THE SERMON - The Message to the Magistrate ｜ Matthew 14_1-12
Episode Stats
Words per minute
147.63748
Harmful content
Misogyny
10
sentences flagged
Toxicity
9
sentences flagged
Hate speech
42
sentences flagged
Summary
John the Baptist was a prophet who preached the good news that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. He was also a man of many talents, but his greatest gift was his boldness in proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In doing so, he threatened the power of all other earthly kings, including Herod the Tetrarch, the King of the Jews.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform.
00:00:03.940
I get it. It's annoying. Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.
00:00:07.660
When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm
00:00:12.040
so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
00:00:16.280
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
00:00:21.860
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
00:00:26.800
As Pastor Joel said, our passage this morning will be in the gospel according to Matthew chapter 14.
00:00:33.440
So if you'll either get your Bibles out or you can look in your notes and if you'll stand together with me for the reading of God's word, please.
00:00:53.200
at that time Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus and he said to his servants
00:01:00.140
this is John the Baptist he has been raised from the dead that is why these miraculous powers are
00:01:06.220
at work in him for Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison for the sake
00:01:11.940
of Herodias his brother Philip's wife because John had been saying to him it is not lawful for you to
00:01:18.820
have her. And though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people because they held him to be
00:01:24.500
a prophet. But when Herod's birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company
00:01:30.300
and pleased Herod, so that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask.
00:01:36.320
Prompted by her mother, she said, give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.
00:01:42.100
and the king was sorry because of his oaths and his guests but because of his oaths and his guests
00:01:48.340
he commanded it to be given he sent and had john beheaded beheaded in the prison and his head was
00:01:55.460
brought on a platter and given to the girl and she brought it to her mother and his disciples came
00:02:01.740
and took the body and buried it and they went and told jesus this is the word of the lord
00:02:09.540
well our passage today recounts the death of john the baptist and before we move into the passage
00:02:32.160
at all, I want to give us a quick reminder of what John's primary mission was. That is, it was
00:02:40.460
to prepare the way for the new king, the king that was coming. Remember, John preached the gospel
00:02:46.420
of the kingdom. That is, the good news that the true king had come and that this king welcomes
00:02:53.760
all who repent and believe. But we need to remember here at the beginning that John, his whole
00:03:01.300
ministry, his whole mission was that he was rolling out the red carpet for the arrival of the king
00:03:07.700
that could ascend and take the rightful throne. And in doing this, as John was rolling out this
00:03:14.620
welcome for the true king, this threatened the rule of all other earthly kings. And so we need
00:03:21.960
to remember today, because this passage seems strangely placed, but Matthew's goal in the book
00:03:27.140
of Matthew is to make the case that Christ is, in fact, the true king, the king of the Jews and
00:03:33.320
the king of all. And so that's what Matthew is doing here today. He's contrasting Herod, a wicked
00:03:40.000
king, with Jesus, the true king. He's contrasting Jesus' authority, kindness, and righteousness
00:03:47.400
with Herod's tyranny, cruelty, and cravenness. And it would be easy to think that John the Baptist
0.87
00:03:55.640
his comments that get him in trouble, his comments about divorce, were somehow an anomaly, separate
00:04:01.580
from his main mission, not essential to our Christian mission as well. It would be tempting
00:04:07.460
to think, John, if you would have just stayed in your lane, prepared the way for the Messiah,
00:04:12.340
don't get involved with all that extra stuff like whether or not divorce was legal or not.
00:04:18.260
You could have just kept ministering. You would have been great. You would have prepared the way
00:04:22.220
better for Jesus. As we will see today, though, that any time Christians proclaim that King Jesus
1.00
00:04:31.500
has come, we must push the authority of Jesus to all areas of life and society. We do not leave
00:04:38.840
any part of society or any person outside of Christ's authority. And so, as we see with John
00:04:45.720
the Baptist, sometimes that means in our effort to promote and teach the authority of Christ,
00:04:51.440
we will endure severe consequences. By God's grace I hope to encourage us in two ways to be bold
00:04:59.060
to yes proclaim the kingship of Christ but to be resolute and prepared when there's blowback
00:05:05.300
and consequence. Our nation is in a mess and I think of the lines from that famous children's
00:05:13.880
book we're going on a bear hunt. This mess that we're in we can't go over it, we can't go under
00:05:20.800
it. We have to go through it. By God's grace, we will, and we will carry, like John the Baptist,
00:05:28.140
the flag of Christ each step of the way. In your notes, I wrote a brief intro. I'm not going to
00:05:35.460
read that. It's there as a placeholder, because before we dive into the passage itself, I actually
00:05:39.840
want to take an extended time giving some background here, okay? So those are kind of a
00:05:46.040
summary of what I'm about to say now. And I think it's necessary to do this background on the
00:05:51.760
situation in that time, because it really, really will make the passage come to life. So get ready
00:05:57.880
for some names and some locations. Okay, track with me. But just keep in mind that the three
00:06:03.080
main names, I'm doing all of this to try to explain the three names that are in our text.
00:06:08.800
Herod, Philip, and Herodias. Okay, those are the three that you really have to keep track of.
