SPEAKER_00: Providence Family, great to see you.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're a guest here with us, we are thrilled that you have joined us.
SPEAKER_00: Every single one of us wants to know the steps that are in front of us.
SPEAKER_00: Really, in all parts of life, but in particular as followers of Christ, what does it look like?
SPEAKER_00: What steps are in front of us to do what Jesus told us to do, which is to make disciples?
SPEAKER_00: And so what we do as a church family is we put together two brief classes and uh just to think about some steps that all of us, if all of us would take these four different steps, we believe that we would make make disciples just as Jesus told us to.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you have not been uh to those classes, I welcome you, invite you, and would ask you to um to um I guess make that investment because it is an investment of your time.
SPEAKER_00: Um, one thing you're gonna find out there's really who we are, what we love, what we care about, but also how you can engage.
SPEAKER_00: And so I welcome you to it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, two of the things.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, 515 tonight, for those of you who are church members, there's a members meeting at 515.
SPEAKER_00: We would welcome you to it.
SPEAKER_00: There's a number of things that we'll um ask you to think about and even vote on.
SPEAKER_00: And so just want you to know about that.
SPEAKER_00: And at six o'clock, what I believe is um the most important thing that we do as a church family when we gather, and that is that we pray and we pray and we sing.
SPEAKER_00: We seek the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The fact is, is the pathway in front of us of how we go about doing that, not a single one of us has the ability, the power, the strength, the gifts, even the moral fabric that's required to carry that out without him.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we pray in these times, we do so on behalf of the whole church family and we pray for power.
SPEAKER_00: We pray for power for our own life, for our homes, for our families, and for our church family.
SPEAKER_00: And so I welcome you back tonight.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you'll be here at six o'clock, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I ask, God, for those who are here, that you would open up our hearts as we open your word.
SPEAKER_00: And specifically this morning, I pray for those who feel like they are trapped in a storm or in circumstances that are troubling, or perhaps feeling like their life is so ordinary and obscure that perhaps they're missing out on what you might think is the best for them.
SPEAKER_00: And I simply would ask that you would help us to see within this story that you see us, you care for us, and that you use these seasons of obscurity to prepare us for seasons that are coming.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray for those who are in the middle of a stretch of time that perhaps is represented by the brokenness of this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: That you would help them to see that they're not forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: And that you have the power to be able to pull them up from the fields full of ashes and bring beauty from the Lord from and to their life.
SPEAKER_00: And so would you please speak through weakness?
SPEAKER_00: Would you please bring glory to Jesus Christ and good to your people?
SPEAKER_00: I pray in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, uh, if you would turn with me to Esther chapter two.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of us love fairy tales, and Esther is not one of them.
SPEAKER_00: It does, however, features a lot of things that oftentimes find themselves in fairy tales.
SPEAKER_00: In this story, there's a powerful king, and there's a beautiful orphan who becomes queen.
SPEAKER_00: There's an evil villain, and there's this amazing rescue at the end, and at the very end, there's this enormous feast celebrating what God had done.
SPEAKER_00: It's a pretty amazing story, but it's true.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a fairy tale.
SPEAKER_00: And what makes Esther so different and unusual than really all the books of the Bible is there's no direct mention of God.
SPEAKER_00: And when we read through it, you don't find anyone praying to God by name, worshiping God by name.
SPEAKER_00: There's no mention of him by name, and there's no description of who he is by name.
SPEAKER_00: And that is really unusual.
SPEAKER_00: You see, in the beginning of the Bible, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and he created us to walk with him, and we became tempted to walk apart from him.
SPEAKER_00: We wanted to chart our own course.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Bible says that we sinned against God.
SPEAKER_00: We broke fellowship, and God saw what took place.
SPEAKER_00: He promised it would take place, and that is the world began to unravel.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts began to unravel.
SPEAKER_00: Sin began to literally create a tidal wave of brokenness that swept over humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, even though he was the offended party, he was sinned against.
SPEAKER_00: God made a promise that he was going to send a special son to be the savior of the world.
SPEAKER_00: This son would be born of a woman.
SPEAKER_00: And nine chapters later, from when this took place, it says that he would come through the Jewish line, a son of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Now that becomes very important because the rest of the Old Testament, until the Christ comes and is offered the name Jesus when he comes in the New Testament, for the rest of the Old Testament, what we find is that God is preserving this Jewish line in order to protect his promise to give us a Savior that we desperately needed.
