God's shadow in Purim

[Music] for [Music] l [Music] for [Music] h [Music] h [Music] that's [Music] good morning church it's good to see you all here today and if you didn't know Pastor Cody is out today he is on vacation and so now it's too late for you to leave you're stuck here anyway no we got Mr Jim petti preaching for us today but I'll be giving us some announcements first off you'll see the giant middle of the first page of the bulletin point set of dedications those need to be in by next Monday right yeah next Monday if you'd like to purchase a poinsetta in memory of someone that needs to be in by next Monday the joy group Christmas part is coming up for those of you of a certain age those reservations need to be made by December 4th you can do that by calling into the office or you can sign up online on Planning Center right okay yeah it'll be in the Planning Center app as well the week out a glance situation you can see that it's a pretty light week and that's because it's Thanksgiving week so I hope we're all safe traveling we'll be praying for traveling Mercy this week because I know that a lot of people are going out and a lot of people are also coming in another thing I wanted to bring to your attention is we're going to do Christmas carolling on December the 17th so just show up and we're going to go out and spread some Joy through

Singing the rest of it you can read in your bulletin so that's all I have for us today if you don't mind just take a moment get up and go greet someone someone you haven't met yet go say hi are [Music] call [Music] than [Music] yeah [Music] well we've reached the part of our service where we like to just take a moment between our between you and God I invite you to take a moment and ask him to prepare your hearts and your minds for worship so yeah just take a moment I invite you to Bow your heads and close your eyes and ask God to prepare you for worship this morning if you're with family or friends near you feel free to pray together and over one another worship is not just a somber time it's a time of rejoicing in who God is and what he's done amen but it is also a serious business it's what we're created to do so I'd invite you to prepare yourselves for worship Lord some of us today have great joy in our Earthly lives Lord you have brought contentment you've rained down mercies and Lord I ask that you'd help us to Rejoice with our brothers and sisters in those situations ask that you would help us to pour out those feelings of joy and contentment and praise to you knowing that every perfect and good gift comes from you and Lord some of us are suffering today Lord I ask that you would help us to remember that you've promised that you work all suffering for our good and

For your glory and Lord while we may have to endure it here for a little while something much greater is coming for those of us who believe God help us to turn our suffering into pray Lord I pray that you would remind us of who you are and what you've done help us not to just know it Lord help us to rejoice in it to Proclaim your Mighty Deeds your wondrous works and your awesome nature it's in Jesus name we pray amen I invite you now to stand as you're able and join us as we sing together the Praises of Our Lord [Music] Come All You Weary come all you thirsty come to the well that Nevers dry drink of the water come and thirst no more Come All You Sinners come find his Mercy come to the table he will satisfy Taste of his goodness find what you're looking for God so loved the world that he gave us his one and only son to save us whoever believes in him will live [Music] forever bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with open arms for God so love the world that he gave us is one and only son to save us whoever believes in him will live forever the power of Hell forever defeated now it is well I'm walking in Freedom for God so love God so love the world praise God praise God from whom all blessings go Praise Him praise him for the wonders of his love praise God praise God from whom all blessings flow praise him praise him for the wonders of his love for God so loved the world that he

Gave us his and only son to save us whoever believes in will live forever the power of Hell forever defeated now in is well I'm walking in Freedom for God so love God so love the world bring all your failur bring your addic come lay them down at the of the Cross Jesus is waiting God so love the world Amen what an awesome God we serve who has given us such Grace that we can't even [Music] fathom marous Grace of ouring Lord Grace that exceed and our there the blood of the Lamb wasil gra God's Grace Grace that will pardon gra graise God grace gra that iser than all our dark is the state that we canot hide what canil to it look there is Flowing a and than you may be God gra that will paron and gra God gra that his greater than All I See by infinite matchless grace freely bestowed on all who believe you that are longing to see his face will this moment his grace receive gra God Grace Grace that will paron and with gra Grace God's grace gra that iser than all our you may be seated as our ushers come forward together Heavenly Father we thank you today for this opportunity to be here and thank for especially for those that you know we come in sometime and we need encouragement and we thankful for those that are encouragers and we also want to thank you today for your many blessings of

