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 as them Guess what? That is pride too Because pride is a comparison game In the former example you compare yourself and come out ahead And in this one, you compare yourself and come out behind But both ways, the focus is squarely on us And it’s easy for us to look at this kind of pride in someone else and say “wow that person is so humble” But really, they aren’t being humble at all, they are still completely focused on themselves They aren’t celebrating that the other person is doing something well, they are down because they aren’t as good as the other person Do you see the difference? Pride is when we put ourselves at the center of everything It doesn’t even matter whether we think we are great or worthless, pride just wants us thinking about ourselves and no one else If you beat yourself up all of the time because you aren’t good enough, guess what? Pride is in the driver’s seat Humility is the exact opposite of pride though I love how Tim Keller explains what humility is: “According to the Bible, humility is not thinking less of yourself – it’s thinking of yourself less.” And here’s how the famous South African pastor Andrew Murray explained humility: “Humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all” Humility doesn’t make you walk around like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh Where I’m awful and everyone else is better than me Being humble just means that your primary focus should be on God and not yourself Think about this: Satan is just as happy with you thinking of yourself as better than someone else as he is when you spend all of your time telling yourself that you aren’t enough Because either way, you are self obsessed You aren’t thinking about God or anyone else around you, all that matters is you That’s a hard word for all of us, but the Bible is so clear on this Let’s look at the example of Moses together, because he shows this effect And he even does it while talking directly to God! Let’s look at the story of the Burning bush together in Exodus 4 God speaks to Moses through a burning bush and tells him to go to Egypt and tell Pharoah to let God’s people go from captivity And God says that he will give Moses signs to show the people to prove that God has sent him Let’s quickly read how Moses responds to what God is asking him to do Exodus 4:10 13 10 Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” 11 The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” 13 But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.” Moses says TO GOD that he can’t do it I mean that takes some serious guts to tell the God of the universe that is literally SPEAKING TO YOU that you can’t do it But Moses was afraid of what the Israelites would say and do The people knew that he murdered an Egyptian and fled Egypt So, he tells himself that he can’t be good enough to go Never mind that God himself is telling him that he will go with him, and do the signs, and convince the people Moses is so wrapped up in himself, he has no ability to hear it And God ends up sending Moses’ brother Aaron with him And throughout the rest of Aaron’s life, he is a thorn in Moses’ side Moses’ pride sets up Aaron as a leader who will lead the Israelites in making a golden calf that they start worshiping instead of God just DAYS after they get out of Egypt And then hundreds of years later, golden calves are set up again in Israel that the people start worshiping and it leads to 10 of the 12 tribes being sent into exile Moses’ self deprecating pride started to set up the dominos that will lead to the fall of an entire nation! And it is the exact same trap that awaits us when we focus on ourselves We can’t hear from God or anyone else over the noise of the voice in our own head Your fall probably won’t affect an entire nation, but who knows what God will do to try and get your attention Because that’s what’s going on with these punishments from God to David and Moses, he is trying to get their attention Trying to discipline them to get them to realize their sin and turn away from it And we are not exempt from discipline either, God promises to discipline us if we walk away from him Not because he is mean or that he doesn’t care, quite the opposite! The fall happens to help us turn away from our pride, he does it because he loves us God doesn’t want us to stay focused on ourselves If you have been beating yourself up, please, please stop God knows everything you’ve ever done and ever will do He knows all of it and he still came to die for you The creator saw you as valuable enough to shed his own blood so you could know him He wants you to focus on him instead, to see how much he loves you and all that he has planned for you Don’t let pride rob you of the joy of focusing on God! We think we know better than God The last effect of pride is simply this: We think we know better than God This one goes back Way, way back Back in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve committed the very first sin against God They ate the fruit of a tree called the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” Satan tempts them to eat it by telling them that they will become “like God knowing good and evil” if they eat it And despite God saying no, Adam and Eve decide that they would rather be like God than listen to him And they eat the fruit If you want to talk about pride going before a fall, that was the original fall And it twisted humanity and the entire world Are you seeing how terrible the consequences of pride can be? There is no circumstance where pride has led to something good, you simply won’t find one We have actually talked about this effect of pride at Renovation before at great length In fact, I’d encourage you to go check out Pastor David’s message called “The Crushing Crown” from the Worthy series on John 5 What God is trying to show us throughout the Bible and especially here in Esther 7 is that Pride is fatal, just look at what happened to Haman! It hides in plain sight and even masquerades as humility It can show up as being better than others or seeming to be worse But no matter how it shows up, it’s always us thinking we know better than God It’s us telling God, “Pardon me, I know what I’m doing, thanks” or maybe “you don’t know what you’re doing God!” I want you to stop and ask yourself a question this morning: Where in your life are you telling God that you know better? Where have you decided that you would rather be like God than to listen to him? We have to ask ourselves these questions because left alone, our pride will grow like a weed It gets louder and louder in our lives until we can no longer hear God And usually, it takes something terrible happening for us to wake up The longer we let our pride go unchallenged, the more likely we are to miss that the fall is happening to help us turn away from our pride Instead of realizing our mistake, we lean even further into pride and the cycle repeats Then ultimately, we walk away from God because he clearly doesn’t know what’s best for me And you know what’s ironic about pride? We get stuck in it, but it doesn’t even feel good Because always having to be better than others is a losing battle, it’s exhausting There will always be someone that is better than you And no matter how hard you try, that won’t change Or on the other side beating yourself up because you’re not good enough never makes anything better You will always have weaknesses, there will always be places that you wish were different But the more you berate yourself, the less likely it is that anything will change Either way we are just chasing after the wind in the end Running away from God to do whatever pleases us in that moment Even though it will just leave us hollower each time I absolutely love how C.S Lewis describes pride in his book “The Screwtape Letters”: He says that pride is: “the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration on the self” Pride never stops, never has enough, and is never, ever happy Because it is just a black hole that sucks us in and wants to crush us with its endless need The Gospel But here’s the amazing news, we don’t have to stay stuck God loved each of us so much that he sent his Son Jesus to earth to break the cycle None of us deserved mercy or grace, and yet he came anyways He came to wake us up from the daydream that we walk around in because of our pride And let’s be honest, it’s not a daydream, it’s a nightmare! Jesus came to give us the opportunity to turn away from our pride and focus on him instead And by believing that he came and died to save us, we can finally be free from our nightmare Because with Jesus, you don’t have to be good enough In fact, the first thing is to admit that you are a sinner just like everyone else And the second thing is to realize that it was never about you being good enough And then we have to admit that his ways are infinitely better than ours Following Jesus is doing the inverse of everything that pride wants us to do We are to think of Jesus and others before ourselves We are to be gracious with ourselves when we screw up (because we all do), and instead of dwelling on it, we must forgive ourselves like Jesus forgave us, and focus back onto him And we are to seek what God has for us instead True freedom, true joy, and true peace is found in Jesus, it’s not found in us Don’t listen to pride, because if you do, if I do, then the fall will not be far behind And if we look back to the example of Haman, was he ever happy? For all of his honor, his boasting, and his showboating, was he ever really happy? No, because Mordecai’s very existence threatened his pride And if he did kill Mordecai, there would just be someone else, and then someone else, and then someone else Pride will keep you in that endless, miserable cycle forever But Jesus came and died so that you could find new life in him instead And if you’ve never made that trade, then today is the day First, we believe that Jesus came for us, and then we need to repent And that just means ask for forgiveness and turn away from our sin That doesn’t mean fix yourself, it just means that you’re choosing to focus on Jesus instead of yourself And then he will help us remove the pride from our lives and find new joy, peace, and purpose in him If you’ve never done that before, I want to give you a chance to make that decision right now