Haman and Esther

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Don Filcek; Esther 5 Haman and Esther

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We're going to dive back into the book of Esther this morning. Last week in the pages of scripture we saw
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Queen Esther make a decision to lay her life on the line for her people. She literally had a massive decision to make that was in front of her.
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You see, through a wicked plot of a guy named Haman who was raised up to be the prime minister of the entire empire of Persia, the entire
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Jewish race was set to be extinguished on the 13th day of the 12th month. Basically, genocide was going to take place in December is kind of the notion of what was going on in the text.
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And when Esther finds out about the plot, she has a decision to make, a massive decision.
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She can do nothing and hope that nobody finds out that she herself is a Jew and hopefully survive.
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That's one option for her. The other option is that she could enter the king's presence unannounced and plead for mercy for her people.
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But entering the king's presence unannounced was equally dangerous for her. If she proclaimed to everybody that she was a
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Jew, she could be in jeopardy. And we also saw that it was Persian law that to enter into the presence of the king was to take your life in your own hands because he could have you killed immediately on sight.
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As a matter of fact, the default was that you would be killed entering his presence without his asking you to come to him.
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And that was the default unless he granted your life back. So last week, Esther asked all of the
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Jews in the capital city, Susa, to pray and fast for her for three days.
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And that's where we're going to pick up the text this morning and see what's the result of that praying and fasting, what happens on that third day.
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We're also going to get a chance to see a contrast between two individuals this morning. We're going to see a contrast very clearly in the text between Esther and Haman, their character, what made them tick, what was going on in their hearts.
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And I think we will find by the end that inside of all of us, there's a little bit of Esther and there's a little bit of Haman as well.
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But without the cross of Christ, we're going to see through the text that Haman will always prevail within us, that arrogance and pride will always have its way in our hearts.
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Has that been your life? Has that been your experience? That pride and arrogance kind of follows you where you go? It has a tendency to coat and cover often our interpersonal relationships with others.
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It's kind of knocking at the door. Has that been your experience? Am I the only one? This is going to be a short sermon if nobody needs it.
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But I have this notion in the back of my mind that all of us to some degree or another struggle with pride at various levels and at various stages of our lives.
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And without the cross of Christ, there is no remedy. There is no solution. And for that reason, we've selected songs for our worship set this morning that focus our attention on the cross.
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And it's my desire that this morning as we come to worship, I'm going to read this text and then the band is going to come and play some songs, that we actually focus intentionally on the cross of Jesus Christ, that that becomes the focus of our worship and our attention is the crucified
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Christ, that he died for us and what that implies for our humility and for this problem of arrogance that we have in our hearts.
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So I want us to focus in on that. But I want you to open your Bibles please to Esther chapter 5 and you will find that on page 355 in the
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Bible that's in the seat back in front of you. So if you turn in that Bible, you'll find it on 355 so you can follow along.
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And if you don't own a Bible, we want you to take that one with you. We want everybody to have a copy of God's holy word.
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But follow along as I read Esther 5, let's jump in. On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the king's palace in front of the king's quarters while the king was sitting on his royal throne inside the throne room opposite the entrance to the palace.
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And when the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, she won favor in his sight and he held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand.
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Then Esther approached and touched the tip of the scepter and the king said to her, What is it Queen Esther?
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What is your request? It shall be given you even to the half of my kingdom. And Esther said, if it please the king, let the king and Haman come today to a feast that I prepared for the king.
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Then the king said, bring Haman quickly so we may do as Esther has asked. So the king and Haman came to the feast that Esther had prepared.
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And as they were drinking wine after the feast, the king said to Esther, what is your wish? It shall be granted you. And what is your request?
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Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled. Then Esther answered, my wish and my request is, if I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it please the king to grant my wish and fulfill my request, let the king and Haman come to the feast that I will prepare for them.
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And tomorrow I will do as the king has said. And Haman went out that day joyful and glad of heart.
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But when Haman saw Mordecai in the king's gate, that he neither rose nor trembled before him, he was filled with wrath against Mordecai.
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Nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home. And he sent and brought his friends and his wife Zerash. And Haman recounted to them the splendor of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honored him, and how he advanced him above the officials and the servants of the king.
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Then Haman said, even Queen Esther, let no one but me come with the king to the feast she prepared.
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And tomorrow also I am invited by her together with the king. Yet all this is worth nothing to me, so long as I see
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Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate. Then his wife Zerash and all his friends said to him, let a gallows fifty cubits high be made, and in the morning tell the king to have
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Mordecai hanged upon it. Then go joyfully with the king to the feast. And this idea pleased
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Haman, and he had the gallows made. Let's pray. Father, as we come to this text this morning, we see echoes and reflections of our own life.