Life and for opportunity to share some of that back with you own it all but this is part of the way we do worship as we give back to you we ask these things in Jesus name amen I'd like to read to you out of the book of Galatians in chapter 6 verse4 it says but far be it for me to boast except at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified died for him except that Christ's grace and mercy is bestowed upon him let me boast in nothing he also says that through Christ the world has been crucified to him and he to the world that should be a goal of ours that the things of this world wouldn't be what has a hold on us but that it would be the things of God that our minds and our hearts and our actions and our thoughts and deeds would all be beholden to Christ who has purchased us amen if we believe he has purchased Us by his blood I invite you to stand as you're able and join us as we sing How Deep The Father's Love How Deep The Father's Love For Us how vast beyond all me that he should give his all the to make his how great the pain of seing the turns his face away as wound The Chosen bring many sons to [Music] Glory behold the man upon a cross sing upon his ashamed hear mying voice Out Among the SC it was my that hel him there until it was aom his ding breath has brought me life I know that it is fin I will not Ro in anything no b no how no

Is but I will in Jesus Christ his death and resur TR I gain from his reward I canot give and but this I know with all my heart hiss have made my grand why should I gain from his reward I canot give an answer but this I know all my heart his wounds have paid my but this I know with all my heart his wounds have paid [Music] my what is Our Hope in life and death Christ Alone Christ Alone what is our only confidence that our soul to him belong who holds our days within his hands what comes aart from his commands and what will keep us to the end the love of Christ in which we stand oh sing Hallelujah our hopes brings Eternal oh sing Hallelujah now and we caness Christ Our Hope in life and what truth can call the TR God is good God is good where is his gra and good in our great who holds our Fai when fears arise who stands above the stor Tri who sends the wav that bring us night unto the shore the rock of Christ oh sing Hallelujah our hopes BR Eternal oh sing hallelu now and ever we confess Christ Our Hope in life and deathto the grave what will we see Christ in Christ he lives and what reward will

Heaven everlasting life with him there we will rise to me the Lord then sin and death will be destroyed and we will be the joy when Christ is for forever more oh sing hu our hes brings Eternal oh sing hallelu now and we confess Christ Our Hope in life and death oh sing Hallelujah our hopes brings Eternal oh sing Hal Hallelujah now and we caness Christ Our Hope in life and death now and we can Christ Our Hope in life and death let's pray together dear Lord we thank you for the revelation of Scripture we thank you for revealing yourself and your work to us through your word God we thank you for allowing us to gather here and to Proclaim your word boldly and loudly together Lord I pray that as we continue to worship today God you would remind us of who are Lord I pray that you would help us as we even as we go from here to keep your Praises on our lips that the world might hear of you through us it's in Jesus name we pray amen okay I don't know who's missing Cody more this morning all of you or [Music] me find this thing okay if we don't all could stand to read the Scripture this morning it's found in Esther 9 beginning in verse 20 and going through Esther 10 to the end of the book verse three and morai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King haueris both near and far obliging them to keep the 14th day of the month of

Adar and also the 15th day of the same year by year as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday that they should make those them days of feasting and gladness days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor so the Jews accepted what they had started to do and what morai had written to them for hmon the agagite the son of hamadaa the enemy of all the Jews had plotted against the Jews to destroy them and had cast purrr that is cast lots to crush them and to destroy them but when it came before the king he gave orders and writing that his evil plan that he had devised against the Jews should return on his own head and that he and his son should be hanged in The Gallows therefore they called These Days Pim after the term Pur therefore because of all that was written in this letter and of what they had faced in this matter and of what had happened to them the Jews firmly obliged themselves and their offspring and all who joined them that with without fail they would keep these two days according to what was written and at the time appointed every year that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation in every Clan proin Province and City and that these days of Pim should never fall into dis disuse among the Jews nor should the commemoration of these days cease among their descendants then Queen Esther the daughter of abah and Mori the Jew gave full written Authority confirming this second letter of perim the letters were sent to all the Jews to the 127 provinces of the kingdom of haueris in words of peace and truth that these days of Pim should be observed at their appointed Seasons as Mori the Jew and the Queen and Queen

