NXR Podcast - THE SERMON - The Message to the Magistrate | Matthew 14:1-12
Aired: 2025-11-09
Duration: 56:12


=== John's Dangerous Mission (06:19) ===

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[00:00:27]  As Pastor Joel said, our passage this morning will be in the gospel according to Matthew.
[00:00:32]  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.
[00:00:54]  At that time, Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus and he said to his servants, This is John the Baptist.
[00:01:02]  He has been raised from the dead.
[00:01:04]  That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.
[00:01:07]  For Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because John had been saying to him, It is not lawful for you to have her.
[00:01:20]  And though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people because they held him to be a prophet.
[00:01:25]  But when Herod's birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company 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.
[00:01:43]  And the king was sorry because of his oaths and his guests, but because of his oaths and his guests, he commanded it to be given.
[00:01:50]  He sent and had John beheaded in the prison.
[00:01:54]  And his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl.
[00:01:58]  And she brought it to her mother.
[00:02:00]  And his disciples came and took the body and buried it.
[00:02:03]  And they went and told Jesus, This is the word of the Lord.
[00:02:08]  You may be seated.
[00:02:26]  Well, our passage today recounts the death of John the Baptist.
[00:02:30]  And before we move into the passage at all, I want to give us a quick reminder of what John's primary mission was.
[00:02:39]  That is, it was to prepare the way for the new king, the king that was coming.
[00:02:44]  Remember, John preached the gospel of the kingdom that is, the good news that the true king had come and that this king welcomes all who repent and believe.
[00:02:57]  But we need to remember here at the beginning that John, his whole ministry, his whole mission was that he was rolling out the red carpet for the arrival of the king that could ascend and take the rightful throne.
[00:03:11]  And in doing this, as John was rolling out this welcome for the true king, this threatened the rule of all other earthly kings.
[00:03:21]  And so we need to remember today, because this passage seems strangely placed, but Matthew's goal in the book of Matthew.
[00:03:27]  It is to make the case that Christ is, in fact, the true king, the king of the Jews and the king of all.
[00:03:35]  And so that's what Matthew is doing here today.
[00:03:37]  He's contrasting Herod, a wicked king, with Jesus, the true king.
[00:03:43]  He's contrasting Jesus' authority, kindness, and righteousness with Herod's tyranny, cruelty, and cravenness.
[00:03:52]  And it would be easy to think that John the Baptist's comments that get him in trouble, his comments about divorce, were somehow an anomaly.
[00:04:01]  Separate from his main mission, not essential to our Christian mission as well.
[00:04:06]  It would be tempting to think, John, if you would have just stayed in your lane, prepared the way for the Messiah, 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.
[00:04:21]  You would have prepared the way better for Jesus.
[00:04:26]  As we will see today, though, that anytime Christians proclaim that King Jesus has come, we must push the authority of Jesus to All areas of life in society.
[00:04:38]  We do not leave any part of society or any person outside of Christ's authority.
[00:04:43]  And so, as we see with John the Baptist, sometimes that means in our effort to promote and teach the authority of Christ, we will endure severe consequences.
[00:04:55]  By God's grace, I hope to encourage us in two ways to be bold, to yes, proclaim the kingship of Christ, but to be resolute and prepared when there's blowback and consequence.
[00:05:07]  Our nation is in a mess.
[00:05:11]  And I think of the lines from that famous children's book, We're Going on a Bear Hunt.
[00:05:16]  This mess that we're in, we can't go over it.
[00:05:19]  We can't go under it.
[00:05:21]  We have to go through it.
[00:05:24]  By God's grace, we will, and we will carry, like John the Baptist, the flag of Christ each step of the way.
[00:05:33]  In your notes, I wrote a brief intro.
[00:05:35]  I'm not going to read that.
[00:05:36]  It's there as a placeholder because before we dive into the passage itself, I actually want to take.
[00:05:40]  An extended time giving some background here.
[00:05:43]  Okay?
[00:05:45]  So, those are kind of a summary of what I'm about to say now.
[00:05:48]  And I think it's necessary to do this background on the situation in that time because it really, really will make the passage come to life.
[00:05:56]  So, get ready for some names and some locations.
[00:05:59]  Okay?
[00:06:00]  Track with me.
[00:06:01]  But just keep in mind that the three main names, I'm doing all of this to try to explain the three names that are in our text: Herod, Philip, and Herodias.
[00:06:11]  Okay?
[00:06:11]  Those are the three that you really have to keep track of.
[00:06:15]  There's something that's been going on in the background of the book of Matthew.

=== Herod Antipas Ambitions (15:33) ===

[00:06:19]  And that is, as authority, whether religious or political, has seen, has just kind of bumped into and encountered the true authority of Jesus, it has seen Jesus as a threat.
[00:06:31]  We saw this originally with Herod the Great, and the prophecies and the Magi came, and he thought immediately, uh oh, this is no good.
[00:06:39]  And so when he bumped into the authority of Jesus, even as a baby, he sought to destroy him.
[00:06:44]  And Mary and Joseph had to flee.
[00:06:46]  And then, of course, there were many years, about 30 years of silence.
[00:06:50]  But then, as Jesus begins to emerge, already we see the religious and the political authorities bumping into him and immediately saying, Not, here is the king, we should listen from him, we should submit to him, but, uh oh, this guy's trouble, we need to get rid of him.
[00:07:08]  So, in order to understand what was going on with this game of cat and mouse, we do need to know a little bit of history here.
[00:07:14]  Okay?
