Faithbase

And I had considered a sermon that would be specific to that topic, something that would remind us again of how we have the responsibility, which you've heard from me many times, responsibility to stand for the weak, for the helpless, to be a voice for those who have no voice, or perhaps a sentimental presentation that would tug at our heart strings. There's a place for both of those, nothing wrong with either approach. But in looking at what we hope to accomplish in our study of Esther, I decided that it would be more beneficial to us at this point, because of the other times that we've talked about our responsibility to the weak and the helpless, I decided that it would be best to launch into this study of Esther and begin to see how we can do that. How can we be a help to those who are without help? How can we be a voice for those who have no voice? When we look at the book of Esther, as I have said in the introduction very briefly, we are going to discover what it is like for the people of God to be involved in changing the world. We're going to talk about how it is that God's people work out in the open and behind the scenes to bring about the desires of the Most High. Let's read from verses 1 through 12. It says 1 through 9 in the bulletin, but we're actually going to be looking at verses 1 through 12 in Esther chapter 1. Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, and we're going to remind you that we're going to be calling him Xerxes, because that was his Greek or his common name. So now it came to pass in the days of Xerxes, this was the Xerxes who reigned over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia. In those days when King Xerxes sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan or Susa, the citadel, that in the third year of his reign he made a feast for all his officials and servants, the powers of Persia and Media, the nobles and the princes of the provinces being before him. When he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the splendor of his excellent majesty for many days, 180 days in all, and when these days were completed, the king made a feast, this is actually a second feast, lasting seven days for all the people who were present in Shushan, the citadel, from great to small, in this court of the garden of the king's palace. There were white and blue linen curtains fastened with cords of fine linen and purple, and silver rods and marble pillars, and all the couches were of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of alabaster turquoise and white and black marble. They served drinks in golden vessels, each vessel being different from the other with royal wine in abundance according to the generosity of the king. In accordance with the law, the drinking was not compulsory, for so the king had ordered all the officers of his household that they should do according to each man's pleasure. Queen Vashti also made a feast for the women in the royal palace, which belonged to King Xerxes. On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was married with wine, he commanded Mehumen, Biztha, Harbana, Bigtha, Abagtha, Zethar, and Karkas, seven eunuchs who served in the presence of King Xerxes, to bring Queen Vashti before the king, wearing her royal crown in order to show her beauty to the people and the officials, for she was beautiful to behold. But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king's command, brought by his eunuchs. Therefore the king was furious, and his anger burned within him. Holy Father, I pray that we will have wisdom as we consider this introduction, these introductory verses to the book of Esther. Pray Lord God that we will be enlightened, that our hearts will be quickened, and that your spirit will impress upon us the message of this text. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. It says in the beginning here that Xerxes reigned over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia, and there has been, and I'm just pointing this out because this has been one of the things that has caused folks to stumble because there were not 127 satraps, but that's not what it says here, and this is why it's, I don't understand why it's a big deal for some folks, but it says provinces, and in the scripture we see the same term used to describe the province of Babylon, or the province of Judea, if you read in Daniel or you read in Ezra, and it apparently is a region, and for instance Judea was a province in the satrapy of Syria, and so 127 provinces, that designation is used to impress the reader all the more with the great expanse of this empire over which Xerxes reigned. Now you have your map there, and it's not very easy to see because it doesn't print out very well, but if you look carefully you'll see on the map of the Babylon, excuse me, the Persian Empire, you can see where Susa, or Shushan is at, and on the map at the top is modern Iran, and you see the Caspian Sea, which isn't much different in color from the landmass around it, and you see the Persian Gulf below that, that'll help you to locate where modern day Iran is in relationship to the ancient Persian Empire, and the capital, there were several different cities, as I mentioned before, that were considered capitals, if you will, of the empire, but the capital of the Persian Empire was to the south, and you can't, you can barely make it out here, it's just right