Esther obligated them and as they had obligated themselves and their offspring with regard to their fasts in lamenting the command of Esther confirmed these practices of Pim and it was recorded in writing King hazus imposed a tax on all the land and on the coastlands of the sea and all the acts of his power and might and the full account of his high honor of morai to which the king Advanced him are they not written in the book of The Chronicles of the king of media in Persia one more oops for Mori the Jew was second in rank to King haueris and he was great among the Jews and popular with the multitude of his brothers for he sought the welfare of his people and he spoke peace to all his people let's pray father thank you for your word thank you for this book in particular as it's coming to a close today thank you for the truth that it contains in it and for the masterful creation of this narrative this story that screams lessons to us even though there's sometimes not spoken out loud work through your servant today help me to express your message to your people and that we would go away encouraged this morning in Jesus name amen you can be seated so this week brings to end the Book of Esther it's Esther is quite the unique book in Scripture one could even ask why is eser included in Scripture it's a very unique that there's no mention of God Jehovah the Almighty in the whole book there's no mention of Israel in the book no mention of the promised land anywhere in the book prophets are not mentioned in the Book of Esther priests are not mentioned in the Book of Esther Levites not even brought up

Anywhere in the Book of Esther sacrifices not mentioned in the Book of Esther Miracles not mentioned in the Book of Esther although there's some statistically very improbable things that happen in the Book of Esther we'll talk about those later prayer not specifically mentioned in the Book of Esther although there is it is implied with the sacko and Ashes that people were also praying along with the sackcloth and as and fasting so the Book of Esther is extremely unique it prevents a challenge to preachers and I think Cody and Steve have done a good job pulling out the principles for us as we've been traveling through this book some of the lessons in Esther are more implicit than explicit it's a story that screams from between the lines some of the lessons are not explicitly put on the table there were not commands for us to follow in the Book of Esther but the book itself calls for us to see the lessons that God has placed between the lines of the story in other words the words of this story may be softly spoken but the lessons are loudly driven home so today we're going to look at the specifically the institution of the Feast of buim per as was mentioned in the text means lots a lot and the IM is a suffix meaning plural so it's the plural of lots and it's the institution of this Feast now this Feast is different than the other feasts that we have in Scripture the seven Mosaic feasts that were instituted back in Exodus when we went through the book of Exodus so in verse chapter 9 20 and 21 and Mori recorded these things and sent to all the Jews who were in the provinces of King huus both near and far obliging them to keep the 14th day of the month of Adar in the 15th day of the

Same year Mori obliged the Jews to keep this feast and that wasn't the typical way that it happened again it says in the next verse as the days on which were the Jews got relief from their enemies in the month that he that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday that they should make them days of feasting and gladness days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor now this shows that morai established this Feast of purum and that was not typically how it happened in ex Esther 27 it says the Jews firmly obligated themselves and their off offs spring and all who joined them that without fail they would keep these two days so now morai establishes purum now the Jews themselves are obliging themselves to follow the Feast of perum so morai established it then the Jews established themselves and then it says that these things should be remembered and kept throughout every generation and then it goes on to say so the Jews obliged themselves and finally Queen Esther the daughter of Abel and Mori the Jew gave full written Authority confirming the second letter of Pim these letters were sent to all the Jews in the 127 provinces of the kingdom of azuis in words of peace and truth that these days of pin should be OB observed at their appointed Seasons as Mori the Jew and Esther the queen obligated them so we see Mori obligating the Feast of perum the Jews themselves obligating the Feast of perum and Queen Esther obligating the Feast of perum the command of Esther confirmed these practices of perum so all three Mori Esther and them the Jews themselves were the ones instituting this feast and that just isn't normal for God's feasts what is more normal is what we find in Leviticus where it says the Lord spoke to Moses saying speak to the

