Sermon: Three Truths To Live By (Esther 1:1-4)

Three Truths To Live By
Sunday, November 17^th, 2024
Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA

Esther 1:1-4

¹Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces:) ²That in those days, when the king Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace, ³In the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him: ⁴When he shewed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honour of his excellent majesty many days, even an hundred and fourscore days.

Prayer

O Father, we thank you that to Christ has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. We thank you also that we live in an age where the kingdom of heaven has come, and is coming, and shall one day come in all its glory. Teach us to live as faithful ambassadors of your kingdom in our day, for we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Introduction

This morning, we are continuing to introduce the book of Esther. Last week we tried to situate this story within the broader biblical timeline, and so before we get into some new material, let’s briefly review the ground we covered so far.

There were two main questions we asked and answered last week:

• The first question was, “Where does the story of Esther take place?” And we said it takes placed in Shushan/Susa, which was the capital of the Persian empire.
  • As promised, I included on the back of your bulletin two maps. The map on the top shows the extent of the Persian Empire, “from India to Ethiopia.”And then the map on the bottom shows you the modern-day names for these places. And I also included the walking distance between Jerusalem and Susa, which is a journey that some Jews like Mordecai and Nehemiah would have had to make.So it was roughly 1,000 miles journey between Jerusalem and Shushan, which we said is about the distance between Centralia and Las Vegas.

• So that’s the Where of the book of Esther. What about the When?
• When did the story of Esther take place?
  • Contrary to most modern commentators who (I think) rely far too much on external extra-biblical sources (like Herodotus), rather than the biblical text as written, my view is that Esther takes place in the years c. 519-509 BC, and that the King who is called Ahasuerus is the same as King Darius I.
    • Ahasuerus is a throne name kind of like Pharoah or President, and it means “Chief/Hero Among Kings.” And just as there are multiple Pharaohs in the Bible, so also are there multiple Ahasuerus’s in the Bible (see Dan. 9:1, Ezra 4:6-7).
    • If you were to study the way these different throne names (Darius, Xerxes/Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes) are used in Ezra-Nehemiah, Daniel, and Esther, the best conclusion is that Darius the Great, who renewed the decree of Cyrus to rebuild the temple, is the same as the Ahasuerus who is described here in Esther and in Nehemiah.
    • This question of When Esther takes place, and the identity of the Ahasuerus she marries, is of major consequence to how you interpret the book. If you get this question wrong, it can warp your view of King Ahasuerus’ actions, Esther’s actions, and so forth, and unfortunately that is the case for most modern commentaries on Esther that are in print today.
    • To go back to our theme last week of becoming prudent “Sons of Issachar, who understand the times,” it is doing this hard chronological work to harmonize the Scriptures, and understand the context, that shall reap great fruit in interpreting the text, as you shall see in future sermons.
• Now this morning, I want to give you a little sample of that fruit by looking at the prophets and the sermons that God gave to his people during this Era of Restoration.
  • Recall from last week that we divided the history of Israel into 5 Eras:
    • 1. The Era of Moses begins around 1,500 BC.
    • 2. The Era of Judges runs for about 500 years.
    • 3. The Era of Kings begins around 1,000 BC.
    • 4. The Era of Exile begins around 600 BC and runs for about 70 years.
      • During this time Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel are all active. Jeremiah in Jerusalem, Daniel and Ezekiel in Babylon. And Daniel lives to see the end of Exile, when in 537 BC, God raises up King Cyrus of Persia (also known as Darius the Mede), to decree that the Jews should return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.
    • 5. So in 537 BC, the Era of Restoration officially begins, and we said that amongst those Jews who return to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel (the Governor), are Nehemiah and Mordecai.
      • We are told in Esther 2:6-7 that in 597 BC, Mordecai was taken from Jerusalem to Babylon, and now 60 years later, a 60 year-old (or older) Mordecai makes the long journey back home.
      • However, we also said that this “Build Back Better” project stalls out, and that sometime during the next 16 years, Mordecai relocates to Shushan. And by the time the book of Esther opens in 519 BC, a 76 year old (or older) Mordecai is there with his adopted daughter and cousin Esther.
• So our purpose in the rest of this sermon is to answer the question: What were God’s standing orders for His people during this Era of Restoration?
  • We know from Jeremiah 29, that God gave very specific instructions to the Jews for the Era of Exile. In short, they were to get married, have children, build houses, and seek the peace of Babylon, for God says, “and pray to the Lord for that city; for in its peace you will have peace” (Jer. 29:7).
  • So during this 70 years of discipline for their rebellion against God and His appointed rulers, the Jews are to learn obedience through the things they suffered. They are to learn the lessons that Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel taught them, and teach those truths to their children, so that when the Era of Exile ends, they know how to live and not repeat the same mistakes.
  • So to help us get inside the mind of Mordecai, Esther, and the Jews of this era, I want to highlight three prophetic truths that these Jews were to live by. And we will draw these truths from the various prophecies of Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, but especially the prophets Haggai and Zechariah who were alive when the book of Esther is unfolding.

