Springs Lighthouse Church

Pastor Brian Michaels: All right, turn with me to the book of Esther, chapter three. Esther, chapter three. Father, we thank You, Lord, for so many things. We could spend the rest of the evening and just keep on going into tomorrow, giving You thanks for all of the myriad things that You do in our lives and the way that You're using us and the way that You strategically place us in other people's lives that we might be a blessing to them.

A lot of that is because You've given us Your word, and we are committed to Your word because it reveals to us who You are. So Lord, as we study this word tonight, we ask that by Your Holy Spirit, You would encourage us and speak to us, that we wouldn't just be here to amass information and learn new details, but Lord, that these things would truly impact and change our lives.

I pray that our hearts would be just glued with attention to You in this time. Lord, all the craziness of whatever has gone on with our day, our week, our month, may we set that aside by the power of Your Spirit. May we just intently focus upon You. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

We had a couple of weeks off of our Esther study while I was out of town, so let's dig right in. We've got a lot to cover tonight, so I want to try to not waste a lot of time going really slowly through this. Let's just jump right in. Esther chapter three, verse one: "After these things..." Let's stop there. What things? What things are we talking about?

I'm glad that this chapter begins this way because it allows us to go back and rehash through a little bit of the background so that we have an idea of where this is leading us. King Ahasuerus—you know him more commonly from your ancient history classes in high school or college as Xerxes—is the same guy. Just the same person by a different name. So King Ahasuerus, aka King Xerxes, is ruling the Persian Empire.

It's an extensive empire. I think we lose sight sometimes of how vast the Persian Empire was. It covered all of what today we know of as Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, as well as parts of modern-day Egypt, Libya, Arabia, and the Sudan. So a very large empire.

He deposed Queen Vashti, and we read about all that. We've studied all through that in the first two chapters. He did this sometime before his ill-fated invasion of Greece, and we talked about that in a previous study, so we won't get into all of those details. But he tried to invade Greece, and some of it was trying to avenge his father. It didn't go well, and returning in defeat, he went on a search for a new queen.

That's where Esther came on the scene while Ahasuerus is looking for a new queen. She was an orphan being raised by her uncle, a man whose name is Mordecai, and he becomes very prominent throughout this book. They were Jews from the tribe of Benjamin, but that fact—that they were Jewish—is being held as a secret at this point. Again, that will play into the entirety of where this book is going as we move forward.

The fact that they are Jewish, no one really knows that at this point. Ahasuerus has chosen Esther to be his queen, not knowing that she is of Jewish descent. The scripture tells us that she was a beautiful and exceptional woman. Those two things don't always go hand in hand. She's beautiful and exceptional; she's wise, she's a prudent woman, and she is chosen by Xerxes or Ahasuerus to be his queen.

Sometime after that, Mordecai overhears the plot of an assassination attempt against King Ahasuerus. Mordecai tells Esther, who goes and tells her husband the king, and so the plot ultimately is foiled. We are now about ten years after the end of chapter two. Between chapters two and three, you thought just three weeks elapsed while I was gone, but it's actually been ten years.

It says, "After these things, King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him and set his seat above all the princes who were with him." So this man, Haman, is now put into the position of number two in the entirety of that vast empire that I just described previously. This guy turns out to be an evil, murderous man, and yet he is elevated to a very high position in government—something that we are completely unfamiliar with in our society.

Evil, murderous people being elevated to high positions in government—who would have thought of such a thing being possible? No, of course, we see it in every governmental system throughout human history. We, without Jesus, are in a world of hurt. This man is obviously, as we're going to see coming through this text even tonight, obviously cares nothing for the things of the true and living God.

Yet, he is exalted to this position while at the same time Mordecai, who just saved the king's life by hearing about this assassination, telling Esther, and asking her to make sure that it was relayed to the king. He has saved his life. This is very odd if you study the history of the Persian government; it's very odd that he was not honored at all for what he had done.

Again, that will come into play later on in the book of Esther, so just tuck that into the back of your mind. At this point, ten years after Mordecai helps to foil this assassination plot, he was never honored, he was never recognized, and he was never credited for that. But all of this is because God has a plan that He is working out in His time.

