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Man, this morning I'm preaching about the person King Ahasuerus, the man who's mentioned in verse number one here of chapter one of Esther, King Ahasuerus, the king of Persia, who is one of the major characters in the book of Esther. But before I get into what I want to say about King Ahasuerus, let me just make a few comments about the book of Esther in general. It's very important when we're reading the Bible to understand the genre of the book that we're reading because not everything in the Bible is telling us what we should be doing, how we should be living, thus saith the Lord. There are historical books in the Bible that just simply tell stories about characters and often there is no narrator telling us this guy did what was right, this guy did what was wrong, and so we're left to interpret the story. And one of the biggest mistakes people could make when they're reading the Bible is to think that everything that people are doing in the Bible is right or that if someone's a good person or a prophet of God, well, everything that they're doing in the Bible story must be right. These stories are there to make you think and for you to compare scripture with scripture and interpret them in light of clear statements found elsewhere, right? When we're in the law of God, God's making a bunch of clear statements, do this, don't do that. When we're in the prophets, books like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, we're getting thus saith the Lord and we're getting these moral judgments from God telling us what is right and what is wrong. But when we are reading historical books, we have to interpret those stories based on the clear statements of the word of God elsewhere. Because when we read the stories, what are we going to find? We're going to find all kinds of people committing fornication, committing adultery, committing murder, stealing, lying, why? Because they're sinful human beings and we have a record of what they did, but it's not necessarily right. And so it's very important to understand that. Another interesting thing to note about the book of Esther is that it is notable for the fact that God is never mentioned in the book of Esther, which is pretty strange for a book of the Bible to not mention God whatsoever, 10 chapters long, no mention of God. Isn't that odd? Here's the thing about that. We shouldn't just ignore that or think that it's just a coincidence or something because it's very out of the ordinary. So obviously God's trying to tell us something here, right? Obviously the author of this book who is obviously writing and speaking as he's moved by the Holy Ghost, he's writing under divine inspiration, you know, is leaving out the name of God for a reason because it's a very noteworthy omission in light of the rest of the Bible, which is constantly bringing up God, the Lord, et cetera. One way to think about it is this, we start out in Genesis with God creating the heaven and the earth, right? So it's in the beginning God, and we have this history that goes from Genesis all the way up through the book of Esther and then after the book of Esther, we're not in historical books anymore. Now we get into poetic books. We get into Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Psalms, and then we get into the prophets. So if we're looking at the historical books, what's the last one that we're looking at? Esther, right? Then we move on. So stop and think about this, that when we start out the Bible, God is right there. He's very present. He's creating the world and then people are interacting with God directly. Adam and Eve are interacting with God. Cain and Abel are interacting with God. And then you have Abraham and God speaking to Abraham and guiding him and directing him. We have Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, the Lord's with Joseph down in Egypt. Then of course, when they come out of Egypt, you have Moses who is the prophet of God with whom God spoke face to face as a man speaks to his friend. Now obviously he did not see God the father, but there is a cloud and he's hearing the voice and so forth. But the point is that God directly communicated with Moses. God's directly communicating with the children of Israel. And then as time goes on, you've got different prophets and, and you know, they're doing miracles and God's speaking to them, but not in the same way that he spoke to Moses. And they're not quite seeing miracles of the magnitude of parting the Red Sea. And what you'll see is that as you read through these historical books in general, God is getting more distant from the children of Israel until finally you get to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. There aren't any miracles in Ezra and Nehemiah. There's not really a lot of prophecy or preaching going on. I mean, there's some preaching, but it's like, it's more like, okay, let's get out the Bible and interpret it. And they're, they're coming up with some wrong interpretations. They're telling people to divorce their wives and getting strange things from, from the law of God that are wrong. And it's not necessarily a good example in Ezra and Nehemiah either. But then by the time you get to Esther, there's just no mention of God at all. It's like God has been kind of backing off and God's just gone now. Okay. This is by design. This is the way it's supposed to be because what God's showing us is the need for the new covenant, the need for Jesus Christ to show up and be, you know, God with us once again, right? Because God is distant. God is absent in the book of Esther. And then with the new Testament, we have Jesus Christ, God in the flesh and Israel has drifted far from God at that point. That's why John the Baptist comes on the scene before Jesus to, to turn the people back to God and try to prepare a people ready for the coming of the savior. So I hope that that puts things in perspective for you a little bit about the book of Esther that not only is it a historical book, so we need to interpret it like a historical book, meaning it's not prescriptive, it's descriptive of what happened. But number two, it's a historical book that doesn't even mention God at all. So that should really make us question