TLN- Esther 1

Hello and welcome to Truth and Love Network. Thank you for joining us. We're excited to spend time with you and looking at God's Word, talking about Jesus, exalting

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It doesn't even have to be about the text that we're looking at tonight. If you have a question about church, religion, a biblical question...

Baptism. We can even talk about baptism. I think Dan's itching to bring that subject up.

We can talk about baptism. One day. We'll show how ill -equipped I am to have that discussion.

But we'll even talk about that and why not to baptize.

I mean, why we should hold the baptistic view of baptism. Or something like that.

That would be a good discussion. That would be a good discussion. Because it is a difference. And there's different ways to interpret scripture, obviously, for years.

And you're coming from a Presbyterian viewpoint. And I'm coming from a Baptist viewpoint.

So if there's anything controversial like that, that you'd love for us to talk about, we'd love to do that. Ask us a

Bible question. We'd love to try to do that as well. We are going to start with the book of Esther tonight.

There's several reasons why we went this direction. There was a request.

And I love it when we can honor requests. And also, when we were looking at Ezekiel.

We were talking about the big hubbub.

Which happens every so often when things go haywire in the world. Russia is involved in this war with Ukraine.

There's so many people that like to throw Russia into prophetic history.

And we want to talk about, does the Bible talk about Russia in prophetic history? And if you want to hear more about that, go back to our last video.

Where we look at Ezekiel 38 and 39. Where people try to place

Russia and say that they are the Magog and Magog prophecy. But what we actually saw, if you look at Ezekiel 38 and 39.

If you continue to read in chapter 39, you'll see a name, a familiar name.

And that name is Haman. And where else do you see the name

Haman in scripture? And that's why we were drawn to Esther. For me personally, that's why

I was drawn to Esther. Is because I think sometimes we can over devotionalize books of the

Bible. Passages of the Bible. I think Esther has been used a lot for women's devotions.

For women's Bible studies. And sometimes over devotionalized. Even though it's a great story where God did use a woman.

Who became a queen in a foreign country. And God used her to save and preserve her people.

And it's a wonderful story. And it made for a good movie that I enjoyed watching.

But what I really want to know, Dan. Is why this book, why

God included this book in the Old Testament. And does it and how does it have ties with the other books of the

Old Testament? And so when I see the word Haman in Ezekiel.

And I know that there's a Haman in the VeggieTales movie. So when

I know Haman is in the book of Esther. You know, I want to make those connections.

I want to see what's going on. What say you? Oh man, we could have a whole other video.

On how Esther fits into the whole scheme of the Bible. I actually preached a sermon on that.

That came from Esther 3 or 4. Maybe 5.

Maybe 5, I don't know. But one of the really cool things about this.

Is that what you see in this book. Is Haman's plot to wipe out the

Jews. He's trying to exterminate every single man, woman, and child. Who is of the Hebrew lineage.

Every single descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Gone. What happens if every single descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is gone?

I'll let him get started. Go back to the garden. The garden of Eden.

We sin, our first parents sin. They disobey God. They fall into sin. God tells them that they're sinful wretches.

The woman's cursed. The man's cursed. The ground. Which is interesting.

I'll get into that later. Satan is cursed. The promise comes that the seed of the woman will destroy the seed of the serpent.

You move on a little bit further. In the time of Noah. The covenant is renewed again.

As you see, God promised Noah that he will preserve him alive and his family inside the ark.

He does so. We know from Peter that that is a picture of our baptism.

Which points to salvation. We also see a little bit later on from Noah, the call of Abraham.

Where he said, through you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. We learn a little bit more from Moses.

As he calls the people to himself. Promises them that a prophet, one of their own kind, would come.

He would tell them about salvation. He promises David that that person would be through his lineage. Eventually we see

Jesus Christ come. Who was the fulfillment of those prophecies. He took upon sin and death upon himself.

Nailed it to the cross. Took it to the grave. Arose victorious. What happens if we're back in the book of Esther.

Haman is successful to wipe out every man, woman, and child from the Jewish lineage. The promises of God fail.

God made a liar. We can never trust them. It's incredibly important that we see

Esther in the way that it does. It is included in the

Bible. That way we can see God's faithfulness to preserve his people alive.

Throughout all of history. I just think that is absolutely fantastic and wonderful.

It is fantastic. I think we'll be able to see more about Haman. His connection with Ezekiel 38 -39.

Gog and Magog. As we go through Esther. We wanted to make that connection.

Just share that Esther is more than just a book that we can make a devotional workbook out of.

Right. It's very important. Very important. It's very important.

We need to look at the ties. I got stumbled.

Oh, you're laughing at me. Yeah, my mom's watching. Hey, mom. So be super impressive.

But yeah, the importance of Esther and the fact that God keeps his promises.

But also learning about how it connects with the rest of scripture. The other books of the Old Testament.

Instead of just isagiting scripture. This is how

I see. I need to plug up my camera. One second. Wow.

Well, while he's off camera. Yeah. I forget where he was going with that.

It's not awkward at all sitting here talking to you guys. There he is. All right. But we've lost your audio.

Still lost your audio. I was like, can you hear me now?

There you go. Okay. Wow. That's the first time that's happened. Not super impressive with stalling.

Sorry, mom. All right. My producers.

My many, many producers I have working for me are failing on the job. So the.

The times that we see in Esther with the other books of the Bible and how it all fits together in the grand story of things.

Oh, I remember. I remember what I was saying. When we look at eschatology or other theological positions that we have.

