Today we begin a series on the Old Testament book of Esther
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Heavenly Father, as we begin our study of the Book of Esther, I pray, dear God, that we would do so with eyes wide open. Lord, not somehow constrained by our 21st century thinking, but enabled by your Holy Spirit to place ourselves in the shoes of those people who lived some 2,400 years ago. And enable us, we pray, Lord God, to see this book as the original audience would have seen it. To see this book as those who were participating in the history that we read here, as we read this and study this, I pray, Lord, we would see it as they saw it. And then, Lord, once we have understood that, to be able to take those things that we discover and determine, understand, again, by the power of your Spirit, how the principles we find there might be applied to our day and age. And to bring glory to your name, just as your people did those 2,400 years ago, in this book and in the understanding and application of the text that we still have with us today. Lord, I pray your blessing, I pray your guidance, I ask that the time I have spent in reading and thinking about this will be stirred by your Spirit, that those things that you would have me to say would be spoken, those things that you would have me to keep silent about, I would be sensitive of your Spirit in that way as well. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. The book of Esther is a misunderstood book. There are all kinds of different points of view concerning the book of Esther. There are all kinds of different points of view concerning history and how God manages history and how God makes things happen and why he makes things happen, I suppose you could say. One of the things I want to do as I begin is hand out a timeline to you, and I think there's only seven copies here, so you might have to share, but just take one and then pass those around. But we're going to be looking at not just the timeline today, but an introduction to who is in this book, who is significant to this book, and what that means to us. One other thing I need to talk about is history. Now it's interesting, I think it was just this last week that my youngest child, Kimberly and I are blessed with someone we, I still call baby, but she's not really a baby anymore. She asked me, why didn't God just get rid of Satan, and I hope she's not embarrassed for me saying this, because I think this is a very important question. Why didn't God just get rid of Satan? From the very beginning, why didn't he eliminate the devil? So I answered that question with a question, which I kind of like to do sometimes. I said, what is your favorite book? She told me. I said, what would that book be like if there was no bad guy? And in the particular book she was talking about, the bad guy happened to be a purebred bull, if I recall, and named Axel Domino, is that right? Something like that. I was close. And I said, what if that villain were not in the book? How interesting would it be? And the answer was, well, it wouldn't be very interesting, because there wouldn't be anything there for the hero to continue with. There would be no tension in the story, there would just be simply a diary, you might describe it as, of someone's life, and it would be kind of boring, because they didn't have anything Well, that's why God let Satan continue to exist, because he wanted, this might sound odd to you, but he wanted an exciting story. And we look at that and we say, well, that seems very strange, that God would want an exciting story at the cost of millions of lives, at the cost of people being led astray, at the cost of all this pain and sorrow and so forth, and the answer is yes. We read books, and none of us say, why did this author write such a, unless we don't like the book to begin with, but why did this author write such a horrible book, where there's all this death and mayhem, and yes, the hero finally solves the problem, the hero finally destroys the villain, but why did he, we don't say that, do we? We understand that the book was written that way to entertain, yes, but also to tell us something about the nature of this world in which we live. A good writer knows how to teach, even as they entertain. Now when I say these things, I'm not suggesting that God is some sort of a mean person who just likes to herd ants around to determine, or not to determine, but to create some kind of tension or problem or whatever so he can then crush them. The truth is that we have been invited to participate in the most exciting story that we can imagine, and it has a villain, a very horrible villain, a very powerful villain, a villain that can destroy us, truly and really, if we are not careful, if we are not in Christ. And it is, to some ears, to some people, this just sounds ridiculous. That isn't how things work, and I would answer, well then, how do they work? This is exactly how it works. God had determined, before time began, that he would write this story. Well, who's the hero? Jesus. And just like every other story, even in the Arabian cowhorses, the one that I was talking about that our youngest appreciates, the hero saves, in a sense, the princess. She's not a princess. She happens to be a neighbor who rides horses. But just like that story, the original story, there's a villain, there's a hero, and there's a princess to be saved. Humanity is the princess to be saved, humanity. And out of humanity, God draws a bride for his son. Now the problem with us is that