All the royal officials at the king’s gate knelt down and paid honor to Haman, for the king had commanded this concerning him. But Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor. Then the royal officials at the king’s gate asked Mordecai, 'Why do you disobey the king’s command?' Day after day they spoke to him but he refused to comply. Therefore they told Haman about it to see whether Mordecai’s behavior would be tolerated, for he had told them he was a Jew. When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. Yet having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.

-Esther 3:2-6

Haman is a vivid and sustained case study in the Bible about pride.

All the royal officials at the king’s gate knelt down and paid honor to Haman, for the king had commanded this concerning him…

-Esther 3:2A

In traditional and hierarchical structures, bowing is absolutely instinctive, but the King had to command people to bow to Haman.

Calling together his friends and Zeresh, his wife, Haman boasted to them about his vast wealth, his many sons, and all the ways the king had honored him and how he had elevated him above the other nobles and officials. 'And that’s not all,' Haman added. 'I’m the only person Queen Esther invited to accompany the king to the banquet she gave. And she has invited me along with the king tomorrow. But all this gives me no satisfaction as long as I see that Jew Mordecai sitting at the king’s gate.'

-Esther 5:10B-13

What is pride?

Pride is ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration on the self.

-C.S. Lewis

Pride makes you concentrate on everything about you.

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something but only out of having more of it than the next person.”

Pride turns everything into a means to an end: your ultimate motivation for everything is about getting the respect and honor you think you deserve.

The Two Forms of Pride:

1. The superiority form of pride

You are always calculating, always measuring, always asking if you are getting the respect, honor, and notoriety you deserve.

2. The inferiority form of pride

You are always down on yourself. You don’t like yourself. You don’t like how others perceive you and how you perceive you.

You are still self-absorbed: you are still doing all the comparison, but you are not making out as well.

The inferiority form of pride is just as, if not more, damaging to the soul.

“My self-worth and self-esteem is tied directly to others perceive me. So I spend most of my time on my image.”

Humility

Humility is the core value and primary characteristic of the Christ-follower and the key to spiritual health and vitality.

Pride is the sin underneath all sins and the primary characteristic of the Devil’s sons and daughters.

Biblical definition of humility: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.”

“You must therefore conceal from your patient the true end of humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but… as a low opinion of his own talents and character. To anticipate the enemy’s strategy, we must consider His aims. The enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world and know it to be the best and rejoice in the fact without being any more or less glad at having done it than if it had been done by another… Our enemy you see wants to turn the man’s attention away from self altogether and toward Him and toward his neighbor… Remember, both vainglory and self-contempt equally keep the mind on self. Both can be therefore the starting point for some wonderful contempt of other selves, other people, cynicism and cruelty.

-C.S. Lewis, paraphrased

When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. Yet having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.

-Esther 3:5-6

What does this say about Pride?

Pride leads to devastation and destruction.

Pride is deadly to all of us.

First: Pride Makes You a Fool

Pride keeps you from ever learning from your mistakes.

Humble people are lifetime learners!

Not learning from your mistakes in general or from criticism in particular makes you a fool.

The superiority form of pride makes you overestimate your gifts.

The inferiority form makes you underestimate your gifts.

The other fool in this story is King Xerxes.

Second: Pride Makes You Evil

Pride is what made the devil the devil!

Pride is not one sin among many but the root among all of them.

Bitterness: In many cases, people’s lives are being absolutely destroyed by something someone did to them in the past.

You can’t stay angry or resentful at someone unless you feel superior to them.

There is no bitterness without pride.

You are saying, “I would never do anything like that.”

Pride is at the root of all bitterness.

Humility would say..

“What they did was wrong, and I am not happy about it, but, God is in control and will use these circumstances to make me a better person and perhaps even open doors for me that would otherwise have remained closed. Besides, I am sure I have hurt people in my pursuits as well.”

Worry: Why are some people paralyzed by worry and fear? Pride.

You cannot be terribly bitter without being proud.

You cannot be horribly worried without being proud.

Third: Pride Makes You Delusional

The more prideful you are, and the more in the clutches of pride you are, the less proud you think you are.

Pride hides itself.

Humble people do not feel superior to anyone.

How can we kill Pride?

Religious Dedication? That will make you unbearable!

“To know that there is this great infinite God of holiness and justice does not create humility. Either you will try to live up to God’s standard and become that self-righteous Pharisee, or you will feel like you can’t live up to that standard and you will just feel crushed and that still makes you proud and self-absorbed.”

Religion will make you feel more self-conscious and like a failure or religion will make you feel much more superior to everyone else.

Religiosity can kill off other sins but its like pouring gasoline on a fire to try to deal with pride that way.

The king said, ‘Who is in the court?’ Now Haman had just entered the outer court of the palace to speak to the king about impaling Mordecai on the pole he had set up for him

-Esther 6:4

Haman asks the King for special permission to make a public spectacle of Mordecai and to hang him in that public place while the Jews are being slaughtered. But God has a different idea.

When Haman entered, the king asked him, 'What should be done for the man the king delights to honor?' Now Haman thought to himself, 'Who is there that the king would rather honor than me?' So he answered the king, 'For the man the king delights to honor, have them bring a royal robe the king has worn and a horse the king has ridden, one with a royal crest placed on its head.'

-Esther 6:6-8

In ancient times the robes were much more significant than they are today.

For the king to put his own robes on somebody was a way not just to simply say, “I honor this person,” but to say, “I delight in this person.”

Is Haman really that different to us? Is this not what we all want, whether we are willing to admit it or not?

This section of the book of Esther shows us an incredible reversal of fortunes.

1. Mordecai was literally about to be trampled into the dust, but suddenly, he is up high on the pinnacle.

2. Haman was about to go up on the pinnacle and now he is down in the role of the servant and doomed.

If you humble yourself, you will be exalted.

If you exalt yourself, you will be humbled.

Lose yourself to find yourself… Does that sound strange? It works in every day matters as well. In social life you will never make a good impression on people until you stop thinking so hard about what sort of impression you are making... The principle runs through all of life from top to bottom… Lose your life and you will save it. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him and with Him everything else thrown in.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

If you seek to lift yourself up, you will be brought down.

What Haman was asking for is something we all want. We want someone of ultimate glory loving us.

Haman did not ask for the wrong thing. He asked the wrong King!

Mordecai was saved only because Haman reversed places with him—but it was involuntary. Jesus does it voluntarily.

There is the ultimate King.

Jesus Christ is the King that you can go to because at infinite cost to himself, he reversed places with us.

Jesus was stripped naked so that we could be clothed in the robes of the Father—the righteous robes of the Father.

Jesus takes what we deserve so that we can get what He deserves.

Make a Decision