Transcription
Your ministry, I want to add my welcome to everyone that's here this morning. Great to have you in church. Esther chapter 2, if you'll turn there with me.
I mentioned Sunday I'm starting a new sermon series tonight. It's just three sermons the next three Wednesdays including this one. Uh but this is a marriage series called the impossible marriage. Esther chapter 2, you can turn there uh with me. Amen.
I read a a news article and it says not even a medical emergency would stop Brian and Maria Schultz from tying the knot. January 2nd, this couple from New Jersey went to the county courthouse to get married. This would be the equivalent in the US of going to home affairs. This is just an informal uh just the legal ceremony. And they went there with their mothers, but while they were there, Brian's mother suddenly had trouble breathing. She began having an asthma attack. A sheriff's officer that was there uh took her into the women's restroom where she could sit down and they began administering oxygen to her. EMTs were called. And when they showed up, they wanted to take her to the hospital. But the sheriff's officers thought it would be too risky to move her out of the bathroom. Uh but the problem is is that uh postponing the wedding would mean they would have to wait another 45 days to get a new marriage license. In the US, if you miss the date, you've got to reapply for all the paperwork. So, they made it work. They talked to the judge, Judge Katie Gummere, came into the women's restroom with the couple and the mother and the medics and the oxygen tank and performed the ceremony. And they said, "We are pleased to report that Mr. and Mrs. Schultz are doing great and so is Mom."
You know, the scripture we're going to read is about a marriage that just shouldn't work. By every possible explanation, it was it was ridiculous. It was impossible, and yet not only did it work, it worked incredibly well. The book of Esther is about a marriage that should be impossible, but it's not because nothing is impossible with a God. Listen to me, not even your marriage. And before you put your hand up and say, "But pastor, have you ever met my wife?" Not even your marriage. And I want to preach this series called the impossible marriage. This morning this evening, our first message is called bad beginnings.
Esther 2, I'm going to read beginning in verse 1. It says, "After these things, when the wrath of King Ahasuerus subsided, he remembered Vashti and what he had done and what he had decreed against her. Then the king's servants who attended him said, "Let beautiful young virgins be sought for the king, and let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of the kingdom that they may gather all the beautiful young virgins to the citadel into the women's quarters under the custody of the king's eunuch, custodian to the women, and let beauty preparations be given to them. Then let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti." Now, you can skip down to verse 16. So, Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus into his royal palace in the 10th month, which is the month of Tebeth in the seventh year of his reign. The king loved Esther more than all the other women, and she obtained grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins. So, he set the royal crown upon her head and put her queen instead of Vashti."
I want to speak for a few minutes about bad beginnings. This story of Esther begins in this impossible marriage conflict. King Ahasuerus is having a party with all of the male officials. Queen Vashti, at the same time, is having a separate party with all of the women. The king gets drunk, and so he calls for the queen. He says, "Come in. I want all the men to see how beautiful you are." Esther 1:10-11, "When the his heart was merry with wine, he commanded them to bring the queen wearing her crown in order to show her beauty to the people and the officials, for she was beautiful to behold."
Now, the Bible is speaking very simply here, but I think we can assume there was probably more going on. It wasn't just that she was going to walk in and they all say, "Oh, well, she's very beautiful, very nice." And they would go back to their party. In these cultures, more than likely, he would have been expecting her to do something degrading to her, especially as she was a queen. But, the queen refuses. Verse 12, "Queen Vashti refused to come at the king's command. Therefore, he was furious, and his anger burned within him."
Now, here we are thousands of years later. It's hard to peel back all of the layers there of culture and all that's happening to determine what exactly went wrong. But, I think it's probably safe to say that these two people really didn't get along very well. You think we could agree on that at this point? Here's the king, "Come to my party." She says, "I will not." And he says, "Fine, I'll kill you." I mean, there there This is whatever's happening, whatever cultural things, these are not happy people. In fact, if you read uh we don't have the time to go into it, but if you read, it's not just that he sent people, it said he sent people seven times to get the queen. Right? Come see. I will not. I will not. I will not. So, yes, he's being a pig-headed chauvinist twerp, but she's being an obstinate stubborn rebel. This is a marriage that's crisis, right? This is total chaos. Ultimately, he kicks her out of the palace. He you you can no longer be queen. This is a divorce, and he starts hunting for a new bride.