00:06:13.720
there's something that's been going on in the background of the book of Matthew and that is
00:06:20.340
as authority whether religious or political has seen has just kind of bumped into and encountered
00:06:26.380
the true authority of Jesus it has seen Jesus as a threat we saw this originally with Herod the
00:06:33.180
Great and the prophecies and the magi came and he thought immediately uh-oh this is no good
00:06:38.380
and so when he bumped into the authority of Jesus even as a baby he sought to destroy him
00:06:43.520
and mary and joseph had to flee and then of course there were many years about 30 years of silence
00:06:49.860
but then as jesus begins to emerge already we see the religious and the political authorities
00:06:55.740
bumping into him and immediately saying not here is the king we should listen from him we should
00:07:01.220
submit to him but uh-oh this guy's trouble we need to get rid of him
00:07:05.020
so in order for understand what was going on with this game of cat and mouse we do need to
00:07:12.980
know a little bit of history here okay so you're probably familiar with alexander the great
00:07:20.340
after his reign ended the area of israel and judaea fell under greek control still but
00:07:27.500
particularly it was the greek seleucids and when the seleucid king antiochus the fourth
00:07:32.940
came into power in this region in the region of israel he tried to completely wipe out all temple
00:07:39.840
worship and in fact even to use the temple of the jews for pagan worship and this led to what we
00:07:47.060
know as the maccabean revolt and the jewish priest mattathias and his sons they were the maccabees
00:07:53.700
they led a revolt against this greek uh king this was 167 to 160 bc and amazingly even though they
00:08:01.540
were an inferior number they won and they cleaned the temple out from all the pagan implements of
0.69
00:08:07.800
worship and they restored Jewish law and Jewish worship and so for about 80 to 100 years from then
0.90
00:08:15.200
on Israel enjoyed actual independence under the the family that came out of this ended up ruling
00:08:22.040
was called the Hasmoneans and so it's referred to as the Hasmonean dynasty they were genuine Jews
00:08:28.100
they were from the tribe of Levi and they ended up ruling for the next hundred or so years
00:08:33.200
but they made a critical misstep and it was this they were of the tribe of levi so by right and by
00:08:40.540
old testament law they had the right to carry on the priesthood but they also took the kingship
00:08:46.380
as well which should have gone to the line of judah the line of david and this created an
00:08:53.920
internal instability within the country that all through this dynasty was always a conflict
00:09:00.320
And eventually, towards the end of it, two Hasmonean brothers fought over this throne,
00:09:05.520
the Jewish throne, and they couldn't resolve it.
0.82
00:09:10.380
And so what they did was they said, let's invite the new global power, Rome, to come
0.82
00:09:16.680
Let's let them decide who's going to get the land.
00:09:20.960
We would be glad to move an army into your region.
00:09:25.100
And they occupied Israel from that point on.
0.80
00:09:30.400
The Hasmoneans remained to some degree in power, but they were largely figureheads at that point.
00:09:35.340
And as that dynasty weakened further, Rome stepped in and they appointed a foreign leader as king of the Jews.
00:09:47.300
He was an Edomite, specifically called an Edomian.
0.68
00:09:50.420
So this was an Edomite who converted to Judaism, at least in name only, for political advantage.
00:09:57.260
and he was called King of the Jews, and this was 40 BC.
00:10:01.300
So we have to understand that when Jesus was here,
00:10:05.140
this arrangement had only been going on for 40 years, right?
00:10:11.800
So by the time of the Gospels, the throne of Israel
0.93
00:10:19.580
And this is Matthew's point from the whole beginning of the book.
00:10:22.260
the true king has come and all false kings feel threatened by him. So Herod the Great is the one
0.76
00:10:30.740
who was in charge when Jesus was born, but he died shortly after Jesus was born. And again,
00:10:36.520
it's important to know what happened in the wake of his death. When he died, remember he had the
00:10:43.080
whole kingdom, basically all of Israel was under his rulership. But Rome decided when he died that
00:10:50.440
they no longer wanted one kingdom in that area. It had been too unstable, too volatile. There had
00:10:56.080
been rebellions. And so they split that whole area into four pieces, four districts, as it were.
00:11:02.940
These were called tetrarchies. If you think of the game Tetris, there's a reason why all the
00:11:08.280
little pieces in Tetris have four cubes. Tetra means four, okay? So for our purposes today,
00:11:15.540
we need to know a couple of these names. Herod the Great had many children with different
00:11:20.580
wives, and his grandchildren, two of them, were Herod in the story, who's called Herod Antipas.
00:11:29.120
So saying Herod is like the family name. Herod, from Herod, and his name was Antipas.
00:11:34.740
And then Herod the Great also had another grandson named Herod Philip. Okay, Herod Philip. And
00:11:41.540
Philip in the story and Herod in the story, Herod Antipas and Herod Philip, were brothers. They had
00:11:47.900
the same father, but different mothers. Herod Antipas controlled two regions of the Judea
00:11:59.240
area. Herod Philip actually did not control any land. He was a wealthy man. He had estates,
00:12:04.900
but he was not a ruler. This is a little bit confusing because in Luke, it does talk about
00:12:09.400
Philip the Tetrarch. There was a separate Philip who was a governor in this area, and he was actually
00:12:14.860
a pretty good governor. He was very restrained and a very good governor. That's not the Philip
00:12:19.700
that's here in Matthew 14. This Philip is the half-brother of Herod, Herod Antipas.
