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Providence family, it is uh a joy to see each one of you. Hope you've had a good week. If you're a guest with us, we're honored that you've joined us. And happy Mother's Day to each one of you, to every uh woman and um little girl in the room. Uh we thank God for you. Uh the fact is that we see within the Bible, we see in life with our own eyes, is that God has created you, made you, uh, gifted you with aptitude and wisdom, intelligence, beauty, creativity, patience, love, uh, and it makes life so much sweeter for all of us. We're so grateful for what the Lord has done to give us you. And for those of you who are mothers, grandmothers, guardians, uh, your patience, your wisdom, your instruction, your teaching, your modeling, uh, your sacrifice for the good of your family, it has ultimately splashed out, and it's been for the good of our society. And I'm just so grateful. We all are. You make life not only more nurturing, um, but you make it sweeter for all of us. We're just so incredibly grateful for you. So I want to pray for us, okay? Father in heaven, we bow before you today and we thank you for our mom. We're thankful for her life. We're thankful that you created her in your image to be able to not only care for us, but by the very fact that she's made in your image to learn something about you. We're grateful for our moms. And I pray for each and every one of us in this room as we think about our moms, or we know you know that our lives, or that each one of us goes through a different experience in life. And so, Lord, you know that there are some when they think today about their mom, their heart just fills with gladness, and others it fills with sadness. And I pray that you would draw near to each. I pray for those who are here who feel the grief of the loss of their mom. And they may feel it more acutely today. We ask, Father, for your care that by your spirit you would draw near to them and give their hearts comfort. We pray for moms in the room. Lord, for those that are joyful in the task today, who may even see some of the fruit of their labor. We pray, Father, that you would sustain and strengthen and give hope and encouragement and gratitude within their hearts, and for those who are experiencing perhaps just the opposite, maybe their children are not walking with you. Perhaps they feel a sense of fear or a sense of regret or maybe even guilt. As they think about how they thought that they would be a mother, or how they thought family would be, or how they thought their kids would be. That you would help them to see even a ray of light in maybe some of that darkness. And I pray for those in the room who long to be a mother. I pray, Father, that you would give them patience and trust within their heart as they wait upon you. And Father, I pray for the mothers in the room who have lost a child, either in the womb or outside of the womb. I pray, Father, that you would give their hearts comfort today as perhaps they feel a sense of grief. And so would you please use your word and your spirit to help us to see Jesus today? I pray that you would speak through weakness, that you would help us as we open up your word to Esther. I pray that you would open up our heart, that you would give us a joy and a curiosity and a delight to study your word. And I pray that as we leave, that we would be thinking much of Jesus. We love you. We need your help now. Would you speak through weakness, I pray, in Christ's name. Amen. If you have a Bible, turn with me to Esther chapter one. If you don't, there's lots of Bibles in the chairs in front of you. And if you don't have one of your own, please take that. If you need to use that one this morning, uh the first chapter of Esther is found on page 382, and uh that might be a help to you. Esther is no fairy tale, but it does feature a strong king. It features a beautiful orphan who becomes queen. It features an evil villain and a faithful uncle. It features a very dramatic rescue and then a final feast where the rescued people get to celebrate. What's perhaps most intriguing about Esther, in that it's found in the Bible, is it's a book where God is not mentioned. His hands are hidden throughout. And because of that, since God is not directly mentioned by name, he's not described by name, he's not worshiped by name, he's not prayed to by name, in all the 167 verses, you're not gonna find anything that says, and God said, or and God comforted, or and God led them. Because of that, a lot of people mistakenly attribute the chain of events to coincidence when in reality God wants to retrain our hearts to be able to see these things as providence. I don't mean the name of this church, I mean God's providence, which is his sovereign orchestration of work of the whole world and history of the world and peoples and rulers and kings and times and empires, in order to bring about his mission, which is to display the glory of his son and the salvation of his son to all peoples. That's what he is doing, and this story fits into that purpose. I think you're gonna love Esther for a lot of reasons. One, it's a fascinating story. I also think it you're gonna love it because it gives reassurance to so many people, perhaps in this room, who sometimes imagine that God, because you can't see what he's doing, perhaps because he's hidden, perhaps you might feel that he's not helpful. And what