TiL- Esther 7

I really have to work on that video. It gets me every time.

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We'll see that. We'd love to be able to pray for you. So, Dan, how are you doing? I'm doing well.

We've got a listener. No, we don't.

You spoke too soon. I did. No, I'm doing pretty good.

I had a pretty good day. One day a year, our church meets for church at a

Christian camp. It's kind of in the opposite direction from us, so it's a little bit too far away for us to attend.

We didn't have service this morning, but our church plant in Oneonta tonight, we had a church up there tonight.

So, it was good. We got to sing some. I ended up having to lead the music tonight.

That was fun. Oh, okay. We only sing acapella psalms. So, you know, you just start off, you sing like the first half of the first line by yourself and hope people just jump right in.

No, it went well overall. Good deal. And you preached today, right? Yeah, I preached from Exodus 15 on the

Song of Moses, how the name of the sermon was, The Prince of Peace is a

Man of War. And I think you just posted it on the page, right? Like four minutes ago.

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Yeah, we had a good day as well. A good day of worship together with God's people.

Heard a good sermon, which I'm always grateful for. Yeah, good day of rest.

So, you ready to jump into Esther? Yep. Good deal.

Tonight, we're in Esther chapter 7. And just to give a little bit of background to lead us up to Esther chapter 7.

In chapter 6, we're at the point where Esther has been convinced by Mordecai that she needs to speak to the king, even though this is an internal struggle because she knows what that means.

If you go to the king unannounced, unwelcomed, or he has not called you to come to his presence, it's the death penalty automatically.

That's the law, unless he holds out his scepter and grants you permission. And it's been about a month that she's seen the king.

And so, she's worried about that. But Mordecai has convinced her that she needs to go speak to the king on behalf of the people because Haman has set out this decree, has convinced the king to allow him to set this decree out to destroy all the

Jews everywhere that can be found within his kingdom because they are troublemakers. So, Esther's plan is to have this banquet.

She sets up two banquets, one that night and one coming up that we're getting ready to talk about in chapter 7.

At first, Haman is extremely excited because the banquet is hosted by the queen herself just for the king and him,

Haman, who is second in command over all of the kingdom. And he is, in his mind, he is tough stuff.

And he goes back and he brags to his wife and to his friends, his cohorts, that he's this tough stuff.

But he can't enjoy the moment for his hatred of Mordecai. And they encourage him, you know, well, just get rid of him.

Build these gallows and hang him. Just get rid of him. Well, in chapter 6, the king, he's having a hard time sleeping.

Of course, we're seeing the providence of God all over Esther and God working where they didn't necessarily, you know, see it all.

But we see, looking back, we see God working in his providence all over Esther. But the king couldn't sleep and the king has them read the chronicles of the history, the recordings, back to him,

I guess, to help him sleep or whatever. And it just so happens that they begin to read about the account where Mordecai saved the king's life by reporting this plot to kill him.

And he says, has anybody rewarded, has that done anything for Mordecai? You know, we talked about at the beginning how

Mordecai could have had this rage of jealousy because here Mordecai saves the king's life.

He foils this plot of killing the king. And then we have

Haman who is lifted up second in command over all the kingdom instead of Haman. But it's all in the providence and work of God.

And here at the right time, at the right moment, the record keepers are reading this account of Mordecai.

Has anything been done to reward Mordecai for this act of kindness to me? And they say no.

The next morning, the king asks, well, who's in the court? Guess who happens to be in the court that day?

It's Haman. He summons Haman in. Haman, what would you do to somebody who the king wants to honor?

And Haman, of course, is thinking about himself. He wants to honor me. And Haman says, well, you should do all these wonderful things.

You know, let him ride a horse, put on a robe, and everybody should honor this person that the king wants to honor.

And, of course, it's going to be me, Haman. But in reality, it's Mordecai, Haman's mortal enemy.

He goes home with his tail between his legs, back to his wife, back to his friends, and they make an interesting remark.

You know, this Mordecai, if Mordecai before whom you have begun to fall is of Jewish origin, you will not overcome him, but surely fall before him.

So they're seeing the writing on the wall. They're noticing something, a reversal.

Something's going on here. You know, you're plotting to kill Mordecai. You're wanting to kill all of his people, but now all of a sudden the king is wanting to honor him.

Something's... You're in trouble. Yeah, so you're in trouble. Something's not going to work out. There's going to be some conflict in this, and they see it.

But still yet, there's hope because there's this banquet that he still has yet to go to.

Verse 14, while they were still talking with him, the king's eunuchs arrived and hastily brought

Haman to the banquet, which Esther had prepared. So that's where we are now, and the plot thickens.

Any comments on that before we head into chapter 7? No, not really.

I would like to point out, we should notice how quickly he goes from thinking, hey, this is amazing.

This is awesome. I'm going to be honored by the king to, well, his demise.

Yeah. And it doesn't take long at all. It looks like it's somewhere around maybe 12 hours time, somewhere between 12 and 24 hours where he's just on top of the world.

Next thing he knows, not going so well.