SPEAKER_00: And most of the stories in the Old Testament, where the people of Israel were threatened, where they were in trouble by their own sin or outside, is that he rescues them in the most dramatic ways.
SPEAKER_00: But in Esther, he doesn't rescue in dramatic ways.
SPEAKER_00: There's no direct commands, thus says the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: There's no parting seas, there's no causing the sun to stand still, there's no direct miracles.
SPEAKER_00: Providence is a word that means that God is sovereign and has all power, and he also has a purpose that he has determined, and he uses his sovereign power to bring about his determined purposes.
SPEAKER_00: And so we started last week, and in Esther chapter one, we're introduced to a Persian king named Ahasuerus.
SPEAKER_00: We know him more as Xerxes.
SPEAKER_00: And we're told in chapter one that he hosts this feast, a feast for 180 days for his army and for various officials to come to show his greatness and his pomp and his glory, his power, his wealth.
SPEAKER_00: And we're told in history why he did this, and it was to raise money for his invasion of Greece.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of these six months of a feast, he throws one more party, lasting seven days.
SPEAKER_00: And this time it wasn't for the army and it wasn't for the officials, it was for the residents of Susa, his capital city.
SPEAKER_00: And it was not just for the rich, it was for all, high and low, poor, rich.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody was involved, and everyone was invited.
SPEAKER_00: On the seventh day, the last day, it says that the alcohol was flowing freely, the king got drunk.
SPEAKER_00: Many of the people there were intoxicated and were also drunk.
SPEAKER_00: And in his drunken state, he made a decision, and that is to order that his queen Vashti be paraded in her sensuality in front of all the drunken men.
SPEAKER_00: And she refused.
SPEAKER_00: And in front of all of his people, his ego was bruised.
SPEAKER_00: And so, in addition to other really poor choices, he makes a decision at the advice of his advisors to depose Vashti as queen.
SPEAKER_00: And that is where chapter one ends.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, when we get to chapter two, almost four years pass.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible doesn't tell us exactly what took place.
SPEAKER_00: We are told the timeline.
SPEAKER_00: We're told, if you remember, in chapter one, verse three, it says that the feast took place in the third year of the king.
SPEAKER_00: And when we read our text, we're going to read that this took place in the seventh year of the king.
SPEAKER_00: So what took place in that middle time?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what took place was King Xerxes took his army and navy and invaded Greece.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you have studied or read of the battle of Thermopylae.
SPEAKER_00: This is when it took place.
SPEAKER_00: And the navy of Persia was decimated.
SPEAKER_00: He was defeated.
SPEAKER_00: He returned back to Susa, his capital, humiliated and much poorer and lonely.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where chapter 2 begins.
SPEAKER_00: After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her.
SPEAKER_00: Then the king's young men who attended him said, Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king, and let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom, to gather all the beautiful young virgins to the harem in Susa the citadel, under custody of Hagai, the king's eunuch, who was in charge of the women.
SPEAKER_00: Let their cosmetics be given them, and let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti.
SPEAKER_00: And this pleased the king, and he did so.
SPEAKER_00: Now there was a Jew in Susa, the citadel, whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shemai, son of Kish, a Benjamite, who had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives, carried away with Jakonia, king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had carried away.
SPEAKER_00: He was bringing up Hadassah, that is, Esther, the daughter of his uncle, for she had neither father nor mother, and the young woman had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at.
SPEAKER_00: And when her father and mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter.
SPEAKER_00: So when the king's order and his edict were were proclaimed, and when many young women were gathered in Susa, the citadel, in custody of Hagai, Esther also was taken into the king's palace and put in custody of Haggai, who had charge of the women.
SPEAKER_00: And the young woman pleased him and won his favor, and he quickly provided her with cosmetics and her portion of food with seven chosen young women from the king's palace, and advanced her and her young women to the best place in the harem.
SPEAKER_00: Esther had not made known her people or kindred, for Mordecai had commanded her not to make it known.
SPEAKER_00: And every day Mordecai walked in front of the court of the harem to learn how Esther was and what was happening to her.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when the turn came for each young woman to go into King Ahiswerus, after being twelve months under the regulations for the women, since this was the regular period of their beautifying, six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with spices and ointments for women.