you find here is that God is incredibly helpful. Some people will be very encouraged, and the reason is because many of us we cannot imagine anything beautiful coming from the ashes of our life, and yet you find within this story some amazing, beautiful things arising for where you think there's no beauty that can originate in that source. And for some of us, we're gonna find great comfort in our own guilt and shame over the sins of our own life. And the reason is because this story features a lot of people, all of the people are morally ambiguous, which means there's a lot here not to emulate. But you see God working in their lives and through their lives, and it gives great hope and comfort to those of us who have stains in our past of things that we've done that we regret. We wonder, would God ever use me? Would God ever do great things in my life because of what I've already done? I think it's gonna be very helpful for you to read Esther. It's 167 verses, and I urge you at some point to just sit down and read the whole thing in one setting. We put together a guide that you can read through it, uh, not in one setting, and this will be helpful to you as well. But the fact is, is if you'll sit down and you'll read Esther in one setting, why that's gonna be really important is because it's gonna take us eight weeks to work through the whole story. In seven of those weeks, you're not gonna get an end that you like. Okay? You have to wait all the way to the end to be like, oh, good, things turn out okay. Until that time, it just stops. And so I urge you to read it. So we come to Esther 1, and in Esther 1, we're introduced to a king, a king who is not a very good king that God uses to create within our own heart a hunger and a thirst for a better king. So let's read it together. Now, in the days of Ahasuerus, the Ahasuerus who reigned from India to Ethiopia over 120 provinces. In those days when King Ahasueras sat on his royal throne in Susa, the citadel, in the third year of his reign, he gave a feast for all the officials and servants. The army of Persia and Media and the nobles and governors of the provinces were before him, while he showed the riches of his royal glory and the splendor and pomp of his greatness for many days, one hundred and eighty days. And when these days were completed, the king gave for all the people present in Susa the citadel, both great and small, a feast lasting for seven days in the court of the garden of the king's palace. There were white cotton curtains and violet hangings fastened with cords of fine linen and purple, the silver rods and marble pillars, also couches of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother of pearl and precious stones. Drinks were served in golden vessels, vessels of different kinds, and the royal wine was lavished according to the bounty of the king, and drinking was according to this edict. There is no compulsion. For the king had given orders to all the staff of his palace to do as each man desired. Queen Vashti also gave a feast for the women in the palace that belonged to King Ahasurus. On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mahuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcass. Parenthetically, aren't you glad that none of the kids up here earlier were named any of those names? God love them. The seven eunuchs who served in the presence of King Ahasuerus to bring Queen Vashti before the king with her royal crown in order to show the peoples and the princes her beauty, for she was lovely to look at. But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king's command, delivered by the eunuchs. At this the king became enraged, and his anger burned within him. Then the king said to the wise men who knew the times, for this was the king's procedure toward all who were versed in law and judgment. The men next to him being Karshina, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshus, Maris, Marcina, and Mamukan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, who saw the king's face and sat first in the kingdom. According to the law, what is to be done to Queen Vashti, because she has not performed the command of King Ahasuris delivered by the eunuchs. Then Mukan said, In the presence of the king and the officials, not only against the king has Queen Vashti done wrong, but also against all the officials and all the peoples who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus. For the Queen's behavior will be made known to all women, causing them to look at their husbands with contempt, since they will say, King Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, and she did not come. This very day the noble women of Persia and Media who have heard of the Queen's behavior will say the same to all the king's officials, and there will be contempt and wrath and plenty. If it please the king, let a royal order go out from him, let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, so that it may not be repealed. That Vashti is never again to come before King Ahisweras, and let the king give her royal position to another who is better than she. So when the decree made by the king is proclaimed throughout all his kingdom, for it is vast. All women will give honor to their husbands, high and low alike. This advice pleased the king and the princes, and the king did as Mamukan proposed. He sent letters to all the royal provinces, to every province in its