there where the Persian Gulf on the old map, at that northernmost point, if you go directly north of that, you'll see a very faded Susa there, and that's the kingdoms, excuse me, the capital of the kingdom that we're talking about, then you look at the expanse here, the Persian Empire, I mentioned before that in reality it was the world's largest empire, partly because of the landmass, the Roman Empire may have covered more territory as the crow flies in a sense, but I think if we were to add up just the landmass of the Persian Empire, it might exceed even that of the Roman Empire, but it is a tremendous region that first was ruled, most of this, by Cyrus, then his son, and then Darius, the father of Xerxes, and then of course by the time of the Greek conquest of the Persian Empire in 330 BC, some of this had been lost, but generally it was this entire region, and Alexander of course expanded upon it, I should mention also that Susa was the crown jewel of Alexander's conquest, the riches there were tremendous, when he conquered that portion and continued eastward, but when he conquered Susa, it's paid for the entire campaign, the wealth that had been accumulated by the Persian emperors was tremendous, it's beyond reckoning really in some ways, we can't imagine it, we're talking about many many tons of gold and silver and jewels, and we've just read a little bit about the wealth of the Persian kings, this is really what we need to recognize when we look at the text, is that the first thing we're supposed to be impressed with is the tremendous wealth, the tremendous power of the Persian Empire, it's unassailable, the wealth and the power, the expanse of the kingdom, these are things that are supposed to make the reader almost in a sense cower before this awesome display, and in reality that's what Xerxes is doing, this book is not really a history of how Purim, the Jewish festival, came about, Jewish scholars laud the book for this reason, but it's not really significant to us, because what this book actually is about is what we read of in Jeremiah 29, this is how you take dominion, and this is a strategy for dominion, and I won't cover all the details I said I did last week when I mentioned the fact that, other than just to say this, that God's name does not appear in this book simply because it was understood, and as I mentioned before, if you heard someone say a group of Christians are getting together to fast, you would know exactly what that meant, whether there are people who believe in God, who are saved by Jesus Christ, and they're going to pray together, and so when it says that the Jews were fasting, everyone who read this book knew exactly what that meant, you didn't have to mention the name of Yahweh, and indeed a Jewish writer would be less inclined to mention the name of Yahweh, and so this book written in the style of the court document was very appropriate for this particular presentation of this information, as we'll see as we continue through the entire book, some of these things will become more clear, but what I want you to understand is that the book begins on purpose with a presentation of great wealth, we are supposed to read this and say the first thing that should come to our mind is this guy was incredibly rich, and really it was the king's wealth, yes there were others who had wealth, but at any time King Xerxes could have said I want that, that's mine, and what we'll find is that the book of Esther teaches diminished strategies, and the two most prominent roles in Dominion, that of the marketplace, as we mentioned this morning before the service, we were talking about what I mean by that, and just to clarify a little bit, when I say the marketplace I mean everything out there, it's public piety you might say, it's where our belief has an impact on the world around us, whereas personal piety to be pious is to be devout and to be religious and so forth, but if you keep it to your personal life, it doesn't really have much of an effect, except that people might look at you and say well that person sure is good, they don't use bad language, they don't lose their temper, they don't steal, they don't throw rocks to the neighbor's windows and things like that, but beyond that it doesn't have much of an impact, whereas marketplace piety or public piety is where our beliefs have an impact, and we're talking today for instance, we referenced already the sanctity of life, and so a someone who holds to just personal piety would say well I don't believe in abortion, but whatever someone else does is their business, someone who says I embrace marketplace piety, to use the term, is to then suggest that they will participate in marches, their voting will be affected by it, they will take action, they'll be active in trying to end the scourge of abortion, and we're going to learn how that can happen, how we should be doing that as Christians today. Now we don't want to impose our 21st century culture on this, that we will not be able to do that and understand it, and so as we go through this, and I'm not, when I presented the introduction last week, I wasn't trying to have a comprehensive introduction to the text, because it just isn't possible, there's just too much as we go through this that we'll be picking up as we go along. So Xerxes is displaying his wealth for a purpose, he's fresh from a victory in Egypt. Now when he ascended