We're tempted sometimes to have that theological position and then pick and choose verses that fit here and fit there like a puzzle piece.

And sometimes sometimes I think that happens with eschatology, Ezekiel 38, 39.

And that's why it's so intriguing to when you see those people and their names used in multiple books to make those connections and see what's really going on.

To understand the history and what God's doing, what he's saying. So all those things are important.

All right. So what we can see in Esther is Dan brought up these these four different things here.

The prophetic, which we kind of hit on a little bit, a moral aspect to Esther, cultural aspect to Esther and a historical context of Esther.

So just briefly point on those four things and what we can look forward to in the rest of Esther.

Sure. Well, obviously, the prophetic would deal with this.

Our belief that this is a historical record of the fulfillment of the prophecy coming from Ezekiel 38 and 39.

So that's fairly straightforward. There's a historical aspect in that it actually happened, happened in a real place, a real time, real events that happened in a context with real people.

That matters. It's not just a story that just dropped out of nowhere. And I actually think that that's how we're able to relate to it.

If God worked in a certain way before, he worked in this sort of way.

These people were absolute wretches at some point. And since I mimic that sometimes in my life,

I know that I can trust and rely upon the grace of Christ and he can use me if I am.

Well, he will use me anyway, but I need to be faithful to trust in him and stand up when

I'm called to stand up. There's a strong moral aspect that flows throughout

Esther. Different things, people standing up when they should, people doing evil things, lies.

That transcends culture. It's just everywhere. Then there is a cultural aspect because there's marriage, banquets, feast, festival, certain customs and laws and different aspects of government.

There's hatred between people groups and there's all sorts of stuff like that.

Some of that is specific to that time, but that doesn't mean that these things can't relate to us.

There are marriages in every culture. When we understand it in their culture, we can see what the issue really was.

We can try to apply that to our culture. What similar situation should we watch out for?

If it was wicked in that day, but they all thought it was normal, are we doing something similar in this day that we just think is normal?

Maybe it's not. Maybe it's something that we should stop doing. There's at least those four aspects. Those are probably not the best names for them, but that's what

I came up with. If we need to change later, I guess we'll do that. It works for me.

It reminds me of the passage in the Song of Solomon. There's nothing new under the sun.

Though the exact circumstances may be different, men are still deceitful.

Men are still prideful. Men are still boastful. Men will still use and abuse to get what they want.

There's still power, greed going on. There's nothing new under the sun.

There's circumstances that flow out of those sinful behaviors that we have to deal with.

We can learn from these principles. There's still one who's running around like a lion seeking whom he may devour.

Yeah. Before we jump into chapter one and work our way through chapter one, there's four things that I wanted to look at or four things that I see in Esther.

The sovereignty of God, His providence, His promises, and His provision. I kind of jotted this down as we got started.

Just to piggyback on the comment that I made about over -devotionalizing

Esther, to one degree, we don't necessarily read ourselves into the characters, which, you know, that's a big thing today.

Learning how to get away from that type of teaching because there's many pastors out there, popular pastors that write books and make money off of making you the main character of the story.

You are David. You are David finding Goliath and your problems are

Goliath. You're reading yourself into the story. We don't necessarily want to read ourselves into the story, into the characters and make ourselves

Esther or whoever that is Mordecai in the story. What we should look for is

God's sovereignty to keep His promises through providence and provision to preserve a people.

And this part you have to listen carefully. To preserve a people for the

Messiah so that He may preserve a people for His glory. So it shows

God's sovereignty to keep His promises through providence and provision to preserve a people for the

Messiah. So the Messiah, these people needed to be preserved so the Messiah could come.

The promises could be fulfilled that the Messiah would come out of these people and the Messiah had to come so that He may preserve

His people, the church throughout all time for His glory.

Now, as Dan pointed out, as we were talking before the program, what we can see in Esther though is that she was on a path of multiple sketchy circumstances and sketchy situations.

But that path led her to be in circumstances that were beyond her control, part of the sovereignty of God.

But when she found herself in those situations, we found that Esther makes faithful decisions so that God's people are preserved.

She was called onto for such a time as this so that the people of God could carry on to fulfill their part in God's promise.

So I hope that makes sense and I hope that's helpful as we begin looking at the book of Esther.

Any other thoughts before we dive into the text? No, let's do it. Esther, let's see,

I can pull it up on our little screen here. Let me get my mouse going.

All right. So Esther chapter 1, we're going to look through verses 1 through 9 first.

Now, it took place in the days of Asherus, the Asherus who reigned from India to Ethiopia, over 127 provinces.

In those days, as King Asherus sat on his royal throne, which was at the citadel of Susa.

In the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all his princes and attendants, the army officers of Persia and Media, the nobles and the princes of his provinces being in his presence.

And he displayed the riches of his royal glory and the splendor of his great majesty for many days, 180 days.

When these days were completed, the king gave a banquet lasting seven days for all the people who were present at the citadel in Susa, from the greatest to the least, in the court of the garden of the king's palace.

There were hangings of fine white and violet linens held by cords of fine purple linen on silver rings and marble columns and couches of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother -of -pearl and precious stones.

Drinks were served in golden vessels of various kinds and the royal wine was plentiful according to the king's bounty.

The drinking was done according to the law. There was no compulsion. For so the king had given orders to each official of his household that he should do according to the desire of each person.

And Queen Vashti also gave a banquet for the women in the palace which belonged to King Ashurus.

All right. So King Ashurus.

Have we heard that? Do we know this guy from other texts?

