Sermons in the Faithful Series

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ruth and Naomi teach us of love, loyalty, and perseverance. Esther becomes a queen who uses her power to save her people. And Deborah becomes a judge and general who defeats the oppressors of her nation. It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the lead pastor here. Thanks for joining us in person here at the First Service. Thank you for joining us online. I've had more people, maybe than ever, who have said to me this morning, oh, you look nice. What's the occasion? And I guess the occasion is that my shirt is tucked in because this shirt just needed to be tucked in, and that's what I wanted to wear today. I had no idea. I'm wearing literally the exact same thing I wear every week for four years, but I tucked it, so I guess that makes a difference. I'll have to remember that in the future. I am very excited about this series because we get to focus on some people in the Bible that we don't often stop on. We're going to focus on the women of the Bible because I think that we have some really profound lessons to learn from their faith. I was very grateful to Erin, our children's pastor, for opening up the series last week by telling the story of Esther. If you missed that, I would highly encourage you to go back and make sure you caught it because she did a great job with that story. This week, we're going to be in the New Testament in three of the four gospels talking about one of the women who may be one of the most underrated figures in the Bible. I think she's even an underrated Mary in the Bible. We all know Mary, the mother of Jesus. We know her. I think she gets her proper adulations. We probably know Mary Magdalene and the things surrounding her, and we've learned about her before. But maybe we haven't thought to focus on Mary of Bethany. Or maybe we just don't know that it's Mary of Bethany that pops up in these ways in Scripture. but I think she is one of the more underrated people in the whole Bible, if not maybe the most underrated person in the whole Bible, and we're going to learn why today. My point today isn't to show you that Mary's underrated and to have you leave and go, yeah, she really was, she's really great. My point today is to help you think through something that I think comes out of one of the stories that Mary is involved in. And this story actually points to what I believe to be one of the most haunting truths in the whole Bible. For me, I grew up a church person. My memory doesn't go back further than my church attendance. And some of us are like that. Some of us have found God more recently than that. But what I typically assume on a Sunday is that most people listening are church people. And for church people, this story from Mary of Bethany is really, to me, is really haunting. And it's something that we want to deal with. It's one of the stories that kind of freaks me out and makes me worry just consistently in my life. So I want to invite you guys into that anxiety with me so that you can be riddled with it for the rest of your life as well. So that's what we're going to do this morning. The story that highlights this, and she shows up three major times in the Gospels, and we're going to eventually highlight all three, but the one I want us to focus on is found in Matthew chapter 26. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. This is six days before the Passover on which Jesus was arrested. So roughly, this is the night before the last week of Jesus' life. And if you've ever read through your Gospels, which I would highly encourage you to do, if you've ever read through your Gospels, you know that the pacing of the Gospels is kind of, it plods along, it moves at a pretty good pace. But then when we get to this last week of Jesus' life, beginning with the triumphal injury, triumphal entry, I guess that's another name for the crucifixion. If you actually start there, it slows down and takes its time. We get a lot of details about the last week of Jesus's life. And so the night before the triumphal entry, when Jesus is riding into Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate on a donkey, a symbol of peace, They're laying down palm branches in front of him, receiving him as a king. He knows that he's going to die. Nobody else with him knows. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a second. The day before this happens, Jesus is at what some scholars believe to be his favorite place on earth. He's in Bethany. He is at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Many scholars believe that these were the closest things that Jesus had to besties. It wasn't the disciples. It was Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They lived in this little town called Bethany. They all lived together. And just for perspective, it's kind of neat to think about it. I've seen it and it's neat to pull it together. If you were to go to Jerusalem right now and go to where the temple is, where the temple mound is, and understand where it used to face in the time of Christ, and if you were to put yourself in the Holy of Holies and take a step out and walk through the curtain that used to hang between God and his people, if you would walk through that curtain and face out, what you would see is the eastern gate and the walls of Jerusalem. On the other side of that gate is the Mount of Olives with the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested. You can see it from the Temple Mount. If you go over that hill, if you go over the Mount of Olives into the next valley, that's where Bethany is. So this is where Jesus is preparing to enter into the gate the next day. And so he's having dinner with everyone. Mary and Martha and Lazarus did what you should do. They were hospitable to him. They were throwing him a dinner, and they know that he's about to enter into Jerusalem. And at this dinner, while they're reclining at the table, Mary goes and she gets a vial of spikenard or oxnard. It's a very, very powerful perfume. We're told that it was worth about a year's wages. And we don't know that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were extravagantly wealthy. We don't know that they were poor. We don't know a whole lot about their socioeconomic status. But what we know is that this perfume was worth a year's wages, whatever that means to us. I thought about trying to summarize it, but I don't know enough about the median income in Wake County. So whatever that is, that's what it was worth, okay? And she empties the whole bottle out. You could just take a dab of it and put it where you want to put it, and that would do the job for the day, but she empties the whole bottle out on the feet of Jesus. And in some accounts, it says that the disciples were indignant. In others, it says that Judas was indignant. And he was, in any case, the ringleader. And he's thinking to himself, how can this woman do this? How can she do this? How can she open up this bottle of perfume and pour it all out on the feet of Jesus? Doesn't she know how many people we could feed with that? Doesn't she know if she would be willing to sell that for Jesus instead of being showy in her offerings here, doesn't she know how many people we could feed, the good that we could do? And Jesus, knowing that this thought existed in the room, addressed it. And he says this in Matthew all, in another