The NXR Podcast - THE SERMON - The Message to the Magistrate ｜ Matthew 14_1-12

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00:00:26 As Pastor Joel said, our passage this morning will be in the gospel according to Matthew chapter 14.

00:00:33 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.

00:00:41 Again, that's Matthew chapter 14.

00:00:44 We're going to be reading verses 1 through 12.

00:00:52 This is God's word.

00:00:53 at that time Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus and he said to his servants

00:01:00 this is John the Baptist he has been raised from the dead that is why these miraculous powers are

00:01:06 at work in him for Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison for the sake

00:01:11 of Herodias his brother Philip's wife because John had been saying to him it is not lawful for you to

00:01:18 have her. And though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people because they held him to be

00:01:24 a prophet. But when Herod's birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company

00:01:30 and pleased Herod, so that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask.

00:01:36 Prompted by her mother, she said, give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.

00:01:42 and the king was sorry because of his oaths and his guests but because of his oaths and his guests

00:01:48 he commanded it to be given he sent and had john beheaded beheaded in the prison and his head was

00:01:55 brought on a platter and given to the girl and she brought it to her mother and his disciples came

00:02:01 and took the body and buried it and they went and told jesus this is the word of the lord

00:02:07 you may be seated

00:02:09 well our passage today recounts the death of john the baptist and before we move into the passage

00:02:32 at all, I want to give us a quick reminder of what John's primary mission was. That is, it was

00:02:40 to prepare the way for the new king, the king that was coming. Remember, John preached the gospel

00:02:46 of the kingdom. That is, the good news that the true king had come and that this king welcomes

00:02:53 all who repent and believe. But we need to remember here at the beginning that John, his whole

00:03:01 ministry, his whole mission was that he was rolling out the red carpet for the arrival of the king

00:03:07 that could ascend and take the rightful throne. And in doing this, as John was rolling out this

00:03:14 welcome for the true king, this threatened the rule of all other earthly kings. And so we need

00:03:21 to remember today, because this passage seems strangely placed, but Matthew's goal in the book

00:03:27 of Matthew is to make the case that Christ is, in fact, the true king, the king of the Jews and

00:03:33 the king of all. And so that's what Matthew is doing here today. He's contrasting Herod, a wicked

00:03:40 king, with Jesus, the true king. He's contrasting Jesus' authority, kindness, and righteousness

00:03:47 with Herod's tyranny, cruelty, and cravenness. And it would be easy to think that John the Baptist 0.87

00:03:55 his comments that get him in trouble, his comments about divorce, were somehow an anomaly, separate

00:04:01 from his main mission, not essential to our Christian mission as well. It would be tempting

00:04:07 to think, John, if you would have just stayed in your lane, prepared the way for the Messiah,

00:04:12 don't get involved with all that extra stuff like whether or not divorce was legal or not.

00:04:18 You could have just kept ministering. You would have been great. You would have prepared the way

00:04:22 better for Jesus. As we will see today, though, that any time Christians proclaim that King Jesus 1.00

00:04:31 has come, we must push the authority of Jesus to all areas of life and society. We do not leave

00:04:38 any part of society or any person outside of Christ's authority. And so, as we see with John

00:04:45 the Baptist, sometimes that means in our effort to promote and teach the authority of Christ,

00:04:51 we will endure severe consequences. By God's grace I hope to encourage us in two ways to be bold

00:04:59 to yes proclaim the kingship of Christ but to be resolute and prepared when there's blowback

00:05:05 and consequence. Our nation is in a mess and I think of the lines from that famous children's

00:05:13 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 it. We have to go through it. By God's grace, we will, and we will carry, like John the Baptist,

00:05:28 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 read that. It's there as a placeholder, because before we dive into the passage itself, I actually

00:05:39 want to take an extended time giving some background here, okay? So those are kind of a

00:05:46 summary of what I'm about to say now. And I think it's necessary to do this background on the

00:05:51 situation in that time, because it really, really will make the passage come to life. So get ready

00:05:57 for some names and some locations. Okay, track with me. But just keep in mind that the three

00:06:03 main names, I'm doing all of this to try to explain the three names that are in our text.

00:06:08 Herod, Philip, and Herodias. Okay, those are the three that you really have to keep track of.

00:06:13 there's something that's been going on in the background of the book of Matthew and that is

00:06:20 as authority whether religious or political has seen has just kind of bumped into and encountered

00:06:26 the true authority of Jesus it has seen Jesus as a threat we saw this originally with Herod the

00:06:33 Great and the prophecies and the magi came and he thought immediately uh-oh this is no good

00:06:38 and so when he bumped into the authority of Jesus even as a baby he sought to destroy him

00:06:43 and mary and joseph had to flee and then of course there were many years about 30 years of silence

00:06:49 but then as jesus begins to emerge already we see the religious and the political authorities

00:06:55 bumping into him and immediately saying not here is the king we should listen from him we should

00:07:01 submit to him but uh-oh this guy's trouble we need to get rid of him

00:07:05 so in order for understand what was going on with this game of cat and mouse we do need to

00:07:12 know a little bit of history here okay so you're probably familiar with alexander the great

00:07:20 after his reign ended the area of israel and judaea fell under greek control still but

