TLN- Esther Chapter 2

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Good. Pretty good day. Good. I'm glad. Is there still any snow on the ground or is it all melted?

No, although it was snow when I came home tonight. It's not sticking.

It's around 36 degrees outside, so it's not going to stick, but it was falling out of the sky.

We've had some good windy days here lately. Of course, moving into that springtime, you've got some cooler mornings, cooler evenings, and it gets pretty warm during the day.

No, but yeah, not there. No, I think we're going to be in the mid forties.

We're all excited about it. We're breaking out shorts and everything. Nice. Well, I'm glad that you're with me and I really appreciate it.

We're going to continue to look at Esther, the book of Esther tonight. So I'm going to lead up to this question,

Dan, and I'd like for you to try to give me an answer for it. So why did we go to Esther?

We looked at Daniel, walked through the book of Daniel, walked through Zephaniah.

So why don't we go to Esther next? Well, I did have a request for that and I'm thankful for that request, but as we were looking at Daniel and looking at eschatology and we looked at Zephaniah and then we talked about how current issues are brought up because certain folks' eschatology leans toward looking at current events and how they relate to Bible prophecy.

And so we wanted to tackle that. And then that took us to Ezekiel, thinking about Russia and Israel and how they interpret

Ezekiel 38 and 39. But when we looked at Ezekiel, it brought up Haman.

And so when we're learning from scripture, interpreting scripture, what we want to do is let the scripture speak to us.

We want to interpret the unclear in light of the clear. We want to read it in its context, in its immediate context, in its greater context of scripture, in its cultural context, all those things.

We want to read it in context. For your intent, what did the author intend?

And of course we know that men penned it, but God is the author of scripture.

So what is God telling us? And we know that best by interpreting through the context.

Now, with that being said, we heard, we read, we studied about Haman in Ezekiel and we thought, well,

I've heard that name before. I've heard it brought up elsewhere. Where have I heard it?

And that brought us to the book of Esther. So here's kind of my question for you,

Dan, and how you would handle this situation. So we don't want to be guilty of what we may accuse other people of like eisegesis or holding on to our theology, holding on to our eschatology, holding on to whatever doctrine it may be and saying, this has been, you know,

I've learned this from tradition. I've learned it from a respected teacher and this is what I believe. So therefore

I'm going to go digging in scripture and say, oh, here's a proof text that will help support this doctrine that I hold to.

How can you and I studying the way we're studying tonight and other times, how can we avoid eisegesis, proof texting?

Is the way we're approaching scripture, in your opinion, the best way to approach scripture if we want to hear from God and what he has to say?

So, yes, I believe our way of approaching scripture is the best. Otherwise, I wouldn't do it this way.

And obviously I would think that everyone else, even if we disagree, would think that their way is the best way.

Otherwise they would do it a different way. Probably mine, but you know, but no, one of the reasons why we try to break stuff down and look at the grammar, the language, the historical context and everything else is because, oh, and the genre, that's a huge one, is because we want to be able to have a interpretive grid that we can approach the scripture with that's consistent from Genesis to Revelation.

It doesn't mean that we impose our grid upon scripture and force it to say things that it doesn't.

But we go to it to ask certain questions. Who was this written to?

Why was it written? What style was it written in? Was this written as history?

Was it written as a letter? Was this written as poetry? And we do all of those things in order to get a grasp of what was meant by the author, especially the

Holy Spirit, when this thing was written down, whatever book it may be. And depending on what type of literature it is, if it's poetry,

God is giving us, like the Book of Psalms. The Book of Psalms, God was giving us songs to sing.

It's the church's hymnal. Wonderful, beautiful. We can look into it knowing that the theology there is going to be put forward in a poetic manner.

So it's going to have, with Hebrew poetry, you look at it with parallelisms and all sorts of different stuff.

And it helps you understand exactly what the author of those poems or psalms is getting at.

Now, when you come to something like Esther, you come to it and it's supposed to be history.

So what to understand in history is that history is simply the outworking and outfolding of everything that God has decreed in eternity past.

We see that from Isaiah, especially in chapters 40 through 48. He talks about the false idols in those chapters.

He says, have them do some things to prove that they're gods, because God knows if there's one thing to be

God, it means that you know what's going on. He says, have them tell us what's coming up in the future.

Or even easier, or probably not easier, tell us what happened in the past and why it happened.

False gods can't do that. They don't know why. I mean, half the time we don't know why. We live through events like, why did this happen?

Well, we don't know because we didn't make it happen. God made it happen. So when we look at the events of historical books like Esther, we look at it to understand based upon why it was written, how it was written, and the manner in which it was written.

So, if we see things from other portions of the Bible that speak to it, maybe we see, okay, this happened about at this time, these events were happening here and here.