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Hopefully we see some of the character of Esther in us, some of the things that you are working in our lives, of humility and a desire to be used by you and a willingness to turn to others in our time of need.
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But equally, if we're honest with ourselves, we see echoes of Haman in our hearts, of ultimately, where Haman is echoing Satan and his pride.
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And Father, I have become convinced in my life as I've struggled and wrestled with pride and arrogance that it is only through your cross, it is only as we come to the place of sacrifice for our sins, that true, that we can make any headway against pride and arrogance.
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That it is only at the foot of the cross that your spirit transforms and changes us to recognize who we really are.
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How much you have loved us, but equally how much our sin cost you. So Father, I pray that as we sing these songs, that we would be able to do so with hearts, kneeling at your cross, kneeling there at the place where we have been made whole and made right because of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on our behalf.
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I pray that this worship would be acceptable in your sight. I thank you for the band and the work that they've put into this.
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I pray that you'd be honored and glorified by everything in your service this morning. The author doesn't pull any punches here, so he's going to just dive right in in chapter five with the, we're looking at narrative scripture, so this is a story, this is real history that he's talking about here.
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And he jumps right into the third day of fasting for, fasting and prayer, and so right away we see at the text in verse one, on the third day
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Esther put on her royal robes. In other words, she gets all promed up, okay, she's ready, and she puts on her royal robes and she enters into the king's court.
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The king is sitting on his throne, he's there and he's presiding, and it's likely that the guards take notice of her presence immediately.
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Now I mentioned last week that the guards there actually had, there's relief cuts in stone of Xerxes on his throne, and standing behind him in these stone carvings are two guys holding axes.
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Those axes are not there for display, they are not there for fun, they are not kind of like the guards around Buckingham Palace that kind of have this changing of the guard and everybody comes and takes pictures and it's cool.
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They are there to be used if somebody comes in to attack, and it's understood that if you come into the king's presence, you mean him some form of harm.
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And so they were ready, and I'm sure that they noticed that she walked in immediately, and yet I'm not sure if they knew exactly what to do about that.
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The author does take a moment, and kind of like a little pause, like I think it's for dramatic effect, he goes through in depth and in detail exactly where she stops and stands in the courtroom, and this all happens really quickly.
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So she enters and stops in a very strategic place where she is most likely to get the attention of the king as quickly as possible without rushing him.
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If she rushes the throne, she's probably not going to make it there. So she walks in and stops and stands, and like I said, she's all primed up in her royal garb, and the tension in the air is unsure, it's unsettled.
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I wonder if she was trembling. How many of you, in reality, if you were to put yourself in that situation where you knew that the king's law was to enter his presence without being welcomed, was immediate death, how many of you would be a little bit nervous?
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A little bit scared? I can't imagine. I mean, I'm sure just in her resolve she said, if I perish,
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I perish, but how many of you have ever made a decision and you make it with steadfast courage and you're still trembling?
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Still a little nervous? Still like, okay, and I'm not sure, and you might even think about wavering back and forth at times in that process.
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It's unclear if the guards made any move to her. Notice in the narrative we don't even see the guards make any motion, and I wonder.
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Put yourself in the guards' shoes. The queen walks in in her royal purple robe, and she's standing there.
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You carry it out. You be the one. I mean, the guards are having this conversation, and I'm picturing it in my mind like, would you take the axe to the queen?
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In the presence of the king? Like, I mean, it's like, I'd imagine there's some hesitancy. Now, I don't want to minimize the fact that she really believes she could die in this situation.
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Do you see? I mean, you saw that in the text last week. She really believes, if I perish, I perish, that he might just let her get the axe.
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But I mean, would you be the guard to do it? To kill the queen in the presence of the king?
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I mean, that's dicey. That's weird, and that's not going to go real well. I'd imagine the guards going to,
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I mean, the guards thinking, am I going to die for killing the queen? I mean, for just following the protocol. But verse 2 gets rid of the tension very quickly.
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So there's this buildup, there's this tension, and it's released very fast. When the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, she won favor in his sight.
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She won favor in his sight. We had been told back at the end of chapter 2, if you were to go there, you don't need to go there, but if you were to read this entire story, it's awesome if you read it in one sitting, by the way.
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I'd encourage that. Sometime while we're going through this series in Esther, go ahead and read the whole thing in one sitting. Take the, whatever, 15, 20 minutes that it takes at a casual reading level and read it.
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It's amazing that you see these insights and stuff. But at the end of chapter 2, it said, the king loved
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Esther, and it wasn't like a, it's not an infatuation kind of love, it's not some kind of, you know, like, oh, she was hot or something.
