God Keeps Interfering.

Thank you, John. So Georgie wanted to come this morning, but he's got a lot of gear. He's got a cat box, he's got food, and so we couldn't do that. How many of you have seen my silly videos? Anybody? So I make pottery. Here's some pots over here. I always bring pottery when I speak in churches, because that's how I support myself, making pottery. My wife and I have been missionaries with Youth With A Mission, a worldwide international non-denominational mission organization, since we got saved in Persia. How do you like that? We're talking about Persia this morning. Let's put the Persian Empire up here.

Setting the scene: the Persian Empire

I'm one of these guys who does maps. There are two eyes of history: chronology and geography. I used to teach high school in Texas for many years. Bella, is Bella here? She's not raising her hand. Anyway, one of my former students was here this morning. So here's the Persian Empire. My wife and I met on a hippie commune in Santa Cruz, California, and decided to hitchhike to India for our honeymoon. This was 1972. You could travel then, not safely, but you could travel across this expanse of land. From what I can tell, the Persian Empire was probably the biggest empire ever created, bigger than the Roman Empire, because it goes all the way from India to Kush, which is modern day Egypt and Ethiopia.

Suzanne and I took a plane to London, hitchhiked through Europe, landed in Istanbul, and got a ride with a guy in a VW bus all the way past Mount Ararat, you can still see Noah, he waves at you when you go by, and around the Black Sea, and up somewhere near Afghanistan, near the Hindu Kush Mountains. We didn't get to India.

We got as far as Pakistan. So the book of Esther is set here, right? Does that help anybody place it on the map? Not very far from the Strait of Hormuz, which we're all aware of. This area of the world is still very much in the world's central focus today. This conflict between the Jews and other people who have been trying to kill them for thousands of years, God has preserved the Jewish people for many, many years. The main reason was to make sure Jesus got here. I'm sure he could have done it some other way, but here we are today.

This map gives us a place to think about where these things happened. The culture there is really different. My wife and I hitchhiked to Afghanistan. We met some missionaries there. My wife got saved in front of the two biggest Buddhas in the world, in Bamiyan and Band-e-Amir, up in northern Afghanistan. Then I got saved there, back at the Dilaram house in Kabul. In March of '73, we decided to go home, because she was pregnant with my oldest son, Christian, who's in France with his family right now. I drove in from Chicago this morning because we've been taking care of their boys in Chicago.

So, a little bit about us. The last 25 years of our lives, we've been in southern Africa. Bella, raise your hand, this is Bella. Hi, Bella. Bella went to school at Christian Heritage School, where I taught for many years. She's one of my youngest daughter's best friends, so it's really nice to have Bella in town. We've been in Namibia for the last 25 years, and we started a teacher training program called Teachers for Africa, and from there we started Community Hope School, which is still going as an after-school program.

I brought some business cards with pictures of the kids on them, and if you're interested in knowing more about the ministry, there's lots of information on our website. Before we went to Africa, we were in Texas, but I took a break to start a school of evangelism near Richmond, Virginia. We moved over there, and I didn't have a school to put my kids in, because the school in Texas was going to stay there while I moved. So we decided to homeschool our kids. I wasn't trained as a teacher. I had taught drama before, but that was it. I taught a drama called Antsylvania, a very funny musical put out by Agape Force, about the story of the prodigal son, only they're all ants.

How I ended up teaching the book of Esther

So here I am, about to start the school of evangelism when we moved there. How does God work in your life? Does everything just work according to plan? You've got this great plan, and then what happens? Something else happens. I don't think Esther expected, as she was growing up, to be queen of the largest empire in the world. That probably wasn't on her bucket list. But this happens. Things happen. And God interferes with our lives on a regular basis. He jumps in, and, you know when you go and grab somebody and take them out of a bad situation, or change things, it's an intervention.

God intervened in Esther's life, and this whole story of how God then used her is a really great story. When we moved to Virginia, the school of evangelism collapsed before we even started it, which was really a drag, because I was excited about being a Youth With A Mission school leader. So what were we left to do? I decided that since I'd moved my family all the way there, and I didn't want to put them in public school at the time, we started a little school called School of the Rock, because this place was called Rock Castle. It was a great big building that was originally started by the Catholics as a school for black children and Native American kids. The nuns ran this school, and they had these beautiful big classrooms. I had a classroom about as big as this room. It had slate blackboards, which were really fun to write on. I still write on things rather than using overheads.

