The We're in Nehemiah Chapter 2. We're looking at this scene where Nehemiah has mustered his courage and clarity of mind to ask the king, our deserksies of Persia, if he can go back to Jerusalem, which is a long trip, it's going to be an expensive trip, and

rebuild the city, get the walls put back together, the gates put back together.

And it's a big request, it's a big deal as we talked about yesterday for Art of Xerxes. It will affect his life.

It will affect the effectiveness of carrying out business in the kingdom.

So it's a big deal. But an interesting contrast here between the request that we're looking at in Nehemiah

too, where Nehemiah is going to ask Arteserxes, and contrasting that with what it was like when Esther a generation earlier had to go before the

king to ask him a request that Xerxes is that Esther had control over when she did it.

The timeline was totally up to her.

At least I got the impression

as we were going through the book of Esther

that she walked in, she was received,

you know, the king extended the golden scepter to her, that means,

I'm not going to kill you, you can come in, you can talk to me, look beautiful, it's great to see you,

what's on your mind, but she read the room, she looked at maybe who was in there, you know, what all the various

factions that were represented in the room were, and she clearly calculated on the fly,

we need to string this along a little bit.

And so because she had control of the timeline, she just invited him to a banquet, and then, as

you recall, in the banquet, they get together and she feels it out and she's like nope this isn't quite the right time either

how did you know that was it shrewdness was at the superintendence of God probably both because what happens in between the first banquet and the second banquet that Esther ends up inviting Xerxes to is that everything breaks loose and bounces in the favor of Esther and Mordecai.

Then if you've never read Esther you didn't listen to the last season, don't worry about a thing,

but it'll all make sense in a minute.

So Esther had a difficult conversation that she needed to have with the king, but she was in charge of the timeline.

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