Chapter 2:10-18

“Esther had not revealed her people or family, for Mordecai had charged her not to reveal it. ¹¹ And every day Mordecai paced in front of the court of the women’s quarters, to learn of Esther’s welfare and what was happening to her.¹² Each young woman’s turn came to go in to King Ahasuerus after she had completed twelve months’ preparation, according to the regulations for the women, for thus were the days of their preparation apportioned: six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with perfumes and preparations for beautifying women. ¹³ Thus prepared, each young woman went to the king, and she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the women’s quarters to the king’s palace.

“¹⁴ In the evening she went, and in the morning she returned to the second house of the women, to the custody of Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch who kept the concubines. She would not go in to the king again unless the king delighted in her and called for her by name. ¹⁵ Now when the turn came for Esther (the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her as his daughter, to go in to the king, she requested nothing but what Hegai the king’s eunuch, the custodian of the women, advised. And Esther obtained favor in the sight of all who saw her.

“¹⁶ So Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus, into his royal palace, in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign. ¹⁷ The king loved Esther more than all the other women, and she obtained grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins; so, he set the royal crown upon her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. ¹⁸ Then the king made a great feast, the Feast of Esther, for all his officials and servants; and he proclaimed a holiday in the provinces and gave gifts according to the generosity of a king.”

Last week we talked about true beauty, the kind that is more than skin deep. We have all met people that are beautiful at first; their speech seems lovely, they seem to be a joy to be around, and they are even physically attractive. They could be either gender, male or female. But as you get to know them more, you begin to see that beneath the façade is a mean person, a person who is looking for an angle and who uses their charm to take advantage of others. God’s people should not be this way; we should be genuine. Be truly loving and kind, and not for gain; just be that way.

We are about to explore more about Esther. There are so many little details about this young woman that I have overlooked in the past, and as I am going through them now, it is hitting me. As I may have mentioned in previous articles, I am currently reading through the book of Proverbs; the goal was 12 times this year. But I am just about 5 times through it already, and it is changing the way that I see people. It has certainly helped me to see some things about Esther that, even though I knew, they did not weigh in my assessment of the story.

• She was obedient, submissive to authority, verse 10

Esther was a Jew. But she had been born and raised in Babylon and most likely looked and spoke like she was from Babylon. Her uncle Mordecai told her not to reveal her heritage, and she obeyed. That simple; she obeyed. The Jews were hated by pagan cultures. Satan has done a good job of trying to eradicate the people that would bring our Savior. He continues his mission in our time, as the Jews are still the most hated people in the world. The Muslims hate Jesus because He is not Ishmael, and they cannot ever have the Temple Mount as long as there are Jews in the world. And the Globalists like Biden and Clinton hate the Jews because – if Jesus is real and they know He is – He will one day rule the world, and they will have to submit to Him.

But, back to Esther, she was told by her uncle Mordecai not to reveal her heritage, and she did not; that simple.

Wow! What if we were all like this as teenagers? What if we just did what we were told? In North America the teenage years are seen as the right of rebellion; the excuse ‘well, they are just teenagers’ is often used. I use it with my kids. But the Bible has a very different view of rebellion. In 1 Samuel 15:23, we are told that rebellion as far as God is concerned is the same as witchcraft, a sin punishable by death. We should think carefully about that when we look the other way at rebellion in our kids and, to some degree, encourage it. But you can’t fix rebellion at 14; you must begin at day 1 to teach submission and obedience. This will carry kids further than anything else you teach them in life, except that they need to be saved.

Esther was equipped and ready to stand and be submissive to authority as a teenager. And as such, she was equipped to change the world and be the heroine of her people, but the foundation as submission. As such, she was equipped to be queen, unlike Vashti, who forgets her place, Esther was equipped to remember her place, and this put her in place for success. Too many of us forget our place in life, and we constantly seek something that God did not have for us. We want to push boundaries and break barriers, but many forget that God put these barriers in place for a reason.

• She understood, she did not know everything, verse 15

Esther listened to Hegai’s advice. This man served the king personally, and he knew the king. As such, it was wise for Esther to listen to him and take his advice. In the world of Google, it is not hard for the average teenager to think that they know more about life than their parents. Just because you know the answer to the questions does not mean that you know how to apply the solution. This takes skill. I can Google what is wrong with my fridge and even order the part, but I need an expert to show me how to install it right.

Esther understood that the adults in her life knew more than she did, and she sought their counsel. This is an essential lesson to learn in life; even as adults, we need to seek the wise, godly advice of others. Proverbs 12:1 says that “Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge.” Esther loved instruction; she was set up for success by her uncle Mordecai. She wanted to know. Why learn the hard way when there have been others who have traveled that path before and know the pitfalls?

In contrast, it would seem the other young ladies, relying on their charm and physical beauty, went in unprepared to meet the king’s needs. This was obviously more than sexual. In any relationship, the emotional highs and ‘googly’ eyes eventually calm down, and the real work begins. Once you get back to work and life from the honeymoon, the frequency of sex will drop down, and things like fatigue and kids can get in the way. The role of the king was a draining one; he was always on call; he had the weight of millions on his shoulders, and wars were normal in that day. He needed more than a pretty face; he needed an Esther. God sent him an Esther, and his life was never the same again.

