country assassinated.

So while he personally may have wanted to see this, which we don't know, I mean, we have to look at the situation to read into it, but looking at that situation, he did what was proper and right.

There was a plot against the king and he said, Hey, Esther, these two guys down here, they're guarding the gate.

At some point, they're either going to let the gate fall or they're going to run up behind them.

Nobody's passing by and stick it, stick a knife in them or they're going to do something. They're going to kill the king.

And Esther said, Hey, my, my guy out here, Mordecai is sitting by the gate and he heard you guys over talking and they're going to try to kill you today, tomorrow, the next day, but they've got a plot against your life.

And he went and looked into it and they're like, yeah, we hate you. We want to kill you. And so he took those guys, got them out of there.

And Mordecai was he was held up as a, a upstanding man.

He like it was written down in the national history that this guy, Mordecai had foil a plot of assassination against the king.

Yeah. Mordecai was a good guy. All of this small bits of wisdom,

Favor and doing what's right would set them up for when

Haman comes along later, that the king would listen to them. Had they played things differently?

Had she not had the wisdom to listen to the king's unit, have Mordecai not paid attention to what these people were saying.

If he tried to take vengeance for himself or, or look out for, for Esther in a special way, they would not have been in the position that they were in later in the book in order to stop the plot of Haman to swipe out the

Jews. They did small, faithful things along the way and those small faithful things were the plan that God had to preserve and keep his covenant with those people that the

Messiah was going to come on down the line. That is, this is incredible.

There's just to watch the way that it all unfolds and to not have the name of God in the book, but to see

God's hand through it all working in a people is incredible. Yeah. Is it your understanding that Mordecai was a court official or had some respectable job in the court?

It's possible. Back in those times, the people who sat at the gate were generally the elders.

That's where you went. If you had either little disputes or, or little lawsuits, you'd go to the elders, the people who sat at the gate, those were the ones with wisdom.

Basically they'd made their fortune. They'd gone through all of their, their time doing all of their work and they'd gotten to a point where they could spend their day sitting at the gate and giving out wisdom.

So it's possible. It's not necessary. It's not a hundred percent, but it's highly likely that he was there as one of those people that people would come and give wisdom to that.

He was a, either a member of a low court or something like that. I mean, he may not have been, but it's very possible.

He may have just been hanging out there, listening to the court officials because he knew that he could maybe hear something from what was going on inside of inside of the palace.

Yeah. It doesn't say, but it's, it's likely. Right. It doesn't hurt a lot of good counsel.

Oh yeah. Yeah. And hurt a lot of things. Oh yeah. Being there. And, and I think it's, yeah,

I think it's worth giving him credit, you know, beyond, beyond what we see here in the taste is they were, they were exiles.

Him and his people, they were exiles. You know, they, they weren't, they weren't the top tier people group in society.

They were, they were exiles. And there was what we would call, I guess, anti -Semitism, you know, people who hated

Jews. And I think we'll, you know, we'll get to some of that in chapter three. They were, they were fortunate that God provided them the, the means to get back to Jerusalem that, you know, he kept his, kept his promise.

It was prophesied. He kept his promise. The 70 years was up. They, they were able to return, but, you know, this, this information that he was able to gain being in that position or at least place that he was in hearing, knowing, knowing their position in society, knowing how people felt about him, knowing the circumstances, you know,

I think obviously God was working in him using him, but, and God gave him wisdom in, in working with Esther, knowing the position that she could be in.

And, and of course, you know, he does honor the king here, but he also,

I would give him credit for, you know, seeing a bigger picture, understanding his, his situation, the, the place that his people held in society.

So what, what better way to, to maintain favor with the one who holds power than to save his life?

And to position his, you know, his cousin there is like you said, his the one he had raised, you know, helping her to be in that position where God could use her to preserve their people.

So it's, it's an amazing thing here that, that, that we see how God uses

Mordecai and Esther to, to save the king. And as Dan was mentioning,

I think it's, I think it's so important to hang onto this as we go into chapter three, the, the part about Esther gave him credit before the king.

And then as Dan was saying, he was counted as a good guy, a great guy.

He was written in the book of the chronicles and the, in the king's presence so that, you know, his name would be remembered for, for saving the king.

But yet that didn't seem to be good enough for what, what we're going to find out in, in chapter three, moving forward as we're new characters are entered into the scene.

And, and there, you know, as we remember that, sorry about that.

Somebody was wanting me to give a shout out and they may not be watching anymore. So if they are, we have a little, we have a little viewer, a little listener named

Sutton, and they wanted us to wave to Sutton. So hello Sutton. Thank you for watching.

Thank you for watching buddy. So keep that in mind.

We, we, we keep that in the back of our mind as we move forward in chapter three, we look at these new characters, we look at what happens and what doesn't happen.

For, for Mordecai, what happens to somebody else? Another reason that Mordecai could dislike the king, besides the fact that he was, you know, possibly hurting

Esther, you know, doing her dirty. Many reasons that he could have disliked the king or wanted, wanted him gone and allow these things to, to happen to him.