It brings up something really important to us. I think most of us in this room right now are at a place in our life where we understand the adage, "life isn't always fair." I see a couple of younger folks with us, and they may still be learning that. But you don't have to live too many decades to start to understand that life isn't always fair. Ask a guy like Joseph—Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, then as he's a slave in Egypt, falsely accused of attempted rape and thrown into prison.

He ministers to two guys in the prison, one of whom ends up being executed, but one of them is exalted back to his former position with the Pharaoh. The only thing Joseph asks as he ministers to them in return is, "When you're restored to your position, would you tell Pharaoh about my situation where I am in prison and I really haven't done anything?" Well, as commonly happens, he gets elevated back to his position and promptly forgets all about Joseph.

That was Joseph's life, wasn't it? But could it be, as you study Joseph's life—because we all know what God intended with Joseph—it was a series of years of events that God was training and equipping and preparing Joseph to become number two in all of Egypt, to save multiple millions of people, not just in Egypt, but all the surrounding area that came for food when the famine hit.

God had a plan to use Joseph ultimately to preserve the entire nation of Israel, which was in a fledgling state at that point. But in the process of God getting Joseph to that place, Joseph was forgotten, and Joseph was left out. So here's the question: Could it be that there are times in our life that God allows us to be forgotten and left out, or at least to feel that way?

We have to learn that even when we feel forgotten and left out by everybody else, we are not forgotten by God, and we are not left out of His plan. So he's learning—Joseph was—through all that he went through. But it's a lesson that all of us have to learn. Sometimes we will be forgotten, sometimes we will be left out, and that can be God's plan and His process for preparing us for what He has in store for us.

When we are in that place and we're feeling forgotten, we're feeling left out, God is still at work, and He has not forgotten us, even though we rarely remember it in that moment. Let's talk about something else from verse one. It says here that Haman was the son of Hammedatha the Agagite. Agag was a title for the Amalekite kings.

The people of Amalek were the ones who attacked the children of Israel as they came out of the land of Egypt under Moses' leadership. They would attack and kill the weak, the stragglers, the sick, and the elderly of Israel as they were making their journey. So there is pretty intense hostility that existed between the Amalekites and the Israelites. Keep in mind, Haman does not know that Mordecai is a Jew, that he is an Israelite.

There is that animosity that was there. Did Mordecai know it? Probably, because it's written here in the book of Esther. The children of Israel were instructed by God when they came into the land—and you can read this in Deuteronomy chapter 25—they were instructed by God to wipe out the Amalekites. It's really difficult for us to try and come to grips with in our day and age because we would just say that's genocide, and we would have all kinds of problems with this.

The reality is that from God's perspective, He had given these people in that land four hundred years to repent, and they had refused. So God says, "Time's up, judgment is coming," and the children of Israel were His instrument of judgment in that day. They did not wipe out the Amalekites. So fast forward past the time of Joshua, past the time of the judges, and into the times of the kings. Who was the first king of Israel? Saul.

But you remember that incident out of which we know the passage, "to obey is better than sacrifice"? Remember what that all centered around? It centered around Saul being given a specific command to wipe out the Amalekites, which the children of Israel had not done before, and Saul didn't do it. He was also instructed to wipe out all of their flocks and herds, that they were not to take anything, but they saved all that they thought was good that would profit them.

Saul allowed Agag, their king, to remain alive. Somehow, though Samuel ultimately came and hacked Agag into pieces, causing everyone to gag—sorry, no, I'm actually really not, I love your groaning—Samuel hacks Agag to pieces, but somehow in Saul's disobedience, the Agagites continued. And now we see in the book of Esther, past the time of the kings, now in the time of the Babylonian captivity, Saul's disobedience rears its ugly head again and is causing problems for the children of Israel.

Verse two: "And all the king's servants who were within the king's gate bowed and paid homage to Haman, for so the king had commanded concerning him. But Mordecai would not bow or pay homage. Then the king's servants who were within the king's gate said to Mordecai, 'Why do you transgress the king's command?'" We never really get an answer to this. Why did Mordecai refuse to bow?

