Well, it's good to see everybody
this morning. I was thinking, as we sang that first verse of
that song on the bulletin, that second verse, it says, that a
holy, just, and perfect God could ever let me live. And I think
about that a lot. God showed us mercy this day. And I think about, I look back
at my life, and I think, my oh my, this holy God has put up
with me and all my wickedness and my sin, my rebellion, and
not done with me as I deserve. And I think, oh, what mercy.
We don't realize, brothers and sisters, the mercy of God. Psalm 145 says, his tender mercies
are over all his works. And that's certainly true with
his people. I want you to take your Bibles
and turn with me to the book of Esther. Go to the book of
Psalms, turn back one book to the book of Job and one more
book to the book of Esther. Two books back from the book
of Psalms. The Old Testament is full of
shadows and types of our Lord Jesus Christ. We know that, we
read it. But so is the book of Esther. But the book of Esther is unusual,
a very unusual book for two reasons. First off, You will not find
in the book of Esther the word God, capital G-O-D, God, Jehovah. And neither will you find the
word Lord, capital L-O-R-D, Lord. It's not there. And also, it's different in that
While it may be called a shadow or type, it's actually the working
out of the gospel in the providence of God in his people's lives. The gospel is actually pictured
in the people acting and doing. So it's very important. I encourage
you, now we're not gonna be able to cover all this because there's
so much in this book of the providence of God in the gospel, but I encourage
you to read it, but I just wanna, I wanna look at some of these
points that refer specifically to the gospel. Because the providence
of God in the gospel itself is most conspicuous in this book. No one, apart from unbelievers,
No one can read this book and not see the gospel. Now, in order to present this,
I'm gonna have to kind of go back and give you some background
information because we need to see the fullness of what has
taken place here. Now, the message in the gospel
consists or is around two people, that is, two Jewish people, one
by the name of Mordecai and the other, by his little cousin named
Esther. Now around 500 years before the
Lord was born, King Nebuchadnezzar came into Jerusalem and destroyed
it and conquered the people and he took them captive back to
Babylon. And he took Mordecai, Mordecai
was a grown man from what I read in the scripture, took him captive
Now it doesn't say anything about Esther, whether she was just
a mere child or she was born into captivity in Babylon, but
it does say that her parents were dead. And so I'm just making
a supposition here that it's more than likely that her parents
were killed in that siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. And so Mordecai took this child,
and it was probably just a child at that time, Esther was, and
took her with him and adopted her as his daughter. Now, in the Babylon kingdom,
Nebuchadnezzar at this time in the book of Esther is long gone.
This is years later after that conquering, The Persians have
come in and they have conquered Babylon and deposed the Babylonian
people. And the Persian's king, according
to the Book of Esther here, was named Ahasuerus. And as I said,
he conquered Babylon. And the story goes that he had
a feast for all the the people of his court for the higher-ups,
the important people, he had a feast. And he brought the queen,
Vashti, V-A-S-T-I, into the presence, and he wanted to show her off
for her to wear her crown and so forth. And she got offended
at that, and she refused to do it. So in doing that, she disrespected
the king. And the king and his court thought,
what are we gonna do about this? He said, this word is gonna get
out to the whole province, and the women are gonna disobey their
husband because of what the queen did. So they decided what they
were gonna do is have Vashti the queen disposed, deposed,
not disposed, deposed, and the king select a new queen. Now it says that the king ordered that these servants
go out into the whole province and bring all the young virgins
into the court. And I want you to begin with
me here, read on chapter two. We're gonna pick up on, I'm gonna
do a little bit of reading just to give us an idea of what's
going on. Chapter two, verse number eight through 12. The
scripture says, so it came to pass when the king's commandment
and his decree was heard, and when many maidens were gathered
together unto Shushan the palace, that's the palace in Babylon,
for the custody of Haggai, that Esther was brought also unto
the king's house. Now she was a Jew, let's remember
that. To the custody of Haggai, keeper of the women. And the
maiden pleased him and she obtained kindness of him and he speedily
gave her things for purification, with such things that belonged
to her, and seven maidens, which were meet to be given her out
of the king's house. And he preferred her and her
maids unto the best place of the house of the women. Esther
had not showed her people nor her kindred, for Mordecai had
charged her that she should not show it. And Mordecai walked
here every day before the court of the women's house to know
how Esther did and what should become of her. Verse 12 says,
now when every maid's turn was come to go into King Ahasuerus,
after that she had been, now listen to this carefully because
here we're going to begin to see the picture of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ. After that, she had been 12 months,
according to the manner of the women, for so were the days of
their purification accomplished, to wit, six months with oil of
myrrh, and six months with sweet odors, and with other things
for the purifying of the women. Twelve months she had to be pinned
up, so to speak, put away for her purification. Why was that? Well, because that was the demand
of the king. She was going to be the queen.