SPEAKER_00: When the young woman went into the king in this way, she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the harem to the king's palace.
SPEAKER_00: In the evening she would go in, and in the morning she would return to the second harem in custody of Shazgaz, the king's eunuch, who was in charge of the concubines.
SPEAKER_00: She would not go into the king again unless the king delighted in her and was summoned by name.
SPEAKER_00: When the turn came for Esther, the daughter of Abbail, the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her as his own daughter to go into the king, she asked for nothing except what Hagai, the king's eunuch, who had charge of the women, advised.
SPEAKER_00: Now Esther was winning favor in the eyes of all who saw her.
SPEAKER_00: And when Esther was taken to King Ahasweris into his royal palace in the tenth month, which is the month of Tibet, in the seventh year of his reign, the king loved Esther more than all the women, and she won grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.
SPEAKER_00: Then the king gave a great feast for all his officials and servants.
SPEAKER_00: It was Esther's feast.
SPEAKER_00: He also granted a remission of taxes to the provinces and gave gifts with royal generosity.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you perhaps, even after reading that, because you heard the story taught when you were in VBS when you were eight years old, and they didn't tell it like this, you heard what we didn't read.
SPEAKER_00: If you heard it correctly, what you know is we just read an incredibly unjust, immoral, unfair, and broken scenario that took place to real people created in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't supposed to be like this.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things we're gonna see in here is that God is gonna give her favor.
SPEAKER_00: Three times it says God gave her favor.
SPEAKER_00: Favor is when God, I don't know how he does it, right, in his providence, he looks at somebody and he gives them favor.
SPEAKER_00: And what that means is it causes the people around that person to be favorably disposed to see them differently, to see them unique, to bless them in a certain way.
SPEAKER_00: When I go overseas, I pray, God, would you give us favor that people would not even knowing why we're there, who we are, just want to know why we're here.
SPEAKER_00: Give us favor.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the hard things we're gonna read is that God gives this woman favor in a setting that is awful.
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna ask, how can God, who is holy, interact in these broken spaces?
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things you have to remember is that it wasn't supposed to be like this.
SPEAKER_00: God in his holiness created us to have a relationship with him, and he protected it by giving us instructions, and we rebelled against those instructions.
SPEAKER_00: We had to leave the garden into the wilderness, but in the wilderness, he still made a promise and he says, I'm gonna send you a savior.
SPEAKER_00: And it's through the Jewish line.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we find in the Old Testament is the story of how God is moving to not only create the nation of Israel, but to protect it, not because they are amazing, but because God made a promise to send an amazing Savior through them.
SPEAKER_00: And what you find, they're in exile in Persia.
SPEAKER_00: Why are they there?
SPEAKER_00: Because God kept coming to them, pleading with them, sending prophet after prophet after prophet instructions, saying, Repent, turn from your idols.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't, I'm going to exile you to show you that when you pray to your idols in exile, that they are of no use.
SPEAKER_00: And they continue to sin.
SPEAKER_00: So they go into exile.
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't his best for them.
SPEAKER_00: And even after they got there, what happened?
SPEAKER_00: God loves them so much, he sends them a prophet named Jeremiah, and he says, 70 years you're gonna have to be in exile, but at the end of 70 years, I'm gonna do something so significant in the world that literally a king is gonna come to power and is going to invite you to return to Jerusalem where you can rebuild and you can rebuild a life that's centered around me.
SPEAKER_00: So the king of Babylon invades, they go into exile 70 years, and eventually God moves in the Persian Empire.
SPEAKER_00: A man named Cyrus the Great invades Babylon, takes over, and it says in his first year, he sends an edict to the Jewish people saying, You can return.
SPEAKER_00: 50,000 Jewish people who had been exiled around the empire returned to rebuild Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And history tells us roughly a million Jews chose not to return to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Many of them had grown so comfortable and assimilated in Persia, they didn't want to go back.
SPEAKER_00: And two of those who had grown so assimilated in Persia, one of them was named Mordecai, and the others Esther.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't have to be this way.
SPEAKER_00: And God in his grace chose instead of to say, you know what, I can't touch such things.
SPEAKER_00: He chose to enter into this broken field in order to protect his promise, in order to restore us.