own script, and to every people in its own language, that every man be master in his own household and speak according to the language of his people. The first thing I want you to see here is that God providentially established this king. His name is Ahisweras. You notice in verse 1, it doesn't say it was God who installed him. We simply get his name and that he's the king. This book has 167 verses, and King Ahasuerus, either by his name, his title as king, or the pronoun he is referring to him, is mentioned 190 times. So he's a main character. God is mentioned zero times. And this king is mentioned 190 times. So let me tell you. Long time ago, the people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt. God led them out, brought them to the promised land. When they get to the promised land, they look around at other nations and they say, We want to be like all the other nations and have a human king who rules over us. This was a great insult to God, who was their king, but he gave them a king. His name is Saul. Eventually Saul left and it was David, and then it was Solomon. Three kings, one united kingdom. They get to the next generation and the kingdom split into two: a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. In the northern kingdom and all the years, the Bible never refers to one of their kings as being good or godly or righteous in the eyes of God. And so God continued to give them warnings, saying, if you do not repent of your sin, if you do not turn back to God, then I'm going to send another country, another empire to invade you, to exile you. And they refused to repent. And so in 722 BC, the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom. The southern kingdom of Israel had a few good kings. And those few good kings, they led the people at times to look at the word and to repent of their sin and to have festivals and feasts of worship to the Lord. And so God was very patient with them, and yet they continued to sin. And he did the same thing. He would send prophets and he would send kings and he would send messages saying you need to turn from your sin, otherwise you're going to be invaded. And once again, they too were invaded three times by the empire called Babylon. The first time was in 605 BC. They came into Jerusalem. They didn't level everything initially. What they did was they conquered them and they took the ruling class, which included many people, one of which was named Daniel. Just hold on to that for a moment. They waited for a while, and in 597 BC, they come again, they invade, and this time they exile the professional class. And this was very strategic. Their idea was if we could take the ruling class and then the professional class, and if we can assimilate them into Babylon with our language and our culture, when we come the third time, invade, and then bring all the common people to exile in Babylon, that all of these people who have already been assimilated will be able to help be our mouthpiece to the people under their care. In 605, I'm sorry, in 586, then they they they came, they also leveled the temple, they leveled the wall, they destroyed everything, and then they exiled the people. Well, God was not done with his people, and he wanted them to know, and so he sent them a prophet, and that prophet's name was Jeremiah. And in Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 10, we're told of a promise that God made to the people of Israel. And there it says that God said, When seventy years are completed for Babylon, meaning you're going to be in exile living there for 70 years, I will bring you back to this place, which was Jerusalem. And so, interestingly, as I said earlier, is that one of these exiles was Daniel, and he wrote a book of the Bible. In the second chapter of Daniel, he's serving the king of Babylon, and the king has a dream. And in the dream, God actually reveals the coming future empires, saying, You're Babylon, but eventually, very soon, the Persian empire that is rising is going to conquer you. And eventually the Greeks will conquer the Persians, and then eventually the Romans will conquer the Greeks. Interestingly, just as promised, in 539 BC, Cyrus the Great, a Persian king, conquered Babylon just as promised. Cyrus was a pretty amazing king. It's called Cyrus the Great. And we read about something very important in Ezra chapter 1. There it says, in the first year of Cyrus, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. Now, what what was that word? It was in after seventy years. And so God, after seventy years, what did it say? He went to Cyrus and he began to pull at Cyrus's heart. Cyrus didn't even know the Lord, but God is God. And he inclined Cyrus, this pagan king, to speak to the people of Israel, saying, Whoever is among you of all his people, let him go up to Jerusalem and rebuild the house of the Lord. And 50,000 Jewish people returned to Jerusalem to rebuild. And we have a number of books in the Old Testament that speak about the rebuilding of different things. There's a book called Nehemiah. If you want to read about the rebuilding of the wall that was destroyed, you can read that. If you want to look about how they began preparations to rebuild the temple, you read Haggai and even Zachariah, some. If you want to read about the rebuilding of the people, the hearts, their worship, Passover feast, you can read Ezra and how they began to turn back to the