I mean, she had to be perfect. She had to be well-knowledged
in the law. of the province, she had to be
well-knowledged in the ways of the king. She had to be purified. Now, as far as our Lord goes,
you recall when the Passover was to be held, that the Jews
were to take a lamb. They had to go out into the fold
and find a lamb. The scripture says that was without
spot and without blemish. Nothing wrong with it, but that
wasn't enough. They had to pin that lamb up
for 14 days, the scripture says, and they had to watch it carefully
that it wouldn't develop any spot or blemish. It was kept 14 days. And these two, here was Esther. purified for a period of 12 full
months, the lamb 14 days. What about Christ our Lord? 30
years from the time he was born till the time he was baptized,
he was watched. He was watched by men. He wasn't
necessarily watched by God because he was God, but he was watched
by men to see that he was perfect, and the
scripture reveals that he was, he was sinless, perfectly sinless. So we have here in this 12 months
of purification, the picture of the Lord Jesus Christ himself
in this 30 years of preparation. And at the end of that 30 years,
you remember what happened? He was baptized when he began
his public ministry, and what was it the Lord God said? This
is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. He did not say
in who I am pleased, but he says in whom I am well pleased. Now how do we define that? How
can we define well pleased? We can't. It's above our imagination,
our understanding, but it says it's well pleased. The Lord says
that Christ has given him a name, said he is highly exalted and
has given him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus,
every knee should bow and every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the honor and glory of God. So in this 30 years
of his life, here we have in Esther, the picture of the purification
and the perfection before God of Christ. Keeping that law of
God perfectly, crossing every T, dotting every I of the law
perfectly. Now in verse, in chapter three,
look at chapter three, verse one. Now at this same time, while
all this was going on, while Esther was being prepared
to meet the king, in chapter three, verse one, it says, after
these things did King Ahasuerus promote Haman, the son of Hamedatha,
the Agagite and advanced him and set his seat above all the
princes that were with him. He took one particular prince
and made him the head of all princes, is what that essentially
means. In verse two it says, and all
the king's servants that were in the king's gate bowed and
reverenced Haman, for the king had so commanded concerning him
But look what it says, but Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence. Now this man Haman, he had everything
going for him as far as the physical world goes, but it ate him up
terribly, and you read through this text. It ate him up that
this Mordecai wasn't bowing. Nothing else mattered to this
man. He was so eaten up by the fact that this lowly Jew would
not stand up and bow to him as he rode by on his horse. And so in verse eight of that
same chapter, chapter three, verse eight, Haman got the idea
that he was gonna kill He was going to kill Mordecai. I've
got to get rid of him. That's the only thing he thought
was going to satisfy his conscience of this man not bound to him.
Verse eight of chapter three says, and Haman said unto King
Ahasuerus, there is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed
among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom. And their laws
are diverse from all people. Neither keep they the king's
laws. And that was a lie. Therefore,
it is not for the king's prophet to suffer them. Verse nine, it
says, if it please the king, let it be written that they may
be destroyed. And I will pay 10,000 talents
of silver to the hands of those that have the charge of the business
to bring it into the king's treasuries. Here's God's people in the gospel
under the sentence of death, under the sentence of death.
