Life Happens

Hi everyone, My name is Josh Pollard. I am the Adult ministries Pastor here at Renovation church. I’m from California originally and I only get to see my parents every few years. They were visiting us from California about two years ago in the late Fall. It was one of their last few days before they went back and I wouldn’t see them for who knows how long but I was facing a stressful situation. My yard was covered in tons of leaves from all of our trees, and the whether forecast said it was going to dump a ton of snow the next day with little hope it melting before spring. And if you’re anything like me you know that is not a situation you can just accept, knowing all winter that under your foot of snow is a layer of leaves. So, stressed out at an unfortunate situation, I decided that despite the it was my parent’s last day with us, I had to mow the leaves downs. But of course, it’s never that easy to fix these situations, and about 60 seconds into mowing, I ran out of gas. So now I have to drive to spend even more precious time on this and go to the gas station to buy gas. I pull up to the gas station with my gas can beside me only to see a handwritten sign taped to the pump that says “Out of Gas! Sorry!” My situation is going from bad to worse! Now I had to drive 15 minutes to the next nearest gas station and I’m feeling more and more guilty about wasting this time with my parents so that I can mow the leaves, but it’s gotta be done. So I’m rushing down Viking boulevard, praying that the next gas station has gas, only to see flashing lights behind me. I get pulled over and the officer comes up to my window and she is a blond woman in her early 20’s and she yells at me for about a minute for going 15 mines an hour over the speed limit. In the end, the leaves got mowed. The next morning, before the snow came, the trees dropped another layer of leaves, just as thick. Sometimes in life things just seem to get worse and worse! And today we are going to continue our study into the book of Esther where we are introduced to the title Character, Esther, herself! and we will see that her life was a chain of bad to worse. So go ahead and open up your bibles to Esther Chapter 2 (page 341) [Esther 2:1 4 Page 341] If you weren’t here last week, we say that King Xerxes was having a big drunken party, called for his wife, Queen Vashti, to come and show off her beauty to all his drunk guests. She refused and so he deposed her of her position as queen and forbad her from ever seeing him again. And now we will pick up in Chapter 2, verse 1: Later when King Xerxes’ fury had subsided, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what he had decreed about her. 2 Then the king’s personal attendants proposed, “Let a search be made for beautiful young virgins for the king. 3 Let the king appoint commissioners in every province of his realm to bring all these beautiful young women into the harem at the citadel of Susa. Let them be placed under the care of Hegai, the king’s eunuch, who is in charge of the women; and let beauty treatments be given to them. 4 Then let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti.” This advice appealed to the king, and he followed it. Later we’re going to see that this was about 3 years after he had removed Vashti. And historians believe that this whole even revolved around the famous Battle of Thermopylae, which they’ve made movies about where a relatively small group of Spartans were able to hold back the whole Persian army. The party in Chapter one was to garner support for his invasion of Greece from all his nobles and military leaders. And now, he’s lost that battle in legendary fashion and he’s returned to his palace, tail tucked between his legs. looking for something to distract him from his depression. Xerxes, great ruler that he was, had great control over much of that area of the world, but the one thing his did not have was self control. He was a greedy, impulsive, and prideful man prone to temper tantrums. He was easily flattered and persuaded, if not controlled, by his eunuchs. He was many things, but he not self controlled. At my house we’ve been reading a book about Godly character building with my kids recently and one of the topics it covers is self control, and the definition that it gave I found really enlightening. It defined self control as “Adjusting your desires in order to act more like God”. self con·trol noun. [ˌsĕlf kənˈtrōl] Adjusting your desires in order to act more like God. Which makes since. Afterall, self control is one of the fruits of the Spirit that is listed in Galatians 5. We develop true self control, only when the Holy Spirit is in us, transforming us, doing what’s called sanctifying us, making us more like Christ. So the more we act like God, like Jesus, the more we are exhibiting self control. Now Xerxes does not know God. So, when his life is difficult, his respond in anger and lust and self importance and rash decisions. And in Chapter 2 he seems to miss his Queen whom he impulsively cast off, so his advisors hatch this plan to find a new queen and it “pleases” him. As one pastor put it: “Whatever pangs of remorse he had been feeling for Vashti are now forgotten as his lust ignites afresh. It’s actually a classic strategy of the un renewed human heart. Incapable of repentance, unbelieving hearts can only avoid guilt. They can ignore guilt, they can hide guilt beneath a blanket of indulgence, but they can never really remove guilt.” Psychologists call that the “shame cycle”. You do something self indulgent but foolish and then you feel ashamed of it so in an effort to escape that feeling you do something else that is self indulgent but again foolish. And the cycle continues. Of course, many of us know that there is only one true way to end that cycle and actually escape guilt, and that is through repentance of our sin and faith in the death and resurrection of Christ to pay for our guilt. Xerxes may have had remorse, but he has no repentance. So like a dog returning to it’s vomit, he is pleased to return to his self indulgence as an escape. Let’s keep reading in Verse 5 and it’s here that our eyes are turned to a small Jewish Family: [Esther 2:5 11 Page 341] 5 Now there was in the citadel of Susa a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, named Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, 6 who had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, among those taken captive with Jehoiachin[a] king of Judah. 