I was going to teach my two kids, my oldest, Christian, and my oldest daughter, Sarah. I thought, what am I going to teach these kids now, because I've got to teach history and science and math and all this stuff. And I thought, well, I know where I can start. I can start with the Bible. I had just finished Bible school, and I thought, I can teach three subjects at once: Bible, history, and literature. So the two books I started with were the book of Esther and the book of Daniel. That's the last time I taught the book of Esther. So I thought I'd share a little bit with you about how I study the Bible. Have you got that chart up there? Josh fixed this so it looks much nicer than my page. I've got some pages of this if you want one to take home, I'm going to leave them for you.

A method for studying key individuals in scripture

Anybody here homeschooling? This will help you study the Bible. There are ten pages here, you can pick them up as you go. When you look at somebody, this is more like a teaching tool. I want to teach you how to really figure out what God is trying to tell you. You can go to Bible school and people will tell you what they believe about the Bible, but how do you go to the Bible and figure it out for yourself? One of the things a literature teacher does is try to figure out what the author was trying to communicate.

He uses setting and characterization and all sorts of different elements, his style, his conflict, and then the theme. What was the theme of the book of Esther? I think Abbie really hit on that. If I had to sum up the theme of the book of Esther, it would be that thing Mordecai says to her, maybe for such a time as this. So I did some real research yesterday on the book of Esther. I watched Veggie Tales on the book of Esther. It's okay, they tickle people forever, that's how they punish them in Veggie Tales. It didn't seem dramatic enough, because they were a little more hardcore in the book about how they dealt with this.

But this is what you do, if you want to take the book of Esther and really learn what God is trying to say about this individual. Esther is a key individual. She saved the Jewish people. Here's a really interesting note: the book of Esther is about the Jews surviving. If you go all the way to the end of the chart, to contributions, God's purpose, what did she accomplish, what was the historical significance of her life, well, the Jews didn't get annihilated. That's a big deal. If you know anything about the history, you had the Assyrian Empire, then the Babylonian Empire, and the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, by Cyrus the Persian. By this time it's Ahasuerus, and she's married to him, and God has prepared her.

What did God do to prepare her? As you read through the book, if you take this chart and study Esther as a key individual, you'd ask, what did God do, what does he do to prepare her? He raised her up in a godly way. Mordecai was her cousin, or uncle, something like that. It wasn't her mom and dad. Her mom and dad had died.

Where did he take her? She'd been taken. The Jews had been taken out of Jerusalem and out of Judah, to Babylon. Then when the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, I guess they took a whole bunch of them to Persia, because it's a ways. So she's there. God prepared her by taking her to this place where he needed to do something. And her influences, what were the godly influences in Esther's life? I'll ask you, what were the influences in Esther's life? This is a really easy question.

Mordecai's influence, and Esther's character

Mordecai, thank you, Bella. Mordecai is a big influencer. Her parents were dead, we're not quite sure, it doesn't even give us any backstory on that. But Mordecai, he's called Mordecai the Jew. So she was raised up as a young Jewish woman with all of that entailed, and apparently really had the fear of God in her life. Do you pray for the things I try to do every morning when I wake up, and ask God for the fear of God in my life? God would just really keep me on track, and I ask God to help me have the fear of the Lord on my life.

Many years ago we had a lot of teaching on the fear of the Lord, by a woman named Joy Dawson from New Zealand, which made a big impact. It was one of those godly influences in my life. You could do this chart for yourself, and maybe use it to figure out where you're headed, what God wants to do. So, Mordecai. As I go through this book, I write out the quotes from the Bible, what the author has to say. I write out the quote. Mordecai was an influence, and he made a big influence, and she really obeyed him. She did what he asked her to do. But what was her character like? You've got two types of character, internal and external. What do we know about Esther's external character?

She was brave. Is that internal or external? Could be both, maybe. What about another internal characteristic? What about external? What about, she was beautiful, right? She won the beauty pageant. They went out and got all the pretty girls in Persia. Women didn't have a lot of rights back then, did they?

But she used that. She didn't let the time and the circumstances and the conditions she found herself in dictate her behavior. That's a really important thing, that we don't let our circumstances govern us. God wants us to have self-government. He wants us to govern ourselves by his purposes and his rules. What's another internal characteristic? Courage. She had a lot of courage. Was she afraid? I think she was a little afraid. There's the whole scene where she goes with Mordecai, and you can't just go into the king's palace and walk in and say, hey, Ahasuerus, I'm here.

You can't do that, because if he doesn't hold out the golden scepter, you get killed. Really top-down, authoritarian government, lots of rules. And yet she's willing to do that. But what does she ask Mordecai and all the Jews to do? Fast, and pray. She's saying, I'm not in this by myself, this is going to be a community effort. I'll do this, but you guys need to do that too. I found that when God asks you to do something, you may be, I used to do a lot of rock climbing with my sons, and if I was lead climbing, that means I'm up there on the pointy end of the rope, and my son's down below with a rope, and it's going to catch me, but first I'm going to fall twenty feet before the rope catches me, which is no fun. But it's a team, I've got somebody on the rope, because I'm not one of those idiots who climbs without a rope. Don't do that. It's important that we get others involved and praying for us, as God has called us to do his work.

We don't do it by ourselves. That's really important, because if you step out for the Lord, I've led a lot of outreaches around the world, and one of the things I know is that when you say, yeah, we'll take a team to Mexico, I went with Bella's dad to Mexico doing a drama called The Lamb, we were gone for four or six weeks, traveled all over Mexico doing these dramas, and as things start to get difficult, you think, God must want us to do this, because if everything goes easy, and then if things get difficult, you hit some resistance, look at all the stuff happening in the background while Esther is saying, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to pray, Haman's building gallows for Mordecai, which is very ironic, because who gets hung on the gallows? Haman gets hung on the gallows. It's this really dramatic story, it's got all this action going on. So our character, what is my attitude, what are my capabilities, am I strong, am I brave, am I courageous, what's my reputation? That's part of my character. And then, what have I accomplished in my life?

Influence, character, and staying persistent

I was thinking about this as I got ready to prepare this. What are some of the things I've done as I've preached and taught all over the world? One thing that stood out to me: years ago, when we got back from Afghanistan, I was deciding where I was going to study, whether I was going to go to Bible school. We drove up to Santa Cruz, near where Suzanne and I met, to a Bible school up there, and we decided not to go to that one. On the way back, we stopped at a friend's house. Suzanne used to live on this hippie commune, and this guy and his wife who used to live on the commune were there in Pacific Grove, California, near Carmel, a beautiful area near Monterey. So we stopped with them. His name was J.R., and hers was Judy. They had a Zen meditation center, they were the leaders of the Zen Buddhist community in Pacific Grove.

We started sharing with them what God had done in our lives. At the time, what we were telling him was that Jesus is actually going to come back for his church. This lady looked at me, and I could tell what I'd said struck her. She said, he's coming back? Her husband, J.R., looked at her, and was going to tell her that I was silly, and whatever hit her bounced off her and hit him, and they both got saved that night. He looked at me and said, what must we do then to be saved?

J.R. went on to establish a number of churches, and the last one he started was in Castle Rock, Colorado. He must have had two or three thousand people on a Sunday morning. I think of all the people who were impacted by the missions, they used to go to Tibet to do missions, people impacted just because Suzanne and I happened to be there. For such a time as this, we told him, and we used to tell everybody we met about what happened to us in Afghanistan. For the first couple of years after we got saved, we were fanatics.

I still try to do that. I still try to share with people about what God has done in my life. When Esther is put in a situation where she has an opportunity, what are the opportunities you're in right now? What is God doing in your life? Most of you are pretty young. I'm 76. My ankles feel like they're 76, and my lower back, but everything else, you know, I'm not. But you're at a point where you're looking forward. God's preparing you. God is influencing you. One of the things you should be doing is looking for really good teachers, people who are going to teach you the right thing and how to be successful.

Esther listened to Mordecai. She didn't reject his teaching. I had a pottery teacher, when I was studying pottery in North Carolina in 1970, and my pottery still looks like her pottery. She's a North Carolina living treasure, her name is Cynthia Bringle. She pounded on me, but she was a great teacher. She had me make ten big vases, and then she'd cut them all in half and say, look at those, John, they're not any good, do them over. Over and over, day after day, she'd do that to me. She taught me really good skills, so I can make pottery very quickly.

That's what you've got to do on Instagram, you've got to make it really fast, or you have to spend a lot of time editing videos. I don't have time to do that. I'm not an editor, I'm a potter. God's preparing you. Who are you hanging out with, who are the people you're spending time with, who are you listening to, who are you choosing to let teach you? That's important, that's the influences, that's the part you get to choose. How is that influencing your character? What kind of choices are you making that are forming your character?

Noah Webster's dictionary says that education is all that manner of instruction which is intended to enlighten the mind, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth. How are you educating yourself? How is that impacting your character? I get regular correction in my life, from things I do that are dumb. My kids have decided to stop telling me what to do on Instagram. But when the first video went viral, everybody had something for me to do, and I don't know if any of that made any difference, but the cat made a difference. The kitten. So that's what did it. What kind of character do you have? Moses was said to be the most humble man on earth, which is sort of crazy, he probably wrote that himself, at least that's what they say. Jesus, God prepared Jesus, he had a wonderful influence, his mom and his dad, and then his character, as we study him, you can look at Jesus as a key individual, what was his character like, and what did he accomplish?

God keeps interfering

Esther saved the Jews. Here's one interesting thing. I grew up in Beverly Hills, California, very privileged. My dad was a physician, he was Frank Sinatra's doctor. We used to go to Beverly Vista Presbyterian Church. They finally closed that, and took one of the stained glass windows to Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church. So I go back and preach at Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church every other year, and in the afternoon, Beverly Hills Persian Church meets there, and the pastor there is the son of the man who baptized me in Kabul, Afghanistan, at Kabul Christian Community Church. His son is the pastor now at Beverly Hills Persian Church, Martin Wilson.

I just think, crazy. Here's this church I grew up in, and there's this Persian church, Jewish converts to Christianity, right there in Beverly Hills. I just think this is really amazing, because I got saved in Afghanistan, and here are all these people from Iran. I lived in Tehran for a while on the way home. Regularly in your life, he's interfering. He's interceding. He's getting in your way and saying, hey, not this way, this way. Listen to him. Pay attention. My wife is a wonderful lady who pays attention. One time she went out for a walk, and came back and said, God spoke to me while I was out walking. I said, really, what did he say? She said, he said you need to listen to me.

I thought, great. It took me 40 years to figure out what that meant. I thought it meant she's right and I'm wrong, because that's what guys think. But that wasn't it. He said it was just that when she talks, she needs me to listen to her. I'm a really slow learner, guys. If it takes you a while to figure things out, don't give up. Persist. That's one character quality I'd put on John Hunter. He's persistent. And listen to the people God has put in your life. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I want to thank you for New Culture Church and the young people here today who are seeking you.

Esther was young, Lord. We don't know how young. But God, you raised her up to save a nation, to reach the world, that through the Jews the life of Jesus would manifest. He was the incarnation, Lord, and he saved the world, not just the Jews, he saved all of us, and we're thankful for that. Pray your blessing on this congregation. In Jesus' name, amen.

So pray for me. I'm preaching in Italy for about three weeks. We leave on September 21st, we get back on the... no, we leave on the 1st and get back on the 21st. We've done this in Sicily, where the volcano's erupting right now.

Can we pray for you right now, John? If you guys want to put out your hands in front of you, just as we pray for John as he goes. God, we pray that you would go ahead of John and Suzanne as they minister in Persia coming up, Lord. God, that you would give him the right words and the right ways to communicate what you have for him to communicate, Lord. God, we thank you for his ministry and for his wife's ministry, as they pour out your love into so many places, God, around the world, quite literally.

God, I pray for his ministry, both abroad and now on social media too, Lord. I pray that you would help him find ways, just being himself, to show people you. God, we thank you for John and Suzanne, and the gift they are, not only to others, but to this house too. We thank you for all of that today. In Jesus' name, amen.