Do we know him from another name? It's Xerxes. Xerxes? Yep. Much easier to pronounce.

And I don't even know if I was saying it right or not, but yeah. There wasn't an S that close to the front of it, but well, we're going to let it go.

Oh, thank you. Ahasuerus. Is that how you say it?

How would you say it? I was just going to say Xerxes the whole time. So King Xerxes.

That's who we've got here. Yeah, I knew I was going to butcher it. And he was king of Persia.

Right. This is a pretty large kingdom. Huge. Yeah, it was absolutely massive.

They were in, obviously, the Middle East area around Baghdad, Iran, Israel.

Went down through Egypt and down to Ethiopia. Also extended all the way across to, right?

No, that way. I don't know which way I'm pointing. All the way to India. Whichever way that was on your map.

Yeah, it was massive. It was a huge area. At one point, it was stated there was 120 provinces.

His wife wouldn't make him a sandwich. It was a little bit more involved than that, but we'll get to that. It had increased by the time of Esther to 127.

They were going out. They were getting it done. By the time he became king, he was very impressed with himself.

I don't know if you caught this. This is how I heard it. For 180 days, he said, hey, look at me.

I am very impressive. And then for seven more days, he had everybody sit around and he said, drink as much as you want.

And look at my stuff. My stuff is very impressive. And then day seven, he said, hey, look at my wife.

My wife is very impressive. We'll get there in a second.

But what he's doing is he's consumed by several things.

One, greed. Another, his own power. He's also consumed by status, his ego, pride.

And I mean, when you think about it, if you don't have a strong moral compass to begin with, if you don't have a solid backbone in actual morality and righteousness, it'd be easy to do.

I mean, he's probably not terribly old. I mean, you look around at people his age and they're not king.

He's top dog. Look how cool I am. It'd be like driving a big truck and flashy stuff everywhere and hooting your own horn and talking about how great you are all the time.

I can see where he would do that. And he doesn't seem to be the most moral person.

I mean, just from this, there's some character flaws that lead to that type of grandstanding, which we do see nowadays in different military parades or when people stand up and lie to our country.

State of the Union Address is, and I'm looking at both parties on that. Yeah, it's not too far -fetched from where we are today.

Well, when I look at his behavior, I don't want to say that, sorry for the dead air.

You know, there's the greed and the power and the vanity of it all.

But I'm thinking about how I worship God, the true king, the true king of the universe.

And I'm like, this is how I want to worship him. Right. I mean,

I want to be merry and joyful and spend all these days just basking in his creativity and his power and what he's done, what he's created and everything about him and how everything that he's made reflects his personality, his character and everything that he's done.

And I can even see us giving honor to a good earthly king.

We're supposed to. Yeah. But here, this really puts me in a mind frame of worship and how

I would want to worship the true and living God. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it seems like he's setting himself up as the opposite of what a good sovereign ruler should be.

So he would be sovereign over his kingdom. That's where we get the rule. He has rule over his kingdom.

But instead of providence, promise and provision, it looks like he's power and prestige and pleasure are his three

Ps. Maybe a purse for greed. That was good

Baptist alliteration there. Joel Beeky, listen to him. So you ready to go on through?

Any last thoughts on that passage? Yeah, it's just important to recognize where we're at.

We're in a time where the mindset is one of puffing up the king, making him look great and grand and everyone should be seeking pleasure through drink.

So when you put yourself in the event of the next few verses, think of merriment, state worship and a drunken party.

There was one for the men and one for the women. So the men were over there just drinking, having a good old time.

And when men get drinking too much, they get to thinking about things they shouldn't. So that's going to be important when we look at this next section.

The mindset of the people who are about to engage in these activities. Well, and just before we move any further on, just a little bit of historical context as well.

We're familiar. Most people should be familiar with the exile of Israel and Judah, popularly known as the

Babylonian exile, where the Babylonians took them out of their land.

They were exiles in a foreign land. And Xerxes here is the Persian king.

What happened? Well, Persia took over Babylon. They defeated the

Babylonians and now it's the Persian Empire. And so now we have the

Persian king. And what other historical information can you let us know as far as timeline?

This is before, I believe this is before they start sending the exiles back to rebuild the temple and the wall.

So I would put it not much before, but before Ezra and Nehemiah.

Okay. It was Xerxes who allows them to go back and rebuild the temple?

Well, I wasn't prepared for that one, but we're only a couple of pages away.

Let's see. Nehemiah was with Artaxerxes.

Artaxerxes. And that was his son. Yeah, I believe he was after.

Ezra dealt with King Cyrus.

And I think Artaxerxes was actually Vashti's son, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know.

I should have probably looked that up. We're not going to know it all.

Come on now. Let's see. Xerxes.

Where are we at? Go back to Ezra with Cyrus.

Cyrus was first.

So they had started some of their stuff. And then

Xerxes and then Artaxerxes later on. But if you remember from the stories, it was starting and stopping the rebuilding of all of the

Jewish things, which is actually prophesied in Daniel. We went over that. They would start and stop and rebuild in times of distress.

All right. So let's take a look at this next section, starting in verse number 10.

On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded

Mechumen, Bista, Harbona, Bicta, Abicta, Zethar, and Carcas, the seven eunuchs who served the presence of...

Now I can't even say it. Here's Xerxes. To bring

Queen Vashti before the king with her royal crown in order to display her beauty to the people and the princes, for she was beautiful.

But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king's command, delivered by the eunuchs. Then the king became very angry, and his wrath burned.

That was a messed up thing to do. Right? I know.