00:07:27 particularly it was the greek seleucids and when the seleucid king antiochus the fourth

00:07:32 came into power in this region in the region of israel he tried to completely wipe out all temple

00:07:39 worship and in fact even to use the temple of the jews for pagan worship and this led to what we

00:07:47 know as the maccabean revolt and the jewish priest mattathias and his sons they were the maccabees

00:07:53 they led a revolt against this greek uh king this was 167 to 160 bc and amazingly even though they

00:08:01 were an inferior number they won and they cleaned the temple out from all the pagan implements of 0.69

00:08:07 worship and they restored Jewish law and Jewish worship and so for about 80 to 100 years from then 0.90

00:08:15 on Israel enjoyed actual independence under the the family that came out of this ended up ruling

00:08:22 was called the Hasmoneans and so it's referred to as the Hasmonean dynasty they were genuine Jews

00:08:28 they were from the tribe of Levi and they ended up ruling for the next hundred or so years

00:08:33 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 old testament law they had the right to carry on the priesthood but they also took the kingship

00:08:46 as well which should have gone to the line of judah the line of david and this created an

00:08:53 internal instability within the country that all through this dynasty was always a conflict

00:09:00 And eventually, towards the end of it, two Hasmonean brothers fought over this throne,

00:09:05 the Jewish throne, and they couldn't resolve it. 0.82

00:09:10 And so what they did was they said, let's invite the new global power, Rome, to come 0.82

00:09:15 in and mediate.

00:09:16 Let's let them decide who's going to get the land.

00:09:19 So Rome said, thank you very much.

00:09:20 We would be glad to move an army into your region.

00:09:23 And then they never moved out. 0.99

00:09:25 And they occupied Israel from that point on. 0.80

00:09:30 The Hasmoneans remained to some degree in power, but they were largely figureheads at that point.

00:09:35 And as that dynasty weakened further, Rome stepped in and they appointed a foreign leader as king of the Jews.

00:09:43 And this was Herod the Great. 0.79

00:09:46 He was not Jewish. 0.63

00:09:47 He was an Edomite, specifically called an Edomian. 0.68

00:09:50 So this was an Edomite who converted to Judaism, at least in name only, for political advantage.

00:09:57 and he was called King of the Jews, and this was 40 BC.

00:10:01 So we have to understand that when Jesus was here,

00:10:05 this arrangement had only been going on for 40 years, right?

00:10:08 It was pretty new.

00:10:11 So by the time of the Gospels, the throne of Israel 0.93

00:10:14 was occupied by a Roman-installed foreigner,

00:10:16 not someone from the line of David.

00:10:19 And this is Matthew's point from the whole beginning of the book.

00:10:22 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 who was in charge when Jesus was born, but he died shortly after Jesus was born. And again,

00:10:36 it's important to know what happened in the wake of his death. When he died, remember he had the

00:10:43 whole kingdom, basically all of Israel was under his rulership. But Rome decided when he died that

00:10:50 they no longer wanted one kingdom in that area. It had been too unstable, too volatile. There had

00:10:56 been rebellions. And so they split that whole area into four pieces, four districts, as it were.

00:11:02 These were called tetrarchies. If you think of the game Tetris, there's a reason why all the

00:11:08 little pieces in Tetris have four cubes. Tetra means four, okay? So for our purposes today,

00:11:15 we need to know a couple of these names. Herod the Great had many children with different

00:11:20 wives, and his grandchildren, two of them, were Herod in the story, who's called Herod Antipas.

00:11:29 So saying Herod is like the family name. Herod, from Herod, and his name was Antipas.

00:11:34 And then Herod the Great also had another grandson named Herod Philip. Okay, Herod Philip. And

00:11:41 Philip in the story and Herod in the story, Herod Antipas and Herod Philip, were brothers. They had

00:11:47 the same father, but different mothers. Herod Antipas controlled two regions of the Judea

00:11:59 area. Herod Philip actually did not control any land. He was a wealthy man. He had estates,

00:12:04 but he was not a ruler. This is a little bit confusing because in Luke, it does talk about

00:12:09 Philip the Tetrarch. There was a separate Philip who was a governor in this area, and he was actually

00:12:14 a pretty good governor. He was very restrained and a very good governor. That's not the Philip

00:12:19 that's here in Matthew 14. This Philip is the half-brother of Herod, Herod Antipas.

00:12:28 Now, Philip married Herod the Great's granddaughter. Her name was Herodias, and this is the same one

00:12:39 that's in our passage, Herodias. Now, if you do the family tree, you come to the conclusion that

00:12:44 Philip married his niece. Not great. Not great. Okay. She was the granddaughter of Herod the Great

00:12:53 and Herod Antipas, the Harris in this story, he, in order to get political power, he had his eyes

00:13:00 set on conquering all of Israel. So his kingdom was down in the Southeast and he wanted to conquer

00:13:08 all of the rest of Israel and he had a neighbor to his southeast who was an Arabian king and to

00:13:14 protect that border so that he could focus northward he married that Arabian king's daughter

00:13:19 and that sealed that shored up his southern border he didn't have to worry about attack 0.71

00:13:24 or invasion from there but because of Herod and Herodias's ambition they decided it would be better

00:13:35 more politically advantageous if they both divorced their current spouse and married each other.