the actions of the characters even more than we normally would and question their actions and compare scripture with scripture. Now the character that I'm going to talk about this morning is King Ahasuerus and I'm probably going to talk about Mordecai tonight in my sermon, but the thing I want to just get right out of the way here is that Ahasuerus is not a righteous person at all and everything I'm going to show you about Ahasuerus this morning is bad. It's all 100% negative. He's not a godly man. He's not a righteous man and he's a horrible leader, a horrible king. He's just a bad person. I just don't like him at all. Okay. So let's go through and see the problems with Ahasuerus because we can learn from this. Why did God give us the book of Esther? What's the point? The point is that we can learn from other people's errors, learn from other people's mistakes and that we can kind of illuminate certain truths from the Bible that are mentioned elsewhere. So let's start out with the sermon, which is going to be just criticizing everything about King Ahasuerus from start to finish. So verse number one of Esther chapter one says, now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus. This is Ahasuerus which reigned from India, even under Ethiopia, over a hundred and seven and 20 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 unto all his princes and his servants, the powers of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces being before him. So let's start out by saying this. This guy is not some great conqueror who created this great empire. This guy is clearly inheriting this great empire because it already has 127 provinces. It's the Persian empire, the Medo-Persian empire stretching from India to Ethiopia in its magnitude and this guy in the third year of his reign, so very early in his reign, is already just throwing a gigantic party that's going to last for six months. So this guy's not exactly building the kingdom or building the empire, he's inheriting it and just partying with it and just indulging and being extravagant and so forth. So that's what we see here, beginning of verse number four it says, when he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesty, many days, even 104 score days. I don't know about you, that seems a little bit excessive to party for 180 days straight. I mean it's one thing to have a week long holiday, seven days of partying, seven days of time off, seven days of relaxation, God had different festivals throughout the year, the feast of Tabernacles, different things that would last for a week. This guy is partying for 180 days and not only that, but it's just all about glorifying himself. Look at me, look at my amazing kingdom, look at the excellency of my majesty. So a couple of things that we can learn about Ahasuerus right away is that he's hedonistic, which means he's just living for pleasure and enjoyment, not for godliness, righteousness or doing good works, but rather just enjoying, overindulging. But not only that, he's super prideful because he is just bragging about his own glory. And not only that, he's super wasteful. So he's inheriting all these resources, he's inheriting all of these wonderful things. And yet what does he do with it? He just parties with it. It's just all about drinking and feasting and having all these decorations and so forth. Now keep your finger here in chapter 1 and look at chapter 10 of the book of Esther, just that little tiny short chapter, Esther chapter 10. And it says in verse 1, and the king Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land and upon the isles of the sea and all the acts of his power and of his might and so forth. And it goes on to just kind of close out the story of king Ahasuerus. So what's the last thing that he does? The first thing we see him doing in Esther is what? Throwing this big, extravagant, expensive, crazy party for 180 days and then what's the last thing we see him doing as he's leaving the stage in chapter 10 is, all right, we got to tax everybody. We're going to have to lay a tribute, we're going to have to have a special taxation of all the isles of the sea, all these far flung parts of my empire and upon the land of Persia. Everybody's got to pay taxes. Why? So that you can get drunk more? So you can spend more money on gold and silver and curtains and hangings and party. So this guy is inheriting, uh, an empire and running it into the ground, wasting money, being extravagant, frivolous, taxing the working man so that he can just have his extravagant party. Okay. I like him already. No, I don't like him at all. People like this are trash as far as I'm concerned. It's a wicked person. Not only that, but he's practicing polygamy. This is not God's intent. The Bible says that a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife singular and they too shall be one flesh. But King has your ears. Not only is he overindulging in food and alcohol, but he's also polygamous. He doesn't have just one wife and we see that in chapter number two. But before I get ahead of myself and talk about chapter two, let's just go through the basic story here in chapter one and get to know Ahasuerus cause this is God here in chapter one introducing us to the character of Ahasuerus and make no mistake about it. I don't want anyone to misunderstand me. The book of Esther is the word of God. Okay. The book of Esther is inspired by God. It's the word of God. The Holy Ghost has given us this story for our learning and our edification and for our reading so that we can think about it and meditate upon it and compare scripture with scripture. So don't get me wrong, just because God's not mentioned in the book of Esther, God is still the author of the book of Esther and so this is the word of God. Everything in the book of Esther is true. What does that mean? That means that the things actually happened. It doesn't mean that they were right or that we should follow their example. Does everybody understand that distinction? So let's look at the story here. He's got the 180 day party. Then verse five, when the days were expired, the king made a feast unto all the people that were present in Shushan because the 180 day party was just for all the top brass. It was for all the princes