Good morning. Well, hopefully I know some of you not on Facebook. You wouldn't have solved the course. If you're not on Facebook, I asked you to read through the book of Esther. So if you haven't got that message, if you'll start doing that, we're going to be on the book of Esther. Probably there's eight lessons, so I'm going to say in the neighborhood of 16 weeks. It's usually split it up into two weeks for each lesson. We'll see how these go. These are a little different, but somewhere in that neighborhood. So read through Esther. Make yourself familiar with the book of Esther. I think it'll help greatly the lessons as we go through because It's entirely, the next eight lessons are entirely dealing with the book of Esther. And of course we'll have other verses but that's what we're dealing with there. So, God's got this. We're going to read Esther chapter 4 verse 14. for if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time. Now this is Mordecai, the cousin of Esther, writing to her. If thou shall altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then there shall come enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place. But thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed. And who knoweth whether thou come into the kingdom for such a time as this? So Mordecai here, and we're going to be talking, we'll get into it a little more later about the sovereignty of God. And this verse is dealing with the sovereignty of God. I think you get a good sense of how much somebody believes in it when you really listen to what he said. He told his cousin that if you don't do this for God that your house will be destroyed and somebody else will stand up and do it for God. So he's saying if you don't do this, me and you both are going to die. He says it don't matter as far as the job getting done because God is going to get the job done. That's sovereignty right there. Now, this is the most familiar verse from the book of Esther. It is the John 3, 16 of Esther. It is Esther in a nutshell. And I hope, as I said, you recently read this. If not, if you didn't get the information, read that, read this whole book this coming week. And it wouldn't hurt if you read it every week while we're on this lesson and make it familiar so that when we bring up the scriptures, you say, I remember that verse. But sometimes we feel overwhelmed or discouraged by the events in our lives or the wickedness surrounding us. Sometimes we may feel that God does not see or care about us or He has forgotten us. Now, I'm not saying that we think He has. I'm saying we may feel like He has. Because if we're saved, we know He hasn't. But our flesh may feel like He has. The book of Esther assures us that the opposite is true. God does see, God does care, and he does have a plan. He's not making it up as he goes along, oh, this happened to Bart, so I need to fix, no, he's already fixed it, Bart. Whatever problems you've got, they're already fixed. You just gotta wait on it. As we study the book of Esther, we gain an amazing view of God's providence, goodness, and sovereignty. Always working on the behalf of his people. Now remember that. everything he does is on your behalf if you were saved by the blood of Jesus Christ and of course in Esther we're talking about more particularly the Jewish people but it also applies to those of us now that are saved that are part of the church always working on behalf of his people even when he is hidden from their view I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you can always tell what God is doing because you can't You see it after it happened. God sees it before it happens. Now, as a goal for this lesson, we should find peace in knowing that God is always in control of the events and history and always involved in their lives. We should understand that God is powerful enough to work in the hearts of ungodly leaders. Now, we got a lesson time coming up. And we have somebody that stands closer to biblical views than the other one. There's really no doubt about that. I'm not saying they're standing on the biblical views, but they're much closer than the other party. Now, you see, it doesn't matter which party wins. Whatever God says they must do, they must do. They might not want to do it, but if God says, you can go this far, but when you get right here, You're going to do this, as far as they can go. Now, I don't know how far God lets them go, but He does. And recognize that God's ultimate plan is for the redemption of the world. Now, He has a plan for everybody to be saved. Everybody won't be saved, but everybody could be saved if they trust in Jesus Christ. So the outline, I'll give you that. We're going to talk about his story, a story of providence, a story of grace. We're going to talk about his saints, and here we're talking about the saints in the time of the book of Esther. We actually have two separated groups. We have the captive of Israel which is there with Esther and Mordecai. But we also have the committed of Israel that has gone back into Israel and began to rebuild the temple. And then his salvation for the children of Israel and for the entire world. So we'll read that verse again, Esther 4.14. As I said, this is the crux of the whole chapter. The John 3.16 of Esther is Esther 4.14. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then there shall enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place. But thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed. And who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? So whatever God has for me to do or for you to do, if it's in his sovereign will for it to be done, when we don't do it, he'll just raise somebody else up to do it. Now, you don't have to answer these questions, but in your heart, in your mind, Do you ever feel forgotten or have you ever felt forgotten by God? Do you wonder if sometimes if you know His address, if He knows your address, if He has a plan for your life? Maybe you thought the plan was right, you had it just dead center right ahead of you and all of a sudden you thought you were there and then one day you're over here. But He knows His plan for your life if He is able to help with your needs. Sometimes we have the flesh causes us to ask these questions. Now, all those questions if I said, according to the Word of God, has God ever forgotten you? Does He know where you are? Does He have a plan for your life? Is He able to help with your needs? Yes. I mean, that's the biblical answer. That's the correct answer. But sometimes when we answer them, whether it's a yes or no question, we say yes, but, or no, but. But God doesn't have buts in his answers. You ever feel discouraged while looking at the state of our nation? Well, actually I hope you do. But as long as we know God's going to win, for patriotic Christians is saddened to see the culture and immorality and the brazen, ungodly politicians. Now, this