we find it difficult to shift gears, because humanity is the firstborn of God, but is also the bride of the firstborn. Humanity is the Adamic line, but is also from which comes the bride of the eternal son. We find this often in Scripture, when God says that Egypt, out of Egypt I called my son Israel, and Israel, he says to Pharaoh, is my firstborn son. And yet Jesus is the firstborn son, and then Israel is the bride, and Jesus is the groom. The people of God become, as we've seen in Revelation, the realized bride of the eternal son. And so when we read the Scripture, when we look at history, we need to be able to be fluid in our understanding and in our interpretation, but generally speaking, we can say without a doubt that God wrote or is writing this story, in which is a villain, whom brings a real threat to the people of God, and who will be defeated by the hero, and that hero will also save the princess, the bride, of which we are a part corporally. How does that all fit in, or how does the book of Esther fit in with that particular description of history? Well, we might wonder why it is the Bible is so important, in the sense that this is a very narrow slice of human history, and when Esther was written, and we're going to talk about this a little bit, but when Esther was written and the things that were going on around this particular point in history, when those things were happening, this little story, this little side story, it wasn't necessarily in the minds of those who might have been watching the most important thing that was going on. Have you ever wondered, and if you look at history, you look at timelines, you'll know the answer, but have you ever wondered what was going on in, say, China, ancient China, 2000 some odd years ago, at this point in time? Wasn't it more important, or was it not at least as important? In some ways, yes, but what we need to realize is that when we talk about this story that God is writing, the Bible gives us the core of that story. Yes, there were other things going on that God was likewise writing, kind of the side stories that could even be a whole other book. In fact, they are. Herodotus is the writer, the ancient Greek writer from whom I drew the majority of this information, tempered with some modern scholarship because, like most ancient writers, Herodotus wrote history and often would combine that with legend and myth and so forth, so we have to be careful when we read him. But that was another story that God was writing, and the bestseller, of course, is what we have right here, this central core of human history, but there are all these other stories going on, and we're still writing stories today. And that, by the way, includes the fiction that we might write. If we want to write a novel, that's part of this great story, part of this tremendous story that God has invited us to be a participant. And he says to us in the scripture, this is the core of the story. This is the core of human history. Yes, there's plenty of things going on at any point in time, but this is the core of human history, and at this core, you will find the answers for everything else that you're going to be doing in this life. And again, when we come to the book of Esther, we find answers, and we find principles, we find information, we find glory given to God, although his name is never mentioned in this book, but we'll talk about that. If we want to understand the book of Esther, I think, personally, we need to go back to about 900 B.C., approximately 500 years, roughly, before our story. Now, if you look at your timeline, by the way, you'll see that there's a section separated out from 485 B.C. to 465 B.C. This is the life, or the reign of Xerxes, who we would, when you read the scripture, you'll read as Ahasuerus, which means Lion King, by the way. I'm going to call him Xerxes throughout this study, because that's who he is in history. Like many people of the ancient world, he had more than one name. We will find that some of our main characters have more than one name. Ahasuerus, Xerxes, began his reign in 485 B.C. at about 800 B.C., at age 36, and was assassinated about 20 years later, 21 years of reign. But if we want to understand this story, we need to go back to 900 B.C., approximately, to the reign of Achaemenes, who is the founder of the Achaemenid dynasty. Achaemenes was the first Persian king, before there was a Persian, a Medo-Persian empire. And there's a lot of discussion in the histories, of the ancient histories, and in the modern historians, about who exactly Cyrus might be, because Cyrus claimed that he was a direct descendant of this dynasty, that he was a direct descendant of Achaemenes. And Herodotus tells us another story. In fact, I'm going to tell you what Herodotus says. And from this kind of story comes all sorts of fantasy tales that, if you like that genre, you'll recognize the plot line, because Herodotus tells us that the grandfather of Cyrus, whose name is Astagis, and he was a Median king, he was a king in the Median empire. He was a, we think, probably some sort of a secondary or governor, wasn't exactly anything spectacular. But when his grandson, Cyrus, was born, the Magi, and by the way, as you've heard me say before, the Magi were a Median tribe who, I guess you could use the term, evolved into the priestly tribe of the Medes. Not unlike the Levites, but of course different. This was not God's, the religion of Yahweh that they embraced. They eventually were Zoroastrians. But when Cyrus was born, grandson of