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June 30, 2021 12:00 am
Mankind frankly is busy, enterprising and entertaining playing Mary eating, parenting, educating, working, investing, and for the unbeliever is an attempt to drown out the journal article I read just as we frankly admitted the health industry is passionate about what was it that help us live healthier lives.
It's an all out attempt to help us avoid how you lived your life. Everyone is what's going to happen after you die, the gospel is the central theme of Scripture in both the old and new Testaments. So what role does the gospel play in Esther's story. What does the book of Esther. Tell us about God's character and divine plan is justice and mercy were looking at all this today here on wisdom for the hearts Stephen baby is in his final lesson from the series called Esther with this message, the gospel according to Esther my life and I quick trip this past summer to Kitty Hawk. The monument stands celebrating mankind's first flight in what would become known as an airplane to sons, brothers, the Protestant pastor had solved the riddle of flight.
They figured out a thing called wing warping system that manipulated the edges of the wings, thereby allowing them using the wind to rise said turn or fly straight record recorded on December 17, 1903 Orville Wright won the toss of the coin over his brother Wilbur climbed aboard their homemade craft create created back in her bicycle shop back airplane then coasted down the sandbar on a wooden rail and rose into the air for all of 12 seconds to travel 120 feet hundred and 20 feet made history when the next time you go to the Raleigh-Durham International Airport. You'll see outside the parking deck there on the grass. What looks like modern art, it's actually a dedication to this flight. The lighted portion of the sculpture represents the distance of that first light which took place, of course, North Carolina which we cannot claim about humility with something to do with Walmart and I were there. This historic event. I picked up the 500 page biography of these two boys simply entitled the bishops boys, it catalogs the invention of these very creative engineers and the way they tackled the mysteries and unraveled them, and in the years they spent in court fighting for their patents as people try to take them away. One of the things that intrigued me. As I read their biography was the fact that their father was originally the one who had said to them, God never intended man to fly really never supported their efforts all that much thought they were dabbling in something that really would make any money or make much of a difference, but six years later after that first flight to Kitty Hawk. Father climbed on board. Orville was at the controls they would circle a field, staying off seven minutes if you want second, the boys had been concerned about their father's reception of their invention firsthand really said much about it, even though by now the boys were famous in their invention, world-renowned. I love the fact of the even though he never asked fly he did on this occasion and at one point during the flight there 81-year-old father leaned close to his sons ear and shouted above the combined roar of the engine and propeller's. These words higher Orville higher grade 11.
Thank you dad redeemed yourself go higher now on a 90 foot hill stanza 60 foot high monument to the memory of these boys their invention, which in many ways do change our world for I think monuments are great idea. I think memorials are wonderful. It's good to set aside seasons, days establish some structures that cause us to remember like Thanksgiving time. Originally set aside by the governor of Massachusetts to thank God for his Provident with the governors today would call their states to thank God for his problem. We've added to that day. Other days I got countries dotted with memorials, calendar events, dedicated long, not all of them wonderful days to remember, but important to remember the Holocaust Memorial. Perhaps you've been through the sacrifice of our veterans. The efforts of past presidents like Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln are worth remembering. These are our special days and beautiful monuments. In fact, under the strong conviction that they think tend to give our past due significance and they give our present needed perspective. There are moments worth remembering the last few paragraphs of the Jews referred to as the scroll of Esther are nothing more or less than the establishment of a Jewish Thanksgiving day, Esther and Mordecai are not about to allow the Jews did, and future generations that may because we tend to forget overlook the problems and I want you to know that what they established 500 years before the birth of Christ is still being celebrated to this. It's called the feast of Purim nephew turned back to Esther chapter 9 all hop and skip around a bit with the text that we have left the last few paragraphs you'll notice that the memorial began really is a spontaneous celebration.
Figure 17 of chapter 9 tells us that you not after all the fighting stopped, the Jews defended their lives against those who hated them rescued from certain death, that the feasting begins.
