Transcription
And therefore, it's uh it's very vivid. It it is uh it illustrates so many other places the Bible speaks about pride and humility. We're going to learn a lot, but I I don't want you to think this is hype when I say I really want you to listen because it might save the rest of your life. Not kidding.
There's three things we learn here. First of all, the character of pride, what it is, the deadliness of pride, what it does, and the cure for it. the character of it, the deadliness of it, the cure for it.
And first of all, what do we learn from the story and Hmon about the character of pride? After these events, King Xerxes honored Hmon, elevating him and giving him a seat of honor higher than all the other nobles. All the royal officials at the king's gate knelt down and paid honor to uh Hmon, for the king had commanded this concerning him.
Now, when he we were told he was given the highest position, that means he must have been essentially prime minister. It's pretty amazing. He had the highest position in the king's administration. But that other statement in verse two is pretty intriguing. Hmon must have been a particularly obnoxious person because in hierarchical and traditional societies, bowing is absolutely instinctive. Totally instinctive. In fact, some of you may come from or know of traditional societies in which you always bowed to anybody older than you or anyone who was in a station or social position higher than you. It was absolutely instinctive. And therefore, Hmon must have been particularly obnoxious if the king had to command people to bow to him, which he did.
But one man wouldn't do it. Mori, the cousin of Esther, who was the uh the the older cousin who raised Esther when her parents died. He refused to give respect where respect wasn't due. And the fact that he wouldn't bow down wasn't gling to um Hmon simply because he wasn't giving this one individual wasn't giving Hmon respect, but it really was a reminder of what Hmon certainly knew in his heart of hearts. And that is that in spite of this great power he had, in spite of this great position he had, he didn't get the respect and the approval of people that he thought should go with it.
At one point even says to his wife and his u uh friends, this is in chapter 5. It says um calling together his wife and his friends, Hmon boasted to them about his vast wealth and all the ways the king had honored him and how he had elevated him above all the other nobles and officials. But all this, he said, gives me no satisfaction as long as I see that Jew, Morortei, sitting at the king's gate. So he's furious.
Now what he does about it, we'll look at soon. But right now, let's stop and say, what do we learn about pride? Pride, according to the Bible, is concentration on the self. Pride is absorption in the self. I'll give you a definition. is from CS Lewis and I'll talk about him a lot tonight because I think he writes about this subject in a way no one else does. Pride he says quote is ruthless sleepless unsmiling concentration on the self. Ruthless sleepless unconentrate uh unsmiling concentration on the self.
This is what pride does. [clears throat] Pride makes you concentrate everything about you. So you don't get into relationships, you don't get into jobs, you don't do anything unless it makes you feel good about yourself. And therefore every nothing is about the thing you're doing. Everything is about you. So for example, as uh Lewis writes in his famous chapter on pride, he says, "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, but only out of having more of it than the next person." You may think you're proud of being successful or intelligent or good-looking, but you're not. Because when you're surrounded by other people with as much or more success, intelligence, or looks, you lose all pleasure in them. See, lust may actually drive you to sleep with a beautiful woman because you want her. Pride, however, drives you to sleep with a beautiful woman just to prove to everyone, including you, yourself, that you can do it and do it over all others. A proud man gets no real pleasure from the woman. It's all about him.
And so what you're doing in pride, pride is is pride turns everything into a means to an end. You never do anything for itself. It's always a means to an end of getting respect and getting approval. And that's the reason why human gets no satisfaction from his accomplishments. It's really the he doesn't care about the position really. He doesn't care about anything he's doing. What he wants is he wants people to respect him. He wants people to approve of him. And that's the reason why pride creates this endless that's why Lewis is right when he says it's end it's sleepless endless ego calculation. [clears throat] You're always adding things up. You're always looking and saying am I getting um the thanks I deserve? Am I getting appreciated here? Um uh how am I being regarded? How am I looking? [clears throat] How does this h how how does this make me look? Everything is about that. It's all you're always saying what about me? What about me? What about me?
And therefore, since pride is concentration on the self, self-absorption, there are two forms of pride, it's very important to see this. On the one hand, you've got the superiority form of pride. And the superiority form of pride is generally recognized as pride by most people because uh people with a superior air are constantly doing that calculation. They're always comparing themselves. They're always thinking, how do I look? How's it going? You know, am I being appreciated? Am I being regarded? how am I being regarded? And you feel like you're making up pretty well. You're doing the calculation and you it's adding up. Okay. And that's one form of pride.
