Haman’s meteoric rise to influence happened like it does for most people: He was in the right place at the right time. The king’s top two officials got busted in an assignation attempt, and Haman gladly stepped in for the job. The king ordered everyone to bow to Haman, but this was a problem for Mordecai.
Mordecai loved God and bowed to no one else. Rather than focusing on the other kow-towers, Haman fixated on the one who wouldn’t kneel, and he “was filled with fury.” He didn’t just hate Mordecai, he hated his entire race.
Warning #1: Hate goes beyond one incident or person to burn the entire culture. It doesn’t seek to discipline, but to destroy. It festers and spreads and is never quenched. It ultimately destroys the host.
Wanting to appease his righthand man, the king issues an edict to slaughter to Jews. Later Queen Esther approaches the king with a strange request: Let the king and Haman come to her feast.
Esther 5:9 says, “Haman went out that day joyful and glad of heart.” Why shouldn’t he be? He pals around with royalty. But on his way home, he sees Mordecai sitting at the king’s gate, still not bowing to him. Haman’s enraged. He does what insecure, threatened leaders do: he goes to his buddies for approval. Haman’s entourage fanned his ego. His wife and friends advise him to build a gallows and have Mordecai hanged on it. “This idea pleased Haman and he had the gallows made.”
Warning #2: Wounds from a friend can be trusted while your enemies will multiply kisses. If the only thing you tolerate is your own praise, you’ve not surrounded yourself with friends, but enemies.
Haman sits at the absolute height of hubris. He’s building a gallows in order to crush Mordecai the Jew. Publicly. Spectacularly. With the whole world watching. Haman had the power, the influence, the fame. Now he had the platform to destroy and humiliate his enemy who would not get in line.
Warning #3: Build your platform with care. Hate-filled people use platforms to hang their enemies, and they’re the ones who end up going down. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But apart from gospel intervention, it’s a biblical guarantee.
At the final day of the feast, Queen Esther reveals it’s Haman who tried to kill her and her people. Esther 7:6 says “Then Haman was terrified before the king and queen.”
Warning #4: Hamans are cowardly. They float down whatever current gives them the most glory in the moment. But deep down they are cowards. They tremble at being discovered. Like a flea flicked off one host and onto another, Haman, leached onto Esther and begged for his life. The one who demanded others bow to him, now bowed before the Jewish queen in terror.
The king saw Haman pestering the queen and became enraged. One of the Eunuchs pointed outside to the gallows Haman had built for Mordecai. Then the king said four words of justice: “hang him on it.”
Esther 7:10 says, “So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.” Esther 9:13 adds, “The ten sons of Haman were also hanged on the gallows.”
Warning #5: Your platform will impact your children. They’ll either inherit or hang from what you’ve built with your life.
As much as I’d like to be an Esther or a Mordecai, the truth is, apart from Christ, I’m just like Haman. All his evil attributes would describe me were it not for Jesus.
We’ve all built our own platforms. We’ve worshipped self, craved our own way, crushed others, cursed God, and chased the praise of man. We’ve built platforms that we deserved to hang from, just like Haman. God sees the platforms our sin has forged, and he calls out 4 words of justice: “Hang him on it.” Except he doesn’t mean me, he means Jesus. The Son of God hung from a sin-forged cross of our making. The platform built by me executed the son of God.
Warning #6: The cross is the only way to escape judgment and find life. As one man’s death delivered the Jewish people from extinction, so one man’s cross delivered the entire elect from everlasting suffering to everlasting joy.
Be patient when you see evil platforms going up right and left. Pulpits. Campaigns. Corporate Ladders. God will get ultimate justice. He changed Mordecai’s sackcloth for royal robes. He’ll change yours too. He will use the wicked’s very platforms to destroy them. You stay humble and courageous and cling to the cross. Our entire salvation hangs on Him.