Astagis, his Magi came to him, and because he called them around, he said, I have had a dream, and I need you to interpret this dream. So he told them the dream, and they said, oh, oh king, this means that your grandson will overthrow your throne and do away with you and your dynasty and become the first king of the combined Medes and Persian empire. Because Cyrus, his father was Persian, his mother was Mede. And so Astagis said, well, there's a good way to take care of this. Let's just get rid of Cyrus. Let's just have him killed. And so he called his chief steward and said, take the baby out and destroy him. The steward, being a man of conscience, felt that this was something he couldn't do. So he trekked deep into the wilderness, and as the gods, he thought, would have it. He stumbled upon a herdsman and his wife, whose baby had just died, had been born stillborn. Well, seeing an opportunity presented himself, the steward said, I'll tell you what, and I'm not speaking Persian when I say this, why don't you take this baby, whom no one wants. I'll take your stillborn child and I will give the baby a proper burial and please raise this child as your own son. And that's what he did. He buried the stillborn child and said, here lies Cyrus. And Cyrus was raised by this herdsman and his wife until about age 10, it became very clear, as the legend goes, that this was no ordinary child, but somewhat of royalty. There was an aura of power and strength and nobility about the child. And when this finally came to the ears of the grandfather, Cyrus, Assyges realized what had happened. He called the steward and pried the information out of him. And to punish the steward, had his own son killed, but allowed Cyrus to live. Now that's the legend. Cyrus says, no, that's not the way it was. My father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather were all Persian kings. I come from a long line of Persian kings, all part of the Achaemenid line originating with Achaemenes back in 900 BC. So for 500, 400 years, he claimed, my family has ruled in Persia. Alas, we will never know the exact truth because that was a long time ago and all the newspaper clippings from that era have been destroyed, lining bird cages and things of that sort. So if you care to, you can embrace the tale of Herodotus, which makes an interesting story, or you can take Cyrus at his word that he was simply the world ruler of the long line of Achaemenid rulers. Cyrus was, in fact, the first world ruler. He was called by his people, the father, because that was his temperament. He was the father. I think I may have mentioned this at some point, but he was the father and Darius, the storekeeper, and they called Xerxes the warrior. I don't know that Xerxes was any more of a warrior than Cyrus because it was Cyrus who conquered the territory that became the Persian or the Medo-Persian Empire. And Cyrus was, in fact, killed in battle while he was attacking or trying to subdue the Scythian raiders of the north. Now this is another somewhat interesting story. It was known to the Persians that the Scythians couldn't hold their liquor. And so Cyrus, they chased these horsemen all over the place. This is up in, it would be northwest of present-day Iran, and so this was into the European region of what we would call Europe today, to some extent. Chased them deep into their own territory, finally said, we can't catch these people. We're losing men, we're losing morale. So he came up with this idea, which was to leave a token force in camp with a lot of wine. He pulled away from his sacrificial soldiers, what they were, because the Scythians came in, slaughtered them all, and proceeded to become completely drunk on the wine that was left behind. Cyrus then brings in the bulk of the army, destroys his enemies, and kills the son of the queen who ruled, the Scythians, and she vowed to kill Cyrus, and again, the legend says that she did, in fact, do so, and had him beheaded, and his head was pickled in a jar of wine as a means of ridiculing him. Other sources say that, no, he was killed in battle, yes, but his own men were able to take his body away, which would seem to be the case, because there is a tomb still standing today of Cyrus in modern-day Iran, what's left of the tomb. So, Cyrus was killed, and his son Cambyses became king, who he only ruled, if you look at your timeline, you'll see he didn't rule that long. Now, just to mention, I put Nebuchadnezzar in here, because I wanted you to see how this all flows, the deportation of the Jews, Nebuchadnezzar came in when he was actually co-regent with his father in 606 BC, and then we see as you go through the entire timeline there, that we jump ahead to Cyrus assuming power in Persia, and I've also shown you where Daniel's visions take place, and the fall of Babylon, October 12, 539 BC, well-known, well-attested, documented from ancient inscriptions. But when Cyrus died, Cambyses became king, and ruled for a little bit less than 8 years. He was, when Cyrus died, the, much of the empire, well, I shouldn't say much, some of the empire, it was still a fairly young empire, began to revolt, and especially there was a revolt in Egypt, that's where Cambyses was at when Gamata, the imposter, took power. And here's what happened, Cambyses had killed his brother in order to secure, or to make secure his claim to the throne. Gamata, who was by the way, a Magus, a Median, and a Magus posed as this killed, as this assassinated brother, and he took the throne, and by the way, the Persian empire