[00:07:16]  So, you're probably familiar with Alexander the Great.
[00:07:21]  After his reign ended, the area of Israel and Judea fell under Greek control still, but particularly it was the Greek Seleucids.
[00:07:30]  And when the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV, came into power in this region, in the region of Israel, he tried to completely wipe out all temple worship, and in fact, even to use the temple of the Jews for pagan worship.
[00:07:45]  And this led to what we know as the Maccabean Revolt.
[00:07:49]  And the Jewish priest Mattathias and his sons, they were the Maccabees, they led a revolt against this Greek king.
[00:07:58]  This was 167 to 160 BC.
[00:08:00]  And amazingly, even though they were an inferior number, they won.
[00:08:04]  And they cleaned the temple out from all the pagan implements of worship, and they restored Jewish law and Jewish worship.
[00:08:12]  And so, for about 80 to 100 years from then on, Israel enjoyed actual independence.
[00:08:19]  Under the family that came out of this, ended up ruling, was called the Hasmoneans.
[00:08:24]  And so it's referred to as the Hasmonean dynasty.
[00:08:26]  They were genuine Jews.
[00:08:28]  They were from the tribe of Levi.
[00:08:30]  And they ended up ruling for the next hundred or so years.
[00:08:34]  But they made a critical misstep, and it was this they were of the tribe of Levi.
[00:08:39]  So by right and by Old Testament law, they had the right to carry on the priesthood.
[00:08:44]  But they also took the kingship as well, which should have gone to the line of Judah, the line of David.
[00:08:52]  And this created an internal instability within the country that all through this dynasty.
[00:08:58]  Was always a conflict.
[00:09:00]  And eventually, towards the end of it, two Hasmonean brothers fought over this throne, the Jewish throne, and they couldn't resolve it.
[00:09:10]  And so, what they did was they said, Let's invite the new global power, Rome, to come 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.
[00:09:21]  We would be glad to move an army into your region.
[00:09:23]  And then they never moved out.
[00:09:25]  And they occupied Israel from that point on.
[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.
[00:09:46]  He was not Jewish.
[00:09:47]  He was an Edomite, specifically called an Edomian.
[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.
[00:09:59]  And this was 40 BC.
[00:10:01]  So we.
[00:10:02]  We have to understand that when Jesus was here, this arrangement had only been going on for 40 years, right?
[00:10:08]  It was pretty new.
[00:10:12]  So, by the time of the Gospels, the throne of Israel was occupied by a Roman installed foreigner, 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.
[00:10:29]  So, Herod the Great is the one who was in charge when Jesus was born.
[00:10:32]  But he died shortly after Jesus was born.
[00:10:35]  And again, it's important to know what happened in the wake of his death.
[00:10:41]  When he died, remember, he had the whole kingdom, basically all of Israel was under his rulership.
[00:10:48]  But Rome decided when he died that they no longer wanted one kingdom in that area.
[00:10:53]  It had been too unstable, too volatile, there had been rebellions.
[00:10:57]  And so they split that whole area into four pieces, four districts, as it were.
[00:11:03]  These were called tetrarchies.
[00:11:05]  If you think of the game Tetris, there's a reason why all the little pieces in Tetris have four cubes.
[00:11:10]  Tetra means four.
[00:11:11]  Okay?
[00:11:13]  So, for our purposes today, we need to know a couple of these names.
[00:11:17]  Herod the Great had many children with different 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.
[00:11:31]  Herod from Herod, and his name was Antipas.
[00:11:34]  And then Herod the Great also had another grandson named Herod Philip.
[00:11:40]  Okay?
[00:11:40]  Herod Philip.
[00:11:41]  And Philip in the story and Herod in the story.
[00:11:44]  Herod Antipas and Philip were brothers.
[00:11:47]  They had the same father but different mothers.
[00:11:51]  Herod Antipas controlled two regions of the Israel, really the Judea area.
[00:12:00]  Herod Philip actually did not control any land.
[00:12:02]  He was a wealthy man, he had estates, but he was not a ruler.
[00:12:06]  This is a little bit confusing because in Luke it does talk about Philip the Tetrarch.
[00:12:10]  There was a separate Philip who was a governor in this area, and he was actually a pretty good governor.
[00:12:15]  He was very restrained.
[00:12:17]  And a very good governor.
[00:12:18]  That's not the Philip that's here in Matthew 14.
[00:12:22]  This Philip is the half brother of Herod, Herod Antipas.
[00:12:28]  Now, Philip married Herod the Great's granddaughter.
[00:12:36]  Her name was Herodias, and this is the same one that's in our passage Herodias.
[00:12:40]  Now, if you do the family tree, you come to the conclusion that Philip married his niece.
[00:12:47]  Not great.
[00:12:49]  Not great.
[00:12:50]  Okay?
[00:12:51]  She was the granddaughter of Herod the Great.
[00:12:53]  And Herod Antipas, the heiress in this story, he, in order to get political power, he had his eyes set on conquering all of Israel.
[00:13:02]  So his kingdom was down in the southeast, and he wanted to conquer all of the rest of Israel.
[00:13:09]  And he had a neighbor to his southeast who was an Arabian king, and to 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.
[00:13:23]  He didn't have to worry about attack or invasion from there.
[00:13:28]  But because of Herod and Herodias' ambition, they decided it would be better, 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, while both of the men were still alive.
[00:13:53]  This was an incestuous, adulterous, politically calculated marriage, and it violated clearly Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20.
[00:14:02]  And Herod Antipas, the Herod in the story, divorced that princess of the Arabian king to marry his niece, Herodias.