Lord. Fifty thousand Jewish people came back to Jerusalem, but over a million Jewish people were so comfortably assimilated in Persian and the Empire that they chose not to return. And Esther happens to be one Jewish woman, as well as her uncle named Mordecai. It's their story, it's this story, of people who are comfortably assimilated in pagan lands that we find and that we study here. Two years after Cyrus the Great said, You can return, we find another prophecy in Daniel 11. And there it says, Behold, three more kings. So Cyrus is the king of Persia, and he says, Three more shall arise in Persia, and the fourth, so we're supposed to be looking for the fourth. He's going to do something important, shall be far richer, and he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece. Well, the kingdom of Greece is who's going to take over the world. So I wonder who these third and fourth guys are. Well, the third king from Cyrus, his name was Darius. And Darius spent nine years amassing an army in order to get revenge on the Greek Empire who had defeated him in a battle called Marathon. And suddenly he died. And his son, the fourth king, from Cyrus, was named Aswaris. More commonly known as Xerxes, who ascended the throne. And that brings us to Esther chapter 1, verse 1. Now in the days of Adasuerus. It's Mother's Day. Why would you do all that history on Mother's Day? It gets worse. We're about to get into the drunken party. And so why would you do that? This is why. It's very important. I want you to see that the Lord God has the whole world in his hands, and that includes you. And sometimes you can't see his hands. Sometimes, just like this book of Esther, it feels like, where is he? He's hidden. And this becomes an interpretive key that I want to show you. I'm going to try to help you see throughout the whole book and help myself to see throughout the whole book. And this is why. Because God is not mentioned in the book. Sometimes we assume it's other things. And so what you find in this passage is this is how you interpret Esther is you look at the revealed word of God outside of Esther to give you interpretive clues of what's happening inside of Esther. Esther, though, is also probably the book of the whole Old Testament that most resembles how you feel like you relate with God. Our story, it feels a little less spectacular. Like, where are you? Would you speak into the mess? Or would you speak into my life? And what we do is this is that once we understand the interpretive key of saying, let's use the scripture to interpret Esther, then what you find is you can use the scripture, everything that is revealed, to help interpret your life and to make your own decisions. And this is why we do this. And so my prayer as we begin, and my encouragement to you is that you would join me in praying this week, and maybe even the months. God, would you ask God right now, God, would you grow our confidence in your providence? In those areas of my life, some of you perhaps have just experienced miscarriage, perhaps have just experienced job loss, marital discord, and you think, where is God? This passage, this story, even this man's life, it shows us that God makes known the end from the beginning in order to show us that he is in control, that he sees us, he hears us, and he's working. The second thing I want you to see is that God patiently endured the evil of this king. This was a pretty amazing king, but most of the amazing things were not very good. He was brutal, lustful, vengeful, and powerful. He knew he was powerful. In fact, he knew he was the most powerful man in the world. He had four capitals, not just here in Susa, and one of them, one of them was called Percipolis. And there, even today, that you can find the inscription in front of where his throne room was. This is it. I obviously can't read this, but let me tell you what it says, at least a portion of it. It says, I am Xerxes, the great king, the only king, the only king of the whole world. And his throne room was in Susa. And it was designed to impress. Oh, it was designed to hold his throne, but it was designed primarily to impress. There is a name of this. You can go and see the ruins today. It's called the Apadonna, six stories tall, two and a half acres, all under roof. Made somewhere around 500 BC. It's a remarkable thing. And it was impressive, and he was impressive. In verse 3, he does something impressive. He gave a feast and he showed the riches of his glory, of his royal glory, and the splendor and pomp of his greatness for many days. Six months. Six months. The historian Herodotus tells us about this feast, the purpose for the feast. And the purpose of the feast was actually a finale of a capital campaign to raise the resources and support to re-amass an army in order to go and avenge his father's loss against the Greeks. After the 180-day feast was over, he threw another feast, seven days long, this time not for the army and his officials, but for people high and low, the citizens of Susa. Verse 6 tells us of the opulence of everything. All the decor was absolutely stunning. But verse 7 and 8 says the only thing that outpaced the opulence was the drunkenness. And they didn't pass out red solo cups. No, they gave everyone golden vessels, and they gave an edict to everybody. And the edict was this: there is no compulsion. Under Xerxes, if you ever had the opportunity to go to a feast with a