The war was over. The latter part of her 17 other Ezra who is the writer comments that that is just feasting and rejoicing and basically what happens is it it is spontaneously broke out all around the kingdom. The war was over lives were spared. It was, it was literally blown combined with celebration at the celebration that spilled out onto the streets in a rather menacing pictures after the news hit the airwaves in World War II was over just ended people spilled out of the streets, dancing and laughing and hugging each other. Total strangers practicing the classic photograph of the crowded spilled and in the Times Square just after the news was delivered in all the hubbub of a sailor dressed in his uniform is had grabbed a young nurse in his arms just come from the hospital and planted a big one on her and that was all right. Total strangers it was all right for two reasons. One, because the war was over and to because she wasn't my daughter is okay, we frankly can imagine you for maybe look through the war there was no Mordecai defines what will become a holiday tradition. Look at verse 21. He's obliging them in one of several letters that he and Esther will be involved in writing, but he's obliging them to celebrate the 14th day of the month radar, which corresponds to our month of March, the 15th day of the same month annually why why why do we want to celebrate because on those days, the Jews, rid themselves of their enemies and it was a month which was turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from morning into a holiday they should make them days of feasting and rejoicing and sending portion gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor, was actually two days of celebration out around the perimeter of the kingdom. It would be on March 14 inside the wall cities including Jerusalem. It would be the 15th because your member they had that one extra day of fighting, which places the Jews defended themselves against their and since we got here and what you have here is Thanksgiving and Christmas all rolled into one celebration. This is their day of deliverance and the scroll of Esther thus becomes a national monument, as it were, to Jewish deliverance and the feast of Purim becomes a national holiday that I found it interesting in my study that during World War II the Nazis absolutely hated any mention of the book of Esther for obvious reason that one historian recorded this little side note, that if a Jew arrived at one of the concentration camps in the possession of any fragment or the entire book of Esther. That Jew was immediately put to death. I want to know message of hope coming here. They didn't want any of deliverance whispered among those who were marked for death inside these death camps.
And still I discovered that many of the inmates of our switch dog howling for Blanca produce written copies of the book of Esther from memory, and then huddled together reading it quietly in secret, during the feast day so convicted think that the backdrop would be a concentration camp and that would be the context for remember clinging to hope tenacious hope in an invisible God was.
I've studied this book with you over these last few months I have found in the book of Esther.
Wonderful analogies and illustrations of the gospel and without torturing the text I want to spell out for you today would simply call the gospel according to short recap and refresh this our last day of exposition from the school to gospel which leads ultimately to helping us remember our deliverance from eternal death and life, this eternal reversal is only getting 567 Annaly metadata updater 10 of the last we would have any reason to stop this lunch is overrated thing number one a commoner becomes a queen I love this truth, it struck me at the very outset of chapter 1 and chapter 2 the fact that a commoner could be chemically for the first time in Persian history.
From what we know. The king reverses centuries of tradition and allows the crown to rest on the head of a common peasant and orphan foreigner, the child of exile becomes the bride of the king, the greater one.
We fallen sons of Adam: daughters of Eve, as he is so politically described, given full rights and privileges as if we were of the same biological family adopted son ship. Paul wrote, through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will in Ephesians chapter 1 verse five and that if you can imagine that that's not the ending of it is a future for us of elevation and promotion and the crowning of us is the bride of Christ our future destiny is to reign with him throughout a literal thousand year millennial kingdom second Timothy chapter 2 verse 12 and then beyond that, to reign with him throughout the internal states of the new heavens and the new hire.
I needed to remind myself today and I did in preparation for today that that I wasn't going to be preaching to commoner's. I would be preaching to Royal preaching the presence preaching to princes and princesses who are destined to become king and queen, reigning with Christ. What happened to Esther effectively will happen to you and me is a coming day of final and ultimate reversal in their one day you're gonna lay aside the common cause of mortality and put on the clothing of immortelle when they are going to move out of houses made with bricks and sticks and plaster plastic and metal, and is made out of Jules set up on shimmering gold when they are going to lay down your burdens of failure and imperfections for the last time and pick up a glorified body perfected in holiness forever when I put aside in a way, sorrow and sadness and enter his courts with thanksgiving fully, perfectly, totaling a day is coming. Ladies and gentlemen, when you put off fear and uncertainty as you speak to your invisible king to that day when you look directly without hesitation or cowardice or insecurity, and with perfect love, communicate the one who is your patrol of eye gets me excited pretty good. Need to practice that okay for next Sunday because the time is coming, in a moment you've been chosen, we altogether commoner's common people to be wedded second analogy that strikes me from this gospel of Esther is bound up in the seated king. As you know is a lot we could Heyman to publish a decree that it is in your revocable edict. So likewise, it strikes me that all of humanity is under an irrevocable. The Bible says it is appointed on the man once to what die and after that the wife judgment. Hebrews chapter 9 verse 27 to point out the man once to die, and then you face God also struck by the fact that the Jewish people during the days of Esther were not condemned to die.
Follow this carefully because of what they've done. They were condemned to die because of who they were.
They were Jews.
Suppose that that alone carried the death penalty in the kingdom of Persia to commit some long list of crimes against the crown to come underneath his edict.
They simply had to belong to the Jewish race today all of humanity is under the unit that you do bad things, you know that the dirty dozen.