We can kind of pinpoint it on a timeline. Say, okay, God was doing this through this portion.

This is how Esther fits in, and then we can see how it affects the rest of what comes after.

If we do that, it's really hard to put yourself in there as one of the main interpretive factors.

It doesn't mean that you can't, but I mean, it's a lot harder to do. That means that your application has to be, well,

God was working in this way at this time for this purpose because he's revealed in his Word.

So because he has done that, I need to A, B, or C. I need to trust in God.

I need to trust in his covenant to keep his people. Part of this thing right here in Esther, why it's so important, and we'll get into this.

Haman comes up in the next couple of chapters, tries to destroy the Jews. If he does that, then God's promise of the

Messiah through the line of the Jews is wiped out. So what is one of these things? God keeping his promise to us through Esther.

So that's how we try to keep from isaging, try to not put ourselves directly into a story and say, okay, well, how is this about me?

Because really the story is not about us. And the story is better when it's not about us because it's about God and what

God is doing, because God is masterful in all that he does. Let's jump on into Esther chapter two.

I really appreciate that answer. And I hope that, well, I know that answer will help people who may be watching and listening because I would want folks to have confidence that we're attempting this with the right motives and we're trying to go in the right direction.

And secondly, I would want them to follow along that same path to have the right motivation and to take the right path in their interpretation and how they do it.

So that's the reasoning behind it. And that's why I wanted to bring it up as a confidence and as a, maybe it will help somebody else.

So last week, we looked at Esther chapter one, and what we saw there was an introduction about King, and I have such a hard time saying these names,

Ahasuerus. So he was a

Persian King, and it says it was from India to Ethiopia, 127 provinces. So this was a huge, huge territory that he ruled over.

And like it says, they were different provinces that, you know, they had their local leadership there, but he was over the whole thing.

And he had this grand party that went on for 180 days.

And he was showing off what a wonderful guy he is, how great he is, what wonderful things he has, and just showing off his greatness.

And then there at the end, he's wanting to show off that which he's not shown off yet.

Maybe he thought his greatest possession, and it would be his wife, his queen,

Queen Vashti. And Queen Vashti says, no, no, I'm not going. I'm not going into your presence.

We don't know what his motivation was. We don't know why he wanted her to come before him and his guests, you know, commentators, us.

It would just all be speculation of what his motivation was. It would be speculation on to say why she said no.

So it's kind of hard not to read into these things because we want to know so bad. What were the dynamics?

What was going on? Now, we do know from beginning of chapter two, that whatever reasons and motivations, when he got a chance to calm down, he was like, oh, snap,

I kind of messed up here, but I can't go back on it because the laws of the Medes and Persians can't be revoked.

Right. So whatever it was, we were right in the fact that he messed up.

Right. Yeah. He was not doing well. Yeah, exactly. Well, these wise men is people he sought wisdom from.

They're suggesting him was get rid of her. Why? Well, they may have had other motivations as well.

But the motivation that they give the king at this time was, well, if she can get away with it, our wives are going to get away with it.

And every wife in the 120 provinces is going to get away with it. And there's going to be this overturn of the family dynamic.

And we're going to lose our power over our wives, basically. Yeah. So the ruling.

Yeah. And then he comes back and he's sad that his wife's gone. And so what is every wise, stubborn, foolish, stubborn man do?

Go back to those same people who gave you bad advice the first time. And let's go get a second round of advice because clearly that'll make it better.

Right. Well, that's right. It makes no sense. But the reason he's in anguish, like you're talking about, is because their advice to him was, you know, get rid of her.

She's never allowed into your presence again. Right. And it seems that it seems that the real bad advice was the first bit of advice.

Hey, put her away. Put her away for good. And then they're like, you know, because of, you know, you messed up so much.

It looked like he caused himself trouble and then he tried to fix it and he fixed it wrong. And now there's more trouble.

And now he's going to get himself into a bigger heap. But when it all plays out, that big heap of trouble that he worked himself into with his own willful rebellion and sin actually worked out to the benefit of the

Jewish people because he wouldn't have fallen in love with the Jewish girl had he not been broken hearted over the loss of his

Persian queen. Absolutely. Yeah, that's information.

We see it hindsight 2020. We see the results. And based on the rest of scripture, we know that God is soft.

We know he's in control. And I guess that's how we view the situation without determining all the details ourselves.

We just know God is behind these things somehow. Right. Because of his promises.

So let's jump in. Let's jump in a chapter two. Let me pull it up here. Scroll on over here to the screen.

Let me read several verses and we'll talk about them together. After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus or Xerxes had subsided, he remembered

Vashti and what he had done and what had been decreed against her. And that's we know for sure, but she couldn't come back, whatever happened to her.