So we've got the 180 days feast, and then we've got this other seven. And then at the end of the seven, he's got this bright idea to call his queen into his presence.

Into the presence of many, many drunk men who have not been around a woman for a while.

Right. Why would you put your wife in that situation? And here's the thing.

It says for her to come before the king with her royal crown in order to show the peoples and the prince of her beauty.

She was lovely to look at. We don't know exactly what this meant.

It could have meant something on a spectrum of things. One thing we do know, she's going to bring her crown.

Her crown would have been a kind of a pointy turban that kind of went up.

We do know that a lot of the times the queen in the Persian Empire would come with a veiled face.

She was trying not to have her veiled. She was trying to show off her beauty. So she at the very least was going to have her face exposed.

It's also possible that he was going to have her paraded naked in front of all these people.

We don't know that for sure. Some commentators make a fairly solid case for it, but we can't say for certain that it was the case that she was supposed to go naked.

But what she was supposed to do was to go before the people at that time in less clothes than what she normally would according to Persian custom.

So he was trying to show off her beauty. Put on a pretty dress and turn around for my boys here.

He was trying to show, and that's just rude. The Book of Proverbs talks about drinking from your own cistern, finding satisfaction in the life of your youth, not going after the woman who's over there looking beautiful.

So why would you take what is yours and parade it in front of all sorts of other people for them to gawk at and want and lust after?

It's ridiculous. Especially those who are under the influence of lots of alcohol.

So at the very least, he was being a scumbag. And at the very most, he was just being downright ridiculous.

I mean, just horribly wretched. So it's not a good look for him. So when you think about that, why would she say no?

Either she would say no because she said, I've got more dignity than that. Or she said no, because she said, this thing that he's asking me to do is just wrong.

And not only is that wrong, it's dangerous. And I'm not going to do that. So she stood up on principle, either for,

I'm not going to be paraded in front of a bunch of drunken men, or I'm not going to disrobe for a whole bunch of men.

Either way, it doesn't matter. You can understand where she's coming from. It wasn't as simple as, wife, come over here and let people look at you.

Just smile pretty for the camera. He pulled her away from her party, or tried to pull her away from her party in order to show off her body because he thought that she was beautiful.

And she said, no. And he got ticked. And I can understand his anger.

Not because he was right in any sort of way. But because he was then, at that moment, put in a very awkward situation that's brought up in the next bit.

But he brought it upon himself. So think about what we have here.

We've got a guy who's trying to do something that he thinks is good. But his compass is thinking that what's good is what is pleasurable, what is self -seeking, what is puffing himself up, and not what is actually righteous.

So when he's trying to do something good, in his own eyes, he ends up doing something that is completely bad.

And it leaves him in a bad situation. He doesn't just look... It's not just a whole bunch of guys standing there going, oh, the girl won't come for him.

He now has the queen saying that the king does not control her. So it slaps at him for being a king.

He loses some face in the sight of people. It's not just a man -to -man type of thing anymore.

It's a, you as a king have been... Your power that you've just been celebrating for half a year, your power, you've just sucked your own power away from you.

And not only that, he's showing the way that his kingdom's going to be run.

And his kingdom is going to be run in a way where your wife can just speak to you any old sort of way.

And what's going to end up happening is he's going to inadvertently, by making a fool out of him, by being a bad husband, he's going to end up undermining the authority of men in house and homes everywhere.

And so what he's done is he's not only stripped himself of power by making himself look like a fool, he's also undergirded the structural core of the nuclear family in his entire kingdom.

I mean, just absolutely foolish. And he's ticked about it.

And I understand why he's ticked. But he definitely brought it on himself. But you just, you basically just, you know, looked at the facts of the situation without, without, without, you know, shoving too much into the text that we just don't know.

You know, he was, he spent all this time, 180 days plus this, this seven, seven day week, showing off how wonderful he is, how powerful he is, how beautiful his stuff is.

And then I guess the last thing that he's, he's yet to show off is, is

Vashti, his wife, his queen. And, you know, I'm just thinking about the, the abuse of it, the inappropriateness of it, that he's taken advantage of her.

And, you know, we can make tons and tons of assumptions and, you know, we can try to look at the culture and maybe glean what he was trying to do here.

But we do know from the text that he wanted, just like with the rest of his stuff, he wanted to show off her beauty that was in his possession.

You know, this, this is mine. I want, I want to continue to show off my possessions and, and here look at Vashti and how beautiful she is.

And, you know, Vashti's response goes back to, I think something you were, you were talking about earlier, a place where we can look at principle and see how it applies or how we can apply it to our lives.

And I was curious why nobody ever talked to Vashti about Romans 13, how we're supposed to obey the government, right?

Oh, man. Well, number one, Paul hadn't written it yet. But number two, the

Proverbs were compiled at that time and there's actually something that speaks, I think, more closely to this.

What the king was trying to do was he was trying to show the beauty of the queen.

I mean, it's not necessarily, from a very shallow point of view, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Let me explain, because it was a bad thing. So don't, don't, don't, don't get me wrong on that.

But if you think about it wrongly, if you think about it wickedly, what he was trying to do was something that was, you know, it was self -seeking because he was trying to show off something that was his.

But at the same time, he knew how much his wife, all women, prized their beauty.

I mean, it's something that they, women are beautiful. They prize their beauty. So he was probably thinking to himself, wrongly, of course, well, this situation, this is an awesome situation.