Persian king, you only drank when he drank. He set the pace. If he wasn't in the mood to drink, then you suddenly weren't in the mood either. But for one week he said it's open bar. Drink whatever you want, whenever you want it, as much as you want. Well, that does things. And even for him, on the last day we're told, when Xerxes was merry with wine, that's the Bible's way of saying he was impaired to make a good decision. He ordered Queen Vashti to be paraded before the king with her royal crown in order to show the peoples and princes her beauty. For she was lovely to look at. Jewish historians, ancient ones, they look at this, and the Bible doesn't say this, and so I don't know, but people have wondered why did she say no? A lot of Jewish historians believe that when the king said, put on your crown, that was the only thing she was to wear. Repulsed the thought of walking into a room of all the men of the city in a drunken state. She refused. And we should pause right here. We should pause right here for a reason. And that's because this is one of the few things in the entire book that someone does that's noble. She shows that she has a conscience. It's pretty remarkable that she did this, and yet, verse 12 says, the king was enraged and his anger burned within him. Think about this. This is a man who rules the whole world, and yet he's ruled by his impulses. His impulse is a pride, of wine, and of anger. The fact is, pride, wine, and anger, and that combination has ruined many people in his generation and in ours. This is the most powerful man in the world, and yet he's threatened by one woman saying no. His advisors fear a women's resistance movement. They say to him, The queen's behavior will be made known to all women, causing them to look at their husbands with contempt, and there will be contempt and wrath and plenty. The solution that they propose is kind of laughable, really. It was to send an edict, an edict to every home in the empire, commanding that they do what Xerxes, the most powerful man in the world, couldn't accomplish in his own home. And that was obedience without regard to conscience. Xerxes yielded, Vashti was deposed, and the edict went out. And a part of that edict was in verse 22. Every man should be master in his own household. Excuse me. No, I need to do some work, Rihu, right here, because um this happens to be Mother's Day, and Esther 122 probably is not going to show up in many of your Mother's Day cards, or some people thought, you're really starting Esther on Mother's Day? I know what chapter one's all about. It it is pretty brutal. What I want you to remember, ladies, is there's never been a person in the history of the world who has done more for the dignity of women than Jesus Christ. And in a moment you'll understand why. If you don't know. So let me just make a quick side detour. Let's talk about relationships just for a little bit. Let me just say this to men, but also to women. Edicts never garner respect. It would be quite foolish to try to gain control of your home by quoting Esther 122 this afternoon. It would be even more foolish to take your wife's lipstick and write it on the bathroom mirror. Esther 122. You need to remember something. It's really important to understand how the Bible is written. So always study it. You're not supposed to apply everything to your life as is. Some things are descriptive, some things are prescriptive. And what we're finding here is descriptive behavior of ungodly people, not prescriptive behavior for all people. This is not supposed to be how it's done. The Bible is remarkable in ascribing value and dignity to human beings, to men and to women, says that we're both created in the image of God. This is an amazing thing. To be created in the image of God means that to look at a human being is to learn something about God. We're made in his image. Friends, you are not made unto yourself. You're not the point of your own life, either am I. We exist as an individual to tell something about God. The whole mission of God in creating us is to display his glory and the glory and salvation of his son. It's not about you. Nothing is about you. Nothing is about me either, but it's all about him. And the Bible says that he created the man first. And he looked at the man and he says, You're made in my image. You can tell a story. If I created more of you, people could look at you and tell something about me. But he says, But that's not enough of the story. And so he created a woman. And he created them differently. The woman was not created in the image of man, it was creating in the image of God. She and he. What that means is that God could create two, and that people could look at the man and the woman and combined the attributes and characteristics and aptitudes and abilities and intelligence and beauty and strength, it tells a fuller story about who God is. Well, don't you understand that in any relationship, God with two different people with different skill sets, they come in, and some are more prone to have strength physically, others sexually, others mentally, others emotionally. Lots of different kinds of strengths, I suppose. And the fact is, is so long as we were living in a garden or we're living in heaven, where the garden ethic will return, everything was okay. And what was that garden ethic? The garden ethic is this my life for your good. If I have a strength, I can use it for your