SPEAKER_00: And this should give so much, so many of us so much hope.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because our stories are so full of broken fields.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us, you're literally right now, you look in the mirror, and all you see is the singes because of sin that you did or somebody did to you.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, how in the world, how in the world could God Almighty move in this space?
SPEAKER_00: He's holy and just, so pure, he can't even, this is some, it's time, he can't look upon evil.
SPEAKER_00: How could he not only look upon it, but actually get involved in it?
SPEAKER_00: It's because he loves us so much.
SPEAKER_00: So how does he do it?
SPEAKER_00: The first thing I want you to see is that God providentially works through ordinary circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: Ordinary circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: Now look, we live in a sinful, broken, fallen world.
SPEAKER_00: And so ordinary, in a sinful, broken, fallen world, those circumstances are typically sinful, fallen, and broken.
SPEAKER_00: And that's precisely what we find here.
SPEAKER_00: We're told in verse 1 that when the king's anger abated, he remembered Vashti.
SPEAKER_00: We don't really know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if it means that he regretted what he did or if he just hadn't thought about her in a few years and thought, oh yeah, I don't have a queen.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know exactly.
SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting that the text says next is that it says that the young men who attend to the king, now this is very important.
SPEAKER_00: We've already seen that he has seven royal advisors who have lived life, who has a sense who have a sense of some wisdom, at least they've lived longer.
SPEAKER_00: And many advisors throughout this time would recognize, man, if there is a if there's a throne for a queen that is open, it's vacant, that we can use this for political gain, peace treaties, or royal line, something other than lust.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what his young men who attended him, it's like his college frat brothers.
SPEAKER_00: They look at him and they go, We want to lift your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: So this is what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: We're simply gonna appeal to your lust.
SPEAKER_00: And so it says that they come up with an idea.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king.
SPEAKER_00: And he thought, Oh, that's a great idea, but how in the world are we gonna get them here?
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, We got another idea.
SPEAKER_00: Verse three let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Just notice these verbs, okay?
SPEAKER_00: We've already seen he sought, now he's gathering all the beautiful young virgins in the harem to Susa, the citadel, under custody of Hagai.
SPEAKER_00: And let the young woman who pleases the king be the queen.
SPEAKER_00: So you notice here that this was not a public invitation sent out to all the women to apply for a beauty contest.
SPEAKER_00: No, in 127 provinces.
SPEAKER_00: It says every province.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter one, we read there was 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia.
SPEAKER_00: So, at very least, 127 women were taken.
SPEAKER_00: And what were they?
SPEAKER_00: They were sought after, taken, gathered, and put in custody.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that sound like to you?
SPEAKER_00: What do we call it today when young women for sexual purposes are sought after, taken, gathered, and put in custody?
SPEAKER_00: We call it human trafficking.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the broken field that we're looking at here.
SPEAKER_00: You see, people, friend, friends, people without a biblical worldview have always and will always fail to see the sanctity of human life.
SPEAKER_00: They fail to see the sanctity of human life, whether it's male or female, young or old, in the womb, outside of the womb, whether the skin is black or brown or white.
SPEAKER_00: The virtue within the garden before there was sin was my life for your good.
SPEAKER_00: We sinned and suddenly everything was distorted, and it was your life for my good.
SPEAKER_00: And when people who don't have a Bible and therefore don't have a worldview from the Bible, or when people have a Bible but they fail to read it and therefore they don't have a biblical worldview.
SPEAKER_00: What happens if you don't have one is you look at people less than whom God made them to be.
SPEAKER_00: Opening up the possibility that we see to steal, kill, take, and exploit.
SPEAKER_00: So this setting is obviously difficult, but let me encourage us let's not let difficulty obscure our hope in God's ability.
SPEAKER_00: There's difficulty and there's ability.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that many of us, even now, are trapped in storms that we didn't choose and we cannot escape.
SPEAKER_00: And I do have good news for you, and that is that God's power is not limited to favorable wind.
SPEAKER_00: God never looks at the world and writes within the Bible, everything is good.
SPEAKER_00: But what he does write in Romans 8 is for those who love God, all things work together for good.
SPEAKER_00: For those who are called according to his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: In Ecclesiastes, when the writer is describing the brokenness of the world, he describes it like a tapestry.
