This morning we turn in God's Word to Esther chapter 5 verse 9 through the end of chapter 6. Esther 5, 9 through the end of Esther chapter 6. You'll find that starting on page 413 in the few Bibles. We continue through Esther this morning and so far in this account, we've seen how a high government official, Haman, convinced the king to pass a law to exterminate all the Jews on a certain day. Queen Esther, herself Jewish, unbeknownst to the king, asked that the king come to a banquet that she would give and bring Haman with her with him. And she planned to ask the king for mercy. But for some reason, she hesitated to make a request, and she asked the king and Haman to return the next day to another banquet. where she would really make a request. And these are the events that that unfolded in the meantime. Esther, chapter five, starting at verse nine, this is God's holy word. And Haman went out that day, joyful and glad of heart. 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. Nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home, and he sent and brought his friends and his wife, Zeresh. 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. Then Haman said, Even Queen Esther let no one but me come with the king to the feast she prepared. 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 Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate. Then his wife, Zeresh, and all his friends said to him, let a gallows 50 cubits high be made, and in the morning tell the king to have Mordecai hanged upon it. then go joyfully with the king to the feast. This idea pleased Haman, and he had the gallows made. On that night, the king could not sleep, and he gave orders to bring the Book of the Memorable Deeds, the Chronicles, and they were read before the king. And it was found written how Mordecai had told about Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king's eunuchs who guarded the threshold and who had sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus. And the king said, What honor or distinction has been bestowed on Mordecai for this? The king's young men who attended him said nothing has been done for him. And the king said, who is in the court? Now, Haman had just entered the outer court of the king's palace to speak to the king about having Mordecai hanged on the gallows that he had prepared for him. And the king's young men told him, Haman is there standing in the court. And the king said, let him come in. So Haman came in and the king said to him, What should be done to the man whom the king delights to honor? And Haman said to himself, whom would the king delight to honor more than me? And Haman said to the king, for the man whom the king delights to honor, let royal robes be brought, which the king has worn and the horse that the king has ridden and on whose head a royal crown is set. And let the robes and the horse be handed over to one of the king's most noble officials. Let them dress the man whom the king delights to honor and let them lead him on the horse through the square of the city, proclaiming before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honor. Then the king said to Haman, Hurry, take the robes and the horse, as you have said, and do so to Mordecai, the Jew who sits at the king's gate. Leave out nothing that you have mentioned. So Haman took the robes and the horse, and he dressed Mordecai and led him through the square of the city, proclaiming before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honor. Then Mordecai returned to the king's gate, but Haman hurried to his house, mourning and with his head covered. And Haman told his wife, Zeresh, and all his friends everything that had happened to him. Then his wise men and his wife Zeresh said to him, if Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of the Jewish people, you will not overcome him, but will surely fall before him. While they were yet talking with him, the king's eunuchs arrived and hurried to bring Haman to the feast that Esther had prepared. Here is a reading of God's holy word this morning. Let's pray and we'll ask for his blessing as we look at it. Our heavenly father, we thank you for blessing us with your word. We pray that you would teach us your ways as we look at it this morning. Help us to understand the importance of your word and help us to understand how you would have us to take it to heart. So bless us, we pray. Speak to us. Cause us to be receptive, we ask in Jesus name. Amen. Sometimes people assume that things work differently than they actually do. or that they function according to laws that are not actually true. One example that comes to mind in the field of geology is quicksand. Now, we all know, I suppose, after fashion from watching TV, what happens when someone walks into quicksand. They flail around for a few agonizing moments and then they're sucked under, and all that's left on the top maybe is their hat. Quicksand. However, I learned in my previous life in civil engineering that it doesn't work that way, because quicksand is actually a spring of water that is forcing its way up through sandy soil, liquefying that sandy soil, and that sandy soil is very dense. It has about twice the weight of normal water. And if you rack your brains back to your physics class, you may remember that a dense fluid helps things to be more buoyant. That's why you float better in a salty sea. The water is more dense. And so in quicksand, it really would not be possible to sink further than perhaps half your body into the quicksand before it would hold you up. It is extremely buoyant. So quicksand does not function the way we normally think. So I guess maybe you're There's one danger you don't really have to worry about, quicksand. It functions differently from how we might think. Now, in our passage this morning, as we think about this conception of honor and Haman's desire to be honored and who the honor actually goes towards, I think we'd have to say that many people have similar misconceptions about honor and the way that it works. You want people to notice