Book of Esther - Part 15

Park Meadows Church

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Hello, everybody. Good to see you. Well, good to have a few visitors with us today. Thank you for being here.

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And we're going to be in the book of Esther. It's a book about how

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God orchestrates everything in our lives, even the things we don't notice, even the things we call little that we think

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He doesn't have anything to do with. Oh, we'll take care of the little things.

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We'll let God take care of the big things. Well, how do you draw the line that separates the two? You know, how do you draw that line?

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You can't do it. So God is involved in all of it. And it's a book. It's a book about that.

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And we'll review just a little bit. We're going to notice some things immediately when we look at Esther's life.

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There were a lot of things that some of us would call bad things that happened to her. But those things happened all under the control of God.

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And that's a thing the modern church has lost. It doesn't understand that anymore, that God is sovereign,

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God is in control of all things. If you live around here and hang around this church, you do understand it.

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If you listen to us on the radio or whatever, you understand it. If you listen just a little bit, if you get a grasp of that great old doctrine that the great

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Spurgeon, the prince of preachers from England, used to preach about so often. Baptists, believe it or not, once believed this great doctrine.

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If you look at it and you grasp it, all of a sudden you'll see it on every page of the Bible. Because God is all in all.

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How can we pray to him for anything not believing he is sovereign?

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Why would we pray? So everyone really believes in the sovereignty of God. Some people just don't know they believe it.

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And he is in control of everything. And so God has far greater love for us than we can imagine, more than we can love our own children.

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We can't comprehend the love that he has for us. And so everything as Brother Otis used to say so often, when it leaves

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God's hand, it's good. Sometimes he delegates things to the devil.

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And the devil brings things that to us look bad. And those very things, when we go through them, we come out stronger, don't we?

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We come out loving God more, knowing God better, and that's good.

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So you see, all things really do work together for good. And this book proves it. I mean, Esther's parents either died or were killed when she was probably an infant.

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She was raised by her cousin who was older than her. And she saw this man as her father.

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And he did a wonderful job of child rearing. There's some great lessons on child rearing in the book of Esther.

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We've seen some of those things. And then we see that all of the different things, whether they appear to be bad or good, they are the things that God brought to bring these people in exactly the right place at the right time.

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Mordecai was the man that raised Esther. He ended up being brought in captivity as a

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Jew. They were defeated in battle and destroyed as a nation and scattered over the known world.

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And they were brought many miles and marched over to the place here where this palace is.

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And Mordecai actually dwelt near the gates of the palace. And that's where Esther grew up.

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And then, you know, as time went on, the king was displeased with his wife, kicked her out, searched the whole land and sent men out into every corner of the known world and said, bring the most beautiful young virgins here.

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I'm going to pick my next wife. And what's interesting about that day, they'd knock on the door and tell that dad, we're taking your daughter.

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She'd be about 14, maybe 13, 14, 15, 16. King wants to see her.

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And that parent just had to say, OK. And then the daughter was gone. And that's what happened to Mordecai. So they come and they take

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Esther. Mordecai lived close, though, and he kept an eye out, watched to make sure she was

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OK. But she was gone from the household from that day. And out of all of the women of that known world, the king chose her for his wife.

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She was the most beautiful, but she had also been raised so well that she was eloquent.

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She was brilliant. She was clever and all these things that caught that king's eye.

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And he loved her. And God put that love in his heart. And he's a pagan king. He didn't know the

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Lord. But you see, people miss that today, too, this modern doctrine we have that is so off.

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Everyone serves God. Some people just don't enjoy it. Some people don't recognize it or admit it, but everyone serves

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God. Even Satan himself serves the Lord. They just don't admit it.

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The goats don't like to admit it. They don't give him any glory, but they're still pawns on a chessboard. And God moves them all around, whether they be leaders of nations or whoever they are.

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God moves them right where they need to be to fulfill his purpose. And that's why they call it history, by the way.

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It's his story. It's God's story. He runs the whole thing. And so this king,

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God had placed a love in his heart for this woman. And we come to this point where there was an evil man named

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Haman who made his way up in the nation at this time. And the king saw him as his number one man.