gospel, we're told that Judas was a thief already and he was skimming off the top. That's why he was really mad. He could have pocketed some of this perfume money. And that's really why he was mad. But he says, you will always have the poor, which is a really interesting thing to say. We could do a whole sermon on what that means. But you won't always have me. And then he says something really profound that nobody else in the room understood yet. He said, she's preparing me for my burial. See, he had told the disciples, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and they're going to kill me. And then I'm going to be buried. And then I'm going to raise on the third day and I will have conquered sin and death and everything's going to be good. He had told the disciples this. And after he would tell the disciples this, they would kind of lean in and go, what do you think he means by that? He's not really, no one's going to kill him. He's not really going to die, right? But Mary believed him. Mary understood him. As a matter of fact, what's profound about Mary, and we see it in this moment, that she prepares him for burial. This isn't just an offering to a savior. This isn't just, I love you and you're in my house and I want you to have this extravagant gift. This is, Lord, I know that you are about to die for me. I know what's about to happen. These yahoos don't. I understand what's about to happen and I want to do my part to love you and to prepare you for the road that you're about to walk. What I want us to see is that Mary, she knew who he was and what he came to do. And I would contend with you, and I mean this, I've thought this for years. I'm deadly serious about this. I would contend with you that she was one of two people alive who understood both who Jesus was and what he came to do. I think the other person is no longer alive at this point. I think the other person is John the Baptist. I think the only two people in Jesus's life who knew who he was and what he came to do were her and John the Baptist. Some people knew who he was, but they didn't understand what he came to do. And some people didn't even acknowledge that he was who he said he was. And this should cause us to ask questions. Why was it that when Jesus comes down, when he condescends, he takes on flesh, he walks among us? Why was it that so very few people, maybe it was more than two, maybe it was four or five, maybe there's more that are not recorded, or maybe you could look in the text and make an argument that somebody besides those two did, but very few people knew who he was and what he came to do. And if that's true, why is that the case? It's so funny to me because I've heard over my lifetime people say, if God's real, why doesn't he just come down and tell us? He did. And then we wrote a book about it. And then we formed a religion around it. Like he did. And nobody believed him then. Why didn't they believe him? This question should concern us because I want to know that if Jesus were to walk through these doors this morning that I would go, that's the Messiah and I would fall at his feet. I want to know that that's true. But how can I know that's true when everybody missed it? If anybody, if anybody that was a contemporary of Jesus should have known who he was, if there were any group of people that when Jesus came on the scene should have been the ones waving the flags and pointing the fingers and saying, this is the Messiah, everyone look, come worship him. If there's any group of people who should have done that, it's absolutely the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of Jesus's day. They were the pastors. They were the theologians. They were the professors. They were the ones who knew the Bible. To become a Pharisee, I'm not going to get into all the details of it, but to become a Pharisee, you had to effectively memorize the entire Old Testament, the Tanakh, the 39 books that we have today. You had to effectively memorize those if you wanted to be a Pharisee. You had to know it inside and out. If you were a Pharisee, you knew by memory every messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. You knew them by heart. You could rattle them off. You knew exactly what the requirements were to be the Messiah. And yet the Messiah showed up, the one that they had been waiting for for generations. He comes to the door. He says, I'm the son of God. And the Pharisees say, no, you're not. And they should have been the ones to identify him. They should have known. They should have seen. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the Pharisees were so certain that Jesus wasn't Jesus that they killed Jesus in the name of the Jesus they thought they should believe in. Do you understand that? They were so certain that he wasn't God that they killed him in the name of the God that they thought they were embracing. They missed him. And that terrifies me. Because the Pharisees are church people. The Pharisees are small group leaders. They're greeters and ushers. They teach Sunday school. They have their quiet times. They know their Bible. The Pharisees are me. They're pastors. The Pharisees didn't have a memory that went back past their church attendance. They're the church people and they missed Jesus. Why did they miss him? The Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation. I think the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation from the Savior. I think that they had some expectations. He's going to come from the line of David, so they're watching a particular line of David. He is certainly, if he's going to be the leader of Israel, he is certainly going to come up through our ranks. We're going to know about him. We're going to see him trending on Twitter when he's eight years old. We're going to know about this kid, right? And we're going to watch him. We're going to watch him go through the educational process. We're going to see him flourish as a Pharisee. We're going to see him rise to the top of our ranks. He's going to come through the system and he's going to tell us that we've been right about him this whole time. He's going to show up and he's going to tell everybody else that even though we're this backwoods country with no future, he's going to tell everyone else that we've been right and that our God is here and that we are important. They were blinded by their need for affirmation, by their certainty that when the Messiah shows up, he's going to point to us and he's going to tell us that we've been right this whole time. He's going to point to us, and he's going to say, well done, good and faithful servant. You have led my nation well. I am so glad I entrusted them to you. And instead, he called them a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs. And when he did that, they couldn't possibly believe that this was the Son of God, because when the Son of God shows up, he's going to tell us that we've been right and he's going to point to everyone else and say, you should listen to them more. They had a perfectly built theology of who the Messiah was going to be and when Jesus showed up, he didn't fit into their theology so they rejected him. And they didn't see him for who he was. They were blinded by their need for affirmation. The disciples, though, they knew who Jesus was. The disciples knew that Jesus was the Son of God. And if anybody should have known what he came to do, it was the disciples, right? See, everybody thought, everybody in Israel thought that when the Messiah gets here, he's going to ascend to the throne of David. He's going to sit on an earthly throne. He's going to raise Israel out of obscurity into international prominence, throw off Roman rule, and establish us as the international power of the world. That's what Jesus is going to do. He's going to be a king and a political leader and he's going to throw off our oppressors and we're going to show them. But the disciples, the disciples walk with Jesus every day. The disciples were with Jesus when people were clamoring around him, trying to usher him into Jerusalem to throw off King Herod and take over the kingdom, they saw Jesus vanish from the crowd so he couldn't be made king yet. They watched Jesus perform miracles and then say, don't tell anybody that I did that because Jesus wasn't ready for the hassle that was going to come from word getting out about his arrival. He knew that people wanted him to be the king and demurred and pushed away from that because they didn't understand what he came to do. So surely the men who ate and slept and breathed and walked and ministered with him for three years knew what he came to do. But they didn't know. They barely even knew that he was the son of God. In a minute, we're going to get to the story about raising Lazarus from the dead. And it's not the reason that Jesus waited two days and allowed Lazarus to die so that he could go and perform the miracle to raise him from the dead. It's not the reason that he did this, but a big reason that we see in scripture is Jesus allowed Lazarus to die so that he could raise him from the dead so that the disciples would begin to believe more in who he was. We see this scene that's unforgettable to me when the disciples are on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night and the sea starts to get incredibly rough and the storm is brewing and a bunch of old school sailors are scared for their life that they're about to drown. So it was pretty serious out there. They're so scared that they go into the hold of the ship and they wake up Jesus and they say, you got to do something. We're going to die. And Jesus walks up to the deck and he says some choice words to the disciples. And he looks out at the storm and he says, peace, be still. And the wind died down and the waves stopped and the rain subsided. And he went back down in the hole and he went back to sleep. And when he left, the disciples looked at each other and they said, who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him? They did not yet know who he was. They hadn't fully accepted that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. They didn't get it yet. And even the day after this, this story that we're looking at in Matthew, after they have dinner in Bethany, they wake up the next day and Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey as a peaceful conquering king. And they're following behind him. And they're arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president. Thomas, you definitely have to be the secretary of agriculture. Nobody cares about that. That's what you have to do. They're arguing about who gets to do what. So much so that James and John's mom is following behind Jesus. And I swear to goodness, if I were a disciple and Donna, my mom, was with me, she would have been the one asking this question. I love moms like this. But James and John's mom leans into Jesus and she's like, when you sit on your throne, can my boys sit next to you? Can they have a prominent spot? And he says, woman, you don't know what you're asking for. They still thought he was going to go sit on David's throne. They don't know that he's claiming a heavenly throne. They don't know that he's about to conquer sin and death and Hades. They don't know that he's about to deliver us into eternal life. They don't know. They misunderstood him. They couldn't see him. They don't understand that he's going, this is a coronation for a burial. They don't get it. Just like the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation, I believe that the disciples were blinded by their aspiration. The disciples were so blinded by their aspiration, by their personal goals, by what they thought Jesus was going to do for them, that when he showed up, they couldn't see him. They were so certain that this is Jesus, he's the Messiah, I'm going to follow him. And see, they had already washed out of the educational system. I'm not going to get into the details of it, but just by the fact that he found them plying a trade, that he found them building things, that he found them fishing, that he found them collecting taxes, just by the fact that Jesus found them plying a trade tells us that they washed out of trying to become Pharisees. And so now here comes this teacher, this Messiah, the Savior of the world who believes in me and he's going to elevate us and we're going to show the Pharisees who we are. We're going to be a big deal as he ascends into international prominence. We're going to write his coattails right into importance. They were so focused on their aspirations, on what they thought Jesus was going to do for them. Because I'm following Jesus, because I'm doing it well, because I'm beating all the other disciples, because I'm the first one to answer, he's going to be proud of me. He's going to be impressed with me. He's going to give things to me. He's going to bring me with him as he ascends. They were so blinded by their aspirations that they couldn't possibly accept that this person they think is going to sit on the throne is actually about to die. They couldn't see it. And what I think is haunting is that both the disciples and the Pharisees were blinded by their selfish expectations. The two groups who should have known who Jesus was, who should have seen him for who he was, who should have believed in him, who should have understood why he was there, are the two groups that messed it up the most. And I think it was because of their selfish expectations that blinded them. It kind of works like this. Some of my golf buddies may know what these are. There's these glasses that you can buy that they sell to golfers. They're called golf ball finding goggles, I think. They're very aptly named. You put them on and they're all blue. All you can see, they turn everything blue except for white. White like glows incandescently. If you've ever spent any time at all golfing, then you have also spent time in the woods wandering around like a moron looking for the ball that you hit. Happy to pick any ball and go back out onto the fairway. With these glasses, you can put them on and you can't see anything except for everything's blue and golf balls glow white. So you can see those, you can get them as they're supposed to help you find your ball. I've never used them before. I don't lose golf balls. I'm just straight down the middle of Fairway 260 every time. I don't need them. But other people do, and I think maybe they work. But I think that the expectations that the Pharisees and the disciples had worked similarly to those goggles. That once they put those glasses on of their expectations, that the only way they're going to see Jesus is if he fits into their narrow-minded theology, is if he fits into their narrow expectations. If Jesus acts and behaves exactly as they're expecting, it's the only way that they could possibly see him. And because they insisted that Jesus had to fit into the boxes that they had created for him, they missed him. And this should haunt us. If you spend any time as a church person, this should concern you. And we should begin asking ourselves this question, is it possible that we have our own blinding expectations? Is it possible that we have expectations of who Jesus is and how he would behave and what he's come to do and what it's going to look like when he shows up in our life and what it's going to look like when he sends someone into our life to speak truth to us and what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door or what it's going to look like to do his ministry or what it's going to look like to have his character or what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door, or what it's going to look like to do his ministry, or what it's going to look like to have his character, or what it's going to look like when he comes back. If we have some expectations that are so rigid and so dogged, is it possible that they're actually blinding us to who he really is? Is it possible that if Jesus showed up in our midst, if the second coming of Christ happened right now, is it possible that we wouldn't recognize him for who he is? The Pharisees didn't recognize Jesus because he came from some backwoods city and he had a bunch of rednecks that were following him around. It didn't come from an educated background. It wasn't anybody that general society respected. And if Jesus showed up in the woods of Appalachia and came over here to us with his redneck followers, would we point at them and say, that can't possibly be Jesus because look at who's following him. They're not educated. They don't know anything. They're not as smart as us. They're easily duped. They're easily fooled. That's not Jesus. I feel sorry for those people. Tell me Wake County wouldn't think that. Tell me we wouldn't be that arrogant. And so it haunts me. If the second coming happened right now and Jesus showed up, would I see him? Or do I have on glasses that only allow me to see him in my way? Are we so rigid in our faith and in our expectation of Jesus that we really think that we've cornered the market on understanding him? Do we really think that the Catholics don't know anything, that they're totally wrong about everything? Do we really think that the charismatic people, the ones who actually raise their hands and participate in worship, do we actually think that they're so far off base that their Jesus isn't our Jesus? Do we actually think that when we come into grace every week, we are just nailing it? Nate is exactly right about all his theology, and everything he says is true. Man, listen, 40-year-old Nate is so embarrassed by some of the stuff that 30-year-old Nate taught. I'm just trying to say stuff now that 50-year-old Nate doesn't make fun of. I think differently about so many things now than I used to. I would even tell you I understand less now than I used to claim to understand. I'm worried that some of our theological rigidity and certainty would actually cause us to miss Jesus if he showed up and defied some of our expectations. I'm worried that some of our expectations and aspirations would actually cause us to miss Jesus. If Jesus showed up in my life, surely he would heal us. Surely we would be safe. Surely my children wouldn't run into issues that are difficult. Surely this couldn't happen to my family. Surely I would get the promotion. Surely he would shield us from this pain. And so I carry around that truth that the people who were supposed to see him didn't. And it makes me wonder, and it should make you wonder, how then did Mary do it? How did Mary see what the others didn't? Why wasn't she blinded with expectations that blinded the others? What was so different about Mary? And I think the only way to answer that question is to look at the stories where we see her. Besides this story where she anoints the feet of Jesus, we see her two other times. The most prominent one is in John chapter 11 when her brother Lazarus is sick and they send word to Jesus, your friend Lazarus, you love him, he's sick, come heal him. And Jesus waits two days and allows Lazarus to die and then comes to Bethany. And when he comes to Bethany, Martha sees Jesus and tells Mary, Jesus is here, the teacher is here. And Mary runs out and says to Jesus what you think we would all say to Jesus. She says this, John chapter 11 verse 32, Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yeah, that's a pretty fair statement, Mary. And I wish we could get into this story. I really do. We just, we don't have time. Jesus wept with her. That's an amazing thing to have a savior who weeps with us. And then he raises Lazarus from the dead, not to just depict raising someone from the dead because he loves Lazarus, but to show us in yet another way what he came to do, to deliver him into eternity, to conquer death and sin itself. That was a picture of the resurrection that was to come. And it is a picture of what happens to our souls when we know Christ. It's a picture of salvation is the resurrection of Lazarus. And he knew that Mary didn't understand that. But what I want to point out is when she runs to Jesus and she's ready to confront him, does she stand face to face with him and say, you did not meet my expectations? She fell at his feet. She fell before him. And it's an interesting posture because the other place we see her is that famous story with her and Martha, right? Jesus is coming over to the house. Martha's scrambling around, getting everything ready. Mary's sitting at his feet, listening to him. Look, it says this in Luke 10, verses 38 and 39. Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. She encounters Jesus. Martha's rushing around trying to impress him with all that she's doing for him. She simply sits at his feet and takes him in, listens to everything that he teaches. And then we see her in the story that we're highlighting today. Interestingly enough, in this story, where is Mary? At the feet of Jesus. There's something to that posture. All three times we see Mary, she's at the feet of Jesus. In sadness because she's going to lose him, in uncertainty because she doesn't know how this resurrection thing is going to work out, she's at the feet of Jesus. In adoration when he shows up to teach because she wants more of him, because she wants to understand him, she's at the feet of Jesus. And even in frustration and disillusionment, when he has disappointed her and she doesn't know what to do with it, what does she do? She falls at the feet of Jesus. It's a humble posture. It's a posture of adoration. It's a posture of subservience and submission. And what I believe, based on the life of Mary, is that her vision was enhanced by her selfless affection. She saw Jesus for who he was and understood and accepted what he came to do because of her selfless affection for him. All she wanted was more Jesus. She didn't want to bustle around and try to impress him. She just wanted to soak him in. She didn't want to accuse him and point a finger at him and confront him. She just wanted to understand, so she fell at his feet. She knew that it would look crazy for her to pour out that whole bottle of perfume, but she understood what he had really come to do, and so she was preparing him for burial. And what's interesting to me is, in at least two of these stories, Jesus did not meet her expectations. Do you understand the significance of, he let her brother die. And she shows up to do what we would do, is point the finger and say, how'd you let that happen? And even though Jesus is, even though her experience with Jesus didn't meet up to her expectations of Jesus, she allowed her affection to shape her expectations and just fell at his feet. She, even though Jesus did not meet her expectations, she fell at his feet undeterred in affection. It's interesting to me that the only other person I think alive who knew who Jesus was and what he came to do was John the Baptist. And John the Baptist walked through that same disillusionment where he thought that when Jesus shows up, you're going to get everybody out of prison. So he sent a messenger to Jesus and he said, are you going to get me out of prison? That's kind of the deal when the Messiah shows up and Jesus quotes the passage back to him and he says, but you're not getting out of jail. Blessed are those who do not fall away on my accord. Their affection for their Savior was so great that it had room within it to adapt their expectations to who he actually was. Mary's affection for Jesus was so deep and so profound and so abiding that it gave Jesus the space to be who he actually was. Everyone else was trying to limit him with their expectations. Mary's affection for Jesus was so generous that she was willing to adjust her expectations to who she actually encountered. And I'm so fearful for us that when Jesus doesn't meet our expectations, that we are too rigid in them and we refuse to wrap our expectations around the person of Jesus and who he actually is. And instead we walk away from him because that can't possibly be my Jesus because he does not fit into my box and I cannot see him through these glasses. My hope and prayer for us is that our affection for our Savior will be so great that it will make room for him to show up however in the world he wants to show up. That it will make room for him to show up in our life in whatever person he decides to show up in, to show up in whatever ministry and in whatever truth and in whatever sermon and in whatever prayer and in whatever song that he wants to show up in. And if you've been a Christian who's paying attention for any amount of time, you know good and well that Jesus shows up in your life in the most unexpected of ways. And if we have expectations that are so rigid that we refuse to accept the ways that He shows up, then we'll be like the Pharisees and the disciples and we'll miss Him. Or we can be like Mary and have an affection for Jesus that is so great that it wraps itself around anything that he does and adjusts our expectations to who our Savior actually is and allows him to show up in deep and profound ways in our lives. I hope that's what we will do. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. I pray that we would love you more. God, I want to know that if you were to show up right now, if the second coming happened and this Messiah figure walked into our life, God, give us the discernment to know if it's him. When you show up in our life, give us the affection for you to allow you to show up in whatever form you want to take. May we not be so rigid in our expectations of you and what you're going to do for us and how you're going to build us up and how you're going to affirm what we've always thought. May we not be so rigid in our expectation that we don't make any room in our heart for who you actually are. Give us eyes to see you, Jesus. Give us ears to hear you, Jesus. Give us an ever-increasing affection so that the only place we want to be like Mary is at your feet. Help us see you in all the ways that you make yourself known to us. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ruth and Naomi teach us of love, loyalty, and perseverance. Esther becomes a queen who uses her power to save her people. And Deborah becomes a judge and general who defeats the oppressors of her nation. It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Well, good morning, Grace. I am Erin, as Nate stated earlier, and I am humbled and honored to actually stand up here to kick off this fabulous new series that we have on some of these really cool ladies of the Bible. I need to give a quick shout out, however, to Caitlin Resar. She did the voiceover for that. She is one of our Grace students, and she is pretty amazing, and I think she did an awesome job. So shout out to Caitlin, and thanks for helping us to kind of give life to this series. For those of you guys that might know me know that I adore a really good story. And one of my favorite stories, and yes, I sounded just like Nate right there. This is my favorite of all the favorites, right? But the book of Esther really and truly is one of my favorite stories from the Bible. Y'all, if you look at it, it has all the good things that you would want in a story. There's a king. There's a couple of queens. We've got some trusted, loyal advisors. We have a villain that you just absolutely love to hate. And we have a couple of plot twists, and at the end, the good guys come out on top. So like really, what more could you ask for? And I might have to pitch this idea to Disney as their next blockbuster. It has the potential. Just wait and see. But as I was preparing to do the story of Esther, I kept looking back and talking about it, and I was like, there's just no way that you can do justice to Esther by diving in and picking just a book or a verse out of her story. So if you will indulge me, I'm going to give you like a 10,000-foot flyover of the book of Esther so that we're all kind of on the same page. So sit back, relax, enjoy. And here, let me introduce you to Esther. This starts back in 483 B.C., so a really, really long time ago. And you'll find historically that the people of Israel are coming out of exile. There's a group that have moved themselves into Judah, but then there's another group that have scattered. And they have scattered in the Persian Empire, which, mind you, is the ruling empire of the time. This is where we pick up the story of Esther. The capital of the Persian empire is a place called Susa, and living inside of that capital is the king. The king's name is Xerxes. Y'all, these names, bear with me today. His name is Xerxes. He's three years into his reign, and the thing that we know about Xerxes at this point is that he loves to be king. He loves the power. He loves the opulence. He loves the wealth. He loves all things that come from being king. He's at the end of a 180-day banquet cycle. Okay, 180 days worth of parties, basic and simple, that he has given for all of his officials from all over the empire, just to show everybody how cool he really is. But because he's Xerxes, this is not quite enough for him. So he decides to hold a seven-day blowout of a party, for lack of a better way to word it. It is seven full days. He hires the best party planners. They decorate the entire courtyard in all of the finest things that they can, the best food, the best wine, and then he invites all of the people of the Capitol to come join them. So he can show off how really cool and powerful he is. Well, here we go. At the end of seven days, you can only imagine with all of the food and all of the wine that you could want what condition King Xerxes may have been