The NIV 365 Day Devotional

Mordecai: Refusing the Smallest Compromise

Being God’s kind of leader means refusing even the smallest compromise in what you believe. Mordecai was that kind of leader.

Mordecai wasn’t going to bend—not one bit—when Haman, the newly appointed prime minister of Persia, demanded a show of reverence bordering on worship (Est 3:2). When the palace officials asked Mordecai why he refused to reverence the prime minister, he told them he was a Jew. And what difference did that make? The Lord Himself had said, “You shall have no other gods before me…You shall not bow down to them or worship them” (Ex 20:3, 5). Day after day these men tried to “talk some sense” into Mordecai; didn’t Haman have the authority to execute him for his insolence?

Haman, in his arrogance and pride, decided not to challenge Mordecai directly, but to wipe out his whole race. In a plot eerily similar to the one carried out many centuries later in Nazi Germany, Haman decreed that Mordecai’s people, the Jews, should be exterminated.

Mordecai, of course, paled at the news. Still, he held steadfastly to his refusal to dishonor his God by bowing before a mere man. In the end, through a twist utterly characteristic of the Lord, God honored Mordecai and exalted him before the very people who had begged him to compromise his principles.

Taken from the The NIV Maxwell Leadership Bible.