And so, here is the foundation of Esther's marriage. This guy, this gem of an individual, he says, I know how to find a new wife. We're going to have a beauty contest. And and this is just insane. And the reason this story is worth talking about tonight is because many marriages have bad beginnings. Or bad things in the beginning. Sometimes it is bad reasons for getting married. I've counseled all kinds of people. They got married why? To an escape an abusive home. Because I was bored or I was lonely. Because I want freedom. Because I got pregnant. All of these these are not good reasons to get married.
Sometimes it's marriage of desperation. Talking to a father recently, he's he's lamenting his daughter. She seems to be a good girl. She's not you know, she's not ugly, right? You know, but she's worried. She's getting older and she's not married. Right? I I you know, I get it. If if you thought she was one of the big five at the at the you know, wildlife park, I you know, maybe that's understand, but she doesn't. And now, this loser comes along, and I mean with a capital L and she falls for him because she's desperate. Why haven't I gotten married yet? And so people will get married out of desperation. And often people rush into ill-advised marriages because they're lonely.
You know, in our scripture, this is actually very shallow. He wants to get married. So, how does he choose a a spouse? I'm going to have a beauty competition. Listen, that is not the right way to choose a spouse. Listen to me very carefully. Beauty is skin deep, but ugly goes all the way to the bone. And it don't matter what she looks like. If she's an ugly person on the inside, you can't wash it off. You can't plastic surgery that away. But this is his plan. We're going to have a a beauty contest. If there is nothing more than physical attraction in choosing your spouse, I predict your marriage is going to be either very disappointing or very short. If you're only choosing based on physical attraction. We read about Samson. His parents said in Judges 14, "Isn't there one of our people you can marry?" And he says, "No, she pleases me. Get her for me." And this is the woman that destroyed his life.
Of course, there can be bad beginnings in our marriage. You know, many of us here tonight were married before they got saved. And so there are hurtful things that were there. Maybe you got married for one of these reasons I mentioned and now you're wrestling with some of the uh the the baggage that comes with that. There are things that we do and say that hurt each other. You know, marriage is a shock to the personality. For all of you single people, listen. You have this idea that it's like you're happy, she's happy, we get married, and now we're happy. Absolutely not. Because you are pigheaded in your own way, and they are pigheaded in their own way, and as soon as you get together, suddenly it's like it's like the US and Iran lately. It's just like suddenly things there's explosions and not the good kind.
Some people spend years reeling because of the hurts in the beginning of their marriages. Some never get over it. It's always heartbreaking to me when I counsel marriages, and the things that I'm counseling are decades old. They're still wrestling with these things. Then of course there are things that are missing in marriage. In our text, there was so much missing, right? He doesn't even know these girls' names. He's just lining them up and looking at them. He has no idea she's a Jew, which plays into this story later in a really big way. There's so much they did not know about each other. When I look back at the beginning of our marriage, there is so much that I did not bring to the table. >> [sighs] >> I was convinced I had it all together. I didn't know how to make good decisions. I didn't know how to resolve conflict. I I was so incredibly lacking in my spiritual life, in my personality. But you know what? Our bad beginnings in marriage, they are because of who we are. If there is a problem in your marriage, I know whose fault it is. And it's yours. It's not the person you're sitting next to. Because that's the reality is we bring us into marriage. We bring our past and our flaws and our wrong ideas, our hurt and our rejection, and now our spouse has to deal with that. We bring this brokenness from our past into our marriage.
Esther 2:7, "Mordecai brought up Esther, his uncle's daughter, for she had neither father nor mother." We have no idea why this is. We don't know why she's an orphan, but she was. And that's the reality. That was the past that she was bringing into her marriage. Some of you, you brought into your marriage your parents' divorce, or the fact that your parents never got married. You brought all of the baggage and the drama, the abuse and the loss and the addiction from your past, you brought it into your marriage. Ultimately, we are bringing the flawed reality that we are all sinners and desperately in need of God's help.