[00:14:12]  And all of this was with an eye that they thought that they could gain some sort of political power and take over the entire region.
[00:14:22]  And into this corruption stepped John the Baptist, who, in preparing the way for the true king, confronted Herod Antipas with fearless prophetic clarity.
[00:14:34]  In Mark 6, 18, we read this.
[00:14:36]  He said, It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.
[00:14:42]  And Herod feared this because John spoke the truth and he spoke it publicly to the people.
[00:14:49]  And Herodias, his niece wife supposedly, hated John, knowing that what he said threatened her power.
[00:14:59]  Now, why do I point all of this out?
[00:15:02]  Because we actually have a situation in our time.
[00:15:06]  Which is very similar to what we're reading about here in the Gospel of Matthew.
[00:15:12]  In Israel at the time, the religious landscape had split in two.
[00:15:17]  There were two sides.
[00:15:18]  The Sadducees, who were the religious establishment, 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, they denied the resurrection.
[00:15:34]  In short, they were denying any sort of.
[00:15:37]  Miraculous interpretation of the Old Testament.
[00:15:40]  And they were moving away both from the Old Testament and from the traditions that had been built up by the various rabbis over the centuries.
[00:15:48]  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, they were bumping up against Jesus a lot earlier.
[00:16:09]  Than the Sadducees, who were mainly in Jerusalem.
[00:16:14]  The Pharisees absolutely despised Roman occupation of Israel.
[00:16:20]  So the country was split religiously a conservative group, a liberal group.
[00:16:25]  The liberal group had most of the establishment power, and there was a third group in the mix, which is a political faction called the Herodians.
[00:16:33]  The Herodians were primarily political, but because they were governing in Judea, most of Herod the Great's family that descended from him.
[00:16:43]  Had 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, Jesus said to them, Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
[00:17:07]  And this 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.
[00:17:17]  So, it's likely that the Sadducees and the Herodians were very much in cahoots.
[00:17:25]  So, the people who were loyal to Herod were only performatively religious.
[00:17:29]  Their religion was all about the new, it was very liberal in the most liberal way possible.
[00:17:36]  And yet, this is what's so interesting.
[00:17:39]  So, you've got the Pharisees who hate the Sadducees, and by extension, they hate the Herodians.
[00:17:44]  When the Pharisees in the regional areas, in the synagogues, began bumping up against Jesus, Not liking what he was saying, they immediately realized this guy's a problem.
[00:17:56]  And Mark 3 6 says this.
[00:17:58]  This is early in the Gospel of Mark.
[00:18:00]  The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Jesus on how to destroy him.
[00:18:08]  And so, what we see is these three massive political bodies who are at odds and control the entire discourse in the country, in the region.
[00:18:18]  As soon as the Pharisees bump up against Jesus, they're like, Those guys aren't so bad, actually.
[00:18:23]  Let's go partner with them for a little while and get rid of this Jesus guy.
[00:18:29]  And all of this comes to a head, as it were.
[00:18:31]  In the political intrigue of the royal houses.
[00:18:35]  As I said before, Herod Antipas was politically ambitious.
[00:18:40]  He wanted to reunite the whole region under one kingdom.
[00:18:46]  And his brother Philip was not a ruler.
[00:18:51]  And so the niece Herodias, who was probably even more power hungry than Herod himself, she and Herod and Antipas decide that they're going to unite.
[00:19:03]  And as the story goes, Herod Antipas was traveling and he spent some time at his half brother Philip's estates.
[00:19:10]  And while he was there, he and Herodias either fell in love or hatched a plan, one of the two.
[00:19:17]  And they decided to divorce their spouses and marry for political power.
[00:19:23]  Now, as I said, they were both married already.
[00:19:27]  And when Herod Antipas divorced the Arabian princess, the king of Arabia to his south, not all of Arabia, the Arab kingdom to his south, took it personally.
[00:19:40]  And he mustered an army and invaded Herod Antipas, and he actually won.
[00:19:45]  And the emperor Tiberius actually 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 weak and ineffective.
[00:20:00]  This was after Jesus died.
[00:20:03]  Many of the Jews of that time interpreted that defeat as God's judgment, the same judgment that John the Baptist had warned Herod about.
[00:20:13]  And Herodias, the niece wife of Philip, when she initiated the divorce with Philip, this was quite a scandal because for Jews, it was not permissible for a woman to initiate a divorce according to the Old Testament law.
[00:20:29]  It was allowed under Roman law, though.
[00:20:33]  And so what's happening is she is appealing to Roman law to justify her sin at the expense of Old Testament law.
[00:20:44]  Jewish law.
[00:20:48]  Now there's one last thing to note here.
[00:20:52]  In order to maintain stability in the region, what the emperor did was he didn't give these rulers big pieces of land to govern.
[00:21:00]  He cut them even smaller and said, okay, Herod, you get the region around the Galilee, which is to the north, and you get the southeast.
[00:21:08]  And they were separated.
[00:21:10]  And this kept them from consolidating power.
[00:21:12]  And so Herod, the Herod in this story, He controlled the region around the Galilee where Jesus was, but his base of operations was in the southeast, exactly where John the Baptist had been preaching.
[00:21:27]  When it says in the Gospels that people went out of Jerusalem to where John was, this is Judea beyond the Jordan, that was about 20, 25 miles, and that distance took them out of Samaria and into this Herod's region.
[00:21:43]  And near there was his main castle.
[00:21:45]  He had a huge castle.