Do you and I make this kind of difference in the lives of people? Are we the solutions that they are looking for? Do we know how to ask for advice from other godly men and women? Do we seek God’s advice in the Word? Do we want to know more, or are we happy in our ignorance?

Sadly, many Christians are happy in their ignorance; they have a cursory knowledge of the Scriptures and don’t want to go any further. The Bible offers godly wisdom and instruction for any and all endeavors of life, from marriage to parenting to being a good friend, how to run an honest business, and how to behave before royalty and those in power. It tells us how to be kids, how to be adults, and how to be grandparents. The Bible tells us who made us and to whom we will answer once this life is over. Unlike Esther, most of us simply don’t want to know. Knowledge takes work, wisdom takes discipline, and success is more about endurance than talent most of the time. Learn to want to know more, learn to ask Godly men and women that know God’s way of life, and follow the advice.

• She became the Queen, verse 16-18

Esther won the king’s heart. This is very important; it was not often that marital relationships like these were based on love. Most were marriages of convenience for political power or for peace. Esther offered neither, but the king loved her and made her queen. As we discussed before, Esther’s physical beauty was eclipsed only by the fact that she was lovely. She was submissive, and she was not full of herself; these were the qualities the king was looking for, and he did not find it in any of the women he had been with before Esther.

From the time that Esther arrived at the palace to the time she became the queen was more than a year. She had been observed by the people around the king, she had been pampered beyond all that a poor Jewish girl could ever expect, and now she was the queen. God was preparing her to make a big difference in the lives of the Jewish people. But there are steps to being where God wants you to be to make a big difference.

We, like Esther, need to learn to be submissive and obedient to those in authority; we need to be willing to seek the knowledge and wisdom of the godly people in our lives and the Word of God. Most of us want to make an ‘impact’ in other people’s lives, and as a child of God, we should be light in this dark world. But we have to live in the complete opposite of the world. Too many of our Christian young people are trying to make an impact for God by living as the world system. But God’s way is the only way He blesses; God is not interested in your ideas; He is looking for your obedience and submission to Him and His ways. Submission is almost a swear word in our modern vocabulary, but it is a very important word if we are to be useful to the Lord.

Are you wanting to make a difference? Then learn to submit, seek Godly wisdom, and obey. See 1 Samuel 15:22-23,

“So Samuel said: ‘Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.”

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)

Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Chapter 2:1-9

“After these things, when the wrath of King Ahasuerus subsided, he remembered Vashti, what she had done, and what had been decreed against her. ² Then the king’s servants who attended him said: ‘Let beautiful young virgins be sought for the king; ³ and let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom, that they may gather all the beautiful young virgins to Shushan the citadel, into the women’s quarters, under the custody of Hegai the king’s eunuch, custodian of the women. And let beauty preparations be given them. ⁴ Then let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti.’ This thing pleased the king, and he did so.

“⁵ In Shushan the citadel there was a certain Jew whose name was Mordecai the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite. ⁶ Kish had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captives who had been captured with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away. ⁷ And Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother. The young woman was lovely and beautiful. When her father and mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter.

“⁸ So it was, when the king’s command and decree were heard, and when many young women were gathered at Shushan the citadel, under the custody of Hegai, that Esther also was taken to the king’s palace, into the care of Hegai the custodian of the women. ⁹ Now the young woman pleased him, and she obtained his favor; so he readily gave beauty preparations to her, besides her allowance. Then seven choice maidservants were provided for her from the king’s palace, and he moved her and her maidservants to the best place in the house of the women.”

Last week we looked at the idea of Absolute Power in the hands of a man, the king. While we do not really have examples of that today for the most part except for regimes like North Korea or Iran, we understand that kind of power in our Lord. I will tell you that I have had to rely on that knowledge to get me through the events of this week, January 20^th, 2021. I have had to remind myself that God is in absolute control even over the President of the USA and that I should trust His plan even when I can’t see the end and the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up.

The king is now lonely and needs a queen. His servants come up with an idea that they should seek out young women, virgins from all over the kingdom, and then they should be brought to the capital where they could be pampered then one by one brought to the king to see which one he liked the most. Kind of a lottery to be the queen. If we just take a cursory count, there were 127 provinces, so there may have been at least 127 young ladies who participated in this event.

This is a good time to point out something very important: there was a correlation between young women and the fact that they were virgins. In the OT we see phrases like ‘a virgin shall conceive,’ and in some translations, they use the ‘young woman’ instead of ‘the virgin,’; thus many liberal ‘theologians’ [this is an oxymoron, by the way], say that virgin statues of Mary can be called into question. This is heresy and needs to be dealt with.

These young women would have been in their mid-teens, 15-16 or so, and they would have been virgins, all of them that came to the king. If not, they would be executed if they were found not to be virgins. The idea of virginity was taken very, very seriously among the people of the OT, especially the Jews (read Deuteronomy 22:13-20). A young woman that was not a virgin at her wedding night could be executed. So, this idea of virginity was not taken lightly. It was a matter of life or death.