Right. And that decree was final. Verse two, then the king's attendants who served him said, let beautiful young virgins be sought for the king.

Let the king appoint overseers in all the provinces of his kingdom that they may gather every beautiful young virgin to the citadel of Susa, which is the capital to the heron into the custody of.

How would you say his name? Hey, a guy, the king's the guy, he got the king's eunuch who was in charge of the women.

Do what it's the guy, the eunuch, the eunuch guy who was in charge of the women and let cosmetics be given to them.

Probably most people are familiar with what a eunuch is. Then let verse four, then let the young ladies who pleases the king be queen in place of Vashti and the matter pleased the king and he did accordingly.

So give us your thoughts. What do you think about what's going on here?

Oh, it's a bunch of foolishness. I mean, really, but this is one of those things that it shows.

It kind of shows the foolishness of mankind in general, as we see someone with power who lost something, who's willing to do what it takes in order to regain what he's lost.

He lost a queen, so now he's going to take one. He's not going to take one from someone else.

He's going to go out and find a young unmarried woman, but she doesn't have a say in the matter. I'm sure that there would be a bunch of the young women out there who would, after desire for greed or whatever else, may say, hey,

I'm going to be queen. Fan me and let me have whatever

I want for the rest of my life. They may have been on board with it. This is a far cry from what marriage ought to picture, which is a loving, caring relationship between Christ and his church, between God and his covenant people.

So when you look here, he's looking to just run through a bunch of young women and then take his pick of which one he thinks is the best, and the rest of them can just hang out in his harem until he decides he has use for them again, which is not at all the picture that you see between Christ and his church.

So it's a king who made one foolish decision, who then made another, all while drinking and living a very pagan lifestyle.

Yeah, he's not very...

By the way, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, just to add this in to the introduction to chapter two, this was what we learned here.

Dan and I were trying to discuss earlier, three to four years maybe after the situation with Queen Vashti and what happened with the partying all, and it looks like there was an unsuccessful military attempt that he was trying.

So this is after this military invasion that he tried to do that was unsuccessful.

So now he's back, and I guess maybe they're wanting to try to make the king happy because he's sad about Vashti.

He's sad about the unsuccessful military invasion or whatever he tried to do.

So he's down in the dumps. You know what it sounds like? What's that? It sounds like he kicked his wife to the curb, probably made use of his harem, and then just went after fame and fortune with the army, got defeated, lost, and then came home and was going to pout about it.

And the one person he wanted to talk to about it, put his head on his wife's side and be like,

I'm trying to take over the world. It just didn't happen this time. And he couldn't.

He had that one moment where he was being vulnerable, needed his wife. He's like, I can't have her because I signed a decree that I can't go back on.

It's been four years. She's down the road, and she's probably mad at me still anyway. And he realized, man, what have

I done? He realized, Vashti, I've done terrible. And so his buddies are like, hey, we got girls over here who wants to get you one.

It just sounds like, I don't know, it sounds classless, which

I mean, really all sin is classless. And I was thinking on the similar lines that what you were talking about earlier, that this is not a good reflection of what

God calls the marriage to be. And I think this part could be devotional and applicable to us and encouragement to us because we got to remember

God's sovereignty and in God's sovereignty, he's doing things to keep his promises. But here,

God's not keeping his promises through the ideal woman marital candidate and the ideal male marital candidate that have the perfect ceremony and have the perfect marriage.

And so therefore, because of what they've done and their ability, then God fulfills his promises through their lineage.

That's not what we see going on here at all. I mean, this is a sinful pagan nation and God is, we don't want to speculate too much, but Esther and Mordecai, they possibly did some sketchy things.

They weren't perfect in all this. And so we have

God using this situation that we would determine not to be ideal to keep his promises, to be a blessing to many nations, to bring forth eventually the savior of the world.

And so therefore, he can use us. And despite of the situations that we're in, despite of who we are, despite the attacks or whatever's going on around us, he can use us because we can't be in and of ourselves lifted up to that ideal sanctified state.

So that we shouldn't have that mindset that we have to be perfect or achieve some kind of status before God will use us.

No, Jesus did that for us. And therefore in him,

God will use us for his purposes. And we just trust in him to do those things despite our circumstances.

Right. Like Jesus said, his will is going to be done so much that even if mankind won't do it, the rocks and the trees will cry out to God and praise him.

So yeah, I mean, a pagan can't help but do what

God has commanded him to do. Even if he's trying to be a wretch, he's going to do what

God's called him to do. So if anybody ever wonders if they're doing God's will, well, if you do it, it's

God's will in one sense. I mean, obviously he's given us his law and his law is our standard for righteousness.

That is his will that we be righteous. But as far as the actual playing out of events happens, you're always in God's will because God's will is decreative.

