Okay, so we'll go ahead and get started. If you all want to turn to Esther, it's right after Job, or right before Job, excuse me. So we can go ahead and get going here. As you're turning there, just as a way of introduction, about a month ago, Jews around the world celebrated the holiday known as Purim. And as part of the usual observance of this holiday, Jews gather for feasts, they give gifts to one another, they give to the poor, and they gather publicly to read the Book of Esther. Because the Book of Esther is the historic origins of the Jewish holiday. And Jews have been celebrating Purim this way for over 2,000 years. So this morning going through Esther, we're gonna talk about what the author intended to communicate and with the way that it structured the narrative, how that narrative was an encouragement to the Jews and how it is a continuing encouragement to us 2400 years later. So I'm gonna pray and then we'll go ahead and get started. Father, we thank you for your day. We thank you for a day to gather with your people to study your word. We thank you for your word and we thank you for all that it teaches us in the rich variety you provide across the canon. We pray that you would illuminate our hearts as we behold your word this morning and that it would make us love you more and seek to glorify you more in our daily lives. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. To begin, we're going to go through some historical context, which will be doubling back a little bit on what Logan talked about in the Book of Daniel. You'll recall, when we went through the Book of Daniel over the last few weeks, you'll remember the chiasm in that book pointing toward the center of the book, with the humbling of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. And Belshazzar's humbling came in the form of the Medo-Persian Empire conquering the Babylonian Empire and absorbing all of their provinces, including Judea. That event occurred in 539 BC. In that same year, Cyrus the Great, the emperor of the Persians, issued what is known as the Edict of Cyrus, which allowed the Jews who had been in captivity in Babylon to return to Judea and rebuild the temple. And I'm sure Jake will tell us more about that when we get into Ezra and Nehemiah. But if you fast forward 50 years from when that edict was issued, the Persians are still the dominant empire in the region from all the way in India in the east to Egypt in the west. The capital of the Persian Empire is about 200 miles east of the city of Babylon where Daniel took place. So Babylon is in modern-day Iraq, and then the capital of the Persian Empire, Susa, is in modern-day Iran. And the king identified in the Book of Esther is Ahasuerus. And this king is commonly identified with the historical king Xerxes I. I'm going to say Xerxes throughout this study because it's really difficult for me to say Ahasuerus correctly. So if you have strong feelings that King Ahasuerus is not Xerxes, we can talk afterwards. For various reasons, there are still Jews living throughout the Persian Empire, including the capital of Susa. And two such Jews, Mordecai and Esther, are the main characters of the Book of Esther. In the book, there's actually no explicit reference to Yahweh, to his covenant, his law, or even explicitly to prayer. And the book's characters are carried along by events outside of their control until opportunities for action are presented to them. And based on this, the fact is we don't know how faithful of a Jew Esther and Mordecai even were, because there's no reference to their observation of the law or their faith in the promises of Yahweh explicitly. So the point of the book isn't ultimately that we should emulate Esther or Mordecai. This is often expressed by saying that this book is descriptive rather than prescriptive. So this book is describing events to us, it's not necessarily prescribing courses of action. So the Book of Esther's not a handbook on political action, it's not a guide on how to be an effective leader, or a positive example of sexual or marital morality. Rather, the Book of Esther is about Yahweh as the covenant lord of his people, providentially protecting them from destruction and restoring them as a people after their exile, as he repeatedly promised to do throughout history. And what's more, we'll see in the narrative that God uses sinners and fools, kings and queens, to accomplish his will. So moving down the front of your handout, our theme statement is that God protects his people even if we can't see how he is working. And it might seem odd that we can draw a theme about God from a book that doesn't mention him, but God's apparent absence from the work is actually on purpose. We have to remember that it's not a mistake. It communicates something to us. As the divine author, God emphasizes his sovereignty and providence by, ironically, not mentioning it. And to the biblically trained mind, it feels like there's something enormous missing from the book of Esther as we're reading. And speaking of authorship, we don't really know who wrote the book of Esther, but we know that it came shortly after the events that are described in it. But this absence, or apparent absence of God, it forces us to think about the events depicted in the book in ways that we often fail to think about our own lives. We read the book and we think, wow, these people should have been praying, or I wish the author would have given God some credit