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He loved her, and it's a good word for love. And so we saw that back there, that the king fell in love with Esther, and she had, in that text in chapter 2, it said she had won grace and favor in the king's eyes.
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Two things that would be beneficial to have in the sight of the king, in the sight of her husband. Yeah, I think those would be good things to have.
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And here that favor is renewed, and it's very fortunate for Esther and her people that that favor is renewed.
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He extends the scepter, and she approached and touched the scepter as a sign of receiving his clemency.
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She was as good as dead when she broke the law, and therefore she is dead if she does not touch the scepter.
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And it's the imagery, the protocol, the picture is that he is literally giving her her life back by extending the scepter, and she receives it by touching the scepter.
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And that's what's going on there. And it's all this customs and formality, but on a real life emotional level,
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Esther believed that she could have been killed. And if you're anything like me, you've spent plenty of your mental energy worrying about things that never actually take place.
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Anybody relate to that? Anybody else worry, have a tendency to worry about things from time to time?
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Okay, and how often does your mind turn to the worst case scenario? Can you relate to that?
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I would guess that we have all wasted a lot of time worrying about what might go wrong.
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And even if you are a glass half full kind of people, how many of you would just raise your hand right away and say, I'm glass half full?
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I kind of just am, I'm more of an optimist, I'd still dare say that you've wasted a lot of time worrying, even if you're in that category, right?
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How much more so those of us who would tend towards the glass half empty kind of thing. Like I mean, just sharing a little bit of my struggle with this, as God is pointing this out, as I'm walking through this as your pastor,
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I have a tendency to jump to the worst case scenario, and then what
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I do, because I'm at least a little bit reasonable, I'll dial it back a click or two, okay, dial it down just a little, and then run with that, and that is the expectation.
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Anybody relate to that? Because you're not, I mean, what's the chances that the worst that could happen is going to happen? It's still going to be bad, right?
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I wonder if those are, is that nervous laughter, or is that, I think probably a lot of people can relate to me on that level though, right?
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Do we have a tendency to think about what could, and we can waste a lot of time thinking through bad things, and Jesus told us very clearly, don't be anxious for tomorrow, don't worry about those things, pursue
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God, love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and just let all these other things filter out, and let them work out.
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And then he makes a kind of a funny comment in that today has enough trouble of its own, so there are troubles, right, he acknowledges that.
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But in this case, God is working things together for the preservation of his people. He is orchestrating events, and we've been seeing his sovereign hand through the book of Esther, and it's been awesome.
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And Esther has been raised up to a high position, people are praying and fasting on her behalf in this text, and she gains super mega favor from the king,
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I mean, exorbitant favor from the king, and that what we're going to see here in just a verse is that he offers her up to half of the kingdom.
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But I want to point out, I really don't think it's anything that she's done to gain this favor. Has she been in control in this situation?
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Sure, she prettied herself up, she put on her royal robe, she went and stood in the right place, and she's got a plan, right?
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But can you say, Esther worked this plan, and it all came to fruition because,
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I mean, she gained the king's favor because she wore the right perfume, or she did the right thing, or is that what the text says?
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Listen to this verse. If you're taking notes, write this proverb down. Proverb 21, verse 1.
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I think that, and by the way, what we're reading was written about three or four hundred years before the life of Esther.
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I believe that she had contact with this, with the Proverbs, that she had access to it, whether she was able to read it or had heard it read in the synagogues or whatever.
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But this is what Proverb 21, verse 1 says. The king's heart is in the hand of the
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Lord. He directs it like a water course wherever he pleases.
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The king's hand, I mean, the king's heart is in the Lord's hand, and he directs it wherever he wants, and he has directed
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King Xerxes' heart to fall back in love with Esther once again in this moment.
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God is working behind the scenes, guiding the heart of the king. In verse 3, we find that the king assumes that she has a request because she's obviously broken the court protocol, right?
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Like, okay, you're here. What do you need, Esther? Is there anything I can do for you?
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There's an assumption that there's a request, and he asks her what he can do and offers even up to half of his kingdom.
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Pretty amazing offer, wouldn't you say? Up to half the kingdom is yours, if you would ask. Now I want to point out, though, that most scholars see this as a token gesture of his greatness.
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It was actually kind of a boasting, in essence, to offer grandiose things as a king was an expectation.
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We see that here, and we're going to see him say it again later in this chapter. We actually find it in other places in Scripture where kings said, up to half of my kingdom is yours.
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For example, King Herod in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Mark, would offer up half of his kingdom to his niece, who did a seductive dance at a party for him, and he says, you can have up to half of my kingdom, and she asked for something kind of trivial.