What he decrees happens. Even if his standards for what should take place are different.

Yeah. And I don't think it's wrong for us to talk about the differences in God's will, his prescriptive, his decreative will, because the

Bible describes his will in those terms, not those terms. Those are our terms to help understand how he defined himself.

Yeah. So somebody asked one time, how do I know I married the right person? And I think it was

John Piper, John McArthur, somebody like that, responded, look at the marriage certificate. Yeah.

That's how you know if you married the right person. All right. Let's jump on into verse five.

Verse five says, now there was at the citadel in Susa a Jew whose name was

Mordecai, the son of Jahar, the son of Shammai, and the son of Kish, a

Benjamite. Now I want to pause right there. Neither one of us, we talked about this, neither one of us know if this

Shammai mentioned is the same Shammai that people refer to when they talk about or they have a conversation about the house of Shammai versus the house of Hillel.

If anybody out there that maybe listened to this, if you know of some reference to tell us if this is, and we may have to look at dates.

I don't know if they know when the house of Shammai was around or not. I'm just curious to know if they're the same people, the same person or not.

So there would be some interesting things to look at if he was the same person.

Like I was telling Dan, Shammai probably would have had influence on Mordecai if it was the same guy, but we don't know.

So go ahead. I would venture to say it's probably not because those houses are generally thought of when you think of the rabbis.

The rabbis are usually thought of as taking off when folks came back from exile.

Okay. But who knows? I mean, maybe somebody thought he did cool stuff or maybe he had extra writings.

I really don't know. And you're probably right. That makes a lot of sense. So Shammai was the son of Kish of Benjamite.

We know who Benjamin is. Verse six, who had been taken into exile from Jerusalem with the captives who had been exiled with Jehoiakim, king of Judah, whom

Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon had exiled. So they're over here because of the Babylonian exile with Nebuchadnezzar.

And since then, they've been taken. Nebuchadnezzar was defeated and taken over by the

Persians, which reminds me, I wanted to make a correction from last week to the best of our ability.

We talked about who made the decree to let the people go back, the

Israelites go back to Judah or Judea. And we see that reference in Daniel chapter nine,

I think it's verse 25. Daniel's telling them to be looking for this decree that someone is going to set forth a decree to rebuild

Jerusalem, rebuild the temple. And we know that it could have been

Cyrus, the first emperor of Persia. We do know,

I'm pretty sure based on what you're telling me, Dan, that he at least allowed them to go back to Judea.

Well, he's the only one that had an actual decree, at least a decree that's recorded in the scripture.

And his was an actual decree, you know, signed, can't be reversed because of the law of the

Medes and the Persians that said anyone who wanted to go could go and leave and go back and help rebuild the temple, which the very first, most important part of the city would be the temple.

So I view that as the beginning of that prophecy in Daniel.

Yeah, I mean, it messes with the idea of 490 years, but we can explain that some other time.

Or we already have, we can always do it again if you're here. Yeah, we have looked at it before and I'll be happy to do it again.

Yeah, I found my book, it's still way on the bottom, but I can get to it. And Dan was right, you know, you have

Cyrus who made that decree and Ezra, prophet

Ezra, and a group of people did go back. And what we have here is

Mordecai, Esther, and this whole other community that stayed in Persia.

It's something Dan and I were talking about before. You can still speculate, why did they stay?

We don't know exactly. We don't want to condemn them or condone them without knowing exactly why they stayed.

But we do know that some left and some stayed. What were you going to say, Dan? Yeah, it could have been something greedy. Like he could have been in a place where he liked, you know,

I'm at the Capitol. It could have been, hey, we've just settled down here, we're going to serve God where we're at.

Or there was a part of the prophecy where he says, no, basically,

I'm not bringing you home right now. You better get comfortable where you're at, and I'll bless you where you're living.

I forget where that is. I think Jeremiah, but I could be wrong on that. But yeah, part of the prophecy given to the people who were in exile was get comfortable, you're going to be here a while.

You know, plant homes or build homes, plant vineyards, grow where you're at. And when the time comes, you'll be able to come home.

So perhaps they were on that train. They were still living there trying to grow their stuff, trying to, and then there was other people who were wanting to get back and rebuild the temple.

And it takes all kinds. Don't really know their motivation behind it because we're not told.

But yeah, it looked like there was people rebuilding the temple. And then

Esther and Mordecai were just kind of hanging out in the capital of Medo -Persia.

Right. And I think it's going to be honest about those things too, that there's certain things that we don't know.

So that if you do hear, you know, someone teaching, this is what was going on. And this is why they did this.

You can, you can remember back to this conversation. That's something that we don't know.