and the governors and people like that. Now he's just inviting the whole city to this party for seven days. He's keeping that a little more, because we can't just shut down the whole city for six months because people have to do the menial jobs and bake the bread and sweep the floor and so forth, but for him and his buddies, they're going to party for six months. Everybody else is going to party for seven days. You got the hangings of all the colors in red, white and blue and God bless America at the end of verse six there. In verse number seven it says, they gave them drink in vessels of gold, royal wine and abundance. Verse eight, the drinking was according to the law, none did compel. So at least you're not forced. It's an open bar, but you're not forced to get drunk. So there's that. Verse nine, also Vashti the queen made a feast for the women in the royal house, which belonged to King Ahasuerus. On the seventh day when the heart of the king was merry with wine, and keep in mind the seventh day here is really the 187th day, because he did the 180 days, now he's on the seven day deal. When the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mahuman, Bizthah, Harbonah, Bigthah, Abagthah, Zithar and Carcas, the seven chamberlains that served in the presence of Ahasuerus the king, to bring Vashti the queen before the king with the crown royal to show the people and the princes her beauty, for she was fair to look on. Now some people will try to read things into this and add a bunch of extra biblical junk to this. Hey, let's just go with what the text actually says. We shouldn't add to the word of God. If there's something else going on here, the Bible would have explained that to us. Yet the Bible just simply says that he just wants her to come and parade her beauty with the royal crown on her head. People have tried to say, oh, she was being asked to show up nude or something. That's just adding to the word of God. There's nothing like that in the story. He just wants her to show up and just parade around and so forth. And basically she just says, no, I'm not going to. Now this is just a simple case of a wife disobeying her husband. Obviously wives disobey their husbands across America and across the world every single day. Now the Bible says that wives are to be obedient under their own husbands, that wives are to submit to their husbands, but yet human nature being such as it is, women often disobey and disregard the commands of their husband. And that's what's going on here is just simply, she's just being stubborn. She's just being prideful and she's just saying, no, I'm not going to come. So Ahasuerus is kind of at a loss here because he's kind of embarrassed because here he is commanding her to come and she's not showing up. So he has to ask like seven people what to do. So this guy's not very decisive as we're going to find. So he grabs seven people, whoever happened to be the closest to him. Verse 14 lists those seven princes and he talks to them and he says, in verse 15, what shall we do unto the queen Vashti according to the law? Because she had not performed the commandment of the king Ahasuerus by the chamberlains. And Mamuacan answered before the king and the princes, Vashti the queen has not done wrong to the king only, but also to all the princes and all the people that are in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus. For this deed of the queen shall come abroad unto all women so that they shall despise their husbands in their eyes when it shall be reported that the king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought in before him, but she came not. So this advisor is actually making a lot of sense here. What he's saying here is actually correct because he's saying, look, this isn't just insulting to the king. It's kind of an attack on the institution of marriage itself. And what's going to happen is when people hear about this bad example of the king's wife rebelling against him, refusing to obey, well, they're going to also refuse to obey their husbands and they're not going to give proper honor and respect to their husbands. Why? Because people follow leadership. Everything rises and falls on leadership. So if you have, you know, the president of the United States or something just being totally dissed by his wife, just publicly disregarded, publicly ignored and, and, uh, people are going to look at that and be like following that example and to be like, you go girl or something, you know, they're going to think it's cool or something and they're going to want to follow that same example. Same thing, you know, if you had, if you had a pastor and his wife is just disobeying what he says and just doing whatever she wants and not listening. So, you know, that could be a bad example, right? Go down the list. Anybody who's important or a leader or famous or whatever, if they see the wife publicly disobeying and disrespecting her husband, it can set a bad example for other people who would follow in her footsteps. And so he's saying, look, if she just gets away with this, if she does disobeys her husband and everybody hears about it and there's just no consequence, then obviously this is going to cause some, some breakdown of family values throughout all 127 provinces because it's kind of an attack on the institution of marriage and the fact that the husband has authority over his wife in general. Okay. Because if the king can't even rule his home, if the king's wife doesn't even obey him, how much less are the wives throughout the kingdom going to obey their little old husband? Okay. When she's not even obeying the king of the whole country. Okay. And so this guy's got it right, but what he suggests as a solution is totally wrong. And here's what you have to understand about the people of this world. Often the people of this world get it right about what the problems are because it's a lot easier to figure out what the problems in our society are than to know what the answers are. So there'll be a lot of people that'll explain, man, something's wrong with our culture. You know, something's wrong with marriage. Look at all the marriages ending in divorce. Something's wrong with our young people. Something's wrong. You know, that's easy to point out. And so just because someone gets the problem right doesn't mean that they have the right solution, does it? Because identifying the problem is kind of a no brainer. You know, it's sort of like these MGTOW types in the manosphere, okay? These bozos, obviously they're correct about the problems caused by feminism because feminism is against the word of God. If it's teaching women to not obey their husbands, not submit to their husbands, to go out and live their own life and do what they want as totally independent women instead of submitting to their parents as children, submitting to their husband as an adult, okay? Obviously it's wrong, but then the MGTOWs and the heathens in the manosphere, they come up with a totally wrong solution. They're going to teach you to just not get married and to just fornicate or just whatever their stupid solutions are, they're wrong. Folks, only the word of God can provide the right answers. Anybody with two brain cells together can see problems in this world and point them out. What Mmucan is pointing out here isn't really that deep. It's not really that insightful. It's kind of a no brainer. It's kind of obvious, okay? So yeah, he got that right. Even the broken clock is right two times per day, but what he's proposed as a solution is 100% wrong because it's not a godly solution, it's not a biblical solution, and it's not a solution that's going to work for anyone else except for the king because look what the Bible says. It says in verse 19, if it pleased the king, let there go a royal commandment from him and let it be written among the persons and the Medes, that it not be altered, that Vashti come no more before King Ahasuerus and let the king give her royal estate unto another that is better than she. So Mmucan's advice to King Ahasuerus is just, oh, well you just need to discard your wife just get rid of her. She's never going to come in before you again. What he's basically saying is he's never going to interact with her again. So this is tantamount to saying like divorce her, right? Because you're never going to be with her again. She's never going to see you again. You're never going to go to bed with her again. It's over between Ahasuerus and Vashti. Hey, that's her punishment. So disobey your husband, discarded. Now is that biblical? Do we just discard our wives if they don't do what we like or if they don't do what we tell them to do? Of course not. And not only that, is this going to work for Joe Pershing who's living in the 127 provinces is he's going to be like, oh, my wife did no baby, I'll just get another one. No, it's not going to work. This is bad leadership. Oh, my marriage is having a problem, just change her out for another one. And not only that, but in the next chapter, he's basically just going to be with a different woman every single night until he finds a new one that he likes. Now is that what Joe Pershing does when he has a problem with his wife? Like, okay, I'll get rid of her and then let's just line up about 50 candidates here and I'll just be with a different one. That's not going to work for anyone else. It's not godly, it's not righteous, it's wicked. God does not approve of that kind of fornication or adultery or whatever you want to call it. God doesn't approve of polygamy, right? You're supposed to have one man and one woman getting married. This is a heathen man. And by the way, this guy's not worshiping Jehovah God. This is just some heathen Persian king and he's being told by his advisors to discard his wife because she has disobeyed him. Now obviously, Vashti is supposed to obey her husband from a biblical point of view because the Bible says that wives are supposed to obey their husband. But the solution, the reaction is 100% wrong. It's, oh, get rid of her. And we're going to see more about Hasher's wonderful leadership skills as we move forward in the book of Esther. So the saying pleased the king and the princes in verse 21. Well, let's back up to verse 20. When the king's decree which he shall make shall be published throughout all the empire, for it is great, all the wives shall give to their husbands honor, both the great and small. Are wives supposed to honor their husbands? And by the way, great and small. It doesn't matter how small your husband is, you're supposed to honor him, okay? It doesn't matter how cool of a dude he is or how not cool he is. It doesn't matter how big and strong he is or how small of stature he is. It doesn't matter how rich he is or how poor he is. All wives are supposed to honor their husbands, both small and great. That part is correct. And you see how I'm going through this and I'm reading this story and I'm not just blindly accepting everything that comes in the story as being what God wants us to do and how God wants us to live our lives. What am I doing? I'm taking clear Bible verses from elsewhere in the Bible and using them to interpret the story. So as I go through the story, I say, okay, Mimeucan's right here because Ephesians said this, because Genesis said this, because Matthew said this. And then I get, oh, Mimeucan's wrong here because of what the Bible said over here. Do you see that? So it's not a case of everything somebody does is right or everything somebody does is wrong. You have to rightly divide the word of truth here by comparing scripture with scripture and deciding, okay, is what he did here biblical? And you know what? This is actually preparing you for real life because guess what in real life, bad people are sometimes going to do good things. Good people are going to do bad things. People that are usually right are sometimes going to be wrong. People that are usually wrong are sometimes going to be right. That's the way the world actually works. You don't want to have this one dimensional view of the world that says, oh, did Biden do it? It must be wrong. Right? Oh, Trump did it for sure, right? That's what a lot of, that's how a lot of Republicans are or the Democrats would be the opposite. Like, oh, Trump did it. Must be wrong. Oh, Biden did it. It's always right. As long as our guy's doing it, folks, this is foolish. The Bible represents reality that people are a mixed bag. You know, these Bible stories are a mixed bag where there's some right thing that's happening and some wrong thing that's happening at the same time. And we have to be able to interpret and divide those different things. Okay. So as we're going through this, we see that all the wives should give, uh, their husband's honor and the saying, please the King verse 21 and the princes, the King did according to the word of Memucan and he sent letters into all the King's provinces, into every province according to the writing thereof and every people after their language that every man should bear rule in his own house and that it should be published according to the language of every people. And so, you know, God could still use something like this to just at least get that general memo out. Hey, everybody in the whole world, everybody in 127 provinces, wives are supposed to obey their husbands. Men are supposed to rule the home. That's a truth that's getting out there, but that doesn't make everyone and what they're doing along the way. Right. Does everybody see that? So then we get into chapter two and I'm going to speed up now. I wanted to spend extra time on chapter one cause that's where we get the real introduction to this character King Ahasuerus. And then he kind of pops up throughout the rest of the story. So then in chapter two, uh, they bring fair virgins from all over the land and he's basically trying a different one every day, every night I should say. And then, you know, when he finds the one that's worthy, when he finds the one he likes the most, he's going to make her the queen and put the royal crown on her head. So obviously the king loves this idea because he's a hedonist because he's prideful because he's wicked. And so of course this appeals to him. So he goes through this process and Mordecai the Jew brings down Esther who he's the guardian of Esther. He is not her dad, but he's like a dad to her. He's actually, uh, is it cousin or uncle? I always mix this up, but whatever. It's her cousin, let's say. But anyway, he's her male relative and uh, he's guarding over her and he brings her down and basically puts her in line to be one of these women, you know, uh, on this game show who wants to be the next queen of Persia. Okay. This a reality game show. And so, uh, Hadassah is her other name. Uh, she's also called Esther. Esther is brought down there. It says it's his uncle's daughter. So I was right. It's, it's a cousin. So he brings his cousin Esther down. He puts her in line. Uh, and it turns out that Esther ends up being King Ahasuerus' favorite. And so he loves Esther so much and he puts the crown on her head and isn't it so wonderful that now Esther is the queen. All right. But here's the thing about this is that go, if you went to chapter four verse 11, okay, maybe you know a little bit about the story of the book of Esther, but what happens is there's a, there's a second in command to Ahasuerus named Haman and this guy is a very prideful, arrogant, wicked person who's full of himself. He's even worse than Ahasuerus. They're both rotten people, but he's really a rotten person. Okay. And so this guy Haman, you know, he ends up devising this plan where they're just going to kill Jews all over the place and they're just going to murder all the Jews in the kingdom and they want to just kill the Jews and so forth. Okay. So he had this guy, uh, he had a little mustache and no, I'm just kidding. But anyway, so, so the bottom line is that Esther is a Jew, Mordecai is a Jew, but the King Ahasuerus, he doesn't realize that Esther herself is Jewish. And so he goes along with this and, and, uh, this plan is to kill all the Jews and Mordecai is telling Esther in chapter four, you know, you need to do something about this. You're the queen. You have the King's ear. You need to talk to him and explain to him why it's wrong for him to kill all the Jews. Why this is a bad idea. Watch what Esther says to Mordecai when Mordecai is saying, look, you need to intercede. Verse 11, all the King's servants, this is Esther speaking, all the King's servants of the people of the King's provinces do know that whosoever, whether man or woman shall come unto the King into the inner court who is not called, there is one law of his to be, to put him to death. So what it's saying here is that there's a law in Persia that if you just burst into the King's room and just, you don't have an appointment, you haven't been summoned. If you just show up without an appointment and just, Hey, I need to talk to the King, you die. Okay. Unless he holds out to you, the golden scepter and pardons you. The default is that you're killed. Now think about how this is the exact opposite of Vashti, because remember with Vashti, she was called to come and she wouldn't, and she didn't show up. And what happened? She gets divorced, she gets discarded. So this is kind of the opposite now where Esther is being asked to go to the King without being invited. So you could see how maybe she could think that this could be a scary thing to do since last time somebody came, didn't, wouldn't come when they were invited. They got cast aside. If she comes without being invited, what if Memucan's like, Hey, we can't let, we can't just let her burst in here, you know, off with her head. That's the law, buddy. So she's nervous about bursting in on the King because that's the law. You're not allowed to burst in on the King. You have to wait until he invites you. But here's the part I want to point out here though. It says there's one law of his, we're halfway through verse 11, to put him to death except such to whom the King shall hold out the golden scepter that he may live. This last phrase is the part I really want to emphasize, but I have not been called to come in under the King these 30 days. Boy, here's a guy who really loves his wife. Stop and think about this. This guy, he's with a different woman every night and then finally he settles on, Oh Esther, she's so wonderful. I love you so much. Put the crown on her head. Queen Esther. Oh, we're, we're, we're in love now. Oh, it's so wonderful. Okay. Let me ask you this. Do you go 30 days without seeing the people that you love without talking to people? Do you, do you think that if a man and a woman were married and had had no contact in 30 days, and I'm not talking about if they were like in the military and deployed or something, but I mean they're living, let's say they're just living right next to each other. They're just right there and they have no contact for 30 days. Is this a loving relationship? Is that normal? I mean if you love it and look, it's not like they've even been married that long and this guy's already just checked out, moved on 30 days. The king hasn't called for me in 30 days. Can you see what a bozo this king is? Okay. This guy is not a righteous example at all. So let's just take a quick inventory of what we got so far and then I have a few more points to make before I'm done. He's hedonistic, he spends way too much money, he's running the kingdom into the ground financially so you can just pass more taxation so you can have more drinking and partying. He's prideful, he's arrogant, he's a braggart, he's practicing polygamy, he discards his wife when she doesn't obey, he doesn't love his wife at all. That's why he just doesn't even talk to her for 30 days at a time, his new wife. But not only that, go if you would to chapter 3 verse 10. Let me show you what a foolish leader he is because what we see him doing throughout the book of Esther is just recklessly, he has this ring on his finger and this is the ring that he uses in order to like seal official documents. And if you remember, the law of the Medes and the Persians can't be changed. So once they pass a law, it can't be changed. Like if we get the Constitution of the United States, it has a bunch of portions with a line through it. Who knows what I'm talking about? If you ever look at the, okay, 10 people have read the Constitution. If you actually read the Constitution, you know there's a lot of it with a line through it, a lot of a strikethrough. What does that mean? It means that the law has been changed. That part of the Constitution's no longer been valid because the Constitution's been amended like 20 some times. But the law of the Medes and the Persians was such that it can't be changed. Once a decree goes forth, it's done. So this ring has a lot of power because once a decree is made and it's sealed with the King's ring, it's in stone. It can't be changed. Now this guy, what does he do? What kind of a leader is he when he's not drinking and partying and having a fashion show and a decorating party? What is he doing? He's constantly in the book of Esther, just taking off his ring and just giving it to someone else and say, Hey, do whatever you want and just do it in my name. This is not leadership. This guy's not actually making decisions. He's not actually taking the lead. In chapter one, it's like, Oh, what do I do? And then they, you know, he just does whatever they tell him to do. And then in chapter two, he just does whatever they tell him to do. Then in chapter three, he goes even further where he just takes off his ring and just gives it to someone else. And he gives it to a super wicked person, Haman. Look what the Bible says there in chapter three, verse 10 and the King took his ring from his hand and gave it unto Haman, the son of Hamadath of the Agagite, the Jews enemy. And the King said unto Haman, the silver is given to thee, the people also to do with them as it seemeth good to thee. Do whatever you want, buddy. I'm going to go get drunk. I'm going to go be with my 20 wives, not Esther though. And the King said unto Haman, the silver is given to thee, and on verse 12, then where the King scribes called on the 13th day of the first month. And there was written according to all that Haman had commanded under the King's lieutenants and to the governors that were over every province and to the rulers of every people of every province, according to the writing thereof and to every people after their language in the name of King Asher, as was it written and sealed with the King's ring and the letters were sent by posts into all the King's provinces to destroy, to kill and to cause the parish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women in one day, even upon the 13th day of the 12th month, which is the month Adar and to take the spoil of them for a pray. The copy of the writing for a commandment to be given in every province were on verse 14 of chapter three was published unto all people that they should be ready against that day. Now watch this in verse 15. Just recklessly just gives the ring to Haman. Hey, do what you want. You want to murder Jews? Go for it, buddy. Just Defcon three on the Jews. Do what you want. Okay. Verse 15, the posts went out being hastened by the King's commandment and the decree was given in Shushan, the palace. Look at, look at the, look at this next statement and the King and Haman sat down to drink, but the city Shushan was perplexed. What does it mean to be perplexed? They're like, what, huh? You know, so, so basically they're all just like, what, what is it, what are we doing? What is this killing all Jews? What? And he's just like busy drinking. So we see the aloofness here. Every statement in the Bible is there for a reason. The King and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was perplexed. So on one side we got the King just drinking, not caring, letting Haman do whatever he wants. And Haman hates Jews. So he wants to kill all the Jews. And then everybody else is, is worried about this. The King is not worried about it cause he doesn't care cause he's a bad leader. He's totally aloof. Other people make the decisions and he just recklessly gives his authority to others and doesn't even check up on anything. But not only does he recklessly give the authority to Haman, even when he realizes what he's done wrong, does he learn his lesson? No. Go to chapter eight, verse eight. He never learns his lesson because once he figures out, oh, Haman's bad. No, I'm just going to take off my ring and just give it to Mordecai. And I'm just going to tell Mordecai to do whatever he wants. Look what it says in chapter eight, verse eight. This is Ahasuerus speaking unto the queen and Mordecai, write you also for the Jews as it liketh you, do what you want in the King's name and seal it with the King's ring for the writing, which is written in the King's name and sealed with the King's ring may no man roars. Hey, this