SPEAKER_01: If you have a Bible this morning, you can open up to the book of Esther as we continue our series on Risk is Right.
SPEAKER_01: And it is not, I've had many comments, it is not Rick is right.
SPEAKER_01: That is my name, Rick Wright.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: I was making sure there was a drummer here to catch that.
SPEAKER_01: Risk is right.
SPEAKER_01: And so last week we opened up into chapter one and two of Esther and looked at how the queen, Vashti, took the first great risk in the book of Esther.
SPEAKER_01: And she refused the king when he was having his drunken party and wanted her to come parade herself.
SPEAKER_01: And she had the right, no.
SPEAKER_01: And that was the first great risk we've seen.
SPEAKER_01: And then as Esther went into the beauty pageant and hid her Jewish background from the king, the second risk.
SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to be looking at some other risks in the book of Esther.
SPEAKER_01: Probably the greatest risk in the book.
SPEAKER_01: There's at least two or three more, but probably the greatest risk that takes place happens in chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to introduce a couple of characters in the story.
SPEAKER_01: We'll introduce Mordecai, who is Esther's cousin, who's taking care of her.
SPEAKER_01: And Mordecai is kind of a protagonist character in the story.
SPEAKER_01: He's doing what's right in the story.
SPEAKER_01: And then you find Wicked Haman.
SPEAKER_01: The bulk of today's message will cover the character of Wicked Haman.
SPEAKER_01: Wicked Haman is a villain in the story.
SPEAKER_01: He is the antagonist of the story.
SPEAKER_01: And Haman is a racist.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to talk to you today on the topic.
SPEAKER_01: In America, I was looking through the U.S.
SPEAKER_01: News and World Reports, just looking over some topics.
SPEAKER_01: And these were some of the top ten that shot up about this subject.
SPEAKER_01: It says, America headline, must expose supremacy.
SPEAKER_01: Next headline said, honoring the Confederacy.
SPEAKER_01: Is it preserving history or preserving hate?
SPEAKER_01: Students suspended from school for racism on social media.
SPEAKER_01: Why are certain races of girls more likely to be suspended from schools?
SPEAKER_01: Then it was talking about sports in America and looking back through the anti-allegiance to the American flag and the trends growing for people not to recognize where they're at.
SPEAKER_01: And it said in 2050, if trends continued, and this is kind of an alarming statistic when I think about my children and my family, but it says if trends continue in the growth of our population by 2050, Christianity will be a co-shared religion with Muslim as 50% and 50% as things grow.
SPEAKER_01: And so if there is a problem, as I look through the headlines in our country, which there is, with racism, then there's a problem in our state with racism, then there's a problem in our county with racism, and there's a pro problem in our town with racism.
SPEAKER_01: And so then it becomes a church matter.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to talk to you today about what we as a church need to do and what it looks like.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's something we kind of skate around.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought about, you need to know a little bit of my background in this so you can kind of understand where I'm coming from as I preach this.
SPEAKER_01: I am born and bred in Newark, Delaware.
SPEAKER_01: Not a whole lot of people know about that place, know what it looks like.
SPEAKER_01: But in Delaware, we talk fast and we say things like soda guys, mad fun, yeah, and yo.
SPEAKER_01: Yo was a word that was developed in actually Philadelphia, but you can look it up in the dictionary.
SPEAKER_01: And Callie was asking me not too long ago, what do people from Delaware sound like?
SPEAKER_01: And I said, it's kind of funny because I've been away from that for a while, and it takes me to kind of reach into my inner self to find it, because I don't even know what I sound like anymore.
SPEAKER_01: But I said, Well, they say a whole lot without saying anything.
SPEAKER_01: So if you get a couple of guys together from Delaware, it kind of sounds like this.
SPEAKER_01: So you remember we was at the thing at the thing and the other day, and we was over there with the place and the thing, and we was, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: We were talking and yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: They don't say hardly anything, but they talk real fast and they get it.
SPEAKER_01: They both get it.
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I was thinking about in Delaware I ate cheesesteak.
SPEAKER_01: I love cheesesteak.
SPEAKER_01: And in Delaware, vinegar goes on French fries, and in Delaware, you eat crab.
SPEAKER_01: And so I so God took me from Delaware, and and God had put a burn on my heart to go to college in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, a whole nother foreign land.
SPEAKER_01: So I went to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and for the first time in my life, backtrack real quick, in Delaware, my best friend from elementary all the way up to eighth grade was an African-American, okay, my best friend.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was kind of normal, cultural for African American people in the East Coast to be at the front of trends.
SPEAKER_01: And so it was very normal for me and my friends to try to keep up with that.
SPEAKER_01: And it's just, I had a lot of friends from, you know, Delaware is a melting pot because you got Philadelphia and New York City and Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: So I had friends that looked like everything.
SPEAKER_01: And following those trends, you know, I played b-ball and I was a DJ, and that was just who I was.
SPEAKER_01: And then God called me to Tennessee Temple, and for the first time in my life, I met Brazilians, Japanese people, Chinese people, Russian people, Australian people, and and I thought, what in the world?
SPEAKER_01: Like, I thought life looked like this.
SPEAKER_01: This is all I ever knew.
SPEAKER_01: And then I God threw me in this school, and it was in the middle of the South, which was its own culture.
SPEAKER_01: And then all these people from all kinds of places, but the most foreign person I ever met was a guy named Josh Minick from West Virginia.
SPEAKER_01: And I loved Josh.
SPEAKER_01: Josh was crazy.
SPEAKER_01: He said things like, Dad blame.
SPEAKER_01: I don't even know what that was or what that meant.
SPEAKER_01: But every time I was around Josh, he was so different.
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be around him, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And he was just, he would just do crazy things.
SPEAKER_01: I got him a job and I just had fun around him.
SPEAKER_01: Um so fast forward, God, Heather and I get married, and we had one conflict before marriage, one major conflict before marriage, and it was Heather grew up in the country in Virginia.
SPEAKER_01: I grew up where I grew up, and um, you know, I said, I've got a good job.
SPEAKER_01: I had been working for that moving company for seven years through the summers and worked my way up.
SPEAKER_01: When I got out of college, they elevated me to a management position, and I said, if I'm gonna take care of a family, we've got to live in Delaware.
SPEAKER_01: And um I said, I know I can take care of a family here, and God will, God's already provided this job, I know.
SPEAKER_01: And so we kind of went back and forth, and she's used to the country, and you know, she was an FFA, and she can weld and drive a tractor backwards, and I there's things I never even heard of in Delaware.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we had one farm in the whole town, and so we had this conflict, but you know, I said, just if you trust me, I'll take care of you.
SPEAKER_01: I love you.
SPEAKER_01: And she did, and so we got married, and as God would have it, six months, eight months later, he calls us to Connorsville, Indiana, the most country place I'd ever seen in my whole life.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, all you could see was corn.
SPEAKER_01: And so we get to Connorsville, and now I'm in the Midwest, and I'm uh I'm around a whole different group of people, and in the Midwest, they eat things like chili and peanut butter together, and uh they do have some good things.
SPEAKER_01: I thought about Heather and I were talking about they have fried biscuits with apple butter.
SPEAKER_01: I never had anything like that anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01: Homemade chicken and noodles.
SPEAKER_01: But they talk even different, they say things like pop, that's a drink, not like your dad.
SPEAKER_01: Um they every every girl is sis, and every boy grown born is Bubby, Bubby and sis, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And this thing that you clean your carpet with is called a sweeper, it's not a vacuum.
SPEAKER_01: And so those things came up, and when you go to the beach, I remember in Delaware I would vacate at the Atlantic Ocean.
SPEAKER_01: In Indiana, the beach was not what you think.
SPEAKER_01: If somebody said they're going to the beach, it was a body of water, could be a river, could be a lake, could be a pond that may or may not have sand.
SPEAKER_01: But they say you want to go to the beach.