And so we don't want to speculate too much. All right. Verse seven, he was bringing up Hadassah, that is

Esther. So what's the difference there? Hadassah was her Hebrew name and Esther was her

Persian name? Perhaps. I really don't know. There's speculation on names in the

Bible, unless it really tells you, you

A lot of people like to say that he was Saul before his conversion and Paul afterwards.

But when you look back, there's nothing that actually changes his name in scripture except usage.

They start calling him Saul before they call him Paul afterwards. It's possible that he had both names from birth and that he started using one more frequently after his conversion or before.

So we don't really know. We don't know how Esther got her names. It doesn't really tell us.

So to say it's of one origin or another, we probably could say that. I haven't looked into it.

It's probably simple enough to do a little Google search or look it up on Logos or something. I knew

I'd seen it. Well, I knew I'd seen it because I read it a little bit earlier. And if this is right, this commentary says that her

Jewish name was Hadassah and it means myrtle. And then her

Persian name was Esther, which means star. Yeah, which could be. It could be something as serious as they had.

She had to use that name or she didn't, or they just used it when they're speaking a certain language or not.

Or, you know what I mean? Like I was in, was it French class in middle school?

We had to take a third of the major languages to people when we wanted to do. So when I was in French class, my name was

Guy because we got to pick our own names. So I don't know how serious the name thing is.

Well, it's interesting that you brought up, you know, depending on what language they used. Cause that was, that was part of the end of chapter one, chapter one, verse 22.

So he sent letters to all the king's provinces, to each province, according to its script and every people, according to their language, that every man should be the master of his own house.

And the one who the man should be the one who speaks in the language of his own people. So, yeah, language was definitely an interesting factor.

And you got her, her Persian name is Esther, which is obviously, you know, knowing a little bit of the story is obviously the name that she used or there wouldn't be, there wouldn't have been any deception with her and the king.

So his, his uncle's daughter, and this was

Mordecai, Mordecai's uncle's daughter, right? Cause Mordecai and Esther were cousins. If you, if you do the math on that, they're cousins.

I had to do it. I was like, wait, which one of my uncle, my uncle has a daughter. What's my uncle's daughter. That's my cousin.

Okay. For she had no, no father and mother. I guess they had died.

Now the young lady was beautiful of form and face. And when her father and her mother died, yeah.

Let's just keep reading a little bit. It's there. That shows my ignorance.

Mordecai took her as her, as his own daughter. All right. And, and that means a little bit more in an ancient patriarchal household because it wasn't so it was, it was his cousin.

So we don't know how old they were or a difference in age between them. It may have been that they were both, you know, roughly the same age, but he had a household.

He was able to take care for his, his household. We do know that he was wise. He kind of hung out at the, the

Gates, the Gates is a place where judgment and rulings are, are just where the who's who of the town would meet.

So he we don't know if there was a big age difference, a little age difference.

We just don't know. But he took her and treated her as a daughter because otherwise she would have been defenseless in a foreign land.

And it would have been, it would have not been, it wouldn't have gone well for her. She probably would have been sold into slavery or abused, probably ended up dead at some point.

So he took her under her, under his care, treated her like a daughter. If she was to be married, obviously to other than the

Persian King, he would get the dowry, the bride price, all of that.

And she would in turn receive protection and companionship as from him as a father type figure.

What was the, what's the name of what happened with, with Ruth and Naomi? A similar to what happened.

Oh man, it left me. Redemption.

There's a Kinsman Redeemer, but it's a certain type of marriage. That's slightly different.

This is more like an adoption. Right. Okay. Yeah. Cause, cause what that is that, that the idea behind that is if like, say, say you have a brother and your brother dies, but his wife hasn't had any children with them.

You take his wife to be your own and you have children. So that way the first one takes on your brother's name and lineage and takes all of your brother's stuff and you restart your brother's household basically.

And that was done because they were given certain things, land and all that at the when they went into the land in the first place.

So the land was already given up between the families. So instead of your family losing that piece of land or being sold off or whatever, you continue your brother's family line.

So his family could keep their property. So that's, that's slightly different than what's happening here.

He's just looking after a family member, which is still good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, from my understanding, there was still that admonition to them to, you know, take in their family.

Oh yeah. Yeah. That in fact, that's one of the major aspects of the commandment on your father and mother.

It's not just to say, Hey mom and dad, y 'all are good. Thumbs up. Go team. It's actually taking care of your parents and honoring them as your parents.

So you do that through your relationship throughout their life. Then at the end of end of life, if they're needing somewhere to stay or they need anything, you are to provide for them in their old age.

That's part of the commandment for honoring your father and mother. All right.

Esther two, chapter two, verse eight. So it came about when the command and decree of the

King were heard, and many young ladies were gathered to the citadel of Susa into custody of Hegai, that Esther was taken to the

King's palace into the custody of Hegai. He was in charge of the women.

