The Beautiful, The Bold And The Courageous

THE BEAUTIFUL, THE BOLD AND THE COURAGEOUS

Esther, 1:10-12; 4:16

Subject: The Beautiful, The Bold and the Courageous

Turn to you neighbor and say neighbor: I’m Beautiful, I’m Bold, and I’m Courageous -- and so are you!

The Beautiful, The Bold and the Courageous

When you go back to your cells, I will encourage you to read the entire book of Esther. When you read it for yourself -- you will discover that the book of Esther, teaches us about the Providence of God.

I took the liberty to look up providence in the dictionary and found that the word means: care or preparation before hand, foresight and divine direction.

But I would like to define providence as before I see -- God has already seen. What do you mean preacher, well, in other words God saw beforehand what we would do and even though we are sometimes out of the will of God, we are not beyond His care -- especially, for such a time as this.

God is El Shaddai. The healing for every wound, comfort for every sorrow, and the assurance for your every despair. God is the provision for everything you lack, and the solution for your every problem.

I think that we can sum up Providence as -- God’s way of providing, directing, and leading his people, even thought we sometimes do not want to be led.

Now, having said all of that -- let me begin this Mother’s Day morning by giving you brief introduction into what is taking place in here in the book of Esther.

In chapter one -- we see King Ahasuerus throwing a big party for 127 of his closet friends. I believe King Ahasuerus is suffering from a disease called “a man’s pride and ego”. This sickly disease has caused him to call all of his boys over to his house for a 187-day party. An party which lasted more than six months and for no special reason but to simply show off all of his stuff, the thingdoms of his kingdom.

This story of King Ahasuerus reminds me of a famous ex-basketball player and ex-sports casters -- who is in trouble this very day with the law because of his desire to show off his stuff, his thingdoms -- his toys to his friends, to appease his pride.

You see this former basketball player -- he had a party one night over his house and invited all of his celebrity friends. You know, the party had to have been off the hook, or should I say off the chain, it had to have been bumping if the likes of the world renowned Harlem Globetrotters had their face in the place. And this party mixed a man’s pride with alcohol and resulted in his limousine drive being killed.

Well sisters -- I don’t know what you know, but speaking from personal experience, a man’s pride alone is enough to get him in all sorts of trouble. Now mix that pride with a bottle of alcohol, and top that off with a little E&J, no I do not mean irk and jerk, nor do I mean Ernest and Julio. No, I’m talking about envy and jealousy -- mix these ingredients with a bottle of alcohol and you will end up with a world of danger.

Well -- we see in the book of Esther -- that a man’s pride mixed with a bottle of wine caused him to do some crazy things. Yeah, pride with alcohol, resulted in King Ahasuerus asking his wife [Queen Vashti] to come paraded around in front of 127 of his partners.

I don’t know -- but maybe one of you here today, may have been asked by your boyfriend -- or that earthly man that you called king -- to do the same sort of thing. If you have that’s okay, because God’s forgives you and if you haven’t then that is great also. But there is a message in the book of Esther that we can all learn this morning.

Many people ignore the role that Queen Vashti, the Gentile played in this story. But, if we take our time and read carefully, we will discover that the character of Vashti was as zealous as that of Esther, the Jew. We can learn a lot from both of these beautiful, bold and courageous woman.

So let us consider out text again: Chapter 1

[Verse 10]

On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, and Abagtha Zethar, and Carcus, the seven chamberlains that served in the presence of Ahasuerus the king. [A Drunk king mond you]

[Verse 11]

To bring Vashti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to show the people and the princes her beauty: for she was fair to look on. Which translate to me that she was fine, all that, had it going on [A beauty queen]