00:13:43 And so Herodias divorced Philip to marry the Herod in the story, Herod Antipas,

00:13:50 while both of the men were still alive. This was an incestuous, adulterous, politically calculated

00:13:56 marriage, and it violated clearly Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20. And Herod Antipas, the Herod in the

00:14:04 story, divorced that princess of the Arabian king to marry his niece, Herodias. And all of this was

00:14:13 with an eye that they thought that they could gain some sort of political power and take over

00:14:18 the entire region. And into this corruption stepped John the Baptist, who in preparing the

00:14:28 way for the true king confronted Herod Antipas with fearless prophetic clarity. In Mark 6 18 we

00:14:35 read this, he said, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. And Herod feared this

00:14:43 because John spoke the truth and he spoke it publicly to the people. And Herodias, his niece 0.76

00:14:50 wife, supposedly, hated John, knowing that what he said threatened her power.

00:14:58 Now, why do I point all of this out?

00:15:02 Because we actually have a situation in our time, which is very similar to what we're

00:15:08 reading about here in the Gospel of Matthew.

00:15:11 In Israel at the time, the religious landscape had split in two.

00:15:16 There were two sides.

00:15:18 The Sadducees, who were the religious establishment,

00:15:22 they were the high priests, and they lived mostly in Jerusalem,

00:15:26 they were extremely liberal, extremely liberal.

00:15:30 They denied the possibility of miracles.

00:15:32 They denied the resurrection.

00:15:34 In short, they were denying any sort of miraculous interpretation of the Old Testament.

00:15:39 And they were moving away both from the Old Testament

00:15:42 and from the traditions that had been built up by the various rabbis over the centuries.

00:15:47 On the other hand, there were the Pharisees, and these were the religiously conservative group.

00:15:53 They did not have as much power, but what they did have was more grassroots.

00:15:57 They focused on the synagogues all through the country.

00:16:02 And because of that, because they were more involved with the synagogues and the local level,

00:16:06 they were bumping up against Jesus a lot earlier than the Sadducees, who were mainly in Jerusalem.

00:16:12 the pharisees absolutely despised roman occupation of israel

00:16:18 so the country was split religiously a conservative group a liberal group the liberal

00:16:25 group had most of the establishment power and there was a third group in the mix which is a

00:16:30 political faction called the herodians the herodians were primarily political but because

00:16:37 they were governing in Judea, most of Herod the Great's family that descended from him had

00:16:43 quote-unquote converted to Judaism, but of course their alignment was with the very liberal form.

00:16:49 They were much more aligned with the Sadducees in their religious practice and belief.

00:16:56 We think this because when we compare, there are two parallel passages, Matthew 16, 6, which says, 0.72

00:17:02 Jesus said to them, watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees,

00:17:07 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 So it's likely that the Sadducees and the Herodians were very much in cahoots.

00:17:24 So the people who were loyal to Herod were only performatively religious.

00:17:29 Their religion was all about the new.

00:17:32 It was very liberal in the most liberal way possible. 0.89

00:17:36 and yet this is what's so interesting so you've got the pharisees who hate the sadducees and by

00:17:42 extension they hate the herodians when the pharisees in the regional areas in the synagogues

00:17:47 began bumping up against jesus not liking what he was saying they immediately realized this guy's a

00:17:54 problem and mark 3 6 says this this is early in the gospel of mark the pharisees went out and

00:18:01 immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Jesus on how to destroy him. And so what

00:18:08 we see is these three massive political bodies who are at odds and control the entire discourse in

00:18:15 the country, in the region, as soon as the Pharisees bump up against Jesus, they're like,

00:18:21 those guys aren't so bad, actually. Let's go partner with them for a little while and get rid

00:18:26 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 houses. As I said before, Herod Antipas was politically ambitious. He wanted to reunite

00:18:42 the whole region under one kingdom. And his brother Philip was not a ruler.

00:18:48 and so the niece Herodias who was probably even more power hungry than Herod himself

00:18:57 she and Herod and Antipas decide that they're going to unite and as the story goes Herod Antipas

00:19:06 was traveling and he spent some time at his half-brother Philip's estates and while he was

00:19:11 there he and Herodias either fell in love or hatched a plan one of the two and they decided

00:19:18 to divorce their spouses and marry for political power. Now, as I said, they were both married

00:19:24 already. And when Herod Antipas divorced the Arabian princess, the king of Arabia to his 0.54

00:19:34 south, not all of Arabia, the Arab kingdom to his south, took it personally. And he mustered

00:19:41 an army and invaded Herod Antipas. And he actually won. And the emperor Tiberius actually 0.80

00:19:47 had to get involved and he was going to send in an army but he died and the army never happened

00:19:52 and basically even though Herod Antipas stayed in power it was pretty obvious to all that he was

00:19:59 weak and ineffective this was after Jesus died many of the Jews of that time interpreted that

00:20:07 defeat as God's judgment the same judgment that John the Baptist had warned Herod about and

00:20:13 Herodias, the niece-wife of Philip, when she initiated the divorce with Philip, this was

00:20:20 quite a scandal because for Jews, it was not permissible for a woman to initiate a divorce

00:20:26 according to the Old Testament law. It was allowed under Roman law, though, and so what's happening

00:20:34 is, she is appealing to Roman law to justify her sin at the expense of Old Testament Jewish law.

