Good morning. Good to see each one here this morning. Y'all was looking at the rain in Florida. They actually had, in some places, more inches of rain than they had in Asheville. But you have to look at it like this. If you've got a rain gauge, right, that big, same size all the way down, if it rains an inch, it's an inch deep. Now then, imagine you had a one-inch wide group board three miles long. All that water runs into that rain gauge. And that's what happened however high the mountain was above the rivers, all those inches of rain come to one spot. So that's what caused the catastrophic flooding up there is so much water in one spot. And the further you got down the mountain, then the more water you had. And I know you've seen the pictures. Some places just washed away, just washed away. And we do need to pray for those. And any way you can do to help them, I know it would be greatly appreciated and greatly needed. So we'll be going into lesson two this morning, a king and his power. You know, we have leaders that come and go, whether it's the United States or other countries. I know in some countries they, yes sir? I'm sorry. And Sheila's not in here either. We'll get them, hopefully, well she may not be in here. Brenda's not in here. They're not in the drawer. Brother, you go in my office, look straight, almost the center of the bookshelf, about this high. Maybe in a bag, may not be. Sorry about that. So, you know, we have leaders that do not love God. If you have one that loves God, that's a rarity. Some don't carry the way and some hate God. And I think this is with Ahasuerus in the book of Esther. I don't know that he was a man that hated God, but he certainly wasn't concerned with God. He was concerned about himself. And that can be discouraging, and it's discouraging to see our leaders the way they are today, but we have to realize our security does not rest in a person. It rests in the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. Because of God's sovereignty, all human power is limited. And a king's power is limited, a president's power is limited, whatever the title is, is limited by God. Although Ahasuerus was ungodly, God still showed himself to his people. Now, we can look and say, well, if we had a good leader that loved God, and we could figure out how it could be done. But we don't have a good leader that loves God. God still knows how it's done. He already knows how it's going to be done. So far as goals for this lesson, For us to have peace and knowing that no matter who is ruling, God is on the throne. And to realize that God sometimes uses ungodly leaders as tools to accomplish his ultimate purpose. And three, trust that God is aware of our present circumstances and actively working to bring about his goodwill. And this was a little unusual, we got four split up into four different parts. One is the realm of Persian power, then the revelation of a wicked ruler, the reasoning of ungodly men, and the ruling hand of God. So we'll read verses. Now, remember lesson one was just sort of an over look of all of the lesson. Now we're going back to Esther chapter 1 and verse 1 and we'll go through the book of Esther. Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, this is Ahasuerus which reigned from India even into Ethiopia over 127 provinces that in those days when the king Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom which was in Shushan the palace In the third year of his reign, he made a feast into all his princes and his servants, the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces being before him. When he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesty many days, even a hundred and four score days. And when these days were expired, the king made a feast unto all the people that were present in Shushan the palace, both unto great and small, seven days in the court of the garden of the king's palace. where were white, green, and blue hangings fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble. The beds or couches were of gold and silver upon a pavement of red and blue and white and black marble. And they gave them drink and vessels of gold, the vessels being diverse, one from another, and royal wine in abundance according to the state of the king. And the drinking was according to the law. None did compel, for so the king had appointed to all the officers of his house that they should do according to every man's pleasure. Also, vastly the queen made a feast for the women in the royal house which belonged to King Ahasuerus. Now of course the main theme of Esther again is the providence of God and When we speak of the providence of God, again, we're talking about God's ability to see beforehand what's going to happen, but not only to see, but to provide the needs before they come up. When the Lord sent the Jews into Babylon captivity, He knew the Babylonians would fall to the Persian Empire. And also that the Persian empire would have a king named Cyrus that would let the people go back to build the tabernacle. 2 Chronicles 36, 22, and 23. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia. All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me, and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him, and let them go up." Of course, we covered before that this was I can't remember exactly, but over 100 years before this happened, it was written in the Bible. Or rather, the prophet wrote it down. Babylonians come in and destroyed everything Jews had and took them away They couldn't foresee like I said, we can see if there's a godly power how God could work things out But we don't understand or we can't foresee how God's want to work something out when wicked people are in power But God did exactly that He had a plan for the restoration of Israel and he knew that what needed to be done, and he is always overruling in our affairs. Hazrus was the most powerful man in the world at that time. Nobody before Hazrus, nobody had ever had that much power, that much wealth, and nobody was ever over that large of a kingdom before. He was powerful, but he was limited. Every ruler is limited by the sovereignty of God. So number one, the realm of Persian power. And we looked at some maps in the first lesson. So A is analyze geographically. So we have a map of present of present day map of Persia. Now, you see in the brown, now I did color in Lebanon and Israel because you couldn't see those two countries. They would actually be brown also, part of Persia. But you see the size of Persia and then Israel is in red. That's the size of Israel. So you see the power that Persia had, the vastness. And if you look, if you can see it, that black dot is Shushan. And the reason when it says Shushan the palace, that's the name of the palace. It's also the name of the city. It's in Iran. So that's what we're talking about. Of course, we know what kind of power Iran is today, and we know a lot about Iran today, but this was back in the Bible times. Again, had 127 provinces, which were countries taken over by Persia, by Babylonia and then Persia. Largest empire so far in the world. And expanded military might was very, very great. In Daniel 7, Persia is represented by a bear, an animal with brute force and strength, and so was the Persian army was brutal and strong. Now, to give you a little bit of grasp of how big their military might was, historians say that they had 2.5, a standing army of 2.5 million men. There is no country today that has a standing army that big. Some close. China's the closest. But 2.5 million soldiers. And then, well, next slide, we analyze monetarily. So, of course, if he had this much land, this much power, then there was much wealth brought in as well. And he won, his wealth is shown in a feast. Esther 1 shows us the king's elaborate feast. 180 days and then seven more days on top of that. So a feast for 187 days. We don't even think about anything like that. You might hear of a festival that runs for a month. But for 187 days it was just pure extravagance. Esther 1, 3, and 4. was in the third year of his reign he made a feast to all his princes and nobles and in verse four tells us it was a hundred and four score days now historians believe that he did this to entice uh... his rulers under him uh... to have another war against Greece so what that tells us is we have to be careful when we are in the presence of somebody that is wealthy or somebody that has power, not to be intimidated by them that we would do the wrong thing because we're in their presence or because they're, you know, to be lured by their flattery or bribery. Proverbs 23, one and three, when thou saidest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee. and put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite, be not desirous of his dainties, for they are deceitful meat. So Proverbs is telling us you would be better off to cut your throat than to give in to the whim of a ruler just because it's going to benefit him. Remember when we studied J. Frank Norris of the, well, this was in the Baptist history class, how that he had a church, he took a church in Texas. Every wealthy person in the town, I can't even remember if it's Dallas or where it was, was a member of the church. He had anything he wanted. He had a great house, all the clothes he wanted, whatever we wanted to drive. Of course, this was in the 30s, 40s, but they were wicked. They made liquor, all sorts of illegal activities, and that was his members. So, he had to clean it up, and to come down to it, he actually had to shoot somebody in his office, because they were there to kill him, because he was trying to straighten everybody out. So we have to be careful, and I'm not saying that J. Frank Norris shouldn't have took the church. I'm just saying we have to be careful. He did not fall to the influence of these men. Although they give him all this stuff, they thought they had bought him, but they had not. Don't be tempted with such dainties, but also don't do the opposite. Don't be impressed by somebody because they have something, and don't go around trying to impress other people. Sometimes we're prone to desire attention and honor. And we don't get that attention and then we get bitter. We shouldn't do that. We shouldn't desire to be in the forefront. And then number two, shown in material possessions. Verses six and seven, it tells all the colors of the tapestry and everything. a pavement of red, drinking golden vessels, probably all these vessels had been taken from different kingdoms and brought into Shushan, and this shows all the wealth. And these colors in that day, you know, if you studied Lydia in the Bible, she was a seller of purple, and she was rich because she could make purple clothes. And it just comes from dye from a little fish. But it was very hard to do in that day, not like it is today. If you had colorful clothes, you were rich. And they just had all these tapestries and curtains and everything showing his wealth. And it was actually probably some of these things were 60 feet long. Again, according to historians, that's not in the Bible. But some, this is renderings of Shoe Sand Palace, different artist drawings from the information that's, you know, given. One thing they can go by is there's still like a substructure of the palace still there, like a footing and a little bit of the building left. But different people have rendered it differently. Pretty magnificent looking there. There's another look