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Instead, she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter, and that's how that great prophet in the New Testament comes to his end, is by an offer to half of your kingdom.
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No, I don't need half of your kingdom, I just want his head. That's how that all comes down. Now what happens next in Artax seems like it's there for dramatic effect, and in a sense it is.
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This is all intentionally built up with reason. Now we're going to see the plot, the plan, the skill, the wisdom that Esther executes from here moving forward.
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God -given wisdom, God -given skill in understanding her culture and things like that, but at the same time, she's going to work a plan.
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In Persian culture, it was not proper protocol to spring a massive decision on the king, therefore creating or causing some kind of a conflict in him if he couldn't say yes to your request.
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So, he's offered half of the kingdom, but how many of you know there are things that she could ask for that he would not grant? And he would lose face in front of his advisors and everybody, and so in essence, it was improper for her to then throw herself immediately at him in his royal court and say, this is what
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I need from you. Does that make sense? So there's some things that she does here that really are working and understanding of her culture.
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A delay in the request, for example, showed importance, that she wouldn't just say it outright but that she's kind of hemming and hawing and saying, let's do this at a different time.
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And the more delayed the request, the more serious. And delaying also served another purpose, to pique the king's interest, to get him curious and thinking about what is it that Esther wants, and there's value in that.
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If you could get the king thinking about your request without knowing what that request is, all the better.
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You were winning. Okay? Are you getting that? So, the more she could get him, have any of you had that?
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Have any of you been in a situation, maybe several of you have been in a situation where somebody's going to ask you for something and they said, I'm going to ask you for something, but they don't tell you right away what it is.
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Would you be curious? How many of you might lose a little bit of sleep wondering, especially if you had to sleep on it, right?
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Don't worry, the next day, tomorrow at lunch, I'll let you know. Okay. Where is this going?
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I mean, you'd have my attention if you brought something to me that way. So instead of falling at the king's feet and begging for the salvation of her people, she wisely and politely invites the king to a feast, and notice in the text, she's already prepared it.
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She's working a plan. This is not like she got cold feet and kind of was like, oh, I don't know, okay, maybe I won't ask him right now.
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No, she's already prepared the meal. This is with intention. This is a plan to get him roped in.
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She proves that she is wise. The food is already prepared, and she invites Haman to come along. She wants him to be part of the process, and boy, is he going to get to be part of the process along the way.
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Now I want to remind you that all the Jews in Susa have been praying and fasting for Esther, and God has been responding to their prayers by granting her great favor and great wisdom.
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She's enlisted others to pray, and we would do well to ask for the prayers of others for decisions that we face.
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We've been asking for your prayers as a church as we continue to make decisions for the future as we contemplate the candidacy of Kyle as an associate pastor, as we contemplate and consider the potential to go to two services, which is in the works.
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Most of you have responded to the survey that we sent out, and I want to use this just as a moment to say that it was a very favorable response.
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About 50 % of you said we'd come at 9 o 'clock, and 50 % of you said we'd come at 11 o 'clock. That's exactly what we were hoping to see, that it wasn't going to be five people at 9 o 'clock, and the 120 of you at the 11 o 'clock, then obviously two services wouldn't work for us.
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But it's appearing like it will, and so we are asking for you to pray and to help us in these decisions as we consider the growth and the way that we're moving forward as a church.
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And then on a personal level, we need to stand in the gap for one another and boldly come before the throne on each other's behalf as we know that people are struggling and hurting.
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But for us to do that for one another on a personal level, we need to know what's going on in each other's lives, don't we?
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And I fear that some here might be going it alone, that you're here and you're struggling with things that you just haven't even shared, and there's a wrestling with decisions and a wrestling with sin and a feeling like you're going it alone, and that with authenticity on this wall, we desire to be open with one another.
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Obviously maybe standing in this meeting place and sharing what's going on in the deepest recesses of your heart is not the place, but that this place becomes a primary outlet for relationships that are authentic and real where we're genuinely praying for one another and genuinely lifting each other up.
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And although the elders here at Recast pray, and although I pray, I'm not sure that Recast church here would be categorized as a church of prayer, and it's my heart's desire to see that change.
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And so the elders are going to be talking about this. Are there things that we can be doing to foster an atmosphere of prayer, an opportunity to gather together and pray?
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And I know we're doing that in our small group, so we're just going to be trying to think through what that might look like in the future here.
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But I don't feel like we've done a great job with that, and I'm just being transparent and honest with you. I don't feel like we've done a fabulous job of bringing people together.