[00:21:47]  Called Macarius.
[00:21:49]  Macarius, sorry.

=== The Marriage Controversy (15:25) ===

[00:21:52]  Now, why does this matter?
[00:21:54]  Because Herod Antipas and Herodias, the woman, their divorces would have been permitted under Roman law.
[00:22:04]  But during his public ministry, John the Baptist went out of his way to confront Herod publicly about their marriage practices and their divorces.
[00:22:14]  In Luke 3, we read this 3 18.
[00:22:18]  So, with many other exhortations, John preached good news to the people.
[00:22:22]  But Herod the Tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all and he locked John in prison.
[00:22:36]  In fact, the marriage, actually the divorce, really, that Herod the Tetrarch and the niece's wife, Herodias, had done was such a public issue that there was a massive public debate going on throughout the whole nation of Israel.
[00:22:54]  There were two prominent schools led by the two most prominent rabbis, and one of them said, Herod was justified.
[00:23:01]  The Old Testament allows divorce for any reason.
[00:23:05]  And the other camp said, no, no, no.
[00:23:08]  The Old Testament only allows divorce for unfaithfulness, immorality.
[00:23:14]  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.
[00:23:31]  And behind the debate, is the marriage justified or the divorce justified, was the question were Herodias and Herod in sin for doing this?
[00:23:42]  It was not just a theoretical religious debate.
[00:23:45]  The political consequences of it were severe.
[00:23:49]  And because of this, it became a very hot political topic.
[00:23:54]  Because the Jews that said theologically, Herod and Herodias were wrong to divorce, were implying he is an illegitimate king.
[00:24:05]  She is illegitimate.
[00:24:10]  And the remarkable thing is that in preparing the way for the true king, for Christ, John the Baptist walked right into that controversy over Herod's marriage.
[00:24:19]  This was not a secondary issue to him.
[00:24:24]  Because John's job was to prepare the way for the true king.
[00:24:27]  And to do that, he had to point out the false one.
[00:24:35]  And so John is preaching that Herod's marriage is not legitimate, and the implication is that he is or is not a legitimate king.
[00:24:43]  And there was a fear that this crowd that disagreed with Herod's divorce would agitate and either overthrow Herod or cause such a ruckus in the region that Rome would have to send in more troops and occupy even further.
[00:24:57]  Sides developed around this question.
[00:25:00]  High stakes were involved, and depending on how you answered that question, Determined what side you were on, both religiously and politically.
[00:25:09]  There was no middle ground.
[00:25:14]  And I hope you see that even though the times we live in are new to us, they're not unprecedented.
[00:25:23]  This is, in fact, a very similar time to what Jesus himself walked into in his public ministry.
[00:25:32]  Hot political topics based in religious interpretations, based on religious schisms.
[00:25:38]  Rulers who are appealing to the masses with a fake or false conversion in order to maintain legitimacy, and no one willing to call out the wickedness.
[00:25:51]  No, our times are not unprecedented.
[00:25:55]  They're not.
[00:25:56]  The Lord has led his people and his plan and the gospel and the church through times like ours before.
[00:26:05]  And because John waded into this, he was arrested, possibly for many months.
[00:26:15]  Possibly some of the verses seem to indicate that he would have a conversation with Herod that was likely private, and we know that on occasion his disciples were allowed to see him, but he was completely removed from public life for months or even up to a year.
[00:26:31]  So, with all that in mind, let's quickly go through the text now to see what it has to say from Jesus' time and what that means for ours.
[00:26:42]  So, this is point number two, it's really the first point, but it's Point number two in the outline God's law is absolute and applies absolutely.
[00:26:50]  This is the first thing that we're to learn from this interaction between John the Baptist and Herod.
[00:26:55]  So there's kind of an aside here.
[00:26:57]  What actually happens is Herod hears about Jesus' fame in the Galilee region.
[00:27:04]  Herod had not too recently murdered John the Baptist.
[00:27:10]  And so when he hears of this new figure that he had never heard of rising in prominence, doing miracles, teaching with authority, He 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.
[00:27:32]  We don't know if Herod went out to see him.
[00:27:34]  We don't know whether John was simply preaching to the crowds and they asked about it.
[00:27:39]  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 situation.
[00:27:51]  Look at what the text says in verse 4.
[00:27:53]  Verse 4 refers to Herodias as his brother Philip's wife.
[00:27:59]  Well, at that point, according to Roman law, he was married to Herod.
[00:28:04]  He was Herod's wife.
[00:28:05]  But the text goes out of its way to say, no, She was Philip's wife.
[00:28:11]  And we see what John said to Herod in verse 6.
[00:28:15]  John was saying to him, it is unlawful for you to have her.
[00:28:19]  It is unlawful for you to have her.
[00:28:20]  Remember, the law of the Romans would have permitted Herod's divorce.
[00:28:24]  And Herodias' divorce, for that matter.
[00:28:28]  But John the Baptist applied God's standard, not Rome's.
[00:28:32]  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.
[00:28:43]  Meaning that even for these two, Herod and Herodias, who conveniently want to call themselves Jews, conveniently want to apply Roman law, will do anything it takes to gain political power.
[00:28:57]  God is not pleased, and you cannot violate God's principles.
[00:29:02]  They are not simply allowed, this is John's message.
[00:29:05]  You are not simply allowed to do whatever is legal.
[00:29:08]  No, God's law reigns supreme.
[00:29:12]  This is a big deal because Herod tried to claim, like I said, that he practiced Judaism.
[00:29:18]  I want you to see this pattern.