had four capitals, one was in Susa, one was Babylon, the other two were up further north to Iraq, Iran, what we would call Iran, and it was in, I believe, Babylon that Gamata claimed the throne, claiming to be the son of Cyrus, and as a response, Cambyses committed suicide, which I thought was, when I was reading that, I thought, he wasn't much of a ruler anyway. The plot, however, was uncovered, this coup. There were seven noble families, all of them claiming to be part of the Achaemenid line, they uncovered this plot, they assassinated Gamata, and then the empire within, this is only about an eight month time span, I believe, the empire was without any ruler at all. And they decided, the ruler must come from one of these seven noble families, we were all descended from the founder of the Persian empire, we must decide, you take it, no, I don't want to take it, you go, no, I don't want to, and it was just, everyone was, no, I don't want to do it, very humble, very subservient to the other. Finally, someone came up with the idea, they said, listen, here's how we'll decide this, let's all gather at the gate of the city, which was Susa, gate of the city, on our battle steeds, and the first one whose horse winnies as the sun arises, that one will be the new emperor of the Persian realm. Well, Darius had a steward who was rather crafty, and I better unplug this, the coffee's gonna start, or if it hasn't already, he had a steward who was rather crafty, and he wanted his master to be king, and apparently Darius didn't know about all this, so the morning before the sun came up, the steward, having a mare handy, picked up the scent of this mare, just rubbed the mare all down, all over the place, getting this mare's scent all over his hands, rushed to the scene, and as soon as the sun came up, put his hands in the face of this stallion that Darius was seated upon, the stallion was excited to begin to winny, and so far, by that event, Darius became emperor. Later he did rid himself of one or two, I think, of his rivals, but generally speaking, it was a peaceful transfer of power, and as I say, Darius was known as the storekeeper of the empire, he's the one who made a regular system of taxation, he began what we would call Pony Express, he established the bureaucracy, and by the way, this is not the same Darius the Mede, this isn't Darius the Mede that Daniel talks about in his book, and we'll talk about that at some point, who that probably was, but it wasn't Darius this emperor. Darius reigned, if you look at your timeline, he began the first Greek campaign, it was during his reign also that the second temple was finished and dedicated, this timeline I won't cover everything in there, but there are some significant events that take place in his reign as well. He died while he was preparing for battle in Egypt yet again, and just died of ill health and old age, and at that point we come to the Xerxes, Ahasuerus, the Lion King of the book of Esther. Xerxes, if you read in the histories, was very much like the Ahasuerus or the Xerxes of Esther, but one thing you will find as we go through this, and I'm not going to cover all this, but as we get into the book, I will explain to you that, and you'll see this for yourself, that the book of Esther focuses on particular character qualities of Xerxes, doesn't put him in the best light, which I don't think was a very difficult task, because he wasn't exactly a stellar or a wonderful example of civility or manhood or anything else, but he is painted in, I wouldn't say the worst light, but some of his worst character qualities are shown in the book of Esther. Xerxes though ascended the throne about age 36, if you read in Ezra, he was, now there's an interesting in Ezra, there's a parenthetical, and I think I mentioned this in that timeline, there's a section there that is actually not in chronological order, and it mentions Xerxes and art of Xerxes, but he did receive an accusation against the Jews, they were wrote to the king, to the emperor, the emperor excuse me, and they were complaining about what the Jews were trying to do, this is when they first, when Zerubbabel arrived there, and they began to build the temple or try to start building the temple, and they were stopped by the emperor. Xerxes is famous for a variety of events that took place in history, if you look at your timeline, 480 B.C. in September, the Battle of Thermopylae, which as we all know is when the 300 Spartans, along with about 1,000 other Greeks, withstood the might of the Persian Empire in the narrow ravine, the narrow pass of Thermopylae. Eventually they were outflanked and defeated, but they held the, and by some estimations the Persian army that faced them was in excess of one and a half million people, now again, that seems an incredible amount for that many men to live off the land, it would be almost impossible, but the ancient historians claim somewhere in that neighborhood, so for several days they withstood the might of the, because as you know if you've watched the movies or read anything about it, or read the histories, it was a very narrow place, and so they couldn't, they were just a narrow column that was able to make contact with the enemy there until they outflanked them and defeated them. However, almost simultaneous with that was a naval battle that took place that the Persians lost, Solomus was the area where the battle took place, this caused Xerxes to leave behind most of his army in Plataea, and by mid-summer of the next year, the Greeks, the