We're all, by nature, sentenced to death. Listen to what Ephesians
2.3 says. Paul, in writing to the church
of Ephesus, says this, among whom also we all had our conversation
in times past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires
of the flesh and of our mind, and were by nature the children
of wrath, even as others." You've heard Marvin say many times that
God's people are not under wrath, and when he's talking about that,
he's talking about this eternal wrath of God. whereby men are
sentenced to hell. But by nature, brothers and sisters,
by nature, we're all children of wrath. You see people going
up and down this road right here. Any of these people in these
cars traveling by that aren't God's sheep are under the sentence
of death. They may be God's sheep at some
time, but right now they're under the sentence of death. So this,
In this text, God's people are under the sentence of death. Who is gonna deliver them? How
are they gonna be delivered? Well, let's read on. In Ephesus,
again, chapter two, verse 12, here's what Paul says further.
That at that time, ye were without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise,
having no hope and without God in this world. We were all that
way, brothers and sisters, at one time. And so the king, Haman
presents this proposition to the king and he signs it, and
in scripture doesn't tell us why he signs it. Haman said he's
gonna bring so much money into the king's treasury, well, How
is he going to do that except to take all the gold, silver,
and everything else that the Jews had that he's going to kill?
That's the only money, that's the only way he has of getting
any money. So the king probably, in Backley's mind, had a sense
of greed. That's the only thing I can come
up with as to why the king, and he didn't know anything about
Esther at this time, that's the only reason I know why the king
would sign such a decree to kill all of these people. But here again, this is a picture
of the gospel. All are sentenced to death. All God's people, in themselves,
in nature, have been sentenced to death. Now in Esther chapter four, verse
eight, turn there for a second. And this decree, this was written,
it was sent out to all the provinces. And in chapter four, verse eight, it says that Mordecai, well,
let me back up just a minute before verse eight. Mordecai
learned of this, and so he put on sackcloth and sat in the middle
of the street and bewailed the fact that the Jews were gonna
be put to death. And the word got back to Ezra. I mean Esther, so she sent this
man by the name of Hathotz down to Mordecai to find out what's
going on. And Mordecai, what he did was
he says he gave, that is Hathotz, he gave him a copy of the writing
of the decree that was given at Shushan to destroy them, to
show it unto Esther and to declare it unto her and charge her that
she should go in unto the king to make supplication unto him
and to make requests before him for her people. She was the only
one who could do it. Esther is a picture of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Who else can make an appeal to
the king, but her, she was and is a picture. Okay, look over
at verse 11. And this is what Esther writes
back. Mordecai says, you gotta go do
something. you gotta go talk to the king because we're all
gonna die. And Esther writes back a note
to Mordecai and she says, in verse 11, all the king's servants
and the people of the king's provinces do know that whosoever,
whether man or woman, shall come unto the king and to the inner
court who's not called There is one law of his to put him
to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden
scepter that he may live. But I have not been called to
come in unto the king these 30 days." Here is a picture of the
unapproachable God of heaven and earth. We do not, of ourselves,
walk in and talk to the king. That's evident right here. Put
to death any man that thinks he's gonna come to God in his
own self, in his own works, in his own righteousness, the death
sentence is upon him. The scripture says many will
come in that day saying, Father, we've done this and we've done
that. Oh, they want to boast about what they've done, and
the Lord's going to say, depart from me. God is not approachable
in ourselves, and that's what this text is telling us, except
for one reason. It talks about the golden scepter. Look at it again. It says, except
such to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter that he
may live. And I would imagine, it doesn't
say there, but anybody coming into the king, whether he's called
or not, is gonna have to touch that golden scepter, and I'm
gonna tell you why. That golden scepter is God's
scepter of righteousness. Psalms 45, six says this. Thy
throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter. That pole
that the king held, as he sat on the throne, that pole is a
golden scepter. The scepter of thy kingdom, that
scepter is representative of the sovereignty of the king,
in this case, the sovereignty of God. That scepter is the scepter
of righteousness. Thy throne, O God, forever and
ever, is forever and ever. The scepter of thy kingdom is
a right scepter. And then Hebrews 1.8, it says
the same thing again. But unto the Son, he saith, thy
throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness
is the scepter of thy kingdom. Now let me ask you a question.