at it from another person's perspective, might have been there. And then that one. And you can see just the extravagance of King Ahasuerus. C will be analyzed prophetically. But God knew all along he would use King Ahasuerus in the bigger sequence of the story that he had planned for Israel. So prophetically, again we said in Daniel chapter 7 verse 5, it refers to Persia being a bear. And verse 5 says, and behold another beast A second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it, between the teeth of it, and they said thus, until it arise, devour much flesh. Now, this was the type of person that Ahasuerus was, but God had plans to use him. No one ever ascends the throne or ascends the leadership of a country without God being in control of him and he fully intended to bring Ahasuerus down. So, when we look back at prophecies that's been fulfilled, how does that help us today? Well, it lets us know that the prophecy that hasn't been fulfilled will be fulfilled one day. Now, we don't know when that will be, but we know it will be. We can look forward to the things that's in the Bible that has not been fulfilled and know that they are going to happen. So what prophecies have yet to be fulfilled? We'll name some of them. The rapture, the judgment seat of Christ, the marriage supper, the millennial reign, the war of Gog and Magog, and then continuing for all eternity with God. We know that's coming in our lives because if we've received Christ as Savior. Now we will analyze this scripturally. So the Bible says a lot about rulers such as Ahasuerus. There's many of them in the Word of God. We know probably the one that would come to mind first would be Pharaoh in Egypt and God brought him down with the ten plagues. Nebuchadnezzar He claimed too much power and he was driven away from men and actually eat grass before he was brought back in. Belshazzar, after Nebuchadnezzar, saw the finger of God writing on the wall. Sennacherib learned at the gates of Jerusalem when the angel of the Lord smoked 185,000 troops just by his presence. Herod the first learned this when he was dying being eaten by worms after receiving glory that belonged to God so God we don't know when God is going to show his power and he may let some men go and we never see anything like this but we do know in the background God is in control nobody has power unless God allows them to have it But we don't need to sit back and try to figure out, well, why is God allowing this to happen? We're not gonna figure it out. We're not gonna figure it out. That's like figuring out, why did God save me? I'm not gonna figure it out. I just believe it. And we have to know, we have to realize, as children of God, that God is in control. He has the ultimate authority. And all authority comes from God. But one day every leader will bow to Jesus, Philippians 2, 9 through 11. Wherefore God hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name. That is the name of Jesus. Every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth. And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. We know that our country was founded on godly principles. And if you read the history books today, it's not going to tell you that. So don't go get one and try to go by that. Probably most of you, when you were in school, you were taught that. But of course, we said, who writes history? Those in power, right? So they've changed the history books. But George Washington said this on Thanksgiving proclamation of 1789. And they would tell you George Washington was not a godly person. But he said, whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and only to implore his protection and favor. but rather than live on conviction of godly values, most politicians are pragmatists, or in other words, what do I have to do or agree to to stay in office? Not what's best for the country, the state, the county, the nation, whatever, or the world, but what will keep me in office the longest? What will get me the most money? What can I do now that when I'm out of office, I can make millions of dollars? And most federal politicians, if that's the right word, federal, they can make millions of dollars just going around making speeches when they get out. They don't get $100 for a speech. They get $150,000, $250,000 for going somewhere and making a speech. Now while it's discouraging to subject ourselves to ungodly leaders, we must recognize that their time is temporary, and again, controlled by the Almighty God. So no matter who's in the Oval Office, and no matter who's in the Oval Office on January the 7th, if it changes or not, of course we know Biden won't be there, but whoever does get in, God is still in control. No matter who sits in the seat of prominence, they are under the authority of God's providence. So, we need to remember that we are on the winning side. The Persian power was vast, but the power of God has no limits. It's sort of like I don't know if you've been, if you looked at any of what it says, the Hubble telescope is found when the universe so many light years away began and it can tell exactly, I don't know what you're making up, but how vast, very vast, well God is even more vast than that. There's no measurement. of how vast God's power and knowledge is. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this day you've given us. Lord, we thank you for all your many blessings. Lord, we do want to continue to pray for those, Lord, in hurricane-stricken areas. Lord, I pray that you touch them, Lord, help them, help them get the help that they need. Lord, pray for those that's doing rescue efforts, Lord. And Lord, we pray, Lord, for a service here today, a soul be saved. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.