SPEAKER_01: Say, okay.
SPEAKER_01: And so God put us there for a time.
SPEAKER_01: And and and one of my the students that I was so close to, and today is a youth pastor, I'm so proud of, uh, is an African-American boy named Joe, and God gave me him for a time, and we got to spend time.
SPEAKER_01: We're we're close today.
SPEAKER_01: And so God gave us this.
SPEAKER_01: And now, here we are in Sweet Home, Alabama, right?
SPEAKER_01: God's country, right?
SPEAKER_01: Somebody say amen.
SPEAKER_01: Roll Eagle, wartide.
SPEAKER_01: I'm still learning.
SPEAKER_01: I'm still figuring things out.
SPEAKER_01: But I bet the point is, and I'll say this about the food, barbecue has changed my life in Alabama, okay?
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know barbecue before I met Harry.
SPEAKER_01: Darren smokes things.
SPEAKER_01: I never tasted those flavors in my life.
SPEAKER_01: Barbecue was sweet other places, and now it's so good.
SPEAKER_01: So, but I don't, in all the places God's allowed me to be, and all the kinds of different people and cultures, I don't believe in making judgments on people based on their skin.
SPEAKER_01: I got a little visual I need help with.
SPEAKER_01: Callie, Weston, can you come help me?
SPEAKER_01: If this doesn't work out, at least you got to see a couple of cute kids.
SPEAKER_01: I need some lights, if you can give lights so people can see.
SPEAKER_01: Come on.
SPEAKER_01: And then you can track them back.
SPEAKER_01: Alright.
SPEAKER_01: So, y'all stand right up here.
SPEAKER_01: This is Callie and Weston, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And by classification system, they say that I am a white person.
SPEAKER_01: And if when I look at myself, I see some version of peach or olive, depending on what time.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a little more peach than normal because I've been out in the sun doing some mowing this summer, okay?
SPEAKER_01: But I'm supposed to be a white person, and these are my white children.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Weston, he's been out in the sun too, but he's normally a lot more fair, right?
SPEAKER_01: He he you might call white.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Callie, as long as we've had her, she's been brown.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is her all year long.
SPEAKER_01: This is what she looks like, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And I when I look at that, I mean, do you see white?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: She's brown or light tan or whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_01: And so when I think about classifications of people, I think there's some things we've got wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you guys.
SPEAKER_01: Love you.
SPEAKER_01: Go off with this.
SPEAKER_01: I've got I've got a slide I want you to see when it compares to this.
SPEAKER_01: This is interesting.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
SPEAKER_01: I think I got a slide.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So if you go to the Creation Museum in Kentucky, you'll see this picture at the top left.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: These babies are twins.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: This is them a few years later on the right.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: These babies down here are also twins, and you can't see it as much in the light, but one is more white-skinned, or I call peach brown.
SPEAKER_01: And these two down here, very interesting story if you get time.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: These are uh white folks in South Africa who birthed this child who is would would be considered would be considered white.
SPEAKER_01: But it is not.
SPEAKER_01: And so you can take that slide down.
SPEAKER_01: I just wanted to get you to seeing some things because I believe biblically in one perspective, that there is one blood of people.
SPEAKER_01: We are one blood of people, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And you can look at skin colors however you want to look at them, but we are one blood of people that descend, if you go back to Noah and then before, to our great, great, great, great, great, great, we are family in some sense.
SPEAKER_01: And so when you look at my children, and when we talk about the classification of a skin problem, I think it would be a more apt if you judge people by language than by skin color, because my wife is supposed to be a quarter red and some percent white, you know, 70% white, but she doesn't look red or white to me.
SPEAKER_01: And so I don't know how to how do we classify and call this this?
SPEAKER_01: My daughter's supposed to be white, and she looks brown or tan to me.
SPEAKER_01: And so when you look in scripture, though, two things happen.
SPEAKER_01: At the Tower of Babel, God threw a curse that separated languages.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where we got division.
SPEAKER_01: And then if you look, people don't talk about this part, but at Pentecost in the New Testament, God brought all these languages back together.
SPEAKER_01: People could all of a sudden understand language, and it was a unifying thing.
SPEAKER_01: There was a curse that separated, and then there was a gift at Pentecost that brought it back together.
SPEAKER_01: And I want you to know we should be a part of that gift.
SPEAKER_01: There's only one division I can find in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: It says, be not unequally yoked with unbelievers.
SPEAKER_01: There's light and there's darkness.
SPEAKER_01: There's people who know Christ and who don't know Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And part of that, we're supposed to get those people who don't know him to know him so we can be unified and be one.
SPEAKER_01: But there's only one race: the human race.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: And the church should be the standard bearer in this.
SPEAKER_01: You say, well, we don't have a racism problem at CCW if you look around.
SPEAKER_01: We don't.
SPEAKER_01: We are doing very good for a church.
SPEAKER_01: Very good.
SPEAKER_01: But what I would tell you again, if there's a country problem and a state problem and a town problem, then we got a church matter that we have to deal with.
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to ask you a practical question as I get into the story here in Esther, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Just to get you thinking.
SPEAKER_01: This is not condemning, this is just to get you thinking.
SPEAKER_01: The last ten families that you invited into your home, what did they look like?
SPEAKER_01: You say, I haven't had ten families in my home.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a whole nother message, bad neighbor.
SPEAKER_01: Clean that house up.
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to be neighborly.
SPEAKER_01: Bible says, go, the Great Commission, go.
SPEAKER_01: Baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son, teaching, discipling.
SPEAKER_01: We can't do those things.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not talking.
SPEAKER_01: That's another one.
SPEAKER_01: I'll go there later.
SPEAKER_01: But we got three pictures and one solution.
SPEAKER_01: Three pictures of problems in the story of really Haman.
SPEAKER_01: So turn in Esther chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: The first thing is this Haman is a picture of selfishness.
SPEAKER_01: Look at chapter 3, verses 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_01: After these things, King Ahaswerus promoted Haman, the son of Hamadatha, the Agagite, and advanced him and set his seat above all the princes who were with him.
SPEAKER_01: And all the king's servants who were within the king's gate bowed and paid homage to Haman.
SPEAKER_01: For so the king had commanded concerning him, but Mordecai would not bow or pay homage.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we thank you for today.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you for the opportunity to preach your word.
SPEAKER_01: God, I pray your word would do its work, God.
SPEAKER_01: It's sharp, it's discerning, it cuts to the heart, it tells us where we are and where we need to be.
SPEAKER_01: So, God, please let your word do its work.
SPEAKER_01: We ask that you rebuke any work of Satan.
SPEAKER_01: God, that attention would be focused on you and you alone.
SPEAKER_01: We love you in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And so Haman is a picture of selfishness.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we all in these next few problems would probably admit to this first one.
SPEAKER_01: We would all say there are times where I'm selfish.
SPEAKER_01: There is some selfish problems in my life.
SPEAKER_01: But selfishness is the gateway to the racism problem.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: I found this little site that had ten signs you might be selfish.
SPEAKER_01: Some of them are funny, some of them will hurt.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: But ten signs you might be selfish.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, you don't like to work hard.
SPEAKER_01: Number one.
SPEAKER_01: Number two, conflict goes one way, your way.
SPEAKER_01: Alright?
SPEAKER_01: Number three, you believe that there are lesser people and they need you.
SPEAKER_01: You're needed by these people.
SPEAKER_01: Number four, you have a really hard time trusting and letting people in.
SPEAKER_01: Number five, apologizing is out of the picture.
SPEAKER_01: Number six, this may help somebody today.
SPEAKER_01: During sermons, you're thinking of all the other people who need it.
SPEAKER_01: Husbands, I'm trying to help you today.
SPEAKER_01: Might get pinched.
SPEAKER_01: When playing games with folks, if you're losing, it's never fun.
SPEAKER_01: That one hurts me.
SPEAKER_01: That's my family.