Yeah, yeah. Well, before we jump into chapter 7, let me make two quick comments about things that I've seen that I've been able to share with others and been encouraged with in my life that I just find that are treasures that we've discovered out of the book of Esther.

The first one is something that I shared today as I was looking at chapter 7, studying chapter 7 and just realizing that we see the providence, the promise, the protection of God in Esther, the work of God in Esther.

When things may look bleak, things may look dim, we can't see the complete picture.

We just see what's in front of us. And I truly believe God has designed it that way.

If we knew everything, there would be no need to have faith in God, to put our trust in God. But God is always working his plan out for his glory and our good, and we may not always see it.

And we may not always see him putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but he is.

He did here in Esther. He's always doing that. And our role is to have faith in him, trusting in him through obedience.

That's our evidence of belief is trusting in God through obedience and letting him put together his puzzle pieces and put together his plan for his glory and his good.

The other thing that I saw and noticed throughout the years, we've talked about this before, that so often when the book of Esther is preached or taught or somebody writes a book about Esther, it's kind of like the story with David and Goliath.

We want to make us the main character, the center of the story.

You know, I'm David. You're not David. Well, that's what they say. I'm David.

My troubles, my issues, my problems are Goliath, and God can take care of my problems.

But we're not the main character of the story. And just like in Esther, it seems like the easiest way to present

Esther is just straightforward application and make it about us and application.

Instead of executing the text and understand what God is doing, seeing God in the text. But really, ultimately, when you're looking at the book of Esther, Haman, the king are not the main characters.

Mordecai is not the main character. Esther is not even the main character. You go back to the key verse, the key verse in Esther, Esther chapter four, verse 14, where Mordecai says to Esther, For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the

Jews from another place, and you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?

You know, it's not Esther. It's not Mordecai who are the main characters. We're not the main characters. We can't put ourselves into the text and form all kinds of application, presenting ourselves as the main character.

The main character of the book of Esther is for such a time as this.

It's God and his plan. Mordecai tells her, God's going to deliver the

Jews, you know, regardless of what you do. You're not the main character. It's God and his plan is the main character.

And that's how I think we need to view Esther is God's the main character, looking forward to Christ.

And just this is a book of encouragement of obeying what obeying

God looks like and trusting in his providence and trusting in his work and his promise. And so those are the treasures that I've seen as we walk through Esther.

So let's jump into Esther, chapter seven. Let me read a few verses. And then I'll let you get some commentary, starting in verse one.

Now, the king and Haman want to hold my Bible up. So I'm not looking straight down.

Now, the king and Haman can't see right now.

The king and Haman came to drink wine with Esther, the queen, and the king said to Esther on the second day.

I think that's important on the second day. Also, as they drank their wine at the banquet, what is your petition,

Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half the kingdom, it shall be done.

What are your thoughts on the first two verses? Well, Haman just had a very rough morning.

All the good stuff he thought was coming to him went to his mortal enemy. I don't know as if Haman knew the connection between Mordecai and Esther.

I don't know as if he knew that. So to him, being honored by the king and his wife would have just been great.

He didn't know what was coming around the corner at him. He thought, well, after all this garbage that happened, all this stuff that I didn't like, at least

I get to go hang out with my friends. And he shows up, and the king's wife is like, oh, by the way, this dude's a twerp.

So you kind of got to enter yourself into the story. Here he goes. He's going to go have some drinks with his friends.

He needs his own wine. He's having a tough day. And here's the queen.

She's got a request. And he's probably sitting there, you know, this is pretty cool. I get to see what the queen wants.

I get to see somebody's wants and desires be fulfilled. I get to be on the cutting edge of what's happening in the kingdom.

And here we go. And then Esther says some undesirable things, at least to the ears of Haman.

I think you bring up a good point. And that's why I emphasize the second day is because this is where we begin in chapter seven.

This is where we begin to see the providence of God. And we can relish in that and strengthen our faith in God and what he's doing.

Because I don't think the kinship connection was made either. And so all these things were happening apart from that kinship knowledge.

And secondly, the emphasis is made that this and the king said to Esther on the second day.

So this is the second banquet. The first one happened, you know, that night. This is the second banquet. What happened the night before?

It was the gallows were made for Mordecai. If Esther had brought this information up the first night, the gallows hadn't been made yet.

So there would be no gallows for Haman. It just all fits together.

So we see God working all these things out. And just like we talked about in chapter six, there was a reason why

Mordecai wasn't rewarded initially. There was another time for that to happen.

So we see God's providence. We see God working all things out according to his time and his plan.

All right. Let's move on to verse three through six. Then Queen Esther replied, if I found favor in your sight,

O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me as my petition and my people as my request.

For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.

Now, if we had only been sold as slaves, men and women, I would have remained silent, for trouble would not be commensurate with the annoyance to the king.

Then King Ahasuerus asked Queen Esther, who is he and where is he who would presume to do thus?

Esther said, a foe and an enemy is this wicked Haman. Then Haman became terrified before the king and queen.

Oh, man, you can just put yourself in Haman's shoes for a second. Back in verse three. And he's like, all right, here we go.

Queen's going to ask for something that's going to happen. I'm going to be here for it. I have a request for my people.