Maybe it was his religious principle that he was somehow hanging on to, but here's an interesting fact: Never in the scripture, in all of the Old Testament law, is there a specific command never to bow to a man. We're not to worship a man; obviously, that's clear from the scripture. But the idea of showing deference to someone, the idea of respectfully bowing to them—we're never commanded in the scripture not to do so.

Was he somehow holding on to principle, or was it because Mordecai, being a Jew, though no one knew he was a Jew, Mordecai knew that Haman was an Agagite, descendant from the Amalekites? Because of that hostility between the two people groups, and maybe he knew Haman better than anyone else knew him, he just refused. He doesn't seem to make a big deal out of it, but some people noticed.

He didn't make a big enough deal out of it that Haman even noticed. Haman finds out because someone goes and says, "Hey, did you know that Mordecai is not bowing to you?" Because there will always be those people. And so Mordecai's not bowing. Someone says to him, "Why is it that you're transgressing the king's command?" because the king commanded that we recognize his position as the number two in the land and that we bow to him and give deference to him.

Verse four: "Now it happened, when they spoke to him daily, and he would not listen to them, that they told it to Haman to see whether Mordecai's words would stand, for Mordecai had told them that he was a Jew." So somewhere in the course of the conversation, Mordecai tells them that he was a Jew, which leads me to believe that it's because of the Jewish-Amalekite history that he wasn't bowing. That's my conjecture, but they find out that he was a Jew.

Someone's got to make sure Haman knows. "Hey, Ham-man, not everyone is bowing down to you. There's that guy over there, he won't bow down." Maybe because of some of the antisemitic ideas that were beginning to creep throughout the Persian Empire, that could be it, we don't know. Verse five: "When Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow or pay him homage, Haman was filled with wrath.

But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had told him of the people of Mordecai. Instead, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, the people of Mordecai." For Haman, it wasn't enough just to kill Mordecai for not showing him the proper respect. He's like, "I'm going to wipe out his whole people." Again, that hostility between the two people groups. "I'm going to wipe out all the Jews."

Think about again the size of the kingdom. Think about how large the Persian Empire was. To wipe out every Jewish person throughout the entire empire, that would have been millions and millions of people, and he wants to eradicate all of them. But it's been the same since the garden, hasn't it? From the time that God said to the serpent, "I will put enmity between your seed and her seed." Her seed being the promised Messiah.

Messiah was going to come from a people group. Who's that people group? Israel. So if Satan can get rid of Israel, then Satan can preempt the plan of God in bringing forth the Messiah. Sometimes the only reason I can see for the craziness of antisemitism is that the Jewish people are a blessing to whatever country or nation or empire they have resided in. And yet, ultimately, antisemitism rears its ugly head again.

We've seen that satanic thing take place through generation after generation after generation. We see it here in the book of Esther; we saw it with Pharaoh in Egypt trying to wipe out the Jewish people, Herod killing all the babies to try and make sure that he wiped out the Messiah. Hitler's a classic example, right? But we're watching it again today, aren't we?

We're seeing this antisemitic, satanic idea raising its ugly head again. And again, we sit and look at it and go, "Why?" Because it's spiritual. God loves the people of Israel; they are His chosen people. He loves us too, praise God, but that nation, He still has plans for. Paul makes that really clear in the book of Romans; He's not finished with Israel.

So Satan wants to destroy them, because to destroy Israel, he can destroy the plan of God. But what are the chances that Satan's going to destroy the plan of God? Slim to none, and slim's out of town, right? Not going to happen. The Jewish people have seen the funeral of every empire that has tried to wipe them out. They have seen the funeral of every empire that has tried to destroy them.

Today if you go to Israel—I've been there many times—you will be taken around and shown the ruins of the Roman Empire, and your guide will be a Jew because the Romans, though they persecuted the Jewish people, greatly persecuted them, they don't exist anymore. The Roman Empire is gone; the Jewish people are still here and always will be. On a more individual note, for Haman, this is what pride and arrogance does to a person.

He's the second most powerful person in a vast empire. How much more power and wealth did he need? And yet one man won't show him the respect he thinks he deserves, and he's on a tirade to wipe out an entire people group. Verse seven: "In the first month, which is the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman to determine the day and the month, until it fell on the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar."

