Pride Goes Before the Fall

Introduction Morning! My name is John McCormick, Renovation U Pastor We are continuing in our Esther series this morning and we are going to jump right into the story in chapter 7 I’d love for you to follow along and see what happens next We’ll be in Esther 7 which is on page 343 in the Bibles under the chairs Before we start reading though, let me do a quick recap of what’s happened up to this point A Jewish girl named Esther became the queen of Persia But shortly afterwards the King’s right hand man named Haman convinced the king to issue a decree that all of the Jews should be killed Haman did it because he hated a Jew named Mordecai (who is actually Esther’s cousin) who wouldn’t bow down to him even though it was required by the King’s law But Esther was secretly a Jew as well, even though no one knew it at that point Mordecai convinced Esther to go to the King and ask him to save her people She invited the King and Haman to a banquet, only to invite them to a second banquet where we’ll pick up today But in between the banquets, Haman’s plan started to unravel on him He was humiliated because he had to honor Mordecai in front of the entire capital city Haman is bitter and angry, and chapter 6 ends with his wife and advisors foreshadowing his fall The very last verse of chapter 6 is Haman being pulled away from his wife and advisors to go to the second banquet that Queen Esther is holding And that is where we’ll pick up today Picking up in Esther Look for the big number 7 and we’ll be starting there Esther 7: 1-10 Whew! That all happened so quickly! In the course of a moment, Haman went from the most honored noble in the kingdom, to a man sentenced to be executed for treason And all of his wicked plans and schemes will continue to crash down in the coming chapters I like to think of this book as God setting up a gigantic set of dominos They slowly started to tumble in chapter 6 as Haman is humiliated by his own pride They will start falling faster and faster as the book goes on Because now Haman has been executed, and we’ll see God flip Haman’s entire plan on its head This is why I love the Bible, only God could orchestrate a reversal like this! Pride goes before the fall As I was reading this and thinking through the greater context of Haman’s story, there was only one phrase that summed it up well in my mind It is a famous phrase that you might have heard before: pride goes before the fall Or if you like the old KJV version: pride goeth before the fall…eth :) This phrase actually comes from a proverb that Haman would have been wise to heed It comes from Proverbs 16:18 where it says this: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. I think that sums up Haman and his story pretty well! And what I want to do this morning is take some time to look at how the sin of pride appears throughout this story and the Bible And I want to look at 3 different effects that pride has on our lives And what we want to see is that whenever people listen to their pride, the fall comes quickly We are better than others One of the ways that pride rears its ugly head in our lives is that: We think we are better than others The very first thing that we ever see Haman do in the book of Esther is become enraged when Mordecai won’t bow down to him The king issued a decree that everyone should bow down to Haman, so HOW DARE Mordecai defy that! Haman becomes puffed up by the King’s attention and his promotion But… who wouldn’t be if everyone had to bow down to you? Let’s use a modern example: a man who is knighted by the King of England would be addressed as “Sir” and a lady would be addressed as “Dame” And when you refer to Sir Ian Mckellen or Dame Judi Dench, you are giving honor to them by a title bestowed by royalty If any of us were knighted by the King and people referred to us through a special title, I’d bet we’d be feeling pretty good too It’s not very many steps from people giving you special honor until you start to think, “yeah I really am special” And then it’s hardly that much further to start to think “those people aren’t as special as me” Haman listened to his pride, and it made him hate Mordecai because he wouldn’t acknowledge Haman’s greatness To build upon what Pastor David talked about last week, hate drove Haman to do these things, but Haman’s hate was born from his pride Haman’s pride was hurt by Mordecai, and so his hate is born, and then his vengeance is planned But under it all, Haman is trying to sooth his injured pride Mordecai challenges Haman’s pride and if there is one thing that pride cannot stand, it’s being challenged And the revenge that Haman devises ends up leading to his fall And the worst part is, he is totally blind to it Right up until the last second, he has no idea that everything is crumbling around him Sadly, this is not isolated to Haman, in fact this same kind of pride tripped up so many people in the Bible as well as us today We’re going to look at one example from the famous King David In 2 Samuel 11, King David sees a woman named Bathsheba bathing and commits adultery with her To cover up what he did, he ends up having her husband, Uriah, killed on the front lines of the war And King David justifies these actions using his pride After all, he is the king, and he can do whatever he wants because he is important Uriah is just some foot soldier that can be replaced He even says this to encourage the commander that has Uriah killed: 2 Samuel 11: 25a 25 David told the messenger, “Say this to Joab: ‘Don’t let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another.’” Wow. Right? But God doesn’t let David just get away with it He sends Nathan the prophet to confront David through a parable A parable is just a story that teaches a specific lesson The quick version of the parable is that there 2 neighbors, a man with many sheep and a man with one sheep And the man with many sheep steals the other man’s only sheep to feed a guest David listens to this story and becomes angry and demands to know what man did this terrible thing? Nathan responds that David himself is the man And David’s punishment is brutal, just like his killing of Uriah was brutal Here is what God gives as his punishment: 2 Samuel 12: 10 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own. Remember David is described over and over as the “man after God’s own heart” And he falls victim to the same kind of pride as the evil Haman David’s lust drives him to take Bathsheba, but it’s his pride that justifies killing an innocent man to cover it up And I don’t want us for even a second to think that we are immune from this Ironically our pride hides itself and makes it almost impossible to identify it in ourselves Just like Haman and King David, our pride creates a huge blind spot in our lives Because if you asked a proud person if they are proud, what will their response be? No, I don’t think I am This is why the Bible tells us that Christian community is not optional We need help identifying pride in our lives Because left to our own devices, we will think we are fine Even when pride is running rampant in our lives This is why we love house groups here It gives you a place to be encouraged AND challenged And in turn God could use you to challenge someone else And pride is one of those areas we all need to be challenged in! Let me give you a couple quick examples that you can ask yourself right now to start to diagnose this kind of pride in your own life Do you ever think something like: Well at least I didn’t do what they did I would never associate with those people I worked hard for this, and they didn’t and so they don’t deserve it These are just a couple of the warning signs, and what is underneath each of these? Inherent in each statement is the belief that you are superior But don’t miss this because this is important: We. All. Do. This. I do this. You do this. We all do this. But Paul gives us the antidote to this kind of pride in Romans Romans 12:3 3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. We need to humble ourselves and realize that we are no better than anyone else And if we don’t humble ourselves, then we can be sure that a fall is coming for us And if David, Haman, and even History are any guide, it’s going to be an ugly fall We think others are better than us The second effect of pride is sneakier and appears this way: We think others are better than us This effect of pride is the exact opposite of the previous one, but it is just as dangerous Have you ever thought: I could never pray as much as they do God moves in their life but not in mine I’m just not that good at