For if we've been sold, he had to be like, ah, I feel a little something in my stomach.

This isn't going good. That we were supposed to be destroyed. Oh, no, she's one of them.

She's one of these folks. Oh, this is not going to go well. Then it says,

I would have remained silent if we were only going to be slaves. I wouldn't have annoyed the king. He's like, well, you could just not annoy him now.

I mean, please stop talking. And then I bet you that terrified before the queen and king.

Well, in the story comes in verse five. He probably had those feelings starting back up somewhere in between verses three and four.

Where he started feeling that in the pit of his stomach. It was weighing down. He probably felt a little nauseous and was hoping it was the wine, but he was sure it wasn't.

He knew he was those things.

And he knew at this moment that he'd messed up. So, yeah, it was not going to be happy.

I had something on the tip of my tongue and I'm trying to bring it back.

I'm trying to remember what it was. We're going to see

God working again. And it flows from this portion of the text.

And I'm trying to remember what it is. But fill in the blank.

Fill in the dead air, Dan. I'm trying. Well, you see here, we have a foe and an enemy, which is exactly what we were looking at when we looked at Ezekiel 38 and 39.

If you look back at Ezekiel 38 and 39, don't do it now because Robert's going to remember before I get all the way done with it.

But one of the reasons why he said that all of these people are going to come after him in Ezekiel was because for the purpose of drawing all the people back to God, they're going to be the prince of Rosh, the head prince.

Talking about Haman here. The whole deal with this is that the entire episode, the entire story here is going to lead the people to gather back together and remember their

God, which if you see a little bit later, they come up with their own feast called Purim, where they get together and roll the dice and whatever in future days.

But it did have the purpose of reuniting the Jewish people as a people from, I mean, they were spread all over the known world at that point.

And because of all this, it brought them back together and all because of one foe or one enemy, one person to hate.

Did that help you remember? It did. I really appreciate it. So, you know, we talked about Mordecai and how he had to wait for God to work his reward.

In some instances, God works a little bit faster. And I think here in this next section, we see

God working a little bit faster because I think this is interesting to see in the text as well.

The king now with this new information is in a really tough predicament because the

Persian law is, and we learned this from Daniel, you know, the king could not, he was tricked into a law that he couldn't back out of.

So he had to throw them into the fiery furnace. He couldn't back out of that law. And so the same thing is true here.

Whatever the king decrees, you know, it's Persian law that the king cannot retract it.

He cannot go back on it. And the king has actually made two declarations here, one through Haman and one directly to Esther.

The one through Haman was, we're going to destroy all these Jews. Right. And so how does he, how does he go back on that when it's against the law to retract and go back on that law?

Here's the other predicament he's in. He's made a direct declaration to Esther. I'll give you whatever you want up to half the kingdom.

So how do you, you know, how do you retract on that? If I follow through with Haman's decree, then that automatically is null.

You're not going to get anything. You're going to get death. So how do you, how do you go back on that?

So he's really in a tough predicament because of both of these decrees to Haman and to Esther.

And we're going to see how God works that out so that he's able to do what's right.

Yeah. Now, I don't know if it mattered in Persian law, if the decree was written down or just a verbal agreement.

So I don't know if he could have possibly backed out of what he said to Esther. I don't think he would have wanted to think he was going away because he was really ticked off.

I can't believe this dude got over on me. Let me figure out what I'm going to do. Let me figure out a way to steam over for a second.

And he came back angry. He was angry already, but go ahead and talk about what happened.

We'll get there. Verse seven, the king arose in his anger from drinking wine and went into the palace garden.

But Haman stayed to beg for his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that harm had been determined against him by the king.

I guess the king's body language was saying something. Body language, nothing.

He probably had some expletives that went out under his breath as he was leaving. He probably didn't have to look at body language.

Now, when the king returned from the palace garden into the place where they were drinking wine,

Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was. The king said, will he even assault the queen with me in the house?

As the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. This is some mafia type stuff right here.

That's interesting. But yeah, he's over there pleading with her for his life.

Like, hey, you got to do something. I was sorry. I'll do whatever. I'll make it up to you. Please just don't let him kill me.

Groveling like a little baby. He wasn't being a man and standing up thinking what he did was right.

He had some childish little motives of revenge. It was all unraveling before him.

So when the king came back in, he saw this. He's like, oh, so you're just going to go and kill her now? You're not even going to wait for the day when you said you could?

Because I don't think he's talking about anything sexual or anything like that. I think he was talking about actually punching her or thinking that he was going to kill her right then and there because he had such a hatred for these people.

So he came in saying, what are you going to do this now? I don't think so. And so they came in and it says they covered his face.

I think of, you know, you're in a situation where you're talking to somebody, you know, mafia boss or something.

You think maybe the guy's going to let me go. Maybe he'll be merciful. And all of a sudden, thank you,

Don, whatever your name is. And then like two dudes come up behind you with a burlap sack and put it over your head and tie the string and punch you in the face.

And then drag you down to the river. Right. Well, it's sort of sort of that situation.

He's he's not coming back from this. The last thing he saw was that burlap sack going over his face.