is totally irreversible here, catch, do whatever you want, dude. But hey, I, you know, I need to go drink another brewski. He doesn't learn anything. There were the King's scribes called and of course then, you know, Mordecai and Esther, they make their proclamation. But it specifically says that he took the ring from Haman and gives the ring. I don't have that verse. It's not in this section. It's elsewhere. It's not in my notes. It literally says he took the ring from Haman and gives it directly to Mordecai. Like why don't you wear that ring for a while? Why don't you do some stuff? But instead it says, oh, here you go, Mordecai. And of course, Mordecai and Esther get carried away with that ring as well. Not only that, not only is he just giving this ring away willy-nilly and just telling people to do whatever they want with it, when it's the most powerful ring in the whole world, okay? He just hands it out like it came out of a Cracker Jack box or something. But not only that, he's constantly just recklessly promising half of his kingdom to Esther all the time. What do you want, Esther? I don't even know what you're going to ask, but I'm already going to give it to you, Esther. I mean, who here feels comfortable saying that to your wife? Hey, honey, what do you want, honey? You name it and whatever it is, I'm just going to give it to you. Let me just give you a carte blanche under the half of my bank account, you know, it shall be thine. He's literally just constantly just promising half his kingdom, promising to say yes to things. And folks, this is a theme in the Bible of people opening their mouth stupidly and making these kind of commitments. It's sort of like when King Herod says, oh, I'll give you whatever you want under the half of my kingdom. And then she says, you know, give me John the Baptist's head on a charger. It's like, oh, man. Why did you say that stupid thinking, Herod? Because he liked the way she danced. It's like, wow, you know, it's another has you here. What a bozo. You don't make all these reckless promises and things and just handing out, you're giving everybody power of attorney, just, you need to sign something, sure. As an idiot, the whole book, whole book, the guy's an idiot guy never makes any sense. Chapter nine, he goes along with Esther and Mordecai, even when they just want gratuitous revenge because at first it's just about the Jews defending themselves. But then after the Jews defend themselves and kill a whole bunch of people, they kill thousands of people. And in Shushan, the palace alone, they kill 500 people. They kill thousands of anti Semites, you know, all over the place. Then he's like, what's your petition, Esther? I'll give you whatever you want. You got the ring, do what you want, baby. And then she's just like, well, let's just do it again tomorrow. Let's just kill more people tomorrow. And he's just like, okay. And they just kill 300 more people. Like, was that really necessary? The Jews have already been totally defended. They're totally safe. They're not in danger. The day of the 13th of Adar has passed. The proclamation has been nullified. Everything's fine. And then they just are carried away. They're basically just drunken with this power or bloodlust or vindication or revenge or whatever. And they're just like, let's do it again tomorrow. Let's kill more people tomorrow. And he's just like, okay. Now what can we learn from this? You know, let me wind down now and just tell you what we can learn from this because all scripture is given by inspiration of God's profitable for doctrine. Okay. Again, I just want to remind you of what I said at the beginning. This is a historical book. It's not prescriptive. It's not prescribing. This is what you need to go out and do. Be like Ahasuerus. It's descriptive. This is what Ahasuerus did. Learn from it for better or for worse, especially in light of the fact that it's a book that doesn't mention God whatsoever. And I believe that the reason why it doesn't mention God is that the idea that we're supposed to get from that is that this is a time when the Jews are distant from God. God's not present in their lives like he should be. You know, God's obviously omnipresent, but when we talk about God being with us, that's something different, isn't it? When we say that the Lord was with Joseph, well yeah, cause I'm not present. No, no. The Lord is with Joseph, right? We want to be close to God in our own personal lives, don't we? We want to be not drawn nigh to God, the Bible says, and God will draw nigh to you. God is not nigh unto any of these people in the story, okay? And you can say, well, I think he is, but you're not going to be able to point to that in the book because God's not even mentioned. So you're going to have a real tough time convincing me that, you know, this is a story about people who are really close to God and really care about the things of God. And I'm going to preach about that tonight, but the point is that right on the surface we can see there's a lot of sin, a lot of wrong things going on here, and that God's not mentioned because people are far from God, okay? Now, specifically about King Ahasuerus, the takeaway is this. He's a bad example of a husband and he's a bad example of a leader. So I think the best thing we can do with Ahasuerus is to be the exact opposite of Ahasuerus and realize like, look, these are all the mistakes that he made. Let's do these things right, okay? So as men, what can we learn from Ahasuerus? Not to be hedonistic, not to be gluttonous, not to engage in too many vacations, too much partying. Look, it's great to take a little time off, it's great to blow off a little steam, it's great to have a little fun, but you know what? Good things can be taken too far and we don't want to be somebody who just lives for fun, lives to play, lives to party, and just drains our bank account because we're just out blowing money on having a good time. So we don't want to be hedonistic like that. We don't want to be arrogant and prideful because guess what? If you're arrogant and prideful, you know what? The people around you, they're going to learn to be that way too. I mean, if you're an arrogant, prideful husband, do you think maybe your wife might start being