The Beheading of John the Baptist

When Mary, the mother of Jesus, met her cousin, the baby in Elizabeth's womb leaped with joy. The Baptist calling Israel to repentance in preparation for Jesus.

And for a while, John and Jesus had parallel ministries until an evil king was provoked. Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul takes us back to this tumultuous time in Israel's history and reminds us that faithfulness to God is costly.

Let's join R.C. now as he begins today's sermon in prayer. Father and our God now as we attend Your Word, we pray that You will be merciful to us by granting us the illuminating power of Your Holy Spirit, that the full truth and its impact may be known to us in this hour. For we ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. Last week we saw the commissioning of the twelve to go two by two into the neighboring villages in the area of Galilee, and now we read a flashback report tied in with the reaction of Herod Antipas to the growing reputation of Jesus. Verse 14 of chapter 6 begins with these words, Now King Herod heard of him, for his name had become well known. And he said, John the Baptist is risen from the dead, and therefore these powers are at work in him. Now notice that when Mark gives us this narrative, he identifies the ruler of that region of Galilee as King Herod.

Now a couple of things I need to say about that. This Herod is not the King Herod who was so vicious in the slaughter of the innocents at the time of the birth of our Lord. This is one of the sons of that Herod who was known as Herod the Great. And actually by Mark's calling him King Herod, there is some irony involved there, though it was the popular Jewish designation of Herod Antipas that he would be called by the people King Herod.

In reality, formally speaking, he did not have that title bestowed upon him by Rome, which was no small matter in this man's life. His father, Herod the Great, had ten wives, making Henry the Eighth seem like something of a piker by comparison. One of the wives, by the way, of Herod the Great was Cleopatra, who had a brief fling with this famous ruler over Palestine. Herod the Great died in 4 BC, and his kingdom, or his domain, was divided among four of his sons, each of whom became tetrarch of a various reason.

Tetrarch simply means ruler over a fourth. And so Herod Antipas with whom we have to do here was ruler of the Galilee region. He was tetrarch of that segment of the land. And he ruled from 4 BC until 39 AD.

Do the math. It was a reign of some forty-three years. Now when he was first coming into power in the Galilee, he petitioned Caesar Augustus to grant him the title king, as his father had enjoyed.

And Augustus refused the request. And this really nettled Herod Antipas, but it particularly bothered his illegitimate wife, Herodias, who constantly goaded and urged him to acquire that title king. Then in 39 AD, when the mad Emperor Caligula was on the throne in Rome at the urging of Herodias, Herod Antipas made a formal application once more for the title king. He had all of the requisites already. He had all the benefits of royalty without the title.

But sometimes people crave titles more than anything else. He wanted the prestige of the title king. Caligula was infuriated by the request and forthwith banished Herod and Herodias to Gaul, and so his reign ended after forty-three years because he got greedy for the title, which I think has some irony to it. But in any case, Mark calls him by the common nomenclature of the Jews King Herod, and he introduces this man here, as I mentioned was one of the sons of Herod the Great. One commentator, by the way, on this family history of Herod the Great says that the family tree of Herod the Great is more twisted than the trunk of a great olive tree native to that region.

Really the machinations and political intrigue that goes on in the New Testament days among this family is so wicked that it staggers the imagination. But in any case, Herod Antipas was disturbed by the rumors that were coming to him about the mighty works that were being done by Jesus. Now keep in mind that up until this time in Jesus' public ministry, His fame was overshadowed by the fame of John the Baptist.

John the Baptist got more press at this time than Jesus did because the Jews were absolutely astonished at the renewal of the office of profit, which had been so important in Old Testament days but had ceased for a period of four hundred years until John came out of the wilderness in the Spirit and in the power of Elijah. And as Mark shows us here with his flashback, Herod was well acquainted with John the Baptist. And so to explain Herod's reaction to the news of the ministry of Jesus, Mark fills in the historical gaps of how John the Baptist had come to be executed, and that's what we find here in the narrative today. But initially when the news of Jesus comes to the ears of Herod, he's trembling.

He's terrified. And his first fear is that John the Baptist has come back from the dead. He is haunted by the idea that John had returned to life because in his mind, which was also the case in many of antiquity, the idea that resurrections always forecall the idea of judgment. And so if John is raised from the dead, that means he's being raised to bring to pass the judgment of God upon his enemies, number one of whom is Herod who was responsible for his death. Some of you may recall the Hollywood movie called The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas.

It starred Richard Burton. They show it every Easter, how the mad Emperor Caligula was terrified by the mere presence of that piece of cloth that had been worn by Jesus. And so Herod has this superstitious belief that John the Baptist is spreading about the land magical powers, and he's taken on a new name called Jesus. It gives us an illustration of the adage that the pagan trembles at the rustling of a leaf and the wicked flee when no man pursues them. That is the status of those who are plagued by troubled consciences. Others said, no, it's not John the Baptist, it's Elijah.