Three Prophetic Truths for The Era of Restoration

Truth #1 – Seek First the Kingdom of God

• We learn from the prophet Haggai, who was preaching in 520 BC, just one year before the book of Esther begins, that the Jews in Jerusalem had their priorities out of order.
• It says in Haggai 1:3-7, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?” Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways! “You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.” Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!
  • So for 16 years, the people have been making excuses for why the building up of their own homes is a higher priority than building up God’s Temple.
  • To put it another way, the Jews in Jerusalem are still living like they are back in Babylon. They are living like the exile is still going, and that Cyrus’ decree to rebuild God’s House, is somehow not applicable anymore.
    • Given the opposition they faced from their local enemies, and the disfavor of the Emperor who ruled after Cyrus died (Cambyses II), a good legal case could be made for them not working. It was legally ambiguous whether Cyrus decree was still in force. But God, who sees into the heart of man, knows when we are making excuses. God who sees into the intents and desires of our heart, knows whether the kingdom of God is our first and highest priority, or if it is just an accessory to our own personal pursuits.
    • This was the great sin of the Jews in Jerusalem. Seeking first their own private earthly kingdoms over the Kingdom of Heaven. So God sends Haggai the prophet to rebuke them and ask, “How is that working out for you?” (Consider your ways!) Are you prospering? Are you happy? Are your storehouses full?
    • Having left off God’s house to focus on your own, why are you still struggling to make ends meet? “You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat and You drink, but you are not satisfied. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.”
    • When God’s people stop seeking first the kingdom of heaven, He often withholds His blessings so that we’ll stop and consider our ways. Remember the terms of God’s covenant, if you keep faith and love God and serve Him, He will bless you (all things work for good). But if you break faith and disobey His commands, the curse of the covenant will find you. Taxes increase, your car breaks down, jobs fall through, things fall apart.
      • In the words of Psalm 106:13-15 referring to Israel in the wilderness it says, “They soon forgot His works; They did not wait for His counsel, But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, And tested God in the desert. And He gave them their request, But sent leanness into their soul.”
• So if your soul feels hallow, lean, lacking in joy and peace and love, perhaps you need to stop and consider your ways. Consider whether God really is the highest priority, or if you are simply using Him as a means to your own ends.
  • And if that is you, consider it a great grace and gift from God to love you enough to show you the unhappiness of a disordered life.
• Remember the full context in which Jesus gives the command to seek first the kingdom of heaven. He says in Matthew 6:24-34, “No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
  • Jesus is like Haggai, preaching to us where true prosperity and blessing can be found. It is not in the love of money, or the building up of our own private kingdoms, it is rather in the ordering of all our affairs towards the kingdom of heaven (remember the Proverbs 31 woman and her priorities). That is what it means to seek first the kingdom of God.Build up the church. Give yourself to right worship in spirit and in truth. Do justice in all your affairs and be merciful even as your heavenly Father is merciful to you.
  • That was the truth Mordecai and Esther were to live by according to Haggai the prophet: Seek first the kingdom of God.
  • The second truth comes from the prophet Zechariah and is a word of encouragement for those building God’s Temple.