Verse nine. Now the young lady pleased him and found favor with him. So he quickly provided her with her cosmetics and food, gave her seven choice maids from the

King's palace and transferred her and her maids to the best place in the

Herald. Have you ever seen, have you ever seen one of those reality shows where the people are competing against each other and they're backstage talking to them and then they bring them out and they compete.

Imagine the host going out there and walking down the line at American Idol talking to everybody and finding somebody that they really liked, pulling them aside, giving them the best.

Here we're going to give you a new wardrobe. You can stay over here. You don't have to wait in line with the rest of the folks.

We're going to give you a vocal coach while you're waiting and all because you're my favorite. I'm going to tip the scales in your favor so that way you win.

This eunuch is doing that for Esther here. He's like, Oh girl, you're pretty.

We need to make you queen. You're really nice. I like you. Come on. You're going to stay over here on the nice suite.

We're going to get you some maids to help you out. They're going to make you the most beautiful woman to ever walk the face of the earth.

And you're going to win this thing. You're going to be queen one day that this was what this eunuch was doing for.

He was rigging the election, so to speak. It already said in verse seven that she was a young lady who was beautiful in form and face.

She was already good and he was like, we're not taking any chances. You're going to win. With a combination of both, we know for sure that whatever their standards were, she met them and exceeded.

She exceeded them greatly. So this is what's she's making everybody jealous right now.

She's getting some good treatment. Verse 10, Esther did not make known her people or her kindred for Mordecai and instructed her that she should not make them known.

Every day Mordecai walked back and forth in front of the court of the harem to learn how

Esther was and how she fared. So here we go again.

We um, yeah, we'll stop right there for a second. We could throw a lot of speculation into what's going on here.

We could speculate on what's Mordecai doing? How is he?

We know he's taking advantage of the situation. He's taking advantage of Esther.

But the ins and outs of everything that's going on. When did

Mordecai, you know, people take liberties when they make movies.

And I watched a movie on this and you know, getting from, she's a cousin that's now being taken care of by Mordecai to, you know, where we are now.

We don't know exactly how we get there, but I mean, they are cousins and he really must, he must have at least, at least we know this, that he um, he really cared for her.

I mean, not, not every cousin would, would go pace back and forth just because he's concerned about her welfare.

Was it more than that? Did he, did he have an agenda? I'm not sure. Eventually we get to that point where he used her position for his advantage and the advantage of his people.

And, you know, we have that verse for such a time as this. But here we see that Mordecai cares, cares about her welfare, which is pretty decent of him.

Any thoughts on that? No. Okay. You said it pretty good. Well, in these two verses right here,

I feel like, and of course, you know, it'll come up, it'll come up later and we can reference this if you think this is a good time to talk about it.

And we don't have to spend an extended time on this issue, but it definitely comes up.

This is one of the places in scripture that this issue comes up. The issue of when is it okay to, in other words, be deceptive or lie?

Because, I mean, you have here in verse 10,

Esther did not make known her people or her kindred. So there was intention in being deceptive of who she was.

And she did it because Mordecai had instructed her that she should not make them known.

It sounds like a self -preservation move.

They were, obviously, they were hated people anyway. Mordecai would use an instance in order to go after them anyway, a little bit later.

So it sounds to me like who would want to have a queen be like, say

America went on a rampage and we took over half of South America.

And then the president got dictatorial powers and was going to take a queen.

And he took the queen, not from one of the 50 states of America, but from Columbia.

He went down to Columbia, found a woman, brought her back, made her second in command of the whole country.

We'd kind of be upset. Hey, we have our own country here. Those people are second class.

Why are you making them second in command? Why are you making that one queen? I think it's kind of the same thing here.

I mean, why would you want this foreign girl to be second in command here at our palace?

Mordecai is saying, hey, we're going to take you in there and you have a chance to be queen. So just be quiet about who you are and just let your beauty do the talking.

That's right. That's right. So in that scenario, because like you said,

Mordecai probably was concerned, you know, speculation about other people's treatment of him and his people.

But it hadn't got to the point yet in the story where there was this direct known plan to eradicate his people.

So we hadn't got there yet. But there had to be some sort of something there where he was wondering about it because he didn't just go back and forth to check on Esther like, oh, are they giving you your correct portion of pudding today?

Right. He was going back and forth like, hey, are you still all right in there? Like, have they done something to you?

Are you still around? Should I skedaddle? You know, what is going on here?

So he had some he was nervous about her being there, which makes me think that there was it was probably a self -preservation move.

I mean, he could have been walking back and forth, having delusions of being the best spy in the world.

