Pride and Providence

There was once a battleship that was patrolling in the Atlantic Ocean. It was very dark with a lot of fog, so there was very low visibility.

One of the lookouts cried out to the captain that there was a light up ahead. The captain asked if the light was moving to either side, and the lookout said no. That meant that they were on a direct course with another ship!

So, the captain got on the radio and said, “unidentified vessel, we are on a collision course, I advise you move 10 degrees south.”

Then, a click came on the radio, and a voice answered, “negative, we advise you to move 10 degrees north.”

The captain was a little upset now, and said, “I am a captain, advise 10 degrees south.”

The voice clipped in again, “I’m a private second class, advise 10 degrees north.”

Finally, the captain was pissed! He got on the radio and said very angrily into the speaker, “Private, we are a battleship, you WILL move 10 degrees south!”

There was a wait, and then a clip came on again, “Captain, this is a lighthouse, I suggest you move 10 degrees north”

The captain was under the impression that he was more important than the person on the other end of the line, and so all of his decisions were made while under that impression. The captain was prideful.

What do you think pride is?

What we’re going to see today is the difference between pride and humility, and trusting in yourself or trusting in God.

We’ve been in the book of Esther for the last few weeks, and we’ve talked about how it runs like a tv show, and has an interesting plot. This week, though, it literally runs like an episode of a tv show, commercial breaks and all. But in all of it, it draws us to look at the different between Haman, the villain of the story, and the two big characters of the story, Esther and Mordecai.

And this passage is going to lead us to look at the difference between Haman and his pride and trust in himself and Esther and Mordecai in their humility and trust in God.

Esther 5-6

Pride or Humility

Haman, in this story, is the perfect picture of pride.

He’s done pretty well for himself, he has a lot of success to talk about, but he SURE LIKES TALKING ABOUT IT!

Look at Esther 5:11

Esther 5:11 ESV

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 had advanced him above the officials and the servants of the king.

He can’t restrain himself, he has to tell everyone, even the people that know him well and are probably aware of his many accomplishments how great he is.

He’s even so arrogant that he can’t just enjoy the immense power and prestige that he has because he doesn’t have everything he wants.

Like Dudley Dursely in Harry Potter who’s so upset that he only got 36 Christmas presents instead of 37, he can’t even handle one thing not going his way.

This, of course, does not work out well for him, and we’ll see next week that he instead suffers and dies because of his pride

See, pride, for Haman, is probably how he rose to power so quickly, but it’s also the thing that kept him from any true flourishing.

Pride is the emotion associated with putting yourself above others.

Pride’s root word means “to lift up,” so when we are prideful, we are lifting ourselves above the status of others.

Pride is the thing that keeps you from life and life to the full.

C.S. Lewis said of pride:

Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense. - C.S. Lewis

Pride will kill, it will rob us of any joy that we might have had because we get to be too busy looking at other people and trying to be better than others than to enjoy what God has actually given us.

Haman was second in command in the biggest kingdom that the world had known at the time! And he still couldn’t be happy because he had to have everything that he wanted.

What does pride do in your life?

It can cause us to reject deep friendships because we need to be better than them, or to reject the ability to learn because we already know enough, or get rid of any hope of change in our lives because we are too busy being so great that we could never grow.

You’ve probably met people who are incredibly prideful, and they are rarely people who are actually worth being around. I’d rather be with someone who knows themselves enough to know their own faults than someone who’s convinced they don’t have any.

And most importantly, it harms our relationship with God, because pride ultimately tries to replace God with us. We want to be above God, and that harms our ability to be in relationship with the God who demands our all.

On the flip side, humility is integral to this story.

Esther is consistently a picture of humility in this story.

She knows who she is, she knows that she does actually have some authority (she puts on her royal robes, showing that she is still the queen), but she’s constantly lowering herself and appealing to people greater than her by being humble.

She serves the king and Haman a meal, not once, but we’ll see next week, twice! She is humble towards the king, and doesn’t attack Haman immediately.

We also know from last week that she, while she is doing this feast, has just fasted for three days and come before God in prayer and asked that He would save His people. So she has submitted to the authorities before her, even the authority of God.

Humility is an understanding of yourself and your own importance in your place in the world.

Humility is just the ability to know who you are and where you fit into the world.

The root word of humility actually means “low,” showing that they aren’t trying to be better than anyone.

Something that is important to note here is that humility isn’t making yourself lower than needed or hating yourself, it’s viewing yourself accurately.

So, it’s not saying that you suck at everything, it’s acknowledging that you are good at things, but giving credit where credit is due.

If, on a football team, there is one offensive lineman who thinks that he’s better than everyone else and never trusts another person, their team isn’t going to do well. But, if he knows who he is and knows his weaknesses, he can trust other people to fill those weaknesses and the whole organization get’s stronger.

Remember a few weeks ago when we had a bunch of people holding up one person and then Christian holding up one person?

Humility is knowing that you’re not the most important person in the room.

C.S. Lewis said something really beneficial about this

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all. - C.S. Lewis

So how do we do this?

Stop looking at the mirror and start looking at others.

Something that we are really good as people at doing is looking at ourselves. The only time that we look at others is to judge how they’re doing in comparison to us.

Let’s start looking at other people and seeing what they’re good at.