00:12:28.780
Now, Philip married Herod the Great's granddaughter. Her name was Herodias, and this is the same one
00:12:39.180
that's in our passage, Herodias. Now, if you do the family tree, you come to the conclusion that
00:12:44.720
Philip married his niece. Not great. Not great. Okay. She was the granddaughter of Herod the Great
00:12:53.080
and Herod Antipas, the Harris in this story, he, in order to get political power, he had his eyes
00:13:00.820
set on conquering all of Israel. So his kingdom was down in the Southeast and he wanted to conquer
00:13:08.040
all of the rest of Israel and he had a neighbor to his southeast who was an Arabian king and to
00:13:14.360
protect that border so that he could focus northward he married that Arabian king's daughter
00:13:19.140
and that sealed that shored up his southern border he didn't have to worry about attack
0.71
00:13:24.300
or invasion from there but because of Herod and Herodias's ambition they decided it would be better
00:13:35.300
more politically advantageous if they both divorced their current spouse and married each other.
00:13:43.560
And so Herodias divorced Philip to marry the Herod in the story, Herod Antipas,
00:13:50.560
while both of the men were still alive. This was an incestuous, adulterous, politically calculated
00:13:56.660
marriage, and it violated clearly Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20. And Herod Antipas, the Herod in the
00:14:04.480
story, divorced that princess of the Arabian king to marry his niece, Herodias. And all of this was
00:14:13.180
with an eye that they thought that they could gain some sort of political power and take over
00:14:18.560
the entire region. And into this corruption stepped John the Baptist, who in preparing the
00:14:28.380
way for the true king confronted Herod Antipas with fearless prophetic clarity. In Mark 6 18 we
00:14:35.960
read this, he said, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. And Herod feared this
00:14:43.800
because John spoke the truth and he spoke it publicly to the people. And Herodias, his niece
0.76
00:14:50.560
wife, supposedly, hated John, knowing that what he said threatened her power.
00:15:02.440
Because we actually have a situation in our time, which is very similar to what we're
00:15:11.820
In Israel at the time, the religious landscape had split in two.
00:15:18.740
The Sadducees, who were the religious establishment,
00:15:22.740
they were the high priests, and they lived mostly in Jerusalem,
00:15:26.720
they were extremely liberal, extremely liberal.
00:15:34.660
In short, they were denying any sort of miraculous interpretation of the Old Testament.
00:15:39.980
And they were moving away both from the Old Testament
00:15:42.120
and from the traditions that had been built up by the various rabbis over the centuries.
00:15:47.800
On the other hand, there were the Pharisees, and these were the religiously conservative group.
00:15:53.320
They did not have as much power, but what they did have was more grassroots.
00:15:57.620
They focused on the synagogues all through the country.
00:16:02.560
And because of that, because they were more involved with the synagogues and the local level,
00:16:06.820
they were bumping up against Jesus a lot earlier than the Sadducees, who were mainly in Jerusalem.
00:16:12.200
the pharisees absolutely despised roman occupation of israel
00:16:18.460
so the country was split religiously a conservative group a liberal group the liberal
00:16:25.680
group had most of the establishment power and there was a third group in the mix which is a
00:16:30.700
political faction called the herodians the herodians were primarily political but because
00:16:37.300
they were governing in Judea, most of Herod the Great's family that descended from him had
00:16:43.300
quote-unquote converted to Judaism, but of course their alignment was with the very liberal form.
00:16:49.600
They were much more aligned with the Sadducees in their religious practice and belief.
00:16:56.440
We think this because when we compare, there are two parallel passages, Matthew 16, 6, which says,
0.72
00:17:02.600
Jesus said to them, watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees,
00:17:07.300
And the same account in Mark 8, 15 says, he cautioned them, saying, watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.
0.85
00:17:16.660
So it's likely that the Sadducees and the Herodians were very much in cahoots.
00:17:24.680
So the people who were loyal to Herod were only performatively religious.
00:17:32.580
It was very liberal in the most liberal way possible.
0.89
00:17:36.020
and yet this is what's so interesting so you've got the pharisees who hate the sadducees and by
00:17:42.200
extension they hate the herodians when the pharisees in the regional areas in the synagogues
00:17:47.680
began bumping up against jesus not liking what he was saying they immediately realized this guy's a
00:17:54.840
problem and mark 3 6 says this this is early in the gospel of mark the pharisees went out and
00:18:01.300
immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Jesus on how to destroy him. And so what
00:18:08.720
we see is these three massive political bodies who are at odds and control the entire discourse in
00:18:15.820
the country, in the region, as soon as the Pharisees bump up against Jesus, they're like,
00:18:21.200
those guys aren't so bad, actually. Let's go partner with them for a little while and get rid
00:18:26.620
of this Jesus guy. And all of this comes to a head, as it were, in the political intrigue of the royal
0.92
00:18:33.840
houses. As I said before, Herod Antipas was politically ambitious. He wanted to reunite
00:18:42.260
the whole region under one kingdom. And his brother Philip was not a ruler.