the throne, when his father Darius died, he died of illness and sickness, but he was preparing a campaign against Egypt, having lost a campaign in Greece, if you look on your timeline you'll see that, but he died, and so Xerxes took up the mantle, and there wasn't much discussion you might say about that, there was some initial question, because Darius actually had an older son, but he was a son from a wife who had he had married before he became king, and that wife was not from the royal families, the seven royal families, or noble families I should say. And so Xerxes being the oldest son of the match between Darius and the daughter of Cyrus, he became king, and his first act was to invade Egypt and subdue the Egyptians, and to have, actually he set up his older brother, his half-brother, the one who was considered for the throne, he set him up as the viceroy you might say of Egypt, and so it kind of pacified that older brother, who had been born as I said before from a marriage that Darius had consummated before he was emperor. I should also mention that Darius was the commander of the Immortals, that's where he learned some of the things that he needed to know about running a kingdom. The Immortals were an elite group, 10,000, the 10,000 Immortals were an elite shock troops you might say of the Persian Empire, and they continue to be the most important battalion, or legion if you will, or whatever, of the Persian military, even after Darius and clear into the reign of Artaxerxes and so on. But Xerxes is having won this victory in Egypt, now he wants to show off a little bit, but in reality the victory in Egypt was not his primary goal. What he was hoping to do was to bring his underlings into agreement with his plan to avenge his father's loss in Greece, a battle of marathons where the Persian attempt to overthrow the Greek city-states was thwarted, and Xerxes says I'm going to do something about this. So this is historically very accurate, obviously that we can expect that from the scripture, but what he's doing here isn't explained, we need to dig a little bit deeper and we find out that what he is actually doing with his tremendous display, this 180-day feast, is showing his underlings that yes, you can count on me to reward you in this coming campaign against the Greeks. The fact of the matter is, we know from history that Xerxes would rather do this kind of thing than fight. He was more interested in wealth and building things and displaying that wealth in tremendous architectural works and things of that sort. That's what he liked to do, he wanted to enjoy the life of a king, he wasn't really a warrior, although it's interesting that that's how he's known, as Xerxes the warrior, and that's because of some of the successful campaigns that he was ahead of, but this was really where his heart was at, right here, in the midst of all this fabulous wealth and really decadence. So he has this 180-day feast and then he has a special, he's set apart from the rest, there is a seven-day feast, and in that seven-day feast it was open to not just the powers of media in Persia and the officials, but to everybody. Now here we, I think what we see here is that he's wanting to, maybe we could say, reach out to the common man, and part of this was to show his generals and so forth that he had popular support. Even in those days a pretender to the throne could be successful in his coup if he had the support of the popular, or popular support I should say, the support of the common man. And Xerxes is showing, no, no one but me has that kind of support. Look at all these people. They love me, they're here to see my great wealth and power, and that really is the primary point of this section of scripture. Tremendous wealth. In fact, we see throughout the Bible that the wicked are often very wealthy. We'll see later in this book that Haman, when he told his family and friends of his great riches, he was talking about the multitude of his children. everything in which the king had promoted him and how he advanced him above all the officials and servants of the king. Haman, as we're going to find out, as we already know actually, is the chief villain of the story, but he was very wealthy. Psalms 37 says this, Wait on the Lord and keep his way and he shall exalt you to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you shall see it. I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a native green tree. And that would be a good description of Xerxes. Yet he passed away and behold he was no more. Indeed I sought him but he could not be found. Then the song goes on to talk about, But mark the blameless man observe him because his future is peace. Wealth, as we know, we've said this many times before, does not imply God's favor. It does not mean God is favoring that person because the wealth of Xerxes and his king was ultimately for God's purposes. And that's what we'll find out is that God uses this wealth for his own purpose, his own means. And we also find that as we go through this book that power is very corrupting. We need to keep in mind one of the lessons we will learn as Christians in the 21st century is that as Paul says, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. In the Greek it actually just says, is the root of all evil. For which some have strayed from the faith and the greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. And