SPEAKER_01: You cut people off when you're talking.
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, that one burns me up, too.
SPEAKER_01: I try not to do it, but man.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta think of yourself as something pretty special.
SPEAKER_01: If somebody else is sharing a thought and you look up Google the Me Monster video.
SPEAKER_01: You'll get a kick out of it.
SPEAKER_01: Not right now.
SPEAKER_01: When opportunities arise, you like to wait.
SPEAKER_01: Here's a funny one.
SPEAKER_01: You're 40 or older, and you still have a full-page Christmas list.
SPEAKER_01: If you've ever been out with somebody eating or on a date and you said, Well, that's enough about me.
SPEAKER_01: What do you think about me?
SPEAKER_01: You might be selfish.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Haman, he was a selfish man.
SPEAKER_01: He's a picture of selfishness.
SPEAKER_01: And the first thing we see in verse 2, as the king's servants were bowing down and paying homage, Haman had a public praise problem.
SPEAKER_01: Haman loved one thing and he loved it well.
SPEAKER_01: He loved his name.
SPEAKER_01: He loved his great name.
SPEAKER_01: And if you were here and Haman was here today, he would probably lead you in a chant that sounded something like this.
SPEAKER_01: Haman! Haman! Haman! He loved himself.
SPEAKER_01: He loved that public praise.
SPEAKER_01: And he had this position complex that people, peasants, were inferior to him.
SPEAKER_01: In the Bible, we're given the greatest command, which says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and strength.
SPEAKER_01: And then it says, the second greatest, love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Why do you think God said, love your neighbor as yourself?
SPEAKER_01: Because you love you, and you are real good at loving you.
SPEAKER_01: So if you can be real good at loving somebody else like you love you, then you might do a good job being a neighbor.
SPEAKER_01: He says, love your neighbor as you love you.
SPEAKER_01: Because you think about it, you don't wake up and start pouring your bowl of cereal and think, I'm gonna pour out something nasty this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I hope this is gonna taste gross.
SPEAKER_01: No, you love you.
SPEAKER_01: So you put together something that you like for you.
SPEAKER_01: You don't get dressed in the morning and say, that is hideous.
SPEAKER_01: And that is very uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to put this.
SPEAKER_01: No, you love you, so you do things for you, and it says, love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Haman sure didn't have a problem with loving himself, but he had this position complex.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 23.
SPEAKER_01: There's a section of scripture that talks about the second part of public praise.
SPEAKER_01: There's a position complex, and then there's the Pharisee complex.
SPEAKER_01: Pharisees loved themselves.
SPEAKER_01: They had no problem loving themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what chapter 23, verses 5 through 6 says.
SPEAKER_01: But all their works they do to be seen by men.
SPEAKER_01: They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments.
SPEAKER_01: They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, and the greetings in the marketplace, and to be called by men rabbi, rabbi.
SPEAKER_01: So the Pharisees, if you can picture this, they loved large, audacious, and showy garments.
SPEAKER_01: They loved for people to look, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying you were wrong this morning if you put on something you hoped somebody complimented you, but the Pharisees lived for this.
SPEAKER_01: And they put on something very showy and put on these great robes, and they hoped for the best seats.
SPEAKER_01: The seats that would have clout, the seats that would maybe be next to somebody important, and so that they looked important.
SPEAKER_01: They wanted the best seats, and they loved this one, cracked me up, the best greetings in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_01: They loved to hear their own name tickle their ears.
SPEAKER_01: Hello, Rabbi.
SPEAKER_01: Hello, teacher.
SPEAKER_01: Can you see it now?
SPEAKER_01: Chest can't get any bigger or broader.
SPEAKER_01: Yes! Good to see you again, student.
SPEAKER_01: Here we are in the market.
SPEAKER_01: You'll probably be buying crackers.
SPEAKER_01: I have lovely meats.
SPEAKER_01: Go on and get your crackers.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: And so they love themselves.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible, it's funny, the Bible is anti to that.
SPEAKER_01: It says everywhere that you look, that we should point words of praise elsewhere.
SPEAKER_01: We should point words of praise elsewhere.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, one of the five love languages is words of affirmation.
SPEAKER_01: So there's nothing wrong with affirmation and even desiring it, but to live for it.
SPEAKER_01: We are the begivers of it.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says Ephesians 4 29, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is the use of edification.
SPEAKER_01: I say this, I'm constantly rehearsing this to my children right now.
SPEAKER_01: I'm saying is that building people up?
SPEAKER_01: Is what you're saying building put people up?
SPEAKER_01: Are you trying to make somebody feel good or are you trying to make them feel bad?
SPEAKER_01: We're to edify people.
SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to public praise, an author said it this way if you are disgusted with yourself because someone is disappointed in you, then you have an idolatry issue.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_01: Let it rattle around.
SPEAKER_01: If you are disgusted with yourself because someone else is disappointed in you, then you have an idolatry issue.
SPEAKER_01: You're idolizing other people's affirmation of you.
SPEAKER_01: You're idolizing what other people think of you.
SPEAKER_01: Are you living for an audience of praise?
SPEAKER_01: How about it, husbands?
SPEAKER_01: If your wife doesn't build you up, are you feeling disgusted?
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you ever say this?
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you ever notice that?
SPEAKER_01: What audience are you living for, wives?
SPEAKER_01: I'm not, listen, I agree with Ephesians 4.29.
SPEAKER_01: We need to be builders up.
SPEAKER_01: We need to be affirming.
SPEAKER_01: So if you are struggling with that, you've got to affirm.
SPEAKER_01: It's an important part of life.
SPEAKER_01: People need it.
SPEAKER_01: But if you're living for that public praise, it's idolatry because we live for an audience of one.
SPEAKER_01: And scripturally, if you're living for public praise, number one, humans are going to fail you.
SPEAKER_01: They just don't always notice all the time every good thing that we do or you do.
SPEAKER_01: We just don't.
SPEAKER_01: We just fail.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times it's taken for granted that somebody has done something all day long and we just we're human.
SPEAKER_01: And the second part is there's only one person that deserves ultimate praise.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're living for praise, you're trying to elevate yourself to a divine position.
SPEAKER_01: Only God gets ultimate praise.
SPEAKER_01: Only Him.
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a common thread between some dictators that lived.
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to elevate themselves to a God position, racist dictators.
SPEAKER_01: Stalin, Hitler, Hussein, they had all this commonality.
SPEAKER_01: They wanted that elevation.
SPEAKER_01: They believed that they were the supreme group of people, and that people needed to see them for who they were, and they were all inferior to who they were.
SPEAKER_01: Heyman had a public praise problem.
SPEAKER_01: There's a man named Frank Simmons, and Frank didn't come from great wealth, but things were going to be different for him and his family.
SPEAKER_01: He decided to become a stockbroker, and Frank became world-renowned for his market timing and how he would land on the stocks at the right time.
SPEAKER_01: And Frank became very preoccupied early with his work, 14 hours a day, and soon his children were growing up, and there was ball games and recitals that it seemed like if it was just one more week, things would settle down and he would be able to get to them.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Frank, who considered himself a self-made millionaire, with the rise of the internet, he told his wife, it wouldn't be long before they would be settled.
SPEAKER_01: And so he took his wife on one trip to Naples, where he was getting ready to close on a property that was beachfront to prove to her someday this is going to be us, and we'll be able to begin to settle down once we have enough, once things are paid off, and this is where we're going to spend our time.
SPEAKER_01: And it was that very weekend that Frank jumped into his Mercedes-Benz, took a corner too sharply, and he breathed his last breath.
SPEAKER_01: When his wife found him three hours later, he had told her, someday we're going to settle.
SPEAKER_01: And the next time he opened his eyes, it was in eternity.
SPEAKER_01: He was living the American dream.
SPEAKER_01: But what happened when he opened his eyes?