combined Greek states attacked and destroyed that army, drove them away, and that really ended the Persian threat in Greece, it wasn't until about another three hundred and forty years roughly before Alexander, I would say conquered the Greek states, united them, and then began his campaign to overthrow the known world at that point. But if you look at the timeline you'll also see where these events in Esther fit in, and we'll talk about this more when we get into the actual text, but you'll see that it was after a successful campaign in Egypt that this great feast was called, and the reason for that is because what the Persians would do, the Persian emperors, would display their wealth as a means of saying, if you join me in this contest you will be greatly rewarded. Keep in mind that what Cyrus had done and what Darius had continued, and what we see in the scripture, is that the empire was ruled by, you might say sub-kings and governors and satraps, in fact Darius the Mede was one of those sub-kings, if you will, who Daniel served. In fact Daniel was placed as really the king of the Babylonian empire. Once it had been brought into the Persian realm, Daniel ended up being the one who ruled that entire section of that Persian empire. But Xerxes was bringing together all these people with the purpose of saying, here is the great wealth with which I will reward you, having shown you my expertise in battle in Egypt, we are now going to go to Greece and destroy those Greeks who humiliated Darius at the Battle of Marathon, the unsuccessful first Greek campaign, if you look in the timeline, 493 BC roughly. By the way these dates are approximate, it's difficult to nail down. You can find a dozen, literally, different scholars who would give you a dozen different dates for almost any of these events, most of them. And what I've done is sifted through that and come up with what seems to be the most logical and it falls into line with what the scripture tells us. So Xerxes had this feast and he was displaying his wealth. Then there was that seven-day feast to which came the leaders, the military leaders, and at that point when the story begins we see this call that Vashti would come before the assembled throng and display her beauty. Just a note on that, one thing we're going to discover is that there is in Esther a focus on something other than the royal family. Xerxes is the only point of contact we have with the royal family because one of the things that the seven noble families determined was that the Emperor would always marry from within those seven families. Now that didn't count the harem he had of lesser queens and concubines. What they were talking about was it was from these seven royal families, these seven families that could trace their lineage to Achaemenes, from those families would come the royal seed. And so Xerxes had married, and for some reason her name slips my mind, but by the way Darius had married a daughter of Cyrus and that was where Xerxes, he was born from that union. Darius had actually married someone before he ascended the throne who was not part of that royal seed, part of that royal group, and so that older son was denied the throne because Xerxes was the first son of this union between Darius and the daughter of Cyrus. So when we look at this in Esther and we realize that Vashti was not actually the royal queen, we have to ask the question, who was she then? What we're going to discover is that she was actually part of the real power behind the throne. She was the most important person in the harem. She was the queen, as it's described here in the book of Esther, the queen of this harem. And the Persians would often, their queens would have quite a bit of pull, quite a bit of say in the empire, especially in the case of Darius having been married, having married, I should say, a daughter of Cyrus, this woman had a tremendous amount of influence in the empire. And it's interesting what we're going to see in the book of Esther. We're going to find out where that real influence is, and it wasn't with the royal family. Vashti was a queen in the sense that she was probably from some foreign royal family. That isn't described as such. We don't really know. But she held a position of great influence and power, which she threw away. We're going to be talking about that when we get to it. And which Esther assumed and made very good use of. Again, we'll be getting into all these things. Also, if you see in your timeline, I actually do talk about Artaxerxes. That's just to give you an idea of where, again, where things kind of fall into place in our scripture and in the timeline there. We won't talk much about him. The other people in the book, though, that are very important are, of course, Mordecai. Now, if you were to look on that timeline back in number 539 BC, return to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel and Mordecai. Well, I didn't know that. And I wrestled with this a bit, trying to decide which direction to go on this. There are, again, all kinds of different points of view. Some say, well, that wasn't the Mordecai of Esther. It was just someone named Mordecai. And the reason that he's in there is because it's to give the reader the knowledge that Mordecai was indeed a true Jew. Because if you read the book of Esther, he didn't seem that way. You think, well, he's not much of a Jew. He's not much of a man of God because he never even reveals that fact. And he tells Esther not to do that and so forth and so on. I think, well, he's not