The bad nine. Whatever to get underneath the edict. The truth is the moral man and the murderer will experience the same thing. Death the man in the Batman stand shoulder to shoulder in this experience the educated and the wealthy don't have a leg up over and against the poor and the illiterate graveyards around the city, state, country in the world are silent testimonies to the impartiality of his edict. It touches the soul, God signed into law the eating, going all the way back to Adam and Eve and that original fall to the New Testament era when Paul delivered again, restating the truth in Romans chapter 6 verse 23 the wages of sin is what death the paycheck for simply belonging to a fallen, sinful human race is down.
Statistics are staggering. It is one out of every one who dies, so also the unit of death has been delivered to our world.
It is written on the heart of every human being in the older they get like me, the more they contemplate that unalterable fact I am going to die and I read recently of Oliver Winchester and his wife Sarah who lived in New Haven, Connecticut Oliver Winchester was the inventor of the rifle named after himself. The first truly repeating rifle was put to great use by the Union Army during the Civil War, governments and private contracts made this man and his wife wealthy almost beyond belief.
Four years after they were married they gave birth to little girl named Danny. The baby died about two weeks old. Sarah was so shattered she withdrew into herself and nearly lost hardly able to recuperate from that Oliver, her husband contracted tuberculosis died, Sarah became heir to this vast fortune with no amount of money could lessen her grief at a friend's suggestion and it was an unfortunate suggestion. Sarah sought to contact her deceased husband through spiritist medium during the session. The medium informed her that her husband was in the room to deliver through her a message to Sarah.
The message was simply this family was cursed because of the invention of the rifle spirits were seeking vengeance message also said that she needed to move to a remote location and build a house for the spirits that had fallen for this weapon.
He also told her through this medium that if she never stopped building the house she would live. She stopped, she would die. Sarah immediately sold her home in New Haven Connecticut moved west with her fortune bought a home that was under construction. Sitting on hundred and 62 acres of land and immediately throw away the building plans for 36 years. The construction crew built and rebuilt, altered, changed, constructed one section of the house after another. The sound of hammers and saws never sees railway cars brought in for supplies and every morning Sarah would meet with Armand to sketch out some new rooms would be added to rooms. I have read wings added the wings levels turn in the towers and peaks staircases that lead to nowhere doors opening to nothing.
Closets opened to blank walls hallways even doubled back upon themselves as the house became a vast expensive maze designed to both. She said house and confuse the evil spirits that tormented her mind, Sarah Winchester depleted her fortune building this vast, confusing, sprawling mansion and then on 9 September fourth 1922. After yet another conference. The medium in her séance room. She climbed in the bed, died in her sleep at the age of 83 she had believed that as long as she continued building.
She would stay alive. She was wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, mankind frankly is busy, busy with hammers and saws, enterprising and entertaining and playing marrying eating parenting, educating, working, investing, and for the unbeliever. All of it is an attempt to drown out the I think about it that one journal article I read just this week, very frankly admitted that the health industry is passionate about one thing I wasn't there to help us live healthier lives as they can have.
It's an all-out attempt to help us avoid that is not for being healthy two point mankind is raising around that it is merely raising to keep its appointment because this is the Kings Bibles. But then comes a ray of hope. There is another analogy in the gospel of Esther is the will simply call the intercession of Esther. After three days in solitude. Esther suddenly appears without any introduction. She suddenly standing the presence of the king, she intercedes on behalf of. She willingly risks her life to save the life of her own people.
And if I die then I die, I discovered that many Jewish rabbis and scholars have believed that the three days of solitude experienced by Esther are mysteriously linked to the three days of Jonah inside the whale and for those of us who believe the gospel of Christ.
We know that is the sign three days and nights in two followed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Martin Luther, the reformer wrote of this same gospel analogy and I quote him translated from German to read in English on the third day after judgment transpired on the cross. Jesus Christ arose guaranteeing safety to enter God's presence to will reach out in faith to touch the scepter of the king, which is in the shape of a cross. The good news of the gospel is what unites us as brothers and sisters in Christ. Stephen's message today is called the gospel according to Esther, there's actually more to this message but because of time working to stop right here and resume this lesson. Next time you've been listening to Stephen Davey here on wisdom for the heart. Stephen's been working his way through the book of Esther and this is the last lesson in that series. We have a gift we'd like to send you. If you haven't already seen it. Our ministry publishes a monthly magazine called heart to heart each month you'll be blessed by the articles that explore important aspects of the Christian faith. We also want to help you spend time with God personally each day. So we have a devotional that you can use. We send heart-to-heart each month as our gift to all of our wisdom partners. If you're not one of our partners. We'd like to send you the next three issues so that you can see this resource for yourself. You can sign up online@wisdomonline.org you can sign up by email. If you write to info@wisdomonline.org and be sure and give us your full mailing address so that the magazine gets to you and of course you can call us at 86 648 Bible or 866-482-4253.
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