These plots to be fulfilled. And then we'll talk more about that in chapter three. Another reason why

Mordecai could have disliked the king, but yet he began, he continued to honor the king, of course, for God's, for God's purposes and God's glory.

And, you know, we, we talk about, I meant to mention this in the introduction, but when you hear a lot of people preach on or teach or read a book on, on Esther, there's doing the alliteration.

You hear a lot of people talk about, we, we see God's power. We see God's provision. We see God's protection.

And we're going to continue to talk about that, but we don't want to forget about the fourth

P prophecy. And that, that's what the whole big introduction was about is remembering prophecy and all this.

And, and not just, not just the power provision and protection, but the prophecy as well. I didn't want to,

I wanted to include that because I think it's so important that we see Esther and the

Bible and learn to read it in its context. So we have about nine more minutes.

Any, any last thoughts? And I think we kind of want to talk about maybe our approach as we look at, as we look at Esther and Mordecai as an example in, in our setting.

Yeah. So how can we, what can we see here for us? What we see here is, is a great example of how, of, of how

God uses, not uses, means determines, causes things to happen through the faithfulness of his people.

So the situation that they're in there, they have a wicked ruler who is ruling over the, the whole kingdom and what they, they have the opportunity to rebel.

They have an opportunity to do all sorts of wicked things that could have jumped in with the people who were trying to kill the

King. Esther could have, she could have tried to live a life of ease and just not even be attractive to the

King and just say, I'm just going to sit over here, get fed in the King's palace and sit back and relax for the rest of my life.

No. What a consolation prize. But instead she, she desired to do what was right.

She listened to Mordecai. She honored her, who was in that case acting as her father.

She was keeping the law of God. You also saw that Mordecai trusted in God's, he trusted that God put the right man in charge for whatever reason.

Xerxes was there and God had placed him there. He wasn't actively trying to kill them.

He wasn't committing genocide. There wasn't a, he was just a wicked guy. So what do you do in a situation like that, where there is a wicked ruler doing wicked things in, in your country?

And I mean, let's face it for like the last, I don't know, 220, whatever years we've had that here in America.

We, we had a people who, who came out with a declaration of independence at a constitution, a sign that has no mention of Christ being

Lord, which is unheard of in the Western world. It, America was the start of the march towards secularism.

Shoot me. We'll fight over that later, but, but every other country in the Western hemisphere who is under the influence of Christendom had named

Jesus Christ as Lord. And we decided to leave that out of our constitution. Get me started anyway.

So we've had wicked rulers over us. Those who did not call

Christ Lord, those who didn't rule and reign and lead in a way that they were supposed to. So what do we do in those situations?

Do we hear of a plot? No, maybe we're an actor in Washington, DC around 1860, something we decide we don't like what the president's doing.

Can we take a gun and walk up behind the president and shoot him in the back of the head? No, that is not our place.

Are we able to go into, into a crowded street and try to shoot a president in, in, in the chest or, or stand up on a grassy knoll and try to hit another one in a car.

We don't get into those, those theories, but no, we don't have the right to take those types of situations into our hand.

We have to remember that these people are placed there by God. That gives us two responsibilities.

One to honor them as leaders placed there by God.

And two, to preach to them, tell them, disciple them as God would have us to disciple all the nations.

So when we look at our president now, a president now has different sins than our previous president.

So what do we look at? We tell him abortion is wrong. It should not happen under any circumstances.

You are pressing a unhealthy, unnatural sexual ethic on the entirety of our country.

That is wrong and damaging to every individual that comes under its, its influence. We also have all sorts of stuff.

You're taxing the mess out of people. You've created a welfare state where you don't require people to work.

There's all sorts of stuff. We tell him what the way in which you are ruling and leading this country is wicked.

And then we pray for his, we pray for that wickedness to stop.

That means one of a couple things, either God destroys him or God destroys his old self.

Now, God will punish evil. He will punish it either eternally in the person who commits the wicked act, or he will punish it through or on the cross of Christ who took the sins of men to himself and then went into the, into the, onto the cross, pay for those sins, went into the grave and then rose again on the third day.

So we pray that justice would be meted out by God, either towards the ones who are doing wicked or towards, or in Christ as the work that he's already done on the cross.

So we can really take a lesson here from a Mordecai that we don't have a right to go out and act any old sort of way.

We do have to remember like, like David, he wasn't going to touch the one that God had appointed as King.

He wasn't going to kill Saul. In fact, he was going to show Saul, I'm not trying to kill you. He cut off a little piece of his thing and said,

Hey, look, I could have, I didn't stop trying to kill me here. But we, likewise, we need to preach to our government, tell them,

Hey, the, the rules and laws that you were putting forward are wicked.

And we need to stop that. And then we pray, preach, show them the gospel, show them the means of repentance and, and the salvation is found in Christ.

We have to remember that they are ministers.

It's Diakonos, the word ministers of God that hold the sword.

So they're going to be judged as ministers of God. We need to, a lot of them need some, need a hefty dose of forgiveness, or they're going to have a lot of stuff to answer to.

So I don't know how much compassion Mordecai had, but his actions were right in that, whether or not he had compassion, it shows that we should have compassion because we know the whole story behind it.