00:20:48 And there's one last thing to note here. In order to maintain stability in the region, what the 0.66

00:20:55 emperor did was he didn't give these rulers big pieces of land to govern. He cut them even smaller

00:21:02 and said, okay, Herod, you get the region around the Galilee, which is to the north, and you get

00:21:07 the southeast. And they were separated. And this kept them from consolidating power. And so Herod,

00:21:13 the Herod in this story, he controlled the region around the Galilee where Jesus was, but his base

00:21:21 of operations was in the southeast, exactly where John the Baptist had been preaching. When it says

00:21:28 in the gospels that people went out of jerusalem to where john was this is judea beyond the jordan

00:21:34 that was about 20 25 miles and that distance took them out of samaria and into this herod's

00:21:42 region and near there was his main castle he had a huge castle called macarius macarius sorry

00:21:50 now why does this matter because Herod Antipas and Herodias the woman their divorces would have

00:22:01 been permitted under Roman law but during his public ministry John the Baptist went out of his

00:22:07 way to confront Herod publicly about their marriage practices and their divorces in Luke 3 we read

00:22:16 this 318 so with many other exhortations John preached good news to the people but Herod the

00:22:23 tetrarch who had been reproved by him for Herodias his brother's wife and for all the evil things

00:22:29 that Herod had done added this to them all and he locked John in prison in fact the marriage

00:22:38 actually the divorce really that Herod the Tetrarch and the niece wife Herodias had done

00:22:45 was such a public issue that there was a massive public debate going on throughout the whole nation

00:22:52 of Israel there were two prominent schools led by the two most prominent rabbis and one of them said

00:23:00 Herod was justified the Old Testament allows divorce for any reason and the other camp said

00:23:07 no, no, no, the Old Testament only allows divorce for unfaithfulness, immorality.

00:23:13 But this debate extended beyond just the synagogues, and it was really capturing the entire country.

00:23:22 And this went on not just for a little while, but even for multiple years.

00:23:26 This was the topic of debate and conversation at the time.

00:23:30 and behind thee is the debate is the marriage justified or the divorce justified was the

00:23:37 question were Herodias and Herod in sin for doing this it was not just a theoretical religious

00:23:44 debate the political consequences of it were severe and because of this it became a very

00:23:50 hot political topic because the Jews that said theologically Herod and Herodias were wrong to

00:23:59 divorce were implying he is an illegitimate king she is illegitimate

00:24:06 and the remarkable thing is that in preparing the way for the true king for christ john the

00:24:16 baptist walked right into that controversy over herod's marriage this was not a secondary issue

00:24:21 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 out the false one. And so John is preaching that Herod's marriage is not legitimate, and the

00:24:38 implication is that he is or is not a legitimate king. And there was a fear that this crowd that

00:24:45 disagreed with Herod's divorce would agitate and either overthrow Herod or cause such a ruckus in

00:24:52 the region that rome would have to send in more troops and occupy even further sides developed

00:24:58 around this question high stakes were involved and depending on how you answered that question

00:25:04 determined what side you were on both religiously and politically there was no middle ground

00:25:11 and i hope you see that even though the times we live in are new to us

00:25:19 they're not unprecedented this is in fact a very similar time to what jesus himself

00:25:28 walked into in his public ministry hot political topics based in religious interpretations

00:25:35 based on religious schisms rulers who are appealing to the masses with a fake or false

00:25:42 conversion in order to maintain legitimacy and no one willing to call out the wickedness

00:25:49 no our times are not unprecedented they're not the lord has led his people

00:25:57 and his plan and the gospel and the church through times like ours before

00:26:03 and because john waded into this he was arrested possibly for many months

00:26:11 possibly some of the verses seem to indicate that he would have conversation with herod

00:26:18 that was likely private and we know that on occasion his disciples were allowed to see him

00:26:24 but he was completely removed from public life for months or even up to a year

00:26:28 so with all that in mind let's quickly go through the text now to see what it has to say

00:26:37 from jesus time and what that means for hours so this is point number two it's really the first

00:26:44 point but it's point number two in the outline god's law is absolute and applies absolutely this

00:26:50 is the first thing that we're to learn from this interaction between john the baptist and herod so

00:26:55 there's kind of an aside here what actually happens is herod hears about jesus fame in the galilee

00:27:02 region herod had not too recently murdered john the baptist and so when he hears of this new figure

00:27:12 that he had never heard of, rising in prominence, doing miracles, teaching with authority, he

00:27:18 comes to the conclusion, this is John the Baptist back from the dead to condemn and judge me.

00:27:27 Now, we don't know what prompted John to criticize Herod originally. We don't know if Herod went out

00:27:33 to see him. We don't know whether John was simply preaching to the crowds and they asked about it,

00:27:38 or we don't know if Herod himself started it, knowing the political situation.