00:18:48.960
and so the niece Herodias who was probably even more power hungry than Herod himself
00:18:57.140
she and Herod and Antipas decide that they're going to unite and as the story goes Herod Antipas
00:19:06.000
was traveling and he spent some time at his half-brother Philip's estates and while he was
00:19:11.040
there he and Herodias either fell in love or hatched a plan one of the two and they decided
00:19:18.000
to divorce their spouses and marry for political power. Now, as I said, they were both married
00:19:24.840
already. And when Herod Antipas divorced the Arabian princess, the king of Arabia to his
0.54
00:19:34.400
south, not all of Arabia, the Arab kingdom to his south, took it personally. And he mustered
00:19:41.220
an army and invaded Herod Antipas. And he actually won. And the emperor Tiberius actually
0.80
00:19:47.440
had to get involved and he was going to send in an army but he died and the army never happened
00:19:52.660
and basically even though Herod Antipas stayed in power it was pretty obvious to all that he was
00:19:59.200
weak and ineffective this was after Jesus died many of the Jews of that time interpreted that
00:20:07.000
defeat as God's judgment the same judgment that John the Baptist had warned Herod about and
00:20:13.700
Herodias, the niece-wife of Philip, when she initiated the divorce with Philip, this was
00:20:20.180
quite a scandal because for Jews, it was not permissible for a woman to initiate a divorce
00:20:26.780
according to the Old Testament law. It was allowed under Roman law, though, and so what's happening
00:20:34.740
is, she is appealing to Roman law to justify her sin at the expense of Old Testament Jewish law.
00:20:48.340
And there's one last thing to note here. In order to maintain stability in the region, what the
0.66
00:20:55.400
emperor did was he didn't give these rulers big pieces of land to govern. He cut them even smaller
00:21:02.120
and said, okay, Herod, you get the region around the Galilee, which is to the north, and you get
00:21:07.420
the southeast. And they were separated. And this kept them from consolidating power. And so Herod,
00:21:13.580
the Herod in this story, he controlled the region around the Galilee where Jesus was, but his base
00:21:21.360
of operations was in the southeast, exactly where John the Baptist had been preaching. When it says
00:21:28.420
in the gospels that people went out of jerusalem to where john was this is judea beyond the jordan
00:21:34.160
that was about 20 25 miles and that distance took them out of samaria and into this herod's
00:21:42.000
region and near there was his main castle he had a huge castle called macarius macarius sorry
00:21:50.180
now why does this matter because Herod Antipas and Herodias the woman their divorces would have
00:22:01.480
been permitted under Roman law but during his public ministry John the Baptist went out of his
00:22:07.960
way to confront Herod publicly about their marriage practices and their divorces in Luke 3 we read
00:22:16.080
this 318 so with many other exhortations John preached good news to the people but Herod the
00:22:23.020
tetrarch who had been reproved by him for Herodias his brother's wife and for all the evil things
00:22:29.980
that Herod had done added this to them all and he locked John in prison in fact the marriage
00:22:38.280
actually the divorce really that Herod the Tetrarch and the niece wife Herodias had done
00:22:45.600
was such a public issue that there was a massive public debate going on throughout the whole nation
00:22:52.920
of Israel there were two prominent schools led by the two most prominent rabbis and one of them said
00:23:00.160
Herod was justified the Old Testament allows divorce for any reason and the other camp said
00:23:07.260
no, no, no, the Old Testament only allows divorce for unfaithfulness, immorality.
00:23:13.760
But this debate extended beyond just the synagogues, and it was really capturing the entire country.
00:23:22.320
And this went on not just for a little while, but even for multiple years.
00:23:26.600
This was the topic of debate and conversation at the time.
00:23:30.440
and behind thee is the debate is the marriage justified or the divorce justified was the
00:23:37.460
question were Herodias and Herod in sin for doing this it was not just a theoretical religious
00:23:44.540
debate the political consequences of it were severe and because of this it became a very
00:23:50.880
hot political topic because the Jews that said theologically Herod and Herodias were wrong to
00:23:59.580
divorce were implying he is an illegitimate king she is illegitimate
00:24:06.780
and the remarkable thing is that in preparing the way for the true king for christ john the
00:24:16.120
baptist walked right into that controversy over herod's marriage this was not a secondary issue
00:24:21.880
to him because john's job was to prepare the way for the true king and to do that he had to point
00:24:29.120
out the false one. And so John is preaching that Herod's marriage is not legitimate, and the
00:24:38.980
implication is that he is or is not a legitimate king. And there was a fear that this crowd that
00:24:45.620
disagreed with Herod's divorce would agitate and either overthrow Herod or cause such a ruckus in
00:24:52.060
the region that rome would have to send in more troops and occupy even further sides developed
00:24:58.740
around this question high stakes were involved and depending on how you answered that question
00:25:04.860
determined what side you were on both religiously and politically there was no middle ground
00:25:11.300
and i hope you see that even though the times we live in are new to us
00:25:19.320
they're not unprecedented this is in fact a very similar time to what jesus himself
00:25:28.200
walked into in his public ministry hot political topics based in religious interpretations
00:25:35.740
based on religious schisms rulers who are appealing to the masses with a fake or false
00:25:42.240
conversion in order to maintain legitimacy and no one willing to call out the wickedness
00:25:49.160
no our times are not unprecedented they're not the lord has led his people
00:25:57.820
and his plan and the gospel and the church through times like ours before
00:26:03.060
and because john waded into this he was arrested possibly for many months
00:26:11.900
possibly some of the verses seem to indicate that he would have conversation with herod
00:26:18.860
that was likely private and we know that on occasion his disciples were allowed to see him
00:26:24.120
but he was completely removed from public life for months or even up to a year
00:26:28.400
so with all that in mind let's quickly go through the text now to see what it has to say
00:26:37.580
from jesus time and what that means for hours so this is point number two it's really the first
00:26:44.180
point but it's point number two in the outline god's law is absolute and applies absolutely this
00:26:50.320
is the first thing that we're to learn from this interaction between john the baptist and herod so
00:26:55.720
there's kind of an aside here what actually happens is herod hears about jesus fame in the galilee
00:27:02.320
region herod had not too recently murdered john the baptist and so when he hears of this new figure
00:27:12.340
that he had never heard of, rising in prominence, doing miracles, teaching with authority, he
00:27:18.500
comes to the conclusion, this is John the Baptist back from the dead to condemn and judge me.