But there's another form of pride. And the other form of pride is the inferiority form of pride. The inferiority form of pride is where you're down on yourself and you don't like yourself and you don't like how you look and you don't like how you you you're doing and you and and you're very self-conscious and you're kind of, you know, always beating yourself up, but you're just as self-absorbed. Don't you see? You're doing all the comparison, too, but you're not making out as well. But it doesn't matter. We don't think of inferiority. People beat themselves up as proud. But you absolutely are by biblical definition. You better get it straight because those two kinds of people have far more in common than a humble person.
Cuz see, now if you understand self is self-absorption. Pride is got two both inferiority and superiority uh uh uh forms. Then you realize what humility is. According to the Bible, humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less. It's just it's just not being needy for approval or respect. Not caring about approval or respect. You you say hello to people. You hang out with people. You go into certain jobs. You do things not because it makes you feel good about yourself. It it makes it gets respect. It gets approval. You do it just for you do it for the things themselves. It's not all about you. And that means you're unne a humble person. If you actually ever met a really humble person, you would never come away thinking they were humble. All you would remember is they were happy and they were incredibly interested in you cuz they're not thinking about themselves and how you and how you're treating them and and how you're looking to them. Not at all. And all that calculation, that ego calculation, it's it's gone. They're not doing it. They're relaxed.
>> [snorts] >> That's why there's a place in Screw [clears throat] Tape Letters and Screw Tape Letters is written by CS Lewis and it's about a senior devil writing to a junior devil about how to tempt people. So you have to understand that the enemy here is Jesus and the patients are us human beings, you know, but once you understand that there's a devil talking to another devil about how to tempt patience and come against the enemy, which is Jesus. And when you understand that, it's still a pretty good quote, but you do have to put that you kind of get your head into it. And here it is. He says, "You must conceal from your patient the real nature of humility. Let him think of it not as self- forgetfulness, but as a low opinion of his own talents and character." To thwart the enemy, we must consider his aims. He wants to bring your 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 that 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 toward him and the man's neighbor. Remember, both vain glory and self-contempt equally keep the mind on the self. Both can be therefore the starting point for some wonderful contempt of other selves, other people, cynicism and cruelty.
Pride is ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration on the self. Number two, so what? Okay. Okay. You say, "All right, so you define pride rather broadly and okay, I see your point. So, how bad is that? Very bad. Verse 5 and six. Hmon, when he heard about this, was enraged. Yet, having learned who Morai's people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordei. Instead, Hmon looked for a way to destroy all Mordeai's people, the Jews, through the whole kingdom of Xerxes.
It's he wasn't satisfied with just killing Morortei and thereby, as it were, making him bow. rather he wants to destroy the whole community. So he goes to King Xerxes in a in a verses right after this that we didn't have printed and he tells the king about a group of people who don't obey the king's laws and he says if you give me permission to slaughter them and take their wealth lots of that will come into the king's treasury and the king who had been dep had depleted his treasury through a very disastrous campaign to Greece needed the money and so he gives him the signate ring and says go ahead doesn't even find out who this group of people are and Hmon uh makes a law and the law of the Mes and the Persians are was were irrevocable when a king made a decree was irrevocable and Hmon designated a day and on that day the neighbors of the Jews anywhere in the Persian Empire were able to destroy them and take their wealth as plunder. Thousands of people are going to die no matter what. And as we see though the Jews are saved, thousands of people still die. and Hmon himself is going to die. Everywhere in the Bible, we're told pride goes before a fall. Pride leads to devastation. Pride leads to destruction. Pride is deadly.
You say, "Well, how is pride?" So, I mean, this is an extreme case. Okay, I want you to see that all pride is deadly. All pride, how? Let me count the ways. Ready? First of all, and this might seem lowle, but it's important. First of all, pride makes you a fool. How? So, first of all, pride pride keeps you from ever learning from your mistakes in general. But why? Cuz you're self-justifying. A proud heart is always justifying itself and always saying, in other words, your this your relationship breaks up or you you know you you there's a falling out with this person and there this job doesn't work out and that job doesn't work out and what are you always doing? It's him, it's her, it's them, it's the circumstance. It's never you. And you justify yourself. So you just can't learn from your mistakes.