00:27:43 But either way, we clearly see in this passage that John brought God's law to bear on the

00:27:50 situation. Look at what the text says in verse 4. Verse 4 refers to Herodias as his brother

00:27:58 Philip's wife. Well, at that point, according to Roman law, he was married to Herod. He was Herod's

00:28:05 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 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 unlawful for you to have her. Remember, the law of the Romans would have permitted Herod's divorce 0.79

00:28:23 and Herodias' divorce, for that matter. But John the Baptist applied God's standard, not Rome's.

00:28:31 He didn't say to Herod, it's not legal for you to divorce your wife.

00:28:37 He said it's not lawful.

00:28:40 God does not permit it.

00:28:42 Meaning that even for these two, Herod and Herodias, 1.00

00:28:46 who conveniently want to call themselves Jews, 0.88

00:28:50 conveniently want to apply Roman law, 0.79

00:28:52 will do anything it takes to gain political power,

00:28:56 God is not pleased.

00:28:58 And you cannot violate God's principles.

00:29:01 They are not simply allowed. This is John's message. You are not simply allowed to do

00:29:06 whatever is legal. No, God's law reigns supreme. This is a big deal because Herod tried to claim,

00:29:15 like I said, that he practiced Judaism. I want you to see this pattern. This is a pattern

00:29:19 repeated over and over in history. Someone will try to excuse his sin. Well, technically it's okay.

00:29:27 I found a legal loophole to do this. No one's harmed. It's not against the law. Just two

00:29:33 consenting adults, all of that. And to that, we as Christians reply with what is lawful.

00:29:42 What has God said about the matter? That is our message. What is commanded by God?

00:29:50 And notice that the commands of God, according to John, applied to the least, the normal people 0.61

00:29:56 coming to be baptized and the greatest King Herod. Now I want you to see what happens when we 0.77

00:30:03 proclaim God's law to people who have hard hearts. God's truth and his judgment can come to haunt

00:30:12 people, to weigh on them with a guilt that they don't know what to do with. Even King Herod knew

00:30:20 that John was righteous and yet Herod and Herodias killed him. They did it anyway. Notice that verse

00:30:27 five said that Herod wanted to kill him the whole time he was in prison. Notice that Herodias

00:30:33 especially hated John's message. In Mark's gospel, we read that she bore a grudge for months against

00:30:40 him. So the guilt of the divorce and the unlawful marriage and eventually the guilt of imprisoning

00:30:48 and killing John blossoms in Herod into paranoia. Verses one and two tell us that when he heard that

00:30:56 Jesus was preaching, he's like, only explanation. Even though I'm aligned with the Sadducees who 0.99

00:31:02 don't believe in the resurrection, this is a resurrection. John is back and he's going to

00:31:06 judge me. You see, when we preach God's law, it leads to a sense of God's judgment on people.

00:31:15 and we as christians we sometimes forget that that is a terrifying thing to those who are not being

00:31:23 softened by the holy spirit matthew henry says this he says the terror and reproach of conscience

00:31:30 which herod like other daring offenders could not shake off and are proofs and warnings of a future

00:31:36 judgment and a future misery to them but there may be the terror of convictions where there is

00:31:43 not truth of conversion. In other words, the terror that God is right can be present even if someone

00:31:49 is not willing to repent. When men pretend to favor the gospel yet live in evil, boy does that

00:31:57 describe a lot of public figures in our time now. We must not favor their self-delusion but must

00:32:05 deliver our consciences as John did. The world may call this rudeness. What rudeness? An insistence

00:32:11 of saying no no no no no you say you love the gospel but you live wicked lives

00:32:15 the world may call that rudeness and blind zeal false professors or timid christians

00:32:24 may censure it as a want of civility politeness he's saying we're going to get called impolite

00:32:29 but the most powerful enemies can go no further than the lord sees good to permit herod feared

00:32:36 that putting of John to death

00:32:39 might raise a rebellion among the people,

00:32:41 which it did not.

00:32:43 But he never feared

00:32:45 it might stir up his own conscience

00:32:47 against him, which it did.

00:32:51 And then this line,

00:32:52 men fear being hanged

00:32:54 for what they do not fear being damned for.

00:33:00 So brothers and sisters,

00:33:01 we must not be surprised

00:33:03 with your friends and coworkers

00:33:05 and family members when we live in a wicked time that when we preach god's truth and god's law

00:33:13 guilt will descend on them but unless the holy spirit works in their heart

00:33:19 often their only response to that guilt is to retaliate

00:33:23 sometimes when god's people preach the truth revival happens as with nineveh

00:33:29 and sometimes people harden like with pharaoh

00:33:33 and that leads to the next point

00:33:41 everybody fears something but few fear God

00:33:46 notice throughout this text Herod is full of fear

00:33:52 he's afraid of a kind of ghostly supernatural vengeance

00:33:56 John the Baptist back from the dead a specter like Lady Macbeth feared

00:34:00 he's also afraid of the people the crowd the masses verse 5 said that he would not put john

00:34:08 to death because he feared them he feared a revolt that they would start an uprising

00:34:12 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 his reputation in front of his guests now think about this surely if this dancer

00:34:28 had asked for his own head,

00:34:32 he would have found a way out of this.

00:34:35 But he didn't.