much of a Jew. He's in the Bible. But if you're like Luther, you'd wish he wasn't. But Mordecai of the Ezra 2.2 and Nehemiah 7.7 passages is, I have concluded, the same Mordecai of Esther. Yes, he'd be fairly old. But remember, Daniel was in his 80s when Cyrus overthrew the Babylonian Empire. And Darius the Mede, who was an under king and governor, was considering placing him, and he did eventually, place him in authority over the entire Babylonian realm that had been absorbed by the Persian Empire. So a man of 80-some years of age, when we come down to the time of Xerxes ascending the throne, we see a man in his 70s and that would be Mordecai. There's no reason to suggest otherwise. Mordecai is described as the son of Jar, Shumai, Kish, that's his family line. And these were men who, from the exile on, again we have about 69 years from the point of the arrival of of the exiles in Babylon and then coming back and so forth. It all, just to give you a nutshell, it all fits quite well. I've come to the conclusion therefore that the Mordecai that arrived in Jerusalem with Zerubbabel is the same Mordecai who came back, but the same Mordecai who is serving, eventually serving Xerxes in Susa, the citadel, the summer capital of the Persian Empire. What's significant about that? Why was he mentioned? Because I'm assuming he was probably just barely of age, 20 years of age. Let's assume he was 20 years of age at the decree of Cyrus, which would have been 539 BC, down in 473 BC, roughly, when he was made prime minister. He'd been about 65, he'd been about 85 years old. So we're assuming he was roughly 20. It would have been unusual to have mentioned his name if he was not of age. If you look in the scripture, you see that anyone under 20 years of age is considered a child. A 19-year-old, 11 months, was still a child. It would not normally have been mentioned in this kind of document. So we're going to make the assumption that he was 20 years of age, maybe just barely 20, when he came back to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel and for whatever reason, God, well we know the reason, but in his mind he felt that God was saying, go back to the Babylonian exile and I will use you there, God says to him. It's interesting, the names that are listed in his heritage, in his lineage, there are names that are a repetition of the Benjamite history. Shemai was the one who cursed David, not the same one, but with the same name, and threw stones at David when he was fleeing his son Absalom. Kish, of course, was the father of Saul. But again, these are just men who are named the same, not the same men as in the time of David or Saul. Why are they mentioned though? Why is it important just to bring these out? Because we're supposed to understand that Mordecai is a Benjamite, that he is of the same family as Saul. And eventually we'll find out why that's so important, you've probably already guessed, because when we come to see, talk about Haman, we will discover that he has a heritage, has a lineage that is, ironically, very closely connected to Mordecai's. We also are going to discover more about Esther, of course, the one whom the book is named after. Hadassah means myrtle, but her Persian name was Esther. There's a lot of discussion about whether that is a name, and it probably is, that refers to a goddess, a Persian goddess. Likewise, Mordecai is probably a name that refers to Marduk, another pagan god. Because again, just as it was with Daniel and his friends, they were given pagan names, and Mordecai is a name that was not all that common. In fact, there's a Mordecai, the time in the days of Xerxes, who is listed in the ancient documents as one of the treasurers of the realm. It's probably the same Mordecai, because he sat at the king's gate, and eventually was given this great authority, indeed, really the second in the king in the prime ministry, you might say. So it's probably, I would say, the same Mordecai as we see here in the book of Esther. Mordecai, who, as we will discover, is indeed the ideal Jew. Esther begins in our story as almost a non-entity. She just does what she's told. She is easily manipulated, it seems to us, anyway, that she just does what she's asked to do, and doesn't ask any questions. This goes about doing these things, and everybody loves her because she's so pleasant, she's attractive, she doesn't make any waves. But what we're going to find out is that the time she spends, and if you look at the timeline, you'll see that when the gathering of virgins took place in the seventh year of the reign of Xerxes, that was about five years before the time when Haman cast the lot. So for five years we don't hear anything about Esther. And what we're going to find out is that during those five years she was learning a tremendous amount about how to run the empire. Because what we're going to discover is that the empire wasn't really run by Xerxes. In fact, even Herodotus tells us that Xerxes was one to rely upon counselors and upon advisers and people other than his own decisions, excuse me, than his own opinions, he would often look to someone else. What we're going to discover is that the empire was actually run out of the harem, and that the eunuchs and the members of the harem were in a real way the power behind the throne. In fact, when Xerxes died, you'll see in your timeline he was assassinated by Artabanus and Aspermitrus. Aspermitrus, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, was a eunuch. One of the many eunuchs who surrounded the