In our time, 2021, it is almost a rare thing for young women, even in the Lord’s churches, to be virgins on their wedding night; but in the day of Esther, it was a very, very important thing. As well in the context of this story, Esther could not have come to the king unless she was a virgin. Mary, like Esther, was a virgin, in her mid-teens, and Jesus was born without the aid of human man, He was conceived via the Holy Spirit and is the perfect, sinless God-man.

• Mordecai, verse 5

While the book is called Esther, one of the main characters is Mordecai. Many of you will know about his role in saving the king’s life if you have ever read Esther. But his real fame is that he raised Esther in a pagan culture, and yet she grew up loving the God of Israel and was willing as a young woman to take on great responsibility, even putting her life on the line.

Mordecai, we are told, was brought with the captives from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. He would have been a counterpart with Daniel and the other three Hebrew boys we meet in Daniel 1. Mordecai, if we allow the 70 years of captivity, would have been in his eighties. He has taken care of Esther after her parents had died and he had raised her. He loved her, and she loved him. She was as a daughter to him.

I learned over the years that there is no such thing as a ‘step’ child among the Jewish people. When I was a boy, 15 years old, my father died; we buried him just before my 16^th birthday. We moved a month later to Canada, and over the next 5 years, my mom developed a relationship with my step-dad, Andy. I have never considered him a step-dad, and I have never had him introduce me as a step-son; he is my dad, and I am his son. Later on in my life, I married, and my wife had two children from a previous marriage. These are my kids; I have never introduced them as my step-kids. They are my kids, they call me Dad, and have never introduced me as a step-dad.

Mordecai loved Esther as a daughter. In like manner, there are no step-kids in the kingdom of God. You and I are born into the Kingdom through the salvation we have in Jesus, and we are joint-heirs with Jesus. God loves us as sons and daughters (1 John 3:1).

As much as we love the story of Esther, one of the greatest parts of the story is that Mordecai raised her in a pagan city, and yet she loved and served the God of Israel. This is a challenge to all of us parents; we cannot and should not use the culture around us as an excuse to not bring up our children in the ‘fear and admonition’ of the Lord. If Mordecai could do it in Shushan, you and I could do it in Toronto or New York or London; we parents have to determine and set our minds to it. The most obvious thing is that Mordecai lived what he believed and that even as a young woman, Esther was taught responsibility for others.

As the new queen, I am not spoiling anything; you know the story. She could have washed her hands of her people and wholly adopted her new role. But no, she was raised to take her faith seriously, not to shy away in the face of adversity and to do what was right, no matter the cost. Oh, that we had more adults and young people like this today in our churches! But what we have seen is that more and more, adults and kids alike do not want to take on any responsibility for others, they never witness, and they have decided to look and act like the culture around them, so they are not effective.

When the time comes to stand, they have no testimony to stand on. What about you and I and our kids? I will be the first to confess that I did not do a great job; at least my results do not reflect that. I have one son who wants nothing to do with the Lord; one daughter that, while she is in church, it is not a doctrinally sound church; and one daughter that we are raising in a Christian School and working diligently with her to prepare her to be like Esther.

• Esther, verse 7

The Bible does not say much about people’s physical appearances. We have no real physical description of Jesus other than that he was able to get lost in a crowd of Jewish guys, so he looked just like the average Jewish man. Bathsheba is described as being very beautiful. We do not know what the standard of beauty was at that time. In Esther’s case, she was lovely and beautiful.

Let us deal with the easy part; she was beautiful. Since the dress code was very conservative, most women and even men wore long robes that went to the ground; there was not much skin to speak of like we see today. Thus, her beauty would have been based primarily on her face. She would have been a beauty according to Persian standards. Her face, her eyes, her hair and other aspects would have made her beautiful. She was given further beauty preparations by the man that was in charge of the young women, which would have enhanced her natural beauty. We have the idea that all of our modern beauty techniques are new, but things like mascara, potions and lotions are nothing new in the physical beauty world.

Now the hard part; she was lovely. This was a reflection of her spirit and character. She was lovely. She was not arrogant and full of herself. We see that a lot with those blessed with physical beauty, but not Esther; she carried herself well. She respected authority (we will explore that more next time), and she was a pleasant person to be around. She endeared herself to the manager of the king’s women right away, and she had his regard and respect.

Learning how to carry yourself and present yourself is an important part of life, and especially the Christian life. There should be something that draws people to you. There should be a sweetness and a gentleness, even as men, that make people want to be around you. If people don’t want to be around you, you will never get to witness to them and share Jesus with them. We should live in such a way that people want to know why we are different. And, by the way, this does not mean being weak. Esther was not weak; she was actually a very strong young woman, but she was not arrogant, and she understood and submitted to authority.

What about you? Are you a lovely person? Do people want to be around you? Do you draw people to you by your personality, or are you a shallow person? You are beautiful on the outside, but there is no beauty below the surface? God’s people should not be that way. We should be beautiful all the way through. Take a look at Galatians 5:22-26,

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.”

Do these verses describe you and me? If yes, then we too will be lovely. Let us desire to be lovely.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)

Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca