Beauty Vs. Lust: Why Christians Should Celebrate Purim & Lessons From Esther

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Radiating Faith, which is a ministry subseries on the

couple of Nukes Podcasts where I deliver solo sermons, review, scripture, as well as faith-based

books. And it is going to be a good time today because it is the feast of Esther, known as

Purim. That starts today and will be celebrated today and tomorrow. And I want to get into that.

It is based on the historical account of Esther from the Bible. It is an amazing read, a great

historical account. If you have not read it, I highly encourage it, especially during this time of

the year. Again, Purim is a different time of the year every year, so you can always look that up

online to figure out when that date is going to be. But it is an amazing time. It is a celebration

of a couple different things, and I really want to get into that. Starting with why Christians should

celebrate it. Traditionally, it is a Jewish holiday and celebrated mainly and only by the Jewish

people. But I believe that everyone should celebrate Purim, who is a believer. And that's not just

my opinion. It is backed by scripture. And we're going to look at that right now with Esther,

chapter 9 verse 27 and 28 where it says, the Jews took it upon themselves to establish the custom

that they and their descendants and here's the key part. All who joined them should without fail

observe these two days every year in the way prescribed and at the time appointed. These days

should be remembered and observed in every generation by every family and in every provenance

and in every city. And these days of Purim should never fail to be celebrated by the Jews,

nor should the memory of these days die out among their descendants. Now, I want to back up to the

part where it says, all who joined them. So while this was, you know, for the Jewish people, it says

all who joined them should without fail observe this day. Now, we look at the New Testament and

what do we see? We see unity through the body of Christ. We see that all Jews and Gentiles will

like are saved when they turn their life to Christ and establish a relationship with the Father again.

So if we are a Christian, if we are a believer of any denomination, we believe God, we believe

Christ, we should celebrate Purim then. It only makes sense. Purim is a day of celebration of,

yes, the salvation of the Jewish people from a mass genocide, but it is also an acknowledgement

of the fact that even when we don't credit God in our lives, even when we don't give him the credit

or acknowledge him or know he's there, he is working on a behalf. Throughout the historic

oracle account of Esther, God's name is not mentioned directly. It is the only time in the Bible that we

see that and it helps show and we're going to get into messages of hidden, you know, salvation and

hidden godly works and doings, but it is part of that. And so Purim, if you are a believer, you should

celebrate it because all of us as believers, regardless of our level of faith, have at times not

given God the credit and acknowledgement he deserves. And so with that said, I want to just

establish what Purim is briefly. Again, you can look up the different festivities and the different

things that you're supposed to do during this time. Part of celebrating it for me this year was

posting this sermon. Last year, I read the entire book of Esther with some commentary. I read it

again this year and that was privately because this sermon, I didn't want it to just be a copy and

paced. I felt a calling in my heart to do a different sermon. Beauty versus lust, God's ultimate

beauty pageant queen. Now this sermon was inspired by an episode recently with Aggie Park.

Aggie Park is a Christian influencer and podcaster who hosts the unspoken podcast. I have been on

her show and she has been online and that being said, we both have had great godly conversations on

both podcasts. During my episode with her, where she was on my show, a couple of nukes and you can

find that linked in the description below to listen to, it was a great time where she shared

her journey of faith, her testimony, talked about some of the trauma in her life and how she has

gotten through that and how God has blessed her. And during that time, we mentioned how God

is using her in the world of beauty pageantry. Now as a result, she has gotten backlash. People

have made comments such as, you know, your nails and makeup aren't going to make it into heaven

or aren't going to get you into heaven, vice versa. Beauty, beauty pageantry, sensualness,

all these things, all these ideas have been kind of skewed by society and even believers.

In the sense that we often say, oh, if it's beautiful, if it's sensual, if it's, you know, this

or that, it's not Christian. It's not of the faith. And that's not true. And we're going to get into

that today. So God created beauty. He loves beauty. He celebrates beauty and he uses beauty. That's

what this whole story is about this sermon. We're going to focus on Esther because of the time of

the year and tie it into how it's, you know, essentially a beauty pageant that God had, you know,

for like a better words or rather, we'll be looking at how Persia had a corrupted system,

a, you know, ungodly beauty pageant and God used a good faithful woman in that system.

Sin detaches beauty from its covenant in turns into consumption, right? We've seen that before. We

see it very much so in a modern day. That's why if you see the thumbnail for this episode or if you

you know, stick around to the end, you'll see we're going to talk about the modern versions of beauty

and how lust has really twisted it. How sin has detached it from its true purpose. You know,

God invented beauty. Beauty is holy. In fact, beauty is very holy in itself when it serves love instead

of lust. And when it feeds lust, it's not good. And lust and sensualness are different, which

we're going to get into that as well. And the problem isn't that beauty exists, but rather that

it's become a product monetization tool, marketing, and it's become, you know, a vice of the enemy

to trap many people, to cause downfall of many people, not just now with the digital world,

but this has been since the historical biblical times. Lust has been a huge temptation in a

downfall of many great people who strayed from the biblical covenant beauty that we're going to

be talking about today. God did not tell Esther to hide her beauty, but rather he said,

use it for a godly purpose. I will use your godly purpose, right? Now that's not what he said

exactly, but that's what we see through the actions that take place in a historical account of Esther.

Esther is very beautiful. We know that from the text itself tells us about her beauty,

not in great detail, but it's very evident, especially with how favor is constantly upon her

from these gentlemen, that God blesses her with favor through her beauty, but Esther fast and she

risks her life to serve others. She does not use her beauty to make money to have the, you know,

the equivalent of what would be prostitution or online, you know, pornographic content or anything

like that. She uses her beauty to get into a position of power that is ultimately used to

say for people and she didn't even purposely throw herself at the king or anything. She was

just kind of part of the system. So that was God using her in that beauty pageant, right?

That we are using an analogy of so that he could have that and later on we talk about in the

scripture says, what if you got into your position for a time such as this to paraphrase?

So Esther's beauty, it's paired with courage, self-denial, timing and intercession, right? It's

biblical beauty. It's not passive, it's not ornamental, it's purposeful. In beauty is meant to be

purposeful, is meant to be part of God's kingdom, right? He said in Exodus, right? He prescribes beautiful

garments for the priesthood. We know that God himself is beautiful. We have seen that in the

scripture and you look at, I want you to hear the Hebrew word here, 12, right? That is when God

says in Genesis, everything is good, right? Repeately we say in God's soul that it was good or God

deemed good, right? That word is 12. It's not just morally good. What it means is pleasant,

desirable fitting, right? So God designed, form, color, attraction, desire, beauty, it's not accidental,

right? Now, I want to give a brief overview of Esther, right? Like I said, I'm not going to read

the whole story here, the historical account rather, but I do want to share a brief overview of it.

Essentially, Queen Vashti refuses to come out before King Exorcise when he's hosting

several, several days. Well, we're going into the exact time period of banquets and feasting and

showing off the prosperity and the splendor of the kingdom. As a result, he counsels with the wise

man that he has and they say, listen, the queen disrespected the king. She did not obey his command.

Other women are going to see this in the kingdom and they're not going to respect their husbands

either. We need to make a public example that disrespect is not tolerated. Now again, we never

see in the text why Queen Vashti did not come out and it could be said that perhaps God

compelled her not to come out just so that all these events would take place.

Further down the line, King Exorcise listens to his wise men and he says, all right, we're going to

do that. We're going to get a new queen and they go through the process of looking for a new queen.

And that's what we'll get into with the text in the sermon today. The way they looked for a new

queen was very shallow. It was very secular. It was based off of beauty, not covenantal or

biblical beauty, but just splendor and display ornamental beauty, which we'll get into. And so

that is the bulk of the sermon that we'll be focusing on in the sense of the beauty pageantry

style event that happens. However, to fast forward throughout the historical account of Esther,

we get into how eventually there is an enemy to the Jewish people, Haman, who wants to destroy

all them also called Haiman, who wants to wipe out the entire Jewish population because of his

hatred for a single Jewish man named Mordecai, who is Queen Esther's cousin. Fast forward again,

because of Esther's position as Queen, she goes before the King, which was punishable by

death at that time, if not someone. But he puts down his scepter and lets her speak because God's

favor is upon her. Again, it says she found favor in the King's eyes as she found favor in many

people's eyes. And she says there is a man trying to kill all of my people. She reveals that she was

Jewish at that time. She had kept her nationality hidden at the request of Mordecai. And the King

allows her to make this decree where all the Jewish people can fight back against the enemies who

wish to destroy them. And the Jewish people are successful and have great victory. And that leads to

the celebration of Purim. Purim comes from Pur, which is the law because Haman casted a lot to

decide the day he would destroy the Jewish people all because they sing which he refused to bow down

and worship him as a King decree because he said the only person, he doesn't say exactly Mordecai,

but it's implied I do not bow or worship anyone other than God, right? He doesn't say the name of

God. He doesn't explain it. He just tells that he is Jewish. That's what we see in the script.

But we understand as people who have read the Bible or involved in scripture that bound down and

worshiping to write no one other than God is what we are called to do. Now again, Jesus Christ

does tell us give to Caesar what is Caesar's respect the government right, but pray for early

leaders and to respect them. But again, not the compromise of your morality, right? So we're going

to get into it with I mentioned, you know, Persia's pageantry, you know, that's not exactly what

it was, but that is what I am referring to it as. And it can be seen that way. You know, it was a

system of selection, consumption, competition, status and control for a position of power. Whereas,

you know, the historical account of Esther flips that. God uses, like I said, that woman placed

into a corrupt system to display courage, restraint, wisdom and covenantal identity.

One of the things we talked about with Aguipark is needing the believers in these spaces.

A lot of people put Christianity and the faith into a small bubble. And because of that,

it shrinks. But our great commission is to go to other religions, to go to other places, to go

where sinners are, and to spread the word to preach salvation, right? Yes, the pageantry industry

is full of lust, the digital industry is full of lust, streaming, you know, all these online

different things, whether it's video game or content or creators or influence, the podcast is

there's a lot of sexual morality. There's a lot of sin. There's a lot of these types of things.

The beauty pageantry industry is very shallow, right? And I'm not attacking it because I'm

sure there are plenty of women who want to show their beauty in an honorable way, which is what

we talked about with Aguipark, which is having believers in this space is important to give the honor

and glory to God as a testimony when they, when that pageantry or even a longer journey if they

don't win, thanking God for the beauty, right? Again, God does not despise beauty. He created it.

There are many biblical characters, not characters in a fictional sense. There are real historical figures

who were described as beautiful. The twisting comes with scripture where it talks about

beauty is on the inside. That is true. However, it's not limited to that. That is first and foremost,

not, you know, all that it is. Beauty is both inside and outside, but if your inside is ugly

and your, your outside is beautiful, right, then you're not living right.

But that doesn't mean don't be beautiful on the outside. It means with your beauty, honor,

God and one another. Our beauty was made for our partner or, or, you know, the biblical story of

relationship in a sense of, you know, God made man and woman. He said it was not good for man to

be alone. And you're to find God has that one partner in your life, unless he calls you to

signal this, to cleave into one flesh and unity. And your beauty is meant to be for your partner

to enjoy within the confines of marriage and within that covenant between you and your partner

and God, right? That's not to say displaying your beauty for good reasons before him is evil,

right? But people get it all twisted up. And I think it is good to be cautious, but oversensitivity

means that we are losing the faith and believers in those spaces and they are only going to get

more and more corrupted. And so we need believers in those pageant tree spaces. As Agui Park and

I were talking about that, I said, well, you know what? God won a beauty pageant once with a woman

who was a believer. Every other woman there was not a believer. They were Persian or a median or

you know, pagan. And so God has done it before and he can still do it today. In fact, he

wants to do it today. And I'm not going to speak on God's behalf or will, but we are called to

evangelize and to spread the gospel in all spaces. So of course, God will want us to go into those

faces. He has prepared a way for us. He has prepared a winning pageantry for us. We just have to

step into it and follow him in faith. And it doesn't even matter how much makeup the other people

are doing, how much plastic surgery, how much whatever they are doing to enhance their beauty,

because we're going to get into this text today. How Esther was a natural beauty. And that's really

important, especially when we look at today, when we get into the sermon later on about how beauty

has been distorted in the modern reality. Like I said, biblical sensualness is covenantal and

honoring modern sexualization is extractive and idolatrous. Social media is essentially a digital

harem, you know, with endless scrolling, endless bodies, you know, endless comparison. And I like

to say this right here, lust doesn't ask who you are, but it asks what can you do for me, right?

And beauty is supposed to be honoring and serving, but not in a way that is exploited or extractive.

Now, one note I want to make beauty aside is just about Esther in general, something that maybe

people don't look or maybe have overlooked. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see

the background behind me is kind of like a render of what this may have looked like. And I say that

the historical account of Esther starts off as a slap in the face. It's really a juxtaposition

is cryrony. As soon as I read it, I felt a pain in my heart. And any believer should feel that

same pain. If you're familiar with scripture, if you were Jewish at the time, you would have known

how painful this was. So I say that in the context of the historical account starts with setting

the scene where in the, you know, middle Persian empire at the time was flourishing. And that's

important for several reasons, the setting. Because I want to go back to Daniel, right? So this is

part of the Bible, the amazing cross connections, right? We see this middle Persian empire was

prophesized in the historical account of Daniel. And I want to read from Daniel chapter 7 verse 5

here from an international version, the beast that was used to symbolize that many scholars say

represented the middle Persian empire, which was in there before me was a second beast, which looked

like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth.

It was told, get up and eat your fill of flesh. Many of you are probably familiar with that creature

in that description. And what we know, at least we have, you know, cultivated is that the raised

up on one side, how the bears like creature is great on one side was representative of how the

middle Persian empire had a, you know, imbalance between the needs and the Persians. And so we see

that historically in historical accounts across the world that the middle Persian empire did have that

balance, you know, that struggle of balance and power and that ultimately led to its downfall.

Now, while we're here, I just want to make a side note, many teachers connect the three ribs to

the three major conquests of Middle Persia, often known as Lydia Babylonian Egypt. However, you know,

scripture does not directly tell us that, but we know based off of all the prophecies fulfilled,

the symbolism that has been verified through historical accounts, that is most likely what it is.

And so I just say that to show that, you know, the book of Esther is connected to many other

parts of the Bible, right? We know that this was not just one fictitious story. This was different

people across generations, fulfilling prophecy in God's story as he put forward as he intended.

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And so as I mentioned, the Meadle Persian Society was prospering at the time. Now I'm going to

read from Esther, chapter one, verses four through eight now to show that to talk about this pain in

my heart that I want to share with you. And I hope it's a pain in your heart as well. Not to

inflict pain on you, but so you understand some of the sorrow of the biblical account and why

like it's going to hold us accountable in a minute here. So in the first chapter of Esther,

you know, it starts with and I read some from verses four through eight as well. For a full 180 days,

he displayed the vast wealth of his kingdom and the splendor and glory of his majesty. When these

days were over, the king gave a banquet lasting seven days in the enclosed garden of the king's palace.

For all the people from the least to the greatest who were in the citadel of Susa,

the garden had hangings of white and blue linen, fastened with cords of white linen and purple

material to silver rings on marble pillars. There were couches of gold and silver on a mosaic

pavement of parfery marble, mother of pearl and other costly stones. Wine was served in goblets of

gold, each one different from the other and the royal wine was abundant in keeping with the king's

liberality. By the king's command, each guest was allowed to drink with no restrictions for the

king instructed all the wine stewards to serve each man what he wished. Ladies and gentlemen,

does that sound familiar at all? If it does, you understand the pain then, the pain in my heart,

the pain in the heart of the Jewish people who were, you know, living there. This is exactly mirroring

the prosperity of King Solomon with all his riches, all his abundance. If you read, go back to

the second kings and the first kings and second chronicles and go back to kings and chronicles

and you will find what you will find that at one point the kingdom was unified and prospering

and especially under King Solomon's reign. They tell you how many sheep and cows were slaughtered

just to feed his palace guards. How many baked goods were made? How much flour was used? I mean,

you look at how much money there was. It was the most prosperous time that nation ever saw. And here we

are not too long later in the grand scheme of things. So to speak, it was quite a while there,

where all of this has now been turned over to their enemies.

What it shows in this juxtaposition, this cryrany is, God promised this greatness. We had it. We lost it.

We gave it up. We strayed from God and now our enemies have it. That is a slap in the face.

At least when I read this text, that is what I felt in my heart. I read this. I said, look at all this

gold and silver and all these costly stones and all this wine and all the stuff that we get into

in the text here. This is what Solomon had for us. And we lost it because all hearts were not

aligned with God, not just us, but the leaders as well. This should be a pain in the heart to

any believer. And this should be something that you're not like, hey, well, I wasn't with King Solomon

during that time. And I'm not in a middle Persian empire. Take this and look at your life.

What in your life was so prosperous that you had and now your enemies have it because you strayed

from the Lord. What are we looking to reclaim that we gave up because of our sin?

So I just wanted that to sit with everyone for a moment.

And I want to get into, again, focusing on the beauty,

passion tree. But I had to bring that up. You know, it did not sit right in my heart when I read that

and I was just, it hurt me. It hurt me like on a personal level. And I hope that reading this,

you weep, you lament over the failures, the consistent failures of the people of God. Yes,

maybe you're not Jewish. Maybe you weren't there during King Solomon's reign. But this is at

account of humanity. This is our origins. This is our historical story. And it shows how much we

have messed up and failed to God who was consistently loving. But what do we see? We see that this

middle Persian empire does not last. That is not as beautiful as the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ,

our Lord and Savior in heaven who come down and get us. You know, we know that it is all secular

based. We know that we are ultimately promised glories and riches far greater than this.

But to know that we have had great prospering here on earth and given it up through our folly,

that pains me. And it's something to weep and lament over to reflect upon and to look at our lives

and say, God, are we wasting? Are we throwing away what you have given us in prosperity?

And so it is a pain in the heart. It is a deep pain, but it is also a moment of reflection

and purpose to drive forward and to do better.

Now, the distortion of beauty that we've talked about so far already really starts just in

the first chapter. I want to look at Esther, chapter one, verse 11 here.

And this is in context of the King commanding. To bring before him, queen Vashti,

wearing her royal crown in order to display her beauty to the people in nobo for she was lovely

to look at two things there to display her beauty. That's number one.

She was lovely to look at.

Not to honor, not to be in a covenantal relationship with to look at to lust after.

That's not to say any woman who is beautiful to look at, who is lovely to look at,

that is a lustful or evil thing. But look at the context here of the king wants to display her

beauty. And I really like to say it like this. Now, again, I am kind of taking this with a bit of

leniency, so to speak, for lack of better words, that we don't know exactly how the king felt.

But we know the context of this, right? Because you go back to for 180 days, he's displaying the

vast wealth of his kingdom and the splendor and glory of his majesty, not of God. What does it say

of his majesty himself, right? So this isn't about honoring God or praising God or thanking God.

This is about men showing off their own conquest, right? So then we look at that with him

wanting to display queen Vashni. Well, it's not a man saying, behold my wife and she is beautiful.

This is a man saying, behold my wife because she is beautiful.

That single word being changed, changes so much.

We are not to love people for their beauty or because of their beauty. We are to love their beauty

in addition to themselves. We know that the king does not celebrate Vashni as a covenant partner,

right? He summons her as a spectacle. Her beauty is instrumentalized.

And then I want to go to how the council addresses this issue when queen Vashni doesn't show up.

They say, also, let the king give her royal position to someone else who is better than she,

right? They're saying give the position of the queen to someone who is better than she.

Now fast forward to Esther chapter 2.

Verses 2 through 4 here, we have that proposal followed up.

Then the king's personal attendance proposed. Let a search be made for beautiful young

virgins for the king. Let the king appoint commissioners in every province of his realm to bring

all these beautiful young women into the harem at the citadel of Susa. Let them be placed under

the care of he guy, the king's unique, who is in charge of the women and let beauty treatments

be given to them. Then let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashni.

This advice appealed to the king and he followed it. Does this make any sense to anyone?

The queen failed to obey the king. He tried to summon her. She said no. We don't know why. We're

not going to get into that today. But we know that she in their eyes disrespected him and was

disobedient. So find someone who is better than she. Now you and I as logical thinkers were thinking,

well, who would be better than she? Someone who is obedient and respectful, right? We're lacking

respect in obedience. So we're going to look for that. But that's not what they look for. What do they

look for? Beautiful young virgins, beautiful young women to bring into a harem, giving them beauty

treatments. And it will be the young woman who pleases the king. She's not pleasing him with her

respect in obedience. I mean, to a degree, yes. But it's based off of her looks.

This is when we talk about people loving for the wrong reason, looking after someone,

having a relationship for the wrong reason, right? I'm going to combine that now with one of the

things that we are told in scripture, right? You look at first Peter, chapter three, verses three

through four, your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles

and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self,

the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

Again, beauty is not wrong. But it should be in addition to your inner self, the unfading beauty

of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. They don't look for that.

Like, yes, they want a queen, obviously, who is respectful and obedient. We know that. That's why

they got rid of Vashdi. But that's not how they prioritize their search for it. They start by

searching for a young version who is beautiful, giving them beauty treatments. In fact, I want to

get into those beauty treatments because they are, they are insane. Here they are in Esther,

chapter two, verse 12. Before a young woman's turn came to go into King Exorcise, she had to complete

12 months. So that's a year. 12 months of beauty treatments prescribed for the women. Six months

with oil of mer and six with perfumes and cosmetics. Now, we're going to look at how Esther

is natural versus, you know, all the artificial beauty. Though she does go through these treatments,

we're going to talk about that. However, it is imperative that we backtrack, right? So we're going

to start with who is Esther in introducing her. So in chapter two, verse seven, it says,

Mordecai had a cousin named Hadassa whom he had brought up because she had neither father nor mother.

This young woman who was also known as Esther had a lovely figure and was beautiful. Mordecai had

taken her as his own daughter when her father and mother died. Now, this is a great quote right here

for a couple reasons. One, I want to reference back another quarter scripture. I don't have the exact

passage in chapter four, but I know it by heart, which is, though my father and mother forsake me,

it is the Lord who receives me. So we see here Esther is an orphan. So we already see right now a

story in historical account of the redemption of orphanhood. You know, God wants us to have a father

and mother, right? That is divine design. But because of the sin of this world, families are torn

apart. There's a lot of, you know, marriages made in immorality that separate. However, we see the

redemption of an orphan right here. And what do we know that God receives her? God receives her very

well. He appoints her to be a queen and the salvation of the Jewish people at this point in time.

We also see that Esther had a lovely figure and was beautiful.

So this is a godly woman who serves a godly purpose, who is lovely and beautiful. So,

loveliness and beauty is not evil. A lot of people say the Bible is misogynistic because the

downfall of many men was a beautiful, lovely woman. And so obviously beauty and loveliness is

villainized. There are historical accounts of that, right? Bathsheba, Delilah, right? We have women

whose beauty was used for evil or led to the downfall of men, you know, Delilah, weaponized

or beauty, Bathsheba did not. But here we have a godly woman with a godly purpose who is beautiful

and lovely and it's not evil, right? It is honoring and serving a purpose. And so the Bible does not

villainize or weaponize women or beauty. There are accounts on both sides of how beauty can be used.

One account, god's purpose, the other evil. And I don't want this sermon to come off as

men are not held responsible for their actions, right? Men who lust after beauty, they distort it.

They are in the wrong. Now, I want to go over something that many people don't really look at is

that Esther isn't her real name, right? Her name was Hadassah, right? And we don't know why they say

she's also known as Esther, other than probably the fact that they were trying to hide her

nationality, right? Mordekai had commanded her to hide her nationality, which we see throughout the

historical account until the second half. So most likely they changed her name to Esther to be

more Persian in nature. And we're going to go over that name. So Hadassah, right? It comes from Hadass,

which is Mertotree in Hebrew, right? And a Mertotree is, we know historically, if you look at the

names in the Bible, they do not lack meaning. In fact, they serve great meaning and purpose. And so

we look at Isaiah chapter 55 verse 13, we see restoration and blessing symbolized in scripture

through the Mertotree. Instead of the Thorn bush will grow the Juniper. And instead of

briars, the Mertotree will grow, right? The Mertotree is replacing thorns and briars and it's beauty

replacing curse. And that's powerful in relation to the story of Esther because we know that she's

an orphan, she's an exiles, she's an a pagan empire, but she's used as salvation for the people at

the time, right? So we see the curse and rule of pagan leaders of the all this prosperity that

was supposed to be the Jewish people. We see that slowly being replaced with Queen Esther, right? She's

a mortal growing in Persian soil for lack of better words. And in Zechariah chapter 1 verses 8 through

11, it mentions Mertotree's in a vision associated with God watching over his people during

foreign domination. And what is the historical account of Esther? It is the Jewish people

under foreign domination. And though God is not mentioned by name, we see constant alignment of

God's people being saved. I mean, the book of Esther, you could read it and say it is

coincidence, after coincidence, after coincidence, if you did not believe and know that God was

lining everything up. I mean, everything is like, you look at, for example, if you're not familiar

with the text, this hopefully I can give enough context here, the king for some reason is restless

one night. And he's like, read to me the stories about my life, right? And you can't have a

chuckle there at that. He says, read to me about myself. So I might fall asleep and

they're reading it. And they say there was a Jewish man named Mordekai who saved the life of the

king by, you know, he had reported that to conspirators were going to assassinate the king. They were

guards that had grown disgruntled with the king. We don't know exactly why, but King Zersi's is like,

whatever happened to this man. And let's bless him. And then the man who's trying to kill him walks

in immediately after that. And then, you know, the king asked him, how should we bless this man,

the king favors this man who walked in was, hey man, and he thinks it's him. So he tells

this stuff. And, you know, so if you read it, you'll understand the great irony and like uncanny timing

of everything. And it's almost, we could say, we can speculate rather that God put a spirit of

unrestlessness of our restlessness, you know, on the king that night so that he did not sleep,

right? Because if the king had just gone to bed, he would have forgotten about Mordekai.

Hey man, what it came into the court and said, I'd like to kill Mordekai and all the Jewish

people. And the king would have said, all right, sounds good. Which initially he did because he

didn't realize, but we see that God is watching over his people in a foreign domination just as

reference to Zekiraya. And that's what we see here. Now, her Persian name, S-Dar,

right? And people pronounce it Esther as well. There's a few speculations left. There is about it.

Many scholars connected to the Persian goddess Ishtar, right? But there's a second meaning that

people take from a root. And this possible meaning really aligns with everything we're talking

about. It comes possibly from the root meaning hidden. And what do we see? We see that

God is, quote, hidden throughout the historical account that Esther hives her nationality and,

you know, later uses it for the salvation of the people, right? So we look at it. God names never

appears, right? He is hidden yet sovereign. And then we see Khadasa meaning Mordel, which is

covenant beauty, along with Esther, which is God's providence hidden in exile. We know that Mordel

is not towering like a cedar or it's not flashy like a palm tree. It's not this big, you know,

flashy plant. It's not loud. It's fragrant. It grows low and steady across the ground, thriving

even in rough terrain. And that's what we see with the historical account of Esther, you know,

it's similar to biblical beauty. And so fast forward going back to, you know, Esther's turn for the

quote, beauty pageant, unquote, when the turn came for Esther, the young woman Mordekai had adopted

the daughter of his uncle, Abigail, to go to the king. She asked for nothing other than what

head guy the king's unique who was in charge of the hair. I'm suggested in Esther, one, the

favor of everyone who saw her. What we see here is trust in God. We see, I'm not going to ask for

anything special, whatever is given to me, I will use with my natural beauty.

Now the king was attracted to Esther more than to any of the other women. And she won his

favor and approval more than any of the other virgins. So he said a royal crown on her head and

made her queen instead of Vashti. And so we see favor upon queen Esther. We see her natural beauty

taking her place is God using her beauty to have this greater purpose. And we see that trust in God.

And so one of the things we see nowadays is a lot of people not being okay with their bodies

because of social media. People getting, I hate to say it. I don't want to villainize it, but it's

true. All these plastic surgeries from breast implants to butt lifts to, you know, penis and

large men's surgeries to, you know, I hate to be crude, but all these different surgeries,

Botox and the face, you know, all this stuff. We see the beauty of God distorted. We see us taking

into our own hands, our own hands like we need to make ourselves more beautiful. God made us beautiful.

Aging and this, you know, distortion of our skin and our body parts over time is the result of sin.

All right, God didn't want it for us, but he certainly doesn't want us to artificially try to

fight these consequences of sin and make our own beauty. And I just want to go through

fast forward to one of the most important parts of the historical account of Esther in chapter 4

verse 14. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise

from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows that that you have

come to your royal position for such a time as this? I want to talk on this. I know it's a little

sidetracked from the beauty parts, but I think this is really important. Want to talk again about

one about not being a bystander. We have seen in several other historical accounts, especially

Ezekiel, that we are not called to be bystanders. We are called to do God's will, to share God's will,

and to intervene when morally sound. Here we see, you know, the consequences for not by standing,

or for sorry, for bystanding not acting. And the last question, and who knows that you have come

to your royal position for such a time as this? Oftentimes in life, we end up somewhere where we

didn't expect it or we don't understand it. And we don't realize that God is serving a purpose with

it. We are to always look at where we are in life. And what can we do to serve God's purpose?

Everything we do should be to serve God and others, right? So he's saying you are queen. Yes,

it wasn't just to have this relaxed life. God is using it for a purpose. God is using your

beauty for a purpose, right? Your royal position. So I think we should take a step back and look

at where we are and how can we use this? How would God want to use this? And you might be saying

to yourself, I don't know what God wants. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And I would tell you,

get into the scripture, get into prayer, right? God will show you what He has prepared for you.

And He will show you how to use that position for the greater good for the salvation and blessing of

many. And going through the rest of Esther, there is not much else to talk about. But

something that's interesting, which is here in Esther chapter six, you look at verse 13. I just

want to share this. I know it's again a little straight from the beauty part, but it is

I want to speak on this and say, and told Zerish his wife and all his friends everything that had

happened to him. This is speaking of Hayman after he went to try to go plot revenge even further

about Mordecai. And then the king honors him instead. And told Zerish his wife and all his friends

everything that had happened to him. His advisors and his wife, Zerish said to him, since Mordecai,

before whom your downfall has started is of Jewish origin, you cannot stand against him. You

will surely come to run. Now hold on. What this implies is a fear of those of Jewish origin because

of their God. And that's not me just speculating. This is a pattern in the Bible. Look at Jonah.

They cast lost to see whose God quote is the cause of the storm that's going to destroy the ship.

And they ask him, where are you from? Who are you from? And he says, I serve the Hebrew God,

maker of heaven and earth. And they all say, what? You're going to kill all of us that they have

a fear of the God of the Hebrew, even though they don't believe in that God. We've seen this in

other accounts where people are afraid of the Jewish people because they have seen their blessing

upon and they have seen, you know, and by their blessing, I mean, the blessing that God bestowed upon

they have seen God's protection in favor. And so I think it's so interesting that here in Esther,

they say, the man, speaking of Mordecai, before whom your downfall has started is of Jewish origin,

you cannot stand against him. You will surely come to ruin. I just think it's so interesting that

we see again this recognition from other people. And this is what I want to say. Sometimes we don't

even recognize God as much as our enemies do. Think about that. Are our enemies more afraid of

God than we are? And then of course, you know, the rest of Esther is just sharing about how this

happened. And again, like I said in Esther chapter nine, it establishes that all who should join

them celebrate her and so that's where we are today. And that kind of wraps up our overview of Esther.

Now I just want to get into looking at how modern society has distorted beauty. Now we see that

beauty nowadays is based on sexualization, right? We know that every, it's about 10 to 15 years,

but really just periodically throughout history and time, the beauty standards change.

We know that every culture has different beauty standards. So I'm speaking mainly for America.

I'm not speaking for the, you know, the Asian cultures or the African cultures or European,

strictly speaking on the majority of American culture. And especially the culture that is online,

we see that beauty is equivalent to sexualization. So the more busty you are, right? We see that

what makes someone more beautiful is the size of their penis, the size of their breasts, the size of

their buttocks, right? We see sexualization. We see what makes a girl beautiful, right? If her

tongue is split, how many, you know, how long her tongue is, right? We see, unfortunately. And

again, this isn't everyone's personal standard. But in general, we see the monetization and the

selling of these types of beauties, right? We see women with disabilities who are marketing their

disabilities to make sexual content and money. We see people with, this is really evil. We see people

putting on filters, AI or we see people putting on AI filters to look like they have Down syndrome

or other types of special education disabilities to market their sexualized, you know, services,

such as these digital online platforms where you can view images and videos of them, the

collaborations, right? We see this continual sexualization of everything and we see that beauty

is based off of that sexualization, right? Like I said, the bustiness, the thickness, the length,

the height, we see so many people judging men and women, both men and women, but especially

judging women based off of their sexualization. Rather than the content of their character,

right? Again, outward beauty is a good thing. But we see it being monetized and sexualized, not

honored and for their partner. We see public display rather than private sharing. And so

I think, you know, there is a big difference between beauty and lust, but the line between them

has become more and more distorted as we have gone throughout history, especially as we have gone

into this digital harem era. And so what I want to take away to be isn't like beauty is

wrong. Lust is, you know, this, I want to get into how you can reframe your mind around

beauty is covenantal. It is honoring. It is God designed. It is for your marital partner.

And it's not something to hide from everyone if you are honoring God with it and using it to serve

a purpose, but that purpose shouldn't be sexualization or money. And that's what we've seen. So my

takeaway for you is to look at your beauty and say, how can I use my beauty to honor God and serve

others? And how can I hold the people in my life accountable who are using their beauty as sexualization

and public display and for evil gain? What can I do to not tempt others with my beauty in a lustful

way, but to pursue honorable relationships, relationships that honor God and one another.

So I think that's really important. And I ask you to look out for one another, you know, honor

each other's beauty, compliment each other's beauty, but do not let lust lead you astray, do not

be sexualized or monetized. And to remember that beauty isn't wrong. You know, there's a lot of

people who are believers who kind of say that beauty is secularization. It's not beauty is God

designed. It is the distortion of it that is evil. And so I ask that you go forward from the sermon

thinking, how can I use my beauty for a greater purpose and serve others? And how can I be honoring

covenantal? Just as Esther was, she was a natural beauty and her beauty was used by God to save

the Jewish people from annihilation on that day. And maybe your purpose isn't as grand as that,

but maybe it is to win a beauty pageantry and to share testimony to God. Maybe it is to get

favor. And again, I don't mean favor in those kinds of ways, but to have things aligned in your life

for that greater purpose. And so I ask that you not weaponize beauty, but that you honor it and

ask God how to use it. And so with all that being said, I hope that you have a great

perfume. If it is something that you're going to research or celebrate, I highly encourage that.

I think it is an amazing thing to do. I think even if you're not Jewish, like I said, it is for

all people. And if you're a believer and you believe that God is working in your life, even when

you don't acknowledge or credit him, then you should be partaking in a solid day. Today is a day

of fasting. And, you know, there is a time of celebration and perfume celebrates also giving

to the poor and, you know, celebrating and being serving. And so I ask that, you know, what are

you hiding in your life that is a talent that God wants to use for a greater purpose? And when

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