somewhere. And all of this should convict us as we read. If someone were reading a story about a chapter of our lives, would they be given details of how often we took our concerns to the Lord in prayer? Or would our dialogue ever record any reference to him at all, let alone his goodness? So then moving on down your handout, some prominent motifs I want to point out just to look for as we walk through the narrative. You can kind of just mentally check these off as we're going through. You'll see them a lot. The first is the theme of fasting, or excuse me, feasting and banquets. The second is peripety, which is just a fancy word for saying a reversal of what is expected or intended. And the third is irony, which we're all familiar with, but the definition is there if you're not familiar. These are all literary tools that the author uses to communicate things to the reader, and then we'll discuss what those things are that are communicated later in some detail. So with all that said, let's get into the text. And really what we're going to do here, because Esther is a complete narrative whole, we're going to walk through the entire story, because it's difficult to talk about any one thing in Esther without talking about the narrative as a whole, because it really is tied together in this neat package that the author intended. So I'm going to walk through the entire book. I'm going to make some comments, and then we're going to look at some primary themes in the book. If you want to flip over onto the back where the outline is, you'll see the order of events that we're walking through. To explain why the outline looks the way it does, we have to remember the Book of Esther is written after the holiday of Purim has been established, and the book is written as an explanation of why the Jews celebrate Purim, lest it be forgotten. And Purim is a holiday of feasting, and so the author expertly structures the entire book around feasts and banquets. Feasts and banquets are kind of the structure, the bones that the story is told on, and there's eight of them throughout the story. So the primary items you'll see in your outline, items one through eight, those are each of the banquets or feasts that appear in the book. So the book opens with King Xerxes, King Ahasuerus, you'll probably see in your Bible, hosting a banquet for all the nobles of the empire. So I'll read Esther 1, one through three. Now in the days of Ahasuerus, the Ahasuerus who reigned from India to Ethiopia over 127 provinces, in those days when King Ahasuerus sat on his royal throne in Susa, the citadel, in the third year of his reign, he gave a feast for all his officials and servants. So this is the first feast or banquet that we find in the book, and the second one immediately follows it. It's kind of a capstone for this feast that he gave for all of his officials throughout the empire to come to the capital, except the second one. is only for a week, and it is for all of the residents of the capital of Susa. And it takes place in the king's own palace, or the gardens of the king's own palace. And at the same time, there is a separate feast going on that is Xerxes' wife Vashti. She is hosting a banquet for all of the women inside the palace. And on the last day of this week-long banquet, Xerxes is described as being merry with wine. We know what that means. in verse 10, and he sends for his queen Vashti to appear before the banqueters so they can all behold her beauty. Kind of a side note, a lot of commentators point to this historical feast as being one that is recorded in secular history that was really used to illustrate the wealth of Xerxes to gin up support for a military campaign against Greece. So his kind of capstone on the The long period of feasting of his queen coming to show her beauty to everyone who was in attendance is kind of meant to be like the final hoorah. But she refuses to come. And Xerxes is enraged, and after consulting his wise men, he issues a royal order effectively divorcing Vashti and encouraging men to be master in their households, whatever that means. And this isn't just a royal order for the royal court or people that he knows or the capital city. It's written in every tongue of the empire and sent to every province. Talk about airing your dirty laundry. But then to replace Vashti, the king's advisors convince him to have beautiful young virgins sought out in all the provinces of the empire. And the king appoints officers in each province to round up beautiful young women and to send them to the capital to be considered to be the new queen. So then reading from chapter two, verses five through seven, now there was a Jew in Susa, the citadel, whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jer, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjaminite, who had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives, carried away with Jeconiah, king of Judah, whom 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 mother and father died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter. So these are the facts that were given about our two main characters. And generally in Hebrew literature, when a character is introduced, the most important thing for the story is what the character is described as. So Esther is beautiful. This will impact her role in the story. And Mordecai is a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, which will likewise impact his role in the story. And we'll