arrogant and prideful too from hanging around with you? And then maybe she's going to pull a Vashti because she's arrogant and prideful like, no, I'm not going to come. Hey, would you, honey, would you just come and, you know, with the crown of me? But why is she arrogant? He's arrogant. They're all arrogant. They're all prideful. You see what I'm saying? Who is Haman's right hand man? A guy who's super prideful. He wants everybody bowing down to him everywhere he goes. If you know the story in the book of Esther, Haman demands that everyone bows down to him all the time and he wants to be led around the city with people proclaiming things and he wants to wear the king's outfit and all that stuff. He's arrogant. You know, we don't want to be prideful and arrogant. Pride is one of the most wicked sins in the Bible. If there's one thing sending the most people to hell right now, it's pride. Why don't people get saved? So easy to get saved. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Why don't they get saved? Because they're too prideful. Like, well, I, I'm going to go to heaven because I'm a good person. I keep the commandments. I'm living a good life. You can't just live however you want instead of just accepting a free gift. Believing in Jesus, pride makes them want to get there on their own merits and work their way to heaven on their own. Don't be hedonistic. Don't be this party animal. Don't be prideful. Okay. Also, you know, don't practice polygamy. And obviously that goes without saying cause it's illegal in the United States, but you know, don't be with a bunch of women is what the Bible is saying there. You know, right. It should, you know, respect the institution of marriage. If you're single, be abstinent. If you're married, have that physical relationship only with your wife and no one else. Okay. Also as a husband, as a father, you have to lead. You have to make decisions. You can't just be aloof and just, you have no idea what's going on and you just let anything go and just let everybody, you know, you have to take the lead and say, okay, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Okay. This is the Bible we're going to read. It's a King James Bible. This is the church we're going to go to. We're going to go to church every week. We're going to read our Bibles. We're a Christian family, you know, and, and not just your, your, your daughter can go out of the house wearing whatever she wants with just a dad just like, you know, daughter wants to dye her hair blue and green and you're just kind of like, whatever, you know, why don't you lead? Why don't you teach your family what's right and wrong and make some rules, you know, and, and that your teenage daughter's not just coming home at two in the morning and you're just kind of like, Oh, you know, it's kids these days. Make some rules, you know, run things, be a leader. Don't just let people do everything and do whatever they want. You know, there has to be some structure. I'm not saying to micromanage every part of your family's lives, but you know, you don't want to be in a has you here as though where you're just, you're so busy having fun. You just don't even care what's going on and you just let everything go to pot cause you're not even engaged. You're not even checked in. How about here's what else we can learn. How about husbands love your wives. Don't go 30 days without talking to your wife, you know, interact with your wife, spend some time with your wife and don't just be like a king of has you here is where you're just, you don't even care. And a month goes by and it's just like, maybe you don't even talk, don't even spend any time together. And so you can see that through this story we can take a character that's a bad example. And with the has yours, it's pretty simple because there's really nothing good about this guy. And you know, maybe you could find something that's kind of good about him or whatever. But the point is, you know, usually people in the Bible are a mixed bag and you take the good about Abraham, you take the good about Moses and you realize that they have some weaknesses and faults. But I think it's pretty safe to say that has you areas is a pretty strong negative example. Maybe obviously I'm sure that he had some good qualities that, you know, I'm sure if we got to know him, he's probably in hell though. So we're probably never going to get to know him. You know, chances are he's burning in hell. So it's, if there was anything good about him, we're probably never going to find out about it, you know, but from the text without adding to the text by actually reading what's in the biblical text here, I think we can say that he's a pretty strong, bad example. And we can look at that and be like, you know what, I don't want to be like this guy. I don't want to be checked out. I don't want to be that aloof. I don't want to be hedonistic, constantly just playing and just, and just shirking responsibility all the time and just, and just letting everyone else take the responsibility where I'm just drinking. It's garbage. And so learn from a has to wear as, as a bad example, not as a good example. And tonight I'm going to preach about Mordecai, the Jew, who many people would interpret as a great man, a godly man. You know, I'm going to preach tonight that he's not a great man or a godly man at all. And I don't like him at all either. And you know what? I don't even like Esther. All right. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, Lord, thank you so much for your word and thank you for, uh, all the great things that we can learn from it, Lord. Thank you for the clear passages that just tell us how to live our lives and, and so many wonderful verses in the new Testament that just tell us exactly what you, you want from us and how to live Lord. But thank you also for giving us these stories, which are, are less clear, but Lord, they help illuminate and maybe illustrate some of the clear statements. And Lord, I pray that every husband and father today would think about a has you areas and, and think about the mistakes that he made and the wrong things that he did and how, you know, we as men don't want to go down that road and in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.