we will find that it pays us to be on guard. Well, we have this great display of wealth but it's also implied to us here that it's worshipped by everyone. Read this again. White, blue linen, curtains fastened with cords of fine linen, purple and silver rods and marble pillars, couches of gold and silver, a mosaic pavement of alabaster, turquoise, white and black marble, drinks in golden vessels, and so on. What does that remind you of? If you know your Bible, something should come to mind. The temple. It reminds you of the temple. We're going to find out later that this is actually what some of this wealth was plundered for. And we'll cover that when we get to that point. But this reminds us of the temple. If you look in Exodus, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the children of Israel that they bring me an offering from everyone who is willing. Bring it and it says you shall take from them gold, silver, bronze, blue, purple, and scarlet thread, fine linen, goats hair, ram skins dyed red, badger skins, acacia wood, oil for the light, spices, and so on, onyx stones, stones to be set on the ephod, and let them build me a sanctuary and I'll dwell with them. So this is here for a reason. Yes, to tell us about the wealth of the empire, but also to turn our attention to something else. This is like a temple. And when he brings the people in there to participate, verse 6 and on, the second part of this feast, it's like having communion with the imperial. And what we find is that this is a presentation of power religion. Indeed, I think I've told you before there's really only two kinds of religion in the world. You can term this many different ways I suppose, but we can also understand it as religion, salvation through self, or another. And salvation through one's own efforts, that's always power religion, because if you have the power to save yourself, it's implied that you have the power to save others as well. And that was ultimately the teaching of Zoroastrianism. Now we don't know, this is what's interesting, we don't know exactly what religion the Persian Empire promoted. In fact, Cyrus was pretty tolerant of, he was almost irreligious. He didn't really care much what people believed as long as they were happy and kept him happy by obeying his word. But in Zoroastrian belief, man is superhuman in his origin. And it's not real clear what that origin is, but he is superhuman and he must understand that this realm is good. Now that's fine, this realm is good, but the idea is to accumulate as much of this realm, material things, as possible. So ultimately it is a materialistic religion. Ultimately it is a power religion that mankind is the measure of all things, and that's what power religion is all about. So I don't think we're misusing the idea when we impose it, or I should say this way, we're not imposing this upon the Persians. We're actually seeing that this is what is the fact in their belief system. Zoroastrianism is primarily self-centered and therefore materialistic, therefore the roots or the seeds of power religion, especially when you see it in the hands of someone with a great wealth and power that Xerxes had. And ultimately what this tells us is that salvation, in this case, was through the king. And we'll see this develop as we go through the book, that salvation is through the king, that if you want to be rewarded, you turn to know God, you turn to the king. So we have this religious decor, this so-called, I guess we could say, communion meal, this beautiful interior decoration, these golden chalices, this royal wine dispensed according to each man's pleasure. It was the custom that normally you would drink when the king drank, and I told you this before, you'd have to watch, and if he lifted his cup, you had to lift your cup and drink at the same time. It was also customary for all the cups to be the same. And here we see that, we know this from some of the the archaeological evidence that we have, but in this case they're different, and that again was to show, because you can imagine that if you had all these different style chalices, golden cups, it would show that you had a tremendous amount of wealth that you could afford to have all these different cups made. And so here the people are given the privilege of drinking when they want, how much they want, even if they don't want to, because the royal wine is dispensed to each man's pleasure, and this is designed to show how wonderful the king is. Kind of bread and circuses sort of approach to pacifying the masses. Everything's beautiful, the king is tolerant, but it's only a facade because the king is not tolerant, and the beauty hides a corrupt, and if you read the histories, a horrible, bloody, ruthless empire that is run by a ruthless, bloody, and almost sometimes you think insane, although I'm sure he wasn't, simply a man of his time, but a king who tolerates nothing, as we'll discover. What we want to realize is that this is setting us up to understand or presenting to us the information we need to recognize that people are often swayed by displays of power and wealth, and when that's coupled with so-called generosity or tolerance, people are very easily brought under the control of the reigning power. And today we're in a similar situation and we need to keep a level head in that circumstance, recognize that the generosity or the benefits that