I'm going to do something wonderful and sweet for my wife. I'm going to give her an opportunity to show herself off. And I'm going to have all these guys over here telling me how lucky

I am that she's my wife. Book of Proverbs says this, whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast.

So if you're a righteous person, you have, you take thought about the animals that you care for, even though they don't have souls, they're lesser than us, you still care for them.

But the mercy of the wicked is cruel.

Or as another version says, the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.

So he and his wickedness was being cruel to his wife.

And she, I don't know what that means.

I don't know. I'm going to have to get some context on that later for my wonderful, wonderful wife who will not have dancing in front of strangers.

I forget where I was. Where was I? Oh yeah, it was cruel.

So, so what? Yeah, I don't know. Well, it's hard to really say.

It's hard to really say. I mean, we want to, I think we can kind of go in one direction because we know that there was,

I mean, it's pretty vain for him to extend this party for so long just to celebrate himself.

Oh, I remember what you were saying now. And do you want to finish?

Yeah. Oh, I get what she's saying now. You say we're going to take her mask off and maybe her shirt too.

Anyway, you're talking about, didn't anybody tell her about Romans 13? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Even, it's crazy. The book of Romans chapter one talks about how we as human beings have a conscience in ourselves because of nature and the things around us that tell us what is righteous.

And that we suppress that truth with our unrighteousness. I think this is one of those cases of common grace where, you know, it may have been something where she actually knew some

Jews and she was a God -fearing woman. We don't know. Right, right. This is one of those cases where she was trying to do something right.

She understood that her modesty was not something to be paraded around in front of other people.

It didn't matter if those men were going to look at her in lust or not. That was beside the point. Her modesty wasn't something to be given away.

She wasn't going to do it. And it didn't matter to her if she was going to have to give up her place in the kingdom or even die.

She wasn't going to do it. I don't think it was a power play. I don't think she was sitting there with a girl saying, oh, watch this.

I'm going to get him. I think she was saying, no, I'm not going to do that.

And I'm not going to do that because it would be wrong. Like, I'm not doing it. And I don't think she's wrong for that.

There's a lot here that we don't know for sure, but just with the facts presented, I don't blame her at all.

Yeah. But what we do know, one thing that she knew and that there would be consequences.

Sure. Oh, yeah. She knew that. Yeah. You know, there had to be a significant reason for her to say no.

Yeah. Like I was saying just a few minutes ago, you know, the lead up to this kind of kind of puts us in a position where we want to say that Xerxes was doing something bad and Vashti was probably more in the righteous position.

But it's not 100 % clear. Like you were somewhat saying a few minutes ago, you know, he may have had good intentions where he wanted to show off her beauty and brag on his wife.

Maybe. That's not where the text leads us. And it's not what he actually did.

Right. Yeah. It may have been his intentions. It's not what he actually did. Right.

Right. And then, you know, Vashti, you know, she could have, like you said, didn't want to didn't want to do that.

She was just choosing not to do that. But the text does kind of lean where you were taking us with Xerxes going in the wrong direction on this and Vashti taking a more righteous stand.

And the principle that we wanted to look at that we can glean from this is, you know, there's going to be circumstances where we can we can take a righteous stand in the face of an unrighteous judgment, rule, policy, command or demand on us, even even knowing the consequences.

Yeah. And you mentioned this story. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, we don't we don't know where she stood religiously, but but for us, we can trust in the sovereignty of God, even in the story of Vashti, because God God uses the, you know, the all people for his purposes and plans.

Those who were pagans and those who were in his covenant, his covenant people. And so here he uses

Xerxes and Vashti and so that his his promises can be fulfilled.

But what we can what we can have joy in and what we can find comfort in is that when we stand up for what's righteous, though there may be consequences, he's got a he's fulfilling his promises.

He's going to provide he's going to give provision and we're going to see that end goal come to pass through his faithfulness.

Right. I think really the main point of this first chapter is to show that this is a wicked nation and that in the wicked nation,

God is still going to act to keep his promises. They were doing all sorts of stuff that they shouldn't have been.

These things were not something Jews should be doing. But these were the people that they were living with at the time and they were supposed to stay separate from those people.

And whatever happened, these events were leading up to the preservation of the

Jewish people. So let's move on, because we almost an hour.

That's right. Let's let's move on to the last section. Starting in verse 13, then the king said to the wise men who understood the times where it was the custom of the king, so to speak, before all who knew the law and justice and were close to him.

The seven princes of Persia and Medea, Medea, Medea, who had access to the king's presence and set in the first place in the kingdom.

According to law, what is to be done with Queen Vashti because she did not obey the king of.

She obeyed the command of King Xerxes delivered by the eunuchs in the presence of the king and the princes.

Mamuchin said Queen Vashti has wronged not only the king, but also all the princes and all the peoples who were in the province of King Xerxes.

For the queen's conduct will become known to all the women, causing them to look with contempt on their husbands by saying

King Xerxes commanded Queen Vashti to be brought into his presence. But she did not come.

This day, the ladies of Persia and Medea who have heard the queen's conduct will speak in the same way to all the king's princes, and there will be plenty of contempt and anger.

If it pleases the king, let a royal edict be issued by him and let it be written in the laws of Persia and Medea so that it cannot be repealed that Vashti may no longer come into the presence of King Xerxes and let the king give her royal position to another who is more worthy than she.

When the king's edict which he will make is heard throughout his kingdom, great as it is, then all women will give honor to their husbands, great and small.

This word pleased the king and the princess, and the king did as the Mucan proposed.