discuss both of those later. So Esther is brought to the palace and she's placed among the king's harem. She undergoes a year-long process of beautification before being presented to the king. This is a year of beautification before she's brought to the king and spends one night with him. And again, we have to remember the author is not condoning any of this, but he's describing the events. So after this year has passed and Esther has been presented to the king, Xerxes chooses Esther to be the new queen and gives a great feast for Esther's coronation. This is the third feast of the story. So while this is going on, Mordecai hears how Esther is doing, and of course, he hears when she's made queen. And throughout the book, on multiple occasions, the author describes Mordecai as being at the gates of the king's palace, which if you're like me, as a child, you just envisioned him as a loiterer, hanging out in front of the gates all day. But the king's gate is really a building through which an entryway goes, and it's really where administrative work goes, or is done. So a lot of commentators think that Mordecai is actually an official in the court of Xerxes, doing official work there. So while at the gate one day, Mordecai overhears two of the king's eunuchs who were guarding the threshold, and they're plotting to assassinate Xerxes. So Mordecai passes this information along to Esther, who then tells Xerxes. The plot is investigated, the conspirators are executed, and that entire event is recorded in the king's official records or chronicles. So now Esther and Mordecai are really positioned for the rest of the events of the book to play out. Esther is queen, and Mordecai has proven himself to be a loyal servant of the king, and three of the book's eight feasts have taken place. So next in chapter three, we're introduced to a character identified as Haman, the Agagite. If we were Jewish right now, whenever I said the word Haman, you all would have booed and hissed. Whenever the Jews read this book in their synagogues on the Feast of Purim, they try to audibly drown out the name of Haman. So it's kind of a spoiler, he's not a good guy, he's a bad guy. So reading verses one and two of chapter three. After these things, King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the Agagite, the son of Hamadetha, and advanced him and set his throne above all the officials who were with him. And all the king's servants who were at the king's gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman, for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage. Now, it's important to consider what the author tells us about Mordecai and about Haman. Mordecai is a Benjamite and Haman is an Agagite. That is, Mordecai is a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin and Haman is identified with the Amalekite king Agag. And this is important because these two facts pit the men against each other historically. We're going to take a really brief detour, I promise really brief, to understand what these two details tell us about these two men. The Amalekites, you'll recall, were the first enemies to confront the Jews after they left Egypt. They attack them. You can see this story in Exodus 17. This is the battle where Moses is standing over the battle while Joshua fights it. Aaron and Hur stand beside him and hold up his hands, and as long as his hands are up, Joshua prevails against Amalek. So the battle is won, and the Lord's judgment against Amalek is recorded in Exodus 17. where it's written, then the Lord said to Moses, write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, the Lord is my banner, saying, a hand upon the throne of the Lord. The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. Now if you fast forward to 1 Samuel, in chapter 15, the Lord remembers that Amalek attacked the Jews in the wilderness and commands King Saul to utterly destroy Amalek. Saul gathers his men and attacks Amalek and defeats them, but rather than devoting all of them to destruction, as the Lord had instructed, he keeps their livestock and brings the enemy king, Agag, back alive. Agag, Agagite, this is what we're being referenced here. So the fate of Agag is referenced in 1 Samuel 15, 32 through 33, where it says, then Samuel said, bring here to me Agag, the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came to him cheerfully. Agag said, surely the bitterness of death has passed. And Samuel said, as your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. And according to 1 Samuel 9, Saul was a Benjaminite. So we can kind of see how these historical pieces are falling into play here. Saul failed to obey the Lord's command to destroy Amalek. And now 500 years later in Susa, a Benjaminite named Mordecai is being asked to bow down and pay homage to an apparent descendant of Agag. This helps to explain the reason for the conflict that's about to happen. And as an aside, some people don't think that he's literally a physical descendant of Agag, rather it's more of a spiritual thing, the same way that actually modern day Jews will refer to terrorists like Hezbollah, they'll refer to them as Amalekites, saying that this is kind of a spiritual continuance of opposition to Israel. So, Agag, or Haman is either a physical descendant of King Agag, or he is just an opponent of the Jews. So, Haman and his advisor, I'm sorry, Mordecai refuses to bow down to Haman, and this fills Haman with fury. But when he finds out that