are supposedly handed out by a central power and the tolerance of that power really are disguising an unrelenting pressure brought to bear on those who worship Yahweh. Now we have then this great power, this worship by everyone except one person, Vashti. Well, who was Vashti? I didn't cover a lot of this before, but I'll tell you who she was not. She was not a mistress, who was the royal, the noble wife of Xerxes. Now there's a number of ways we know this. One way we know this is because of Herodotus and his histories. We read about a mistress, and what we read about her is rather grisly. She was... Let me just give you one example. I'll try to keep it as tame as possible, but Xerxes married one of his sons to a daughter of one of his brothers, and the wife of this brother was supposedly, apparently quite attractive, and this, by the way, is long after this event here. One of the reasons we know that Vashti was not a mistress is because she keeps cropping up in the histories after this event took place. In fact, there's even some evidence that she went with Xerxes on the Greek campaign that took place between this feast and the gathering of the virgins later, seven years later. But to make the long story short, Xerxes became enamored with this young woman that had married his son and initiated an affair with her. A mistress, in order to get back at the family, at her brother-in-law, ignored the young woman, but had the mother arrested and horribly mutilated, and apparently the mother lived, but Xerxes did nothing about that other than to tell his brother that it was his fault because, after all, he was not showing proper gratitude for all the things that Xerxes had done for him, and he should have somehow kept this from happening. It was his own fault. Xerxes, after all, was emperor, and a mistress was the empress, and so it wasn't her fault at all. One of the things we know from the history is that, as we go through this book, we should have in the back of our mind a warning, Esther, watch out, because, obviously, Xerxes had his harem, but a mistress was a very brutal, very terrible woman. There's a number of other things that I won't even discuss that she did. As she grew old, I will say this one, as she grew old, she wanted to assure herself a fine place in the underworld, and so she sacrificed, by burying alive the children of a particular village, and this was an offering to the god of the underworld that would allow her a special place upon her death. So this woman, a mistress, is not vasti, and what we have here is a snapshot right now, which will be developed throughout the rest of the book, of the real power behind the throne. It's interesting that in the Persian kingdom, the queens were active in the reign, in the rule of the kingdom, not completely, but their advice was listened to, and their participation was not limited to simply being, you know, someone who sat there by the king and looked good, and in reality, the king would marry a queen, the royal queen, according to family, and his harem would be for the looking good part, because vasti, the name actually means best, or the beloved, or the desired one, and apparently she was the chief wife of the harem. In Song of Solomon it says, and this one, by the way, Song of Solomon is not about Solomon and his bride, it's actually one that he wrote, he wrote it, but it was about, it was about this made-up couple, but at one point it says, there were sixty queens and eighty concubines and virgins without number, my dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the only one of her mother, the favorite of the one who bore her, the daughter saw her and called her blessed, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her. Now, if Solomon is actually writing about a particular woman, we don't even know who it is, but if you read the entirety of the book and understand some of this, it's apparently a poem that isn't describing a courtship between Solomon and this particular young woman, but is just a story, and of course dedicated, apparently it was dedicated to his bride, whoever this was, at their wedding, but what I want you to see here is that there were sixty queens and eighty concubines, this must have been early in his reign, and virgins without number. Vashti apparently was the queen of the harem, she was the chief bride of the harem, most important woman in this harem, and so when I say that she was not a mistress, that is not to diminish her position of power, because as we're going to find out, it was a position of tremendous influence and power, but what this tells us is that the king had his royal wife, but he also married for beauty and for pleasure, and we have no idea what a mistress looked like, there's never any description of her in the histories that I've read, but in this case it seems that the chief wife of the harem was someone who Xerxes considered the most beautiful woman that he had seen, and that's why he married her. So when I say that she didn't worship this power, I'm not suggesting that she was somehow not a pagan, she was indeed a pagan, and she did indeed worship power, but it wasn't the power of Xerxes she worshipped, it was her own power. And what we see here is that she overestimated the power of her beauty and the pleasure that she brought to Xerxes, she overestimated her position, she had been doing this kind of thing for a long time. I've