benefit. That's just what heaven's gonna be. We're all gonna look around and say, My life for your good. And because everyone does that who is in heaven, it's gonna be a marvelous place. But suddenly when we sinned against God, we didn't really live in a garden ethic anymore. Now we lived in the wilderness. And what was the wilderness ethic? It just flipped it all. It simply said this, your life for my good. So now if I have a strength, whether it's verbal, sexual, or physical, I can use that strength and I can exploit you in order to get something for me. And that's precisely what Xerxes does. I'm gonna use my strength to exploit for my good. This is not his plan. And yet it's very important to understand that as you continue to read the scriptures, is that God does give a blueprint that includes mutual submission in the home. In Ephesians chapter 5, when he's writing what marriage is all about, this is what he says. I think this, I personally think this is the most important verse about marriage in the New Testament. God doesn't say that, but for me, and this is what it is: submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. It's the verse right before he then speaks to husbands and wives. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. What does that mean? Die to the demand for yourself to get your own way. You're gonna submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And why it's so important you have reverence for Christ. This is why. It's because sometimes that we are not behaving in such a way that is so worthy that generates the desire for the other person to love or respect us. And so if you are in a relationship with somebody, let's just say that this thing right here is my spouse, and I'm here and we're talking. The fact is, is how that verse tells us to live is to see Christ as the backdrop for each side, is that I would see Christ behind Tabitha, my wife. And there are moments where I nor she are behaving up to potential, and as such, it makes it more difficult to love and respect. But so long as I can continue to have reverence for Christ in that moment, he's always worthy. And so he generates a motivation within me to treat her in that moment, perhaps not on the way that she's treating me, or for her to treat me in a way that I'm not treating her because of Christ. And it's in that environment that he then says, okay, now that you understand mutual submission, he says, husbands, how you submit to your wife is by is by loving them and leading them as Christ loves and leads the church. You say, Well, Christ died for the church, so I should be willing to die for my wife. You should. She's about to get hit by a bus, you should jump in front of the bus. But you know what? That's probably not gonna happen. So, what could it mean if that's not the case? It means to live every day, dying to yourself in order to serve your wife. And this is what Jesus says. He says in Luke chapter 22, let the leader become one who serves. The leader in the home, the leader of the country, the leader of the church, the leader of whatever it is. If you're a leader, Jesus says, You want to know how to be a great leader? You serve the people under your leadership. And then he says to the wives that you're to submit to your husband is under the Lord by respecting and following your husband as the church respects and follows Christ to defer. And don't you understand, of course, we all would, is that it's absolutely true that the more a wife respects her husband, the more apt a husband is to love. And certainly the flip would be true, is that the more husbands love, the more apt that she is to respect. So we find this awful example in Esther of a man mistreating his wife. So let me give you a healthy example of a verse about how a husband is supposed to treat his wife. 1 Peter chapter 3 says this. Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. That means understand them, at least as best as you possibly can. I realize it's always like heaven's coming, right? We're gonna understand really well in heaven. An understanding way, and then it's a showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. And don't get uptight by when it says weaker vessel. There's many places in your life when perhaps you are stronger, maybe verbally, physically, I don't know what it is, than your husband. But here's the point. Typically, when a husband with a fallen nature looks at an area and says, I'm stronger in this area, a husband like Xerxes can use that not to show honor to the weaker vessel, but to exploit. So he's simply saying this if you're a husband and you know that there's an area of your life when you have a superiority over your wife, don't exploit her, but to show honor in that way. Protect her in that way. The reason is because we are co-heirs of the grace of life. This is an amazing thing. Early Jews, like in the first century, there was a Jewish prayer that Jewish men would literally wake up and they'd say, God, I thank you that I'm not a Gentile, I'm not a slave, and I'm not a woman. So don't you see that it was Jesus who went into that environment and began treating not only men but women with the same dignity and honor, elevating them, showing that they have an essential contribution not only to culture, but to the kingdom. Co-heirs with Christ. And this is why Peter says, and you better be careful, man, and this is why. Because your father is her