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And a lot of churches have a Wednesday night prayer meeting, and what I've seen at a lot of, and not to criticize, but what I've seen at a lot of Wednesday night prayer meetings is they started out as a
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Wednesday night prayer meeting, and they ended up being a Wednesday night Bible study, they ended up being a Wednesday night second sermon and service and kids programs, and everything gets rolled up into that.
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And I would love to, we're going to be brainstorming and thinking through ways that we can actually be gathering together to pray.
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And that would be the point. So that's something that I just, it came out in this passage and it was a conviction on my part as I was looking through and just thinking about our church and the fact that Esther humbled herself and asked others to pray and included others in the process.
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And so I think that that's something that we would like to do more of as a church. But back into the text, the king responds positively to the request, he even rushes.
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It's obvious that she's gained such favor with him and in such a good way that he actually hurries, he says quickly to a servant, go get
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Haman so that we can get to this feast that Esther has prepared. He's eager. I think he's eager to get to the food, but he is well aware that that is not the extent of her request.
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He knows that she didn't come and break the court protocol so that she could invite him to a feast.
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He knows that there's something else going on here. And it's shown because he's going to ask again. He is quite intrigued by what she really wants and it was obviously important enough to risk her life.
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It's important enough that she wants to ask in the right atmosphere. And she even went through the extent of preparing a feast for him, so he knows all these things.
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So as they get to the customary wine after the meal, it was like there were different courses and there was actually a wine course to conclude the meal.
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And the king is itching to know her request. It's obvious that he's eager, he's intrigued. She's got him right where she wants him.
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He says, what is your wish? It shall be granted to you. And again, what is your request?
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The cat and mouse game is a good way of keeping the king's attention and she's doing it.
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Once again, he emphasizes that up to half of the kingdom is hers. So she plays the intrigue and invites him back to another banquet.
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And in verse 8, she promises to let him know the true request if he and Haman come to the feast the next day.
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She says, I promise, okay king, I will give you the answer that you're looking for. I will tell you what my request is if you come again tomorrow.
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Now some have assumed, have any of you ever thought, like being guilty of maybe thinking that Esther got cold feet here?
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Like she invited him to one banquet and then she was like, oh, I don't really, oh, I can't bring it up. And so she's like, oh, how about another banquet tomorrow?
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I mean, I've actually heard it taught that way, but I don't, I really don't see that when you actually begin to understand the culture and take that into account, what she's doing is very wise and she's working a system.
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She's heightening the seriousness of her request to the king. And by the time the second banquet rolls around, the king is really concerned and really wanting to know what's going on.
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And now he's had to sleep on it. Now he's had to spend a night actually thinking through what she risked her life.
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She's preparing food. What in the world could Esther want? What could this be?
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And he is concerned for her. So let's look at Esther for a moment before we jump into the text on Haman, the second part.
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Esther has laid her life on the line for her people. She has humbled herself to ask others to pray for her.
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And in that request, she has demonstrated that she needs others in her life, even as a dignitary, even as a person in holding high office in the empire of Persia.
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She said, I still need others. She follows the direction of her adopted father.
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Esther has exuded humility, self -sacrifice and wisdom so far in this book.
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And I think all of us would like to relate to her in one way or another, right? She is being used by God and His plan is being revealed through her.
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How many of you would like to be in that situation of humility, willing to say, if I perish, I perish, but I will do what is right and I will do my part that God has called me to do?
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Raise your hand if you think, I mean, you like that notion of being that person who says, I will do. Okay. And then some of you know, some of you are not there yet.
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You don't want to do it. All right. I'll be praying for you guys too.
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But she's being used by God. But now we come to Haman in verse nine. He is joyful and glad of heart when he leaves the feast, the text tells us.
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He's just left a feast that would be great in and of itself, just being able to take part of this awesome food and wine and all that stuff.
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And it was good and fun and all that. But it was not just an ordinary feast, right? He was invited and included in a feast with one of the most powerful couples on the face of the planet.
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Pretty cool? How many of you think that would be kind of cool? Like, I wonder if you, you know, getting autographs and stuff and red carpet event and all that stuff.
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But all that joy ends, the text tells us, the moment he sees Mordecai.
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The minute that he sees Mordecai, all the joy, all the happiness, all the gladness in his heart is completely drained away and he's immediately bitter again.
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He's got vengeance on his heart and he's got murder on his mind.
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But he doesn't act immediately. He knows that he will have the last laugh. And we see that Mordecai once again refused to worship
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Haman. He didn't tremble before him, the text tells us. I would assume that many Jews at this time would tremble before Haman, right?
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Haman, who is responsible for the edict that is going to basically destroy all of your people, he refuses to tremble.
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Haman doesn't act right away. He knows ultimately, like I said, he's going to have the last laugh and it's going to be done legally and properly.