Truth #2 – If God is For You, Who Can Be Against You?

• It says in Zechariah 1:14-16, “Thus saith the Lord of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. And I am very sore displeased with the heathen that are at ease: For I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction. Therefore thus saith the Lord; I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies: My house shall be built in it, saith the Lord of hosts, And a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem.”
• And then a few verses later it says, “Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls For the multitude of men and cattle therein: For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, And will be the glory in the midst of her.” (Zech. 2:4-5)
• This is the promise for those who trust God and build even in adversity, “I will be a wall of fire around you, and the glory within you.” God will be your invisible shield, and He will be the source of light and heat when the world feels dark and cold.
• There were many enemies of the Jews who did not want the temple rebuilt, who did not want the walls rebuilt, and who were ready to play dirty to stop them. We read in Ezra and Nehemiah that they used tactics of intimidation, assassination threats, false accusations, and hired false prophets against them.
  • It says in Nehemiah 6:1-3, “Now it happened when Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall, and that there were no breaks left in it (though at that time I had not hung the doors in the gates), that Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, “Come, let us meet together among the villages in the plain of Ono.” But they thought to do me harm. So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?”
  • Nehemiah had set his face like flint to accomplish God’s purpose, and that conviction gave him courage to say, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down.”
  • The enemies of the church will try to get us off course. They will conjure up false accusations again our leaders, they will try to trap us and discourage us, but we must expect this opposition and be unmoved by it.
    • Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:11 about the necessity of forgiving one another, “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.”
    • Likewise he exhorts in Ephesians 6:16, “Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.”
  • We see that another scheme of the devil in Nehemiah’s day was to hire a prophetess named Noadiah, along with some others prophets to report that Nehemiah was planning to make himself King, and he was entering the holy place, against God’s command.
    • It says in Nehemiah 6:6-7, the Sanballat wrote an open letter saying, “It is reported among the nations, and Geshem says, that you and the Jews plan to rebel; therefore, according to these rumors, you are rebuilding the wall, that you may be their king. And you have also appointed prophets to proclaim concerning you at Jerusalem, saying, “There is a king in Judah!” Now these matters will be reported to the king. So come, therefore, and let us consult together.” And when that bait does not work, they try another scheme.
    • Nehemiah 6:10-13 says, “Afterward I came unto the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah the son of Mehetabeel, who was shut up; and he said, Let us meet together in the house of God, within the temple, and let us shut the doors of the temple: for they will come to slay thee; yea, in the night will they come to slay thee. And I said, Should such a man as I flee? and who is there, that, being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in. And, lo, I perceived that God had not sent him; but that he pronounced this prophecy against me: for Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. Therefore was he hired, that I should be afraid, and do so, and sin, and that they might have matter for an evil report, that they might reproach me.”
• So the enemies of the saints have many devices, many schemes and ploys to run against us. And so as the church is built up, and the walls of Christendom start to get repaired, we should expect to see these same moves run against the Ezras and Nehemiahs of our day. Ezra was a priest and scribe. Nehemiah was a civil ruler. The enemy focuses his attack on the leaders in the church, and the Christian leaders in civil government. Wherever Christians are in places of influence, the devil schemes against us.
  • To translate this to modern day, there are powerful special interest groups and political factions, that have a vested interest in opposing the kingdom of Christ. And so they will use scare tactics, they will run smear campaigns, they will fund Jezebel’s prophets to run interference on our building projects.
  • And so we must learn from Nehemiah to not take the bait. To see through their lies and accusations, and say to them, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down.”
  • Where do we get that kind of boldness and fortitude? It comes  from loving what God loves and hating what God hates; that is when we have the fire of the Holy Spirit around us and within us.
    • We are told in Titus 2:14, that “Christ gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.”
    • Likewise Jesus says in Revelation 3:19, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.”
    • God wants the fire of His love to burn within us. That is the zeal He desires in the church. And when you have that supernatural love of God, then Romans 8:31 feels true in our soul, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
• Now whenever the enemies of God’s people cannot stop us from the outside, they try to corrupt us from within. And so the third truth God reminds His people to live by in the Era of Restoration is.