00:34:36 Because it was John the Baptist's head

00:34:38 and because he was afraid of losing face,

00:34:40 even though he didn't want to,

00:34:42 he thought probably this is not a good idea,

00:34:44 he did it anyway.

00:34:46 He feared losing his public image.

00:34:51 You see the contrast here. 0.99

00:34:53 Herod, the unworthy king, afraid, cowardly, conniving.

00:34:58 And then Matthew drawing the image of Christ, Jesus.

00:35:03 The true king, bold and courageous, giving.

00:35:07 The next passage, this is not a coincidence, is the feeding of the 5,000.

00:35:13 So here we see Herod's banquet of gluttony and debauchery and death.

00:35:17 And then we see Jesus' banquet of life and service and grace.

00:35:23 afraid people are tight-fisted cautious ready to lash out and suspicious

00:35:34 they are this way not only because they're afraid to lose the one thing that they have

00:35:40 but also because deep down they know that they're a slave to their own fear

00:35:46 fear brothers and sisters fear is a terrible master it completely paralyzes controls and

00:35:55 drives us to do wicked and totally illogical things and not only is the true king christ

00:36:02 not afraid but he goes beyond that and he frees his subjects from fear

00:36:08 unlike Herod whose subjects lived in fear we do not have to fear what any man would do to us

00:36:17 yes in this passage we see they may do terrible things to us but we do not have to fear them

00:36:24 John Gill says this Herod feared the multitude not God but the multitude and these not only the

00:36:32 large number of people that attended on John's ministry and were baptized him and became his

00:36:38 disciples, but also the generality of the people, the whole body of the Jewish nation.

00:36:43 So God is pleased oftentimes to restrain the wickedness of princes by the fear of their

00:36:49 subjects. And in this sense, it was a good fear for a while that kept John alive.

00:36:57 I said just a moment ago that Christians do not have to fear, but that's not entirely 0.94

00:37:02 true, is it? We do fear. We do fear. We fear the Lord, the holy judge of all. But that fear,

00:37:12 as a Christian, actually becomes a wondrous thing. Think of a Formula One driver, which I have never

00:37:21 been and never done. But I imagine it's a terrifying thing to sit down in that machine,

00:37:26 to go racing around it over 100 miles an hour inches apart from the cars next to it taking

00:37:34 turns in all weather conditions formula one drivers experience extreme g-forces from the

00:37:42 rapid changes in speed and direction it can be over five g's while they're braking and cornering

00:37:47 they also exert significant physical force pushing that brake pedal and the clutch and all that can

00:37:53 can require up to 200 pounds of leg pushing force and they do this for hours their neck and their

00:38:01 core has to be extremely strong because they get bounced around so terrifically and yet when that

00:38:08 driver gets in that car I imagine there's still a thrill of exhilaration but there's a confidence

00:38:15 in how the car has been built in the years of his training the communication with the pit crew

00:38:21 and that fear that would be terrifying for us becomes a sense of awe and exhilaration for him

00:38:29 so it is with christians as we believe more and more what christ has done for us that he has

00:38:36 redeemed us our nearness to god which apart from christ is utter terror and ruin becomes less and

00:38:44 less terrifying we come to trust the work that christ has done we are in constant communication

00:38:49 with him. We experience not only forgiveness for past sins, but strength for today's struggles.

00:38:56 And suddenly, the terror of being in God's presence becomes something else. It becomes awe.

00:39:03 It becomes reverence. It is the fearful delight of being embraced by Aslan.

00:39:10 and yet those who hate christ cannot know this their only fear is a dread terror of the holiness

00:39:20 of god they only know to fight or to flee so of course they will lash out but brothers and sisters

00:39:28 we do not fear them we fear and reverence the lord

00:39:32 and certainly we would be tempted to fear because the wicked in their fear and in their guilt and

00:39:43 in their hardness will lash out and so here we see the next point the twisted alliance between hate

00:39:48 and lust this story tells us more details than we might want to know about how wicked

00:39:56 Herod, Herodias, and even the entire ruling class were. First of all, we have to see that everything

00:40:04 about these two, Herod and Herodias, the king and his so-called niece's wife, revolved around

00:40:11 pleasure and power. Herod was a weak-willed man in a lot of ways. And this combination of a love

00:40:19 for pleasure and a love for power is a dangerous combination. I said earlier that Herod wanted to

00:40:24 take the whole region, the whole area for his own kingdom. And Herodias, the illegitimate niece's 0.95

00:40:31 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 sin, and they hated that the people would listen to them. They hated that the message was gaining

00:40:43 traction. That's even worse for them. Notice that verse 3 says that Herod imprisoned John in the

00:40:52 first place, quote, for the sake of Herodias. She's the one that demanded it. I hate that man 0.98

00:40:59 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 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 on the spot. John dared to tell the truth. And this is exactly what we see now. People get angry,

00:41:28 and the more public they are, the more angry they get. Look at how this festered in her. John 1.00

00:41:33 was in prison already. He's already out of the public image. He couldn't criticize her publicly.