SPEAKER_00: That the loom is flipped, and so we can only see the backside where you see all the gnarls and the knots and the phrase, and you can't quite see what's really being designed.
SPEAKER_00: But in time, the author of it all is going to flip the loom, and suddenly we're going to see this beautiful thing that he put together.
SPEAKER_00: My encouragement to you, for those of you who are in really difficult experiences and circumstances, is to hold on and be patient.
SPEAKER_00: For God's power is not limited to the ideal.
SPEAKER_00: The people look and it's go, I don't know why I like you so much.
SPEAKER_00: There's just something about you.
SPEAKER_00: I just I'm favorably disposed in your direction.
SPEAKER_00: He does this and he does this to ordinary people.
SPEAKER_00: This is where we're introduced to Mordecai.
SPEAKER_00: Mordecai was a Jewish man living in Persia, which meant he was a racial, ethnic minority.
SPEAKER_00: We're told that he was raising his cousin as his own daughter.
SPEAKER_00: His cousin, her name, Hadassah.
SPEAKER_00: It means myrtle or myrtle tree.
SPEAKER_00: A beautiful name and a beautiful tree that has big, beautiful flowers.
SPEAKER_00: She goes to Persia, though, and she received a new name.
SPEAKER_00: Her new name in Persia, Persian is Esther, it means star.
SPEAKER_00: We're told a few things about her in verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: We're told that she had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at.
SPEAKER_00: When her father and her mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter.
SPEAKER_00: So we know a few things here.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, we know that she's an orphan.
SPEAKER_00: She's adopted by a very kind older cousin who takes care of her.
SPEAKER_00: And we're also told that she's physically attractive.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible goes out of its way, and if you think about the context, okay, in the context of the story, this is not a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: You know, in the Middle East, many women they dress in a way to where the only thing you see sometimes is their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes their face, never their body.
SPEAKER_00: And when it says here that she had a beautiful figure, the Bible is going out of its way to say her body was attractive.
SPEAKER_00: And when it was covered, her face was lovely to look at.
SPEAKER_00: This was an attractive person.
SPEAKER_00: It's written this way to help us to see immediately, I bet she's at risk.
SPEAKER_00: So it's no surprise that if these women from 127 provinces are being shipped to Susa, and she lives in Susa.
SPEAKER_00: The verse 8 would take place, and that is that Esther was taken into the king's palace and put into custody of Haggai.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I wonder when I think about these stories like this, I think I wonder what their dreams were.
SPEAKER_00: Not just Esther, but all of these women.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we all have dreams, right?
SPEAKER_00: When we were seven, eight.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of us thought it'd be cool because we watched Disney.
SPEAKER_00: So we're like, it'd be cool to be a princess, a queen, or maybe a king one day, a prince.
SPEAKER_00: But not like this.
SPEAKER_00: Surely none of these individuals thought, dreamed of marrying such a godless man, a sensual man, a ruthless, jealous man who had just shamed, objectified, and deposed his previous wife, was not only filling the throne, but was filling a harem of concubines for when he was bored with his own wife.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, these women didn't dream of this.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9 says that she gets there, and the the eunuch that was in charge of the harem of all of these virgins, his name is Hagai, it says that Esther pleased him and won his favor.
SPEAKER_00: He looked at her and he says, I don't know what it is about you.
SPEAKER_00: There's just something about you.
SPEAKER_00: I just like you the most.
SPEAKER_00: See, God can even work in these spaces that are so brutal.
SPEAKER_00: Giving favor.
SPEAKER_00: And so Hagai gives her food and cosmetics, seven maids, and a best place in the harem.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that meant she got a window or I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: It was just an awful upon awful upon awful, is all I know.
SPEAKER_00: But she got the best of what was awful.
SPEAKER_00: But her obscure life, maybe she felt was so ordinary before this moment was about to change.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you, and some of us, we're living in a time where we just feel obscure.
SPEAKER_00: It feels like so many of our dreams perhaps are our life is not quite as great as our dreams once were.
SPEAKER_00: I have these gifts that aren't actualized.
SPEAKER_00: I have, I have these, I have these things that I could do in my life and they're just not doing.
SPEAKER_00: I feel so obscure, hidden, meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: What do I do?
SPEAKER_00: Let me just encourage you to remember this.
SPEAKER_00: Let's not waste our seasons of obscurity.