See, a humble person. Humble people are not always looking at themselves. They're not always standing on their own dignity. They can laugh at themselves. And as a result, they learn fast. When something goes wrong, they actually look for what they have done wrong. Even if it's not mainly their fault, partly it's their fault. And they find it and they learn from it. And they grow so fast. And proud people don't. But not only that, proud people don't just not learn from the mistakes in general. They don't learn from criticism in particular. One of the best ways to grow as a person is to take criticism. But see, the superiority type of pride keeps when someone criticizes you, you dismiss them or you attack them. And in the inferiority form of pride, criticism so devastates you that when people even try to talk to you, you just melt down. They just say, "Forget it." And you never learn anything. And because you don't learn from your mistakes in general, and you don't learn from your criticism in particular, you are a fool. What do I mean? You constantly bake bad choices. You choose the wrong jobs. You choose the wrong boyfriends or girlfriends. You choose all kinds of things that are wrong. Why? Because the superiority form makes you overestimate your gifts. And the inferiority form makes you underestimate your gifts. You're always feeling down on yourself. And the people who are above you, you resent and fear them and you find them threatening. And the people who you think are below you, you tend to disdain and you don't learn from them. And as a result, you're constantly making miscalculations. You're constantly making wrong moves just like Hmon does here.
But it doesn't just make you a fool. Pride makes you evil. Pride is what made the the devil the devil. Since St. Augustine, Christian theology has understood that pride is not one sin among many, but really the root under all of them. Pride is the hellish spiritual petri dish that grows all kinds of stuff in your life. Let me show you. Bitterness. Some of us, many of us struggle a great deal with bitterness and anger toward things that people have done or people have done to us or classes of people or individuals. There's many people whose lives are being distorted by anger. But remember this, you can't stay angry at someone. You can't stay resentful at someone unless you feel superior to them. There's no bitterness without pride because you're saying, "I would never do anything like that." And if your life is distorted by anger, it's because pride is at the root of it.
Or what about paralyzing fear? Some people are paralyzed by worry. You know where that comes from? You know exactly how things have to go. You're sure you know what's best to happen in history and it's got to be this. And if this doesn't happen, it'll be a disaster. And you're freaking out about it. Why? Cuz you know exactly how things have to go. How can you know? You just know. That takes arrogance. You can't be You can't listen. You can't be horribly worried without being proud. You can't be terribly bitter without being proud. Pride leads to um being opinionated, which everybody doesn't like. But pride also leads to being indecisive because that's the inferiority form. You're just afraid of making a wrong move and how you're going to look. You pride makes you uh pride makes you too shy. That's the inferiority form. Pride makes you too abrasive. That's the superiority form. And that's just the personal stuff. Then there's the social evils and all the great social evils. Racism and injustice and imperialism all come from class pride or racial pride. See, or overweening national pride. And and this week, some young man's going to be gunned down on the streets of New York. And what will the cause be? Pride. That's what so many of them are. Maybe that's what all most of them are. It's not all.
Pride makes you fool. Pride makes you evil. It's not that's not all. Let me tell you something else that makes it deadly. On top of everything else, as bad as pride is, it's the one sin that hides itself. Pride is the carbon monoxide of sin, killing you without you having any ability to tell it's happening. It's odorless. See, by definition, the more proud you are, and therefore, the more in its clutches you are, the less proud you think you are. See, pride hides itself. Look, you know when you're committing adultery, right? You never say, "Oh my gosh, you're not my wife." No, you know when you're going to get over. You know when you're embezzling somebody. You don't say, "Oh, how did that $300,000 get into my bank account?" You know, I mean, I don't make that much every year. No. See, you know when you're embezzling. You know when you're when you you know you know when you're doing lust. You know when you're doing investment. You don't know when you're proud. Virtually nobody ever comes and says, "I'm proud." I got a problem with pride. I've listened to all kinds of sins confessed to me over the years. I don't think anybody's ever come and told me about that one. And let me show you just how inescapable it is. Joseph Epstein in his book on pride says so many people hate snobs. They just hate snobs. But you can only hate snobs if you feel superior to them. Which means hating snobbery is a form of snobbery because humble people don't feel superior to anyone.
>> [snorts] >> Do you look down your nose at snobs? Do you look down your nose at people who look down their nose at people? You see how inescapable it is? Or let me go one step further. Let me just to show you how, you know, it's a carbon monoxide. Honestly, now up to now, haven't you mainly been thinking about a couple of other people during this sermon? Haven't you immediately said, "My gosh, boy, does that sound just like him or just like her. It takes a certain amount of pride to have come through the sermon up to now mainly thinking about somebody else. I'm serious.