king, who fed information to the king, who fed information from the king to others, who stirred up plots against the king, as Mordecai discovered, and we'll talk about that as well. This is really where the power was behind the throne. That's what Esther is telling us, is that Xerxes was a self-indulgent fop, and in reality the empire was run by other people. Yes, he was the head of this whole mess, but the truth is somebody else, some other peoples, were running the empire and doing quite well at it, you might come to find out. And what we're going to discover is that this young girl, who seemed to be very easily manipulated, who seemed eager to please other folks and not much else, actually becomes the one who runs the entire Persian Empire, and in a sense does so through Mordecai. And we'll be talking about this in much more detail as we get into the text. We'll also be looking at the counselors, the eunuchs, and of course the villain, without whom there would be no story. That would be Haman, who is a satanic character. And not only that, but he is the serpent whose head is crushed by the woman Esther. And we'll also find that Esther personifies, in his reality, a type of Israel, and indeed is a type of the Bride of the Eternal Son. What we're going to find is that, I'm out of time, but I think I'll rush through this quickly and then we can come back and pick up some more of this as we get into the text. But we are going to look at a narrow slice of court life, but as I mentioned, it's where the real power is at. We will find that Esther is written in the style of a court document, a Persian court document, which would typically leave out the names of any gods, not just Yahweh, but any gods. And that's why, one of the reasons why, God's name never appears in the text. Because this is written in the style of a court document to act, I guess we could use the 21st century term, as a tract that you could hand to somebody. And they could read this and say, they would know. Let me make something clear. When you read the word Jew in this point in time, it'd be like us today reading Christian. So there would never be, if I were to say, a group of Christians got together to fast. What would you think? Well, I don't know if that's religious or not because they never said prayer and they never mentioned God. Well, we would all know exactly what's going on, wouldn't we? A group of Christians gathered to fast. No one would have a doubt that these are people who worship God and Jesus Christ and who are fasting and praying to ask for God's intervention. Same thing here. When we read the word Jew, we need to recognize that as clearly stating that these are people who embrace worship of Yahweh. It wasn't just their ethnic heritage. In fact, that wasn't it at all. It was a religious heritage. These are Jews. And so when we read the book, it's really rather foolish to say, oh, God's not in there. So, I mean, can we even trust this book? Well, of course you can trust it. Just like you would any part of the Bible. And you can understand it the same way that we would understand someone who said a group of Christians gathered to fast. And they wouldn't have to say the word pray. They wouldn't have to say that they prayed to God. They wouldn't have to say anything. We would know exactly still in this country. We would still know. That may not be the case a few generations from now. But we would still know that we're talking about folks who worship God. So we have a narrow slice of life showing us where the real power is at. It's a court document. It's written in this particular style for a particular reason, which we'll cover more in detail down the road. It's encouragement to Jews. And it's explaining or portraying this ideal Jew. But wait a minute. The ideal Jew to us, he doesn't seem too ideal because look at all these things he doesn't do. Well, just as it takes a a wide array of people, men, to be a type of Christ to give us the whole. And we have to throw away all the things about them that are not Christ-like to understand. For instance, David is not exactly like Jesus. But there are things about David that tell us about Jesus. We want to know what Jesus is like. One way to do that is to look back and look at the types. And we see David the warrior who was 100% sold out to God. Now that didn't keep him from sinning from time to time. But he was he was wholly devoted to God. God says this himself. And this is a type that gives us just a small part of what Jesus is like. Not all this other stuff that he did. Likewise, when we want to know what the ideal Jew is like, let's phrase it this way, we'll begin to make some application. What is the ideal man of God like? Well, part of it we find here with Mordecai. What is the ideal woman of God like? Part of it we find here with Esther. Not everything. The Bible isn't like that. The Bible doesn't want to give us all... We want it all just in one spot. We can read like two paragraphs and know everything. Well, you can't do that with the Scripture. You need to read and to reread and to study the entirety of the Bible. So it's going to explain or portray this particular facet of the ideal Jew, Jewish man and Jewish woman. One thing we need to realize, we cannot interpret this book by 21st century standards. It demands our understanding of the culture of the time. And I've given you a little bit of that when I've talked to you about where the real power lie in the Persian Empire. And that's not just me talking. That's what the Bible says right here. It's