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If he takes his vengeance out right away, he himself might be guilty of murder and get in trouble and he's like,
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Mordecai's as good as dead anyways with the edict that I've signed. So he heads on home and calls up some friends and his wife and calls them together for a little party and a little get together to talk about the thing that matters most to him, his own awesomeness.
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Okay? Do you see that right in the text there? He calls them together and everyone,
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I think, has a friend like this or an acquaintance, friend, acquaintance, who mysteriously the conversation or magically when you're talking with them, it somehow works its way around to their awesomeness, their accomplishments, their promotions, the great things that are happening in their life.
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Does anybody know? I mean, anybody have a friend like that? Pray for those people. If you don't have a friend like that, be careful because it might be you.
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I mean, if you're kind of like, I don't know what he's talking about. Just think through that one, okay?
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I'll leave that one with you. But from this point in the story on,
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Haman really serves as an illustration of another proverb. So, again, if you're taking notes, jot this one down and you can look it up.
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A great one to memorize, Proverbs 16, 18, pride goes before destruction and a haughty or arrogant spirit before a fall.
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Pride goes before destruction or an arrogant spirit before the fall. Haman highlights his immense riches with his friends, talks about his many sons which were considered a blessing in that time.
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He had 10 sons, we're going to find out later. His promotion from the king, and not only does he speak about his promotions, but how many of you know you can talk about the king promoting you, but then there's another way you can talk about promotions and that is over against others.
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You can talk about being promoted, but it actually says in the text that he compared himself to the other officials and how high he was and how the king loved him so much more than all of the other officials in the kingdom.
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This guy is blowing his own horn and in verse 12, his final boast is that he was invited to a special feast with the king and Esther.
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Got to go to this festival, this feast, and not only that, but you guys, I got invited again tomorrow, it's going to be awesome.
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His arrogance is so blind that he doesn't even stop to consider why he was invited. He's Haman, of course he was invited, right?
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Of course, the king, the queen, and me. Wait a minute, wait a minute, do you see how he's blind in his area?
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How many of you, you get invited to a special dinner with the king and the queen, you might wonder why? Like something might connect or click or like, why'd she invite me to this thing?
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And yet his dark heart is utterly exposed in verse 13, all those great blessings it says are worth nothing when he sees
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Mordecai. And a hunger for vengeance is sapping his joy. His bitterness towards Mordecai is stealing away the very life of Haman.
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So Haman's wife and friends come up with an idea, they're all there, they're hearing about his awesomeness, hey, if you're so great, why don't you do this?
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They recommend that he has this ludicrous, crazy instrument of execution built for Mordecai.
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I say ludicrous just because of its scope and size, and he says, ask the king to have him put to death on it in the morning.
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Just hurry and get it over with. And although the English word reads gallows, this is not a gallows like we think of in the wild, wild west.
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I mentioned that this isn't the wild, wild west, this is the wild, wild east. And this is a wooden spike, just a gruesome thing,
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I don't want to get into the details, but this is for the display of a dead body. And it is 70 feet tall with a hinge that was able to be raised and lowered.
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And that's what he has, that's his intention for Mordecai, is to display him before everybody at the highest place in the city, to build this immense structure for the sole purpose of executing
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Mordecai. That's their recommendation. And when
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Mordecai's body is hung on it, everyone will know not to cross Haman. So they ultimately advise, be done with Mordecai, and then you will have joy, then you can go to the banquet tomorrow and everything will be fine, because you've gotten rid of your enemy, the guy who really is a burr under your saddle.
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So Esther humbles herself and gains favor and blessing, and even gets her very life back.
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And Haman conveys arrogance and pride, and he is about to be brought very, very low, or very high, it depends on how you look at the text, if you know the end.
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And I'd like us to basically conclude our time thinking about the interplay of humility and pride within our hearts.
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Where we live every day as we walk out from this place, and even as we sit in our seats here, Esther is not perfect in the text, and yet she certainly stands in this particular text as a woman willing to be used up for the purposes of God.
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She laid it all on the line by faith, and I believe that God would call all of us to a similar commitment, to lay our lives down for his honor, for his glory, for his calling to us.
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And it is not by chance that this account of Esther is set in a text right next to the account of Haman's arrogance and pride, that we have this contrast to look at the way she responded, and the way that he responded.
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And I'm convinced that ever since the first act of pride in the Garden of Eden, all humanity has exhibited the blinding pride of Satan in our hearts.
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And it is very well displayed in Haman's life and in this text. The reality of it is, we all struggle with pride to some degree, but the symptoms look different in each one of us.