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And this man hated Mordecai because Mordecai would not worship him. The king had passed a law that said everybody's got to bow down to this man if he walks down the street.

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Mordecai refused to do it because he had been taught as a Jew that you don't worship anybody but God.

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So he refused to do it. So Haman hated him. And not only that, he said in his heart he would kill him.

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Not only that, he said in his heart he would kill the entire nation. Every Jew that he could find, he would kill them all.

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And he made a plot and he convinced the king that it was to his benefit to not only fund the killing of these

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Jews, but to make sure they were all just totally eliminated from his kingdom. And the king agreed to do it.

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Haman was so well versed and so clever in his speech that he made that king think it was going to be best for his whole reign if he could destroy the

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Jews. So all of this plot was created. And it come during this time period,

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Mordecai, who was the one who raised Esther, was hanging out around the gate to the palace and he heard two of the king's men plotting to assassinate the king.

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And he made that known to Esther, who made it known to the king. And so the king was able to have these men captured and killed before they assassinated him.

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But he never knew who it was that let him know about it. And so that's in the background. All these things going on, all these people being moved around to the right place at the right time, all this is happening.

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And now it comes to the place where Mordecai finds out about this plot to kill all the Jews. He sends word into Esther and says, look, how do you know

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God did not put you in the place you're in as the wife of the most powerful man on the earth, that he didn't put you there to keep this from happening?

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You need to go into the king and tell him what's happening and stop this. And she said, well, I can't do that. There's a law among the

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Medes and the Persians that if anyone approaches that king without him requesting them to come, that they'll be killed.

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It's capital punishment for that. And he said, well, here's the thing. If you don't do it, you're going to die anyway because they're going to find out you're a

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Jew. They're going to kill me and they're going to kill you. And God will raise up someone else to save the Jews if you don't do it.

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But how do you know God didn't put you there and that's your purpose in life? And that sort of woke this young girl up and she realized that Mordecai was speaking words of wisdom to her.

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And she said, well, I'll tell you what, you go tell all of the Jews you know to pray and fast for me and I'll do this thing.

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And so she was fearful. And she that night trying to go to sleep,

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I'm sure she was thinking of every terrible thing that could happen when she walked in the presence of the king without permission, that he would just have her taken out and killed immediately.

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She had all this in her mind. She was worrying about it. And sometimes we do that.

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We forget that God's in control. We think we're in control and that's what causes worry. That's all that can cause worry.

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If you think you're in control, you can worry and you ought to worry because if man's in control, there's a lot to worry about.

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But if God's in control, there's nothing to worry about. As long as you love him, follow him and fear him.

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You don't have to worry. You don't have to fear anything else, anybody else. She forgot that just for a moment.

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She shouldn't have, because if you remember the story we talked about probably just last Sunday that I preached, she walks in and he holds his scepter up.

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And that was part of the law was if he did that, that means he's receiving you even though you came without permission. And she walks down to his throne and puts her hand on the scepter.

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And that was the tradition that meant it's okay. I'm not going to kill you. You can come in and speak. And you know what the first words he said to her?

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He looked at her and smiled with love in his eyes. And he said, he's thinking, I hadn't seen you in a few days.

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Good to see you, queen. Tell you what, you came here, you must want something. I'll give you anything you want up to half my kingdom.

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Now, do you think that's what she expected to hear? Of course not. But she didn't need to be worrying.

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God had placed that love in his heart that he was not going to do anything other than give her everything he had.

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That's what this king wanted to do. And so she was just fine. And so that took place.

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Now, what's interesting, he says, I'll give you anything you want. And she said, well, all

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I want is I want you to come to a banquet, a dinner that I'm going to prepare tonight for you and for Haman.

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I want Haman to come. So she invited this evil man and she already had a plan. She had a plan in her mind and God opened the doors and made it possible for this to happen.

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So she invites the king. She invites Haman to this banquet and they come. Haman goes back and you get into about chapter five of the book of Esther and he begins to brag.