00:27:27.140
Now, we don't know what prompted John to criticize Herod originally. We don't know if Herod went out
00:27:33.060
to see him. We don't know whether John was simply preaching to the crowds and they asked about it,
00:27:38.720
or we don't know if Herod himself started it, knowing the political situation.
00:27:43.420
But either way, we clearly see in this passage that John brought God's law to bear on the
00:27:50.360
situation. Look at what the text says in verse 4. Verse 4 refers to Herodias as his brother
00:27:58.700
Philip's wife. Well, at that point, according to Roman law, he was married to Herod. He was Herod's
00:28:05.180
wife. But the text goes out of its way to say, no, no, no, no. She was Philip's wife. And we see what
00:28:12.500
John said to Herod in verse 6. John was saying to him, it is unlawful for you to have her. It is
00:28:19.340
unlawful for you to have her. Remember, the law of the Romans would have permitted Herod's divorce
0.79
00:28:23.920
and Herodias' divorce, for that matter. But John the Baptist applied God's standard, not Rome's.
00:28:31.820
He didn't say to Herod, it's not legal for you to divorce your wife.
00:28:42.800
Meaning that even for these two, Herod and Herodias,
1.00
00:28:46.900
who conveniently want to call themselves Jews,
0.88
00:28:52.700
will do anything it takes to gain political power,
00:29:01.820
They are not simply allowed. This is John's message. You are not simply allowed to do
00:29:06.820
whatever is legal. No, God's law reigns supreme. This is a big deal because Herod tried to claim,
00:29:15.300
like I said, that he practiced Judaism. I want you to see this pattern. This is a pattern
00:29:19.780
repeated over and over in history. Someone will try to excuse his sin. Well, technically it's okay.
00:29:27.000
I found a legal loophole to do this. No one's harmed. It's not against the law. Just two
00:29:33.260
consenting adults, all of that. And to that, we as Christians reply with what is lawful.
00:29:42.420
What has God said about the matter? That is our message. What is commanded by God?
00:29:50.980
And notice that the commands of God, according to John, applied to the least, the normal people
0.61
00:29:56.580
coming to be baptized and the greatest King Herod. Now I want you to see what happens when we
0.77
00:30:03.820
proclaim God's law to people who have hard hearts. God's truth and his judgment can come to haunt
00:30:12.780
people, to weigh on them with a guilt that they don't know what to do with. Even King Herod knew
00:30:20.180
that John was righteous and yet Herod and Herodias killed him. They did it anyway. Notice that verse
00:30:27.420
five said that Herod wanted to kill him the whole time he was in prison. Notice that Herodias
00:30:33.940
especially hated John's message. In Mark's gospel, we read that she bore a grudge for months against
00:30:40.700
him. So the guilt of the divorce and the unlawful marriage and eventually the guilt of imprisoning
00:30:48.560
and killing John blossoms in Herod into paranoia. Verses one and two tell us that when he heard that
00:30:56.680
Jesus was preaching, he's like, only explanation. Even though I'm aligned with the Sadducees who
0.99
00:31:02.720
don't believe in the resurrection, this is a resurrection. John is back and he's going to
00:31:06.780
judge me. You see, when we preach God's law, it leads to a sense of God's judgment on people.
00:31:15.880
and we as christians we sometimes forget that that is a terrifying thing to those who are not being
00:31:23.280
softened by the holy spirit matthew henry says this he says the terror and reproach of conscience
00:31:30.460
which herod like other daring offenders could not shake off and are proofs and warnings of a future
00:31:36.780
judgment and a future misery to them but there may be the terror of convictions where there is
00:31:43.980
not truth of conversion. In other words, the terror that God is right can be present even if someone
00:31:49.660
is not willing to repent. When men pretend to favor the gospel yet live in evil, boy does that
00:31:57.960
describe a lot of public figures in our time now. We must not favor their self-delusion but must
00:32:05.140
deliver our consciences as John did. The world may call this rudeness. What rudeness? An insistence
00:32:11.380
of saying no no no no no you say you love the gospel but you live wicked lives
00:32:15.460
the world may call that rudeness and blind zeal false professors or timid christians
00:32:24.400
may censure it as a want of civility politeness he's saying we're going to get called impolite
00:32:29.820
but the most powerful enemies can go no further than the lord sees good to permit herod feared
00:33:05.840
and family members when we live in a wicked time that when we preach god's truth and god's law
00:33:13.440
guilt will descend on them but unless the holy spirit works in their heart
00:33:19.460
often their only response to that guilt is to retaliate
00:33:23.160
sometimes when god's people preach the truth revival happens as with nineveh
00:33:46.900
notice throughout this text Herod is full of fear
00:33:52.240
he's afraid of a kind of ghostly supernatural vengeance
00:33:56.420
John the Baptist back from the dead a specter like Lady Macbeth feared
00:34:00.860
he's also afraid of the people the crowd the masses verse 5 said that he would not put john
00:34:08.300
to death because he feared them he feared a revolt that they would start an uprising
00:34:12.700
and there's one more thing that he's afraid of in verse 9 we see that he was afraid to lose
00:34:19.420
his reputation in front of his guests now think about this surely if this dancer
00:34:53.260
Herod, the unworthy king, afraid, cowardly, conniving.