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

What's interesting to me, just on a side note, is how, I mean think about it, it tells us his kingdom was from India all the way to Africa, and this is a huge territory, and what we know is that they had a pretty efficient mailing system from my understanding.

And so when you read this passage and you're thinking, how in the world can this little episode that happened in the king's party over here in Susa, how can it make its way all the way across his whole kingdom?

Gossip. Do what? Gossip? Gossip. People go and tell me. Yeah. And this mailing system that I think they had.

Well, also at this party, people from all over had come together to witness the greatness of the king.

They leave the party, instant rumor mill. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yep. So he brings in the wise men, and some people say, is this similar to Daniel's wise men that he associated with?

Well, the wise men of the pagans used every tool at their disposal.

Generally, those tools were not tools that were allowed to the Jews or to Christians.

They would engage in divination, astrology, all sorts of different stuff.

So while it may not have been the same, the differences between Babylonian and Persian, there was a lot of the same similar stuff going on there.

I mean, they probably studied with each other at some point, learned from each other, cultures passed stuff around, something that looks a little bit different here than there, but I mean, it's roughly the same.

There's only so many demons out there. Right. So, yeah. And I still can't help, just on another side there,

I can't help but make that connection with the wise men in the

New Testament that come to visit Jesus. Right. And you see wise men here in Esther, you see wise men in Daniel, and there's connections to be made between the

Old Testament and New Testament. Yeah. Well, I mean, this would chase a rabbit trail farther than we want to go tonight.

But the wise men knew where Jesus was because what the wise men were doing was getting results.

And the results were because they were actually tapping into spiritual powers. Now, they were doing it in a way that they weren't supposed to, and it was dangerous and evil.

But it's real nonetheless. And so, I mean, we would all do well to think of those things as real, explainable through the

Bible, of course. Right. But yeah, way farther than we want to go tonight. So, this behavior was a threat.

I mean, like you were trying to say earlier, this was more than just saving face between a husband and wife at a party they're having at their house.

This is political stuff. Yeah. Turn political real quick. Oh, yeah. Because the queen had real power.

So, it wasn't just a husband -wife thing. It was, it was a husband -wife thing, but it was more than that because it was a queen -king thing.

Yeah. So, he was undermining the authority of all the rulers in his kingdom.

He was also undermining the authority of the man in each of his homes. And what's interesting is that he wasn't dumb.

He kind of knew that. And he listened to his wise men who told him, you need to fix this.

You need to fix this now. When I go home to my wife, it's like, I'm not going to listen to you. The queen didn't have to listen to the king, and she got away with it.

Why would I listen to you? And the whole thing is so crazy is that the king tried to do something right by saying that the man should be the master in his own home.

But the way that he went about doing all of this really leads me to believe that his idea of a man being the master in his own home is not going to be the same way that God tells the man to be the master in his own home.

Be the one who leads, loves, and cares for his wife, who takes her under his wing, who watches her in the word.

And then the wife who submits in a godly fashion, which causes her to be fearless and highly skilled and productive.

It's a one -two punch. You don't want to mess with a highly functional couple that's having a strong male headship and a solid female number two right there.

You don't want to mess with that. That's why God put it there. They can conquer the world.

They have children. The man can conquer stuff. The woman gives life. What is that?

God knew what he was doing. The king here knew that he had screwed something up.

He knew that he needed to keep the nucleus of the family together. But the way that he was going to restore it, it was going to get ugly.

And it was going to get ugly quickly. Because even a little bit later on,

Haman, as number two or three or wherever he was in the kingdom, wanted parades for himself.

And he was kind of going down the same path. And then he makes a big blunder. And that's when

Esther gets to stand up and say, hey, you're trying to kill all my people here. And Haman does that well for him.

It's so discouraging and discouraging. And I can't think of the other word

I'm looking for. Encouraging. It's encouraging. Encouraging and then encouraging.

Yeah. The direction that I'm thinking right now, the parts that's discouraging and aggravating is the liberals of the day.

You were talking about how King Xerxes and his approach to keeping the nucleus of the family together and his approach of how to deal with the gossip and the undermining of his authority was different than how we would know

God would have us as husbands to live. But yet the liberals of the day who want to oppose complementarianism would say, this is what we believe.

You know, this is what our households look like, what the kind of man that King Xerxes was.

That's kind of the picture that's painted of us who are complementarian, who are patriarchal, you know, but that's not the case.

Not positively patriarchal. Yeah. People want to take that and run with it.

Yeah. So that's definitely not the case. Right. His approach here is evil.

It's not God's way. Yeah. Even those who recognize the wisdom of doing things

God's way, when they try to implement it on their own terms, will always implement it in a way that is inherently sinful and wrong.

Right. So when he saw that this was a problem, what did he do? He basically divorced his wife and stripped her of her queenship.

Yeah. Why? She hadn't done anything wrong.

Right, right. And you were talking about the pride of Haman later on and his falling in the footsteps of the king and wanting to show off himself in a parade and his clothes and his pride.

As we were reading this, I was thinking about all these men who were there with the king, and you've got someone who's undermining his authority.

And their first thought is, well, if she can do it, I can do it. That's not their first thought.

Their first thought is, this is going to affect me back home. Right. He's going to make my life difficult.

Right, right. So instead of following the

God -given plan for the structure of the family, they try to reinvent it in a way that's more suitable to them.

They can still get together and drink with the boys to excess for half of a year. They can still show off all of their stuff and basically be prideful.

Yeah, it's a twisted version of what

God has called right and good. And I think that's really this whole first chapter is a setup for the rest of the book.