Guys, Rob is an excellent guitarist and drummer, Mia can play bass like no one’s business, Colin has insights that are profound, Mya is an incredibly skilled horseperson (I don’t know if that’s what you’re supposed to say), and something about a high school dude.

And if we just spend all our time looking at ourselves then we’re never going to get to know the people around you who God placed in your life for your good and theirs!

Acknowledge our faults.

If we aren’t to say that we do things badly, then we have a problem!

The people that I’ve interacted with that are incapable of admitting that they are wrong are regularly the most frustrating people to hang out with because they are typically not defined in kindness.

Can you say sorry? Can you admit that you’ve made a mistake?

Look to Jesus

Jesus is the perfect example of humility.

We see in Philippians 2:5-7

Philippians 2:5–7 ESV

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Jesus, who is God, took the form of man, becoming both God and man, and didn’t lord His status over anyone, but instead served others, showing us kindness and humility unlike anything that anyone has ever known

He has all of the power and authority, and yet He lowered Himself to our level to bring us into His family.

That’s the thing with humility, they’ll always get down to the level of whoever they are working with, because they care.

So that’s the difference we see in Haman and Esther, we see pride in Haman and humility in Esther; but we also see a difference in Haman and Mordecai (and also in Esther) in their trust in self or trust in God.

Trust in Self or Trust in God

When we look at Haman, we see a guy who’s pretty confident in what he’s able to do on his own.

He’s a pretty prideful guy, and is VERY sure of himself.

He doesn’t like Mordecai? He’s just going to ask the king to kill him and he’s going to have the vehicle of that murder ready

The king wants to know how to honor someone? It obviously was for him, because he’s the best and everyone should love him because he’s so handsome and cool.

He trusted in himself, which happened to be his undoing.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Mordecai.

This guy is in legitimate danger! Haman HATES him and wants him dead, and he has the authority to do it too!

But Mordecai had heard from Esther that she was going to take care of it and he had prayed and fasted and trusted that God was going to provide.

And then (wouldn’t you know it) the night before Haman was going to ask the king to execute Mordecai, his sleepy time gets interrupted and so the king asks to hear about the chronicles for his kingdom and he hears again about this Mordecai guy who saved his life!

So, by the end of chapter 6, Haman (who only trusted himself) is starting to unravel, and Mordecai (who seemed to trust in God) is honored by the king.

But what does trust in self look like, and why is it bad?

Now, when I say trusting in your self, that can feel like it’s supposed to be a good thing, right?

“believe in yourself! You can do it if you just try! You can do anything you can set your mind to!”

Why might trusting in self might be a problem?

Trusting in yourself isn’t a confidence issue, it’s believing that you are the main character in the story.

Haman undoubtedly thought that he was right all the time and that everyone needed to listen to him because he was the best. He didn’t need anyone else in his life, because he was the smartest person in the room.

It’s like when we won’t ask for help because I can’t let someone else do anything to make me look weak, or when I have to win in any contest or argument because I deserve to win. It’s trusting in ourselves to be the one in control and the one in power.

It goes hand in hand with pride, the two are intertwined.

Having confidence isn’t a bad thing. Knowing that you can do something is good. It’s when we put ourselves in the place of God that we have an issue.

It takes more faith to trust in yourself than in the God who made you.

That’s the real problem! Work out this problem with me

Which is easier, to trust that God, who knows all things and is in ultimate control, can handle the problems of our lives; OR that we, who don’t know everything and aren’t in control, can handle it?

It’s a no brainer, but it’s still difficult for us to do!

It’s like rock climbing.

If you rock climb on what’s called top-rope, you climb up a 50 or 75 foot wall and you’re held by a rope that’s attached to a lever that’s attached to what’s called a belayer, and so when you get to the top of the wall, you’re supposed to let go, and then they slowly lower you down.

The first time people do this, what they always end up wanting to do is climb down the wall they just climbed up, but that ALWAYS ends badly, it’s a lot more difficult and ends in skinned knees and elbows and pain that wasn’t needed.

It’s easier to trust the belayer, but we still have a hard time doing it.

But

Trusting in God looks more like faithfulness than believing in magic

Trusting in God doesn’t look like you just don’t trust logic and do insane stuff.

God’s not going to ask you to jump off the roof of the church and trust that He’s going to text you.

It’s not like that monk in star wars Rogue One. He just walked out into gunshots because he thought that the force was going to save him.

More often, trusting in God looks like being faithful.

It looks like showing up, day after day, knowing that God is going to provide because He constantly provides.

It’s praying and believing that God is listening (not that He’s going to do whatever you want, but that He’s listening)

It looks like avoiding things that the Bible says are wrong because we trust that God truly wants the best for us, even if we don’t know how this applies.

You can trust God with your every day, and I guarantee that He will show up for you.

Most clearly, we can look to Jesus.

Jesus in the garden with faithfulness.

And so we see in Haman and Esther and Mordecai two different ways of living.

Are we going to be prideful people, or humble?

Are we going to trust in God, or are we going to trust in ourselves?

Questions

Would you rather own 50 duck sized horses or one horse sized duck? Why?

What’s the difference between being humble and putting yourself down? Can you think of an example?

When have you found it hard to admit a mistake, ask for help, or give someone else credit? What could humility look like in that situation?

What’s one practical way you can trust God this week?