And that's not all. Let me just tell you, there's one more deadliness, one more thing that makes pride so incredible. It makes you a fool. It makes you evil. It hides itself. And then last of all, some of you are saying, "Well, it's about time for three." And being a minister, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say, "Pride's very bad." Yes. Very. And I Okay, I got you. It's very bad. What's the solution? God. You need to get closer to God. You need to obey God. You need to pray. You need to obey the ten commandments. You need to humble yourself before God. That will deal with the joyilling psychological and sociological deadliness of pride. I'm not going to tell you that. At least not that way. And here's the reason why. This is the worst thing about pride of all. is that if you get somebody really religious and they start to be really good and they come to church and they study their Bible and they try real hard to you know to uh you know pray and and and obey God, religiosity will kill off lust to a great degree. And religiosity will kill off materialism to a great degree but it just makes pride worse. There is no pride like religious pride. There's no pride there's no proud people like Pharisees. And just to be told, God is great and you need to obey him. That doesn't necessarily let me tell you that does not decrease pride at all. Jonathan Edwards in his great sermon on humility in his book Charity and its fruits says to know that there's this great infinite God of holiness and justice does not create humility because either you will try to live up to that God's standard and then become a self-righteous Pharisee or you will feel like you can't live up to that standard and you'll just feel crushed and that still makes you self proud. you know, self-absorbed. It's either the superiority or the inferiority. Act and religion makes it worse. Religion will make you feel more self-conscious and like a failure or it'll make you feel much more superior to everybody else and think we have the truth and and look down your nose at everybody. It all by itself just obeying God and trying to be a good person. It's scary. Religiosity can kill off other kinds of sins, but it's like pour pouring oil on the fire to try to deal with pride that way.
So, are we cooked? To extend the metaphor. Now, there is there is a point three and here's the point three. There is a cure. [snorts]
In at the beginning of chapter 6, Hmon is coming to see the king. And you know why? Because as we learn here down in uh verse uh 4, Hmon has not just been satisfied to kill Mori. And he hasn't just been satisfied to kill the his community. He wants to make a public spectacle of Morortei. So he has built a gallows in a public place and he has come to the king to ask for special permission to make a public spectacle of Morortei and to hang him in that public place on the day in which the Jews are going to be slaughtered. But God has a different idea. And that night the king can't sleep. And he begins to read a book or have a book read to him. and he suddenly remembers that Morortei had saved his life, had saved his life from assassination and he'd never been rewarded. Hmon happens to come in just as the king has realized this and says, "Hmon, what should we do for a man that the king delights to honor?" And Hmon, desperately needing respect, desperately needing approval, desperately wanting honor and glory, thinking the king means him, comes up with a fascinating proposal. He says, "Let the king's robes be put on a man, on that man, and let him be put up on the horse, which of course is the position, the king's horse, which is the position of a conquering king. and let he says your greatest noble take the position of a slave or a servant because that person will simply walk along leading the horse by the rains through the streets as a kind of herald and that will show how much you delight in that man.
Now, why does he talk about the robes? In ancient times, the robes were much more significant than they are. Actually, we miss the significance. Let me help you with it. For the king to put the robes on someone was more than just giving him a high position. When Pharaoh puts the robes on Joseph in Genesis 41, it means he actually partakes of the king's position. And when Jonathan gives his kingly robes to David in 1st Samuel 18, it's Jonathan's way of actually saying, "I love you and you should be the king, not me." And to put the ro for the king to put the robes on somebody, his own robes was a way of not just simply saying, "I honor this person, but I delight in this person. I love this person." And here's what Hmon is. Here's why Hmon's excited. Hmon's saying, "If the people out there saw that I'm loved like that by someone as great as that, that I'm loved, but not just loved. I'm loved like that by someone as great as that. I'm loved by the king." Then they'll know. and then I'll know my worth, my value. See, that really is what we need. We don't just want love. We want someone that we think the world of thinking the world of us. Or as one writer put it, the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards. The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards. And that's what he's saying is if I had that, if I had the king putting his robes on me, the king loving me like that, if if I was loved like that by someone as glorious as that, then I would know. Then everyone would know.
