So we're back in the book of Esther in chapter 2. Let me tell you about chapter 1. So this evil self-absorbed maniac king is throwing this big party. He shows off his wealth for 180 days. Do the math, that's half a year. At the end of that, if that wasn't enough, he throws a seven-day feast. And there's a bunch of drinking, so you imagine drinking for seven days. Everyone's a little bit tipsy. And then he gets the genius idea, hey, go call my wife, or the queen, to come in here, because she's really pretty, and I want everyone to look at how pretty she is. She says, uh-uh, I ain't doing it. So after he thinks he's all this, and he's showing off, and his own wife, his own queen, says no. And so then he needs a bunch of legal counsel to what to do, and then he deposes her, makes a fool of himself. It's a big mess. But okay, what you need to know from that is crazy guy has no queen now. Okay, there's your context. Let's look at Esther chapter two. We'll look at the whole chapter. I'm just gonna read the first 11 verses right now. This is God's word. Let's give it our attention. After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered Vashti. and that what she had done and what had been decreed against her. 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 providences of the kingdom to gather all the beautiful young virgins to the harem in Susa the citadel under custody of Haggai, the king's eunuch who is in charge of the women. Let their cosmetics be given them and let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti. This pleased the king and he did so. Now there was a Jew in Susa, the citadel, whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jar, the son of Shimei, son of Kish, a Benjaminite, who had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives, carried away from Jeconiah, with Jeconiah, king of Judah, when Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had carried away. He was bringing up Hadassah, that is Esther, the daughter of his uncle, for she had neither father nor mother. the young woman had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at. And when her father and her mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter. So when the king's order and his edict were proclaimed, and when many young women were gathered in Susa the citadel in custody of Haggai, Esther was also taken into the king's palace and put in custody of Haggai, who was in charge of the women. And the young woman pleased him and won his favor, and he quickly provided her with her cosmetics and her portion of food, and with seven chosen young women from the king's palace, and advanced her and her young women to the best place in the harem. Esther had not made known to her people or kindred, for Mordecai had commanded her not to make it known. And every day Mordecai walked in front of the court of the harem to learn how Esther was and what was happening to her." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I do pray that as we look at this, your word, that you would help us understand it. Lord, you wanted us to read this this morning. There is some very ugly things in this chapter. And so, Lord, I am committed to preaching it to the people in front of me. Lord, I pray that you would use your word for whatever purpose you intended in all of their lives and even my own. We trust you, Lord. You've given us all of your word with purpose. And so we look at this chapter now with your help in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Now, I don't know if you've had this experience, but you call customer service and after you've messed with the dialer thing, right? Three for this, one for this. I mean, you're already getting more and more annoyed. You finally get to a human being. Isn't that a great moment? and now you've about had it. Like, you just want a refund. Like, I need this person. I mean, it could just as well be a robot. Like, all they have to do is click some magic button and I'm going to get my money back, right? All right, so is this person like a friend of yours? You just want them to do what you need. They could be a robot. Well, this morning I want to introduce you to someone sitting in our audience. It is Brad Mull. Brad Mull, you think he's just this nice guy. He's a father of two daughters, right? But he is actually one of those people that you might get someday if you call your cell phone carrier. He does customer service. Now he could tell you thousands probably of stories where he's been yelled at and treated like all kind of, said all kind of things to him because he wasn't giving them the answer they wanted fast enough. Right? He was being objectified. He is an object that is in their way between their refund. Make sense? We all do this, don't we? We do this, whether it's with customer service, whether it's at Publix, the drive-thru, like, just get me my Starbucks drink faster, please, right? They're just an object that's between you and what you want. This chapter has a lot of objectifying in it. The treating of a human like an object. Kids, if you don't know that word, objectify, there it is in the word, object, an object, to treat an object, or like a toy, or like a tool to get what you want done. All right, here's how we're gonna break up our time. First, we're gonna look at living on exile. Then, and you see this on page seven, second, overcoming objectification, and then third, overcoming assimilation. Overcoming assimilation. Let's begin with that first one, living in exile. Look at verse one again. So it sets the stage. After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered Vashti and what had been done, what he did. It wasn't always done, right? And what had been decreed against her, what he decreed, right? So he's maybe regretting the fact that maybe I was drunk and I kicked her out of the kingdom. Maybe I overreacted a little. All right, so look at verse 2. Well, all his young friends say, hey, we got an idea. We'll help you. What happened to his legal counsel? Remember, he got seven lawyers to help him with his last marriage problem. He probably doesn't want to talk to him right now. Like, yeah, I didn't like what you said last time. You talked me into deposing my bride because she wouldn't come in here. All right. So now as young guys, what do they have? They're going to have some genius idea. Look at verse two. Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king. Unbelievable. And let the king appoint officers in all the providences that came. He has 127 providences. Send out guys in 127 providences. Gather all the pretty young women and gather them here to the harem. You ought to be disgusted. I'm disgusted. Like, what does this guy think he is? He thinks he's a god or something? Is the whole kingdom just there for his pleasure? Yeah, and at this age, this happened a lot. I mean, you would never see this in the US. Can you imagine that? A harem? Or do we have anything similar to that? Now, I don't know, have you ever watched a movie with your kids, and you watch it, you haven't seen it in 20 years, and you watch it, and you're like, I don't remember that scene being in there, right? And you're like, I'm sorry, kids. I was 12 last time I saw this. I'm sorry, right? So this has been my experience with Esther. I was like, oh, Esther, it's such a nice book. I remember the Veggie Tales version, right? You got vegetables, and it's a storybook version. Like, it's a, there's a beauty contest, and Esther wins, and it's all so nice. There's some really ugly stuff in here. And so, we have a choice. Either I give you the VeggieTales version this morning, or we just do an honest reading. Like, what's actually right in front of us? And I'm going to take a leap of faith this morning and actually just tell you what's right here in front of you. There's not going to be any vegetables pretending to be Bible characters this morning. It's just what's here. And so it's really ugly. And so we're going to look at some ugly stuff this morning. But I think it's important because you know what? We live in an ugly world. You know, there are no harems in the US, but there's something that's just as evil. It's called pornography, right? It's where there's a whole collection of people to look at and people just lust after them. You should be disgusted by that too. It is so prevalent in our culture. And it is, it is no different than what's happening here with this evil king. You know I heard a story one time. I'll tell it to you because I think it's helpful. So imagine this little village and they have this, they buy a lake and there's this fierce crocodile. comes out and like maims people. They're like, no, we don't talk about the crocodile. Don't talk about the crocodile. Because some people have died from it. You know, if you'd actually like tell your kids, like, watch out. Don't, don't walk by the lake. You might get eaten by the crocodile. Right? Is pornography not like that? When was the last time you heard a sermon? Ever heard, have you ever even heard a preacher say that word through a microphone? probably haven't. And yet it's this crocodile that just like destroys marriages, destroys people's lives. And so, I'll be that guy. Because it's here. Like how else do we read this? He's got this harem. He's collected all these women. Oh, it gets worse. Look at verse 12. It says, and when their turn came, when the turn came for the young woman to go to King Hesuerus after being 12 months under the regulation for women, since this was a regular period of their beautifying. All right, what's their beautification? Six months with oil of myrrh, six months with spices and ointment for women. They're being fumigated and dunked for a year to make them pretty. 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. In the evening, she would go in, and in the morning, she would return to the second harem in custody of Shayashkas, the king's eunuch, who was in charge of the concubines. You connect the dots. She would go into the king. She would not go into the king again unless the king delighted in her, and she was summoned by name. This is so evil. Like what? So you have fathers of all throughout the kingdom. They had dreams for their daughters. This was not the dream for their daughter. Right? They end up being like a doll in a doll collection to maybe played with once and probably never. This is probably gonna be a one night stand with the king for all but one of these hundreds of women. Like it's, it's unimaginable. But this is what happened. So this is what living in exile meant for the Jews. Right? There's some benefits to living in Persia. This is not one of them. This is an evil time. So they have all this beautification to maybe be worthy. These women, they're never gonna get married. They're never gonna have kids. They're never gonna, any dreams they had for their lives have just been shattered, right? Now, not one of them, well, yeah, she gets to be queen, but think about it. If you read the first chapter, he doesn't really treat women so well. This is not really the guy you want your daughter to marry. Now, see, I've been talking to you from the woman's perspective, right? And we're all been horrified. This is not the king's perspective, is it? He thinks this is all grand, doesn't he? So this takes us to our second point. Overcoming objectification. Overcoming objectification. We finally get to meet our main characters. There they were in verse 