Yeah. Yeah. And you talk about Hayman's response to Esther. Just imagine what he what he had shown.

Or do you think that he had any plans to show mercy to any of the

Jews? I mean, you had Mordecai already on the streets, you know, in sackcloth and ashes and, you know, wailing.

Did Mordecai, did Hayman care? No. I don't think that he would have shown mercy to any of them.

But yet here he is begging for mercy for his life. What a turn of events.

Yep. Yep. It's one of the reasons it's not the only reason it's kind of like a secondary, a third, third tertiary point.

This is one of the reasons why. Why God has said the vengeance is his.

God knows exactly how much justice, how much violence should be dealt out to a person for their sin.

We don't. Yeah. And we come at things from wrong motives, which is why thinking about God is as somebody being violent is or as a man of war.

It's something foreign to us, because usually when we think violence, when we see violence, we see it or think of it as in a human way, which is like 999 times out of 100 is always sinful, tainted.

Selfish, wicked in some nature, unjust. But when

God gets violent. When he pulls back the Red Sea and dumps it on the Egyptians or when he goes after Hayman or when he goes after sin.

God, God's violence is completely consistent with his justice.

So that his wrath and his justice are put out perfectly. So, I mean, this isn't something that's directly taught here.

It's kind of one of those things you just kind of see along the side as you're going. But this is one of the reasons.

This is one of the bad. This is one of the examples of what goes wrong when you try to take justice and revenge into your own hands.

Instead of saying vengeance is the Lord's, I'm going to let him do this his way. He went about it in a sinful way.

And, you know, like they say, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Well, there you go.

Stupid prize number one for Hayman. He gets to go hang on his own gallows. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I'm hearing these two verses. This is what I was referring to earlier, where it may not have held the same authority as the written decree, but he still had.

He made his commitment to Queen Esther. He made his decree or he allowed him to make his decree against the

Jews. So, you know, he was in a he was in a hard place about how to get out of this law that he allowed to be decreed to kill the

Jews, which now includes his wife, whom he loved, Queen Esther. And so here.

The king finds his his out. He comes back in and, you know.

I'm not sure the cultural context, whether she was. Was she laying on the couch?

So he fell on the couch with her. What what the couch represented, you know, the cultural context of that situation?

I'm not sure. Whatever it was, the king used it. His falling on her couch as a means to get

Haman and get out of his his decree to kill all the Jews.

Right. So it's interesting that it only serves.

It only fixes half the problem, though, because the the previous while he killed the author, the previous decree still stood.

So that's why we have chapter eight. That's right. That's right. One of the guys that I was listening to,

I think he mentioned that there's some common commentators that say that maybe it was an angel that tripped

Haman that caused him to fall on the couch. Of course, we can't we can't say that because it's not in Scripture.

But it's interesting how people think things through. Oh, I would have thought it would have been his his weak knees and wobbly personality that would go over there, start boohooing.

Queen, save me. That probably had a lot to do with it. Yeah, I mean, you probably you think about somebody who throws himself down before somebody to plead for mercy or whatever, and you drop down on your knees.

It was probably something like like I mean, you make a request like that before the king, you sit up.

You don't do that like just back in your lounging position, like you are relaxed, having a few drinks like you sit up to ask that question.

I want this dude to be taken out because he's trying to kill us all. You know, so you plop over there and you're right next to her, you know, by grabbing on to clothes like please help me, please save me.

No groveling like a little baby. And yeah, you walk in and see somebody grabbing your wife like that.

I mean, I don't know. You'd be hard pressed to keep to keep me from. It wouldn't matter what

I decreed previously. They'd have to take that out, take that up with me later. My wife, like something's happening.

I'm taking care of this now. You better back off. You know, and that's exactly what happened.

Yeah, I think I think he would have shot first and ask questions later in this instance.

Yeah, because I mean, whether or not a written decree or a verbal decree had as much actual weight with the law, you mess with somebody's wife.

You've stepped a little bit further. I mean, honestly, you know, I worry about political stuff.

Second, if somebody's messing with my wife. Right. So, yeah,

I don't I don't know as if it mattered which one held more political pull or more poor Persian law.

Either way, Hayden was in a tough situation here because he put himself there.

Yeah. All right. Let's look at verse nine and 10. Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs who were before the king said, behold, indeed, the gallows standing at Haman's house, 50 cubits high, which

Haman made for Mordecai, who spoke good on behalf of the king. And the king said, hang him on it.

So they hang Haman on the gallows, which had which he prepared for Mordecai and the king's anger subsided.

Oh, this is just hilarious to me, because, I mean, I can imagine this happening and you're sitting there and all of a sudden

Haman gets his the bag put over his head and they're holding him, holding him back. And then there's this eunuch.

He's just standing over there, like laughing a little bit, like maybe more. Maybe Haman had been rude to him or maybe he didn't like him or whatever.

He just pipes up out of nowhere. Like nobody knew that this eunuch was just there.

Like this court servant just hanging out like, oh, there's a gallows over there. Y 'all seen it?

Y 'all can put him on it. I mean, like completely unsolicited, just like pointing over there, like, behold, the gallows that Haman made.