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You know, he goes back and tells all the people that live around him, all of his little group and his wife, how he's the only man in the universe that Queen Esther invited to the dinner with the king.

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Just the king, her and me, he said. It's amazing. He said, I'm so wealthy. I'm so powerful.

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Look at this. I'm the only one they love. They invited me. And so he's all prideful. And then yet at the same time, and he's also happy, but at the same time, this hatred for Mordecai is still in his heart.

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And he passed by him on the way home that night. And that hatred almost overtook even the joy that he had.

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So that's how deep this was. And so his own wife comes up and says, look, don't worry about that.

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Why don't you just go have your men build some gallows? And you, when you go into that banquet, you tell the king, we've already got this plot.

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So I've got this gallows built. We're going to hang Mordecai and you get that okayed and then you can be happy.

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He said, that's a great idea. So he had the gallows built. Then you come into Esther chapter six, and this is where you start to see this concept.

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Now think with me a minute. Last time we talked about two great doctrines that have gone or thoughts, let's put it that way.

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They've gone through time among theologians. One is the concept of the transcendence of God.

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And one is the concept of the eminence of God. Who can remember what transcendence means?

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So, so God is so holy that he is removed from creation and he doesn't directly touch it and he's not directly involved in it.

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Right? So there's this group of theologians that believe that's how God is. I mean, you take Hinduism, Buddhism, some of the

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Eastern religions, and even the new age movement, which really doesn't count God as a personal

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God, but definitely he's transcendent. He is not really involved.

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And yet some of the Eastern religions go to the other end of the spectrum. And we call that the eminence of God.

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And who can remind me what that means? That belief is all about what? Dave?

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God is present and not, and they take it so far that he's in everything.

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Even animism, the, the, uh, pagan religions in Africa and places like that, where they believe

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God's in the wood, he's in the rocks. And so therefore they will worship rocks and trees, right?

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Because God's in the wind. Do you hear it in certain songs that come out from in Hollywood movies, you know, he's in the wind, all this stuff that's taking it too far.

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You know, God, they don't say he's in the wind. He is the wind, you know, and that taking the eminence too far. So if you go too far on either side of those arguments, you become, uh, your doctrine is perverted.

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The truth is in the middle as it so often is there's a balance in truth. The truth is God is both

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God, the father, when you speak of God, the father, he is transcendent. He is totally separated from sin.

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Sin cannot come into his presence. He is the, I am, which means he is not bound by time, which also means he's the ever present tense.

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It says he has seen the end from the beginning. In fact, he's already been to your future with you. He's there now with you in your future.

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Why do we worry about anything? Think about that. He's already there right now in your future with you in reality because he's the,

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I am, he's now all the time. A God like that cannot come directly into time. He would destroy everything that's physical.

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So the father does not. However, he exists as a triune God, the son,

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Jesus Christ, and the Holy spirit. That's the way that God can extend himself into time and space without destroying it.

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We talked about that in Sunday school this morning, a little bit when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son,

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Isaac, and he raised his hand with a knife above his son. And as he came down with a knife, a voice from heaven said, stop, don't touch your son.

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Now I know that you have faith. Have you ever asked yourself the question? How could God say, now I know something.

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If he's omniscient knows everything. Why did God have to see the hand come down before he knew that Abraham really had faith?

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Well, there is a component that, uh, truth to that, that it was Abraham that needed to know that, but that's not all there is to that.

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The truth is when God chooses to dwell in time and space through his son,

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Jesus, he binds himself into time. He's in time. He's on the timeline with us.

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That's who Jesus is. His name is Emmanuel God with us. And when God comes in, in that fashion to dwell with us in time, then he does look at things and see it and know it.

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Now there are things Jesus didn't know when he was on the earth, even though he was deity, he didn't know the day he would come back because they asked him.

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And he said, only the father knows that. So Jesus is God with us.

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Jesus is the eminence of God. Think about that. The father is the transcendence of God.

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God is both. The holy spirit is both. He is omnipresent.