SPEAKER_00: You see, friends, there's nothing in Esther within the book that leads us to think that she's going to be a key to God's redemptive history.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she's a woman who's living in a world that's dominated by godless, ruthless men.
SPEAKER_00: She's Jewish, so she's a minority, she's an orphan, she doesn't have wealth, she doesn't have power, she doesn't have status.
SPEAKER_00: And yet she's being positioned by God Himself for purposes that are beyond her understanding.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, so are you.
SPEAKER_00: God is moving you into jobs and neighborhoods and relationships and new friendships, then you're being positioned, and you don't even know why.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even know why you're there.
SPEAKER_00: It's beyond your understanding.
SPEAKER_00: But there are moments coming in your life that are the pivotal moments of the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, I believe for most of the people in this room, within the next 10 years, you think, oh, 10 years, of course, it takes a long time sometimes to get to these pivotal moments.
SPEAKER_00: That there's going to be a fulcrum, there's going to be a pivot point in your life, and what you do at that moment will be very, very important.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why do I say that?
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes when we feel like God doesn't see me, we do not utilize our seasons of obscurity to do what the Bible suggests, and that is to use it as a season of preparation.
SPEAKER_00: We simply assume, well, I'm nobody, I'm gonna be nobody, so I might as well not do anything of significance today.
SPEAKER_00: Do the next right thing today.
SPEAKER_00: We tell our story, and when we tell our story, how do we tell it?
SPEAKER_00: We tell about these big rocks, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're like, okay, I kind of grew up here.
SPEAKER_00: Then I went to school and I graduated.
SPEAKER_00: And normally in our story, there's different things like significant moments.
SPEAKER_00: If you get married, if you have kids, or you started this job, I started this company, I made it through cancer, I retired, and we tell our story, our life story, and like a like a bucket of like 10 rocks.
SPEAKER_00: But most of our days are not what we describe.
SPEAKER_00: They are not what we reference when someone says, tell me your story.
SPEAKER_00: And what I want you to know is this is what you do with the days that you do not reference in your big story is precisely what influences what is referenced in your big story.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody says, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: And then for 18 years, when I was 10 and I thought one day I'm gonna get married, and it was not until 28 when I actually did.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody says, and let me tell you what I did for those 18 years.
SPEAKER_00: I read these books on what it meant to be a godly wife or a husband, and I prayed for character, and I tried to sharpen my skill and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, those are the very things that make it such that when you turn 28, if that's your story, and you get married at that time, that now all of a sudden you're ready.
SPEAKER_00: You're ready to do that well.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter how old you are in the room right now, you're not done living.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first day of the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: And if you happen to be in a season of obscurity, use it to prepare.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What do I do?
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea, just do the next right thing.
SPEAKER_00: Do something that would benefit no matter what his purpose is for your life.
SPEAKER_00: Read the Bible, read it again, learn how to pray, learn how to love people.
SPEAKER_00: Go tell people about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Get a passport.
SPEAKER_00: Go overseas and tell people about Jesus who don't have Jesus or Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Say, what does that have to do with me being married one day?
SPEAKER_00: One day you will see it has everything to do with it.
SPEAKER_00: Everything.
SPEAKER_00: The third thing I want you to see is that God providentially gives favor to imperfect people.
SPEAKER_00: I just don't understand this part, and I've said this four times now.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it means to soak in essential oils for a year.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what they all did.
SPEAKER_00: And after that, they had one night with the king.
SPEAKER_00: And the objectification of these women in this setting is overwhelmingly stunning and sad.
SPEAKER_00: You remember they're in the first harem.
SPEAKER_00: We've told many, many times, there's a guy named Hagai who's the eunuch over that harem.
SPEAKER_00: And we're told something about that harem, and it says it's the harem of the virgins.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me tell you what happened when it was their night.
SPEAKER_00: In the evening, she would go in to the king, and in the morning she would return.
SPEAKER_00: So she spent the night.
SPEAKER_00: Now, where would she return?
SPEAKER_00: She returned to the second harem.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't go back to where she was, in custody of a different man, Shazgaz, not Hagai, another of the king's eunuch, who is in charge not of the virgins, but the concubines.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're following right, what you just heard is this.
SPEAKER_00: They left one harem a virgin, went overnight, and came back the next night, and they were no longer a virgin.