You should do with this information whatever you want. But there you go.

It's almost like, I don't know. It's like I only get to say five words to the king.

I'm going to make them count. Yeah, it's a funny. I mean, I don't know about funny, but it's one of the situations.

He's probably sitting there in that burlap sack. Shut up, man. What are you trying to say? Don't tell nobody about that.

I'm in enough trouble as it is. Well, you know, it is hard to say how this all came about.

But, you know, thinking motivationally at the very least, everybody who was present could see who the king favored, the king's anger, the king's predicament.

And so if you're going to see what's going to happen next. That's right. If you're going to say anything, say something that's going to be in favor of or to make the king happy.

Right. Well, I've been taught and learned throughout the years that you never come to your boss with a problem.

You always come to him with a solution. So if you have something that's wrong, you show up and say, hey, this was what's wrong.

I think this is what we should do with it. Now, if this guy were to come to the king, hey, king,

I see you've got this guy who's still alive. He's like, of course I do. No, we're going to say anything helpful.

He came to him and said, hey, king, I see you've got this guy who's still alive and you don't want him alive. There's a gallows right over there.

You should take him and hang him on it. So, yeah, he came over there with that constructive problem solving mentality that is good for the business world.

Because it's probably just about his cutthroat, which is a sad state of affairs for our economy.

But we'll get into that later. That's right. Well, this was a short chapter and we've come to the end of it.

Any final remarks you'd like to say about chapter seven? Really, just that God is good.

He made his promises to this people all the way back to the garden.

There was promises made that he was going to crush the head of the serpent. He looked through the time of Noah, where by all rights, the whole earth should have been wiped out.

But God found favor or Noah found favor in the eyes of God. God made the covenant sign of the rainbow that he would make sure that he wouldn't destroy the earth with water.

But that he was going to be faithful to his promises. He then went to Abraham and said, in you, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed.

Told him in Genesis 15 that his people, his descendants, were going to be put into slavery and bondage.

But then the people are going to come out. The Exodus story where they go out of the Red Sea, fulfilling that promise.

He makes a whole new covenant. Well, continuing on covenant with Moses and the nation of Israel there.

He continues that covenant faithfulness with David, all leading up to the time when Christ was going to come to the earth and pay for the sins of men.

And so right here, you see God being good that there was a wicked man who was going to try to destroy

God's people. And in the process, destroy God's promise to mankind that through Abraham's descendants, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

But what we see instead is that when you go on from this story, because of these events in this chapter, and even in the rest of the book, you have a celebration where God has preserved his people.

That goes on into the new covenant where you see Christ coming, paying for sins, dying on the cross, going into the grave, raising up three days later, and the sins of men being forgiven.

So that anyone who comes to him will find forgiveness in him. You see that promise upheld all the way back in Esther during the

Persian Empire and all throughout history. Because what God had promised in the past, he made sure was going to happen to that time and into the future then, and even through our future on into eternity.

Because those of us who believe in Christ, who have him as our Savior, will one day absolutely be resurrected just as Christ was.

He was the one who breathed life into Adam's lungs in the first place and gave him the breath of life.

He's the very same one who's going to breathe into our dead bodies when they're resurrected and give us new and eternal life.

Because through the breath of God and the forgiveness of sins found in Jesus Christ.

So seeing that happen here in this Old Testament narrative is fantastic because it's a real people who are doing real stuff in real life.

And stuff got hairy, but God was there even though his name wasn't named, even though you can't always see exactly what it was that God did.

God orchestrated this whole thing to preserve these people alive and to preserve his promise of eternal life to all who would believe and have faith in him.

So beautiful, beautiful story we have here. And I was definitely trying to make that connection as well.

Looking specifically at this chapter where the story of God preserving his people to fulfill his promise and bring himself glory.

Here in this story, you see God preserving his people where Haman prepared gallows for, in this instance, we'll say an innocent man.

But in the end to preserve his people, God arranged the story, arranged the plan to where Haman became found out.

And the gallows that he prepared for Haman, the innocent man, was used on him, the truly guilty man here.

So that God could preserve his people, so that through these people his messiah could come, the anointed one, the

Christ could come, who was Jesus. And that in his story, you had these insurrectionists who were trying to overthrow the government in his day.

And you had this criminal Barabbas who was there, the gallows or the cross in this instance was created and made for him.

But the people wanted to release

Barabbas and crucify the innocent man, Jesus. And which was here we see

God's providence and his plan working out. Where in this case, the innocent man replaced the guilty man, the criminal.

And ultimately, in the eternal scheme of things, replaced all of his elect because we're all guilty.

And the innocent man went to the gallows, the innocent man went to the cross, so that God's remnant,

God's elect could be saved. And so we see, as you were talking about,

God's providence and God's plan preserving his people so that God could eternally preserve his people through Christ on the cross, taking the gallows in our place that we deserved on himself.

Right. Yeah, it's interesting that here in this account in Esther, you see

Haman making gallows for an innocent man to hang on and he ends up finding his end on it.