never read anybody who has recognized this, but it's clear to me that Vashti didn't just one day say, I'm not going to do what he says, in fact she had been doing this for a long time, and one of the reasons we know that is because Esther was easily slipped into this position that Vashti had vacated, but she did so, as we're going to find out, with far more wisdom and understanding and far more self-restraint, she was a much more clever woman than Vashti, because Vashti became puffed up, she worshipped herself, she worshipped the power that she had, and she overestimated, she overreached in this case. So when the king summons her by the word of these seven eunuchs, and by the way, as we will later discover as well, and I'll probably cover some of this next week, the eunuchs play a very important role in this story also. In fact, this is a hint of Xerxes' undoing. I mentioned last week that it was Espamatres, a eunuch who was involved in the assassination of Xerxes when he was about 56 years old. In fact, we'll find that the eunuchs in the story are just as significant as Mordecai and Esther. So Xerxes wants to show off his trophy wife, I guess is how we could use terms today to say it. He wants to do this to before the people, before the officials, and this tells us that although he had a royal wife, this wasn't some hush-hush thing, the harem was, everyone knew about it, it was no big deal, it was just the way that kings or rich folk did things, which, again, reminds us that we cannot impose upon, and I'm not suggesting that it's right to have a harem, I am suggesting that we cannot judge the circumstance by 21st century Christian values. We can look at it and say, well, that's wrong, Jesus himself said that one man and one woman are supposed to be together for marriage and for life, but we also know that in the ancient world, even among God's people, that was not always the case, especially among those who had the power, like a king, or rich men, like Jacob or Abraham. So when we read this, we need to not be distracted by what we would consider a very immoral situation, which it is, obviously, for him to have this harem, but we need to look at the principles that are being presented to us, and the thing that we see here is that that Vashti was someone who was accustomed to wielding tremendous power, so much so that she felt comfortable saying, I'm not going to do what you tell me. What she didn't reckon on is the fact that Xerxes could not afford to lose face at this point, because this is a very important point in his kingdom. He has just defeated the Egyptians, and he looks good, and now he's saying we need to go back to Greece, to the city-states of Greece, and we need to avenge my father, we need to subdue all the Greeks, and they had, some of the Greek cities were under the control of the Persians, but at this point he's saying we need to go back and destroy them all, and so he is, he can't afford to lose face, and at this point he's drunk as well. Now, the Persians had a strange custom. They would drink themselves to drunken, it was their normal state of affairs. In fact, the feasts were more about drinking than eating, but while they were drunk, they would hold council and make decisions, as we see them doing here, as we will next week, and that was their normal custom. The next day they would meet soldiers. or with a hangover so they might wait for a couple days but they would meet sober and and consider the same decision and if it agreed with the decision they made while they were drunk they stuck with it if it didn't they got drunk again and thought about things as well as they could so this drinking and this drinking to drunkenness was part of the Persian approach. They believe that in a state of drunkenness they were more spiritual more apt to hear the hints of the almighty or not the almighty but of the supernatural so the king summons her he wants to show her off this is understandable obviously we don't know what she looked like exactly but apparently she was very beautiful to behold but Vashti says no and this tells us that she was accustomed to getting her own way it tells us that this was not an isolated incident but it does tell us that she badly overreached badly misunderstood the situation and her own she had become drunk on power and again as we continue through the book you'll see how much Vashti threw away but it was by God's design that this took place so Xerxes not able to lose face recognizing that this was not going to fly well with with the people and with his officials Vashti had been more subtle in the past but this time the kingdom demanded that her power be broken publicly so we find that Vashti misinterpreted her position her problem was that she was not content for her power to remain in the background for her authority to remain hidden and she wanted to be known for more than just her physical beauty that's what was being celebrated here and she was saying no that's not the case I'm I'll show you who I really am and what I really am about so her routine wielding of power had inflated herself worth and clouded her judgment which tells us that we as we read in the epistle this morning must not think too highly of ourselves nor misunderstand our place in God's plan so as we wrap this up what we find is that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous the scripture actually tells us that it