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He is everywhere. He is in God. He is God. He is here. He is in you. He's around you.

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You are baptized into him. You know what baptized means when you go underwater, it just pictures it. You're immersed.

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You're totally surrounded by God. And that's what that pictures. That's what water baptism pictures. But the holy spirit baptizes us into Christ, which means

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God's all around us, but he's in us. He's imminent in our lives. So there is that.

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Now what's interesting is the book of Esther is a study on the eminence of God, the presence of God, that he's involved in every detail of our lives.

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Now here we come into Esther chapter six. And on this particular night, the king tries to go to sleep and he cannot sleep.

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Why? Because God's keeping him awake. Does he ever do that to you? So sometimes when

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God wakes you up, probably all the time when that happens, it's on purpose. One thing you should do is ask,

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Lord, is there somebody I'm supposed to be praying for right now? Often that happens. So think about that. But anyway, this king wakes up, he can't sleep.

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So he says, well, you know, I'm a time manager because I'm running the entire world of that day.

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So I'm not going to waste my time. So he called, he woke up his men and told him to come in and bring in the chronicles. And that's the book where they write down everything that's happening in the entire kingdom.

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And he said, read it to me. I need to know what's happening lately. And in that time period, late at night, they read about the assassins that were going to kill him.

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And he said, well, that's interesting. That tells who told me about that.

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And I didn't know it. It was Mordecai's. That's right. He said, well, what did you do good for this man? He saved my life.

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What did you do? And they said, well, we didn't do anything. And I'm sure they were fearful that the king was angry. King is saying, you did not do anything nice for this man.

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And he said, who's here tonight? It just happens by coincidence that Haman had come to the palace late that night because he was going to ask the king permission to kill

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Mordecai. And before he got to do that, the king found out he was on the grounds and he called him in late at night and said, listen,

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I got to ask you a question, Haman, a person who the king loves dearly.

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What should I do for such a person? Well, Haman being so prideful, he thought it was himself. So Haman begins to think and he thinks of all the stuff he wishes the king would do for him.

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He said, well, first thing you should take some of your clothes that you don't wear right now because you wore them last week. And now you have new king clothes and put those old king clothes on this person, put him on your best white horse and then get your most favorite man that works for you and have him lead that person down through the streets.

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And as he leads them to every corner, he's going to stop and cry out. This is what the king does for people he admires and loves the most.

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And the king said, that's perfect. We're going to do it. And that person is Mordecai and you're the man that's going to lead him around town and cry that out.

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Now tell me that's not funny. Tell me God was not imminent in this. I mean,

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God woke this king up or you'd have never known that Mordecai saved his life. God had

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Haman come in there because his wife told him go get permission to kill Mordecai or he wouldn't have been there. All of these little details were worked out by God.

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The timing of it, the coordination of it, the orchestration of it is impossible without a manager.

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And God is that manager. God is sovereign. He's over everything. And so you see the irony of this.

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And now the next time he goes home, guess what? He's not bragging. He had to go home and tell his wife what he just did all day, leading that horse around.

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And so that wasn't fun. So now all of a sudden his wife is changing her tune a little bit and she actually tells him,

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I think that your position is lowering all of a sudden.

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I think you're losing your power and I think Mordecai is going to be the powerful man and you're not anymore.

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In fact, you may not even survive this. His wife told him that. He was so fearful.

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So that's sort of where we left off last time. And his wife,

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Zeresh was her name. And all the friends were there. And he tells all of them what had befallen him.

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And you see this in verse 13. And it says, then said his wise men and Zeresh his wife unto him, if Mordecai be of the seed of the

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Jews, those people you thought you were going to kill. And now they're, this man

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Mordecai is a Jew and he's the king's favorite man. All of a sudden you have just begun to fall.

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They told him thou shall not prevail against him, but shall surely fall before him.

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And while they were still telling him this, the king's chamberlains came and knocked on the door and hasted to bring

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Haman unto this banquet that Esther had prepared. Esther had this whole thing planned.