SPEAKER_01: John Tillotson puts it this way He who provides for this life but takes no care for eternity is wise for a moment, but a fool forever.
SPEAKER_01: Much like Frank, Haman had a pride problem, and that's letter B.
SPEAKER_01: He had a public praise problem, but he also had a pride problem.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Haman was the type of guy that could strut sitting, if you know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Haman took great pleasure in being Haman.
SPEAKER_01: Turn over to Esther chapter 6, and I want to take you to a little part of our story that we'll really unpack next week, but the king couldn't go to sleep.
SPEAKER_01: And as he went back through the books, he was having somebody read to him because he was tired.
SPEAKER_01: And in the books, there's a story of what Mordecai had done to save the king's life.
SPEAKER_01: And Haman comes walking into the court, and King Ahaswer says, Haman, what would you do for a man to honor him from the king?
SPEAKER_01: Look at what follows.
SPEAKER_01: So Haman came in verse 6, chapter 6, verse 6 through 9.
SPEAKER_01: So Haman came in, and the king asked him, What shall be done for the man whom the king delights to honor?
SPEAKER_01: Now Haman thought in his heart, Whom would the king like to delight and honor more than me?
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
SPEAKER_01: And Haman answered the king, For the man whom the king delights to honor, let a royal robe be brought which the king has worn, and a horse on which the king has ridden, which has a royal crest placed on its head.
SPEAKER_01: Then let this robe and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king's most noble princes, that he may array the man whom the king delights to honor.
SPEAKER_01: Then parade him on horseback through the city square and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honor.
SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
SPEAKER_01: Haman doesn't have to be asked twice.
SPEAKER_01: What do you think should be done, Haman?
SPEAKER_01: What do you think should he doesn't have to say, let me get back to you on that king?
SPEAKER_01: He had been daydreaming and envisioning that moment for time.
SPEAKER_01: He says, How about a robe of royalty?
SPEAKER_01: He says, How about, and I don't get this part, a headdress, right?
SPEAKER_01: This audacious show.
SPEAKER_01: And then a bodyguard, he's going to need a bodyguard to walk him through the city square on a white horse while the bodyguard chants.
SPEAKER_01: This is how the king honors a man.
SPEAKER_01: He knew exactly what he thought the king's honoring should look like because he had a real pride issue.
SPEAKER_01: In Proverbs 6, verses 16 through 19, it says this that the Lord hates six things.
SPEAKER_01: And the first thing it says, the Lord hates a proud look.
SPEAKER_01: Lord hates when we have a pride problem, a pride issue.
SPEAKER_01: Bible says in Proverbs 16, 18 that pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
SPEAKER_01: Haman had some serious pride issues.
SPEAKER_01: We say, you know, Pastor, I really don't have that much of a pride issue.
SPEAKER_01: I do like to be publicly praised, but I don't think listen.
SPEAKER_01: At CCW, I think sometimes, and in many churches, we would rather be dignified instead of justified.
SPEAKER_01: Stay with me.
SPEAKER_01: We'd rather be dignified.
SPEAKER_01: On Wednesday nights here, if you come to youth group, you will see at this altar at the end of service a flood.
SPEAKER_01: Am I right?
SPEAKER_01: There's a flood of students who come down here with all different types of problems and things that they just lay at the feet of God.
SPEAKER_01: And there's been a few times in ministry where I've gotten to preach, and I feel like I'm just, if an adult would just respond, that's the whole purpose of this thing.
SPEAKER_01: Response.
SPEAKER_01: It's response that you respond.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that the altar is the magic thing or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: You can respond here.
SPEAKER_01: See, I know we don't, but I've been in a lot of church, and there's times I just had to get down there.
SPEAKER_01: I had to make a public response before.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because I needed to humble myself first of all, let my pride go.
SPEAKER_01: We'd rather be dignified because so-and-so is right here than be justified.
SPEAKER_01: I'd rather care about what somebody around me is thinking.
SPEAKER_01: I need to take you to a scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Go to 2 Samuel.
SPEAKER_01: Talk about dignified.
SPEAKER_01: This is beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: In kind of a weird way.
SPEAKER_01: You'd rather be dignified instead of justified.
SPEAKER_01: Why is it so hard sometimes to get people to get baptized after they've given their life to Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Because it's a little bit embarrassing to get up in a tub of water before people and get completely done.
SPEAKER_01: Now, sprinkling would be a little better.
SPEAKER_01: I walk away with my dignity.
SPEAKER_01: If I just got a little, but to get wet like a mouse into some water and be pulled back up, I'd rather be dignified than justified.
SPEAKER_01: How about church worship?
SPEAKER_01: I've been in all kinds.
SPEAKER_01: I've been in very conservative churches where something like this would have been like, whoa! Did you see sister so-and-so?
SPEAKER_01: We probably gotta go pray for her because she's getting a little out of hand.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: You know, the Bible says that we should worship him in spirit and in truth.
SPEAKER_01: Look at 2 Samuel.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 6, verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not advocating you do this in church, but then David danced before the Lord with all his might, and David was wearing a linen ephod.
SPEAKER_01: He was wearing his holy underwear, and he was dancing before the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: Then David returned to bless his household, and Michael, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David and said, How glorious was the king of Israel today, uncovering himself today in the eyes of the maids and his servants, as one of the base fellows shamelessly uncovers himself.
SPEAKER_01: So David said to Michael, listen to this, it was before the Lord who chose me instead of your father and all his house to appoint me ruler over the people of the Lord over Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, I will play music before the Lord, and I will even be more undignified than this, and I will be humble in my own sight.
SPEAKER_01: But as for the maidservants that you have spoken of, then I will be held in honor of them.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'll get more undignified for the cause.
SPEAKER_01: I'll get more undignified for my Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I think we need a little less dignity and a little more clapping.
SPEAKER_01: Can somebody say, Amen?
SPEAKER_01: You can clap if you want.
SPEAKER_01: A little less dignity and a little more Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: When was the last time you saw dignity at the football stadium?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, ooh, ow.
SPEAKER_01: Go, run, score, defense! Right?
SPEAKER_01: Got a foam finger and painted face?
SPEAKER_01: Look, if somebody brings a foam finger in here next week, I will get lost.
SPEAKER_01: If you get a foam finger out while I'm preaching, I'm gonna be pumped up.
SPEAKER_01: But I need you to high-fire somebody next to you and say, undignified.
SPEAKER_01: It took some of you a little stress to do that.
SPEAKER_01: You really need to get undignified.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Haman had a racism problem, and it was because of his pride, but it also had to do with his prejudice.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the next point.
SPEAKER_01: Haman was a picture of a supremacist.
SPEAKER_01: A supremacist is an advocate of the supremacy of one race.
SPEAKER_01: And Haman was that.
SPEAKER_01: See, Haman, he saw that opportunity.
SPEAKER_01: And Haman saw himself as something special, but Haman was a racist.
SPEAKER_01: He was a supremacist.
SPEAKER_01: Why did he get that way?
SPEAKER_01: How did that happen?
SPEAKER_01: Number one, or letter A, under that, he has some heart problems.
SPEAKER_01: Haman was lost.
SPEAKER_01: He was a lost sinner.
SPEAKER_01: We give Haman a really bad rap in this story, but Haman was lost.
SPEAKER_01: And there's people we rub elbows with at work.
SPEAKER_01: There's people that you rub elbows with in your community or neighborhood, and they're lost.
SPEAKER_01: And Haman had a heart problem.
SPEAKER_01: He was lost.
SPEAKER_01: You see, because of being lost, he had a godless heart.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis 1.27 tells us that we were made in the image of God and that we have this God-sized hole in our heart that will only be fulfilled with the Holy Spirit coming in and indwelling this heart.
SPEAKER_01: There's a book called We Are Homesick for Eden.
SPEAKER_01: We're homesick for that day that we get back to that place that we're fulfilled by the Holy Spirit and raptured by that.