People of Israel and say to them these are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall Proclaim as holy convocations they are my appointed feasts so the seven feasts that occur in the Old Testaments are God's feasts the Feast of Pam is very unique because God didn't specifically appoint this as a feast we saw that morai Esther and the Jews themselves did this was not the typical way that a feast became a feast here you have in the green section on the right the spring Feast the green represents the spring season and those are the four spring feasts you have Passover un leved bread first fruits and Pentecost then in the fall there were Tabernacles day of atonement and trumpets so feasts were those all that were mentioned there were all established by God and God called them my feasts okay in Colossians the church was having an argument about these feasts whether or not we should still observe them or not and Paul writes this therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink or with regard to a festival a feast or a new moon which was also a feast or the Sabbath which was also a feast these are shadow of the things to come but the substance belongs to Christ feasts are just a shadow of something more important and this these feasts were Shadows of Christ the spring feasts were Shadows of his first coming and the fall feasts were Shadows of his second coming but this pum It cast Shadows of a different type and let's look into this so what does the Feast of pum teach us today one of the things that it teaches us and this is Scream from between the lines is that God works behind the scenes behind the things we can see and behind the scenes of the stage both scenes the little play on words there God works behind the scenes and where do

We see this in the Book of Esther we see this in a drunken King a drunken boastful King makes a foolish request of his wife was that an accident I don't think so that was God working behind the scenes we see this queen vashy a self-respecting queen refus to attend that King's de demands attend to the demands was that an accident I don't think so that was God working behind the scenes we see a Jewish girl an orphaned girl winning a beauty pageant amongst hundreds or thousands of women from 127 different Pro provinces was that an accident I don't think so that was God working behind the scenes we see Esther being selected and brought into the Haram the king selects her of all those all those people to be brought into his Harum to be made the queen and that was not an accident it was God working behind the scenes partway through the story we saw hmon overhearing a conversation between big th and teresh that they're planning on an assassination attempt on King azerus did he happen to be in the right place at the right time was it an accident that he heard that no that is God working behind the scenes again then we have the case of kingly insomnia that happened which happened just on the perfect night was that insomnia an accident or is that God working behind the scenes you have hmon deciding to build the Gallows out in his this was the same night of the King's dream hmon builds the Gallows to kill morai the Jew that same night was that just an accident or was that God working behind the scenes then this the unic or King's attendant the Chamberlain the unic who attended to the king with

Insomnia goes into the king's Library selects a scroll off out of the library of all the history of this King just happens to be the scroll that recounts mori's saving the King's life from that assassination plot was that an accident was that just a coincidence or is that God working behind the scenes then we have Esther who is going to approach the king this could cost her life in behalf of the Jews she approaches the king she wasn't invited in and when the king doesn't call for you could be executed for a approaching him without being asked she risks her life and the King accepts her and lets her come forward was that an accident no that's God also working behind the scenes he accepts her whether it was the way she looked that day for whatever his reasons that was God working behind the scenes hmon falls down on Esther in the banquet pleading for his life just as the king walks in and it looks like he's making a pass on this queen was that an accident no that was God working behind the scenes again and then hmon he directs those around him to cast purr or lots to determine what dday is going to be for the Jews destruction day and he cast lots and I want to pause right here for just a moment to look at something that shows God's hands behind the scenes this lot casting what was casting lots and why was it [Music] used well one person one reason for casting lots was it had a purpose was to settle disputes Proverbs 18 tells us casting of lots settles disputes and keeps the strong opponents apart I don't believe this was the reason that he was casting lots it's kind of like the coin

Flip on the kickoff right there're not they're not it's just a way to be fair but and also in Proverbs in 16:33 it says the lot is cast into the lap but EV but it's every decision is from the Lord hmon was looking for his Gods to bless his decision now Hon's Lord wasn't the capital L Lord but he was looking for favor in his gods and deciding what day to choose to annihilate the Jews and this is where it gets really in lot casting was used by Israel to decide things and these were some examples there it's used 25 times in the Old Testament but here's just a few of them it was the land was divided by casting lots as jobs were assigned in the temple by casting lots Saul was selected as King by casting lots the scapegoat on the day of atonement there were two goats which one was going to be the scapegoat which was going to be the sacrifice was decided by casting lots determining the responsibility of the storm in Jonah that was decided who was responsible that we're in this storm why are we being tossed about on the sea casting lots decided that who would live in Jerusalem was decided by Lots one out of every 10 people in the whole nation was going to live in Jerusalem that was decided by Lots Jesus garments on when he was on the cross were parted and decided amongst the Roman soldiers who would get them that was done by casting lots replacing Judas was done by casting lots it's throughout the Old Testament but it starts here in Exodus 28 for the Israelites and it says in Exodus 28:30 the first part of that verse and in the breastplate of judgment you shall find the urum uim and the thumim and they shall be on Aaron's heart and when he goes in when he goes in before the Lord now IR means light you are take the IM off IR means light and the IM on the end of it adds the meaning of plural so