says and well I don't know if we have time to well we can probably turn to that Proverbs 11 if you look there and there's several scriptures that would lead us to understand this but Proverbs 11 excuse me 13 22 a good man leads and inherits to his children but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous and again you can look in other sections of the Proverbs and other sections of the scriptures that tell you the same thing that the the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous and the reason for this is that the truly righteous those who are indeed in fellowship with God use wealth differently and I do want to look at this as well in Proverbs 11 26 and we won't turn to companion scripture in Amos but Proverbs 11 26 says in fact let's go back to 24 there's one who scatters yet increases more and there is one who withholds more than is right and it leads to poverty the generous soul will be made rich and he who waters will also be watered himself the people will curse him who withholds grain but blessing will be on the head of him who sells and that's Proverbs 11 24 through 26 the righteous use wealth differently the righteous of course defined as those who are in relationship with God and who walk according to his precepts and if the people of God misuse the blessings given them we know from Deuteronomy 28 which we won't turn to that you just read the entire chapter and you'll find that one of the things that God curses his people for is the misuse of the gifts he has given them so the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous we also see that in this particular book not so much in this part of the book but we're going to find that the worship of God takes place wherever his people are and that was part of what we were talking about this morning before the service we talked about personal piety as opposed to participation in the marketplace in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also wood and clay some for honor some for dishonor therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter he would be a vessel for honor sanctified and useful for the master prepared for every good work we are used by God according to his pleasure not in this case dishonor but Paul also tells slaves for instance to honor their masters to do what they're told to do as a means of bringing glory to God and so one of the things we will discover in that the book tells us is that we can glorify God in the marketplace whatever work one does should be done to the glory of God whether that be a government official or a slave or whatever it is and also we will discover that God is glorified in the palace even this palace of the great king of Persia finally we see that the worship of God helps us to recognize her place in the cosmic drama Vashti didn't understand her place in the cosmic drama she didn't realize that what she was doing was going to defeat her purposes but it was part of what God wanted to take place and that's why God wants to see as we look at this that those who are wielding great power apart from him are destined to fall eventually they will because all authority in heaven and earth is given to Jesus given to our Lord not to us or to anyone else and so if we attain to greatness as Vashti did and as Mordecai and Esther will we need to realize it's not because we are specialists because we are being called to serve in a particular capacity and if we keep that in mind it will help us to avoid an embarrassing fall like this of Vashti and will enable us to be useful to God what we need to do is think as God thinks to interpret our role as a and what I mean by that by the way as I've mentioned before I think I was talking to the kids about this but if you've seen movies and the example I used was Scarlet Pimpernel and there's several movies made of those books made over the last many years and if you see one interpretation of that story and different actors and you see another you'll discover how people do the same role differently and so in this cosmic drama in this grand adventure that we are part of we are given the opportunity to interpret the role that God has placed before us that's part of what it means to have free will and yet we have God as the writer and the director the producer who controls the entire movie the entire story but if we are walking with the Lord we will interpret that role properly and express what it is that God wants us to express in that particular circumstance so as we conclude we once again see that the way of the world and the way of the kingdom of God are very different there's really no similarity and we also discover that wealth is not evil in itself but it easily turns man toward wickedness although wielding great power is not intrinsically evil men and women often fall into sin when they misuse that power or misunderstand their role in the cosmic drama the book of Esther as we're going to find will teach us how the people of God are to use wealth to use power to understand their place in the grand adventure no matter what role they might play I pray that we will learn these things well and use them as we've mentioned already in the defense of the unborn and in other issues of dominion that we face today let's pray Heavenly Father I thank you for the opportunity to begin our study of the book of Esther and to begin just to get a taste of what we have ahead of us you