Mordecai is a Jew, he decides to not only take revenge on Mordecai, but on all the Jews in the entire Persian Empire. So Haman and his advisors cast lots, or called poor, to pick a date on the calendar. And the date they select is about a year away from when they're casting lots. So Haman goes to the king and convinces him that there is this people group, unnamed people group, dispersed throughout the empire whose laws prohibit them from obeying the king's laws. Haman advises the king to allow him to destroy these people. The king gives his permission, and Haman drafts an edict to be spread across the entire empire. And one of the low-key pieces of irony that we see throughout the story is that in the beginning, you'll remember, the king issues this edict and says, all men should be masters of their household. And yet, throughout the entire story, he's just doing what other people tell him to do in his entire kingdom. So this edict that is issued instructs all citizens of the empire to, quote, destroy, kill, and annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, on the day that Haman selected by casting lots. And Mordecai's response when he hears about this is recorded in chapter four, verses one through three, where it says, when Mordecai learned all that had been done, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes and went out into the midst of the city. And he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. He went up to the entrance of the king's gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king's gate clothed in sackcloth. And in every province, wherever the king's command and his decree reached, there was a great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting. And many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes. So here's kind of the low point in the plot for the Jews throughout the empire. You see this throughout the entire empire. The Jews are mourning and they're fasting and weeping and lamenting. So let's keep that memory in our mind before we get to the end, that right now the Jews throughout the empire are really in distress because they're about to be destroyed. So next, Mordecai convinces Esther, because he has this kind of in with the king through Esther, to go before the king uninvited and to intercede for her people. But going before the king was a crime, or uninvited, was a crime worthy of death. So unless the king extends mercy, Esther will be put to death whenever she goes before the king, even though she's his wife. She tells Mordecai to gather all the Jews in Susa and to fast for three days on her behalf. Fasting is almost always accompanied by prayer in the Bible. It makes sense to assume the same is true here, even if it's not mentioned. So this is one of those places that's kind of an implied reference to some kind of faithful relationship with the Lord. So Esther goes before the king and he extends mercy to her and does not put her to death for coming in uninvited. Esther invites the king and Haman to a banquet. They go to the banquet and the king asks Heather what she wants to request from him. Esther simply invites the king and Haman to a second banquet on the next day. So if we pick up the text then in chapter five, verses nine through 10. and he sent and brought his friends and his wife, Zeresh. So Haman has this little get-together with his friends and his wife. He's kind of complaining about everything that's going on, and they tell him, just have Mordecai executed. Just get rid of him and solve your problems. So he thinks that's a great idea. So he builds a gallows 75 feet high. If you Google that, that's about seven stories, which is an enormous gallows. And it's not the kind of Wild West gallows that you might imagine in your mind. This is a Persian gallows, and it's actually made for impaling people, not for hanging them. So not a pleasant device. And that same night that Haman has come up with this plan, the king Xerxes, he can't sleep, and he has a servant come in and read from his book of Chronicles while he can't sleep. The servant reads the story of Mordecai reporting the assassination plot nearly five years earlier, if you remember that event, and the king realizes that he never remorded Mordecai for those efforts. And right then, at that moment, as the king is thinking about Mordecai, Haman comes in to ask permission to hang Mordecai on the gallows that he's built for him. But before he can ask, the king asks him a very interesting question. He asks him, what should be done to the man whom the king delights to honor? And Haman has every reason to think the king is thinking of him whenever he says this, the man that the king delights to honor. And so he comes up with all of these extravagant ideas he'd like the king to do for him, like he wants to wear the king's robe, he wants to sit on the king's horse with a crown on his head and be led through the city in a parade. And this is one of, I think, the greatest pieces of irony in the book. The king basically says, great idea, now go do that for Mordecai the Jew. And so Haman is forced to lead Mordecai through the city in this procession through the entire city. And he goes home understandably depressed. His wife, finding out that Mordecai is a Jew, now says, oh, if he's of the Jewish people, then you will not overcome him, but you will surely fall before him. The next day, during Esther's second banquet with the king and Haman, we get to the climax of the