[00:29:19]  This is a pattern repeated over and over in history.
[00:29:22]  Someone will try to excuse his sin.
[00:29:25]  Well, technically, it's okay.
[00:29:27]  I found a legal loophole to do this.
[00:29:30]  No one's harmed.
[00:29:31]  It's not against the law.
[00:29:32]  Just two consenting adults, all of that.
[00:29:36]  And to that, we as Christians reply with what is lawful.
[00:29:42]  What has God said about the matter?
[00:29:45]  That is our message.
[00:29:48]  What is commanded by God?
[00:29:51]  And notice that the commands of God, according to John, applied to the least, the normal people coming to be baptized, and the greatest, King Herod.
[00:30:02]  And I want you to see what happens when we proclaim God's law to people who have hard hearts.
[00:30:09]  God's truth and his judgment can come to haunt people, to weigh on them with a guilt that they don't know what to do with.
[00:30:18]  Even King Herod knew that John was righteous, and yet Herod and Herodias killed him.
[00:30:25]  They did it anyway.
[00:30:26]  Notice that verse 5 said that Herod wanted to kill him the whole time he was in prison.
[00:30:32]  Notice that Herodias especially hated John's message.
[00:30:36]  In Mark's gospel, we read that she bore a grudge for months against him.
[00:30:43]  So, the guilt of the divorce and the unlawful marriage, and eventually the guilt of imprisoning and killing John, blossoms in Herod into paranoia.
[00:30:53]  Verses 1 and 2 tell us that when he heard that Jesus was preaching, he's like, Only explanation, even though I'm aligned with the Sadducees who don't believe in the resurrection, this is a resurrection.
[00:31:05]  John is back and he's going to judge me.
[00:31:09]  You see, when we preach God's law, It leads to a sense of God's judgment on people.
[00:31:17]  And we as Christians, we sometimes forget that that is a terrifying thing to those who are not being softened by the Holy Spirit.
[00:31:26]  Matthew Henry says this He says, The terror and reproach of conscience, which Herod, like other daring offenders, could not shake off, are proofs and warnings of a future judgment and a future misery to them.
[00:31:40]  But there may be the terror of convictions.
[00:31:43]  Where there is not truth of conversion.
[00:31:45]  In other words, the terror that God is right can be present even if someone is not willing to repent.
[00:31:52]  When men pretend to favor the gospel yet live in evil, boy, does that describe a lot of public figures in our time now.
[00:32:01]  We must not favor their self delusion, but must deliver our consciences as John did.
[00:32:08]  The world may call this rudeness.
[00:32:09]  What rudeness?
[00:32:10]  An insistence of saying, no, no, no, no.
[00:32:13]  You say you love the gospel, but you live wicked lives.
[00:32:18]  The world may call that rudeness and blind zeal.
[00:32:22]  False professors or timid Christians may censure it as a want of civility.
[00:32:27]  Politeness, he's saying.
[00:32:28]  We're going to get called impolite.
[00:32:30]  But the most powerful enemies can go no further than the Lord sees good to permit.
[00:32:35]  Herod feared that putting John to death might raise a rebellion among the people, which it did not.
[00:32:43]  But he never feared it might stir up his own conscience against him, which it did.
[00:32:51]  And then this line men fear being hanged for what they do not fear being damned for.
[00:33:00]  So, brothers and sisters, we must not be surprised with your friends and coworkers and family members when we live in a wicked time that when we preach God's truth and God's law, guilt will descend on them.
[00:33:17]  But unless the Holy Spirit works in their heart, often their only response to that guilt is to retaliate.
[00:33:25]  Sometimes, when God's people preach the truth, revival happens, as with Nineveh, and sometimes people harden, like with Pharaoh.
[00:33:40]  And that leads to the next point.
[00:33:43]  Everybody fears something, but few fear God.
[00:33:49]  Notice throughout this text, Herod is full of fear.
[00:33:53]  He's afraid of a kind of ghostly supernatural vengeance, John the Baptist back from the dead, a specter like Lady Macbeth feared.
[00:34:02]  He's also afraid of the people, the crowd, the masses.
[00:34:06]  Verse 5 said that he would not put John to death because he feared them.
[00:34:10]  He feared a revolt, that they would start an uprising.
[00:34:13]  And there's one more thing that he's afraid of.
[00:34:16]  In verse 9, we see that he was afraid to lose his reputation in front of his guests.
[00:34:24]  Now, think about this.
[00:34:26]  Surely, if this dancer had asked for his own head, 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, and because he was afraid of losing face, even though he didn't want to, he thought probably this is not a good idea.
[00:34:45]  He did it anyway.
[00:34:46]  He feared losing his public image.
[00:34:52]  You see the contrast here.
[00:34:53]  Herod, the unworthy king, afraid, cowardly, conniving.
[00:34:59]  And then Matthew drawing the image of Christ, Jesus, the true king, bold and courageous, giving.
[00:35:08]  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.
[00:35:18]  And then we see Jesus' banquet of life and service and grace.
[00:35:28]  Afraid people are tight fisted, cautious, ready to lash out, and suspicious.
[00:35:36]  They are this way not only because they're afraid to lose the one thing that they have, but also because deep down they know that they're a slave to their own fear.
[00:35:47]  Fear, brothers and sisters, fear is a terrible master.
[00:35:53]  It completely paralyzes, controls, and drives us to do wicked and totally illogical things.
[00:36:00]  And not only is the true King Christ not afraid, but he goes beyond that and he frees his subjects from fear.