Haman wants to wipe out the Jewish people, but because of superstition and astrology in Persia, he tries to ascertain when is the best day to wipe out an entire people group. And so they cast lots, basically the idea of something like throwing dice. We don't know exactly what it looked like, but the Hebrew word for casting lots is "Pur." The Hebrew plural, they would make a word plural by adding "im" as a suffix, so "Purim" or "Purim" as we would normally say, which is the name for the celebration of this holiday that commemorates what takes place in this book.

When you hear about the Jewish holiday of Purim, it is the holiday of God preserving His people against the plot of Haman, and it is linked to this word right here in verse seven. We do know that God can work through these kinds of things. We read in the Proverbs, Proverbs 16:33, "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord." So can God speak through the casting of lots? Can God speak through drawing straws?

Sure He can; God can do whatever He desires. Does that mean that we as New Testament Christians should rely on these things to try and ascertain the will of God? I don't believe so because I know that we have the Word of God and we have the Spirit of God, and that's where we discern the will of God, by His Word and by His Spirit. But Haman wants to figure out when is the best time to eradicate the Jewish people, and the lot falls out eleven months from now.

Do you think that made him happy or sad? I'm thinking it made him angry that he's got to wait eleven more months to accomplish this. Then verse eight, Haman said to King Ahasuerus, "There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from all other peoples." That's a true statement, isn't it?

The Jewish people, following God's laws, were different from the laws that all the other people groups he had conquered in that Persian Empire followed. Again, these laws of God that the Jewish people were following ultimately served the betterment of the kingdom where they were, which makes the antisemitic idea just so crazy. Haman wanted to set everything up to accuse them of rebellion.

He says, "King, there's these people all out there throughout your provinces, and they do not keep the king's laws. Therefore it is not fitting for the king to let them remain. If it pleases the king, let a decree be written that they may be destroyed. And I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who do the work to bring it into the king's treasuries." Did you notice that Haman never says to the king which people group they are?

He never tells him which people group. I am going to bet—and again, this is not in the scripture completely, it's not clear here—but I'm going to bet that when we get to heaven and we can get all the details to all these events, King Ahasuerus had no idea the size of the people group they were talking about. He's probably thinking it's a small group of rebels who just don't want to keep his laws, and so, okay, if they're a problem, Haman, you can take care of them.

Go ahead and take care of them. Haman says, "I'll pay money to the people who will do the work, and then everything that they gather after they wipe these people out and take their belongings, they'll bring back into the king's treasury because, oh King, I just can't stand the thought of these people rebelling against your kingdom." That's the idea. Verse ten: "So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews.

And the king said to Haman, 'The money and the people are given to you, to do with them as seems good to you.'" You get the idea that at this point King Ahasuerus, he's still stinging from his defeat at the hand of the Greeks. He just got a new wife, and now he's just like, "Yeah, whatever, just take care of it." He's almost a little bit checked out and detached from what's happening.

Verse twelve: "Then the king's scribes were called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and a decree was written according to all that Haman commanded—to the king's satraps, to the governors who were over each province, to the officials of all people, to every province according to its script, and to every people in their language." Remember, I described that vast empire—lots of languages, lots of different writings, all different alphabets.

This decree is translated into all these languages, written in all these different scripts, and in the name of King Ahasuerus it was written and sealed with the king's signet ring. And the letters were sent by couriers into all the king's provinces. Remember growing up hearing about the Pony Express in our country? It actually didn't last very long because it was right before the telegraph was invented, and then once those wires were laid, there was no need for the Pony Express.

They would set up stables about every fourteen miles or so, and a courier would take a message and would get on a horse and ride to the next stable, and either he would get a new horse or another rider would set out on a different horse, and they would relay these messages from one coast to the other in our country, and it halved the time that it used to take to get a message across the country. The Pony Express was not invented by Americans.

It's the same thing right here; this is the ancient Camel Express. You can study this in history; they had stables that were set about every fifteen miles apart where a courier would give the message to a new courier on a new camel, or they would get on a new camel themselves, and they would continue spreading this message throughout the entirety of the empire. The letters were sent, verse thirteen, by couriers into all the king's provinces.