story. Esther tells the king that someone has sought to destroy her and her people. The king asks, enraged, obviously, who would do such a thing? And Esther identifies Haman. She identifies herself as a Jew in Haman's plot to destroy the Jews. And then, in short order, Haman is hanged on the very gallows that he built for Mordecai. Again, irony. So with Haman gone, Esther and Mordecai write a new edict with the king's permission. And this new edict does not technically undo the first one because when you read that first edict, the word of the king is said to be irrevocable. So instead it commands all the Jews throughout the empire to rise up and defend themselves on the day that they are attacked. So we get basically this legalized civil war. You get this first edict saying destroy the Jews, a second edict saying all you Jews defend yourself. So then Mordecai is promoted and honored in the kingdom, and the people throughout the empire actually become afraid of the Jews because they see that Mordecai is in this high place, there's this looming edict of this conflict that's coming. And when the day finally comes, what falls out is that the Jews kill 800 of their enemies in Susa, the capital, and throughout the entire empire they kill 75,000 of their enemies. Then Mordecai and Esther send letters to the Jews throughout the empire directing them to keep the Feast of Purim in remembrance of the relief that they've gotten from their enemies of this reversal. And we can see kind of the key verse that the author clearly wants us to see in chapter nine, verse one. This is where he kind of sums up the events of the book and why Purim is celebrated. That bold text in the second half, it says, on the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain mastery over them, the reverse occurred. The Jews gained mastery over those who hated them. This is why reversal is kind of a prominent motif or theme throughout the entire book. It's woven through masterfully because the author wants to reinforce this idea of reversal. So that's the narrative. That is the story of Esther. There are a lot of details that I left out, but everything that was critical to the narrative I tried to include there. So we're going to flip to the inside of your handout where we have two themes of the book that we wanna walk through, and then we'll have some time for questions, I think, right at the end here. So the first theme we wanna look at is that God will judge his enemies and save his people. This twofold theme is what we see most prominently in the book of Esther, and really it's the same theme we see throughout all of scripture. God wages war against sinful rebels and protects those that he's chosen for himself. We have to remember that this story of deliverance in Esther is not just for Esther and Mordecai, or even for the Jews in Susa. Rather, this deliverance is for all the Jews in the provinces of the Persian Empire, including the Jews who have returned to Jerusalem. So without this deliverance, the restoration of Israel promised in the prophets and the procession of redemptive history toward the coming of Christ would have come to a screeching halt. Many commentators actually see here a parallel between the state of man after the fall and the state of the Jews at the end of the book of Esther. There was a promise of death over Adam because of their sin, Adam and Eve because of their sin, and without revoking that initial edict, God counteracts that edict with the second edict which promises life. And even in the case of the individual believer, each of us once had the sentence of death upon us, and that sentence was born by Christ while we received his life. This is a story of reversal, right? The story of repentance is a story of reversal. So as John says in 1 John, we have passed out of death into life. In any case, it's in the context of judgment for God's enemies and deliverance for his chosen people. that those structural terms on the front of your handout, those primary motifs, are really used to effect. So the book is filled with ironic reversals. Some of those are listed in the table in your handout. We're not going to go through those, but if you want to look through them, they're really interesting to see how all of these events that are in the first half of the book that are negative for the Jews are directly reversed and the opposite actually happens. So look through that whenever you get a chance. But additionally, the general structure of Esther does form a chiasm, and we've talked about chiasms a lot here. The author ties the subject of divine judgment and protection throughout the narrative with the combination of chiasm, which, remember, chiasm is whenever the outside parts of a text are parallel, the next inside parts are parallel toward a center, which highlights some important point in the middle. So combine chiasm with peripety, which again is a reversal. If you combine those two things, we really see the structure of Esther and how it's laid out. So to see how this works, if you look back at the outline on the back of the handout, there are those eight banquets or feasts throughout the book. So if you look at the first two pairs, so number one and two, and number seven and eight, these are parallel. So the first banquet in the beginning of the story, Xerxes throws a banquet for all the nobles of the empire. The very last feast is the second day of, I'm sorry, the number seven. So these two are as a