[00:36:10]  Unlike Herod, whose subjects lived in fear.
[00:36:14]  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.
[00:36:26]  John Gill says this Herod feared the multitude, not God, but the multitude, and these, not only the large number of people that attended on John's ministry and were baptized him and became his disciples, but also the generality of the people, the whole body of the Jewish nation.
[00:36:44]  So God is pleased oftentimes to restrain the wickedness of princes by the fear of their subjects.
[00:36:51]  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 true, is it?
[00:37:04]  We do fear.
[00:37:06]  We do fear.
[00:37:07]  We fear the Lord, the holy judge of all.
[00:37:11]  But that fear, as a Christian, actually becomes a wondrous thing.

=== Fear of the Lord (05:25) ===

[00:37:18]  Think of a Formula One driver, which I have never been and never done.
[00:37:23]  But I imagine it's a terrifying thing to sit down in that machine.
[00:37:28]  To go racing around it over 100 miles an hour, inches apart from the cars next to it, taking turns in all weather conditions.
[00:37:37]  Formula One drivers experience extreme G forces from the rapid changes in speed and direction.
[00:37:44]  It can be over five Gs while they're braking and cornering.
[00:37:48]  They also exert significant physical force.
[00:37:51]  Pushing that brake pedal and the clutch and all that can require up to 200 pounds of leg pushing force.
[00:37:57]  And they do this for hours.
[00:38:00]  Their neck and their core have to be extremely strong because they get bounced around so terrifically.
[00:38:07]  And yet, when that driver gets in that car, I imagine there's still a thrill of exhilaration.
[00:38:14]  But there's a confidence in how the car has been built, in the years of his training, the communication with the pit crew.
[00:38:22]  And that fear that would be terrifying for us becomes a sense of awe and exhilaration for him.
[00:38:31]  So it is with Christians as we believe more and more what Christ has done for us, that he has redeemed us.
[00:38:37]  Our nearness to God, which apart from Christ is awesome.
[00:38:40]  Utter terror and ruin becomes less and less terrifying.
[00:38:45]  We come to trust the work that Christ has done.
[00:38:48]  We are in constant communication with Him.
[00:38:50]  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, it becomes reverence, it is the fearful delight of being embraced by Aslan.
[00:39:13]  And yet, those who hate Christ cannot know this.
[00:39:17]  Their only fear is a dread terror of the holiness of God.
[00:39:22]  They only know to fight or to flee.
[00:39:25]  So, of course, they will lash out.
[00:39:27]  But, brothers and sisters, we do not fear them.
[00:39:30]  We fear and reverence the Lord.
[00:39:37]  And certainly, we would be tempted to fear because the wicked, in their fear and in their guilt and in their hardness, will lash out.
[00:39:45]  And so, here we see.
[00:39:46]  The next point, the twisted alliance between hate and lust.
[00:39:52]  This story tells us more details than we might want to know about how wicked Herod, Herodias, and even the entire ruling class were.
[00:40:02]  First of all, we have to see that everything about these two, Herod and Herodias, the king and his so called niece wife, revolved around pleasure and power.
[00:40:14]  Herod was a weak willed man in a lot of ways.
[00:40:18]  And this combination of a love for pleasure and a love for power is a dangerous combination.
[00:40:23]  I said earlier that Herod wanted to take the whole region, the whole area for his own kingdom.
[00:40:29]  And Herodias, the illegitimate niece's wife, wanted this too.
[00:40:32]  She wanted to be the queen.
[00:40:35]  And so they both hated John for calling out their sin.
[00:40:39]  And they hated that the people would listen to them.
[00:40:41]  They hated that the message was gaining traction.
[00:40:44]  That's even worse for them.
[00:40:48]  Notice that verse 3 says that.
[00:40:51]  Herod imprisoned John in the first place, quote, for the sake of Herodias.
[00:40:56]  She's the one that demanded it.
[00:40:58]  I hate that man and what he says about me.
[00:41:02]  Get rid of him, kill him.
[00:41:04]  Call him down.
[00:41:04]  We're not killing anyone today.
[00:41:06]  I'll just throw him in jail.
[00:41:10]  Imagine the rage, the immediate rage that she had to want his death on the spot.
[00:41:22]  John dared to tell the truth.
[00:41:25]  And this is exactly what we see now.
[00:41:27]  People get angry, and the more public they are, the more angry they get.
[00:41:31]  Look at how this festered in her.
[00:41:33]  John was in prison already.
[00:41:35]  He's already out of the public image.
[00:41:38]  He couldn't criticize her publicly, he couldn't call her out anymore.
[00:41:42]  And yet, Mark 6 19 says this, and Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted him to be put to death, but she could not.
[00:41:49]  This is at the time of the banquet that we read about.
[00:41:52]  So, this whole time, months or maybe even a year, She's got this grudge gnawing at her.
[00:41:57]  John, John.
[00:41:58]  And you have to think about how crazy it is.
[00:41:59]  He's in a dungeon, completely forgotten by everyone else in the country.
[00:42:03]  She wakes up in the morning, John, that John the Baptist, growing and festering in her.
[00:42:11]  We must expect that people will sometimes be personally offended by God's truth, and that this will lead them to carry a grudge.
[00:42:19]  And the grudge will be carried against the messenger of that truth.
[00:42:25]  When we bear God's truth and we bear witness to his law, we will be the ones that people come to hate sometimes.
[00:42:35]  There's another motivation here that we need to keep in mind, and it is Herod's lust, his debauchery.