00:41:39 he couldn't call her out anymore. And yet Mark 6, 19 says this, and Herodias had a grudge against

00:41:46 him and wanted him to be put to death, but she could not. This is at the time of the banquet

00:41:51 that we read about. So this whole time, months or maybe even a year, she's got this grudge gnawing

00:41:56 at her. John, John. And you have to think about how crazy he is. He's in a dungeon, completely

00:42:01 forgotten by everyone else in the country. She wakes up in the morning, John, that John the

00:42:05 baptist growing and festering in her we must expect that people will sometimes be personally 0.88

00:42:14 offended by god's truth and that this will lead them to carry a grudge and the grudge will be

00:42:20 carried against the messenger of that truth when we bear god's truth and we bear witness to his law

00:42:29 we will be the ones that people come to hate sometimes

00:42:33 there's another motivation here that we need to keep in mind and it is

00:42:38 herod's lust his debauchery herod hosts this lavish party to commemorate his birthday

00:42:47 commentators are a little bit split here some of them say maybe it was his coronation or the

00:42:51 annual celebration of his coronation either way large party it seems to be the custom of royalty

00:42:59 in ancient times to have these lavish parties with men only pharaoh did this uh the babylonians

00:43:06 did this uh sorry the assyrians did this um the men would come there would be a lot of drinking

00:43:13 a lot of gluttonous feasting and a lot of what we'll call it dancing

00:43:18 basically this was a modern day non-christian debaucherous bachelor party

00:43:26 the text doesn't tell us this but the historians do tell us so I'm going to read from

00:43:33 the commentator John Ellicott he says this dances so he's talking here about

00:43:39 what appealed finally to Herod and it was this dance by this girl he says dances in filmy garments

00:43:46 that but half concealed the form commonly of an impure or voluptuous nature were common enough

00:43:52 both at eastern and roman banquets the guests being simply spectators but the dancers were

00:43:59 for the most part women who made it their calling in other words they were professional dancers 0.92

00:44:04 usually and it was a new thing at herod's party at which every decent jew would have shuttered 1.00

00:44:12 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 gays of the banqueters including as they did the chief captains and chiliarchs of the roman legions 0.97

00:44:27 as well as herod's own courtiers and the chief men of the province according to mark 6 21

00:44:32 but herodias the wife it would seem knew the tetrarch herod knew herod's weak point and

00:44:41 sought to bend him to her will, even though it were by the sacrifice of her own daughter's

00:44:49 modesty. She danced before them, literally in the midst of them, as they reclined on their

00:44:56 couches, indolently, which means without shame, gazing at her. This wicked, wicked woman sacrificing 0.98

00:45:08 her daughter's modesty in order to get what she wanted because she knew that this wicked, 1.00

00:45:14 wicked man would love it.

00:45:19 Things have really not changed at all, have they? 0.95

00:45:23 Notice this, though.

00:45:25 This was not a common practice.

00:45:27 Maybe having dancers, inappropriate dancers, would have been somewhat common. 0.97

00:45:32 But for someone of the royal family to come in and debase herself in this way,

00:45:37 that would have been new and we see in mark's account that everyone was delighted by it

00:45:43 their delight in perversion that day got turned up a notch before it was just

00:45:50 professional dancers now it's a holy or not a royal girl

00:45:55 this explains what we are seeing now by the way sin when it goes public when it's private sin

00:46:06 there's a measure of social shame that sometimes forces us to restrain ourselves but when sin goes

00:46:13 public and is an approved of publicly it gets turned up quickly it gets turned up quickly

00:46:20 and when it's embraced publicly it actually becomes a race now to see who can be the next

00:46:29 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 to be the person who turned it up a notch. So when sin is public, the situation is really desperate

00:46:43 because now it becomes a game to be the one who can turn up the volume and turn up the volume

00:46:48 and turn up the volume. And so though they were both involved, in this case we see that Herodias

00:46:57 plotted against her so-called husband, humiliated him in public by blindsiding him with the dance

00:47:03 and then also with the request for John's head. Herod is pleased and probably partially drunk 0.52

00:47:11 and he offers this girl whatever she wants. Now Herodias was obviously planning this.

00:47:19 She knew what kind of party it was. She knew that lavish offers would be made

00:47:24 because that was the custom.

00:47:27 And even so, her request blindsided Herod.

00:47:34 The girl goes out, comes in.

00:47:36 Herod's probably thinking she's going to ask for, you know, a horse

00:47:38 or some, you know, very expensive trinket.

00:47:43 King Herod, give me the head of John the Baptist here, right now, on a platter.

00:47:50 and immediately he realizes he's been played by his own wife but afraid to lose face publicly

00:47:59 Herod ordered it done immediately and as John was likely there in that fortress that's the one in

00:48:06 the southern region of Israel where Herod made his residence there was a prison there probably

00:48:13 John was on the premise, probably happened in like 15, 20 minutes. We need to see how bleak

00:48:21 this was at the time. John has been in prison for months with very little exposure. He's sent

00:48:31 messengers, Jesus, are you the one? He's by himself. He does not get any sort of final sermon.

00:48:39 He doesn't get a final appeal.

00:48:41 He doesn't get a confrontation like Elijah did

00:48:43 where fire descends and burns up the idols of the wicked.

00:48:48 He doesn't get Stephen's chance,

00:48:51 who even though he was martyred,

00:48:52 presented a defense, a powerful defense of the gospel

00:48:55 that was used to convert the apostle Paul.