In the same way, a wicked man made a cross in order to crucify the innocent

Christ. And in the end, they ended up finding their end and their demise there because it was that cross that he conquered.

It could not be held down by it. So each set of wicked folks met their demise at the,

I don't know what

I was going to say, but take what I was going to say and say it. Well, they met their demise at the cross because it was the big reversal where they thought they were doing

God's will. They thought they were preserving their religion, but it was in fact that.

It was their religion and not God's religion. And so God defeated sin, which was their demise because they were actually opposing

God in all that. And then by their rejection of Christ and his work on the cross,

God's prophecy, God's promise finally come to fruition when he said, you know,

I finally had enough. You've broken my covenant. You've rejected all my prophets.

Now you've rejected my son for the last time. And so we unintentionally bring eschatology into this, the prophecy being fulfilled,

Jerusalem being destroyed in 70 AD because he promised judgment and it came to fruition.

Yep, absolutely. Sorry, I got distracted there, Robert. I had a text message come through that was just hilarious to me.

Apparently my sermon from tonight was partially muted due to a copyright infringement.

And I'd made mention in my sermon of Mickey Mouse and the pastoral intern that I work with.

He said, what did you do? And had a whole bunch of laughs and had a little red sticker up there.

And it says, how dare you say that Jesus can crush Mickey Mouse? I don't know.

Maybe I'll have the fact checkers coming after me. Did you really say that Mickey Mouse can trample or Jesus can trample

Mickey Mouse? I don't think so. That's un -American. You can't go against Mickey Mouse.

Oh, come on now. Mickey Mouse and Fantasia was not, let's talk about Fantasia for a second.

You got a little mouse with a little magic hat on going like this and that, trying to have waves come up and little hippopotamuses be born out of nothing.

You think that that was the real creation story? That's a blasphemous little cheat trying to take something from God.

Now, they were trying to do it in a fun, cutesy way where everything was no fun and dandy and fun and all that.

But when you overthink it, it's clearly

Jesus is going to beat up Mickey Mouse. I mean, I don't know. Maybe we'll get this one banned off of Facebook and YouTube as well for copyright infringement.

Who knows? We'll see. We'll report next time. Who knows?

It may have been my reference to A Whole New World in Aladdin or Rick Roll in The Congregation.

What was the other one I used? Oh, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We'll see if any of that triggers a copyright warning on this one.

We'll see. I'm starting to get worried about you. Are you doing sermon series based on movies?

No. No, I preach from the Bible. However, where Hollywood gives me good material to push back on,

I push. When somebody says, here's a red button that'll anger those who hate

Christ, I'm tapping that thing just as fast as I can. All right.

We missed out on a current event type thing, but how about this one?

Why don't we talk about this for a little bit since I accidentally brought it up? What about the 11th commandment?

The 11th commandment in the Southern Baptists is, you shall not talk bad about another

Southern Baptist. But in broader Christianity, it's thou shalt be nice.

At what point in pressing the red button that ticks off the world around us, at what point should we do that?

At what point has it gone too far? I think those are two different questions because they're two different applications.

Sure. Go ahead. Well, the nice part when talking about the world, that does kind of bleed over into our theme, our motto, our whatever.

From Ephesians chapter four, verse 15, speaking the truth in love. And the gospel,

I've always thought and believed that the gospel in and of itself is an offense to the unbeliever.

Because you're proclaiming to them, you're calling them a sinner, that they are bad.

In and of themselves, they are bad. They are not good by nature. They are sinners. They've broken God's law. There's someone in authority over them who has established the law.

They've broken the law. And by saying that they need to be saved, you're implying that they are a sinner, that they're bad.

And so the gospel in and of itself is an offense. And our approach does not need to be offensive.

Of course, they're going to hate us. But as far as our presentation, we don't need to be hateful or harmful to give them a reason.

I think in the New Testament, speaking of the qualifications of elders, they're supposed to have a good reputation with those outside of the body.

And to me, that speaks of how we communicate, how we deal with, and that we allow the gospel to be an offense and not we ourselves in our presentations.

But it also doesn't mean that we are doormats, that we don't speak on sin, that we don't preach on repentance and sin and hell, that we don't bring up the tough issues, the harder topics.

So to me, there's a balance there. Does the

Bible talk about revealing, unveiling, exposing sin?

Yeah. But it also speaks of our attitude in that presentation.

So as far as the 11th commandment to be nice, in today's culture,

I would say that we've interpreted being nice as agreeing with sin, being okay with sin, looking past sin, looking over sin, for the sake of not ruffling feathers, getting along in the culture.

And that's the opposite of what I was just talking about. We bring it up, but in our conduct and attitude, we're loving.

But we bring it up nonetheless. I think what you're talking about in today's culture, the culture of being nice, that 11th commandment is condoning it, basically.

Right. Yeah. I agree with you. I think that the gospel and the word of God is spicy enough.

We don't have to throw any extra hot sauce on it to give a food metaphor. I was just listening to a podcast from a few

Anglican folks, and they were talking about how people are using the phrase, the imago

Dei, the image of God, and using it in a way to try to get us to completely pass over what the word of God says by saying, well, that's somebody who's made in the image of God.