book happens to be written, I think it's only about a year old, so this sentence, but you can go back to Oliver Greene, who I guess has been dead 40 years, something like that. He would have wrote the same thing 40 years ago. I don't think he really thought that it would get this bad. But it had. All of us can find encouragement from the story of Esther. A story that has not lost its relevance in our course of history. As a matter of fact, Esther has not been any more relevant in his day since World War II. Because Esther is about the destruction of the Jews. And of course, World War II was caused because of Hitler's desire to destroy the Jews. Esther lived in a godless culture. Remember I said that she is in the land where Nebuchadnezzar took the Israelites to. Some of them had gone back now. But she is still there in that godless culture with wicked leaders. Esther herself faced much heartache and disappointment but despite all that was going on around her she knew that God still was the sovereign ruler of the universe and that's what we have to remember in today's culture I mean we look at culture today and probably I would say everybody in here is scratching their head What in the world? What are they doing? What are they wearing? What are they not wearing? What's that in whatever part of their body? And you think about what they're doing and some of these things, I mean, there's nothing wrong with some of the things they do but it's so bizarre from the norm. You wonder what are they trying to attract attention to and you wonder what's going on. But you know that some of the things that influence why they do this and it's those influence that the influence is the bad thing and then it starts with this and it just gets worse starts with something just like any other bad thing that the devil starts he starts a little bit at a time and it gets worse From Esther's story, we learn how to stabilize our souls in the sovereignty of God. We must trust in the sovereignty of God if we're going to live a stable, stable Christian life. We hear politicians proclaim that they will stabilize the economy. The Federal Reserve will stabilize the housing market. I mean, the news said the Federal Reserve, if they'll cut the interest rate, it'll help stabilize the housing market. As soon as they cut the interest rate, it may have destroyed the housing. I mean, that's the media for you. How the CDC can stabilize a pandemic. They say they can do this, they say they can do that, but God can stabilize everything. The sovereignty of God is always stable. The sovereignty of God is the definition of stable. There's no scheme that man has ever come up with that can thwart the providences or purposes of God. Isaiah 40 and 17 says, All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him less than nothing. and vanity. In that same chapter, I'm pretty sure it is, it talks about that these things, the nations are as dust on the balance. So, if you're weighing something out and you've got to balance the way that they did in that time and you've got five pounds on this side and you want it, so you want five pounds of this and you put on there There's dust, at least a little bit, on those scales, right? Do you count it? No. You don't worry about it. God's not worried about all the strength of all the nations in the world. It's just like dust to Him. Isaiah 46, 9 and 10, Remember the former things of old, for I am God. For there is none else. I am God. And there is none like me. declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done saying my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure nothing is going to change the plan of God now Voltaire lived in what is called the Enlightenment period, a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries emphasizing reason and individualism rather than tradition. Now, of Voltaire, Mozart I won't say that he was a Christian but he definitely was a religious man and had religious beliefs and maybe he was saved. Of whom Mozart wrote his father after Voltaire's death the arch scoundrel Voltaire has finally kicked the bucket. Voltaire dreamed of the day that Christianity would be extinct and that the Bible would be nothing but a relic in a museum. In fact, he claimed that that would happen within 100 years of his death. But in fact, his house was turned into a Bible publishing house. I think he was wrong. The sovereignty of God is always stable. Though Voltaire tried to stop the spread of Christianity through his teachings, it's grown more, discontinued to grow. Truly God is not rendered powerless by the plots of evil men to overthrow him. Now, we'll get more about Esther was in Shushan, Persia. We'll get more into that and on into the lesson. That's the capital of the Persian Empire. Again, many of the Jews had already returned to Jerusalem. And in part, the book of Esther was written to remind the Jews in Jerusalem that God had not forgotten them either. Though the Israelites were scattered, God was still working in their behalf in both parts of the world where they were. In this book, we see how God provided salvation for the Jews from genocide. Of course, again, talking about Hitler, we're most familiar with the genocide of the Jews. When we talk about Hitler, that's what he tried to do. But there have been many, many attempts through the course of the ages to try to get rid of God's chosen people. But this book is more than just about the Jews. As we said, we're talking about God's sovereignty. At times, God's intervention is invisible, but it's always invincible. You don't have to see what God is doing to know that God is doing and that He will do what He said He would do. Now then, try to relate of the area of where the Jews were. This is the Persian Empire. And if you look on that lower left, I know you can't read that word, that's Jerusalem is there. And then Shushan is there. That's about a thousand miles apart. So when Nebuchadnezzar come to Jerusalem and took the Jews away, he carried them away about a thousand miles. And one of the things that rulers used to do then when they would overtake a territory, they would come in and take those people out, put them somewhere else, and then bring other people in and live there. They were easier to control that way. Because people they brought in they could control because they weren't used to that area, they didn't know anything about that. People that they took to another area they could control because they didn't know any more about that. And that was the way they chose to control people. Now, well, I said that about a thousand miles apart. If you look down below that purple area, that's Saudi Arabia. Okay, Saudi Arabia. And then over here, that is Iran. Persia basically is Iran that spread out and conquered people. It wasn't called Iran at that time, of course. And then what In the book of Esther, what Haman wanted to do was have all Jews executed in all that purple area, whether they were in those two areas or whether some of them had spread out into other areas. If they were Jew, the letter was sent to every province or every nation that Persia had conquered and they were to execute all the Jews. Now then, to sort of define sovereign, it means supreme in power, possessing supreme dominion as a sovereign ruler of the universe. Now, it says supreme, supreme means superior to all others, chief. God is the sovereign good of all who love and obey him. Now, sovereign It comes from the Latin word that we translate as super. So you could say that God is super good. He is the supreme authority of everything good. He is still the supreme authority over everything that is bad. He is the supreme authority. He is sovereign. So we need to understand sovereignty as we study through Esther because really the whole book is about God's sovereignty. Revelation 1.8, I believe it's in your outline there. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty. And the title of the book is Esther, but the book is about God. And the word God is not in the book, but it's still about God. If you just read the surface level, it just looks like a story about politics, genocide and courage and different things. But the beauty of Esther's story is that it reveals the powerful, intricate sovereignty of God working in the lives of his people. G. Campbell Morgan said, while there is no name of God in Esther and no mention of the Hebrew religion anywhere, no one reads this book without being conscious of God. Matthew Henry said, if the name of God is not there, His finger is. So we see God's will throughout the entire book of Esther. And that's the way it is in our lives. Do you see God in my life? No. Do you see God in your life? No. Do you know He's there? Yes, definitely. God is not always seen or mentioned, but we know He's there. In America today, Christians are discouraged again by the immorality and degradation of our culture. And being a culture of high morals coming down to what it is now, it seems and is very wicked. But in the book of Esther, we see that God is not limited by how bad something is, by the ungodliness of culture. He's always at work, even in wicked times. God doesn't just work in great matters, He works in all matters. And He was working here to save the lives of the Jews. And Mordecai again in his writing that verse 14 shows that he believes that God will do exactly that, that he will save the Jews And sometimes we're facing situations where we see as dire and no way out of But we have to remember the sovereignty of God and that he is working in our lives Just like in the book of Esther, he's able to work in our lives. From the book of Esther, we learn the title of this book, this lesson book, God's Got This. And you've heard the phrase before, God's Got This. And sometimes we doubt and we wonder and we fret and we pray And then we come to that point where we know God's got this. And that's what we have to do in hard times of our lives, just realize God's got this. Whatever your this may be, God's got it. Even when your resources are thin or nonexistent, God has everything he needs to accomplish his will. This is his story. History is his story. Let's see, yeah, we got time to do this right here. So, the definition of history in Webster's 1828 Dictionary, an account of facts, particularly of facts respecting nations or states, a narration of events in the order in which they happen with their causes and effects. Now you hear of history and you've probably heard the term the annals of history. There's a difference. In the annals of history they relate simply to the facts and events of each year in strict chronological order without any observation of the analyst. Now sometimes and I like this in history and most people hate this history in school You had the annals of history and you had a test. And you say, okay, start here and end up here and what happened in between? And they taught you that and they say, they would give you what happened and you put the year down or they'd give the year down and you'd tell what happened. And that's sort of basically the way your test went. Of course, you was hoping for a multiple choice. Sometimes you didn't get a multiple choice. But that type of thing is the annals of history. Now, history itself regards less strictly the arrangement of events under each year and admits the observations of the writer, okay? Whose writing the history makes a difference in what's being wrote. Who is the writer of history? Whoever's in power. Now, if you listen to more about history class, if you listen in your US history class, you have at least an idea of what happened in the Revolutionary War. Now, I'll help you a little bit. That's when the colonies got together and they fought King George, okay? And then they fought and they beat King George and drove the Redcoats out. That's the Revolutionary War, not the Civil War, okay? Some people don't... I'm sorry, some people couldn't tell you which one's which. But that's the one we're talking about, the Revolutionary War. Now then, do you think when you learned this that England was teaching the children the same facts? No. They didn't go get a U.S. history book and teach it in England. They had an English history book. And they won't match up every time. A lot of us are saying, you know, yeah, we want our independence. But a lot of it is different. Now then if you check the English from England, the annals of history, and the annals of history from the United States, they would line up exactly. But when you put the story in the history, they'll differ. Okay? So that's what history is. It depends on who wrote the story. Now, if you're still not sure about the Revolutionary War, Eddie and John were generals in that war and they can explain to you. They know a lot better than I do. Alright. We've already established that God is supreme in power. Also, God cannot lie. Hebrews 16, 18, that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation. John 17, 17, sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth. So God is supreme, he can't lie. And God knows everything, Job 37, 16. The wondrous works of him which is perfect in knowledge. So the history we get from the Bible comes from the one that knows everything, the one that always tells the truth, and the one that cannot lie. That's why true history is his history. And that's the history we want to know about. So we'll start right there next week. Well, we'll start with his history next week. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you, Lord, for helping us this morning. Lord, I hope, Lord, we have a foundation, Lord, of the book of Esther and understand what it is about. But, Lord, more than that, I hope we have an understanding of your sovereignty in our lives and, Lord, that we can depend on that. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.