So, let me speak then for a moment about problems with bad beginnings. The problem with beginnings is just that, they were the beginning, which means they were in the past. Now, if you are still single, I'm glad that you're hearing this sermon tonight, and I hope some of these things will click and you'll make note, things to remember when you begin your marriage. But if you're already married, the beginning's over. And that's the worst part about it. Is that you're here now. It's in the past. It's been done. That chapter has been written. The page has been turned. And the difficulty for many of us is that because our beginning is behind us, we assume it cannot be fixed. It It's over. There's nothing that can be done. My marriage just is the way it is. It's a mess. There's no love, it's chaos, and that's the way it always has to be. And so many people that I've pastored and I've talked to, they make bad decisions now because they can't change the past, but that's ludicrous.
Some people lose hope because of how their marriage began. I was told one time speaking about marriage and they said, "Well, I'm never going to have a marriage like yours because ours started bad." In other words, because something was bad in the past, it is always going to be bad. Nothing is ever going to change. This is a fatalistic mindset that ignores all of the word of God. On one hand, people view some problems as unavoidable or inescapable. I get very frustrated with talk like this. People that say, "Well, my parents were like this, so I." Would you knock it up Would you stop blaming everybody and take responsibility for the fact that maybe you're a jerk? And it wasn't your mom? Oh. Right? We blame our culture. Well, you know, listen, I come from an aggressive people, SO I'M JUST LIKE THIS. NO, YOU'RE A JERK. STOP. NO, you don't understand where I come from, you know, it's just we all, you know, we all drink. No, you're an alcoholic. You need to stop. Stop blaming things and take responsibility. But that's how we act in our marriage sometimes. Well, my parents were like this, and so that's just the way it's going to be. I'm just like this. I yell, I do this, I slam the door, and you just act as if it's just going to be that way. My dad was silent, so I don't communicate. My mom was overly emotional, so I blow up. Maybe you started your marriage in morality, so you assume that it's just going to be broken forever. You're going to have conflict. You had problems. Maybe you said things in the early days of your marriage that you shouldn't, and now you think there's nothing I can do about it. And you're carrying the burden of past hurts and violations and failures. And you carry them with you year after year after year. I counsel people that they are still carrying hurts that are so old. These hurts have grown up and they've got grandchildren now. But you're holding on to it. But she said this to me. But he did this. And then of course on the other hand, some people view a good marriage as an unattainable ideal. Something that's out of reach, and I see that even in the church. Many Christians, they just assume you have to fight. Well, we're just going to yell. That's what you do when you get married. I I disagree. I don't think you have to yell. Now, I don't think you're going to hell if you do. But you don't have to. You don't have to always have slamming doors and broken dishes and the kids crying because mom and dad are arguing about whether we're going to have spaghetti or macaroni. They're both noodles. Just have one.
There's people here. Every time I preach on marriage, every time Pastor Leben preaches on marriage, you sit there and think, "Well, that's not for me." There's just no way. It couldn't work for me. Or must be nice where you come from. To have good marriages like, but not where I come from. It's as if it's unattainable. Like God can't do for you what he did for the person sitting across the aisle from you. You see people who are in love. You see people that are happy in their marriage, and what's the first thing you think? It's fake. Rachel and I went on a holiday for our 20th anniversary. So, this is now been many years ago. Actually, it was our 20th anniversary, but we were celebrating it in year 21 because year 20 was just kind of a crazy year. >> [laughter] >> Just one of those, you know? And so, that we were celebrating our 20th anniversary, went on a holiday to Mexico, and we had several people that asked that week, you know, whatever like at dinner, I'm like, "Are you enjoying your honeymoon?" Sweetheart, they say my honeymoon. We've been married and and they We had some of them they seem they they're they I'm to this day they're convinced we were lying to them. No, this is our Actually, we've been married 21 years, but we're celebrating our 21st our 20th anniversary. They That is not true. You're a liar. That can't be. You know why? It is not because of my youthful face. It's because my wife and I would sit at dinner and we would talk to each other, and we would laugh. We would walk around holding hands like we do when we're having any meal. There's no phone. Oh, hello. We We're in love. But some people when they see it, they think, "Pastor's just performing." They get outside and they they walk and they Okay. >> [panting] [sighs] >> Okay, let's go in the church. Hi, sweetie. Because you have never seen it in your own life, you think it's impossible. It's this impossible ideal.