5. Mordecai, we get his lineage and then we see Esther, who's kind of like his adopted daughter. What's the one thing we learn about Esther? Look there, it's in verse seven. The young woman had a beautiful figure, and she was lovely to look at. But that's the only real thing that matters in this kingdom, what you look like, which sets us up for verse eight. So then, when the king's order and his edict was proclaimed, and when many young women were gathered in Susa the citadel, in custody of Haggai, Esther was taken into the king's palace and put in custody. Now when we say taken into custody, is that usually volunteer, volunteer under your own compulsion? No. This was not. She was taken. He was just, see in his mind, the whole kingdom is for his disposal. And this is the way it worked. Very sad. So she's taken into custody. Objectification. The whole reason she's there is because she's an object. Maybe she'll be useful to the king as his plaything. She's taken into custody. Now there's two sides to objectification, isn't there? The one who's objectifying and the one who's being objectified. And this is, we're looking, this is like the most evil level of it, right? When it's sexual. But we do it at much higher levels, right? So simply put, there's the person who's calling. Brad is the object who is in the way of their refund, right? So we can objectify, you can objectify Starbucks to anyone. So there's both sides. The one who's being objectified and the one who's objectifying. The clear answer for this guy is just stop it, right? Stop objectifying. Look at verse, I think it's 11. Every day, Mordecai walked in front of the court of the harem to learn how Esther was and what was happening to her. Now, we don't know what's going on in Mordecai's mind. Was he thrilled? Maybe that she's gonna end up being the queen and the power and prestige she would have. We don't know. Or, I mean, any of you that are fathers, I mean, how would you be walking in front of the harem every day to see how your daughter's doing? Let me just pause there, let that sink in for a second. I mean, you tell me that's not a powerful motivation against pornography. I mean, every girl on every screen is somebody's daughter. I guarantee that was not the dad's dream for their girl. You see, objectification breaks the tie between the actual person and what's happening. Well, then you can do whatever you want. It's happening in Ukraine right now. Sure, they're just in the way of our victory, right? Well, as soon as you objectify people, it's happened in Nazi Germany, happened in all kinds of places. As soon as you objectify people, then you can do whatever you want with them. What about the person being objectified? What about Esther? What's she to do? Here she is, she's in custody in the king's harem. The sole reason she was there was because she was pretty. How is she to handle this situation? Look at verse 9 and 10. And the young woman pleased him. So this is the guy who's, hey guy, who's taking care of all the women. So Esther pleased him and won his favor. And he quickly provided for her cosmetics and a portion of food. Huh, this is interesting. It doesn't mean anything to us, but it should if you were Jewish. Now what food is she being provided? The king's food. We're all thinking that's great. I'd love to eat the king's food. But not for the Jews. The Old Testament said don't eat any unclean thing. They had all these rules. Read Leviticus sometime when you want to go to sleep. It's quite a difficult book. All these laws about you can't do this, you can do this. You definitely don't marry a pagan. Right? You definitely don't eat these things. There's all these rules. Right? So she's given her portion of food. Now, to understand what's going on here, I want to give you a contrast. For any of you that know lots of Bible stories, kids, you could do this too. What Bible story is there that sounds like this? Someone gets taken during exile, and they would be useful to the king. They're given a portion of food. They're in this training program to then be useful to the king. Do you know who that is? Yes. Who said it's Daniel. Daniel, let me read to you from the book of Daniel. This will help it make sense. So this is Daniel 1. This kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it? This is also similar. that the king ate and the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years. Okay, this was even more, this was to be an advisor, so it lasted three years instead of one. Among them was Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. You ever heard those names before? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank. Therefore, he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him to not defile himself. And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs. Okay, so in Daniel's situation, he says, I ain't doing it. He says, I'm a Jew. I'm gonna obey God. I don't care what you do to me. I'm not gonna eat this food. and God just amazingly blessed. Later, the guys end up in a fiery furnace, if you know that story. He ends up in a lion's den, because he says, I will not compromise. He said, my God is still God in exile. He's gonna take care of me. And he does, it's amazing. Okay, so contrast that with Esther. How's she doing so far? Well, she just eats the food. And she's being beautified. And one thing you have to understand is, have you ever compromised on anything? Not like compromised on who gets the biggest piece of cake, but like compromised your convictions, right? The way it goes, it's a slippery slope. The generations before Mordecai, they had got an opportunity to go back to Israel. God moved and Cyrus, the guy in charge, and he said, you can all go back to