SPEAKER_00: I know there's all kinds of words that as parents, you're like, I'm gonna have to describe all these at lunch to my kids.
SPEAKER_00: Because I've just used concubine, virgin, all kinds, eunuch.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's lots of words in here that I'm just let you be parents, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Um, but can't you see that this is awful?
SPEAKER_00: The winner of this became queen, and the loser became a concubine.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't get to go home.
SPEAKER_00: She was touched by the king, never to be touched by another.
SPEAKER_00: She become a she would become a concubine for all the knights when the king was bored with his queen.
SPEAKER_00: And somehow in this pothole, God's at work.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because look what it says in verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: And Esther was winning favor in the eyes of all who saw her.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone in the harem was like, There's just something about that Esther.
SPEAKER_00: And then what happens?
SPEAKER_00: She takes only what Haggai advises.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 17 says it was her night with the king, and it says the king loved Esther more than all the women, and she won grace.
SPEAKER_00: And there it is again.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I don't get it.
SPEAKER_00: I've been with this beautiful virgin woman for all these nights in a row, but there's something about this one.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know why.
SPEAKER_00: That is so complex to look at this kind of brokenness and this kind of immorality and this kind of sinfulness and to imagine that the God who is perfect and sinless and holy and pure could do something in this mess.
SPEAKER_00: But aren't you glad he can?
SPEAKER_00: Because if not, what would you do with your story?
SPEAKER_00: What do I do with my story?
SPEAKER_00: It's full of all kinds of potholes, and yet God is willing to enter into it in order to restore and heal and forgive.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly Esther becomes queen of Persia.
SPEAKER_00: It's very important that this passage doesn't tell us everything about the story.
SPEAKER_00: It emphasizes what it wants us to think about.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's nothing here that emphasizes romance or purity.
SPEAKER_00: The emphasis here, and this is very important, is God's placement of a deliverer to his Jewish people to preserve a remnant so that the Christ could one day come before it was needed.
SPEAKER_00: We hadn't even gotten to the place where the Jewish people were threatened, but it will come soon.
SPEAKER_00: And so, friends, let me encourage us to give ourselves neither a license to sin nor a license to despair.
SPEAKER_00: You see, there's no doubt that these events in Esther's life and in Esther chapter two are not nearly as clean as we wish they would be.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, some of you, on the basis of what I just said, you're like, some of you, I imagine, just because it happens all the time, you're a little uptight with me right now.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, this is not how I learned it when I was eight.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps I've just soiled your beautiful picture of perfection in someone that you called Esther.
SPEAKER_00: But friends, don't you understand there is only one hero in the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: One hero in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We could look at any human being in the entire Bible outside of Jesus Christ, and we could show you.
SPEAKER_00: I could show you this is why he or she is not the hero.
SPEAKER_00: God uses her and she does heroic things.
SPEAKER_00: She becomes a brave heart, but she's not the point.
SPEAKER_00: I admit, in every way her situation was impossible.
SPEAKER_00: It was, it was, it was wrong.
SPEAKER_00: It was, she was objectified, she was probably in tremendous danger for her own life, but the Bible does not present her as flawless.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, wouldn't it make a better story?
SPEAKER_00: I thought about this.
SPEAKER_00: I thought, man, wouldn't it be cool if this is what it said?
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be awesome if it said, and Esther went in to the king.
SPEAKER_00: And because of her moral fiber and virtue, she said no.
SPEAKER_00: And God moved in his heart in such a way that in light of her beauty and her virtue, his heart melted, began to become a worshiper of the Bible, let her be queen, repented, and send all of these other people that he had abused back to their homes.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, wouldn't that be a better story?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: What do we get?
SPEAKER_00: She slept with him.
SPEAKER_00: That just stinks, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: If she was here, she would say, I'm not the hero of the book you're studying.
SPEAKER_00: But God is a God of grace.
SPEAKER_00: He worked in my life and he can work in yours.
SPEAKER_00: You see, by comparison, we find another book of the Bible that's about the Jewish exiles in Persia.
SPEAKER_00: It's called Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: What do we find in Daniel?
SPEAKER_00: In Daniel 1, Daniel and his buddies say, We want you all to know that we're Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because we're not going to eat this food.
SPEAKER_00: Because we want to protect ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Bible that we read tells us there's a dietary law and we don't want to violate our conscience.
