excited about tonight. If you're not already there, you can turn there. We'll begin in Esther

chapter 5, but I think it would be good if I took just a little bit of time and kind of brought

everyone up to speed, especially for the benefit of those who haven't been with us for the first

four chapters of Esther. So the story begins, and I'm even reluctant to call it a story

because it tends to come package with this connotation of not being a true story. It's just

a Bible story. And this is also why I shy away from calling the men and women of God that we are introduced

to in the pages of scripture.

I have difficult to referring to them as characters.

Because again, the connotation is that they are fictional characters and

they were not fictional characters and these are not just stories and it's not even

just based on a true story this is a true story this happened I hope you know that we are going to see Esther and Mordecai in heaven and

many of them with them as well. These are real people. And by the way, Esther at the time that

this happened was very young, probably not quite 20 years old.

I mean, there's really no way we're not told in the scriptures exactly what her age was.

We just know that she was very young.

And with Christmas coming up, one of the things we're going to be talking about on Sunday in Luke's Gospel, as we revisit the Christmas, here it is again, story, the Christmas story,

Mary, it's believed, was about 17 years old when the angel appeared to her and told her that she was with child

and that she would give birth to the Savior of the world. Think about that. Joseph, her soon-to-be

husband, could not have been that much older as well. And while I'm at it, I might as well

mentioned that when Jesus called the disciples, many of them were very young.

Late teens, perhaps, very unlikely, but perhaps at the very oldest, they were in their

20s. I think about what the Apostle Paul

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