And so, what this means is that too many people allow bad beginnings to dictate their future. Because of whatever was in the past, whatever dark thing lays in your history, in your family history, you've given up hope of getting beyond survival. And many they they just stopped trying. I used to joke and and please forgive me. I'm not I'm not poking at you if this is happens to be you, but I watch people, you know, when they're they're married, they sit next to each other, then they have kids and the kids sit next to them, but then all of a sudden, you see the husband and wife go boop and there's a kid in between them. Right in the And then there's two kids in between them. And it's not because they can't control them. Right? Because then you notice sometimes then they move back and there's Now they're sitting next to each other again, right? Oh, and then now now there's just space again. But some people just assume that's the way it's got to be. You just stopped trying. Oh, well, that's just life. That's just how it's going to be. It's very sad to me. I I love preaching on marriage. Surely you picked up on that by now. I love preaching marriage retreats, but it's very sad when I meet couples that have given up trying. They're They're not going to divorce. They're not They're not going to break up. They're I mean, they don't even know what they would do, right? Man, if I got divorced, I wouldn't even know where to find my socks, right? And so you stick together, but you're not trying anymore.
So I want to speak finally then about building on bad beginnings. Our scripture shows us that you can build a good marriage on a bad beginning. You can build a good marriage on a bad beginning. If you read the rest of the story, and I I get the story of Esther is an odd one. It's a unique tale. But you don't read about this chaos ever again. Whatever it was that was going on between Ahasuerus and Vashti, the insanity, the chaos, you don't read about that ever again. It never shows up. We don't know what was happening behind the scenes. The Bible only tells us what we need to know, but what we can glean from this is that not only do you not read about the insanity in their marriage, you read about the opposite. We read about the king and Esther, a marriage marked by fidelity and responsibility and care for one another.
In Esther chapter 7, there's this whole drama when Haman he's going to kill the Jews, he's exposed and uh Esther exposes him. This is the king's best friend. It's the king, his best friend, and his wife. And when she exposes him, uh Haman kind of freaks out and I don't know it's not clear, but it sounds like he went down on his knees and it's like he was pleading with the king and he put his hands on her. And the king said, "Kill him." That's the same guy that at the beginning of the story, when his wife offended one of his friends, he divorced her. But now something's changed when his best friend dares disrespect his wife, off with his head. Something has changed. This man is viewing his wife in the appropriate way. Now, I want to just qualify this. I do not advise that you should often be killing people for the sake of your wife. Notice I said often. Because if it's necessary, I hope it's never necessary, but it's on the table. >> [laughter] >> It was not in my notes. I don't know how that snuck in there.
The point is this. It doesn't matter at all how your marriage started. At all. Not a drop. You could have started for every bad reason, every chaos, every problem, every insanity in your marriage, it doesn't matter because in God there is power to build a good marriage. Maybe you started in sin, you got married before you were saved, but you're saved now. You're a new person. 2 Corinthians 5:17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Listen, when you and your spouse got saved, the Bible declares that you are new people. You're not married to the same person anymore. I know I've told the story before, but I had a wife come to me years and years ago and she's telling me, she says, "I'm just struggling, you know, trusting my husband about this." And and that it's a story I was familiar with. It was something that had happened many, many years ago. And I said, "Okay, dear, but from then till now, did he get saved?" And she said, "Yes." And I said, "And has he ever done it again?" She said, "No." I said, "Well, I got good news. The guy that did those things to you, he's gone. God himself says he has passed away and this is a new creation. The guy you're married to didn't do that to you. You are new people. There's people here right now, if you would just believe that, it would set you free. It would change your whole life. When you got saved, you became a new person. You are not the person that hurt your spouse in the past. Your spouse is not the person that hurt you in the past. If they've given their life to Jesus Christ, they are new creations. That's why you can build a good marriage on a bad beginning.