Light and then Thum means dark and the IM on the end means plural so what they're talking about here you could substitute in there for urum the light ones and Thum are the dark ones so there were at least four items in the breastplate of the high priest CU they were plural and there were plural light ones and there were plural dark ones there could have been more than four but there was a minimum of at least four and equal numbers of both this casting lots was also used in the time of Saul when do you remember Saul's command no one's going to eat anything until I Vanquish my enemies and then his son Jonathan comes along finds honey dripping out of a tree dips his staff in it and tastes the honey so Saul is prayed to the Lord the God of Israel why have you answered your servants today why have you not answered your servants today if the fault is in me or my son Jonathan respond with the light ones the irum but if the men of Israel are at fault respond with the dark ones the Thum Jonathan and Saul were taken by lot so the first time one of the light ones came out indicating it was Saul and either Saul or Jonathan so then he sets up phase two of the lot casting and says the men Jonathan and Saul were taken by lot the men were cleared Saul said cast the lot between me and Jonathan and I don't know if Saul was and Jonathan was th or what the deal was but the lot fell on Jonathan so to cast lots you had to set up a situation where there was a polar Choice a yes or no an on or off kind of thing another let's see so when we get to hmon back in Esther 3 and this comes up the lot casting what we see in verse 7 says in the first month which was the month of Nissan in the 12th year of the king of haueris they cast purr that's

Lot they cast lots before hmon day after day and they cast it month after month till the 12th month which is the month of Adar now what is really happening here did the casting of lots go on over the whole year I don't think that was the case what it seems to be saying is that day after day meaning they started at the first month of the year which was Nissan and they cast the Lots starting it one of the possible ways they could have been they start on the first of the Nissan and said yes or no for Nissan nope came up then they went to the second yes or no for Nissan second should we destroy the Jews on that day nope should we destroy the Jews on the third nope how about the fourth no the Lots now what's happening for each time is the lots are being pulled out getting a black one black one black one black one over and over it happens on the fifth day and then finally it goes through the entire month of Nissan and they were no that we the Lots were coming out black every single time so if you look at the Jewish calendar Nissan is about at the 1:00 or 12:30 position up there at the top so after he finished with Nissan he progresses into Yar and tries the first there then the second and the third and he keeps getting NOS all the way through the month of e no now I don't know how many of you have any played dice games but you don't end up getting the same if you toss heads and tails you don't get Tails Tails Tails Tails Tails Tails Tails Tails Tails Tails over and over and over again and that's what was happening here so from he went through saon Tam tamuz a elu Tish and no 30 times in each month no till we get all the way up to Adar and he starts in Adar and he gets no until he gets to the 13th

Day of Adar and finally he pulls the white one out he gets an on the 13th of Adar so you can see God's like there's no Miracle stated in the Book of Esther but this if you calculate the possibility of pulling 350 NOS out and then one yes it comes out to one in a this is 100 Google that's 10 to the 100th so the chances of you getting 350 NOS before you get that s yes at the end are one in 100 Google that to me is one of the biggest miracles in the Book of Esther but suppose he didn't do it that way and if it were me to be honest I don't think I would have done it that way I would have gone I'll pick the month first right I then I only have to do it 12 times I'm going to save myself some time here I'm GNA pick the month first so I'm goingon to start a Nissan and I'm going to get no I'm going to have 11 NOS there in a row and then Finly a yes and then I would have to pick the day of the year and I'd get 12 more Nos and then finally a yes so I ran the numbers on that sequence which is like H and T are heads and tails head then the tail for the month of Adar then head and a tail for the 13th of Adar that's the sequence he got and that's a much more reasonable number one in 33 million chance of that happening so that's as big a miracle to me as I suppose those winning the lottery would be the numbers are stacked against him and there was a reason that day needed to be picked because the Jews needed time to organize themselves to protect themselves from Annihilation if the next day or the next week were selected God's plan for Redemption and saving people through Israel and through the line of David and through up into the Christ would have had to take a different course I'm not going to say it would have been thwarted it would have looked different but his plan never fails he's at work behind the scenes and