Israel. You can go back to the promised land. A bunch of Jews went home. Some didn't. Some said, you know what? Persia ain't bad. They didn't know it was coming. Right? They know that their daughters might get snatched up. Right? And then remember also it said that she didn't say who, look there in verse 10, Esther had not made known her people or kindred. So she hides she's a Jew, she eats the food, she goes along with it, she's making everybody happy. Now granted she was obeying what her dad said, right? Her adopted dad said. He said don't tell anybody and so she obeyed. But there's, can you just see the compromise? How they, generations, whether it's Mordecai's dad or him, said we aren't going back to the Promised Land, we're staying in Persia. And so you just see them being assimilated. We're gonna come back to that in the next point. Just, they're blending right in. She blends right in. She's about to be made the queen. No one knows that she's a Jew. Look at verse 15, what happens next? Then it's her turn. Then the turn came for Esther, the daughter of Abihel, the son of Mordecai, And she was taken, who had taken his own daughter, to go into the king. She asked for nothing except what Haggai, the king's eunuch, who in charge of the women, advised. Now Esther was winning favor in the eyes of all who saw her. And when Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus, into his royal palace in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign, the king loved Esther more than all the women. Man, that man likes to party. He's gonna be drunk like most of this book. Just wait and see. It's Esther's feast. He also granted a remission of taxes to the provinces. and gave gifts with royal generosity. So she wins everyone's favor. What do we do? Do we celebrate or do we cry? Who is now she the queen for? Not a good man. Not a good man. But, spoiler alert, God has a big purpose in this. God is orchestrating things. Look at what else happens. So she's there. Look at verse 19. Because she's the queen, what happens? What gets to happen? So now, when the Virgin, this is verse 19, oh, in your bulletin, too many words, it wouldn't fit, you're actually gonna need your Bible, or your phone. So you've probably run out by now. So look, this is Esther 2, verse 19. That's a good thing. See, it's all, this is a crazy thing. You read the Bible, you read things like this, narratives, and you have to put your thinking cap on. You have to figure out what's good and bad. So far, did it say what was good and bad? There's a lot of stories like this. They're descriptive, not prescriptive. They're describing what happened and God wanted them to know about this crazy thing that happened. But they aren't prescriptive. Don't go do this. Right? Don't imitate everything in here. Don't compromise your convictions. Now does this mean that she's excluded? Does this mean that she'll never be used by God? Absolutely not. If you've compromised your convictions, whether it's sexually or some other way, God can still use you. God can absolutely still use you. That's what's so crazy about God. It never stops Him. Now you might say, but He, she had to be here. She had to be here. This all had to happen because of what happens later. Do the ends justify the means? No. But God can still use them. This, we should, we should praise God that He is so amazing. He can use wretched people like us. I'm a wretched man, and so are you, and women. We are all mangled up. We've done lots of things we've regretted, but it does not stop God from using us in any way He chooses. That's how amazing God is. That's what we're gonna see in this book. Well, it keeps going. All right, so what happens? She obeyed Mordecai, verse 21. And this came to the knowledge of Mordecai. Okay, so Mordecai knows these guys are going to kill the king. And he told it to Queen Esther. She just happens, his daughter just happens to be the queen. And so he saves his life. Look what happens. And Esther told to the king in the name of Mordecai. She gave Mordecai credit. When the affair was investigated and found to be so, the men, the men were both hanged on the gallows and it was recorded in the book of the Chronicles, the presence of the king. And how was he rewarded? Not at all. The next, the very next chapter is going to start with some crazy guy getting exalted. That's what we'll pick up that next week. And so we have two things interesting here. No one knows that the queen is Jewish. That's a key fact. Hold that in the back of your mind. And that Mordecai just saved the king's life and wasn't rewarded at all, but they wrote it down. That's going to come back up. God's going to use that later. It's important. I want to look for a minute at assimilation. Third and finally, assimilation. Kids, have you heard that word? I don't know if you've ever had a kid move to your school from another country. They speak a different language, they dress different, they act different, right? But over time, they start to speak English, don't they? And then they start to dress like everyone else and act like everyone else. That's called assimilation. It happens in the military. You get a new haircut, new clothes, everything, right? So it's not always bad, but sometimes it is. If you assimilate into the wrong crowd, for all you kids in school, bad things can happen, right? You'll begin to imitate them and you'll act like them. All right, so think about Esther. She's in Persia. How has she been assimilated? A lot, hasn't she? I mean, so much so that the king pictures her as his queen. Is there any pressure on you to assimilate? Is there any pressure on you to assimilate to secular American culture? You better believe it. To have the same values, to look at the same stuff, watch the same movies, act the same way? Assimilation. Listen to this from 1 Corinthians 6, it says, We don't have a temple anymore. You just come to a middle school for church, right? This ain't no temple. What's the temple now? Your body, the Holy Spirit. If you're a believer this morning, the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. We had a bunch of little temples all in one room. It's really cool. Listen to what it says after that. You are not your own. You don't belong to yourself anymore, for you are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. If you have believed on Christ, if you've asked him to forgive your sins and be your Lord, then he, you're now this temple. Well, that kind of affects this whole assimilation thing. You can't be assimilated. You belong to somebody else. You are an exile, right? We're talking about exiles. You are a stranger here. Your home is where? Where's your home if you're a Christian? Heaven. Heaven, we're just passing through. We're just passing through. You don't assimilate when you're on vacation, right? You're just hanging out, enjoying the beach. You aren't a local. You aren't a local here. You are not a local here. You belong to Jesus now. He has purchased your life with his life. He's purchased your body, your time, your mind, your eyes, with his blood. We cannot be assimilated. There's something else cool here. You know how this king is so wicked, he's looking for the perfect queen. Is God like that? Is God looking for some perfect queen? No. Romans 5.8 says that God demonstrated his own love for us in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He picked mangled, broken people to be his kids. Jesus said in Mark 2.17, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, I came to call the righteous. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Many people stay away from church for this very reason. They say, I'm not good enough. Like, I need to clean up my act. They got it all wrong. Like, this is the place for broken people. That here's the place that is the only place where you get to, in the front door, come in and say, hey, I'm broken and messed up. And we say, welcome. You'll fit right in. All of us are. All of us are. You see how this helps us not be assimilated? Does it make sense? Because you belong to someone else. You now have, he owns your life, your body. You're his temple. Of course, we can't be assimilated into this world. But don't give up on Esther. Don't give up on Esther. The story's just getting going. You know what, later, so no matter how much you've compromised, your story, listen please, your story is not over. The story of Esther is not over. There's exciting things to come. And so I want you to understand in this early things, there's a lot of compromise. There's a lot of shady things, things like, what do you think of this good Jewish girl marrying this like wicked, crazy maniac? I don't know it's such a good thing, but God will use it. And one day she will have the courage to stand up. God is working that courage in us. 2 Corinthians 5 says this, those who live that they might no longer live for themselves. May that be true of Hope Community Church, that we may no longer live for ourselves. But for him who for their sake died and was raised, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ. Do ambassadors assimilate? No, they cease to be an ambassador anymore, right? You're an ambassador. This year, our other focus other than the March Marriage Challenge, right, prayer is one of our focus, the other is living on mission. that you would live different. You know what, in order to do that, you have to stop objectifying people. Whether it's customer service, public, Starbucks, women on the internet. We have to stop it. We have to treat people like people if we're gonna love them. You don't share Jesus with someone you don't love. You don't share Jesus with like trees and objects and rocks. Those are objects. We share Jesus with people we care about. We must stop objectifying. We must not be assimilated into this culture that has a plan for your life. And it's not for you to be ambassador for Christ. So I encourage you, please choose to represent a Savior who's worthy. Unlike crazy fickle kings. You have fickle bosses. They don't always promote the right people. You live in a fickle world. This is not the place we want to please. We want to please our Heavenly Father. You'll never regret that. I absolutely promise that. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, here we are, your mangled, sinful kids, and we are so thankful you adopt us. You're cleaning us up. You're in the process of making us more beautiful, but not so that we'd be acceptable to you. You accepted us in the beginning. You made us acceptable by Jesus dying. Thank you, Jesus, for dying for me and dying for them. I pray that every single person that is hearing my voice would know you, that they would look to you Many are under conviction right now. I've said some really uncomfortable things. Your word actually said it, I just repeated it. Lord, thank you that there is no sin that could separate us too far that Jesus can't save us. Thank you. Thank you for what you've saved me from. Lord, I pray that you would give us peace this morning, that though we have sinned, we are accepted by the blood of Jesus. Lord, though we've been assimilated more than we understand, Lord, we thank you that you are in the business of taking people like Esther who's compromised a bunch and making something amazing out of her. Lord, make something amazing out of us. Not for our glory. Not for our glory, but your glory alone. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.