This is based on the character and the nature of who God is. When you read the Bible, you find two things. Number one, God never leaves things like he finds them. Anytime God shows up, something changes including your marriage. And number two, God does not leave us in our brokenness. He repairs us. And we'll discover one day that not only can you build a good marriage on a bad beginning, but even bad beginnings can be redeemed.
In the story of Esther, and it's not really clear where this was in the timeline, but it appears to be right around the time when Esther was chosen as queen. So, I want you to think about this. All this chaos, she is just picked out randomly it seems to be the queen. At the same time, this interesting event happens with Mordecai. And it says that Mordecai was sitting in the king's gate. And he uncovers this conspiracy. Two officials were conspiring to kill the king. And so, Mordecai exposes it and saves the king's life. And it's written down in the history books, and then it is promptly forgotten. It's this weird strange thing. Has anything weird ever happened to you in your life? You are liars. Yes. You you have things that happen and then you just go, "What was that all about?" These move on. I don't I don't get it. Maybe there's some things that have happened in your marriage. You wonder, "Why did this happen to me?" This weird event happens and it turns out down the road there's this night the king can't sleep. Maybe he was keeping Esther up too. Maybe she would you just be quiet. >> [gasps] >> Can you pray with your mouth closed? I don't know what was happening. He couldn't sleep, so he gets up and he decides the best way to go to sleep, which is still the very best way to go to sleep, go read history books. He said, "That will work. I'm going to go." And they pull out the book and they turn to the page and it says, "And one day Mordecai exposed the conspiracy and saved your life." And the king says, "Wait a minute, do we ever do anything for him?" You guys, many of you, you know the story. Haman comes in. This is how the whole plot is unraveled. This is how the Jews are saved. This is how Esther is saved. The entire nation is saved and their people, they are rescued. Listen, in your marriage, there are going to be some things that don't make sense. There are events that happened to you in your past. You can't put two and two together right now. It's It's irrational. But God can redeem those crazy things from your past. Not only will God help you get past the old hurt. Not only can you get past the violation or the problems or the things you can't change. Not only can God help you build a new life, but it says that God can redeem those things for future blessing.
In our story, it's this weird event about a conspiracy. But I want to tell you, there are things in your past, in the bad past of your marriage that God can turn around. I I believe absolutely that it was the intensity of the chaos in my parents' early marriage that turned into the intensity of their love once my father finally got saved. If you knew my parents in their later years, uh they were embarrassing. They were really in love. That's a bummer when you're a teenager. Parents, can I just throw this in there? You should embarrass your children. I just need you to hear that one. I You should You should give your children regular reasons to cover their eyes. And be like, "Oh my god, Mom. Dad." Greg always says, "Rated PG." The only reason my parents were like that is because God redeemed the insanity. I've told you some of the stories. The The The demonic insanity of their early years, but God redeemed it. There are things in the early days of your marriage, and maybe the early days are literally today. But God can redeem them. He can turn them into something new.
Our scripture is about what should have been an impossible marriage. There's no reason it should have worked. They were in the wrong cultures. They had the wrong backgrounds. They didn't speak each other's language. But it worked. And I want to tell you tonight your marriage is not impossible. Amen.