in. And I'm just going to call it for what it was. He wasn't in the best state. Most likely he was very drunk. And he decides one last thing he wants to do is he wants to show off his crowning jewel, which is his king or his queen. And her name is Vashti. Now Vashti's on the other side of the palace. She's giving a party for the ladies. Messenger comes over and says, Hey Vashti, Xerxes wants to see you and all your queen finery. And Vashti says, no. Now, scripture doesn't tell us why she says no, but y'all can only guess. They've been over there for seven days doing all things around this food and drink. And now I'm going to put on my crown and my royal robe and I'm going to go parade through a bunch of basically drunken men. No, no, thank you. I appreciate the offer, but I think I'll stay right here with my ladies. It's a little safer here. So Vashti says no. Message gets back to Xerxes. We find out Xerxes has this crazy temper, and he makes this quick flash decision and says, I'm sorry, you're no longer my queen. You're done. So now he's King Xerxes without a queen. A couple of years pass because he's out doing whatever you do to run the kingdom, right? And his advisors come to him and say, it's time for you to have a queen. Now we know that King Xerxes loves all things beautiful. And so his advisors develop this beautiful idea to hold a beauty pageant. There's really no other thing that you would want to call it. It's a beauty pageant. Please go collect all of the beautiful young virgins from all over the empire and bring them to us. And then we're going to parade them around in front of the king and he gets to pick his queen. So that's exactly what happens. Research that I did said somewhere around 400 ladies end up back at the capital of Susa. They get dropped into the harem of the king, and they get to spend the next 12 months, y'all, 12 months, getting themselves all primed and pretty and beautiful before they can go before the king. So stop there for a second. We're right there at the edge of the harem. Let me introduce you to our next two people. The first one is Mordecai. Mordecai is one of the Jews that chose not to go back to Judah. He's living right there in the middle of Susa. And he's raising his cousin as his daughter. Her parents died at a very young age. So she's orphaned. Her name is Hadasha, or as we know her, it's Esther. And so in Scripture, Esther is described as being lovely in figure, or beautiful in figure and lovely to look at. So you can only guess what happens to Esther now, right? She's a lovely in figure and beautiful to look at. She becomes part of that 400 that end up inside of the harem awaiting their parade before the king. The only thing Mordecai can say to Esther before she goes in is, Hey, Esther, just do me one small favor. Don't let them know who you are. Don't let them know that you are a Jewish orphan. So Esther, because she loves and adores her Mordecai, she keeps her mouth closed. It goes on to tell us that once she gets into this harem, she finds favor with the person that's in charge of all the girls. She gets the best of everything. She gets servants of her own. It is an okay time, I guess, if you're going to be caught in a harem. I don't know. But yeah, I guess it's an okay time. She's kind of up there in the top of things and all is good. The 12 months pass. It's time to basically parade the girls out in front of Xerxes. And because this is the story of Esther, you kind of guess what happens. The parading happens. They get to Esther and it all stops. Because the king takes one look at Esther, is bowled over by her beauty. And lo and behold, he walks up and he puts the crown on Esther's head. And she is now the queen of Persia. And they hold a huge banquet to celebrate all of this. So just to make sure you're with me, we have King Xerxes. We have King Xerxes who basically says bye-bye to Queen Vashti because he can, right? And then we now have Esther who is queen, and we have Xerxes who is absolutely smitten with Esther. I like that word. That's why I used it. Smitten. It's just kind of a good word. And if you don't know what it means, for those of you in here that are younger, go look it up because it's fun. It is. It's just a fun word. And then we have Mordecai who is hanging out outside of the king's palace at what they call the king's gate because he wants to check in periodically on his Esther and make sure she's doing okay. And it's at the king's gate that we meet our final character in the story of Esther. And his name is Haman. Haman is the king's right-hand man. He is the top of the top. He has got the king's ear. And if we go back to Disney references, for those of you guys that are familiar with Jafar, he is Jafar. He's going to do everything in his power to keep his power and to manipulate the king. Now, inside of the story of Esther, there's another little story that runs in the underneath side between Haman and Mordecai. I don't have time to go into that, but I suggest y'all read it because it's great. It really is. It's worth your time, I promise. But let us just suffice to say that Haman did not like Mordecai, and Mordecai did not like Haman. And actually the word here, which, you know, in my house when my kids were growing up, we always said we don't use the word hate. Like it's not a good word. In this case, that's actually a good descriptor of the relationship between Haman and Mordecai. They just despised each other. And so what happens in this moment is we have years that passed, and somewhere in there, about five years into Esther's reign, this ongoing feud, for lack of a better term, between Mordecai and Haman comes to a head. And Haman just decides that it is time for Mordecai to go. I'm done with you. But the thing is, is it's not just Mordecai. He decides that because Mordecai is Jewish, it needs to be all Jewish people that go. And remember I said he has the ear of the king. And so lo and behold, Haman goes into the king and he says, Hey, king, there's this group of people that live in the empire. They're not like us. They don't follow our rules. They don't do. And they're going to be a threat to us here before too terribly long. So we need to get rid of them. We need to annihilate them. We need to take them out. He wasn't talking about just slavery. He was talking about killing all of them. And so he says this to King Xerxes. And remember, King Xerxes is like, Haman's his right-hand dude, right? Oh, sure, go ahead. I'll even pay for it. Go on. So this decree is drawn up. It's sent out to all of the Persian Empire, and it states that on a specific day in time coming forward, they are going to kill all of the Jewish people living in the Persian Empire. Done. Well, the people living in the Persian Empire, the Jewish people living in the Persian Empire at this point in time had kind of assimilated into the culture. And so they hadn't been causing any trouble, really. This is because of Mordecai. And so they get this information about the fact that they're soon to be killed and they don't know what's going on. So there's a whole lot of weeping and a whole lot of lamenting. And if you know anything, tearing of clothes and wearing of sackcloths. This is the picture we get of our Mordecai standing outside of the gate. And the message gets in to Esther that Mordecai is in bad shape outside of the gate. And so she sends a messenger and says to Mordecai, hey, Mordecai, what's