SPEAKER_01: And Haman was lost.
SPEAKER_01: He had that God-sized hole in his heart.
SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't just that Haman was lost.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't this that he was godless.
SPEAKER_01: He had wickedness in his heart.
SPEAKER_01: Proverbs 6.18 says this.
SPEAKER_01: God hates a heart that devises evil.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Haman was lost.
SPEAKER_01: And Romans 3.23 it says this about us.
SPEAKER_01: We're all, I need to understand the difference between being a sinner who's lost and being a wicked person who's lost.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 3.23 tells us we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's our divide.
SPEAKER_01: If you're born on this earth, you inherited that, and that's our division.
SPEAKER_01: We're lost.
SPEAKER_01: And so when he says, be not unequally yoked, you have to come to Christ to be yoked together with him, and we all have that heart of being lost, a godless heart.
SPEAKER_01: But Haman's heart was also wicked.
SPEAKER_01: You see, they are our sinful people who are moral.
SPEAKER_01: You've probably met moral people who are sinful.
SPEAKER_01: They have ethics, they work in business with ethics.
SPEAKER_01: They have principles, they have a way that they live their life that to them seems good, and they have morals.
SPEAKER_01: But Haman, he was wicked and he was unethical, and he was unprincipled, and he was what we would call amoral.
SPEAKER_01: He had sinful thoughts in his heart.
SPEAKER_01: And in Romans, the Bible says this in Romans 1.26 that God will at one, at some point, give people up to their vile affections, to their sinful heart.
SPEAKER_01: It says that people replace the Creator with creation in their heart, and they begin to have vile affections, man for man and woman for woman.
SPEAKER_01: And it says there's a time where God will let people, He will give that over to them, their wickedness in their hearts.
SPEAKER_01: God hates a heart that devises evil.
SPEAKER_01: So there's a wicked heart, there's a grieved heart, or the lazy heart, the heart that is filled with excuses.
SPEAKER_01: And so Haman has these heart problems.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to turn to John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus comes across a lady with a heart issue.
SPEAKER_01: And we need to look at it this morning.
SPEAKER_01: John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: And so we run into the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman.
SPEAKER_01: Look what it says in verse 6, and we'll go through a few scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Now Jacob's well was there.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, therefore, being wearied from his journey, sat thus by the well.
SPEAKER_01: It was about the sixth hour, a woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
SPEAKER_01: For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
SPEAKER_01: Then the woman of Samaria said to them, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?
SPEAKER_01: For Jews don't have dealings with Samaritans.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would give you living water.
SPEAKER_01: We'll pause there.
SPEAKER_01: And so, here's this story.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus and the Samaritan woman, there's a whole lot of excuses Jesus could have used for not ministering to her at this time.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 6 says that he was weary from traveling all day.
SPEAKER_01: He was tired.
SPEAKER_01: That's an excuse.
SPEAKER_01: Verses 7 through 9 is the race excuse.
SPEAKER_01: Jews and the Samaritans just don't have dealings together.
SPEAKER_01: And the woman addresses that.
SPEAKER_01: She says, You want a drink from my cup?
SPEAKER_01: You want to put your Jewish lips on my Samaritan cup?
SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's the intellectual excuse, verses 13 through 15.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Give me that drink.
SPEAKER_01: And then he goes on further and says, If you understood who I was, I could give you a drink of living water and you'll never thirst again.
SPEAKER_01: And she says in response, Well, good, give me that water.
SPEAKER_01: Then I won't have to keep coming down to this well.
SPEAKER_01: That would be fantastic.
SPEAKER_01: Give me that drink.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to thirst anymore.
SPEAKER_01: So there's the intellectual side.
SPEAKER_01: Well, then there's the sin problem.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here.
SPEAKER_01: It's funny how Jesus goes to a cup issue to he's all up in her bedroom.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Just like that.
SPEAKER_01: Give me that water.
SPEAKER_01: Then he says, he went from the dinnerware to the bedroom.
SPEAKER_01: All in her business.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Call your husband.
SPEAKER_01: She said, I don't got no husband.
SPEAKER_01: He said, You said that right.
SPEAKER_01: And the five men you're, and the five men before you, and the man you're sleeping with right now is not your husband.
SPEAKER_01: Look at how she responds to that.
SPEAKER_01: I perceive that you are a prophet.
SPEAKER_01: I guess so.
SPEAKER_01: He just told you all your business.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus gets to the heart of the problem.
SPEAKER_01: There's a racial divide, but he gets to the heart of the problem and says, You've got a sin issue.
SPEAKER_01: You can be made like my people and my family, but there's a sin issue that needs to be dealt with.
SPEAKER_01: Haman had that same heart problem.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't just have heart problems, he had a hate problem.
SPEAKER_01: You see, there was a history with Haman.
SPEAKER_01: Haman was an Agagite, a descendant of King Agag.
SPEAKER_01: God told Saul in Scripture to utterly destroy the Agagites.
SPEAKER_01: And Agagites was Edomite people, descendants from Esau.
SPEAKER_01: And in Exodus, it says, God said, I have perpetual warfare with Esau.
SPEAKER_01: Now Mordecai and Esther were God's chosen people, Jewish people.
SPEAKER_01: See, the conflict in this scripture is more than two men who don't like each other.
SPEAKER_01: Symbolically, you're seeing heaven and hell, light and darkness.
SPEAKER_01: There was a history of hate.
SPEAKER_01: There was hiding from hate.
SPEAKER_01: 1 John 2, verse 9 through 11 talks about that light and darkness can't exist together.
SPEAKER_01: Haman had only known darkness.
SPEAKER_01: He was lost.
SPEAKER_01: He had only known the dark side.
SPEAKER_01: He had such hatred he couldn't see clearly.
SPEAKER_01: You know, scripturally, you can't be wrong with others and be right with God.
SPEAKER_01: You can't have aught out with your others.
SPEAKER_01: That's why why the Bible says obedience is better than sacrifice, says, come bring your gift to the altar and get your thing, or go get your thing right, and then come bring your gift to the altar.
SPEAKER_01: Don't come up and worship and sing before me while you have issues still out.
SPEAKER_01: You can't be wrong with others and be right with God.
SPEAKER_01: And so Haman had this hatred and this constant in his heart, and he saw everything through his lens of hate.
SPEAKER_01: Everything was black and white with Haman.
SPEAKER_01: He saw things through hate.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus, Jesus was colorblind.
SPEAKER_01: Look at a list of who Jesus hung out with.
SPEAKER_01: Smelly fishermen, tax collectors, deficient and poor, drunks, demon-filled, lame, blind, deaf, prostitutes.
SPEAKER_01: You see, we see things through a lens of human experience.
SPEAKER_01: He saw outside of that human experience.
SPEAKER_01: And it might seem black and white to you and me, but Jesus saw in red because he said, Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And his red blood shed over somebody can make them whiter than snow.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' crimson blood cleans up this rag.
SPEAKER_01: It does.
SPEAKER_01: My best is a rag.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm not at my best on my own.
SPEAKER_01: Because when I accepted Jesus into my heart, it says, now the Father sees me as family.
SPEAKER_01: He adopted me, He cleansed me, He's purifying me, He's justifying me, and one day He's going to glorify me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not just a sinner saved by grace anymore.
SPEAKER_01: I accepted His grace, and now I'm a child of the King.
SPEAKER_01: How much of a hate problem do you have to have not to tell people about that red blood?
SPEAKER_01: You see, the Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: It says, How shall they hear, unless there be a preacher that says, be instant in season and out of season?
SPEAKER_01: How shall they hear?
SPEAKER_01: Who's gonna tell them?
SPEAKER_01: The Great Commission tells us to go and tell.
SPEAKER_01: Second practical question for today.
SPEAKER_01: When is the last time you shared Jesus with a lost person?
SPEAKER_01: Who you've been dining with?
SPEAKER_01: When's the last time you share Jesus with a lost person?
SPEAKER_01: Because what kind of hatred do I have to have in my heart to know the salvation answer, to have the lifeboat to rescue somebody from drowning, to have the cure to a disease and hold it within.
SPEAKER_01: See, Haman had a hate issue.
SPEAKER_01: It's like the story of the good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_01: Priest and Levite walked on by.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't know a neighbor, didn't have the time.
SPEAKER_01: But the Samaritan, what was different is that he had compassion.
SPEAKER_01: These were different races of people, but he had compassion in his heart.
SPEAKER_01: He saw something and saw it through because he had compassion.
SPEAKER_01: Well, not only did Haman have a supremacy issue, but Haman was also a picture of Satan in scripture, number three.
SPEAKER_01: Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Adrian Rogers said this if you've never met the devil, it's because you and he are going in the same direction.
SPEAKER_01: If you turn around, you're gonna meet him.
SPEAKER_01: Back in Esther chapter three.
SPEAKER_01: Need to see verses eight and nine.
SPEAKER_01: Then Haman said to King Ahazwerus, There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Their laws are different from all other peoples, and they do not keep the king's laws.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore it is not fitting for the king to let them remain.
SPEAKER_01: If it pleases the king, let a decree be written that they be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who do the work to bring it into the king's treasuries.
SPEAKER_01: So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, the son of Hamadatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews.
SPEAKER_01: So the first thing we see in that passage there is that there's an accusation problem.
SPEAKER_01: Haman is a picture of Satan because he's a great accuser.
SPEAKER_01: Revelations 12 10 tells us that Satan is the great accuser.
SPEAKER_01: When Callie was real young, I had gotten to a point where I needed a new TV, and we were kind of trying to figure out how to get the, you know, I wanted to get into the flat screen world, and I wanted it to be big, you know, and so I was just looking, and and anyways, I finally was able to have the money and get this TV, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And so I get this TV and I'm all proud of myself.
SPEAKER_01: Look at me, I have arrived.
SPEAKER_01: I've got, you know, 40 something inches, but it was a big screen TV to me, and it was flat and it was awesome.
SPEAKER_01: And when I was gonna watch games or have teens over, look at my TV, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so I come home one day, and Callie has an orange crayon and she is writing on the TV screen, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is the first time she had ever lied to me that I could remember.
SPEAKER_01: And I looked at Callie and like my heart dropped, and I was like ready to I don't try to abuse children, nothing like that, but I'm like, this is my new TV.
SPEAKER_01: And she got the crown in hand, and I looked at her and I said, Callie, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: And she looked at me and she said, Wyatt did it.
SPEAKER_01: At this point, Wyatt was like a nine-month-old baby.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what?
SPEAKER_01: You got the crown fresh in your hand.
SPEAKER_01: There is orange on my TV.
SPEAKER_01: You know how hard it is to clean orange crown off a TV?
SPEAKER_01: She was accusing, just like that, naturally, Wyatt did it.
SPEAKER_01: Like the crown is in your hand.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what he said.
SPEAKER_01: Haman said in verse 8 and 9, those people, if ever there was a racial slur, those people are not bowing down.
SPEAKER_01: He made it a he made it a whole culture thing.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Those people, when it was one man who stood up for what he believed, but he said, Those people are not abiding by your laws, king.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, this man will not bow down, he will not pay homage to me.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Those people are not being politically correct.
SPEAKER_01: They will not bow.
SPEAKER_01: Those people won't shut up about their beliefs.
SPEAKER_01: Those people won't shut up about marriage between a man and a woman.
SPEAKER_01: Those people can have those views as long as they don't speak it.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Those people, King.
SPEAKER_01: Those people.
SPEAKER_01: Go back to John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: I need you to see what happens with this Samaritan woman.
SPEAKER_01: Because she has a similar talk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 20 through 25.
SPEAKER_01: Those people.
SPEAKER_01: She says, after she says, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 20, she says, Our fathers worshiped on this mountain.
SPEAKER_01: And you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father.
SPEAKER_01: You worship what you don't even know.
SPEAKER_01: We know what we worship for salvation of the Jews, but the hour is coming, and now is when the true worships will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such the Father is seeking.
SPEAKER_01: And so they go further on into their conversation, and she said, Hold up, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: She said, Your people, from what I know, worship on that mountain over there.
SPEAKER_01: And she said, That's what my daddy taught me, and his daddy, and his daddy's daddy, and his daddy's daddy, and his daddy's granddaddy, and all these people.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus, all of a sudden, before it was like, Jesus was pretty nice with her.
SPEAKER_01: But you brought his father up into the business.
SPEAKER_01: And look what happens in verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: She said, He said, Listen, lady, you worship what you don't even know.
SPEAKER_01: You're worshiping something, but it ain't God.
SPEAKER_01: You're worshiping something, you don't even know what it is.
SPEAKER_01: You're talking about where we're supposed to be and where we're supposed to worship.
SPEAKER_01: After he had brought out her heart problem, she tries to say, like, maybe you should go on over back to the mountain.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Lady, you don't even know what you're talking about when it comes to worship.
SPEAKER_01: You keep completing this habit, but why?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said this to her, and listen, we all need to hear this.
SPEAKER_01: Lady, your daddy was wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And your daddy's daddy, and your daddy's daddy's daddy, and your daddy's daddy's granddaddy all were wrong.
SPEAKER_01: The way that you've been taught about this thing, about this race was wrong.
SPEAKER_01: There's going to be a time where we're going to be all together.
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to be segregated, it's not going to be different races and classes.
SPEAKER_01: We are all going to worship together.
SPEAKER_01: Can somebody say amen?
SPEAKER_01: Now the disciples come back, verse 27.
SPEAKER_01: Look at look, it says, and at this point, his disciples came and they marveled that he was talking to this woman.
SPEAKER_01: They were us, they couldn't believe that this lower class Samaritan woman of a different race, that Jesus would take his time with her.
SPEAKER_01: Now Haman had the same issue.
SPEAKER_01: He said, King, those people, they don't respect your laws.
SPEAKER_01: What an accusation.
SPEAKER_01: When what really happened is one man wouldn't get his knees dirty to give homage to a man that was like Satan.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Satan, like Haman, wants to accuse you.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to accuse you.
SPEAKER_01: And he wants to make you feel like you are nothing.
SPEAKER_01: And he wants to make you feel like it ain't worth fighting.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the way it's always been done.
SPEAKER_01: So this is the way it's gotta be done.
SPEAKER_01: And that's not the way it is.
SPEAKER_01: And so Satan tries to first accuse you, and then the second thing under that, he tries to abduct your power.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says he comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
SPEAKER_01: And so then he tries to steal.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 10 of Esther chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to power, or gave it to Haman.
SPEAKER_01: He gave over that power.
SPEAKER_01: He gave that ring to Haman.
SPEAKER_01: Haman came and he wanted that ring, he wanted that power.
SPEAKER_01: You see, a stealer is what Satan is, and a thief can only possess what you own.
SPEAKER_01: A thief can only take what you already have.
SPEAKER_01: And so when Satan comes to steal, God has promised you provision.
SPEAKER_01: My God shall supply all my needs.
SPEAKER_01: Satan wants to try to mess up and mess with your provision.
SPEAKER_01: But it's already yours.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to come and try to mess up your deliverance.
SPEAKER_01: Colossians 1.12 says, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of his inheritance, he has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to come and mess with your deliverance.
SPEAKER_01: But it's already yours.
SPEAKER_01: A thief can't steal what you don't have, he can only steal what you do have.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to come and steal your healing.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Peter 2.24 says he bore the sin of the cross on him, and by his stripes, by his wounds, you've been healed.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to come and mess with your healing.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to come and mess with your community, the church.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 12, 26 says, if one member suffers, all the members suffer.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to come and mess with this.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to rebuke, he wants to cause people to be arguing from across the aisles and people to have conflict that goes on for years.