pair, parallel. So number seven, the first day of Purim feasting is throughout the entire empire. The second feast, Xerxes' banquet, is for all the residents of Susa, and the final feast is the Purim feasting in Susa. If you go a step in, we have Esther's coronation banquet, and the feasting and celebration of Mordecai's promotion and his counter-edict. And then the last pair in the center are Esther's two banquets. And then if you look at what happens in the exact center of this chiasm, we get that, I bolded it to make it easy to see, Xerxes can't sleep. And what this tells us is this is the hinge point of the entire story. This is where the story turns. Without that event, the story doesn't fall out the way that it's going to. So, the point of Achaism is the center to highlight something of importance. But the events of this story aren't just reversed by themselves, remember. There's a singular event that takes place to turn everything around, which is this episode of Xerxes not being able to sleep. The deliverance of the Jews and the destruction of their enemies hinges on this event happening, and it's the only major event of the plot that has nothing to do with human agency. And this leads us to the second major theme that God works through circumstances. We said earlier that the climax of the story is when Esther confronts Haman in front of the king, and that is true, but it's not the pivot point of the story. It's not where things begin to take a turn. One commentator had this to say, by making the pivot point of the peripety an insignificant event rather than the point of highest dramatic tension, the author is taking the focus away from human action. Had the pivot point of the peripety been at the scene where Esther approaches the king uninvited, or where Esther confronts Haman, the king and or Esther would have been spotlighted as the actual cause of the reversal. But there is no human cause presented in the book of Esther. The king can't sleep because it was the Lord's will. And he read from his chronicles and remembered Mordecai, because it was the Lord's will. Without this event, Haman would have probably gotten permission to kill Mordecai, Esther might have reconsidered confronting Haman, the genocide of the Jews would have gone ahead, and Israel would have been effectively wiped off the face of the earth. But instead, Xerxes simply couldn't sleep, and the Jews were saved. And as we're thinking about God's control over the story, we know that God isn't limited to just finding gaps in human agency and asserting himself in those places, but rather he works all things according to the counsel of his will. The best example of this is in the story of Joseph, where God uses the sinful schemes of his brothers to sell him into slavery so that he might advance in Egypt and be in a position to save many from famine. So too, in this story, Xerxes' sinful treatment of his previous wife positioned Esther as queen. Haman's sinful plot to destroy the Jews resulted in the destruction of 75,000 of their enemies and their own deliverance. So the Lord brings deliverance from the jaws of death to his people and he turns wicked schemes back onto the wicked. Many places in the Psalms point to this work of the Lord, this turning the schemes of the wicked back on themselves. One example we'll see is in Psalm 9, verses 15 and 16, where it says, the nations have sunk in the pit that they have made. In the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught. The Lord has made himself known. He has executed judgment. The wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. And that verse 16 really could be another theme statement for the book of Esther. The Lord making himself known, the wicked being snared in the work of their own hands. So God works in the seemingly insignificant moments, like not being able to sleep. He reverses the grand schemes of the wicked, like empire-wide genocide, and he also glorifies himself using the mixture of sin and obedience that constitutes each of our lives. Note how Mordecai persuades Esther to rescue her people from the sentence of death in chapter four, verse 14. He says, if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place. But you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this. There's a lot of implied faith in the Lord in this verse, although it's not made explicit. Mordecai says deliverance for the Jews will rise from another place. He's very confident in that. He also says who knows whether or not you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this, implying some kind of divine direction of events. So Mordecai believes that there is a purpose to Esther's becoming queen and that her purpose is made clear by the opportunity presented to help save God's people. So God uses earthly instruments like people's actions to accomplish his plans. In fact, as you look across the scriptures, you'll notice that it's pretty rare for his miracles to take the form of abrupt disruption of history we see in books like the Exodus. Mordecai is telling Esther that she should understand herself and her queenship to be the instrument by which God accomplishes his purposes. And doubtless God does not need any particular person or circumstance to achieve his purposes, but he has ordained to use people like Esther and us to spread his word and redeem his people. Mordecai, as we're reading this, should be saying to us that you could be that instrument. And even