But to his absolute shock, the king says, "Do that to Mori and you take the role of the servant leading the horse along." And it's astounding to Hmon. It's the most incredible and astonishing reversal of fortunes because you see Mori was literally about to be trampled into the dust literally. But suddenly he's up high on the pinnacle and Hmon was about to go up into the pinnacle. He's down in the role of the servant but he's down worse than than even the king knows because he realizes now he couldn't possibly now that they're doing this to Mori, he can't possibly move against Morai or his people. And Hmon knows he's doomed. There's been a total reversal. And Hmon also knows it's because he tried to put himself up there. He's been brought down.
And this is exactly what the Bible says everywhere. This goes across the board. This is a this is part of life. What is part of life? If you humble yourself, you'll be exalted. If you exalt yourself, you'll be humbled all through the Bible. In fact, uh CS Lewis writes about it here. He says, "Lose yourself to find it." Does that sound strange? It works in everyday matters as well. In social life, you will never make a good impression on people till you stop trying so much to make a good impression on people. In literation art, you will never be original till you stop trying so hard to be original. The principle runs through all 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.
Why is this a principle of the universe that if you seek to lift yourself up, you'll be brought down? I'll tell you why. Because of the nature of God and he made the universe. And how do we know this is the nature of God? Like this. Hmon did not ask for the wrong thing. What Hmon was asking for is something we all want. We want someone of ultimate glory loving us. Not love in general. What we need is this ultimate assurance of who we are. ultimate assurance of our worth. We need someone like that loving us like that. We need someone we think the world of loving thinking the world of us. We need the praise of the praiseworthy. He didn't ask for the wrong thing. That's what's wrong with us. That's why we all have a problem with pride. We all have this problem. That's why we're so needy all the time. He didn't ask for the wrong thing. He asked the wrong king. He went to the wrong king.
There's a better king. There's a king with ultimate glory who, believe it or not, came to earth and stripped himself of his glory. And when he went to the cross, he stripped himself. Not just he didn't wasn't just stripped of his clothes. Literally, he was he was stripped of his father's love. He was stripped of he was stripped of his father's approval, of his father's respect. Why? He was reversing places with us. Mori was saved only because Hmon reversed places with him, but it was involuntary. But Jesus does it voluntarily. There's the ultimate king. There's the king of glory. Jesus Christ is the king that you can go to because he at infinite cost with him to himself. Reversed places with us. God made him sin that knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Jesus Christ was stripped naked so that we could be clothed in the righteousness of of of his son. Jesus Christ exchanges places with us. He takes what we deserve so we can get what he deserves. And now in Genesis in uh John chapter 17, there's a place where Jesus actually says, "Father, give them the glory that you gave me before the foundation of the world." That's unbelievable. The disciples, that's us. Jesus is the glory isn't just psychic phos kind of divine phosphoresence. Glorious delight, glorious honor. Jesus says, "You must realize that the praise of the ultimate praiseworthy, the glory and honor and robes of the ultimate king are yours." And when you know he loves you like that, when you know you went he went through all that for you, that's the one-two punch that the ego needs to make it finally self-forgetful and at rest to fill it. So it's not needy anymore.
See, it's not enough just to say, "Oh, I believe in God." That doesn't make you humble. We just said that'll make you either superior or inferior. What you have to see is God coming all the way down and reversing places with us at infinite cost to himself. Because on the one hand, to know that he had to die for you humbles you. To know he was glad to die for you affirms you infinitely. And when you realize that that onetwo punch on the ego finally look, you know this Jesus Christ was strong enough to be weak. He was so strong that he didn't care what people thought. He was so strong he was able to do the right thing. And if you see him doing that for you, you will be strong enough to be weak. You'll be strong enough to learn from your mistakes. Strong enough to take jobs and do have relationships that don't just make you feel good about yourself, but they're just the right thing to do. Finally, you won't be snubbed all the time and you won't feel feel uh you know always be looking at yourself and always being down on yourself or up on yourself or anything about yourself. Don't you want that?
Here's how it'll start. See, as Lewis says, the only way that you can take a step to getting this healing, to take that down into yourself, to the degree you understand that he did that for you, to that degree, you have that inner assurance and glory and joy that'll enable you to move out with the blessed self-forgetfulness that we all need. And uh here's what Lewis says is the first step. If anyone wants to acquire humility, I can I think tell him the very first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud and a biggestish step it is too. Nothing whatsoever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.
Let's pray. Our father, we thank you for assuring us that Jesus Christ is the ultimate