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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Sam Walters

Christ’s Method of Mission

What's the, I know it is in the UK, but how does it change?

When does it go from afternoon to evening in the US?

Sometimes I like smaller groups, because I just feel like you can connect more.

And so yeah, I'm looking forward to this evening's message, this afternoon's message.

And I'm praying that we'll be blessed as we go.

Dear Lord, as we look into your holy word, I'm praying that you will speak to us, that you will challenge us to come up higher, and that we will be drawn closer to you and to your son, Jesus Christ.

So I'm not usually a presentation guy, but it's good to use slides every now and again.

We're going to explore some reasons why we drift in our Christian walk and how this affects our witness.

And we're also going to explore ways to overcome these reasons and we're going to do this through the book of Esther.

And hopefully, this is a familiar story, so we won't have to go too much into all the details.

But we'll just unravel a few things as we go.

Okay, I didn't hear any of that, but it sounded like, it sounded good.

So you've got Esther, you've got King Ahasuerus, him, that's the king of the Medes and the Persians.

You've got Queen Vashti, remember Queen Vashti.

There's a couple of other people, we'll get there in a moment.

Now, let's just make sure we're all together in terms of where we are in Bible prophecy.

Where you've got that image with the head of Babylon, chest of arms of silver, I said head of gold, chest and arms of silver, and then you know it carries down legs of iron etc etc.

So Babylon's come, they've taken over Judah and now a kingdom, another kingdom has come and taken over the Babylonians, it's the Medes and the Persians.

So in the timeline, that Daniel 2 timeline, we're in the chest of silver.

That's where we are in our Daniel chapter 2 timeline.

You know what I'm talking about when I say this, don't you?

So in 539 BC, Babylon were defeated by the Medes and the Persians.

God's people were in captivity from about the year 605 to about 539 BC.

And in 539 BC, Babylon was defeated by the Medes and the Persians.

And Cyrus, King Cyrus in about 536 BC and Darius in about 520 BC gave some decrees giving God's people civil and religious liberty to reestablish their religion and rebuild the temple.

You know what I'm talking about, don't you?

And you had in 480 BC, Ahasuerus comes on the scene.

So you got 536 BC Cyrus, you got 520 BC Darius.

They're giving civil and religious liberties to the children of Israel, to the Jews, to rebuild the city, rebuild Jerusalem, so they're given civil and religious liberty to do so.

But in this story, Esther, the civil and religious liberties are removed and a death decree is issued.

And so in Daniel 8.20, this Medes and Persians is actually represented as a ram, a male sheep that has 2 horns.

And so you see that they're giving civil and religious liberties, but then you also see them issuing a death decree.

I'm trying not to get too much into different things, but those who get it, get it, and those who don't get it, just put it as a note to study.

Right, now many people have said with the book of Esther that 1 of the major themes that come out is this thing called turnarounds.

We're gonna be in, we're gonna, Get your Bibles open to Esther because we're going to be in there.

Now in the twelfth month, that is the month of Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king's commandment and his decree drew near to be put in execution, in the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to have power over them, though it was turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them.

You see this theme in the book of Esther of something supposed to be going 1 way and then it turns around and ends up going the other way.

You see this time and time and time again throughout the book of Esther.

I don't remember, there's a little subplot in the book of Esther.

There's a plot to kill the king and then they end up getting killed themselves.

And then you've got the reversals between Haman and Mordecai.

At the beginning, Haman's given a signet ring where he's got tremendous power and by the end of the book, that ring is taken away from him.

Haman seeks to exterminate all the Jews and finds himself begging a Jew for his life.

Haman builds these gallows to hang Mordecai on and ends up being hung on them himself.

Mordecai is sitting at the gate of things at the beginning of the book, but by the end, he's the prime minister.

At 1 point, he's dressed in sackcloth, and another point, he's dressed in kingly robes.

Even the non-Jews in the empire go through some type of convergent experience, and many of them become Jews.

There's many different names of different characters in the book of Esther, but only 2 have dot, dot, dot, question mark.

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Christ’s Method of Mission

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