To destroy, to kill, and to annihilate—just in case destroy wasn't descriptive enough—to kill and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, little children and women—just in case all wasn't descriptive enough—young and old, little children and women, in one day, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their possessions. So a little bit of incentive: Kill them off, help us with this, and you can take some of the possessions.

Some of the possessions are going to be brought into the treasuries of King Ahasuerus, but you can take some for yourselves. This would be their version of Purge Night. They would have one night that they could go out and kill as many Jews as they wanted. Verse fourteen says a copy of the document was to be issued as law in every province, being published for all people, that they should be ready for that day.

The couriers went out, hastened by the king's command; and the decree was proclaimed in Shushan the citadel. That's kind of been the setting for all of the book of Esther, taking place in one of these palaces of the king, Shushan the citadel. Now it's being proclaimed throughout this capital city, probably by their version of what we would call a town crier. Most of us were not around when we actually had town criers—maybe Walt, but most of us were not here in those days.

They used to have a town crier who would walk through the streets of a community, ringing a bell and shouting out, "Hear ye, hear ye!" and giving whatever decree was to be issued to the people. Most people, being illiterate, the news was proclaimed by being read or shouted in a loud voice and then posted on the door of the local inn. So those that could read could read it, but most people back in the days of a town crier couldn't read.

They'd run through the city, they'd announce the news, they'd go to probably the local inn or the local tavern, they would post the bill, which is why, by the way, so many of our newspapers—and a newspaper for you young folks up here is something that you actually used to use, it was paper and it would have all the news in it delivered to your doorstep—but how many newspapers were called The Post?

That came from the posting of this news onto the local tavern door, posting a notice. In the Persian Empire, the same kind of thing would take place, only instead of running through the city or in the town square, this would take place in the gates of the city, which was the gathering place for the people. And so, it says the king and Haman sat down to drink.

Of course they did. "Let's issue an order to wipe out an entire people group and then let's go down to the bar and get a brewski." So the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was perplexed because they for the life of them cannot figure out what would cause the king to issue an edict or a decree like this. Chapter four: "When Mordecai learned all that had happened, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city. He cried out with a loud and bitter cry."

Mordecai's heart, when he hears about this decree that there is a day coming when everybody throughout the empire would be completely legally justified in murdering their Jewish neighbors, it breaks his heart. It wounds his heart, and so he begins to weep. He tore his clothes, he put on sackcloth and ashes. I don't believe for a moment that any of this was for him personally and the threat against his life personally.

If he was worried about that, all he needed to do was bow his head in recognition of Haman's position. So then what is his heart broken for? For his people. His heart was broken on behalf of God's people and his people. His people because he recognized that they were God's people. He probably understands that his unwillingness to bow to Haman was likely at the root of this proclamation.

Imagine him now feeling like this edict has been issued, the entirety of God's people are in danger of being wiped out because—remember, Israel was part of that Persian Empire, the land of Israel—all the Jews in Israel would be wiped out, too. And he realizes that his actions have probably led to this. That doesn't mean that his actions were wrong, but that's a heavy weight of responsibility to bear, isn't it?

His heart is broken. So it says in verse two, he went as far as the front of the king's gate, for no one might enter the king's gate clothed with sackcloth. So he just comes to the edge of the gate; he's in sackcloth and ashes, his clothes are torn, he's weeping, he's mourning with a loud and bitter cry. He doesn't enter into the gates because that was illegal, to go into anything pertaining to the king with bitterness in your heart or some kind of weeping or sadness.

Remember Nehemiah, the cupbearer to the king? Remember how afraid he was when he came into the presence of the king and the king asked him why he was sad? He was afraid because you didn't come into the king's presence with sadness. They did everything they could to make the king's little world what we would call today a Disneyland. So no one went into his presence with sadness, no one went into his presence crying bitterly.

They didn't want to see or hear anything bad around the king. Verse three: "And in every province where the king's command and decree arrived, there was a great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes." What strikes me so much about verse three as we read through that is they're laying down in sackcloth and ashes, there's fasting, there's weeping, there's wailing.

Do you see one mention of prayer? There's no mention of prayer. They're scared, they're afraid, they're fasting, they're crying out, they're mourning, they're laying down prostrate on the ground in sackcloth and ashes, but there's no mention of prayer. Is it implied? Maybe, because this kind of activity in the scripture is usually associated with prayer, but it's not specifically mentioned. I can't help but wonder if it's not because of their compromise and their distance from God.