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Some pride is obnoxious and very direct. I've had someone look me in the eye and say, I beat you because you're a loser.
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I've actually had that. Does that seem a little obnoxious? Maybe. Maybe a little bit direct, but rarely does our pride and arrogance appear that direct, right?
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It's pretty rare that it's just that right there. See, I'm convinced that most of us, pride sneaks up on us in thinking things like,
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I earned and I deserved that promotion. Or worse yet, I deserved and earned that promotion that somebody else got, right?
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It's found in the subtleties of thinking that I'm smarter than most people. And how many of you know that if all of us think we're smarter than most people, half of us are wrong?
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Okay, I'm just saying, right? But we all have a tendency to think that our brand of intellect is better than others.
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I don't know. But pride itself coats human interaction at every level, like a dust that just never settles.
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Any of you ever had any drywall work done in your house? We had some drywall work done this past week, and I know about dust settling all over everything.
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And it is, it's like it permeates things and just gets in the way of things. One of the most insidious of all prides,
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I would say, is religious pride. That is a pride that says my way of approaching
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God is better than your way as a believer in Christ. God loves me more than you, or I do more for God than you, and so God loves me more.
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Any of you ever come up against religious pride? And take a pause to stop for a second, because it's very easy to think of religious pride we've seen outside of ourselves.
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Any of you looked in your own heart and seen it there? The scary sight. It's sometimes scary when we look inside our own hearts and see things that we did not want to see there, or we did not believe were there, and then
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God, through His Word or through His Spirit, convicts us and shows us. It's like looking in a mirror and you're like,
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I don't remember that blemish there. How did that get there? And sometimes it can be a really ugly reflection that we see back.
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And sometimes God graciously uses our spouses or other people in our lives to point those things out too.
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I'm grateful for that. And ironically,
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I've often identified in myself that even the moments of low thinking of myself, pride, is even permeating my low thoughts.
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So some of you might be here and you would say, I don't really relate to this because my thoughts are primarily low of myself.
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And yet one of the issues in the human situation is that we think so much about ourselves, right?
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And even that in itself is insidious. And part of the pride issue is that we overanalyze our own lives and, oh,
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I'm just a horrible person. I'm a horrible dad. I'm a horrible mom. I'm horrible at this. And even that can, in essence, be driven by a pride, in essence.
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Does that make sense? Are you getting it? Because it's still all about us. It's still putting ourselves on the pedestal.
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And I golfed this week, and that's great for my sanctification, by the way, for making me more like God.
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I'm not a good golfer. And it's funny because what's really ironic is when I throw a fit on the golf course.
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Okay, throwing a little fit about missing, you know, four putting a hole, not three putting, not two putting, four putting a hole.
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And when you're doing things like that, it's like that little fit is obnoxious on a couple of different levels.
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But one primary one is that I think I ought to be better than I am, and I don't know why. I'm not a golfer, and it makes sense when
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I shank it. Like that's sensible. Okay, I don't golf, so like what are my expectations for myself?
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But do you see what I'm saying? I mean, pride sometimes says, oh, I am better than that. I do these things, but you see,
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I give myself the benefit of the doubt and I act like, well, when I sin, that's not really me because I am better than that.
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I'm really up here. This is me. Now, other people, when they sin, they sin because they're sinners.
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Are you hearing what I'm saying? You're relating to that? They sin because they're rotten, no good people, but I sin and it's out of character for me.
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We give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, right? That's pride. So how do we defeat pride inside of us?
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Have any of you waged a war with pride in your heart? You don't need to raise your hand. I mean, if you want to, that's great. I apologize to you.
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Sometimes I ask you to raise your hand and then criticize you when you don't, and then other times I, whatever. Just please forgive me for that.
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Do we just act humble and hope that it sticks? Just act it, and maybe if we act humble enough, eventually it'll just become part of our lives.
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I don't think that's going to work. And even those types of efforts get twisted in our hearts because, you know what,
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I bet I could be more humble than most of you. You know what I'm saying? So even that just gets twisted and turned around to a competition of who can be more humble.
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I am convinced, and I've seen this in my own life, and this has been key to my battle with pride and arrogance, that there is only one remedy that I have found.
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There is only one solution. There is only one vaccination against pride, and that is the cross of Jesus Christ.
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That is the only place where victory over pride and arrogance, where true humility is found, where there comes a balance in my thinking about myself and God.
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And that's what humility really is, is knowing what I am. Who am
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I? We just sang. That the Lord of all the earth would care to know my name. Who am
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I? I mean, fundamental to the issue of pride and arrogance is, first of all, who am I? And then who is
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God? And when those two things come in balance and become correctly understood, then this issue of pride, arrogance, and humility come into balance in our lives.