you, You want people to speak well of you, then common wisdom is you go get that honor, and you go get it by achieving, or you go get it by making people happy with you. But you cannot really grab honor. Honor is not something that you can permanently appropriate to yourself, as Haman was trying to do. Honor is ultimately something that comes from God. And it rests on those whom God chooses and calls by his grace. And that is the law, if we could put it that way, that is the kind of spiritual law of physics that is functioning in our passage. We might look at this story and say, what a remarkable series of coincidences beginning with the king's sleepless night. And truly, they are remarkable. And it shows God's hand of providence But, you know, on the other hand, this outcome that is described here is in one sense predictable, because whether it happens in this life or in the next, no one who grabs an honor for their own glory is going to be able to hold on to it. It slips through their fingers. And that's what this story illustrates. On the other hand, God's people will, by his grace, most certainly gain honor. So that's what we'll study this morning in two points. First of all, you cannot grab honor illustrated by Haman. You cannot steal honor. Secondly, you cannot fail to gain honor if you are God's child. You cannot grab and steal honor. You cannot fail to you cannot, on the other hand, fail to gain honor if you are God's child. So that's what we'll look at this morning. First of all, how you cannot steal honor. And Haman, we see here, has risen to a point, but now he's really grasping at it. And at this point, the more he grasps, the more it's just slipping through his fingers. Zooming out for just a minute, remember from previous weeks that Haman is an Agagite. And some of you may remember that that means he belongs to or is like the tribe of the Amalekites, people who had historically set themselves against God and God's people. They had tried to load themselves with riches and honor and plunder. What we see here is, we could say on the largest scale, the battle of God against Satan, or the battle of God's people against the wicked who opposed them, or down to the individual level, how this quest, how these dynamics function in our own individual lives like Haman and Mordecai. And zooming back into that individual level, we see that honor grasping ought to have no place in our lives. We can clearly see Haman and we understand this is a warning. But that's easier said than done. Pride and honor grasping is a tricky thing. It often conceals itself from the person who's afflicted by it. But this passage helps us to spot its characteristics. Kind of like, I'm told, in a southern swamp, if you go there at night, you can shine a flashlight around and you can see the hidden alligators because their eyes flash back to you reflecting red. With a flashlight, you see those red lights and you know where the alligators are. In this passage, It helps us to see some of the effects, some of the telltale signs of a prideful attitude and an honor-grasping spirit. So we're going to shine our flashlights around in this text and we're going to see what bounces back at us. Not to criticize Haman as much as to learn what the Lord has to teach us. For we all need to be on our guard against pride. Three things I especially want us to focus on this morning here under our first point. Three things about honor grasping three sets of red eyes. We put it that way. The first characteristic notice is that, well, all this honor ought to make Haman happy. It doesn't. It doesn't make him happy. Or we could say his joy is very, very fragile. So even though he's loaded down with all these promotions and he just got done dining with the king and queen of all people, It's spoiled for him. He says, all that is worth nothing if this one man will not bow down to me. And the reason for this is because pride, the proud person thinks he deserves honor. And every trophy he collects and puts in his mental trophy case becomes more proof that he's remarkable and special and deserves honor. After a while, all those accumulated achievements and that manifest remarkableness become their own justification for seeking and receiving more honor. But then he looks at Mordecai and Mordecai won't bow, saying, in effect, you ain't so great. He didn't respect him. And Haman is shaken because this contradicts his whole story of his remarkableness. And he's really shaken down to the roots. Frankly, it's hard to have much joy when you take yourself so seriously. So these first alligator eyes are a lack of joy. Notice just briefly how a sinner saved by grace has the opposite assumption. Instead of thinking, I deserve that and that and that and that, I'm so remarkable. Sinner saved by grace says, I, by nature, deserve nothing. Therefore, everything I get is a bonus. Wow, look at that. Another thing I got. Didn't deserve it. God is great. And that mindset of a Christian encourages joy, whereas if we're slipping into the prideful honor-grabbing mode, it squashes our joy. So that's the first tip off here of pride. It's helpful to think about how pride works against joy. Secondly, pride hampers wisdom. Pride hampers wisdom. Haman is looking through the world through these, I'm wonderful, tinted glasses and he's missing basic things. A couple biggies here. One, he doesn't seem to really carefully consider the fact that he alone is invited to this banquet with the queen and why. If he didn't have this kind of ego getting in the way, he might have actually interpreted that as passing strange. Why just him? What is the queen up to? What is this request she wants? And why is she hesitating to say it? With a little more humility and circumspectness, he might have been a little bit more cautious. And then later on, he assumed that the king delighted to honor him most of all. So, get this, out of the millions in the empire, he seriously thinks, and who would the king desire to honor more than me? That is seriously what he thinks. So his ego is getting in the way and he's