father. And if you mistreat her, her father will not listen to you. Xerxes shows us that authority without humility is very hazardous. And so let me encourage us. Let's remember that God can even use what is corrupt. He uses all of these environments. Like you look at this, think, why would God, and why would God in his providence establish such a vile man? He knew this was gonna happen. And yet he still allowed this man to become king, appointed him to become king. How could God allow that? Well, interestingly, in the four empires that I've talked about, it was God who used ungodly rulers in Babylon to purify his people. It was God who used ungodly rulers in Persia to rebuild his temple. It was God who used ungodly rulers in Greece to literally give the world a new language called Greek, that the New Testament would be written in so that it could spread so quickly. And the last one was Rome. You think, could God ever use the Romans? Well, Axe says they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, two Romans, who saw to it that Jesus Christ would be crucified so that we could be redeemed. He can use even people who are ungodly to accomplish his plan. The last thing I want you to see is that God used this king to create a longing for a greater king. Friends, we all need a king. We all need somebody who sits on the throne who is healthy and holy and righteous and humble and servant-hearted. And the interesting thing is you're never gonna be able to vote for one like that. And maybe more interesting is this you will never be that king either. You can't even sit on your own throne of your own heart, and either can I, and be a king like Jesus. And because so many of us try, what happens is it creates all kinds of anxiety in our own heart because that's a chair that's too big for us, and we know it. But you look at your life when you're the king of your life, it also created a minefield for the people around us. We needed a better king. You see, when we sinned against God Almighty, the Bible tells us that God in his grace made a promise and he says, One day I'm gonna send a son to you, and that son is gonna be your savior. We open up the Bible and you get to the 12th chapter. It's nine chapters after the sin entered the world, and we're told, God says, I want you to know you don't have to be guessing where the son comes from. He's gonna come from the line of Abraham. And you turn to chapter 17 of Genesis, and he says, By the way, he's also gonna be a king. And we have 43 kings of the New Testament of the Old Testament in Israel, and then we have all kinds of kings surrounding those kings, afflicting this people like Xerxes. And throughout all those kings, what we find is God continually coming, giving us promises to say, I'm gonna send a better king. Such as in Micah chapter 5, when it says, O Bethlehem, from you shall come forth from me one who is to be ruler in Israel. This king is Jesus who was born in Bethlehem. And he's the true and better king. The true and better king who ascended the throne in heaven and came to the earth in the form of a man. He lived without sin, and yet he went to a cross and he died for our sin. He was buried in a grave, and on the third day he rose from the dead, extending to us an invitation that if we would acknowledge that we have a sin problem, if we would believe in his death and resurrection, if we would believe in his perfect life, and if we would confess him as Lord of our life, king of our life, if we would bend the knee and acknowledge him as Lord, that we would be forgiven of our sin and we would be given eternal life. There's never been a king like this. And there never will be. Xerxes was a man who said he was God, but Jesus was God who humbly became a man. Xerxes used his power to disgrace and objectify women. Jesus used his power to honor and remind us of the essential contribution of women. Xerxes made edicts and Jesus made promises. Xerxes took pleasure in conquering the world. And Jesus took courage and laying down his life for the people in the world. Xerxes died and his body decayed. And Jesus died, and then he rose up from the grave. Xerxes' best offer was wine without restraint. And Romans 14 tells us of Jesus' kingdom that it is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And so, friends, today the question, I hope, in your mind is not, is Jesus a superior king? My question is, is he your king? Have you trusted him with your own personal life? And if you haven't, I urge you today to put your trust in Christ. So let's pray together. Father in heaven, we we bow before you today and we acknowledge you. And I ask that you would draw those in the room who do not have Christ as their king to yourself right now. God, would you lead them to call out to you in faith to Pray, God, I believe, I believe that I'm a sinner. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe he died and rose again. I confess him as Lord and King of my life. Would you forgive me and save me and give me eternal life? God, would you please incline the hearts of those who have trusted in you today to tell somebody. And Lord, for those of us who already have now, would you help us to sing, believing that there's really not another one like you? We thank you, Jesus, that you elevate all of us, men and women. You give us grace that we can know you personally. We are so thankful. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.