And, you know, I'm going to tell on which I don't know if we're going to get to it tonight because it's getting kind of late.

But later on the same chapter, two people are going to try to kill the king and he's going to let him know about it.

Hey, maybe that's my plan. Maybe I want to be in there. So let me get on the king's good side.

Don't be put. No, my girl right next to him have his ear all the time.

Let me look in the king's eye by uncovering the plot to kill him. It doesn't say it doesn't seem like that's the issue, but.

Yeah, I mean, what we do know is that. It was in her best interest not to disclose her nationality at that point.

Right. Well, like you said, I think this is a good time to wrap it up. So I wanted to I wanted to bring forth where I was going with this issue of lying and being deceptive.

And I'm not sure if you had a chance to watch Douglas Wilson's video not too long ago on the ethics of war.

It was just 10, 10 or so minutes long. It's not very long.

It's one of his blog posts, but he brought it up because of what we're dealing with.

When is it OK to do this or do that? Because, you know, your conscience is telling you his his example was your you know, your conscience is telling you not to get the vaccine.

So how do you live in light of certain mandates that or certain things that you can or can't do because you you didn't get the vaccine?

And, you know, to his two examples were going to Disneyland or not going to Disneyland because of a vaccine versus, you know, crossing state lines past the checkpoint because you did or didn't get a vaccine to bring supplies to, you know, persecuting

Christians or something. Mm hmm. So those are his two scenarios. And why is that an issue?

Why is that subject brought up? Well, because you have places in scripture, not just here in Esther, but you have places in the scripture like the the

Hebrew, Hebrew women in in Moses, when

Moses was born, you had them being deceptive so that their babies were not killed.

And I meant to take notes on this, but but Douglas Wilson says somewhere in the

New Testament. They're they're they're not condemned or camera, how you put it, but God honored it.

And then you have Rahab with not telling the soldiers where the

Israelites were in her home or that they were even there. And so she was she was deceptive in that point.

And I think it maybe was James that didn't condemn her actions there.

But there again, I can't remember the words they used, but it was I don't want to say condone, but she was she was honored by God.

And she was she was a Hebrew Hebrews. OK, so the other one must have been in James. The Hebrew women must have been in James.

And it was one or the other. But but God honored those situations where they they were deceptive.

And you think to yourself, well, how do we deal with this? Because we we have

New Testament passages that says all liars will have their part in a lake of fire.

You have the New Testament telling us that that lying lips are an abomination to the

Lord, that we're not to bear false witness, we're not to lie to one another.

And when when this conversation is brought up, you know, you hear people talk about how, you know, a white lie is no different than any other kind of lie.

There's no variations or degrees between lies. So what do we do with that? You have

God who honored people who were, you know, deceptive and lied, but then we're not supposed to lie because all liars have their part in a lake of fire.

So this is kind of how Wilson dealt with that. And I thought this was a good time to talk about it because we have

Esther being deceptive to a degree. And this, you know, she continues this line of deception.

So we think about other other circumstances in the

Bible where you have a distinction being made between murder and killing.

So there's a prohibition against murder, you know, the murder of the innocent or killing your neighbor, killing your brother, whatever.

But then the government bearing the sword, you know, ending the life of a person is justified or a soldier doing it is justified.

So we too make that distinction between two different kinds of ending one's life.

So he says, why can't we do that here? So in warfare, what in essence is camouflage?

It's deception. You're deceiving your enemy so that they can't see you. You are pretending to be something that you're not fishing.

Yeah, that's a delicious warm and it's not. That's right.

That's right. And so in this arena of war, you have these times where being deceptive is, you know, not condemned.

It's not wrong to do that because it's a different category of lying, just like ending someone's life and murdering, killing.

There's a distinction there. And so there's a distinction here. It's the it's the perseverance of life.

It's the persuasion of a promise here. And going back to Wilson's example of Disneyland and, you know, crossing a border, he was like, you know, if if you if you say or using a fraudulent vaccination card to get into Disney World is like you can't do that just for your entertainment.

He said, you know, that would be like but. To use a fraudulent vaccination card to cross the border, to go for certain, you know, certain reasons, it would be justified.

Right. Yeah, I think the issue is. It's the difference between doing something for your own reasons or.

Or something wicked, if you're only but if you're doing something that's actively inherently righteous, that's just taking care of the poor, caring for other people, preserving your own life, which would be dealing directly with the

Sixth Commandment, doing a murder, not to get murdered. The same same general idea there.

Yeah. The difference is, is it's really motivation. It is what you're doing is someone actively hindering you from doing what is good and righteous.

Yeah. You know what God would have you to do. And if the answer is yes, then that person is an obstacle to what should be done, which is righteousness.