Why are you judging them? Or they're made in the image of God. How dare you tell them that this is right or wrong?

And basically using it as a point of trying to shame you into shutting up about something that the

Bible is very clear on. They were made in the image of God. How dare you tell them that they are wrong about this?

They're made in the image of God. Why? If God made them that way, then just leave them that way. No, that's not what the

Bible says. So I think it's a sad time that we live in.

We're more concerned about not offending someone at all, because apparently offense is the biggest thing that you can do to somebody.

If you offend them, what do they say? Words are violence or words are assault.

So if you, I don't know, I'd say press the button all you want. Keep on pushing their buttons, but you don't have to push the button softly and whacking the button with a sledgehammer.

At some point, you're going to break the button. Yeah. And, you know, people want to talk about how, well, if a certain wing of a political party, if they had their way, then all

Christians would be in prison because we're domestic terrorists.

All of our speech is hate speech, just because we don't agree with certain behavior, certain lifestyles, certain actions.

So, you know, if they had their way, that's the route that they would take. So there's a sense of they already know what we're against.

The problem is when we get to the point where our speech and our behavior is such that they're

OK with us to where they don't know what we're against anymore.

And I like to take it back to the approach that I was talking about before. We should make it known what we're for and what we're against and what scripture,

I should say, is for and what scripture is against. But we can, on our part, it is in love.

It's in the right attitude. It's in the right tone. We're still going to get crucified regardless.

But we're called to have that right attitude, right tone. The problem is when they're, what's the old saying?

If the devil's not messing with you, then, you know, you're doing something wrong.

Right. Yeah, same situation here. You know, if these certain political wings or parties don't want anything to do with us, that we're no threat to them, then not only is our attitude, our behavior is off, we're doing something wrong.

If they're not, if they don't know what we're for and what we're against. And so I hope that makes sense.

It does. Yeah. And as far as the 11th commandment, when it comes to the

Southern Baptist Convention, you know, that's, it happens locally and it especially happens on the highest level.

And it has a lot to do with power and greed because you don't want to lose your position.

You've got these presidents, seminary presidents who are living in these, you know, gated, fenced in, fancy homes, which some of them have to because, you know, they are in a position where the world, they are the figurehead that people see on media or whatever.

And so they get the attention, they get the death threats. And so there's a part of that, that, you know, it's practical, you know, where you, you've got to have some kind of protection.

But as far as, you know, living comfortably, you know, you scratch my back,

I'll scratch yours. You hide my sin, I'll hide yours. So that we maintain this, this level of comfortable living.

And that probably has led to a lot of the, the scandals that we've seen recently.

Well, I think it might be a little bit of this too. Somebody realizes that, that they've, they've come short on an issue, but don't bring that up because the alternative is these other guys.

And we know they're not going to do as good a job as what we're doing. When, I mean, they don't realize,

I guess they don't realize that God's put whoever in charge for a reason and they don't have to protect or not protect because God is going to still have those folks in place where he wants them as long as he wants them there.

Yeah, yeah. And where I've seen it happen on the local level too, and it may not just be the

Southern Baptist churches, it may be happening in other denominations as well, where God has called there to be a certain aspect of authority within the local church.

And he's called us to deal with sin, Matthew chapter 18, church discipline.

And so when there's, you know, I've seen examples where there's sin in the church, but it's not addressed because maybe it's a member of a certain family who are big donors, who bring in big numbers.

And you would deal or address that sin, your nickels and noses are gone.

Keep this quiet or our bucks will go elsewhere. That's right. Or you lose your means of income to support your family if you address this sin.

Or you don't want your church to have a bad reputation in the community. So you just ignore sin.

You know, there's a plethora of reasons why churches choose to ignore sin. But in reality, they're ignoring obedience to scripture.

And I don't think God is going to deal kindly in his timeline and his prerogative with those churches who decide to ignore sin or decide to ignore scripture instead of,

I'm phrasing that wrong. They ignore the sin by ignoring scripture. Yep, yep.

And that's probably a good barometer test of seeing what's going to happen in our nation as well.

If judgment really does begin at the house of God, like the Bible says, so of course it does. If we start seeing our churches judged in these certain ways, you know, poor rulers, loss of influence, you know, terrible theology.

I don't know, it kind of sounds like I'm describing the church today. We may want to watch out for our nation as well because if judgment's already begun with the church, our nation should be short to follow.

Right, right. And that's why folks like you and I and other people who are, you know, there's some ministries who are writing books.

They're preaching in their ministries. They're preaching from their pulpit. And you have folks like us who are trying to go through a series of what does a healthy church look like from scripture?

You know, we're drawing from scripture. What does a healthy church look like? Because we're concerned about God's glory in his church by obeying him.

And that's what we were talking about earlier in Esther. You know, the evidence of our belief is our obedience.

And we have a concern about God's glory in his local church, in families, in our country.

And that starts, you know, in our homes and it starts in our local churches. And so that's why folks like you and I have such a passion about speaking about the things that make up a healthy church.

And one of those things is church discipline. And we have a desire and a passion to get that biblical teaching back into our churches.