So these themes of struggle and God's sovereignty and his Lordship over all things, the most important thing to remember is

Christ's Lordship, his righteousness, and his law is righteous standard that he expects us to live up to.

Because if we take it upon ourselves to act where God has not asked us to act, we run the risk of running against God's law.

And when we do that, we're the ones who stand in need of forgiveness. Now there's always forgiveness in Christ, but like Paul said, should we go on sinning so that grace may abound?

Am I allowed to act in any old way that I think is right, just because there's grace there to cover my sin?

No, you shouldn't do that because that's stupid. You don't put the Lord your God to the test.

You don't go out there presuming upon the grace of God, because those who truly turn to God repent of their sin and turn from it, turn away from doing things their own way, and turn towards doing things

God's way, which would be to turn away from wickedness, trust in the law of God, trust in what he is doing, and then to move forward as a people who trust in Christ, who put aside their own wants and desires, knowing that perhaps they're wicked.

Perhaps we have some evil desires popping up. We need to control that and let

God do God things and let us do repentant, sinner, believer things, like listening to Christ and preaching the gospel and stepping in and telling people exactly what they need to hear, which is the truth of God and his power to forgive.

That's right. Just to jump in, one of the things that I see here too is, and I hope you will join us for our interview that I hope

Dan and I will be able to do the beginning of next week. One of the things that I see here that we'll touch on in the interview is the myth of neutrality.

And be sure to tune in on that interview so that we can learn more about the myth of neutrality.

But you have Mordecai here, and he's encouraging Esther.

He's right there alongside with her. But the mindset that we have for many years as the church, many years in America, is that the government is neutral.

They're going to leave us alone, and we'll just leave them alone, and we'll live happily ever after.

But that's not true, and we don't see that as an example.

We see here that Mordecai and Esther are encouraged. I mean, they look at prophecy fulfilled.

They see that God comes through, fulfills his promises. He said you will be in exile for 70 years.

They were in 70 years, and they were allowed to return. And so he's trusting in the sovereignty of God.

He's trusting in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's trusting in his sovereignty and saying, hey, look, we're going to, instead of running from this opportunity, we're going to trust in God and be a part of this and allow

God to use us in this platform, in this arena. And Esther's not the only place that we see that.

Who saved Moses besides God, besides Miriam and his mother?

He went to the princess of Pharaoh and was raised in the palace as a prince.

So we have Moses in that area, that platform, in a secular government.

You have Joseph, who became second in command in Potiphar's house,

Potiphar's property, and he also became high up in Egypt.

And so God does not tell us or does not give us examples of holding a neutral position where we live as the church and then we leave the government alone and they leave us alone and we just live happily ever after.

No, we see God, and then this goes back to eschatology, that we are to disciple the nations.

We are to preach to the nations. We are to teach them to observe all that Jesus commanded. And that's exactly what

Dan was talking about. Our president, our commissioners, all of our leaders, from smallest to greatest, that they are to observe all that Jesus has commanded us.

And we are to be in that realm and not hold this myth of separation of church and state.

But God is drawing all nations to himself and we are to be baptizing them and teaching them.

And so that's what I see there. And Dan, I'll give you the last word before you pray.

I just want to present the gospel before we head off here. And just like Mordecai, he's seen the prophecy and the fulfillment of God's promise to his people.

And we can do the same thing We can look at the sovereignty of God, view the prophecies because God has been so gracious and kind to us to give us his word, which for so many years, not everybody had the compilation of this book.

But we do. And it's so accessible. And we can see it for ourselves, all the promises of God, the prophecies about the

Messiah, and that Jesus fulfilled all of them. And the reason that he did was because God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son to those who could not and did not obey him and keep his commandments and keep his laws.

We broke them fiercely, each and every one of us.

And we needed someone outside of ourselves to come and rescue us and save us.

And God sent his one and only son who fulfilled the law, taught us what it really meant, lived out what it really meant, where we couldn't do that, so that we could obtain his righteousness so it could be given to us.

But then he also took on our unrighteousness on the cross and paid the penalty that we deserved because we deserve death on the cross and eternal hell.

But Jesus took that and was a sacrifice in our place so that we could live forever and be his child and be born again and be a part of his kingdom and not experience his wrath.

And that's cause for joy and excitement, and that's cause to live in gratitude and live for him daily.

So if you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, we would extend the invitation for you to repent of your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

Dan, I'll give you the last word, and if you would, pray for us as we close. Oh, we're good, let's pray.

All right, go ahead. Dear Heavenly Father, God, we thank you for giving us your word, for allowing us to have time to come together and talk about it, to look into it, and we pray that your spirit would work in us to understand it.

We pray that you would be honored and glorified through all of it and that you would lead us, each and every one of us, closer to you.

We pray that you would keep us all safe and direct us in the way we should go. We pray that you would grow your church and let us see your will done on earth as it is in heaven.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. Thank you guys for watching. Remember that Jesus is king.

Go live in the victory of Christ. Go speak with the authority of Christ and continue to go out and share the gospel of Christ.