00:34:58.940
And then Matthew drawing the image of Christ, Jesus.
00:35:07.940
The next passage, this is not a coincidence, is the feeding of the 5,000.
00:35:13.280
So here we see Herod's banquet of gluttony and debauchery and death.
00:35:17.820
And then we see Jesus' banquet of life and service and grace.
00:35:23.980
afraid people are tight-fisted cautious ready to lash out and suspicious
00:35:34.540
they are this way not only because they're afraid to lose the one thing that they have
00:35:40.900
but also because deep down they know that they're a slave to their own fear
00:35:46.480
fear brothers and sisters fear is a terrible master it completely paralyzes controls and
00:35:55.660
drives us to do wicked and totally illogical things and not only is the true king christ
00:36:02.640
not afraid but he goes beyond that and he frees his subjects from fear
00:36:08.240
unlike Herod whose subjects lived in fear we do not have to fear what any man would do to us
00:36:17.200
yes in this passage we see they may do terrible things to us but we do not have to fear them
00:36:24.680
John Gill says this Herod feared the multitude not God but the multitude and these not only the
00:36:32.960
large number of people that attended on John's ministry and were baptized him and became his
00:36:38.060
disciples, but also the generality of the people, the whole body of the Jewish nation.
00:36:43.920
So God is pleased oftentimes to restrain the wickedness of princes by the fear of their
00:36:49.720
subjects. And in this sense, it was a good fear for a while that kept John alive.
00:36:57.220
I said just a moment ago that Christians do not have to fear, but that's not entirely
0.94
00:37:02.820
true, is it? We do fear. We do fear. We fear the Lord, the holy judge of all. But that fear,
00:37:12.920
as a Christian, actually becomes a wondrous thing. Think of a Formula One driver, which I have never
00:37:21.060
been and never done. But I imagine it's a terrifying thing to sit down in that machine,
00:37:26.700
to go racing around it over 100 miles an hour inches apart from the cars next to it taking
00:37:34.620
turns in all weather conditions formula one drivers experience extreme g-forces from the
00:37:42.060
rapid changes in speed and direction it can be over five g's while they're braking and cornering
00:37:47.500
they also exert significant physical force pushing that brake pedal and the clutch and all that can
00:37:53.700
can require up to 200 pounds of leg pushing force and they do this for hours their neck and their
00:38:01.240
core has to be extremely strong because they get bounced around so terrifically and yet when that
00:38:08.540
driver gets in that car I imagine there's still a thrill of exhilaration but there's a confidence
00:38:15.020
in how the car has been built in the years of his training the communication with the pit crew
00:38:21.700
and that fear that would be terrifying for us becomes a sense of awe and exhilaration for him
00:38:29.640
so it is with christians as we believe more and more what christ has done for us that he has
00:38:36.140
redeemed us our nearness to god which apart from christ is utter terror and ruin becomes less and
00:38:44.060
less terrifying we come to trust the work that christ has done we are in constant communication
00:38:49.560
with him. We experience not only forgiveness for past sins, but strength for today's struggles.
00:38:56.560
And suddenly, the terror of being in God's presence becomes something else. It becomes awe.
00:39:03.800
It becomes reverence. It is the fearful delight of being embraced by Aslan.
00:39:10.760
and yet those who hate christ cannot know this their only fear is a dread terror of the holiness
00:39:20.620
of god they only know to fight or to flee so of course they will lash out but brothers and sisters
00:39:28.260
we do not fear them we fear and reverence the lord
00:39:32.920
and certainly we would be tempted to fear because the wicked in their fear and in their guilt and
00:39:43.180
in their hardness will lash out and so here we see the next point the twisted alliance between hate
00:39:48.880
and lust this story tells us more details than we might want to know about how wicked
00:39:56.680
Herod, Herodias, and even the entire ruling class were. First of all, we have to see that everything
00:40:04.260
about these two, Herod and Herodias, the king and his so-called niece's wife, revolved around
00:40:11.840
pleasure and power. Herod was a weak-willed man in a lot of ways. And this combination of a love
00:40:19.760
for pleasure and a love for power is a dangerous combination. I said earlier that Herod wanted to
00:40:24.820
take the whole region, the whole area for his own kingdom. And Herodias, the illegitimate niece's
0.95
00:40:31.320
wife, wanted this too. She wanted to be the queen. And so they both hated John for calling out their
0.62
00:40:38.700
sin, and they hated that the people would listen to them. They hated that the message was gaining
00:40:43.140
traction. That's even worse for them. Notice that verse 3 says that Herod imprisoned John in the
00:40:52.460
first place, quote, for the sake of Herodias. She's the one that demanded it. I hate that man
0.98
00:40:59.560
and what he says about me. Get rid of him. Kill him. Call him down. We're not killing anyone today.
1.00
00:41:06.160
I'll just throw him in jail. Imagine the rage, the immediate rage that she had to want his death
0.99
00:41:15.000
on the spot. John dared to tell the truth. And this is exactly what we see now. People get angry,
00:41:28.580
and the more public they are, the more angry they get. Look at how this festered in her. John
1.00
00:41:33.720
was in prison already. He's already out of the public image. He couldn't criticize her publicly.