Who Who among us is able to touch that scepter of righteousness
in ourselves? No one. All have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. Every time I read that, I think
the Lord is awful kind there when he says we've come short.
You think about that word, it's farther than short. God's on this very end as far
as he can go, we're on the left hand the other way as far as
he can go. We fall far short of the scepter of righteousness. 1 Timothy 6.16 says this, speaking
of God, this unapproachable God, that we dare not try to come
to. We dare not. It says, who only
hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach
unto, whom no man has seen, nor can see, to whom be honor and
power everlasting. He's not talking there about
a physical life, although we can interpret it that way. He's
talking about the glory of God The majesty of God, the sovereignty
of God is so, so overwhelming that in our minds and in our
hearts, we can't rise up to that. My ways, he says, are above your
ways. My thoughts are above your thoughts. As high as the heaven is above
the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts, and my ways
above your ways. is to us incomprehensible. Now, in Esther 4, verses 13 and
14, let's look at that for a minute, it says, then Mordecai, after
Esther says, hey, anybody goes in there, they're gonna die,
they're gonna die. If I go in there, I'm gonna die.
Esther, Mordecai writes back in verse 13, then Mordecai commanded
to answer Esther, think not with thyself that thou shalt escape
the king's house more than all the Jews. You're a Jew, you're
a Jew, you think you're gonna escape? For if thou altogether
holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement
and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place. but
down thy father's house shall be destroyed. And listen to this,
and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such
a time as this? Our Lord was the lamb, the scripture
says, slain from the foundation of the world. He's always been
slain in the mind of God, but in time, There was a time for
him to come. And that was the very time that
he did come. The time as this, as he says. This is what he was brought for.
He says this in John 18, 37. Pilate therefore said unto him,
art thou a king then? And Jesus answered and said,
thou sayest that I'm a king. To this end was I born. and for this cause came I into
the world. And how many times do we read
in scripture where the Lord says my time's not yet come? But his
time was come, and it was appointed at that particular time. Now in Esther 4, verse 16, here
again is Esther's answer back to Mordecai. He says, go gather
together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast
ye for me, and neither eat or drink three days, night or day. I also and my maidens will fast
likewise. And so will I go in unto the
king, which is not according to the law. And if I perish,
I perish here, Esther has committed to dying. In her mind, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. The law is this. And so here
we have again the picture of our Lord. Our Lord came for this
earth for one purpose. That is to glorify God. That
is to restore God's right as God over man, and he did that
by being obedient. He was the obedient servant of
God. And he came to die. And as I
was working on this message, I got, can you imagine a man
from his youth till he's able to realize and think that he
knows he's gonna die? This man, Christ Jesus our Lord,
knew that his ultimate end was death on the cross. He was about
his father's work. Now it says here, in this verse, it says, fast. He says, fast ye for me. You
know what fast means? We all think we know what fast
means. I thought I did. You know what fast means? Hand over your mouth, that's
what it means. No nourishment going in, no sustenance. And so here's our Lord again. My God, he cried on the cross,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The sustenance of
his spiritual life from God the Father was forsaken. He stood
alone. He suffered the winepress of
God's wrath alone. And it also says, I thought this
was unusual, he says, or she says, and neither eat nor drink
three days, night or day. Now you normally think, well,
you know, I'm going to fast for three days, but notice she says
three days, night and day. That Lord was in that grave three
nights, three days and three nights. That's no coincidence
that it was written that way. This is a picture of Christ in
that grave without any sustenance. It is said he had no nourishment,
no support from God the Father because he had sin on him, no
sin in him. Let us all be careful that he
was sinless, perfectly sinless, But he had sin on him, he had
the sin of God's people. He had your sins on him, and
he had my sins on him as he laid in that grave three days and
three nights. And again, she says, if I perish,
I perish. And the scripture in Psalms 50
says, the Lord set his face like a flint toward the cross. If I perish, I perish. And he
cried in the garden of Gethsemane, Lord, if it be thy will that
this cup might pass from thee. But not my will, but thy will. Again, this was the lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. Now look over at chapter five,
verse one. And it says, now it came to pass
on the third day, after they fasted, that Esther put on her
royal apparel and stood in the inner court
of the king's house, over against the king's house. And the king
sat upon his throne in the royal house over against the gate of
the house. Here Esther bedecked herself
in the finest, and here is our risen Lord in a glorified body. God raised him from the dead,
and he raised him with a glorified body. Not that old sin-cursed
body that was put in the grave. Not that body that had sin on
him, but a glorified body. and he was about to enter into
the presence of the Father. He was about to enter into the
Holy of Holies that we read about in the Old Testament tabernacle.