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They'd take him away. He's going to go to this banquet with the king and with Esther. And we're going to see what happens next.

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But what I want to do is take a few minutes and camp out just for a minute on this idea of the preeminence of God.

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What does it mean to us that God is imminent? In Ephesians chapter four, verses three through six, we see this passage, this verse, we talked about it a little bit last time.

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It said one God and father of all who is above all and through all and in you all.

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Now, when you study the preeminence of God in the Bible, you can't really find a much better verse than that.

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Although there is one that we'll get to in a minute in Colossians chapter one. But this one in Ephesians, it says that God is above all.

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When you look at the little Greek words for above, for through and for in, you see that above means super imposition, something that's super imposed upon something else.

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It's the little Greek word epi, and it means to be super imposed. And I was talking to Charlotte about this in the car on the way over here because we talked about it last time.

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And I said, what is it in like everyday life that we've talked about before where something is super imposed upon something else?

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And she remembered a photograph once, I think it was a, was it a Paul? A Ben. It was a

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Ben. And we took a picture and it was back in the days when you still sometimes took stuff to be developed at Walmart or wherever.

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And we brought it back. When we opened up the picture, they, something had either gone wrong with the camera or with the guys that were developing it, the film.

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And there, the photograph of Ben was really two consecutive photographs that were superimposed on top of each other.

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And when you study what this word really means, it generally means that something is super imposed upon the top of something else, but both are still evident.

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You can still see both of them. And so we could see Ben with a

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Christmas package, standing there looking at it. And the thing superimposed upon it was him opening the same package and it was open.

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You could see the toy and his little smile and all this cool stuff. It made the picture actually better than if it had just been the normal picture.

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It was cool the way it turned out. And so think about that. The Bible says that God is above all.

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And in the Greek, it means he is superimposed upon all. That includes you.

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You're part of all, aren't you? And you made me think of this. I mean,

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I was thinking about this sermon a little bit while you were teaching and maybe you think about your lessons while I'm preaching.

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I don't know. But it serves me right if you're doing that. But anyway, you were talking about how the trials take the gold.

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And you gave this example of how, you know, when you find gold in nature, it's in a rock.

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And so the way they would do it, they would put it in this little, what do you call the little thing they put it in? Crucible. Right.

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Little crucible. It's like a clay test tube. No, I don't know what it is, but I have seen one before.

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So they put that in there and they heat it. And that heat pictures the trials that God puts us through.

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And Bill's talking about how Brother Otis used to teach this from time to time. How did the person know when that gold was ready?

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Because what he would do is he would heat it. The dross would come up to the top and float. And it was ugly.

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And they would scoop that off and throw it away and keep heating it. And more dross would come up and they'd scoop that away and keep heating it.

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And as you keep heating this gold, the rock and the clay and stuff, whatever it is that it's in, rises to the top.

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You scoop it off and chunk it away. And how did he know when he was finished? Well, Otis said the way they know is when that gold is pure, he could see his own reflection in the gold.

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Now think about that as an example of what God's doing with us when he takes us through trials. He is taking us through trials and removing the dross.

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He takes us through more trials and removes the dross until eventually he sees himself in us.

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He sees Jesus Christ in you when you're ready. And we're all going to be ready someday when we meet him.

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He's going to see himself in us at that point. But we will have gone through many, many trials.

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And it's interesting to think about it that when God gets you to that place where you're pure gold, your faith is as pure as gold, it's as if he will be superimposed upon you.

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And yet he'll still see you, but he'll also see himself. And that's what this word means.

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God is above all. He's superimposed upon all. That's not just you and me, though. It's everything in his creation as well.

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I'll promise you if you go to Hawaii, if you get that opportunity someday, I have business there, so I had to go.

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But if you get that opportunity someday, it really is the most beautiful place I've ever seen on this earth.

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When you look out at the Pacific Ocean, it's the bluest blue you've ever seen, and it just glistens with the light as it hits it.

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And you're looking across at the greenest green stuff you've ever seen, the little plants and the grass.