00:41:39.740
he couldn't call her out anymore. And yet Mark 6, 19 says this, and Herodias had a grudge against
00:41:46.000
him and wanted him to be put to death, but she could not. This is at the time of the banquet
00:41:51.360
that we read about. So this whole time, months or maybe even a year, she's got this grudge gnawing
00:41:56.440
at her. John, John. And you have to think about how crazy he is. He's in a dungeon, completely
00:42:01.120
forgotten by everyone else in the country. She wakes up in the morning, John, that John the
00:42:05.780
baptist growing and festering in her we must expect that people will sometimes be personally
0.88
00:42:14.780
offended by god's truth and that this will lead them to carry a grudge and the grudge will be
00:42:20.300
carried against the messenger of that truth when we bear god's truth and we bear witness to his law
00:42:29.000
we will be the ones that people come to hate sometimes
00:42:33.060
there's another motivation here that we need to keep in mind and it is
00:42:38.780
herod's lust his debauchery herod hosts this lavish party to commemorate his birthday
00:42:47.560
commentators are a little bit split here some of them say maybe it was his coronation or the
00:42:51.960
annual celebration of his coronation either way large party it seems to be the custom of royalty
00:42:59.040
in ancient times to have these lavish parties with men only pharaoh did this uh the babylonians
00:43:06.480
did this uh sorry the assyrians did this um the men would come there would be a lot of drinking
00:43:13.780
a lot of gluttonous feasting and a lot of what we'll call it dancing
00:43:18.380
basically this was a modern day non-christian debaucherous bachelor party
00:43:26.780
the text doesn't tell us this but the historians do tell us so I'm going to read from
00:43:33.200
the commentator John Ellicott he says this dances so he's talking here about
00:43:39.340
what appealed finally to Herod and it was this dance by this girl he says dances in filmy garments
00:43:46.240
that but half concealed the form commonly of an impure or voluptuous nature were common enough
00:43:52.460
both at eastern and roman banquets the guests being simply spectators but the dancers were
00:43:59.520
for the most part women who made it their calling in other words they were professional dancers
0.92
00:44:04.340
usually and it was a new thing at herod's party at which every decent jew would have shuttered
1.00
00:44:12.020
for the daughter of a kingly house to come in thus in a shameless publicity and expose herself to the
0.87
00:44:19.800
gays of the banqueters including as they did the chief captains and chiliarchs of the roman legions
0.97
00:44:27.180
as well as herod's own courtiers and the chief men of the province according to mark 6 21
00:44:32.700
but herodias the wife it would seem knew the tetrarch herod knew herod's weak point and
00:44:41.740
sought to bend him to her will, even though it were by the sacrifice of her own daughter's
00:44:49.480
modesty. She danced before them, literally in the midst of them, as they reclined on their
00:44:56.240
couches, indolently, which means without shame, gazing at her. This wicked, wicked woman sacrificing
0.98
00:45:08.100
her daughter's modesty in order to get what she wanted because she knew that this wicked,
1.00
00:45:19.840
Things have really not changed at all, have they?
0.95
00:45:27.820
Maybe having dancers, inappropriate dancers, would have been somewhat common.
0.97
00:45:32.480
But for someone of the royal family to come in and debase herself in this way,
00:45:37.200
that would have been new and we see in mark's account that everyone was delighted by it
00:45:43.200
their delight in perversion that day got turned up a notch before it was just
00:45:50.000
professional dancers now it's a holy or not a royal girl
00:45:55.860
this explains what we are seeing now by the way sin when it goes public when it's private sin
00:46:06.280
there's a measure of social shame that sometimes forces us to restrain ourselves but when sin goes
00:46:13.500
public and is an approved of publicly it gets turned up quickly it gets turned up quickly
00:46:20.920
and when it's embraced publicly it actually becomes a race now to see who can be the next
00:46:29.220
person to get his hand on the knob and crank it up, and crank it up. And then it becomes a delight
00:46:36.800
to be the person who turned it up a notch. So when sin is public, the situation is really desperate
00:46:43.320
because now it becomes a game to be the one who can turn up the volume and turn up the volume
00:46:48.920
and turn up the volume. And so though they were both involved, in this case we see that Herodias
00:46:57.040
plotted against her so-called husband, humiliated him in public by blindsiding him with the dance
00:47:03.360
and then also with the request for John's head. Herod is pleased and probably partially drunk
0.52
00:47:11.360
and he offers this girl whatever she wants. Now Herodias was obviously planning this.
00:47:19.340
She knew what kind of party it was. She knew that lavish offers would be made
00:47:36.280
Herod's probably thinking she's going to ask for, you know, a horse
00:47:43.160
King Herod, give me the head of John the Baptist here, right now, on a platter.
00:47:50.100
and immediately he realizes he's been played by his own wife but afraid to lose face publicly
00:47:59.680
Herod ordered it done immediately and as John was likely there in that fortress that's the one in
00:48:06.960
the southern region of Israel where Herod made his residence there was a prison there probably
00:48:13.020
John was on the premise, probably happened in like 15, 20 minutes. We need to see how bleak
00:48:21.560
this was at the time. John has been in prison for months with very little exposure. He's sent
00:48:31.240
messengers, Jesus, are you the one? He's by himself. He does not get any sort of final sermon.
00:48:43.760
where fire descends and burns up the idols of the wicked.
00:48:52.600
presented a defense, a powerful defense of the gospel
00:49:08.340
receives the most ignominious and shameful death.