Many of these Jews, when they were given the right to return to Jerusalem to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, to build the temple under Ezra's leadership, under Nehemiah's leadership, most of the Jewish population didn't go back. Compromised. Far from God in their relationship. So then what amazes me about this verse? Compromised, far from God, not apparently walking in close relationship with God, no mention of prayer, but it amazes and it thrills my heart that God works with them where they are.

What an amazing God we serve, that they would be in this condition and God doesn't say, "You guys are awful, I want nothing to do with you." He still is going to intervene on their behalf, is He not? Verse five, then Esther called Hatach, one of the king's eunuchs whom he had appointed to attend her, and she gave him a command concerning Mordecai to learn what and why this was. She's confused.

Have you ever thought about the fact that it was unlikely that Esther could read? Women in that day and age were generally illiterate; they weren't taught these things. So most women in those days could not read, and even though the king's harem might have been educated in a whole lot of other things, reading wasn't going to be one of them. Or voting, but we won't talk about that.

The notice is given outside of the royal compound, and she probably didn't know anything about it. Why would the king tell his wife anything about it? What would she have anything to do with it? She's not going to be out there killing these people that Haman wants killed. She doesn't probably have any idea what's going on. Verse six: "So Hatach went out to Mordecai in the city square that was in front of the king's gate.

And Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and the sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king's treasuries to destroy the Jews. He also gave him a copy of the written decree for their destruction, which was given at Shushan, that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her, and that he might command her to go into the king to make supplication to him and plead before him for her people."

I wonder if this was the first indication that Hatach, the eunuch that was attending Esther, the first idea that he got that she was Jewish. Or whether he was that trusted. I wonder if Hatach was Jewish and that's why he was chosen to attend to her. There were many Jews in the king's court during the time of the captivity from Babylon on into the Medo-Persian and then the Persian Empire, weren't there?

Think Daniel and his buddies: Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah. You know them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were Jews serving in the king's courts. Verse nine: "Hatach returned and told Esther the words of Mordecai. Then Esther spoke to Hatach and gave him a command for Mordecai." I think Hatach must have been a healthy dude. There's no telephone, text, email—he's running these messages back and forth between Mordecai and Esther.

It's Hatach-mail. Verse eleven: "All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know..." Everyone knows how this works. Now, this is the message that Esther gives to Hatach to give to her uncle Mordecai. "Everybody knows how this works, Unk. That any man or woman who goes into the inner court of the king who has not been called, he has but one law: put all to death except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter that he may live.

Yet I myself have not been called to go into the king these thirty days." Tell my uncle, you know how this works. I can't just go into the presence of the king and ask him what he's thinking, why he's doing this, and is there anything he can do to reverse this. If I do, and he doesn't hold his scepter out towards me, I'll be put to death. I haven't seen him in thirty days, Uncle. I haven't seen my husband in a month.

Some of you wives right now are thinking, "Well, that wouldn't be so bad." That's okay, some of you men are thinking the same thing. It also means you didn't go around the house yelling for your husband if he was the king, right? I've got three levels in my house; it's a split-level house. If I'm the king, then my wife, Janine, can't just run through the house going, "Brian! Brian!"

In that day, you didn't do that. You certainly didn't try to have a conversation from the next room in another level of the house while the game is on. The king saw whom he wanted to see when he wanted to see them, and he had a harem of concubines. So if he didn't want to call his wife in to see him for a month, that was no problem for the king.

But you didn't walk into his presence without being summoned because unless he was feeling especially magnanimous, it meant certain death. And I wonder this: at this point for Esther to go in before the king, would she have had to go through Haman to even have an audience with the king? Verse twelve: "So they told Mordecai Esther's words. And Mordecai told them to answer Esther: 'Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king's palace any more than all the other Jews.

For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish.'" He says, "Esther, God's going to take care of His people. I don't know how, and I'm scared to death. It's why I'm weeping and I'm mourning and I'm wailing, why I'm clothed in sackcloth and ashes. I don't see how God is going to preserve His people, but deliverance is going to come from somewhere.