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It's the greenest green you've ever seen. It rains a little bit every day, and then the rain just goes away, and you can do what you want to do outside.

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It's perfect weather. And then it rains a little bit more, and then it goes away, and it's perfect weather. And it never gets more than about 78 degrees.

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And that's in the winter, and in the summer, and in the spring, and in the fall. It's always that way.

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And when you look at some of the things God has created, if you look hard enough, you will see him superimposed upon it.

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You will see him in it. You will give him the glory for it. And that's the difference between a

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Christian and a pagan. A pagan just uses it. He never thanks

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God for it. He never even mentions anything to God about it. But someone who belongs to the

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Lord cannot look at something like that and not see God superimposed upon it. God is above all, but it also says he is through all.

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The word through is the word dia. It means the channel through which something goes to get to the place it's got to be.

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So God is not only superimposed upon everything, he is the channel through which all life, all energy, all work, everything that animates anything that makes anything real, he is the channel through which that happens.

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You see, those who focus too much on the transcendence of God, they think God is just sitting up there looking if he even exists.

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That he flung it all out there and now he's just watching to see if anything good or bad happens. That is not how

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God is. God is through all of it and everything is through him.

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God is transposed upon all of it. And then it says he is not only above all and through all, but he is in all.

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That's the little Greek word ein. And the word ein means in.

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That's good. See, I know a little Greek. And the word all is from the word pas, which means the whole of everything.

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So God is above and superimposed upon the whole of everything. There's nothing left out of that.

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God is the channel through which the whole of everything exists and is held together all the time, every moment, every nanosecond, he holds it together.

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And God is in the whole of everything all the time.

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That's how eminent God is. Turn with me to John chapter 15 verse 3.

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John chapter 15 verse 3. And while you're turning to that great passage that speaks about the eminence of God in your life and mine,

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I want to read you one from the Old Testament. Isaiah 49 verse 14. Just listen to this.

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But Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me. So Israel said this at one time.

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God has forsaken us. We've been taken captive. We've been destroyed as a nation.

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We've been scattered into the whole world. God has forsaken us. You know, that very event is what put

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Mordecai right by the king's palace. Isn't that interesting? But anyway, God has forsaken us.

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Don't you feel that way sometimes when you go through trouble or things don't go like you planned? I'll give you a clue, young people.

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It's good to plan. You're supposed to plan. The Bible says, without a vision, the people perish. So you're supposed to have plans and visions, but it never works out the way you plan it.

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God will change it. He will close the door in front of you, open one over there, and then you're forced to walk through it.

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When you get out there and you look back, it's better than your plan was. It's going to be that way your whole life.

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Now what's interesting about this is sometimes we think when God closes that door that God is bad or God is gone.

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He's just not there. He is not with me in my life. He has forsaken me. Now listen to me. Listen to me.

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There is no greater definition for tempting God than that. The Bible bears that out.

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I don't have time to go into that today, but you're not supposed to tempt God. The Old Testament meaning of tempting

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God means to live as if he's not there. Stuff has happened.

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It's not going right, so God's just not there for me. That's tempting God when we do that.

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Well anyway, Israel was tempting God at this point. They said, God has forsaken me. What does that mean?

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Tell me what it means when you say that. I'm the one that flew all night.

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Y 'all aren't supposed to be so sleepy. What does it mean? It's just like he's not there, right?

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He's turned his back on me. That's what they're saying. Then he goes on and says, God has forgotten me. Now what does that mean?

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That means you're stupid when you think that. How can God forget something? He's omniscient.

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God has not forgotten me. He has not forsaken me. We're just being stupid, right? Do we do that sometimes or is it just the

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Jews? Yeah, we do that. Now here's what God's answer. I want you to listen to this.

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Talk about the eminence of God. Here was God's answer to that. He says through his prophet

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Isaiah, he says to the whole nation, God speaking now through his prophet, can a woman forget her sucking child?

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It's graphic language, isn't it? Can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?

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You're thinking the answer to that is, well, of course not. But God says, yeah, some mothers do.