Get that teaching in there accurately and appropriately. I've talked with folks about church discipline before in the past in the local church.

And one of their oppositions to church discipline was, well, you know,

I look back in the church history logs and they used to practice what they call church discipline.

And basically they were sin hunters and it just become a big mess. And well, just because they practiced it wrongly doesn't mean that the biblical practice of church discipline should be ignored.

Right. Right. I forget who it was. One of the apostles said that if we have a matter of sin, we tell it before the church to warn other people not to fall into those types of sins.

So, I mean, it's almost like people need to toughen up a little bit. I mean, if you're out sleeping around on your wife, even if you repent, it says bring the matter, let the church know, let them know that there's been grace and forgiveness, of course.

Let them know, hey, this has happened in our church. It can't go on. This person has repented.

We've made restoration. Things are going wonderful. And be careful that this doesn't happen to you.

Not judge this person over here, but be careful that this doesn't happen to you. And then let's celebrate the fact that Christ has returned a sinner who was lost and lost their way.

I think one of the problems we have is that nobody actually wants to admit that they've sinned.

And so when sin does come up, it's more scandalous than it ought to be. I mean, it's like you got a whole bunch of people who clearly confess,

I'm a sinner in need of a savior. When's the last time you sinned? Oh, I don't do that. Not me, no, you're not going to pin that on me.

I might confess to something little and small that I don't feel bad about, but you actually want to look at my life and see what

I'm doing and hold it up to the word of God. Nah, don't do that. That might be painful. It's more scandalous to talk about sin than it is the sin itself.

Right, right. And the thing is that what you've got is a group of people who don't have a real working knowledge and experiential understanding of seeing the gospel actually save people from their sins.

You can point to stuff like that right there. That guy was stealing from the store and he repented and Christ gave him forgiveness.

That's the God that I serve. I was lying to my neighbor over this, this, and this, and I found forgiveness in Christ.

I mean, other than that, it's all theoretical. If you find something theoretical, you're not as willing to go out and share it.

If you find something practical that you can sink your teeth into, something real that's in front of your face that you're confronting on a regular basis, you're willing to go out and tell the whole world about it.

The old, like 1800s, 1700s, 1800s level

Methodists were fantastic with this. They had several meetings throughout the week.

One was called a class meeting where you'd get together and you'd talk to each other about how you saw

God moving in your life. One of the questions that they ask is, how does your soul prosper?

How has the grace of God been evident in your life this week? And then another group that they would get together, much smaller, three, four, five people, they would get together and just confess their sins for 30 minutes, an hour.

They'd pray for one another, talk to each other. Okay, you've been struggling with this. Here's some scripture on it. We're going to pray with you for it, and we're going to find forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ with you.

That would be dangerous today. People would weaponize it. There'd be people gossiping and all sorts of stuff.

We can't stop this ridiculousness we have going on. I don't know if we need to all be 17th, 18th century

Methodists, or 18th and 19th century Methodists, but they weren't entirely wrong.

Even if there are better ways, they were doing something that the church has largely lost.

And George Whitefield, he was one of those Methodists. He was one of those people that came out later and said one of the things

I wish I had been more involved with was the class meetings, which is one of the basic ways of engaging in discipleship.

I don't know. Rant over. Well, just to close, I think you brought up two great points, the deterrent factor and the reconciliation factor.

And this just goes back to understanding church discipline correctly from a biblical point of view. We want to practice church discipline in our churches for the glory of God because he's commanded it.

It's obedience and faith toward him. Deterrence and reconciliation are not the pragmatic means to get to the end.

But deterrence and reconciliation are the beautiful fruit that the Bible says will happen when we're obedient to Christ in church discipline.

So that's just fleshing it out a little bit so that we can understand it correctly since we're talking about that subject.

But, yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I think it's a really, really good subject and things that we need to flesh out and think through so that we're moving forward in a

Christ -honoring way. And as we spoke of earlier as we ended Esther chapter 7, the innocent man,

Christ, did take our place of the guilty because we could not earn it.

We could not pay enough of the sin debt that we deserved.

He took it upon himself and based on the gift of repentance and faith that God works in our hearts,

God gives us the righteousness of Christ and forgiveness through his death and resurrection on the cross.

And if you've not repented of your sins and put your faith and trust in him, we would plead with you that you would plead with God, submit to Christ in that and turn from your sins and put your faith and trust in him and let your obedience be the fruit of your new faith in Jesus Christ.

And we would encourage you to come to him tonight. And thank you for watching. We really appreciate it. Thank you for today for the opportunities we had to gather together with our churches.

We pray that as we move on from here and get started with our week, that we remember the things of your word, your grace and your mercy that your son procured for us on the cross and pray that your spirit would be alive and working in us, that we would really see the effects of that gospel pressed into our lives.

God, we pray for those of each and every person that we come in contact with.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. And thank you guys for watching. We really, really appreciate it.

Remember that Jesus is King. Go live in the victory of Christ. Go speak with the authority of Christ and go share the gospel of Christ.

And from Rob the Baptist and Dan the Presbyterian, we hope to see you real, real soon.