though we fail over and over again daily by sinning, every opportunity for obedience presents itself anew. Esther and Mordecai were not perfect. They sinned before, during, and after the events of this book, just like we do every day. But they were of God's chosen people and were each called specifically for the purpose of the Lord, to save His people and bring judgment upon the wicked. So to kind of conclude, we should walk away from the book, a book that doesn't mention God or his works, and be thoroughly convinced that nothing comes to pass apart from his will and purposes according to his word. So high-level recap real quick. The book of Esther is descriptive, not prescriptive. We shouldn't read through it and think, I should take a year to beautify myself. That's not what that passage is about. The theme is God's protection of his people, and the pivot point of the entire book is Xerxes' inability to sleep, which highlights God's providence and control over history. So I purposely left some time at the end because I just talked a whole lot without giving you any opportunity to talk, and And that's a lot of information, I know. If there's any questions, comments, interesting things you notice, there's a lot of interesting things that I didn't even get to, so if those things are on your mind, shout them out and we can talk about them. So any questions or thoughts? Yeah, and Ezra and Nehemiah haven't returned yet, and so if this genocide had taken place, we wouldn't have the events of Ezra and Nehemiah either, yeah. Any other thoughts? Yeah, every single moment, yeah. I think a lot of times, in my experience, whenever I see people, I see, you know, just kind of in the popular world, people talking about the book of Esther, it's that focus on Esther, and it's saying, the point of the book is God wants you to be like Esther. And it's not the point of the book. Esther does admirable things, there are admirable qualities of her and Mordecai, The narrative doesn't rest on Esther. Esther could fail. Yeah. Heather and I were talking about this last night, about how often, whenever, if someone pulls out one verse from Esther, it's the, for such a time as this verse, and it's kind of painted as, you know, you should look for the one moment in your life that God made you for, for some big, exciting thing. And I think that for such a time as this, we should really view as every moment of the day, every opportunity for obedience and the small things and the big things, that we were made for obedience, right? And so the story of Esther isn't that she was perfectly obedient, which is why she was obedient in this situation. The story is that she was obedient at the right time, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and that sums up, you know, the reliance of God's people on the Lord. Again, that's why I think it's important to remember that the book is descriptive in nature, because a lot of people will read the Book of Esther and say, this is how we should use government in the same way. you can have those conversations, but that's not what the Book of Esther is saying. The Book of Esther isn't saying we should take control of the government and kill 75,000 people necessarily. It's really, it's describing how in this context, in this situation, God used the means at his disposal that he ordained for his purposes. And I think you can really get off the rails if you read the Book of Esther thinking I should emulate the characters of the Book of Esther in all of their details. There are, and if you read commentaries, they'll say, we don't have any evidence of the king's edicts being irrevocable, but it seems like they were, that there was, for some reason, because obviously the king, if he could have, he would have, right, in this narrative, but he didn't. Which really ties into his treatment of Vashti, right, that he makes this, you know, a really small thing, hey, come to my banquet, she says no, and he's like, You're gone. There's a really, it's humorous but not humorous quote from Martin Luther where he's talking, he's writing on the topic of divorce, but he basically says that if you have a wife worthy of divorce, out with the Vashti, in with the Esther. It's like, geez, Martin Luther. But to that point, his pride really seems to be what's his motivation throughout that whole thing. That's true, that's a great point. If you didn't hear, she was talking about Darius sending Daniel to the lion's den, even though he didn't want to. That's a great point, the same thing of the irrevocability of a king's edict. Yeah, he's not like King Xerxes, for sure. Any other thoughts? We're right at time. Great thoughts, great conversation. I will pray, and we will get out of here. Father, we thank you again for your word, and we thank you for your Spirit's work in our hearts and in our minds and applying it to ourselves. We thank you that you do not leave us without guidance. We thank you that you, in your word, you direct us to yourself, you guide our priorities, you show us how to think about your word and the world around us, and we pray that by looking at the book of Esther, are encouraged and that we find great reason to always rest in your omnipotence and your provision for your people and in your working of all things for your purposes and for our good. We pray that you would be glorified this day and that you would go with us as we worship you as a body. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.