wrong? What's going on? He sends in a copy of the decree and he says in his message to, it's time for you, Esther, to go speak to your husband on behalf of your people. Well, then Esther sends a message back out to Mordecai and says, hey, Mordecai, I'm not sure if you've heard this or not, but anybody who happens to walk inside to speak to the king and doesn't have permission gets killed. And my husband and I have not spoken in like 30 days. So I'm not quite sure he wants to see me at this point. And so then Mordecai hears this and sends back a message to Esther. And y'all, by the way, offside here, would you like to have been that messenger? Like back and forth. Could they not have figured out how to talk to each other? Oh, well. But here they go. So here goes this messenger, goes back into Esther with a message from Mordecai. And the message from Mordecai is basically, and y'all remember, this is my paraphrase, but he's like, hey, Esther, you know that crown and those beautiful robes you have? Well, on the day of annihilation, that's not saving you. It's not. You are still a Jewish woman. You're going to be killed. And have you not thought about the fact that somehow, someway, you are the queen for such a time as this? There's something in those words from Mordecai that prick Esther's heart. And Esther stops in her tracks. And her response back to Mordecai is, I will, basically. And her whole thought process on this one is, I need you to do something for me first. I need you to gather all of the Jewish people together, and I need you to fast. And I'm going to fast for the next three days. And I'm going to get my ladies around me, and we're going to fast. And at the end of those three days, I will go see the king. And if I perish, I perish. Y'all, this is one of the reasons why I adore Esther so much. Like here she is, she's at this moment of time, she's made her decision, and she just says it. If I perish, I perish. It sounds like something out of like Gone with the Wind. Do y'all remember the end of the something about, yeah, it doesn't matter. But it's all, there's so like, here she is. It's this moment in this story of being this heroine. And she's like, if I perish, I perish. So at the end of three days, she gets dressed in all of her royal garb and she goes to the edge of the king's court and she stands there. Zerch sees at the other end of the court, he looks up and he sees his beautiful queen and he immediately hands her the golden scepter, which allows her to walk in and to speak to him. And he says to her, my queen, what is it that you want? Up to half of my kingdom I will give you. And so here you expect her to say, hey, save my people, right? This is the expectation. It's time. Like she's there. It's time. No. Her response is, I want to have a banquet. What? Food, drink, what? But she says, I want to have a banquet with you and Haman and me, just the three of us. King says, okay, fine. Next day, there's a banquet. The king, the queen, Haman, everybody eats, everybody drinks. It's a great time. At the end of it, though, Xerxes looks at her again, and he's like, hey, queen, what can I do for you? If it's, you know, up to half my kingdom, it's yours. It's her moment to shine again, right? It's here. And what does she do? She asks for another banquet. Again, just her and Haman and Xerxes. And her beautiful husband obliges her and says, sure, so here we go. 24 hours later, it's another banquet. This time around, it's just, again, the three of them sitting around eating, drinking. And y'all, I can imagine Haman at this point, right? Our power-hungry little villain. He's sitting back going, this is banquet number two. Just me and the king and the queen. Like, how cool am I? How powerful am I? This is the best of the best. And I can almost imagine that he's like at the end of the meal sitting back. Maybe he's got his feet up on the table because that would be a Haman kind of thing to do, I think. Feet up on the table, rubbing the belly like, I'm good, y'all. I'm so good. And somewhere in this moment, though, King Xerxes says to Esther, again, what is it that you want? Up to half of my kingdom, and it's yours. And this time, this time Esther responds and says that she wants her and her people saved. Okay, Haman's feet just fell off the table, by the way. Because all of a sudden, Haman is exposed for who Haman is. Because guess what? He knows what's coming next. The king gets furious. Who did this to you? And the queen's response is Haman. And so lo and behold, because this is one of those really cool stories where the good guys win, right? What happens? Haman is executed because of his crimes against the queen. And then all of his things are given to Esther. Esther gives all those to Mordecai. In turn, Mordecai then gets elevated to Haman's position. So he's now second in command in the kingdom. And all is right in the world, except for one thing. Unfortunately, when the king makes a decree in Persia, it's irrevocable. So that little decree that says that the Jewish people are going to die is still sitting out there. And so Esther comes to her king again and says, hey, what can we do? And he says, you and Mordecai figure it out and fix it. And so Esther and Mordecai come up with this brilliant idea that says, guess what? On that day, the Jewish people, y'all can defend yourself. So if somebody comes after you to kill you, you can defend yourself. So kind of think about that one. If you're a Persian person, yeah. So needless to say, the day comes and lo and behold, there is unfortunately bloodshed on both sides, but the Jewish people are far from annihilated. And I can honestly say that all was right in the kingdom at that point. So, wow. That was a lot. Thank you for hanging in there with me as we tried to do the flyover. And didn't I tell you all a whole lot of mystery and intrigue and suspense? And it's all good. It's one of the things that I love about it. But if I were to say to you what was missing from that story, or better yet, who was missing? Y'all, this story is in the Old Testament, and it sits right in between Nehemiah and Job, if you're flipping through pages. But guess who's never mentioned in this story? It's God. It's the only book out of the 66 books of the Bible that God has never mentioned. But in my opinion, God's fingerprints are all over this story. I see him as being a master weaver of the story of Esther into his story. Now, I am a needle pointer, not a weaver. And so the idea of master needle pointer didn't work in this example. So we're going with Weaver, but I'm going to use needle point as an example. So just bear with me. It's one of those days, y'all. It's just one of those days. So in needle point, you start with a piece of canvas and it's blank. And then you have all of these different threads of different colors that you use in your picture, in your needlepoint. And they get woven in. And so you start with one color, and you start it on its path. And then you add another color in, and then you add another color in. Each one of them has their own path, has their own pattern. Well, each one of them individually is a different color. And so like if we think about the story of Esther and God's blank canvas, you know, you've got Queen Vashti, and you've got, oh who, Xerxes, and Esther, and Mordecai, and Haman. And they all have their different colors. And we start this process of weaving