SERMON

Today’s message is entitled Esther, No Coincidence

INTRODUCTION

Let me start off by saying, there are elements that don’t want you to have
the promises of God. Furthermore, there are times when we find ourselves
in dark places, but despite your circumstance and even how you Got there,
God is in control. Psalm 139:11-12 says:

11 I could say, “The darkness will hide me. Let the light around me turn into
night.”

12 But even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as light as the day;
darkness and light are the same to you.

Acts 17:28 says

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own
poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Romans 8: 28 says

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who
are the called according to his purpose.

There is a worldview that everything that happens, happens according to fix

natural laws. However, we as Christians must have that acute sense, that

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this is our Father’s world and the affairs of man lay in His hand. He is
involved in all aspects of our lives and ever so often he reminds us that he
not only sets the laws, but he enforces them also.

Now the Book of Esther teaches us that God never stops loving His people,
even though they may sin against him and the He controls the affairs of
men to bring about his plan for His people. We will go through the Book of
Esther to examine said lessons.

Before we get into the body of the sermon, let’s take a brief look at:

• the writer,
• the book and
• the setting

The unknown author of the book of Esther, but the book is named after a
young Jewish girl named Hadassah who was crowned queen, after
participating in beauty pageant. When she became queen, she was
renamed Esther, which means Star. It is worth mentioning that Hadassah
means an evergreen, fragrant shrub. Furthermore, references of Myrtle
were in Isaiah, even before Hadassah came on the scene. Isaiah 41:19
and 55:13 refer to the divine establishment of the people in the land in
subjection to Jehovah. It is not by coincidence that Hadassah, meaning an
evergreen, fragrant shrub, a fitting symbol of the recovery and
establishment of God's promises, is the one that God uses to save His
people.

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Passage Setting. Where are we?

Scholars tell us that the events in the book of Esther occurred from 510 BC
to 522 BC, during the first half of the reign of King Xerxes, in the Shushan,
the capital of the Persian Empire. Let’s look at a brief chronology of the
Israelites:

1. Israelites were in Hebron, then

2. They went to live in Egypt when there was a famine.
3. They became slaves in Egypt
4. Then they had an Exodus from slavery in Egypt to live in Canaan to
the promise Land.
5. The Israelite Kingdom established in Canaan based on God’s law.
6. The Israelite Kingdom is divided into Israel and Judah
7. Both Kingdoms fall
8. Israelite Kingdoms are taken into Captivity by foreign Kingdoms.
Persia is one of those foreign Kingdoms