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That's sad, isn't it? We've seen that in society, haven't we? Yeah, they may forget.

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Yet will I not forget thee? Now that's what

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God says. He says the love of a mother is nothing compared to the love

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I have for you. He says, behold, I have graven thee in the palms of my hands.

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Thy walls are continually before me. Now, can you imagine you love someone, a child or someone so much that you carve with a knife their name in the palms of your hands so you can't forget them?

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That is the object lesson God uses to say that's how it is with me and you. Think about that.

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He is imminent in your life. He cannot forsake you. He cannot forget you. You're carved in his hand.

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Now let's look at this. One more passage will be done for this morning. And we have a lot left,

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Brother Bill. We're not going to get to Colossians. The whole message is in Colossians. We'll get there next time,

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Lord willing. John 15, 3. Now look at this. And you are clean through the word which

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I have spoken unto you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can you except you abide in me.

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So God pictures himself, the Lord Jesus pictures himself as a vine and you are a branch that's attached to him.

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Where did the nutrients come from for the branch, by the way? They come from the vine and that comes up from what?

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The root. And Jesus is the root of Jesse. He is our root. And he's reminding us that all of that life and energy comes from me, not from you.

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Yeah, you're the branch. You're the thing everybody gets to see in the world. They see you and you're supposed to be bearing fruit, which by the way, what does it mean to bear fruit?

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It means you're just a branch sitting there and you're holding the fruit. It does not mean you created the fruit. You understand that?

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And that's what he's saying here. You don't create the fruit. You just hold it out in front of everybody so they can see it. And the physical world and the people in the physical world see my fruit that's in you and you get to hold my fruit.

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But you're not the producer of the fruit. You're just the branch. But it's not that you're just the branch.

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The branch is really important because it's connected to me. So you're part of me. You see what he's saying?

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He's saying I'm eminent in your life. If you well, let's read it. He says, unless it abides in the vine, unless it lives, unless it's connected to the vine, no more can you produce any fruit.

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I am the vine. You're the branches. He that abides, lives in, is connected to me.

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And I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. For without me, you can do nothing.

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Now, where would we be if God is not eminent? We would be dead branches. Look at this. If a man abides not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered.

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And men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you.

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There's the key to answered prayer is this abiding in Christ because you won't ask for anything that he's not wanting to do in the world anyway because you're part of him.

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You're connected to him and that's how prayer works. Herein is my father glorified that you bear much fruit.

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So shall you be my disciples. Now look at John chapter 10 verse 25. I said

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I was in the last passage. What I meant was I'm in the last book that I'm going to study this morning. The book of John. It's the last book we'll study.

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John chapter 10 verse 25, talking about the eminence of God.

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1025, Jesus answered the Jews, I told you and you believe not.

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They just ask him, who are you? Are you the Christ? And he said, look, I've already answered that question.

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Why do you keep asking me? I answered it and you don't believe the answer that I give you. That's what he's telling them. And Jesus said,

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I told you and you believe not the works that I do in my father's name. They bear witness of me.

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The fact that I am the Messiah, but you believe not because you are not of my sheep.

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As I said unto you, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish.

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Now look at this. Neither shall any in the word man is inserted in the English. It's not in the

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Greek. It should read this way. Neither shall anything pluck them out of my hand.

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That would include men, of course. There is nothing in the physical universe.

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There are no people. There's no one who can pluck you out of Jesus's hand. That's what he's saying.

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He's saying, look, you don't believe you asked me if I'm the Messiah and I've already told you that I am and you don't believe that.

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And the reason you don't believe it and you never will believe it is because you're not of my sheep.

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You're a goat and goats never become sheep and sheep never become goats.

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You're a goat. And I'm telling you the truth. You're looking at me. You're looking at a manual.

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You're looking at God and you don't see God and you never will. And you're going to crucify me someday.

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You're going to kill me. And he says, what works have I ever done that I deserve to be killed?

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Show one work I've done that I deserve to be killed. And he goes on and says, but let me show you the difference.