=== Lavish Party Tragedy (05:20) ===

[00:42:43]  Herod hosts this lavish party to commemorate his birthday.
[00:42:48]  Commentators are a little bit split here.
[00:42:49]  Some of them say maybe it was his coronation or the annual celebration of his coronation.
[00:42:54]  Either way, large party.
[00:42:56]  It seems to be the custom of royalty in ancient times to have these lavish parties with men only.
[00:43:03]  Pharaoh did this.
[00:43:05]  The Babylonians did this.
[00:43:07]  Sorry, the Assyrians did this.
[00:43:11]  The men would come.
[00:43:12]  There would be a lot of drinking, a lot of gluttonous feasting, and a lot of what we'll call it dancing.
[00:43:20]  Basically, this was a modern day non Christian debaucherous bachelor party.
[00:43:29]  The text doesn't tell us this, but the historians do tell us.
[00:43:32]  So I'm going to read from the commentator John Ellicott.
[00:43:36]  He says this dances, so he's talking here about what appealed finally to Herod, and it was this dance by this girl.
[00:43:44]  He says, dances in filmy garments that but half concealed the form, commonly of an impure or voluptuous nature, were common enough both at Eastern and Roman banquets, the guests being simply spectators.
[00:43:58]  But the dancers were, for the most part, women who made it their calling.
[00:44:02]  In other words, they were professional dancers, usually.
[00:44:06]  And it was a new thing at Herod's party, at which every decent Jew would have shuddered for the daughter of a kingly house to come in, thus in a shameless publicity, and expose herself to the gaze of the banqueters, including, as they did, the chief captains and chiliarchs of the Roman legions, as well as Herod's own courtiers and the chief men of the province, according to Mark 6 21.
[00:44:33]  But Herodias, the wife, it would seem, knew the tetrarch, Herod, knew Herod's weak point and sought to bend him to her will, even though it were by the sacrifice of her own daughter's modesty.
[00:44:51]  She danced before them, literally in the midst of them, as they reclined on their couches, indolently, which means without shame, gazing at her.
[00:45:05]  This wicked, wicked woman sacrificing her daughter's modesty in order to get what she wanted because she knew that this wicked, wicked man would love it.
[00:45:20]  Things have really not changed at all, have they?
[00:45:24]  Notice this, though.
[00:45:26]  This was not a common practice.
[00:45:27]  Maybe having dancers, inappropriate dancers, would have been somewhat common.
[00:45:32]  But for someone of the royal family to come in and debase herself in this way, that would have been new.
[00:45:40]  And we see in Mark's account that everyone was delighted by it.
[00:45:44]  Their delight in perversion that day got turned up a notch.
[00:45:49]  Before it was just professional dancers, now it's a holy or not a royal girl.
[00:45:59]  This explains what we are seeing now, by the way.
[00:46:03]  Sin, when it goes public, when it's private sin, there's a measure of social shame that sometimes forces us to restrain ourselves.
[00:46:12]  But when sin goes public and is approved of publicly, it gets turned up quickly.
[00:46:19]  It gets turned up quickly.
[00:46:23]  And when it's embraced publicly, it actually becomes a race now to see who can be the next person to get his hand on the knob and crank it up.
[00:46:34]  And crank it up.
[00:46:35]  And then it becomes a delight to be the person who turned it up a notch.
[00:46:40]  So when sin is public, the situation is really desperate because now it becomes a game to be the one who can turn up the volume and turn up the volume and turn up the volume.
[00:46:52]  And so, though they were both involved, in this case we see that Herodias plotted against her so called husband, humiliated him in public by blindsiding him with the dance, and then also with the request for John's head.
[00:47:08]  Herod is pleased and probably partially drunk, and he offers this girl whatever she wants.
[00:47:16]  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 because that was the custom.
[00:47:28]  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 a horse or some very expensive trinket.
[00:47:43]  King Herod, give me the head of John the Baptist here, right now, on a platter.
[00:47:52]  And immediately he realizes he's been played by his own wife.
[00:47:57]  But afraid to lose faith publicly, Herod ordered it done immediately.

=== Unthinkable Final Showdown (08:08) ===

[00:48:04]  And as John was likely there in that fortress, that's the one in the southern region of Israel where Herod made his residence, there was a prison there.
[00:48:12]  Probably John was on the premise, probably happened in like 15, 20 minutes.
[00:48:19]  We need to see how bleak this was at the time.
[00:48:25]  John has been in prison for months.
[00:48:28]  With very little exposure, he's sent messengers.
[00:48:31]  Jesus, are you the one?
[00:48:33]  He's by himself.
[00:48:35]  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, where fire descends and burns up the idols of the wicked.
[00:48:48]  He doesn't get Stephen's chance, who, even though he was martyred, presented a defense, a powerful defense of the gospel that was used to convert the apostle Paul.
[00:48:59]  He's brought out of the cell, walked to the execution block, and with no explanation, and it's over.
[00:49:06]  The greatest of the prophets receives the most ignominious and shameful death.
[00:49:14]  Like Aslan's death, it seemed not only that evil had won, but they had won with impunity, with no consequence.
[00:49:24]  This conniving, evil, vindictive woman and her lecherous, power hungry husband had killed the greatest of all the prophets just like that.
[00:49:35]  No epic showdown.
[00:49:38]  Cowardice, cravenness, and capitulation.
[00:49:41]  And this is the pattern.
[00:49:43]  When people do wrong and pursue evil, they can only descend.
[00:49:48]  More and more until what was once unthinkable, Herod was not going to kill John the Baptist.