He was the at work in the Book of Esther in a really man miraculous way like a master chess player placing the pieces on the board from Esther in the right position morai in the right position vashi making standing up against The King The King making foolish requests and God is behind the scenes placing all these pieces on the chessboard in his sovereignty we think those were a bunch of circumstances on this side of Eternity but looking at what's on the other side not the temporal but the Eternal shows us that he's directing things towards his goals and for me that's pretty encouraging to know that as a Believer I have a God who's directing my enemies behind the scenes that what they would bring against me is being arranged thwarted rearranged by a God who can take unmeasurable odds and turn them around for his people so that was the first Shadow we see God's shadow cast in pum is that he's at work behind the scenes but the Book of Esther also casts another Shadow about God in that he expects obedience and you say where do you see that in the Book of Esther where is God expecting obedience where does it come out well when God tells us to do something once it's pretty important to listen but if he tells us three times about about something it must be really really important and that's kind of what happened here if you look back to First Samuel which was the incident where AAG was involved Saul was supposed to have killed AAG had a pretty simple job two points don't take any spoils and don't take any survivors two things you would think it wasn't I guess it was twice as hard as Adam's instructions he only had one thing to worry about he messed that up so he had two things don't take any spoils and what did we hear we heard sheep BL bleeding in the background he

Said what's that bleeding of sheep I hear did you not obey well good reason I'm going to rationalize here they're for sacrifices Lord I'm going to give them to you that's why I took them so if I have a good motivation then I can disobey right wrong and AAG was not destroyed so he didn't take annihilate all of the amalekites and apparently there were more than AAG because if you read through the story in 1 Samuel AAG finally does reach his end thanks to Samuel he is annihilated but he must not have taken care of others amongst the amalekites because here we are 500 plus years later in the Book of Esther and we have some of those relatives the amalekites appear appearing an agagite in particular one of the sons of AAG is appearing in the form of hmon of hamadaa how important is obedience to God's people this Disobedience that Saul performed back in 1 Samuel was still casting a Shadow 500 years into the future and affecting people negatively how much better is it when we follow God his way so in 1st Samuel 15 it here's the command to Saul Now go and strike amalec and devote to destruction all that they have that's the spoils and do not spare them that's the people themselves two instructions and that's the command from God and I believe with all my heart that this story was in the minds of the people in the Book of Esther and you say what gives you the least inclination that they were thinking that way and I'll show you where it comes from well the rest of 1 Samuel says it basically the word of the Lord came to Samuel I regret that I have made Saul King for he has turned back from following me he disobeyed me and has not performed my Commandments plural both of them spoils and he did not get rid of the people he blew both of them twice as bad as Adam and why then did you not obey the

Voice of the Lord why did you pounce on the spoil and this line of the story why did you pounce on the spoil is why I think that the people in Esther's time still had this story in their Forefront 500 years later we see in the Book of Esther this is coming up ES 811 the king allows Esther and the Jews to take the spoils the king gives them and Cody mentioned this last week I think the king gave them permission to take the spoils when he in saying that the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives to destroy kill and annihilate any armed forces of any people or Pro province that might attack them so this was a self-defense had to fall they had to attack you first before you could attack them and also to plunder their goods that was the permission that aerus the Earthly T King had given to them but 500 years earlier God said and don't take any of the spoil saw from this people group he wanted no spoils well even if you were going to offer him to me on the altar I don't want them so in Esther 96 you see what happened in the Citadel of Susa the Jews destroyed 500 men and they also killed there's the list of the 10 sons of hmon the 10 sons of hmon of hamadaa the enemy of the Jews but they did not lay their hands on the plunder oh interesting they did not lay their hands on the plunder then if you skip down four or five more verses the Jews and Susa verse 15 the Jews and Susa came together on the 14th day of the month of Adar and they put to death in Susa 300 men but they did not lay their hands on the plunder H that's twice then in verse 16 they killed 75,000 men of them but did not lay their hands on the plunder this is why I think the story of Saul and his Disobedience was in the minds of the people in exus they had gotten it wrong