00:48:59 He's brought out of the cell,

00:49:01 walked to the execution block,

00:49:02 and with no explanation,

00:49:03 and it's over.

00:49:06 The greatest of the prophets,

00:49:08 receives the most ignominious and shameful death.

00:49:14 Like Aslan's death, it seemed not only that evil had won,

00:49:18 but that it had won with impunity, with no consequence. 0.99

00:49:24 This conniving, evil, vindictive woman 1.00

00:49:26 and her lecherous, power-hungry husband 1.00

00:49:29 had killed the greatest of all the prophets just like that.

00:49:34 No epic showdown.

00:49:38 cowardice, cravenness, and capitulation. And this is the pattern. When people do wrong and pursue

00:49:45 evil, they can only descend more and more until what was once unthinkable, Herod was not going to

00:49:52 kill John the Baptist. All of a sudden, it seems like an okay idea. What was once unthinkable now 0.69

00:50:00 becomes a happy tool to accomplish more wickedness and this brothers and sisters this pattern is

00:50:09 inevitable in the wicked and it is why christians must speak god's truth it's the only breaks it's

00:50:17 the only true check the only hope for people to be convicted of sin there are other measures that

00:50:25 can temporarily restrain evil and we applaud those but they're temporary

00:50:30 but to close today i don't want to leave us on that note of despondency i want to just

00:50:39 quickly look at jesus response the last few minutes here looking at how jesus responded to this

00:50:45 we see in the next verse that he took himself away he secluded himself when he heard about it

00:50:51 so we see here that in his humanity he wanted to grieve we see secondly that even though he

00:50:59 wanted to be alone the crowd followed him and his response was compassion and service to them

00:51:05 brothers and sisters remember as we think about the nation and the world

00:51:09 there are the people caught in the middle they are sinners yes but they're not the same as the

00:51:15 ones driving the wickedness they know their need and they come looking for help they don't know

00:51:20 where the help is these are the people that we see with compassion and we serve and we love

00:51:28 but we also see that Jesus removes himself rather than putting himself in public here

00:51:36 Jesus had a strategy and this was not the time for a confrontation with Herod

00:51:42 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 and he moves out to the country for a little while but it will not always be that way if we

00:51:55 look down a little bit in the story at the end of his time in the galilee jesus leaves the region

00:52:03 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 left the region of the Galilee, which was Herod's territory, and he went down to Judea beyond the

00:52:19 Jordan, also Herod's territory, exactly where John the Baptist had performed his ministry, had been

00:52:27 baptizing the people coming out of Jerusalem, and had publicly called Herod to account. He leaves

00:52:33 Galilee, and it's obviously intentional. I'm going right to where Herod had his showdown with John 0.89

00:52:40 the Baptist. And you remember I talked about how the question of this divorce dominated the public

00:52:48 conversation. It was still the case. And Jesus arrives in this region and the loyal lapdogs of

00:52:56 the Herodians, the Pharisees, if you look at verse one, it says the Pharisees came right up to him

00:53:01 to test him. Not to just discourse with him. It was to trap him. And they say to him,

00:53:11 first thing that they say to him when he arrives in Herod's region of power,

00:53:16 is it lawful to divorce a woman for any reason at all? Man, you see how this political question,

00:53:25 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 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 be done but Jesus does something incredible here he doesn't go back to Moses he goes back to

00:53:43 creation and he says God created this way in the beginning and the important thing here is as

00:53:50 preeminent and powerful and central as the law of God is Jesus actually says you guys are missing

00:53:57 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 roman and no jew and no pharisee and no sadducee gets to countermand that and it leaves them stunned

00:54:13 i love this about jesus that when he leaves the galilee he goes right to that spot picks that

00:54:19 exact same fight and wipes the floor with them by saying you're asking the wrong question nobody

00:54:26 here in this picture wants to submit to God. Nobody. And that's your problem. Because if

00:54:32 you submitted to God, you would recognize me as the King and the Messiah, and you would humble

00:54:36 yourselves. So brothers and sisters, we need to remember that in times that we live in, wicked

00:54:46 times when we preach God's truth it's going to hurt people have not been exposed to it

00:54:55 or they have been used to hiding it and it's going to hurt and there's going to be backlash

00:55:00 but that's the time that God has called us into to preach the truth and the gospel

00:55:08 with courage with boldness with resolution and to proclaim like John the Baptist did

00:55:16 the true king has come. And the message and the gospel of the kingdom is that he welcomes all

00:55:23 who humble themselves and repent and believe. So let us not grow weary in doing that in the face

00:55:31 of increasing hostility, increasingly high stakes. Let us carry the banner of Christ forward

00:55:36 together. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this incredible truth. Thank you that

00:55:42 your son Jesus Christ the true king and messiah is not cowardly he's not weak he is not indecisive

00:55:55 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 to proclaim that to the world around us we trust you lord we don't fear the world we fear

00:56:07 and trust and revere you so help us to walk in obedience in Jesus name amen

00:56:12 Amen.

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The NXR Podcast - November 09, 2025

THE SERMON - The Message to the Magistrate ｜ Matthew 14_1-12

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