00:49:14.520
Like Aslan's death, it seemed not only that evil had won,
00:49:18.740
but that it had won with impunity, with no consequence.
0.99
00:49:29.440
had killed the greatest of all the prophets just like that.
00:49:38.340
cowardice, cravenness, and capitulation. And this is the pattern. When people do wrong and pursue
00:49:45.420
evil, they can only descend more and more until what was once unthinkable, Herod was not going to
00:49:52.740
kill John the Baptist. All of a sudden, it seems like an okay idea. What was once unthinkable now
0.69
00:50:00.360
becomes a happy tool to accomplish more wickedness and this brothers and sisters this pattern is
00:50:09.520
inevitable in the wicked and it is why christians must speak god's truth it's the only breaks it's
00:50:17.700
the only true check the only hope for people to be convicted of sin there are other measures that
00:50:25.380
can temporarily restrain evil and we applaud those but they're temporary
00:50:30.280
but to close today i don't want to leave us on that note of despondency i want to just
00:50:39.780
quickly look at jesus response the last few minutes here looking at how jesus responded to this
00:50:45.920
we see in the next verse that he took himself away he secluded himself when he heard about it
00:50:51.060
so we see here that in his humanity he wanted to grieve we see secondly that even though he
00:50:59.300
wanted to be alone the crowd followed him and his response was compassion and service to them
00:51:05.040
brothers and sisters remember as we think about the nation and the world
00:51:09.760
there are the people caught in the middle they are sinners yes but they're not the same as the
00:51:15.220
ones driving the wickedness they know their need and they come looking for help they don't know
00:51:20.900
where the help is these are the people that we see with compassion and we serve and we love
00:51:28.120
but we also see that Jesus removes himself rather than putting himself in public here
00:51:36.920
Jesus had a strategy and this was not the time for a confrontation with Herod
00:51:42.620
so he heard about the death of John the Baptist but he also heard that he was now on Herod's radar
00:51:47.900
and he moves out to the country for a little while but it will not always be that way if we
00:51:55.220
look down a little bit in the story at the end of his time in the galilee jesus leaves the region
00:52:03.060
in the northwest and where does he go i love this this is amazing mark 10 tells us it says that he
00:52:12.700
left the region of the Galilee, which was Herod's territory, and he went down to Judea beyond the
00:52:19.400
Jordan, also Herod's territory, exactly where John the Baptist had performed his ministry, had been
00:52:27.340
baptizing the people coming out of Jerusalem, and had publicly called Herod to account. He leaves
00:52:33.780
Galilee, and it's obviously intentional. I'm going right to where Herod had his showdown with John
0.89
00:52:40.220
the Baptist. And you remember I talked about how the question of this divorce dominated the public
00:52:48.440
conversation. It was still the case. And Jesus arrives in this region and the loyal lapdogs of
00:52:56.500
the Herodians, the Pharisees, if you look at verse one, it says the Pharisees came right up to him
00:53:01.640
to test him. Not to just discourse with him. It was to trap him. And they say to him,
00:53:11.480
first thing that they say to him when he arrives in Herod's region of power,
00:53:16.820
is it lawful to divorce a woman for any reason at all? Man, you see how this political question,
00:53:25.940
this religious question, they're like, we've got him. He's going to say yes or no. He's going to
00:53:31.280
say no it's not lawful and then we're going to report back to the Herodians and he's going to
00:53:36.800
be done but Jesus does something incredible here he doesn't go back to Moses he goes back to
00:53:43.320
creation and he says God created this way in the beginning and the important thing here is as
00:53:50.840
preeminent and powerful and central as the law of God is Jesus actually says you guys are missing
00:53:57.600
the point it's not about jewish law versus roman law it's about how god has made the world and no
00:54:05.420
roman and no jew and no pharisee and no sadducee gets to countermand that and it leaves them stunned
00:54:13.060
i love this about jesus that when he leaves the galilee he goes right to that spot picks that
00:54:19.840
exact same fight and wipes the floor with them by saying you're asking the wrong question nobody
00:54:26.040
here in this picture wants to submit to God. Nobody. And that's your problem. Because if
00:54:32.160
you submitted to God, you would recognize me as the King and the Messiah, and you would humble
00:54:36.960
yourselves. So brothers and sisters, we need to remember that in times that we live in, wicked
00:54:46.760
times when we preach God's truth it's going to hurt people have not been exposed to it
00:54:55.100
or they have been used to hiding it and it's going to hurt and there's going to be backlash
00:55:00.360
but that's the time that God has called us into to preach the truth and the gospel
00:55:08.440
with courage with boldness with resolution and to proclaim like John the Baptist did
00:55:16.640
the true king has come. And the message and the gospel of the kingdom is that he welcomes all
00:55:23.300
who humble themselves and repent and believe. So let us not grow weary in doing that in the face
00:55:31.040
of increasing hostility, increasingly high stakes. Let us carry the banner of Christ forward
00:55:36.780
together. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this incredible truth. Thank you that
00:55:42.940
your son Jesus Christ the true king and messiah is not cowardly he's not weak he is not indecisive
00:55:55.780
he is the true king of kings and the true lord of lords and we pray that you'd give us courage
00:56:01.840
to proclaim that to the world around us we trust you lord we don't fear the world we fear
00:56:07.420
and trust and revere you so help us to walk in obedience in Jesus name amen