SPEAKER_01: I got family members.
SPEAKER_01: Will not darken the doors of church because somebody upset them.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, somebody's gonna upset you.
SPEAKER_01: But get it right, Matthew 18.
SPEAKER_01: Get it right.
SPEAKER_01: Do it immediately.
SPEAKER_01: Don't sweep it up under the rug.
SPEAKER_01: Fix it.
SPEAKER_01: Because he's already given that.
SPEAKER_01: He's already healed it.
SPEAKER_01: He'll deliver you.
SPEAKER_01: But Satan wants to come and steal it.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to mess with it.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to mess with your mind about it.
SPEAKER_01: There's a reading I came across called the South Indian Monkey Trap.
SPEAKER_01: It was developed by villagers to catch small monkeys.
SPEAKER_01: It involves a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake.
SPEAKER_01: The coconut has some rice inside it, which can be seen through a small hole.
SPEAKER_01: The hole is just big enough so that the monkey can put his hand in, but it's too small for his fist to come back out after he has grabbed the rice.
SPEAKER_01: Tempted by the rice, the monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped.
SPEAKER_01: He's not able to see that it is his own fist that traps him.
SPEAKER_01: His own desire for the rice, he rigidly holds on to and will not let go to retain his own freedom.
SPEAKER_01: He holds on to it and he's captured by his own possession.
SPEAKER_01: And Satan wants to accuse and abduct, and ultimately he wants to trap you so he can kill you.
SPEAKER_01: But what he's gonna put in front of you is gonna look like something you gotta hold on to.
SPEAKER_01: There's people that have been bitter in churches for 20 and 30 and 40 years, just holding on to their own capturing.
SPEAKER_01: They're holding on so that the devil can come and kill, steal, and destroy.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he wants to do.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what Haman wanted to do with that power.
SPEAKER_01: And ultimately is him to verse number 13, where he wants to annihilate.
SPEAKER_01: He has annihilation problems.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: He put together the letters, and the letters were sent by couriers into all the king's provinces to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, little children and women.
SPEAKER_01: In one day, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder all their possessions.
SPEAKER_01: See, Haman in his wickedness and his heart, he wanted to get rid of them all.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to get rid of all the Jewish people.
SPEAKER_01: Go back to verse number six in chapter three, though.
SPEAKER_01: The enemy is a crafty enemy.
SPEAKER_01: You see, in verse six, when he noticed, verses one through five, that Mordecai had not bowed down to him.
SPEAKER_01: In verse six, he has it, he has a small window where he could have done something about it quickly, if he would have acted out of rage.
SPEAKER_01: But you've got to think about the mind of this man.
SPEAKER_01: He's looking for a bigger way to get rid of people who will not honor him, so he is elevated.
SPEAKER_01: And in verse six it says, But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone, or he hated that moment.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to lay hands on him.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to go to Physicus, he wanted to punch him out for not bowing down.
SPEAKER_01: But he held back, it says, For they had told him of the people of Mordecai that they were more like this, and instead Haman sought to destroy all of the Jews who were throughout the whole kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: He's crafty.
SPEAKER_01: You see, he could have beaten Mordecai.
SPEAKER_01: If it was just a man-to-man thing, you won't bow down, he could have beaten it, but he waited patiently for a bigger devastation.
SPEAKER_01: Church, if Satan can get you feeling accused, get you feeling down about some fall, some slip, some something in your life, he'll wait patiently.
SPEAKER_01: And then if he can steal some joy, and if he can fracture a little bit out of your family, and if he can tempt you with a little bit of that rice and say, you need to put some time in here, and if I can tempt you away from over here, and if I can get you out of God's house a little bit more, and if I can get you out of doing your devotions this morning, and if I can get your family just fighting a little bit more, then I can take the power so that eventually I'll have the chance to completely shut you down.
SPEAKER_01: And if you look back, there's groups of families, and thank God this church has done this.
SPEAKER_01: One thing that it's in our core values of church is we want to bring people back to God who were far from God.
SPEAKER_01: But there's people who will spend time and time and years away from God because they've taken the bait.
SPEAKER_01: They were on fire.
SPEAKER_01: People who they were living out their salvation, they loved the Lord, but something happened, and they just another day, another week, another month, not getting it right, and they became so cold that they couldn't fight it anymore.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what that's what Satan wants to do.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to shut you down completely.
SPEAKER_01: You see, his annihilation problems.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to kill you.
SPEAKER_01: And he wasn't just a crafty enemy, but he was a vengeful enemy.
SPEAKER_01: Satan wants vengeance.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Satan, his pride caused him a great fall.
SPEAKER_01: Remember what he did?
SPEAKER_01: He elevated himself.
SPEAKER_01: Like the dictators, like Haman.
SPEAKER_01: He said, I am just as great as God.
SPEAKER_01: And it caused him a great fall.
SPEAKER_01: And there is only one who gets that position.
SPEAKER_01: And even the scripture says, there's only one that gets vengeance.
SPEAKER_01: Vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I will repay, because there's only one who's truly just.
SPEAKER_01: And so he had annihilation problems.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the last thing we'll look at is this.
SPEAKER_01: It's all been about Haman, but let's look at Mordecai.
SPEAKER_01: He is a picture of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Esther chapter 3, verses 3 and 4.
SPEAKER_01: Again he says, And the king's servant who were within the king's gate said to Mordecai, Why do you transgress the king's command?
SPEAKER_01: Now it happened when they spoke to him daily, and he would not listen to them, that they told it to Haman to see whether Mordecai's words would stand, for that he was a Jew.
SPEAKER_01: He had Mordecai had some problems that were good problems.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, he had a popularity problem, and it was this, he didn't care what was popular.
SPEAKER_01: There was others at the gate saying, Why are you not bowing down like us?
SPEAKER_01: Why are you not paying homage like us?
SPEAKER_01: But he had his mind made up.
SPEAKER_01: Early as a teenager, I had my mind made up about something that I'm I'm proud of.
SPEAKER_01: In my heart, and it I don't know if it was a spiritual thing or not, but I I was never gonna do drugs.
SPEAKER_01: I just was never gonna do drugs.
SPEAKER_01: And uh my father got saved, and he was he got saved out of detox.
SPEAKER_01: And so early on it was just something in my mind that I wasn't gonna mess with that.
SPEAKER_01: And when I heard about it or saw people talk about it, it it made me think that it was dirty.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying if you you if you struggle with that, that's it.
SPEAKER_01: I just have my mind made up.
SPEAKER_01: And so I remember working at the skate rink, and there was a bunch of people getting ready to go to a hotel party, and I like to be in the party scene.
SPEAKER_01: I like to have fun.
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't living for the Lord, but I was like, you know, what's gonna be happening?
SPEAKER_01: What's gonna be going down?
SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, they said, we're gonna smoke some weed, we're gonna party, and I'm like, nah, I think I'll pass.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I found out, you know, I come into work the next day, the police raided this hotel party that it would have been very easy for me just to walk in and go be a part of because all my friends were doing this.
SPEAKER_01: But I had my mind made up what I wasn't gonna do.
SPEAKER_01: And Mordecai is the same type of guy.
SPEAKER_01: He had his mind made up.
SPEAKER_01: I am not gonna bow to this evil man.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't get caught up in the rumors when people were like, Why aren't you doing that?
SPEAKER_01: Come on.
SPEAKER_01: Just he wasn't gonna fall to that popularity problem.
SPEAKER_01: He refused, the Bible said.
SPEAKER_01: His mind was made up, and the pressure wasn't gonna break him.
SPEAKER_01: The picture of the word there, the pressure, is similar to what we see in a story of Joseph running from Potiphar's wife.
SPEAKER_01: It says that he refused daily.
SPEAKER_01: He refused that.
SPEAKER_01: They came back and said, Why aren't you doing this?