When we live amongst the people who are trying to implement good things, if they don't have

Christ, they're going to do so in a twisted way. That twisted way is going to turn very, very bad very quickly.

And not only is it going to do that, it's going to do so in a way that negatively impacts

Christians the most. But it's not necessarily going to be a direct one -for -one, yo, it's the

Christians. In Esther, he was saying, hey, there's a people who want to live their own way.

They want to have their own law. They don't want to conform to what you want them to conform to, King. We should be allowed to kill them.

Fast forward to today. There are some crazy fundamentalists out there.

They don't want to conform to the way that we do things. They want to do things their way. They don't want to believe that abortion is health care.

They want to call it murder. They don't want to call what we call right, right, and what we call wrong, wrong.

They want to have their own standard. They say that there's some God out there who's going to judge us one day. They are the problem and they need to be stopped.

It's because of them that people are committing suicide. It's because of them that poverty is such an issue.

If we could just get those people and their values out of the way, we could have a good society.

So here's why you can't separate religion and politics. Because anytime you enter into the realm of politics, you enter into the realm of morality.

The realm of morality is based upon the character of God and who he is, which is based upon his law.

That is inherently religious. Because God has created the world and spoken into existence everything that is.

He's then given us laws to live by. He's even given us the kings and queens that we have, the rulers, governors, mayors, whatever, to be his deacons, it says.

The ministers who administer justice, to reward good and punish evil.

That's not what you see from these folks here. So when you see the persecution coming, it often comes in a political way.

And we've seen that, especially in the last couple of years. And what's sad to see is that a lot of Christians will then point at you and say,

Well, you're just being political and you're inviting this upon yourself. If you would just go with the flow, it would be okay.

If you would just adopt this sort of incrementalism, it would be okay.

You don't have to try to abolish abortion. We won't get elected to office if we don't have this platform to run on or whatever.

I mean, there's a lot of connections that can be made here, but none of them have to plop us in the middle of the story.

Well, I'm glad you went there. Apart from trying to over -devotionalize the thing, it's not just women that can be esters.

Men and women need to take the role of ester here because there was a plan for a holocaust to end a people.

That was the Jews here, and Haman wanted to end them, to be finished with them, for them to be gone.

And so just like you said, we've got this holocaust happening right now where we have a people who want another group of people gone, and they want it completely legal and without any opposition to it.

And they're trying to get rid of the opposition so that it can happen more frequently and more often.

And this is what you were talking about, is the issue of abortion.

And so you're right, we can't separate religion and politics. It reflects who

God is. He puts people in places for those purposes of protection and for rewarding the righteous and punishing the guilty.

That's what their role is, and they're not fulfilling that role righteously right now. And so where are our esters to end this holocaust?

We need esters in this day and time instead of just rolling over.

And I don't know what the mindset is on this issue. I mean, we believe murder is wrong.

You're killing another person who is made in the image of God. And we believe that pre -born babies are persons made in the image of God.

So therefore, if you kill a child in the womb, you're committing murder. You're ending the life of an image bearer.

So where are our esters? Where are our Christians who are taking a stand to end this holocaust?

Well, this story right here gives us the answer.

Bear with me for a second. When you look at these folks, the

Persians, wicked people, drinking, carousing, prideful, immoral.

And in the midst of all of that, God placed one young lady in a situation where she would speak for, be in place for an entire group.

And because of her words, that group was spared, saved.

And the beautiful thing about that is, is that just 550 years later, there was another young lady who people despise.

Why this one? Joseph was about to put her away, thinking that she was immoral. And yet she brought forth the word, who became flesh and dwelt among us.

And that right there is the key. I don't mean to play with words or anything. The Persian people were wicked, and that's what caused the issues of the day.

Today, we have people who are wicked. I mean, granted, we're all wicked in some form or fashion.

And it just takes the one with the word to stand up and say something.

So here we have now Esther there and Mary in the New Testament who brings forth the word, and then that word is powerful.

But this word isn't just speaking up to a king. This word is king. This word is

Jesus. And He comes into the world, and He takes all the sin, and He takes it to Himself and nails it to the cross and goes to the grave and arrives victorious in order that those who are around who are sinful, who are pagans from every single nation and language.

Look at verse 16. It says that this is going to be a problem for all peoples.

And then who did the edict go out to? In verse 22, it says that the province in its own script, that every people in its own language, to every people in its own language, all the people would hear the word of God.

Not necessarily hear it, but all the people there in Esther, translates to when you move on, all the people are going to hear the decree, but not the wicked decree of this king.

They're going to hear the righteous decree of the king of glory. It's going to go out to every tribe and tongue and nation.

Everything that was wicked and evil in Esther is being undone and solved in the person of Jesus Christ as he comes to take away the sin of the world.

And so the reason why we're saying Christians fold like a cheap suit on these issues is because a lot of them need

Christ. We're standing in a situation where we see the world around, the

Christian world around us, and we need to stop thinking of us as a big evangelical powerhouse.

We need to think of ourselves more like the reformers during the Roman Catholic church.

The church throughout the ages had done wonderful things and done terrible things and had good theology and terrible theology.

And when it came time that they had that terrible theology, there was always someone who stood up and said something.

In the time of Arius, the whole world followed after Arius so that way they didn't even believe in the deity of Christ.