And we're supposed to overcome those obstacles. Yeah. And it doesn't give us a license to go out and do anything we want.

Right. Because still at the same time, we have not been given the power of murder.

We are not allowed to take life unless we have we fall under very specific parameters given by God, which we don't have on a regular basis.

Right. If we're protecting our family, that's one thing. If we're it gets stickier as you go.

But we generally don't have that right to take life. But if if I've got neighbors at the end of the street and they need something that I have or say their child is going to die and I've got a blockade and I need to walk down there and I know that they're not going to let

Dan through. My name's Frederick. I don't even care. Like I'm not going to let the baby die.

Right. Right. I think that's that's the difference between whether it's right or wrong is is the the intention, because there's there's other things where that were an action.

A certain action is either evil or righteous, depending on the situation and the motivation behind it.

I think about sex, for instance, in the context of a marriage between one man and one woman.

It's a beautiful, wonderful, God honoring thing. If you're going off with every Tom, Dick and Harry wherever,

God has said that's inherently wicked because sex was created for one specific thing.

So it's like the taking of life, engaging in sex or telling the truth or not.

There are certain instances where a certain action could be either righteous or wicked, depending on the context in which it's.

In which it's done, because really, when you're the example of me going down the to save a baby's life, being hindered by someone, the real thing

I'm doing is not lying to the blockade. The real thing that I'm doing is

I'm going to help save a baby's life. That's what

I'm doing in getting there. And, you know, if I'm not going to be able to get there, I can't help.

You know, you try to explain to an overzealous six year old who learned a couple of kicks, who says, dad, if somebody breaks into the house,

I'm going to beat them up. No, buddy, you're not. You're six. The best thing you can do is grab your brother and sister and hide.

Why, dad? I want to help because you can't help anybody if you're dead. They'll go and slap you around.

You're six. I cannot save that baby's life if I tell them my right name.

So my name is whatever you want it to be. And oh,

I just lost my train of thought. So it's permissible that I mean, that's kind of what we're gathering here, that, you know, in certain circumstances is permissible, but we don't want to be we don't want to fall into the camp of the grace abusers.

You know, we're saying we have eternal security and some people want to turn that into being a grace abuser or accusing other people being grace abusers and just sending do whatever you want to do.

Just because we were gathering and putting these things together and saying, it's probably permissible in certain circumstances.

That's the key. There's certain circumstances, right? You know, and those certain circumstances are rare.

Yeah. And it should make you feel uncomfortable to actually go through with it. Another, another analogy, another situation that I thought about as you were explaining that is the where Jesus tells us to if you get slapped on the cheek, turn and give him the other one to slap.

But that's that's talking about, you know, insults, you know, a personal, you know, emotional verbal type attack.

It's not talking about protecting your life. You know, those are two different circumstances.

So that's kind of what we're the direction that we're going with this sometimes permissible to be deceptive.

Right. So if you have any questions about that, let's let's talk about it further.

We're going to wrap things up tonight and Esther chapter two, verse, verse 10, 11, what looks like we'll start in verse 12 next next time that we're together.

If you do not know Jesus, Jesus is the reason why God is intervening here.

As Dan was alluding to and telling us earlier, Jesus is the reason God is intervening and saving his people because he promised that through this people, he would bring forth a savior.

And he did bring forth that savior, fulfilling all the prophecies about his coming.

And then he fulfilled the law. He's as he said, he would have come to fulfill the law, not to abolish it.

So he fulfilled all the prophecies. He fulfilled all law. He proved and he showed that he is

God's son, God's sent one, God's Messiah, the Christ, the son of the living

God. And the only way to be saved and forgiven is to repent of your sin, put your faith and trust in him.

Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died on the cross, taking upon the sins of those who would repent and believe in him.

He was he died. He was buried. He rose from the grave and then he ascended into heaven where he seated at the right hand of the father.

And he told his disciples all of all authority has been given to him in heaven and on earth.

And then he tells his disciples to go, therefore, and preach the gospel to every nation, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son of the

Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that he's commanded and that low, he will be with them until the end of the age.

So. We we've got to recognize that we need a savior and that when you and when you do, when

God has opened your eyes, run to him and he will give you new life.

And we'd love to hear from you. Leave us a comment question and let us know if you enjoyed the video.

Continue to pray for us if you would. And with that being said, Dan, would you mind to close us in prayer?

Not at all. Daryl and father, thank you for tonight for being able to talk about Esther and see what you've done in your word.

Pray that you would touch each and every one of us with your gospel. Draw us closer to yourself and glorify yourself through our salvation.

We love you Lord Jesus and we pray. Amen. Amen. Remember that Jesus is King. Go live in the victory of Christ.

Go speak with the authority of Christ and go out there and share the gospel of Christ. We hope to see you soon.