1.
Please pray
with me. May the words of my mouth and
the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and
our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word this morning is
taken from Mark 6:14-29 and is entitled, “The
Preacher Meets His King,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
It’s
sometimes said that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I think that saying is flawed, because the only being who possesses absolute
power is God Himself, and He’s absolutely without corruption. Still, we can’t
deny that in a human sense, the more power one has, the more corrupt one tends
to be. Heading almost every list of the great criminal minds and evil tyrants
of world history are men such as the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, the Emperor
Nero, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin. These men had one thing in common—they
were rulers who wielded virtually unlimited power. That is, no one (at least
within their own nations) exercised restraints on them. Herod didn’t possess
the same power as a Hitler or a Stalin, but in his little realm, his evil
impulses were unrestrained. And yet, John the Baptist was brave enough to try
to restrain him.
3.
In Mark
6:14-29 we see that the Preacher meets his King. Here John the Baptist and Herod Antipas are
the perfect opposites. John was serious and simple; Herod was flamboyant and
ornate. John was righteous; Herod was wicked. John was a man of immense moral
courage; Herod was a man who lived in spineless relativity. John was a man who
kept his conscience and lost his head. Herod was a man who took John’s head and
lost his own conscience. It’s the story of the life and death of a
conscience—of the death of a soul. This model has been lived out thousands of
times in this century as well as in preceding ages. It bears gracious
instruction for those who will learn.
4.
It all
began when John confronted Herod about a sin in his life and Herod reacted
vengefully: “For Herod himself had sent
and laid hold of John, and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his
brother Philip’s wife; for he had married her. Because John had said to Herod,
“It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” Therefore Herodias held
it against him and wanted to kill him, but she could not; for Herod feared
John, knowing that he was a just and holy man, and he protected him. And when
he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly” (vv. 17–20). Let me
provide some background and then try to break down this terrible incident.
5.
John the
Baptist was God’s anointed witness to declare to Israel the coming of the
kingdom of God and the appearance of Jesus God’s anointed King. John was the
first human witness to Jesus; he leaped in the womb of his mother, Elizabeth,
when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, came to visit her (Luke 1:41). Later, of
course, he bore witness to Jesus as “The
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). His main
function was to call the people of Israel to prepare themselves for the coming
of Jesus, but in at least one instance, he got much more specific in denouncing
sin—he thundered against Herod Antipas for his adulterous lifestyle.
6.
Herod’s
guilty conscience really began before John entered the picture. Mark 6:17 describes the scandalous love
affair between Herod and Herodias, which led to an even more scandalous
marriage. Herodias was married to Herod’s brother, Philip. Tradition records
that Herod seduced Herodias and then convinced her to divorce Philip and marry
him. Herod seduced his brother’s wife and married her in view of all the world.
7.
John
the Baptist, that fiery desert preacher of repentance, wouldn’t tolerate such
an incestuous affair. “It is not lawful
for you to have your brother’s wife” (v 18). John does what all faithful
prophets and preachers of God must do: proclaim God’s unrelenting Law in all
its force and severity regardless of the position, power, and influence of the
person. Like Nathan, that famous prophet of old who looked David, the most powerful
king of Israel, in the face and declared, “You
are the man who deserves to die for committing adultery only to murder the
woman’s husband to cover the sin,” so John declares the sin of such actions
were before the Lord God.
8.
The single
greatest restraint on evil that God has placed in this world is conscience. The
most wicked people, sociopaths and psychopaths, are sometimes described as
being without conscience. Even so, they
haven’t been able to annihilate altogether that voice of right and wrong that
God has implanted in every human creature. The Apostle Paul speaks of the law
written on the heart, so that one’s conscience bears witness to God’s standards
and one’s thoughts therefore accuse or excuse (Rom. 2:12–16).
9.
Of course,
we can’t fall into the trap of “Jiminy Cricket theology”; we can’t always let
our consciences be our guides. If we follow our consciences at every point,
they will guide us into disaster. Even though God plants a conscience in the
mind of every human being, our repeated sins put calluses on our consciences,
and we learn how to silence the voice of conscience within us. In other words,
our consciences can be twisted. So, if we only let conscience be our guide, we will probably live in
wickedness.
10.
No matter
how much we seek to suppress our consciences, we can’t finally do so. The
people in this world who are hostile to the things of God, who have no qualms
about the godless behavior in which they’re involved every day, don’t always
sleep easily at night. When they put their heads on the pillow, they know that
the way they are living isn’t good. I think that, to some degree, explains
Herod’s fascination with John the Baptist.
11.
Have
you noticed that when you’re struggling with a particular sin, the Church and
her pastors then become attractive and repelling—at the same time? This is the case when the preacher John the
Baptist, meets his King Herod. The man or woman with the guilty conscience says,
“How does he know about my sin? He’s
preaching to me! Who does he think he is to single me out from everyone else?!”
It’s true; Christians will sometimes quit coming to hear God’s Word and to
receive Christ’s body and blood when their conscience tells them they’re
violating God’s Law. And yet, so often they’ll be the first to defend the
Church when outsiders speak ill of it. They love the Church, her pastors and
members, but they refuse to join them regularly.
12.
Who
will deliver us from the living death of a guilty conscience? The same man that
Herod thought was John the Baptist returned from the dead: Jesus, our Savior
and Lord. Through your baptism into Jesus you are sealed with the promised Holy
Spirit. No longer are you walking in the futility of a sinful mind that’s
neither alive to God nor at home in this fallen world. You have “heard the word of truth, the gospel of your
salvation” (Eph 1:13). In Jesus, you are made alive again.
13.
The
tragic death of John the Baptist powerfully proclaims the mission of our Lord
Jesus. The disgust we feel over Herod and Herodias’s scandalous marriage should
serve as a warning for us. Sin is corrosive—not just sexual sin, but any and
every violation of God’s Holy Law. We must not allow ourselves to think that
such sins only happen to others. Within each of us is a world of sins. And the
Lord Jesus came to save us from them through his life, death, and resurrection.
Daily we pray “thy will be done” in
the hope and confidence that God our Father “breaks and hinders every evil plan and purpose of the devil, the world,
and our sinful nature, which do not want us to hallow God’s name or let His
kingdom come” (Small Catechism, explanation of the Third Petition).
14.
The
death John suffers also points to Jesus’ own death. For Jesus the preacher also met a king. Our
Lord wouldn’t die under the order of Herod (Lk 23:6–16). Jesus died under a
different government official, Pontius Pilate, who likewise declared his victim
innocent and righteous, only to cower under pressure from others. The disciples
of John took the body of their master “and
laid it in a tomb” (v 29). Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus, would
take the Lord’s crucified body from Pilate and lay him in a tomb.
15.
The
joyous difference between John the Baptist and our Lord Jesus, is that Jesus
rose from the dead on the third day in order to destroy the power of death and
the devil (Heb 2:14), to give us justification to eternal life (Rom 4:25), and
to wash our consciences clean (Heb 10:22).
Because Jesus lives, you live—pure, clean, holy in the sight of God.
Connected to the Lord’s death in Baptism, you are living recipients of his
resurrection life. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment