Please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, we do come before you this morning and it is our desire, Lord, that we would acknowledge you rightly as we gather here, your people, those who have been redeemed through the blood of your Son. Father, as Matt opened our service this morning, we do ponder upon the great message of your mercy and your grace to us this morning. May these truths, Lord, be at the forefront of our minds. as we enter into this time of looking at Your Word. I pray, Father, that You would give aid to me as I seek to honestly and rightly communicate the truths that are found here, and particularly in the book of Esther. I pray that You would use these truths, Lord, to affect our lives. We ask Your blessing on this time in Your Word, We pray these things in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Have you ever had an experience in your life that seemed to be more than just mere coincidence, if there is such a thing? Something that you might have even said, wow, that was the providence of God. I had a particular incident that occurred to me a number of years ago while we were still living in Olathe. One particular morning, and I've perhaps shared this story in other times, but one particular morning as I was headed out on my prayer walk, it's been my habit for a number of years that I like to try to go out away from other distractions of the home to seek time with the Lord in the morning. What happened that morning was not too uncommon to other experiences that happen to me as I'm out praying, and that is that my mind began to drift. I might have started with a spiritual mind frame, but as too often is the case, my thoughts started drifting back and I started sort of daydreaming and thinking about other things, interrupting this time of prayer with thoughts about sort of the happenings of life. And that particular morning was unique in that I had chosen sort of a different route than I normally took. That detail sticks out in my mind. I'm not sure why. But another important detail was that as I was thinking about things, my mind was going to a problem that we were having at our house. where one of the downspouts was dumping water along the foundation of the house and that water was sort of permeating and getting underneath the house and creating some moisture problems there and was thinking that I really needed to do something about that and what I really needed was one of those flexible downspouts that you can connect to extend onto the the bottom of the of the downspout there and divert the water away from the house and oh a dark green one would look nice there and And I'm going through and I'm thinking about all these things and then I realize, oh... Ah, my mind has wandered again. I said, oh, Lord. And I kind of stopped, as I continued to walk, but was repenting over my distracted thoughts, the things that take me away from His presence. And I just sort of finished this time of repentance and continued into my prayer. And as I'm walking along, I look down. And there on the curb, out with the trash, was a dark, green, flexible downspout that someone had set. I stopped and I was like, okay, Lord, I picked it up and continued on with my prayer walk. And obviously it caused me to ponder, it was to me an act of providence. You know, how do these things happen? How do I take a different route? end up on a block where I'm not normally walking, and some other person, for whatever reason, decided to dispose of the very downspout that I was thinking I needed. And this happened all at a time where it did in the course of my prayer time that morning. What are the odds, you know, of something like that happening? Now, I assure you, there have been many times in my life, this is a unique experience, okay? There have been many times in my life where I was praying for rain, and I'm speaking allegorically here, and a dark cloud seemed to blow in to my sky, only to pass on over. And so there are many times when these sorts of things don't play out that way in our lives, but surely this was the hand of God. And it was a reminder of the fact to me, and particularly important, that my prayers don't just fall off into nowhere. There is a God in heaven who is over all things, and he cares about me personally and intimately. It was a great truth and one of those things that I've clung to throughout my life. So, what does this have to do with the book of Esther? I've entitled this morning, An Introduction to Esther, Providential Preservation. The Book of Esther is the story, true story, behind how the Jews came to celebrate what's called the Feast of Purim, or that is, the Feast of Lots. We'll talk more about that later. Perhaps one of the most unique aspects about the Book of Esther is that the name of God is nowhere on the pages, and yet, The fingerprints of God are all over the story. The hand of God is seen throughout this book. Therefore, we could say this, that the book of Esther is the story about providential preservation. In particular, it's a story about the providential preservation of a chosen people by the hand of an unseen God. That's the overarching theme here in the book of Esther. There may be other ways to articulate it and that's at least the best that I can come up with here to sort of encapsulate the whole of this book. And we're gonna come back to this theme here later on this morning. What I wanna do is this morning is sort of lay for you the groundwork and the context as we head into this book of the Bible. And so, let's see here. We're gonna go, first of all, and look at the historical and the geographical context. Now, I wanna give a disclaimer as we do this. Neither history nor geography are among my strong suits. So, take what I give you this morning and reference it for yourself to make sure it's accurate. I'm not entirely sure what my strong suits are. I used to say it was math. That makes my wife laugh as I stumble over simple math problems these days. But whatever the case, history and geography are not my strong suits. So I have sought, though, to try to prepare myself to at least share what I can discern in these regards. And it's important. Because I think in order to make good sense of the book of Esther, particularly because it's a historical book, we need to have some sort of backdrop here to understand and appreciate it correctly. So the historical context, for you kids here, and I've prepared this in many ways with you in mind, Here I want to take some time to just sort of step back and take in the larger view here, the larger historical perspective as it relates to scripture. So if we go back to the beginning, let's think this through, we have first of all, at the very beginning we have Adam, and in the beginnings we go from Adam to Noah, there's 10 generations, then from Noah that leads us to Abraham, And that would have been the time with the dispersion of the nations during the time just after Noah, where we have the Tower of Babel and people are distributed following the flood there into all of the world. Then we have the patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac. and Jacob, and from Jacob then we go on to Joseph and the story of the time of Israel and Egypt, and that story takes us then from Joseph on, moves us hundreds of years forward to a little baby born by the name of Moses, right? And then God uses Moses, he brings him up into a position to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to go to the land of promise during the Exodus time. We have Moses and that shifts into Joshua, who actually takes them into the land of promise. And then there's the season of the judges. And some of the judges you might think of, people like Deborah and Gideon and Samson, and then even Samuel, who's also the one who is going to take us then into the period of the monarchy, where we have first King Saul, then King David, then King Solomon. And then it was after Solomon with his son, Rehoboam, that the kingdom is divided. The kingdom gets divided into Judah and Benjamin to the south and what's called then Judah. The other 10 tribes to the north called Israel. And then we enter into this period of various kings, and there are, in Israel, all bad kings. In Judah, there's some good, some bad. And then eventually, as God had warned many times through many prophets during this period of times, both sides of that divided kingdom would eventually be taken captive and their cities brought to ruin. And then this would lead into the time of the exile. So in the exile, the Israelites went into exile first. The North did under the Assyrians and they were dispersed throughout the nations. That was the way the Assyrians dealt with it. When they conquered a city, they would take the people and then they would sort of spread them out as to make sure that they would not rise back up and unite together. That was the way they handled it. And then about a hundred years later, we have Judah getting taken by the Babylonians and they're brought into captivity and they're led into Babylon. And then later we have the return. And during that time, such figures come up as Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and this is when there's a great return and restoration, then back into Judah. And then from this period of the return, we, then go into the intertestamental period, a period of silence, and that all leads up to the birth of Christ, and that closes out the Old Testament. So that's just kind of run through with you the larger context here, the history, because it's important, I think, just to understand this. So the book of Esther, occurs during this period of return. That's sort of the context here, and we're going to look at that now a little bit more closely. First of all, in relationship to Scripture, At the end of the historical books, we have 1st and 2nd Chronicles. 1st and 2nd Chronicles are going to lead directly into the Book of Ezra. In fact, the very last verse in the Book of 2nd Chronicles is the very first verse in the Book of Ezra. And then Ezra is going to flow into the book of Nehemiah, and they actually were, at one point in time, one book, comprised of two parts, Ezra 1 and 2, basically, and it was only when the Geneva Bible was produced that it became called Ezra and Nehemiah, distinguishing those two books in particular. And then we have the book of Esther, finally, at the end of sort of what we might call the historical books in scripture before we get into the poetry and wisdom books. So that's just sort of an overview and a context. There are prophets during this time, this restoration period, Haggai and Zechariah, and then later Malachi, that are proclaiming prophecies, they're stirring up the people, seeking to get the temple rebuilt. So let's then look a little bit more closely here. Now this is interesting to me, Justin, I'm not sure, okay. Somehow I have a black backdrop that was not black before. I'm missing some, I think we have all the details there we need, though. We're missing some of the details. I'm sorry? Let's just go with this. Yeah, it should still work, I think. It might change a little bit of the details that we're seeing here, I'm not sure. Anyway, yeah, let's see, we're just missing some dates. Yeah, what you can't see on there. So yeah, it's not all that important, honestly. There are some bars that we can't see on this backdrop here, marking 600 BC, that's really towards the beginning of the Babylonian Empire there, and then 500 BC, which sort of hits partway through that Persian Empire scheme there, if that helps you with understanding the context of dates here. So I wanted to sort of look at the relationship here historically in reference to what's happening with the change of these world empires. You kind of see that across the top, the Assyrian Empire being replaced by the Babylonian Empire, being replaced by the Persian Empire. So during the Assyrian Empire, which would have been from 859 to 612, One of the events there in 722 was when the 10 northern tribes were conquered by Assyrian dispersed, as I mentioned earlier. Then we enter into the Babylonian Empire, which is from 612 to 539. And there are three waves here of exile. You can see marked there A, B, and C. The first one was in 605. There was a wave of deportation of Jews to Babylon. That would have included Daniel, who wrote the book And of course, the book of Daniel, Daniel and his friends. And then in 597, the second wave of deportation when Jerusalem was captured and Ezekiel was taken with this group. And then in the sea in 586 was the third wave of deportation. And that's when Jerusalem was finally destroyed and the temple completely burned. So that sort of gives you an idea there of when that exile occurred. And then we enter into the Persian Empire, which was from 539 to 330, beginning with Cyrus the Great. And it was in 539 that Cyrus issued a decree allowing the Jews to return. And so marked there with the number one, we're gonna have three waves of return back into the Persian Empire. back into the land of Judah. So first of all, in about 538 was the first wave under the leadership of Zerubbabel. We have, if you're looking above, some of the leaders that are in Persia there. So Cyrus, then Cambyses II, Darius I, then Xerxes and Artaxerxes. So we're gonna be kind of tracking along that line. So during the reign of Darius, and I want you to note it's Darius the Persian, not Darius the Mede. There's a different Darius that comes up in the book of Daniel. So this is a different Darius. It was during his reign in 516 that they were able to actually finish the temple and it was completed and dedicated at that time. And then we come to Xerxes or Ahasuerus is the name that he goes by and what's recorded in our scriptures here. And that's the period when Esther occurs. And then there's Artaxerxes and then the second wave of return, many believe that Ezra led a second wave in 458, and then in 444, the third and final wave of Jewish exiles return under the leadership of Nehemiah. So we see Esther falling into the context here, sort of a parentheses that happens during that period between Ezra and Nehemiah, actually specifically between chapter six and chapter seven in the book of Ezra. And if you ever read through those books, just a fair warning, it gets confusing because the author doesn't particularly, as often happens in scripture, those books don't happen necessarily in a straight chronological order. They oftentimes will give an event and then in a sort of parenthetical way, you know, they're going to cover another event that might have occurred earlier in another period of time. And what makes it even more confusing is that many of these kings would often use multiple names or have different names used for them. And they also often like to reuse names. And so you end up with various Darius's and etc. So it gets a little bit difficult to sort it all out if you're actually reading through those books. But to the best of my knowledge, this is the way that most scholars would lay it out for us. So we see here then in this context where it is that Esther occurs under the reign of Hasuerus, or that is King Xerxes. So let's look at the geographical context here, and we'll start with the larger geographical context. The Persian Empire was very vast. It covered essentially all of the Middle East and some of Northern Africa, from India all the way to Ethiopia. And so if you look here, that picture there in the middle for you kids, that's sort of the Middle East there that you see. So let's come in a little bit more closely here and take a look at that same picture, but now a little closer up. And what you're gonna see here is Susa, if you can read that, is toward the middle of that picture there. We can see both Susa and Babylon there towards the middle. And the city of Susa is the capital city of the Persian Empire. It was about 150 miles north of the lower sea, the Persian Gulf, near the base of the Zargos Mountains. a royal city during the Persian Empire. Here's a picture that gives sort of the terrain. You can see them. I don't have a pointer here, but located down there a little lower to the right-hand side of the screen there. And you see that strip of mountains. Those are the Zargos Mountains running sort of at a diagonal downward. And that's where Susa was located. You also see on here, I believe, what was called the Royal Road. that led from the capital city all the way up to Sardis. And that was also an important highway that was established. I think it was established by Darius. Another interesting thing about this city of Susa is it's found in scripture other places. It was the same city where Daniel had the vision about the coming invasion of Persia and Greece, which happened before the fall of the Babylonians. And it was the same city where Nehemiah would later serve King Artaxerxes as a cupbearer, which we read out of Nehemiah chapter one, same city. So I want to look at the authorship then. And I hope I'm not boring you with all these details. I do think it's important just to kind of get our minds wrapped around this story here as we go into it. Who wrote the Book of Esther? And the short answer to that is we don't know. We're not sure who wrote this book. But we can discern this much. It was likely a Jew who lived in Persia who had firsthand knowledge of the customs, the events, the places, including the palace itself. Popular traditions are Mordecai, which is suggested by the historian Josephus, or Nehemiah, who might have personally known Mordecai, or at least known of Mordecai. And if it was Nehemiah, then it would perhaps help explain some of the more immediate purpose that the book was serving, to reassure the Jews living in Palestine of God's sovereign protection over them. When was it written? Well, it was likely, again, we don't know for sure, but it was likely written shortly after the death of King Ahasuerus, so mid to late fifth century. was when it was written. And then I wanted to consider also this morning just the genre. And by genre, I mean there are different types of literary styles that we find in scripture. And depending upon those literary styles, that's going to have an impact on how we apply that scripture. Okay, and so it's important to understand that this is historical literature. And while it's a true story, we have to give care to how we apply the truths that we find here. The things that we're reading about in the Book of Esther are not didactic. They're not just given as straight teachings. Do this, don't do this, etc. In other words, they're not necessarily informing us on the particulars of what is right and wrong. And we have to be careful about that. We also have to account for its relationship to redemptive history and allow the clearer teachings of the New Testament to inform the lessons that we might draw from the narrative. We have to figure out where it fits in redemptive history and make sure that we factor that into whatever lessons we wanna draw out of this book. So just as an example, Because Esther was one of many wives of King Ahasuerus, and was basically brought into her harem, doesn't mean that we should embrace polygamy, right? We can't just read this and say, oh look, that happened, and it seems like God's smiling upon this, therefore it's a good thing. We can't do that. That's not how we wanna handle this type of literature. Or, just because the Jews were permitted to slaughter all of their enemies on the 13th day of the 12th month, doesn't mean that we should do the same. That would not be right. We have other scriptures that we have to take into account and give consideration to. And so I just say that to say as we go through this, we have to be mindful about the ways that we're using Esther and how we're gonna use them. And there are a lot of lessons here. I think there are things to be gleaned. But we just have to be careful and make sure that we're connecting it to the rest of scripture, and particularly the more clear parts of scripture that tell us and teach us what are the right and wrong sorts of things for us to do. So let's look for a minute at the main characters. I'm gonna go through each of these here. So first of all, one of the main characters in this story is King Ahasuerus. And for each of the characters, I sought to take just three words. And I vacillated. There's a lot of words we could use to describe them. I vacillated on each one of the characters to pick which three words I wanted to pick. But these were the three words that I settled on as best I can discern the situation and understand the people that are represented here in this story. So for King Ahasuerus, wealthy, showy, and impulsive. So the Greeks referred to him as Xerxes. He was the son of Darius, who preceded him, and Atassa, who was actually, so Darius' wife, but the daughter of Cyrus the Great. Ahasuerus is reigning here in this story during the zenith of the Persian Empire, which Cyrus had secured. He loves to flaunt his wealth. He holds long, extravagant feasts to that end. There's a story about how, at one point, he was battling against the Greeks at that time. And there's one story where he was trying to cross over a particular strait that connected them to the main body, the waters of the Helen Spot is what it's called, where this passage, this narrow strait where the Black Sea flows into the Aegean Sea, where they were gonna try to create a bridge across that, a way for the armies to move into that area. And the storms rose up and destroyed the work that had already been started. And so King Ahasuerus ordered his men to go and whip the waters 300 times for having been defiant against him in his efforts here. So this is sort of a window, an insight into this guy and how he's thinking. It was interesting as I was doing preparation that somebody recently made a comparison between King Ahasuerus and Donald Trump. And the more I thought about it, I saw a lot of parallels, honestly. And their point was he wasn't Haman. He's not Haman, but he's a lot like Ahasuerus. I thought maybe they made some keen observations as they did so. So next we have Queen Esther. And the three words I've selected here are beautiful, intelligent, and courageous. Now, Esther, though apparently much younger than Mordecai, is his cousin. And Mordecai raised her as his own daughter because she was orphaned. She lost her parents. So a little background there on Esther herself. But she's very sagistic. She's a sage here, and she's beautiful, intelligent, courageous. We'll see that in the story. Then we have Mordecai. Mordecai, I chose the words wise, noble, and resolute. And Mordecai was a Benjamite from the family of Kish, and maybe that brings to memory a particular king in Israel's history, King Saul. So he has relationship there. And I think that's an important point, and we'll come to that eventually. In one of the opening verses, it talks about him coming with those who had been exiled. The chronology doesn't work too well. It'd make him pretty old. It's probably his father that's being referred to in that statement. So probably his father came with the exiles initially into Babylon and he was born there while in captivity. Mordecai is dwelling in the city of Susa. He's very familiar with the court of the king. And his Jewish kinsmen were very near and dear to his heart. He refuses to bow down to Haman. And some of that would become more clear when we understand who Haman is. So let's go to Haman next. Of Haman, we could say he's bad, bad, bad. In particular, he's arrogant, he's self-absorbed, he's hateful. Now Haman was an Agagite, that is a descendant of King Agag, the very king that King Saul had failed to kill, if you remember that story in the Old Testament. So that's kind of an interesting detail connecting Mordecai and Haman. and some of the history that's behind them. So he's, that makes him a descendant also of the Amalekites. And of course there's a longstanding issue with the Amalekites because of how they attacked Israel from the rear during the time of the Exodus. So now Haman was very wealthy. He held a position that was nearest to the throne. He was in fact entrusted with the signet ring of the king and he would use it to seal the decrees. And he despised the Jews on account of Mordecai who refused to bow down to him. Now I don't have, I gave four slots if you're following along and taking notes in the bulletin. There's actually a fifth character here and probably rightly that there's not even a little mark there for you to put something. And the fifth character, the most important character in the story here is God. Unseen, almighty, and ever faithful to his covenant people. Again, while his name is not found on any of the pages of this story, his fingerprints are all over it. I wanna go from here then back to the theme and we'll close out this morning here thinking about the theme and we'll do an overview as well. But as I mentioned at the beginning, the primary theme of Esther is the providential preservation of a chosen people by the hand of an unseen God. So first of all, regarding the issue of providence, As I mentioned, Esther is this whole story behind the Feast of Purim and how it started. And Purim refers to the casting of lots. And so the history of that is this, that Haman, as we'll see in the story, used the casting of lots in order to determine his lucky day. That is, the day that fate would smile upon him, the day that would be most favorable to him, And he did that in order to decide which would be the best day for executing all of the Jews. And this is how this date came to be, the 13th day of the 12th month. That's the day that he would set his plan in order to eradicate the Jews. But in the end, it really wasn't his lucky day. And it's exactly as we read in Proverbs 16.33, the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord. So ironically, God, in His providence, turns this whole thing upside down, and He makes the day that was intended, now listen carefully, He takes the day that was intended to be the destruction of His chosen people. and he uses it to destroy their enemies. Does that sound familiar to you? Should something familiar to redemption, the history of redemption, maybe something involving a cross even. So the Feast of Purim is celebrated on the 14th day of the month of Adar. And you know what, I was looking it up Providentially, that feast begins this Saturday evening, March 11th, and ends the following evening. So actually, we're sitting right at the doorstep of this Feast of Purim, the Feast of Lent, this coming weekend. The word providence comes from the word provide. It's funny how sometimes you see a word and you've read it a number of times and you missed the most basic observation about that word. I never tied providence to provide, but that's where it comes from, its relationship here. which in its original form, this idea of providing also is closely associated with the idea of foresight. It implies having a future end and a goal and a definite plan for attaining that end. I thought one Bible encyclopedia put it well. So listen to this carefully. I know this is kind of lengthy, but listen carefully. I think this is really good. Providence is the preparation, care, and supervision which are necessary to secure a desired future result. While all rational beings exercise a providence proportioned to their powers, yet it is only when the word is used with reference to the divine being who is possessed of infinite knowledge and power that it takes on its real and true significance. The doctrine of divine providence therefore has reference to that preservation care and government which God exercises over all things that he has created in order that he may accomplish the ends for which they were created. In short, providence is the means by which God directs all things, both seen and unseen, good and evil, toward a worthy purpose, which means His will must finally prevail. So I wanna tie this then, the idea of providence, to preservation. And it's not just preservation, but specifically preservation of a chosen people. God had chosen out a people through which to bring about his plan of redemption according to his everlasting covenant. In fact, the whole of the Bible is really the grand story of God redeeming mankind through the son of promise that would come through this chosen people. And all of it for the purpose of obtaining his glory. So the preservation of a chosen people is essentially bound up in the son of promise, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's important to understand. It's not just about the preservation of a chosen people, but the preservation that's tied to a savior, which is Christ. Esther, is, in one way, another episode of that grand story. This is just one more episode of God working out His redemption in Christ. We see God intervening to preserve His people and this, to bring about the Messiah, according to His covenant, promises. You see, if Haman would have succeeded, that would have been the end of the Jews. There would have been no Messiah coming forward. But we also see that not only is Esther a picture or just an episode in the grand story, but there's ways in which Esther is also a picture of the story itself. And we see this many times throughout scripture, many episodes along the way that have reflections of the grand story itself. One example and one that has striking resemblance here is the story of Joseph. And we talked about that when we went through that. Earlier, the story of Joseph is very parallel, and it also projects types and shadows of the coming Messiah. So it's also good to think about then the relevance of all of this. How was this providential preservation, the story of Esther, relevant to the Jews that lived through this and the Jews that received this story as it was written down? From their perspective, it was relevant because as aliens living in a foreign land, often being persecuted by their enemies, they were encouraged to see that God was working out His covenant faithfulness with continuing hope of a coming Messiah that would rule over His people in the land of promise. That's the relevance of this story to the people immediately in those days. So how about from our perspective? How is it relevant then to us? We have seen God bring about the fulfillment of His covenant promises in Christ, and yet we too are living as aliens in a foreign land, often persecuted by our enemies, but encouraged to see God working out His covenant faithfulness with the hope of the consummation of our coming Messiah to rule over His people in the land of promise, which is heaven. the ultimate consummation of these truths. So I want to pause here, and let's hit the kids' questions that we have this week. What is the book of Esther about? Esther is a story about God's providence in preserving His people. Esther is a story about God's providence in preserving His people. And then on the heels of that is an important question. Kids, I hope you're getting this. I hope you're understanding this, because this is important. This is what Esther's all about. What is providence? And I've tried to just narrow it down to a simple definition. Providence is God directing all things for his own purpose. God directing all things for His own purpose. And ultimately, that's bound up in His own glory. His own purpose is redeeming mankind, that we can live in communion with Him, and to enjoy Him forever, and enjoy the glory of God. So then, finally here, See, I think we've got all of our data. It might be, it's maybe a little bit difficult. The colors are pretty weak there. I wanna just kind of step back then. We're gonna look at the whole of the book of Esther here and give you this sort of summary schematic and how I plan to walk us through this. There's different ways that you can divide it up. I've chosen to divide it into four, sort of four episodes. So you have, first of all, chapters one and two. This is the time of the King's Feast, and it's when we see Esther replacing Queen Vashti. You might call it rising to royalty as just sort of a summary. And with that, the primary redemptive theme in that section is selected representation. selected representation. And then we have chapters three and four, and that's when the Jews fast. And this is the time when Haman plots to destroy the Jews under the decree of destruction, and the Jews enter into a fast. And we call the theme in this section perilous intervention, as Esther goes before the king to plead on behalf of the people. Then we have chapters five through seven, which is the Queen's Feast. And this is the time where Esther is gonna overthrow the plot of Haman, call it defeating the enemy. And the theme here is triumphant salvation. And then finally, the last section, chapters eight through 10, This is when the Jews feast. So as you can see this theme, there's multiple feasts in a fast that seem to be kind of scattered throughout the book. So here's when the Jews feast, and the Jews prevail over their enemies. And we might call this rejoicing in victory, this episode. And the theme here is joyful commemoration. Now, In the midst of all of this, and we're gonna be learning a lot about providence as we walk through this, what does the book of Esther teach us about providence? And particularly these redemptive aspects of providence. There are also many tangential lessons that are gonna come along that we're gonna be looking at too, such as the deceit of wealth, God overturning sorrows, self-surrender, courageous faith, the folly of presumption, humility and pride, gospel celebration, and the essence of holidays. These are all tangential themes that are sort of wrapped into this whole story, and we'll be looking at those also as we go through the book. But I wanna just sort of bring this to a close here this morning, the introduction, And I wanna answer a specific question, and it's a question that we always need to ask. If we understand the scripture, as I do, and you all do as well, the whole of scripture is about our Lord Jesus Christ. It's all about Jesus, if we really summarize it, right? As we've already talked about, God working out his redemption through his son, Jesus. So we have to ask the question, Where is Christ in the book of Esther? Where is Christ in the book of Esther? Because Jesus is found throughout all the books of the Bible, throughout all the pages of scripture. So where's Christ? And I've really already alluded to the answer, but for clarity here, I wanna say that the entire theme of this book points us to Jesus Christ. You see, Christ is the ultimate manifestation of our providential preservation. He is our selected representation. He is our perilous intervention. He is our triumphant salvation, and He is our joyful commemoration. Let's close in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, again, we just thank you so much, Lord, for your word, and the many truths, Lord, and beautiful truths that we find there as we explore and dig. particularly as we can see Christ here in the book of Esther. I pray that as we walk through this book, Lord, you'd make that clear to us and bring these truths out, Lord, in such a way that we can enjoy them and revel, Lord, in everything good that you've given to us in Him. I pray these things in His name. So I want to give an opportunity then for the men to, if they have any questions or comments or corrections here this morning, to entertain those now. Hey, Dan. Two years ago, Carol and I were in Israel, and we were there during the time of Torah. And a lot of the young children dress up in costumes similar to what we would do for Halloween, I guess, here in the United States. And whether a contemporary secularized Israel understands the significance of the holiday, I don't know. But I wasn't lost on the prime minister of Israel, who was here addressing a joint session of Congress protesting his concerns about the Iran nuclear agreement. And he reminded everybody that there was once before in history a powerful Persian leader who sought to destroy the Jewish people. So it has significance today in geopolitical concerns. Right. Interesting. Any other thoughts or comments? It is amazing that this has such significance that it has a future of celebrations, and yet there is never a mention of it in the New Testament. It is not referenced as a book. In John chapter five, I believe it is, some people believe, somewhere early in John, some people believe that one of the feasts that's mentioned there is the Feast of Purim, but it doesn't use the name associated with that feast. All right, I'll go ahead and turn it over to Matt.