There are still promises to Israel that God had to fulfill, and Mordecai is trusting. He's got faith. But I don't know, can any of us relate to being in that place where it's like, "I trust God, but this is like the worst thing imaginable at the same time"? It's like knowing on this plane, on the vertical plane, that if this happened, God's got this and He will provide and He will take care of us, but on the horizontal plane, I just don't see how He's going to do it and how that's possible.

We all live in that constant tension, don't we? That's where Mordecai's at. "Esther, God's going to provide, but don't think that you're going to escape if you don't allow yourself to be the instrument that God uses." He says, "Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Who knows but that you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this?

Could it be, Esther, that God brought you to this place at this moment in time for this very work of God? Think about that with Joseph. All that you've gone through, Joseph. Being sold into slavery by your brothers, being barely rescued from being killed by your brothers because that was their original intent. One brother saved him by selling him to slavers. Being falsely accused and thrown into prison, being forgotten so that one day you would be raised to the place of second-in-command under Pharaoh and entrusted with storing up grain through seven good years so that there would be grain not only for Egypt but the entire surrounding area for the next seven years of famine. Joseph, could all of that have happened so that God could bring you to this moment?

Esther, all the hardship that has brought her into this place. Born in a foreign land, losing both her parents. We're not told exactly how she lost them, but she was an orphan; that means her parents were gone. Being taken forcibly with no choice in the matter into the king's beauty pageant. Being taken into the king's bed, whether she wanted to or not—she had no say in the matter—placed in his harem, but as the number one woman in the harem, the queen.

It's all been to bring her to this point in time at this place where she can make a difference. And I'm sure that she hadn't always considered it that way. Would any of us? I doubt it. But God records our struggles and our tears, doesn't He? What does the Psalmist tell us? Psalm 56:8, "You number my wanderings." Every time I have felt like I was in the wilderness, Lord, You've numbered each time.

"You number my wanderings; put my tears into Your bottle." Every time I've shed tears of pain and sorrow because of what life has thrown at me, put those tears into the bottle. Are they not in Your book? God keeps a record of all of these things. So what does that mean for us? It means that God has allowed us to be born into this land to be here in 2026, in this community, for such a time as this.

Look around this room right now and tell me that it doesn't make you want to chuckle that God knew that this group would be here at this moment, in this time, in this place, for ministry in 2026. This group? Really, look around. You're like, "We need look no further than the pulpit." It's amazing to consider that, isn't it? Things are getting really weird in our country and in our culture.

The hypocrisy, the outright insanity, that someone who has every advantage over 99.9% of the rest of the world would stand up at an award ceremony and say no one is illegal on stolen land. Your mansion is on that land. Give us an example, give it back. I mean, this is the insanity that we're watching take place in our society right now. Okay, how do we respond to it?

Could it be, who knows, whether we have come into this kingdom for such a time as this? We have the message of the good news of Jesus Christ. We have the message of hope for people that don't know their right hand from their left, that people that can't tell up from down, right from wrong, good from evil. We have the answer. Who knows but that God has us planted in this community for such a time as this?

I believe that's the case, and I look forward to seeing what God is going to do throughout this coming year. Amen? Father, thank You so much for Your word, thank You for the encouragement we derive from it because, Lord, we often look around and we don't understand completely what You're doing. But we do know that You love us. You demonstrated that at the cross.

You have saved us from darkness, You have brought us into light; from death, You have brought us into life. Lord, You didn't just do that so we would be pew potatoes, but Lord, You did that so that we can be about Your business. So Lord, excite us and encourage us for the possibilities that You may lay in front of us in the coming year. Lord, keep us from responding in our flesh because we so desire to do that so many times.

Our flesh rears its ugly head and we just want to be angry and we want to just strike out at the insanity, which accomplishes nothing. But Lord, help us to remember that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but the battle is taking place in the spiritual realm. That battle being won there can then be shown in the physical realm. So Lord, as a congregation of people, as a people who are called by Your name, may we truly be a lighthouse in our community to warn of danger and to lead to safe harbor. God, use us for Your glory and for others' good. We pray in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, amen. Right on. God bless you guys. See you this weekend.