Let's bow our heads together. I thank God every head is bowed, every eye is closed. No one's moving around just for a few minutes. What a wonderful thing it is to be here in the presence of God with God's people. In a moment we're going to move on to other things. We're all going to have the opportunity to pray, but first, before we do that, if you are not a born-again Christian, you need to be. The Bible says that we have all sinned. We all come short of God's glory, and none of us are righteous. The scripture tells us the penalty for our sin is death. [music] That's speaking of the condemnation of our soul for eternity. And there is no answer for that. In human efforts, there's no answer [music] for that in religion. It doesn't matter how much scripture you memorize, it's actually irrelevant. >> [music] >> Doesn't matter how spiritual you think you [singing] may be, you need to be born again. You need to admit that you're a sinner. And ask Jesus [music] Christ to forgive your sin. And if you do that, if you'll turn away from your sin, the Bible says that God will >> [music] >> answer. He'll respond to that. He will forgive you. He will set you free from your sin. >> [music] >> And he gives the promise of eternal life with him in heaven. Right now, while our heads are bowed, eyes are closed. >> [music] >> If that's you, you want to turn from your sin, you want to ask Jesus to forgive you. If that's you, I [music] want you to lift your hand all across this place. Amen, I see that hand. How many others? I see that hand. How many others? You're unsaved, you're not a born-again Christian, you want to give your life to Jesus, put your hand up. Thank God. Amen, each of these that lifted your hand, I want you to get up out of your seat, kneel down here in the front. Someone's going to pray with you. >> [music] >> Praise God. Come, kneel down. Someone's going to lead them in a sinner's prayer. If you didn't lift [music] your hand, but you know you needed to, get up out of your seat, come and kneel down. Need a couple men to come pray here. >> [music] >> Lead them in a sinner's prayer. Hallelujah. Thank God. Wonderful Jesus. Amen, Christians, I preached [music] very direct tonight. The world and the devil want you to believe that there's no hope for your marriage. [music] And maybe it's not going to break up, but the devil wants you to believe that it's not going to get any better. You're just going to survive. [music] I absolutely reject that. God can do anything he wants. [music] He can do anything we allow him to in our marriages. God's dealing with some people here tonight. You need to come talk [music] to God. Let's stand together. I want to invite you into this altar. You come speak to God. All across [music] this place, come get a hold of God. We're going to sing a song while these are praying. You come, you begin to speak to, get a hold of him. Tell him what's on your heart. [music] Ask him to move for you. >> [music] >> Jesus, breathe upon your people right now, Lord. >> [singing] [music] >> God, I'm asking that you would [music] pour out your spirit upon us, Lord. Cause there to be a miracle dimension of your grace and favor. God, I need you to move in each [singing] and every home, [music] in every marriage. God, cause there to be a miracle of revelation and clarity. >> [music] >> Sweet [singing] the sound that saved [music] a wretch like me. >> [music] >> I once [singing] was lost, but [music] now I'm >> [singing] >> found. Was blind, Amen. If you're here in the altar, you need to speak out to God. Cry to God. He can [music] meet you here. He can do a miracle for you and help you in your marriage [music] and in your home. >> [music] >> God, I need you to move [music] and help us, Lord. Lord, >> [music] >> Amen. >> Amazing grace, [music] [singing] how sweet the sound that saved [singing and music] >> Oh, Jesus, breathe upon every heart and every life. Cause [music] there to be a miracle of redemption and your grace. Move for us, Lord. >> [singing] [music] [music and singing] >> Chains are gone. [singing] >> [music] >> I've been set free. My savior >> [music and singing] >> has ransomed me. And [music and singing] like a flood, his mercy brings unending [singing] [music] love. Amazing grace, >> [music] >> amazing >> [singing] >> grace, how sweet the sound >> [music] >> that saved >> [singing] >> a wretch like me. >> [music] >> I once [singing] was lost, but now I'm found. >> [music] >> Was blind, but [singing] now I see. >> [music] >> My chains [singing] are gone. >> [music] [music and singing] [music and singing] [music and singing] >> Say [music and singing] it again, my chains are gone. >> [singing and music] [music] [singing] [music] [singing] [music] [singing and music] >> Let's worship God together. Thank you, Jesus. Wonderful [music] Jesus. Hallelujah. Thank God. Amen. In a moment we're going to be dismissed. I'll [music] encourage you you fellowship with someone before you leave. Take [music] some time to greet one another. Remember all that's happening this weekend, 180 on Friday, the Impact Team on Saturday morning. We'll be back in church on Sunday at 9:00 a.m.