[00:49:54]  All of a sudden, seems like an okay idea.
[00:49:58]  What was once unthinkable now becomes a happy tool to accomplish more wickedness.
[00:50:06]  And this, brothers and sisters, this pattern is inevitable in the wicked, and it is why Christians must speak God's truth.
[00:50:16]  It's the only breaks, it's the only true check.
[00:50:21]  The only hope for people to be convicted of sin.
[00:50:24]  There are other measures that can temporarily restrain evil, and we applaud those, but they're temporary.
[00:50:34]  But to close today, I don't want to leave us on that note of despondency.
[00:50:39]  I want to just quickly look at Jesus' response.
[00:50:43]  The last few minutes here, looking at how Jesus responded to this, we see in the next verse that he took himself away, he secluded himself when he heard about it.
[00:50:52]  So we see here that in his humanity, he wanted to grieve.
[00:50:57]  We see, secondly, that even though he 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, there are the people caught in the middle.
[00:51:12]  They are sinners, yes, but they're not the same as the ones driving the wickedness.
[00:51:17]  They know their need, and they come looking for help.
[00:51:20]  They don't know where the help is.
[00:51:22]  These are the people that we see with compassion and we serve and we love.
[00:51:30]  But we also see that Jesus removes himself rather than putting himself in public here.
[00:51:37]  Jesus had a strategy, and this was not the time for a confrontation with Herod.
[00:51:43]  So he heard about the death of John the Baptist, but he also heard that he was now on Herod's radar, and he moves out to the country for a little while.
[00:51:53]  But it will not always be that way.
[00:51:55]  If we look down a little bit in the story, at the end of his time in the Galilee, Jesus leaves the region in the northwest.
[00:52:05]  And where does he go?
[00:52:07]  I love this.
[00:52:08]  This is amazing.
[00:52:10]  Mark 10 tells us it says that he left the region of the Galilee, which was Herod's territory, and he went down to Judea beyond the Jordan, also Herod's territory.
[00:52:22]  Exactly where John the Baptist had performed his ministry, had been baptizing the people coming out of Jerusalem, and had publicly called Herod to account.
[00:52:33]  He leaves Galilee, and it's obviously intentional.
[00:52:36]  I'm going right to where Herod had his showdown with John the Baptist.
[00:52:44]  And you remember I talked about how the question of this divorce dominated the public conversation.
[00:52:49]  It was still the case.
[00:52:51]  And Jesus arrives in this region, and the loyal Lapdogs of the Herodians, the Pharisees.
[00:52:58]  If you look at verse 1, it says the Pharisees came right up to him to test him.
[00:53:05]  Not to discourse with him.
[00:53:07]  It was to trap him.
[00:53:10]  And they say to him, first thing that they say to him when he arrives in Herod's region of power is it lawful to divorce a woman for any reason at all?
[00:53:22]  Man, you see how this political question, this religious question, they're like, we've got him.
[00:53:28]  He's going to say yes or no.
[00:53:31]  He's going to say, no, it's not lawful.
[00:53:32]  And then we're going to.
[00:53:35]  Report back to the Herodians, and he's going to be done.
[00:53:37]  But Jesus does something incredible here.
[00:53:40]  He doesn't go back to Moses, he goes back to creation, and he says, God created this way in the beginning.
[00:53:49]  And the important thing here is as preeminent and powerful and central as the law of God is, Jesus actually says, You guys are missing the point.
[00:53:58]  It's not about Jewish law versus Roman law, it's about how God has made the world.
[00:54:05]  And no Roman and no Jew and no Pharisee and no Sadducee gets to countermand that.
[00:54:12]  And it leaves them stunned.
[00:54:14]  I love this about Jesus that when he leaves the Galilee, he goes right to that spot, picks that exact same fight, and wipes the floor with them by saying, You're asking the wrong question.
[00:54:25]  Nobody here in this picture wants to submit to God.
[00:54:29]  Nobody.
[00:54:30]  And that's your problem.
[00:54:31]  Because if you submitted to God, you would recognize me as the king and the Messiah, and you would humble yourselves.
[00:54:41]  So, brothers and sisters, we need to remember that in times that we live in, wicked times, when we preach God's truth, it's going to hurt.
[00:54:53]  People have not been exposed to it, or they have been used to hiding it.
[00:54:58]  And it's going to hurt, and there's going to be backlash.
[00:55:03]  But that's the time that God has called us into to preach the truth and the gospel.
[00:55:10]  With courage, with boldness, with resolution, and to proclaim, like John the Baptist did, the true king has come.
[00:55:19]  And the message and the gospel of the kingdom is that he welcomes all who humble themselves and repent and believe.
[00:55:27]  So let us not grow weary in doing that in the face of increasing hostility, increasingly high stakes.
[00:55:34]  Let us carry the banner of Christ forward together.
[00:55:37]  Let's pray.
[00:55:39]  Father, thank you for this incredible truth.
[00:55:42]  Thank you that.
[00:55:45]  Your son, Jesus Christ, the true king and Messiah, is not cowardly.
[00:55:51]  He's not weak.
[00:55:54]  He is not indecisive.
[00:55:57]  He is the true king of kings and the true lord of lords.
[00:56:00]  And we pray that you'd give us courage to proclaim that to the world around us.
[00:56:05]  We trust you, Lord.
[00:56:05]  We don't fear the world, we fear and trust and revere you.
[00:56:10]  So help us to walk in obedience.
[00:56:11]  In Jesus' name, amen.