them into this canvas. And then all of a sudden, they start to overlap. And they mix together. There may even be moments when you see knots start to form in this story. But the thing is, is that these seemingly unrelated, meandering lines and threads of different colors are really the master weaver putting together Esther's story and weaving it into his story and the story of his people. So give me one second here and let's go back quickly and look at the Esther story, but using the lens of having the master weaver attached to it. You have King Xerxes, who we know loves all things beautiful. We have Haman over here, who we know hates the Jewish people. We know what his plan is, right? We know he wants to annihilate God's people. We have a queen in place, but we need a different queen in order to make sure that God's people get saved. So what does God do? Well, Vashti disappears. There's a beauty pageant of all things that happen because we know Xerxes loves beauty. There's a beauty pageant that happens which then gets our orphaned Jewish girl to be queen of the large ruling empire of the time. Y'all, there's no other way but God that that girl would have ended up as queen of Persia. Esther is beautiful. Esther finds favor. Mordecai sits as her trusted advisor, loving on her, and is there as the person who actually gets through to her about what her purpose is. And her purpose at that moment is to stand before her king and plead for her people. And you know, throughout all of this, Esther has not known what her purpose is. And even when Mordecai says to her, oh, by the way, you need to go in and you need to plead for your people. Esther's only response to that was what? We're going to fast first. And I don't want you guys to miss this because this is the part to me that was so very cool as well in the Jewish faith when you fast what else do you do you pray so to me that said Esther is this sweet Jewish orphan who's now queen who doesn't know what her plan nor her purpose is, but she does know who her God is. And she trusts in him. Sorry. She trusts in him. She prays, and then she takes that step of faith, even if it meant the end of her life. So the other thing to see here too is I look at that section with the whole interaction between the king and the queen and the banquets and y'all seriously we know Xerxes had a hair-trigger temper. We know all those things about him, and yet he indulged Esther. And then he comes back and three different times asks her, what is it that you want? And she says, a banquet. But he could have just given up on the first one, and it would have been done. But no, God is in this moment prodding and pushing and saying, ask her again. There's something important coming. So God just continues to take what we think are these seemingly unrelated moments and weave them together to create these beautiful stories. He does it for Esther, but y'all, he does it for us too. Harris and I got married. There were three guys in our wedding that we knew in high school, which doesn't seem like a big deal, except if I were to tell you that I didn't know Harris when I was in high school. Think about that one for just a second. We went to the same school, and I was actually a year in the class ahead of him, so we were in different classes. Went to the same school, in different classes, but we somehow had a lot of friends that were similar, but we never met each other. I graduated. I went off to the University of Kentucky. Harris graduated. He came back here, because North Carolina is home for him, and went to East Carolina. I took a little detour and went to South Carolina. And thankfully, God showed me that, y'all, South Carolina, for those of you that like it, I'm so excited for you, but I hated it. I made it six months. That was it. I was like, I'm done. I am done. I am going home. And so I went back to Kentucky, and I'm there. And about a year after I had returned to Kentucky, one of those mutual friends from high school found it fit to introduce Harris and I to each other. And two years later, we're married, and somewhere in there made the decision to, as Harris would tell you, move back to the promised land. To him, this is the promised land. This is where family was, etc. I, on the other hand, was like, I kind of like Kentucky. My family's here, et cetera. But I stepped out in faith and went. Harris's family enveloped me as their own. Harris's mama, who I can't look at, she's sitting in the front row, and I didn't know that when I was doing this. But Harris's mama was very, very instrumental in my faith walk. And so then from there we find grace. And then from there our kids are raised here and you know, so on and so forth. And I'm now standing here before you guys, but there's a whole lot of meandering threads in mine and Harris's story that if those hadn't, if God hadn't been weaving in them, we wouldn't be, this wouldn't be our story. I wouldn't be standing here before you today and Zach and Zoe wouldn't be around. So like God is in the middle of all of these seemingly unrelated moments. He's building a beautiful, beautiful tapestry. And then your tapestry becomes part of his huge tapestry, his big story. So don't ever forget that. Yours is part of his. And so if I were to say to you guys, what is it that you do when you feel like God is absent? When you feel like you're in the middle of Esther's story and you're just reading it and God's name's not mentioned, what is it? When you're in the middle of a pandemic, or maybe you're in the middle of the season of life where you're caring for a bunch of young kids, young children, or maybe you're caring for aging parents. Maybe you're in the middle of a loss. Maybe it's just a dry season for you for whatever reason. What do you do? I want to ask you to ask yourself two questions. Question one is, are you willing to trust? Are you willing to trust him in even those darkest moments like Esther did when she walked into that harem? Because scripture tells us that he will never leave us nor forsake us. Do you hold on to that and do you trust in that? And the other one to ask is, are you willing to step out in faithful obedience? Even when you cannot see that big picture. Like what Esther did when she said, if I perish, I perish. And she walked in to see her husband. That, y'all, was that step of obedience. And she did it because she knew her God. And she trusted him. So, in this beautiful tapestry that has its chaos and its knots and what looks like seemingly unrelated threads, do me a favor. Turn it over and see it as your God sees it, as he has woven it together to tell his story and your story. Will y'all pray with me? Lord, thank you that you have given us these spectacular ladies of the Bible and stories like Esther that just show us that even when we feel like you aren't there, if we feel like we can't see you, that really and truly you are there. You're in the background. You're taking what we feel are just these random moments in time and this chaos that can be our lives, but you're taking it and you're molding it and you're weaving it together for your good, for your purposes, so that we, as your kids, can bring you glory. And so we just ask that in those moments that we trust you, that we walk in faithful obedience to what it is that you would have us to do. And most of all, Lord, we just thank you for loving us. And it's in your son's mighty name that we pray. Amen.