telling us that the real power in the Persian Empire was not really with Xerxes. Yeah, he made the decisions. But if you read the book, you'll find that he never really makes a decision. What does he do? He waits for someone to tell him what to do. And then he does it. And as we will discover, that is Esther and Mordecai. Then Esther and Mordecai together end up running the Persian Empire. And we don't know what happened. We don't know how long Mordecai lived. We don't know what happened after Xerxes died. Except that we find yet again the cup bearer to the king is a Jew, Nehemiah. And he finds favor with Artaxerxes and is actually given, which is a whole other story, but very interesting as we see the timeline, we see the story unfold. This was taking place in one of the Persian capitals. We'll cover that. There was more than one capital. They would move around depending on the seasons. It's taking place in the middle of the largest company of Jews, which were scattered still or still exiled. But it's also written in part of the history of the return Jews. And again, that's another connection we have with Mordecai having gone back to Jerusalem and then returning to exile. We think it was written, probably we assume it was written well before the Greek influence. There aren't any Greek words in the original text. After Alexander's conquest of the known world, the ancient writings begin to take on a Greek flavor. In fact, you'll find a lot of Greek words, kind of like how we as Americans adopt words and then they kind of are corrupted, but you can still see where they came from. When you look at ancient texts, which I'm not an expert to be able to discern what is a corrupted Greek necessarily, but the scholars will tell us that once Alexander completed his conquest, you don't find documents from that era written without the influence of Greek. There isn't that influence here in the book of Esther. And so the assumption is that it was written anytime around 473 BC when Mordecai came to power, and there are many who think he wrote it, or maybe up to about 400 BC, but probably no later than that, because around 330-333 BC is when Alexander began his push eastward, and from that point forward we would have seen some evidence of the influence of Greek. But again, this was written to show the people of God what it meant to be a man or a woman of God. There are many facets to that. This provides just one. Also, and I think most importantly, as it is with any scripture, it is written to bring glory to God, some warm air in there, and to encourage his people. And I hope when we read this we will be encouraged. When we study this we should be encouraged. We won't be studying this to find faults with Esther because she's a human being, and one of the other things that I wrestled with on this was whether this was literally history or whether it was more of a historical novel, and I've concluded that it is kind of both. It's true history, but it's written, as I said earlier, giving us just the aspects, for instance, of Xerxes' character, and we'll find this with other characters in the text as well, just those aspects of his personality that were important to the story. Although if you do read the histories you'll find that he wasn't entirely unlike this, but this is not, I wouldn't say a caricature of the man, but it doesn't spend much time telling us his good qualities. He probably didn't have too many. I don't imagine that an empire, that the emperor of the Persian realm would would take too much time cultivating qualities that most of us would think are important. We will also find that this gives us one aspect of how we are to take dominion, how the people of God, if you remember in Jeremiah 29, he said this is what you're supposed to do. Esther shows us how that happened, at least in this particular sense, in this particular case, and also reminds us this is exactly how we, one way, that we can take dominion. And finally, just to clear up and to make, just I guess I'd say to affirm the fact that this book is supposed to be part of the Bible, that this book is just as much of God's Word as anything else, even though his name is not mentioned. If we read it carefully, if we understand it carefully, if we understand the culture, the purpose, and the writing, if we understand what it was like 2,400 years ago, we recognize that God is on every page of this document, that God is woven throughout the entire narrative, that Yahweh is always present, and that those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will realize that God is present and revealed in all things that take place here, even when he's not recognized. And I also think that God had this book written in this fashion because he has something of a sense of humor. I don't know if the Lord laughs as much as I might about some of these things, but if he's going to laugh at anything, he'd probably laugh at the way that the scholars have tied themselves in knots over this book, trying to decide what it's worth and what its value is to the Christian, when it is a purely, to their mind, secular document that has nothing to do with salvation in Jesus Christ, to their way of thinking, and has also, in their way of thinking, very little to do with the people of God, even in the ancient world. They're wrong. This has everything to do with God's work with his people, as we will discover in the weeks ahead. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to begin our study.
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