7 Mordecai had a cousin named Hadassah, whom he had brought up because she had neither father nor mother. This young woman, who was also known as Esther, had a lovely figure and was beautiful. Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter when her father and mother died. 8 When the king’s order and edict had been proclaimed, many young women were brought to the citadel of Susa and put under the care of Hegai. Esther also was taken to the king’s palace and entrusted to Hegai, who had charge of the harem. 9 She pleased him and won his favor. Immediately he provided her with her beauty treatments and special food. He assigned to her seven female attendants selected from the king’s palace and moved her and her attendants into the best place in the harem. 10 Esther had not revealed her nationality and family background, because Mordecai had forbidden her to do so. 11 Every day he walked back and forth near the courtyard of the harem to find out how Esther was and what was happening to her. So here we get Esther’s backstory and the vast majority of it is really terrible. Her people, the Jews, have been concurred and exiled from their land and she live under a foreign pagan empire. Both of her parents died when she was very young. And now she’s being raised by her cousin. Fortunately, he seems to be an honorable man. But then this edict goes out and it says that the young women were “brought” to the citadel and that Esther, too, was “taken.” At times, this story is portrayed like some Cinderella story of a peasant and a prince, or some Persia’s Got Talent beauty contest but every description of this event is involuntary on the part of the girls involved. These girls did not sign up for this – they were taken for this. Back in Chapter one, when Xerxes got rid of Vashti, his counselor’s advice was to “…let the king give her royal position to someone else who is better than she.” So what were the qualification to be better? Well, they had to be young, they had to be beautiful, and they had to be virgins. The Ancient Historian Herodotus estimated that there were probably around 400 girls that were taken for this from all over the 127 provinces that Xerxes ruled over. Let’s keep reading to hear more about what would happen to these women that were taken in Verse 12: [Esther 2:12 14 Page 341] 12 Before a young woman’s turn came to go in to King Xerxes, she had to complete twelve months of beauty treatments prescribed for the women, six months with oil of myrrh and six with perfumes and cosmetics. 13 And this is how she would go to the king: Anything she wanted was given her to take with her from the harem to the king’s palace. 14 In the evening she would go there and in the morning return to another part of the harem to the care of Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch who was in charge of the concubines. She would not return to the king unless he was pleased with her and summoned her by name. So after they were essentially abducted and gathered like cars to be test driven, they went through a full year of beauty treatments. One reason for such a lengthy period of preparation was to make sure they weren’t actually pregnant already from someone else so that Xerxes didn’t end up with some other man’s child for an heir. When finally, they were ready, the text says they went to Xerxes for the night and the text is kind of subtle, but clear on what happened there. The Harem was a structure in Xerxes’ palace that Archeologists actually excavated in the 1930’s. There were three sections. One for the virgins, one for the queen and one for the concubines (women that were sexually available exclusively to him for pleasure and childbearing at his will, but without any of the rights of a marriage). After their night with Xerxes, they were no longer virgins, so if they were not chosen to be queen, they face a life in the harem of the concubines, with no prospect of a future husband, family, or freedom. This was no Cinderella story, this was a very dehumanizing process, turning vulnerable young girls into things to be possessed or thrown out at the whim of a powerful man. In short, things had gone from bad to worse for Esther through no fault of her own. She didn’t make some giant mistake or something, no, these terrible things just happen to her. Xerxes problems were self inflicted, and many of us face the consequences of our own bad decisions, but Esther was a victim of circumstance. Do you ever feel like that? Like life has been happening to you. And it’s genuinely not your fault. It’s just one thing after another and it just piles up. Maybe it’s major events or maybe it’s a thousand little things that just seem to just keep coming. It can leave a person with an overwhelming since of helplessness, desperation, and despair. When Life happens to you Esther Chapter 2 shows us two paths that face. One path is the path taken by Xerxes. It is the path of self pity. [When life happens to us: Path 1: Self pity leading to Sin] And when we give in to self pity it opens a door wide open for sin. It causes us to start making excuses and exception for poor decisions. In some behavioral studies I’ve heard this called “the Three I’s of acting out.” The three I’s are feelings of incompetence, impotence, and insignificance. [The 3 I’s of Acting Out Incompetence – impotence – insignificance] In other words, you can’t fix your life because you don’t know how to (you feel incompetent) even if you did you don’t have the power to (you feel impotent)– and even if you did it wouldn’t matter anyway because you are insignificant. So instead, we act out like Xerxes when he lost a war. Maybe you don’t kidnap a harem of women, but you make allowances for bad decisions. An extra drink, a bad temper, a lustful website, an irresponsible shopping spree, a unkind word to your spouse or kids. In biblical studies we just call that listening to the lies of Satan. Self pity opens a path for temptation in your life. Satan whispers in your ear that you are helpless and that he knows how to relieve your pain, if only for a moment and then you are pleased with his proposal and take his advice and act upon your desire to sin. In your self pity, you may feel powerless to that temptation but The Bible has words of encouragement and clarity for you in 1st Corinthians: 1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” And in Esther we see her take that way out, the second path. Let’s keep reading in verse 15: [Esther 2:15 18 Page 341] 15 When the turn came for Esther (the young woman Mordecai had adopted, the daughter of his uncle Abihail) to go to the king, she asked for nothing other than what Hegai, the king’s eunuch who was in charge of the harem, suggested. And Esther won the favor of everyone who saw her. 16 She was taken to King Xerxes in the royal residence in the tenth month, the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign. 17 Now the king was attracted to Esther more than to any of the other women, and she won his favor and approval more than any of the other virgins. So he set a royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. 18 And the king gave a great banquet, Esther’s banquet, for all his nobles and officials. He proclaimed a holiday throughout the provinces and distributed gifts with royal liberality. So orphaned, exiled, abducted, abused Esther could have resigned herself to hopeless self pity in the face of a terrible situation. But she doesn’t run from God like the prophet Jonah, nor she doesn’t curse God, like Job’s friends tell him to do after all of his stuff is destroyed and his whole family dies. She could have had a pity party and built her whole outlook on life as a helpless victim, but instead she somehow carries with her a peace that surpassed understanding to the point that it effected even her oppressors. [When life happens to us: Path 1: Self pity leading to Sin Path 2: Peace that even effects your oppressors] She winds up a lot like Joseph in the book of Genesis, who was sold into slavery by his brothers, falsely accused of assault and thrown into prison, only to find favor in people’s eyes and wind up as second in command of all Egypt. Just like him, Esther gained favor wherever she went. Three times it says she found favor, with the people that she interacted with. When that happened to Joseph in Genesis 39 it said it was because the LORD was with him even though his circumstances were so heartbreaking. It should give us all great hope that when the Bible talk about how God can be a powerful force for peace in our lives, it even means for the darkest corners. Some of you are in a very dark season of life right now. You are in what the book of the 23rd psalm might call the valley of the shadow of death. You aren’t sure how to carry on, your family is a wreck, you’re an addict, you are depressed or even suicidal, you are secretly being abused, or you hate your job but you’ve got bills, Life has happened to you. You are in a terrible valley but God puts that valley in perspective when you read more of Psalm 23. It says: Psalm 23:3b 4 He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; That dark valley might be a part of the right path that he has led you on for the His name’s sake. Ultimately, self pity is a belief, a fear, that evil has prevailed, and that God is no longer with us. But the story of Esther, and particularly the horrors of the situation is Chapter 2 should give us all great hope that God does not cower away even when our situation is beyond comprehension. We may feel incompetent, and impotent, and insignificant and honestly, maybe we truly are those things but He is none of those things. He is always working so that even in the end his enemies will serve his purposes. However, there is always a nagging question in my mind when I read stories like Josephs and Esther’s – I wonder things like “Well what about those other 399 girls in the harem? What was God’s plan for them being there? Not every orphan gets to save her people from extermination, some are just orphaned and abused and then die. Maybe you are like me A bit of a cynic, wondering ”Yeah but what when it doesn’t work out? Then what was God’s big plan?” “Wasn’t he thinking of those girls?” “Did he even know or care what they were going through?” And the truth is that he knows all because there was a time when one much more precious even than all our beautiful daughters was unjustly dragged before a king – the son of God. And while the girls were helpless, he could have called down an army of Angels to fight for him, but instead he laid down his power and willingly took the sin of that king upon himself, along with the sin of every other person. Jesus was the most preciouses thing to ever exist, and he sustained the must unjust act ever imaginable. He was not just a guy dying – He was the perfect son of God, dying like the worst sinner. But in doing so he set us free. So if you are wondering about the people for whom things don't work out? What's God's plan then? Well the answer for that is that you need a much bigger story One that doesn’t end with even death. Roman’s 8:38 says: 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” You see when we say we trust in his plan we don’t mean we think he had a plan to not make us face difficult times here in this life. His plan is to protect us from a much more terrible prospect then challenges in this life – Facing the guilt of our own sin alone. Some of you here might be in that valley without Christ and that’s not a good place to be. He freely offers you true freedom. He doesn’t always pull you out of the valley but he will never leave you alone, weather you are in the worst time of your life or the best. He will pay for your sins and begin to empower you with a peace that goes beyond understanding – something you can’t really understand until you experience it. And the Bible says that all you need to do to accept that gift is to repent of your sin, and have faith that he died for you, and follow him. During the next song, if you've never made this decision, I urge you to consider it seriously. If today is the day you want to make peace with God, any time during the rest of the service, I want you to just slide out of your seat go right out of those doors and but don’t go into the lobby, instead, slip into the prayer room. and meet with me and couple people from our follow up team. We will pray with you and help you know how to take the next steps. [Pray]