digging a hole for himself here because he can't see things rightly. Wisdom, in many ways, is like learning to spear a fish from above the water. where because your line of sight bends in the water, you can't aim where the fish is or you'll miss it, I'm told. You have to aim at a different spot and then you might hit the fish. Wisdom oftentimes consists of being able to filter out the self-flattering ways in which you interpret the world or sometimes the self-flagellating ways in which you interpret the world and to see things honestly, to see yourself, God and the world honestly and correctly is a mark of wisdom and pride works against it. So the second pair of alligator eyes revealing pride consists of, you know, cross wires and bad assumptions. Because our ego distorts our wisdom and it makes us do foolish things. Many of us can probably think of cases in which we have been flushed with success and then we rushed ahead and did something foolish. Or we've been stung by an insult and so we rushed ahead and we did something foolish. We said or we wrote something because we were piqued in the moment and we may have not even had all the facts. But that kind of sting there, our pride is stung, and we rush ahead. It kind of makes you long for the days of snail mail again, when after writing a bitter note, you could rush out to the mailbox, and maybe the mailman hadn't come yet. These days with email, it's challenging. And we have to be very thoughtful before we hit the send button. Sit on it, is my advice, for a while. Anyway, third. Third pair of eyes staring back at us, a third marker of pride is just this, that his quest for honor becomes a means of discipline or punishment. Pride builds its own torture chamber and it locks you in. Pride builds its own torture chamber and it locks you in. For instance, If Haman were humble, hard to imagine, but just imagine a humble Haman. If Mordecai hadn't bowed, that would have meant zippo to him. Who cares? He could have gone on with his day. Or he could have said, hey, you teach him the regulations, right? And he wouldn't have had to think about it. He wouldn't have been burned up by it. If Haman had a sense of humor, That's even harder to imagine. But if he had a sense of humor, he might have actually seen something funny about leading Mordecai around on a horse. Like, oh my goodness, I thought I was the most special guy. And I set myself up to be giving a horse ride to my worst enemy. You know, silly me, I had to learn a lesson. It would have been good if he could have chuckled about it. Again, he just doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humor. How does it feel? How does it feel when you become angry at someone who has stepped on your pride, someone who won't give you credit, someone who insults you? In the moment, it feels sometimes almost good to get angry at that person, but it doesn't feel good for long. It feels terrible. The acid pours into your stomach. You think about it. You're stressed out. You're putting yourself in a torture chamber. by your own pride, because bitterness is toxic. My sanctified advice to you this morning would be to laugh, laugh at yourself before it's too late. If you catch yourself being self-important, taking yourself really seriously, being offended when you're not giving your due, you know, Take a step back, do what Haman was unable to do and just say, you know what? I'm a sinner saved by grace. What am I getting so bent out of shape about? Who do I think I am? And just laugh and also repent to the Lord for for seeking that honor by force, as it were, that is his alone to grant by grace. So that's the first point this morning, if we're grabbing for honor, it's going to slip through our fingers. Heyman illustrates that. But him who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall. Secondly, this morning, you cannot fail to gain honor if you are God's child. You cannot fail to gain honor if you are God's child. Now, leave it to Zeres, wife of Heyman. to discern something of the truth here when she says, if Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of the Jewish race, you will not stand but will surely fall before him. Words to that effect. Not a very comforting wife. But she she was seeing something, as one commentator pointed out, she had probably seen from history how the Jewish race had survived and survived against all odds. And she probably discerned there that their God was real and true and that there is something to this faith of theirs and that they, though a weak people on one hand, were powerful in another sense. Now, that's what she said, and I think that's what she was thinking. But we, with the benefit of the rest of scriptures, would just say in biblical terms that God had made a covenant with his people and God had decided to rescue them by his grace and take them for his own for his own people. And those who responded in faith, God saved through the Messiah to come. So God has honored us by his grace. And Mordecai's horse ride illustrates how, in a way, more certain than the working of the laws of physics, more certain than what happens when you step into quicksand, history is heading For the fall of the wicked and the rise of God's people, those who set themselves against the Lord, God will fall and God's people by his grace will rise. Xerxes here delights to honor Mordecai, he says, in effect, this one Mordecai is close to me, this one will share my best things. Now Xerxes had a, or Hasuerus, same guy, he had a vested interest in rewarding people richly who had saved his life. So he did have that interest there. But this is a message of great honor. This is one who is close to me, he is saying. And so God honors our father. God honors all those who trust in Christ to a much greater extent and put these instances side by side and compare them. It's very interesting. Mordecai was honored by the king for saving the king's life. But if you look at how God has honored us as his children. We cost the life of God's son, though the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified for us. Even still, and through that, God has decided that he delights to honor us by his grace alone and to his glory alone. Remarkable. God has honored us in Christ. God has, in the image of this passage, dressed us in robes of beauty and righteousness in Jesus. God has paraded us as his very own, joining us to his family and calling us his children. That is remarkable. That is deep and rich honor. that he delights to give. Jesus said in Luke 12, 32, Fear not, little flock, for it is the father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom, this good pleasure of God to give his people the kingdom. We just saw witness this morning in baptism. Baptism is perhaps above all other. In this life, baptism is perhaps the most visible A demonstration and proclamation by God of honor upon his people when he actually puts on us baptizes us into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, giving us great honor belonging to his family and his church. Because he is very gracious. OK, just a couple of things here by way of application as we close, first of all, Let us seek true honor. Let us seek true honor from God. Our problem, I think, is not that we seek honor too much, it's that we seek little honors too much and we don't seek the great honors enough. Haman is reaching for worldly glory. And he ends up giving a horse ride. He was aiming actually for a little honor on the scale of things. I mean, on the true scale of things, a little honor. And he missed it. Reaching for a little honor, he missed it. It is ironic, isn't it? Or glorious? I'm not sure what the adjective is. That if you reach for the greatest honor, the honor then which there is none greater, you will get it. And that is the honor of fellowship with God, free forgiveness of sins, heaven and eternal life. It's yours if you trust in Jesus. Confess to God your sins and trust in his son, Jesus Christ, is the one who lived for you and died for you and rose again and God receives you into his family and that great honor is yours. The greatest of all honors you get by asking for it. And so you see how this honor is all of grace and it's all of glory. A companion thought to that is this. That we should keep living in pursuit of this honor. So the Apostle Paul said, I want to know Christ and the fellowship of his sufferings and the power of his resurrection. In other words, I want to experience the rule of Jesus Christ in my life. Having Christ. is kind of like having a world famous neighbor who tells you, come over anytime and actually means it, wants you to come over and would love to have you there. But actually Jesus is different from that. He is The eternal son of God, and yet he doesn't wait for you to knock on his door. Jesus said, I stand at the door and I knock and I would come in with you and dine with you. He actually pursues each one of us and he offers himself to us. We can have that honor of fellowship with Jesus. If you trust in him, you already know the honor of having him as your Lord and being saved by him, but you can have this further glorious honor. of communion and fellowship with him by seeking him, by being his disciple, by giving attention to his word, by praying, by being in the church and being with God's people. This is a great honor to pursue as Jesus teaches us, his people, what it is to be truly good and as he teaches us what it means to live in a way that is worth living. Well, what can be a greater honor than that? Why would any of us be slow to be zealous disciples of Jesus Christ? It's great honor. Seek for that honor. And then one final application. This passage, I think, also helps us relax about receiving honor from people. If someone compliments you, You know, if you're a Christian, that can kind of make you cringe because we're supposed to be humble. And won't that create pride in us? And we can kind of feel like there's something dirty there or it's a temptation. And it is a temptation, actually. Proverbs says a man is tested by his praise. So we feel slightly on guard. There's something to that. On the other hand, if God saves us by grace alone, then We have already said that we haven't earned anything we've gotten, and there is no reason why a compliment has to feel dirty. I think perhaps sometimes it might feel that way because there actually is something dirty about it, and we are too much tempted to glory in that, and we want it too bad. We push it away. It's okay for us to praise one another and to build one another up and to give compliments. As long as you keep in mind that praise is nice, but it's not what we live for. It's nice, but it's not what we live for. So you receive it, give glory to God, say thank you, and it's all great. I think Mordecai is a good example here, where after his thrilling ride, where does he go? Right back to work. Right back to the king's gate. As if to say, that was pretty neat. But life goes on. And that's the way that we should we should see it when we are praised to be encouraged by it, to say thank you, but not to live for it, to get back to the work the Lord has for us. So we have a king who delights to honor us, not for anything we have done, like saving his life, but rather a king who in honoring us gives the life of his very own son because he delights and he's chosen us as his people. It's amazing. It's amazing grace. And it invests life with worth and with meaning that God has dressed us in the worthiness of his son and that he has brought us into his family. That is great honor. Let's give God great praise and thank him now. Dear father, we thank you for delighting to save us through your son, Jesus Christ. We can see from your word how if we pursue our own glory, it will fall flat. But if we are your children, if we are trusting in Jesus Christ, we are honored indeed. Father, we thank you that you set your love on us in Christ. Help us not to neglect this great honor, but to pursue it by devoting our lives to the service of Christ. And as we do, we ask that you would receive all the glory and we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.