You remember that? That the priest went into that
holy place only one time a year with blood to make atonement
for the sins of the people. And here Christ, in that glorified
body, in his royal apparel, about to enter into the king's palace
in his presence. John 20, 17, this is what he
told Mary Magdalene. Jesus saith unto her, touch me
not. Remember, he met her outside
the tomb. Jesus saith unto her, touch me
not, for I am not yet ascended to my father. but go to my brethren
and say unto them, I ascend to my father and your father and
to my God and your God. And so, in his risen body, in
his perfection, God raised him from the dead, he entered into
heaven. the very presence of God in the
Holy of Holies. Look at verse two of chapter
five. And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing
in the court, that she obtained favor in his sight. This is my
beloved son and who I'm well pleased. He was well pleased. And the king held out to Esther
the golden scepter that was in his hand. So Esther drew near
and touched the top of the scepter. That scepter of righteousness
again, Christ entered into the holiest of holy, where God the
Father sat on the throne, and the Father held out the scepter
of righteousness to the Son And the son touched it. Why? Because
he was righteous. He was absolutely perfect. No sin. Accepted of. The father. John 829 says this. And he that sent me is with me. The father hath not left me alone,
for I always do those things that please him. He pleased the
father. He pleased the father. Now, in
Nestor 5.3, look what the king says. Then said the king unto
her, what wilt thou, Queen Nestor? And what is thy request? It shall
be even given thee to have the kingdom. Men will never give
up everything they have. Here he's gonna give up half
the kingdom and no more. Not so with God. Not so with
the Lord Jesus Christ. It says here in Hebrews 2, listen
to this. Here's what God gave to the Lord
Jesus Christ. More than half the kingdom. says,
thou has put all things under subjection. Thou has put all
things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all
in subjection under him. He left nothing that is not put
under him. Christ, when he entered into
the glory, of God the Father, he sat down in his right hand,
and he now has the scepter of righteousness in his hand. And in the gospel, he invites
men, no, he commands men to come and touch that scepter of righteousness,
not in ourselves, No, no, no, no, that's not gonna work. You'll
never get that scepter of righteousness reached out to us if we're coming
in ourselves. It just will not happen. God
is holy and we must be holy. But in Christ, we're accepted
in God because God has accepted Christ. And if Christ has accepted
us, then we can go and touch that. Scepter of Righteousness,
and God bids us to come. Come to the throne of grace,
he says, that you might find help in time of need. It's opened. It's opened. It's opened because
of Christ and his blessed work. If we don't come through him,
we're not coming. There's no other way. There's
no other way because God looks at him before he looks at us. And if we be in him, then we
are as Christ is himself. And now in closing, I'll just
wind this down. We see the gospel here. This
is the gospel pictured in the life of these people. Actually,
and I don't like to use this word, but it's the providence
of God acted out in people's lives. It truly happened. This is not a parable. This is
not And as you read on through the text, it says the king rescinded
that order because of Esther. And God has rescinded the order
of death to his people because of the Lord Jesus Christ. With that, I close. I pray that
God will give us some sight. I encourage you, go read this
whole thing, because there's much more. As you read through
this, and I've read this before, and I didn't bring it out, but
Haman himself is a picture of Satan. We see it. I mean, there's
so much more than what I've given you, but I encourage you, read
it. Read it. Take time and study it. And with
that, we'll close and say amen. Gary, you come and lead us in
a song.