SPEAKER_01: And it went on, and he said, This it's not gonna break me.
SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna break me.
SPEAKER_01: And so he had popularity problems.
SPEAKER_01: The second thing, he had possession problems.
SPEAKER_01: He had possession problems.
SPEAKER_01: He knew who he was.
SPEAKER_01: He was a Jew, and that's who he was, and that's who he was gonna be.
SPEAKER_01: He was not gonna bow down or break down to something else.
SPEAKER_01: He believed what he was.
SPEAKER_01: Christians today, you believe what you are?
SPEAKER_01: You believe it?
SPEAKER_01: Because belief requires action.
SPEAKER_01: Your actions show others that you believe.
SPEAKER_01: Because if you and your actions don't show what you believe, when pressure comes, it's gonna break you.
SPEAKER_01: You know what possessions you.
SPEAKER_01: He knew who he was.
SPEAKER_01: Let her see he had a posture problem.
SPEAKER_01: He said, I'm not gonna bow.
SPEAKER_01: To bow is an act of adoration or worship.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm not gonna bow to Haman.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna pay homage.
SPEAKER_00: Paying homage is a term used to describe a ceremony in which a man acknowledges himself the vessel or the claim of another man.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make myself the vessel or the claim, the documents, but I'm gonna do that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00: We have a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws.
SPEAKER_01: It ain't right, I'm not bowing.
SPEAKER_01: If it ain't right, if it I'm not bowing because it's politically correct, because that's what I'm supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01: Because if you find out throughout this thing, Esther's cause was, is that it's such a time as this?
SPEAKER_01: Am I gonna risk the right things?
SPEAKER_01: You see, Haman would take, I'm sorry, Mordecai would take this risk that would become most detrimental.
SPEAKER_01: It would come with the greatest consequence because it almost caused a legal genocide of people.
SPEAKER_01: Esther is the hero of the story, but Mordecai takes the risk that would catapult her to have to make the hardest decision she would make in her life, the scariest choice.
SPEAKER_01: And when it comes to that, for such a time as this letter that Mordecai sends her, it's because, first, Mordecai would not bow.
SPEAKER_01: That's what got this all started.
SPEAKER_01: And when they're getting ready to put in the law and send the letters out for all the people to be destroyed, it started because Mordecai would not bow.
SPEAKER_01: That risk was detrimental.
SPEAKER_01: But it was the right risk.
SPEAKER_01: And church, I'm telling you, as we get more and more where we're at today in our society, there's gonna be a more and more push of political correctness.
SPEAKER_01: And you gotta know what you believe, and your belief is probably gonna require some action.
SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna stand up for what you believe?
SPEAKER_01: Or will you posture down and bow to society?
SPEAKER_01: There's one last thing about Mordecai and his picture of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: He had preservation problems.
SPEAKER_01: Turn back to John chapter 4, and we'll parallel with what happens with Jesus and the woman at the well.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Mordecai wanted to see his people saved.
SPEAKER_01: He was not for a group of people, his people being killed in a mass genocide.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted his people to be saved.
SPEAKER_01: Haman wanted everyone to be annihilated so Haman could be seen.
SPEAKER_01: Mordecai was willing to risk his own life so that his people would be saved.
SPEAKER_01: A picture of salvation and a picture of annihilation, totally different.
SPEAKER_01: John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what happens in verse 35 through 39.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus has this encounter with the woman.
SPEAKER_01: And he says this when the disciples come back.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Do not, do you not say that there are still four months and then comes the harvest?
SPEAKER_01: Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest, and he who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: That both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
SPEAKER_01: For in this the saying is true one sows and another reaps.
SPEAKER_01: I sent you to reap, that for which you have not labored, others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.
SPEAKER_01: And now listen to this.
SPEAKER_01: And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, he told me all that I ever did.
SPEAKER_01: And so the woman comes back and she says, I encountered this man.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know a whole lot about him, but he knows a whole lot about me, and he told me all about my life and my problems, and he told me how to get right with him.
SPEAKER_01: And because of that, my life has been changed.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to tell you, and I want others to tell.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Mordecai loved his brethren, and it's the love of the brethren in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: That's the mark of the disciple, the believer, that leads people to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You see, racism and disunity is hatred.
SPEAKER_01: Bible says, brethren, how good and how pleasant it is for us to dwell together in unity.
SPEAKER_01: If we're going to go to the next level as a church, it's going to take great risks.
SPEAKER_01: You have to be willing to do what your mama and daddy and your daddy's daddy and your daddy's daddy didn't do.
SPEAKER_01: You have to be willing to bear burdens.
SPEAKER_01: We used to have uh small groups in our former church, and people would get tired of small groups because people would ultimately end up in tears sharing their stories.
SPEAKER_01: And it was hard for them to get that close, to open up those walls, and they didn't like all those tears, and the Bible says it that way.
SPEAKER_01: Bear one another's burdens.
SPEAKER_01: You have to do that.
SPEAKER_01: You have to get real and get gritty and love this family.
SPEAKER_01: I would love to see today, as we get ready to close, a united front of people, before God, locking arms together in prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Because we're not going to be a church that's going to be a church where we're segregated.
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to be a church that sees in those colors.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to see in colors like Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to close with this story.
SPEAKER_01: Muhammad Gandhi is one of the most respected leaders of modern history.
SPEAKER_01: And Gandhi is a Hindu.
SPEAKER_01: Nevertheless, he admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: Once when the missionary E.
SPEAKER_01: Stanley Jones met with Gandhi, he asked him, Mr.
SPEAKER_01: Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is it that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?
SPEAKER_01: Gandhi replied, Oh, I don't reject your Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I love your Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Apparently, Gandhi's rejection of Christianity grew out of an incident that happened when he was a young man practicing law in South Africa.
SPEAKER_01: He had become attracted to the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_01: He had studied the Bible and the teachings of Jesus and was seriously exploring becoming a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: He decided to attend a church service as he came up the steps of the large church where he intended to go.
SPEAKER_01: A white South African man asked Gandhi in a belligerent tone of voice, What are you doing here?
SPEAKER_01: Where do you think you're going?
SPEAKER_01: He said, I'd like to attend worship here.
SPEAKER_01: The church elder snarled at him, said, There's no room for kafirs in this church.
SPEAKER_01: Get out of here, or I'll have my assistant throw you down the steps.
SPEAKER_01: From that moment, Gandhi said he decided to adopt the good he found in Christianity, but he would never again be considered becoming a Christian if it meant being a part of the church.
SPEAKER_01: Sir Edmund Burke said this there's only one thing necessary for evil to triumph.
SPEAKER_01: That's for good men to do nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Heads bow and eyes closed this morning.
SPEAKER_01: You see, there's only the human race, but there is a division, church.
SPEAKER_01: Division is between those who have a relationship with Jesus Christ and those who do not.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter if they're white, black, red, yellow, Muslim, Hindu, the division we have in this life is there's people who know Christ and there's people who do not.
SPEAKER_01: So this morning, as you listen to that, I want to invite you.
SPEAKER_01: Today you can become family.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we want here.
SPEAKER_01: We want a unified group of people that's family.
SPEAKER_01: And you be you can become a part of that.
SPEAKER_01: If you've never given your life to Jesus Christ, if he's never become your Lord and Savior today, you can be adopted in.
SPEAKER_01: A blood-bought family member.
SPEAKER_01: You can be adopted, and he'll begin purifying you.
SPEAKER_01: You can do that.
SPEAKER_01: You can be adopted as a kingdom heir, child of the king.
SPEAKER_01: Bible says this that Romans 3.23, we all have sin and fall short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's our division problem.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 6.23 said, the wages of that sin is death.
SPEAKER_01: Someday we're all gonna die.
SPEAKER_01: But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And in Romans 10, he says, if you will believe with your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus died on a cross, was buried for you, and rose again, that you can be saved.
SPEAKER_01: You can become a part of this family.