SPEAKER_00: And Esther, at the command of Mordecai, tells nobody that she's Jewish and eats all the king's food.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 3, what happens?
SPEAKER_00: Daniel's buddies are told, if you don't bow down and worship my idol, you're going to die.
SPEAKER_00: What do they say?
SPEAKER_00: They say, God whom we serve is able to deliver us.
SPEAKER_00: But even if he doesn't, be it known to the king, we will not serve your gods or worship the golden of image that you have set up.
SPEAKER_00: The story of Esther, even if I have it wrong, there's no doubt that the story of Esther does not depict that kind of courage and moral resolve in an impossible situation.
SPEAKER_00: So the fact is, some of you I know, some of you have been trafficked, some of you have been objectified, some of you have been misused.
SPEAKER_00: And so you look and you can hear what I'm saying, and you think you don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, I don't, and second, is this.
SPEAKER_00: I realize that she was in a situation that was impossible for her.
SPEAKER_00: And yet she made decisions.
SPEAKER_00: And so do we.
SPEAKER_00: And this should give us great hope that this is recorded in scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because our lives are not as clean as we hope that they would be either.
SPEAKER_00: You see, so let me encourage us not to turn this into a license of sin, saying, Well, see, she did it.
SPEAKER_00: I could probably do it and ascend myself.
SPEAKER_00: See, we do not see the guilt that she experienced.
SPEAKER_00: We don't see her experience when she stood before God Almighty and gave an account for her life.
SPEAKER_00: We don't see that part of the story.
SPEAKER_00: And second, is let me encourage us not to walk out of here in despair for our own sins, because we can see here that God Almighty is not only willing to forgive us, but to continue to use us for his glory.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason there's hope in that is because number four is that God providentially elevates a deliverer to point to the deliverer, and that's Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You see, God knew a threat to the Jewish line was emerging, and so he positioned Esther before the crisis.
SPEAKER_00: And this Esther was there to provide not only temporary relief for the Jewish people, but to provide a pointer to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You see, God wanted to protect the line, and he used Esther to do that.
SPEAKER_00: She will be a temporary deliverer, but she points to a true and better deliverer in Jesus that she needed, that I need, that we all need.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Esther lived in poverty until she became a queen.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus left his throne to come and to set us free.
SPEAKER_00: Esther was familiar with sin and needed God's grace, but Jesus remained perfect in order to die in our place.
SPEAKER_00: Esther was positioned to stand in the gap for her people.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus was put on a cross to bridge the gap for all people.
SPEAKER_00: Esther was given beauty from God on high.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was stripped of his beauty and then lifted high.
SPEAKER_00: Esther died.
SPEAKER_00: And her body decayed.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus died on the third day he rose from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: And when he did, he extended to us an invitation that if we would put our faith in Jesus Christ, if we would admit that we have a sin problem, if we would believe in Jesus Christ, and if we would confess him as Lord of our life, that he would forgive us, he would give us eternal life, he would fill us with the Holy Spirit, and he would begin to restore the broken places of our life.
SPEAKER_00: And as someone who has put their faith in Christ, I can only attest that He can take broken places and He can bring beauty back again.
SPEAKER_00: And I urge you today to put your trust in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray for those who are waiting in what feels like Like a pretty difficult and obscure field, that you would incline their hearts to wait upon you to be faithful and to do what they know is right.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for those who feel guilt from their past, you would help them to see that your grace is sufficient, that their sin may be deep, but your grace is deeper.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray for those who are considering putting their trust in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would incline them right now to call out to you in faith and say, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: I believe I have a sin problem.
SPEAKER_00: I believe I cannot save myself.
SPEAKER_00: I believe in Jesus Christ who died on a cross and rose again.
SPEAKER_00: And I confess Christ as my Lord.
SPEAKER_00: God, would you please forgive them?
SPEAKER_00: Save them, restore them, fill them.
SPEAKER_00: Would you deliver them?
SPEAKER_00: And would you do it this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Would you give them enough courage to come and tell us that we might be able to celebrate and encourage them?
SPEAKER_00: So, God, we love you.
SPEAKER_00: We are grateful for your love for us.
SPEAKER_00: And now we ask that you would help us to sing as people, not only who believe, but are so thankful for the grace that's been poured out to our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.