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The difference between you and a sheep is like this. When my sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.

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It doesn't say they might. It says they will. And the great John Calvin used to preach as part of his doctrine of salvation.

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He would preach the fact that when a sheep hears the voice of Jesus, the calling, we call it that it is irresistible to him.

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He cannot resist it. He cannot say no to it. Now he may say no once or twice in time, several times in his life, but he will come to a point where when he really hears it with an ear that will hear, he cannot resist it.

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And that's the point of salvation of our earthly salvation. When we know that we became a child of God is when we said, yes,

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Lord, what do you want me to do? I'm yours. You're, I vividly remember my salvation.

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I was 24 years old, driving to work and got saved in my car because the Lord placed in my heart, the desire to say these words and to mean it.

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And I said, Lord, I've always known about you, but today for the first time in my life, I want you to be my boss instead of me being my boss.

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And my life changed in that moment has been different ever since. And it's because he became irresistible to me at that point.

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So that idea of irresistible grace is absolutely biblical. It is absolutely the way it works.

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And Jesus says, look, you won't believe you can resist the gospel. You can say no to me.

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You can live your own life the whole rest of your life because you're a goat. You don't, you're not going to hear it.

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But my sheep, even though they may resist me for a certain time period in their life, there will come a point when

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I'm going to turn their ear on like a switch. I'm going to turn their eyes on like a switch and they're going to look up and see me and they're going to say,

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Lord, what would you have me to do? They're going to receive me as their Lord at that moment because I'm going to be irresistible to them. And that's what he's telling the goats.

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He's telling them to their face. Here's how it works. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give unto them.

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It's a gift. You cannot earn it. Of course, life that is eternal, which means it never ends.

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That means it can't stop. That means you can't lose it. If it's if you lose it, then it wasn't eternal.

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It stopped. So I give this gift of eternal life and they shall, if that's not enough, he puts it in negative.

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He says they'll never perish. They'll never go to hell. They will never perish.

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And if that's not enough, he puts it this way. He neither shall anything in the created universe pluck them out of my hand because I'm holding them in my hand.

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Now that's imminent. You can't walk down the street without being in his hand. You can't drive down the street without being in his hand.

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You can't go through trouble without being in his hand. And if that's not enough, look what else he says. And I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish.

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Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My father. Now we're going to talk about the transcendent

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God of the universe, the creator of all that is the

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I am. And Jesus responds and speaks about him. He says, my father, which gave them to me is greater than all things in the universe that he created.

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And no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. So now you have yourself seated in Jesus hand and the father's hand on top.

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Where are you going to go? Where are you going to go without God? You're not going to go anywhere without God.

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God is imminent in your life. He's orchestrating everything that you've ever been through to put you to the place where you are today.

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And he's going to take you through some more stuff tomorrow to put you to the place where you see him face to face. And you'll be exactly who you're supposed to be in that moment.

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It's all orchestrated by him. If you had to do it, mess it up. I guarantee you, you would mess it up.

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And God's not going to let that get messed up. The eminence of God is an amazing thing to study.

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Esther is all about that. I might have to take one more Sunday to get over to Colossians. We'll do that soon.

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Let's pray. Stand and have prayer together. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you comfort our hearts.

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You reveal yourself to us. You let us know you more and more.

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We let us understand your ways more and more as we walk with you and throughout all eternity.

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As we look at eternity as a timeline, we don't know how it really is, but we know that it's infinite time with you, that throughout all of that, we will continually be learning more and more about you because you're incomprehensible.

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You are infinite in your being, and we're finite. We'll always be learning more and more about you.

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Thank you for the fact that you reveal yourself to us in your word, even here in this cursed world. You've given us this book, these words that you say are spirit and life to us.

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You've given us yourself, and you are the vine, and you bring all the life and light and spiritual nourishment into our lives.

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Lord, we pray that you would bring fruit into our lives, and that the world would see it, and it would make a difference.

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Lord, we thank you for the time we're about to spend together, the fellowship we can have. We pray in Jesus' name.