Truth #3 – Do not intermarry with unbelievers.

We read in the book of Numbers, that Balak, King of the Moabites, hired Balaam the prophet to curse Israel. But because God was a fire around them, and the glory within, God turned those attempted curses into blessings. However, Balaam gave the Moabites counsel that the best way to conquer Israel, is to just get them to sin so that God will punish them.

• So we read in Numbers 25, right after Balaam and Balak go their separate ways it says, “And the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab. And they called the people unto the sacrifices of their gods: and the people did eat, and bowed down to their gods. And Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor: and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.”
• This same sin is committed by the Jews in Jerusalem under both Ezra and Nehemiah, and it persisted until the days of Malachi when the OT Canon closed. And so it is this sin of intermarriage with idolaters that looms large in the background of Esther’s marriage to Ahasuerus. Was that marriage biblically lawful or not? That is a question we will have to take up in a future sermon.
• It is significant that Scripture tells us, “In the tenth month, in the seventh years of his reign” (Esther 2:16),Esther is in Shushan marrying Ahasuerus. And in that very same month and year, Ezra is back in Jerusalem dealing with all the Jews who had married pagan wives.
  • We read in Ezra 9, that right after the temple is finished, a report comes that they have already broken God’s covenant.
    • It says, “Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass. And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonished. Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgression of those that had been carried away; and I sat astonished until the evening sacrifice.” And then Ezra goes on to offer a prayer of repentance and intercession for this great sin.
• So the great temptation for God’s people when they are scattered throughout the empire, is to intermarry with unbelievers, and to adopt their idolatrous customs, their morality, and their religious and political views.
• How did our nation go from having Protestant Christianity and even established churches in the states at our founding, to transgender story hour at your publicly funded library?
• How did we go from having God’s law as the infallible foundation for our civil laws, to the legalization and celebration of abortion, sodomy, adultery and the like. In just 300 years, we have gone from punishing with the death penalty what God calls abominations, to open celebration of these manifold perversions?
• The answer is: We intermarried with unbelievers. We did this both literally and figuratively.
• One of the reasons there is so much injustice, oppression, murder, rape, sexual abuse, and child trafficking in our land, is because the church yoked itself to unbelievers. The church committed grave injustices, abandoned God’s standards for its leaders, stopped disciplining its members, stopped defining sin by God’s standards, and started mimicking the world. It is obvious that the church intermarried with the world when our Sunday worship services became little more than a rock concert and a ted talk with a few Bible verses attached.
• As one of my fellow pastors in the CREC likes to say, “Before we had clown world, we had clown church.”
  • Before we had abortion on demand, we had no fault divorce in the church. Before we had women in the military, we had women in our pulpits and seminaries. When the church yokes itself to Baal of Peor, there is only one way out: the zeal of Phinehas.
  • How does God discipline and reform His adulterous people?
  • Hear Numbers 25:3-13, “And Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor: and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor. And, behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought unto his brethren a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand; And he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel. And those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy. Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace: And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel.”
• The only way out of idolatry is through the atoning blood of Jesus. If you live like a Canaanite, your end will be like the Canaanites, devoted to destruction.
• And so the church must recover (at bare minimum) these three prophetic truths, if we want to see justice restored, and peace in our cities, as we build God’s House in age of empires. The king’s heart is still in the hands of Christ, He turns whithersoever he will.
• And so:
  • 1. Seek first the kingdom of God.
  • 2. Stir up God’s spirit of love within you.
  • 3. Do not intermarry with this idolatrous world.
• May God make you as zealous as Phinehas, so that with javelin in hand, you thrust through the world, the flesh, and the devil. IN the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.