The first time and now they had a chance to get it right and that shows God's grace he gives us a chance to get it right we blow it sometimes but he gives us a chance to get to make it right and he was giving them a chance to make it right here do you remember what I told you don't take any plunder from this people so three times in chapter nine they didn't take any they didn't take any they didn't take any plunder why recount that why say it three times I think it's because they obeyed God expects obedience he expects to be obeyed and this time they got it right so in the shadows that God's Shadow that's cast in perum he's at work behind the scenes he expects us to obey him and then finally he positions his people and you say well how in the world is God positioning his people now if you go back through the stories that we've covered here in church we've been preaching through books one of the stories we covered was back in Exodus and if you think about Joseph God had the chance to make Joseph the Joseph the Grand Puba in all of Egypt but he what he didn't put him there he put him close and this when we later on we studied the Book of Daniel and the same was true of Daniel he could have been the ruler over all of Babylon but God didn't choose to make him ruler he put him close then we look at Mori he ascended up quite High just like Joseph and Daniel but he didn't become king God put him close Esther she could have been the one God raised all the way to the top but he didn't he put her close and I believe God puts people close they don't have to be in the top slot he put you close enough to be effective and he's doing that with

Each of you he's got you in a position where you're close enough to be effective to somebody and something so morai the Jew was second in rank to King Xerxes preeminent among the Jews he wasn't first he was just the vice King I guess second in command I don't know the if the speaker of the house was third or what but he was the vice King so God positions his people and that for Believers we need to be conscious of that God had Esther in position right where he wanted her he had morai in position right where he wanted him and God has you in position right where he wants you are not maybe number one in your organization but you are close enough God's put you close enough to make a difference like these people they weren't number one but they were close enough to make a difference and God has you close enough to make a difference can do we realize that God has placed Us in these positions close enough to make a difference so head the takeaway what do we want to take to know from this book of Esther we want to know that God orchest Illustrated the events in Esther with Precision it was like an orchestra director hundreds of moving pieces all perfectly orchestrated to make a wonderful Harmony amongst all of them that's what happened and that's what we see in the Book of Esther from cover to cover heart what does God want us to believe about the Book of Esther well I believe he wants us to believe that God gets his people into the right positions at the right time timing was key in all of this the right person in the right position at the right time and he pulled that

Off so heart for heart or hand excuse me recognize what can we do with this if this is all true and God puts people in the right position at the time re we need to recognize that God has placed each of us in the position that he hases us has Us in to use mori's words for such a time as this go ahead Austin well let's pray before I step down father thank you for the Book of Esther thank you for the explicit lessons that are taught in this story and thank you for the implicit lessons that are taught that are that jump out from between the lines thank you for your sovereignty being clearly Illustrated even though you're not even talked about it Lord it's like a big dollhouse with things being moved around and you're not able we're not able to see the what the force moving them around but we all know it's you and Lord that gives us great confidence to go through our lives knowing that you are arranging the pieces as you see fit you will get us and other people to the places they need to be at the perfect time you're never early you're never late help us to realize that we are pawns on that board that you desire to use and take advantage of the times that you move us into positions for such a day as this in Jesus name amen let's stand and sing together How Deep The Father's Love For Us how vast beyond all measure that he should give his only son to make a r his treasure how great the pain of seeing L the father turns his face away as wound which Mar The Chosen One bring many sons to Glory [Music] behold the man of upon a cross my sin upon his shoulders ashamed I hear my mocking

Voice called Out Among the SCS it was my sing that H him there until it was aish his dying breath has brought me life I know that it is [Music] finished I will not boast in anything no gifts no power no wisdom but I will boast in Jesus Christ his death and Resurrection why should I gain from his reward I canot give an answer but this I know with all my heart his wounds have paid my [Music] Ransom why should I gain from his [Music] reward I canot give an answer but this I know with all my heart his wounds have paid my R but this I know all my heart his wounds have paid my [Music] R let's pray together dear Lord thank you for the cross Lord thank you for the Book of Esther reminding us over and over and over again that you are in control that you are always working in us and through us for our good but Lord For Your Glory even when things seem darkest even whenever your very son who you sent into the world died on the cross Lord it was for your glory and for our good God please remind us of that and help us to Proclaim that as we go out from this place