And yet St. Nicholas stood up and punched him in the face. Like, Merry Christmas, Jesus is Lord. Jesus is king, he's

God. The same thing happened throughout history a couple of other times. Especially when we come to the

Reformation, we have people, Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, we have the

Calvins and Zwingles and Luthers and all sorts. I know

I'm forgetting a bunch of them. You have the Whitfields and even the Wesleys. You have people who do all sorts of things, who stand up in their time, and they preach the gospel.

And that's what we need to do. Because the people that they were going to were those who would listen, and a lot of those who would listen were those who were dissatisfied with what was happening in the church.

If you've seen the... I know I'm ranting a little bit, but we're just going to go with it. The deconstruction movement in the church today.

We have young people who have seen the absolute wretchedness that has been going on in the church for a long time.

They're saying, we want no part of that. So they go back and they say, this was bad, this hurt me, this wasn't good.

And they pull those things apart. And instead of going back to the Word of God and trusting what God has said, they insert the culture's ideas and the ways of the world.

So really the way in which these things are going to change, the way that we are going to have people like Esther to stand up and say things, is that we're going to have to listen, or not listen, but to speak, mainly to Christians who will not listen.

And we're going to have to have them angry at us and cancel us, and we're going to have to make us think about it.

They're going to have people fight against us, and that is okay. The Reformation had a counter -Reformation, and God has blessed it.

We need to do the same thing today by telling people that Jesus is Lord, that His Word is sure, and that the

Gospel saves people. Because the large swaths of the church don't believe that 52 % of people that call themselves

Christian don't believe that Jesus is God. That's from the

Ligonier State of Theology survey. 34 -36 % of those are professing evangelicals.

A third of people who you would show up to church with on a Sunday don't believe that Jesus is

God. We have to speak up. Where are the Esthers? We're here.

We have to be. But we're cowards. And what does it say in Revelation?

Cowards and liars have their place in the lake of fire. So I went off, and I don't know where all that came from.

I'll try to wrap it up with this. Here's the shame of it all,

Dan. So many of us are Christian cowards, even though there's really not even hardly any consequences for us, like there was for Vashti or like there was for Esther.

For us to stand on what's right, we really, truly face no consequences that amount to anything.

So why are we? Here's my appeal to you, Christian, and please share this information, share this video, however you can get the word out.

Here's my appeal to you, Christian, that may be watching this video. Take a stand on the word of God.

Take a stand on what's right. But going after this issue of abortion, because it's the holocaust of our day.

It is the main issue of our day. Haman wanted to end the

Jews. Hitler wanted to end the Jews. Slavery was prominent for such a long time.

Not just England and America, but slavery was prominent in Ireland and so many other countries, in Africa, in the

United States, in England. Slavery has been such a big thing in our world's history, but not just one country.

And people sought to abolish it. And we need to abolish and end the murder of image bearers in our day.

And so take a stand on what's right. There's really no consequences that amounts to anything for us, but I will share that the people who are in a position that will face some consequence are our legislators.

So we do need to pray for them, because they will have a few more consequences than what we would have.

And I understand that. They'll call it political suicide or a loss of election, loss of a job, loss of their income, loss of reputation.

They won't be any good for any other pursuit of any other bill or any other legislation that comes along, because their reputation will be ruined.

So political suicide. Hey, how about you tell them you got their back? That's right. They face a little more consequences than we do.

But what we need to do first is pray for them. And number two, call them. Tell them we're praying for them.

Tell them we have their back. Tell them this is what we want. But then we can also remind them, too, if need be, that they're going to tell you, because I've heard it, these bills won't pass.

There are many states. Our state has one. There's quite a few other states that already have a bill to abolish abortion in your capital.

The bill is there. It's been written. It just needs to be signed by legislators.

And they're going to tell you it won't work, you can't get enough support for it, and they'll give you all these other excuses.

But here's the thing about it. Is it right or is it wrong?

And if you know that they profess to be Christians, they're going to stand before God and have to give an account on whether they are appealing to their fear of man or their conscience before God and standing on the word of God.

Because it boils down to that. Is it right or is it wrong? If it's right to pursue this bill that ends abortion, be an

Esther. Go before the king despite the consequences or knowing the consequences.

If it's wrong, don't pursue it. But we know in our hearts that fighting for life to end abortion is the right path.

And Dan led us on a path. He shared the gospel with us a few minutes ago. And we want, if you do not know

Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, we want you to come to know him.

He is the reason Esther was written. He is the reason God is keeping his promises.

So that a people can be preserved so that the Messiah can come and Jesus Christ did come through the

Virgin Mary. Given to her by the Holy Spirit. And he lived a sinless life and took on the sin of the world, put it upon himself, hung on a tree, became a curse for us, and took the wrath of God so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be saved.

And so we would encourage you if you've not turned from your sins, repented of your sins, and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we would encourage you to do that today.

Dan, any last thoughts as we wrap up Chapter 1? No, that's just the beginning though.

Really, Chapter 1 just sets you up for the rest of the book. You've got a bunch of wicked folks and a good

God who's not mentioned anywhere in the book. He's doing a wonderful thing. Tune in next week.

So we do hope you will join us next week for Esther Chapter 2. Lord willing, we will be back on Sunday at 8 .30.

And we look forward to continuing to look at God's sovereignty, fulfilling

His promises through His providence and provision for His people and for the glory of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Dan, would you pray for us as we close? Sure. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the

Lord's Day, for your word, your promises, and for your gospel. Thank you for Jesus dying on the cross for the sins of men.

We pray that you would remind us of that frequently, as we know we need that forgiveness.

We love you, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Remember that our Savior Jesus, He is that King.

So go live in His victory. Go speak with His authority, and continue to go out there with us and share