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And that only happens at the cross. It's the only place where those things are going to be balanced.
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A correct understanding of the cross leads to true humility. And anybody who claims to have attained humility without the cross has found another brand of pride.
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You found another shade of it, a new color. You've invented something. Great. But it's pride nonetheless.
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Whether it's Mother Teresa helping street kids in Calcutta, John Piper preaching to thousands, or Charlie Sheen who just keeps on winning, pride is always ready to own us at a moment's notice.
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And I'm not maligning any of those people. I'm just saying in reality, we've got a broad spectrum of people, and we all have pride ready to own us any time.
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And it's only as we come to realize the cross shows us who we truly are that we can have any freedom.
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You see, we're a mess. Who am I? I'm a mess. There's corruption in me.
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We're broken. We're self -focused. We're petty. And we're not that good either. How's that for a nice, cheery
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Mother's Day message? And pride and sin and corruption own us to the degree that we cannot remedy our own situation.
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We're broken, and we can't fix ourselves. And we cannot get rid of pride and arrogance that just permeates our lives.
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So the cross helps us defeat pride and lead us to humility in three ways. If you're taking notes, I don't very often give three points.
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These are going to be quick. So if you're taking notes, write them down. The first thing that the cross does for us is the cross reminds us of how dire our sins are.
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At the cross, the remedy was extreme because our sin, our situation.
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Who am I? I'm an extreme sinner. I'm a sinner, and I'm broken at the core, and I needed an extreme and radical remedy.
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And it was God's Son coming in flesh, the perfect Lamb of God coming down and dying a gruesome death on the cross for my sins.
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Does that say something about who I am? Does understanding and looking upon the
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Son of God broken and bruised and nailed and bleeding and emaciated, does that say something about me?
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Yes, it does. It says something significant about me. It took extreme measures to make me right with God.
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See that? Is that humbling? It should lead us to be on our face before God in gratitude for the extreme measures that it took for us to be reconciled with Him.
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The second thing is the cross gives us a great model and example of humility. Jesus, the
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Son of God who experienced the glories of the throne of God in heaven, who was integral in creation and is integral, as Colossians tells us, in sustaining all things and holding them all together, came down to this broken crusty world where everything is messed up and broken by us and came down in humility.
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So the incarnation is an awesome model of humility. But as Philippians says, it even went to the point of Jesus humbling
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Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Is that pretty significant? Does that say something about the example that we have to follow in the cross?
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But fortunately, it's not just an example because how many of you know that examples are limited? Right? I mean,
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I can tell you to act like Christ, but how does that work for you? Is an example enough to make things click in your life?
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Have you tried it? Follow somebody else? Try to do what they do? Try to be like them? That gets old pretty fast, right?
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But on the cross, and this is the third one, on the cross, Jesus actually bought for us freedom from pride.
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He purchased for us victory over sin. So it's not just an example, but it is an example.
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And He bought freedom from pride for those who would come under His protection, who would bow their knee before Him and say,
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I acknowledge you as Lord, King, Master. Would you save me? Freedom is available, and the
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Spirit comes in and dwells with us and convicts us and walks through that with us. So in practicality, we need to live a cross -centered life, to wake in the morning with the cross in front of us in our minds and in our thoughts, to enter meetings and conversations with that great sacrifice of Jesus before us, to discipline our children with the cross in mind, to confess our sins with the cross in mind.
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And I'm convinced that the more we focus on the cross of Jesus Christ, the less room for pride we will have in our lives.
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We will find ourselves living to serve others because the cross is the greatest act of love and service the world has ever known.
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If you launch into a campaign of self -improvement, it will result in pride. You will end up thinking too much about yourself.
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People, please put your focus on Christ. That is the place that victory is at.
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It is not getting things out of your life, it is putting what matters most in your life and focusing on that, and that is life -changing, that is transforming.
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No list of rules, no list of regulations can ever lead us anywhere but pride.
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I've checked the list, I've read my Bible every day, I've done this and this and this, look at how good I am. No, that is not the
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Christian life. The Christian life is based on grace through the cross of Jesus Christ, saying He paid the price for me and I will keep my eyes on Him and follow
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Him and walk with Him and relate with Him and love Him with my life. Does that make sense?
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That is the Christian life. It is not a list of rules. And I tell you, the more you focus on trying to get rid of pride in your life, the more prideful you become.
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It is just the nature of the way that we are knit together because we are fallen, broken. Because pride in Satan, I don't know how that worked in the eternity past, sometime in history,
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Satan fell due to pride. He said, I want to be like God, and then he passed that along to Adam and Eve in the garden and caused questioning about Him.