That was fear number two. Remember that John had come in the power and the spirit of Elijah, and so still the judgment of God is in view when they're afraid of the presence of the prophet Elijah or one of the prophets. But when Herod heard, he said, this is John. I just know it's John. It has to be John.

He was not aware of the history of the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist, that they were obviously two different persons. But Herod wasn't aware of that, and so he's still insisting that it had to be John. This is John whom I beheaded. He's been raised from the dead, for Herod himself had sent and laid hold of John, bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, for he had married her.

Ah, therein lies the tale. This is what cost John the Baptist his life. Remember that when John appeared out of the wilderness, he came as the herald of the Messiah. He came as God's anointed witness to declare to Israel the coming of the kingdom of God and the appearance of God's anointed King. And though we've read and studied that witness that he gave by the River Jordan to the Lamb of God who appeared to him there, we remember that much earlier in his life, John the Baptist was the first human witness to Jesus.

Do you remember when that was? When after the angel Gabriel came to Mary and announced that she would be the mother of the Messiah, that Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was already six months pregnant with the child that Gabriel had announced to Zacharias would be the forerunner of the Messiah, and what happened when Mary met Elizabeth? The babe leaped in her womb. That before he was born, John the Baptist was bearing witness to Jesus. And so he is in the very real sense the first Christian witness. He's also the first Christian martyr.

There's a link in the language there that we often overlook. The word martyr comes into the English language from the root of the verb in Greek, which means to bear witness. The reason why that connection between witness and martyr has been so strong throughout linguistic history because in the early church to be an open witness, to witness to Christ before kings and rulers was in many cases to experience martyrdom. And in this case, John the Baptist who bore witness to the coming kingdom called all of the people to repentance, told them all they were unclean, but he thundered especially against the tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, for his wickedness and his adulterous lifestyle. Herod had been married to the daughter of Aretas who was king of the Nabataeans, who were a bordering nation next to the region of Herod Antipas. And he divorced his wife because he had an affair with his half-brother's wife, and her name was Herodias. And so he illegitimately, to satisfy his own lust, divorced his true wife and then married his stepbrother's wife, which was illegal by Jewish law on two grounds. On the one hand, there was the problem of adultery, and secondly, there was the prohibition in Jewish law of marrying your brother's wife while your brother was still alive. And so out of his sinful desires, Herod Antipas violates the law of God. Now in his mind, he had justified it, and he had assumed that his divorce was completely legitimate even though it patently violated the law of God.

And his wife was particularly vexed that anybody would raise any question about the legitimacy of her second marriage now to Herod Antipas. And John the Baptist publicly declared their union to be unlawful and wicked. Now you notice the pattern in biblical history that continues after the death of the last apostle that any time you call attention to the wickedness of those in power, any time you speak publicly against sin in high places, you are risking your neck. We read already today what happened when Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and spoke the truth of God to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh would have none of it. He not only denied the request of Moses and Aaron, but he took away the straw from the Hebrews so they had no straw for their bricks. At the same time, he maintained the quotas for bricks, further oppressing the people of God. How like this is of rulers, not just in the ancient world, but in the world today.

There are few, beloved, in history who when placed in positions of power and authority are really concerned about justice. Several years ago there was a case in a presbytery where a minister had founded a church, and it has been built to many people, over a thousand members. He went on his vacation for four weeks, and while he was gone, three of his elders met with the rest of the elders and accused the minister of having a sin problem. Now what would you expect that to mean, some kind of sexual immorality or embezzlement or something of that nature, when in fact this lead elder, who was very powerful in the church, thought that the pastor had too much pride.

And so he convinced the rest of the session to depose the minister without a hearing, without a trial, without any formal charges being made to him, so that when he came back from his vacation, he was told to vacate his office. Well, of course, the pastor appealed to the presbytery. The presbytery created a commission to investigate it, and I was asked by the presbytery to participate in this commission's investigation.

So I went to the meeting, and the chairman of the commission set forth the problem. He said, Well, here we have a church that has been thriving with about a thousand people. The founding minister, however, has been accused of having a sin problem, which is pride, by three of the elders.

Now we have a problem here. The minister is hurting. His associate minister is hurting. The three elders who brought the charges are hurting.

The rest of the session are hurting, and the congregation is hurting. So we have five parties that we must minister to, and we have to figure out a way to make peace among all five groups. And after he spelled out what our task was, he looked, and he said, Have I left anything out? I raised my hand.

He said, What's that? The main purpose of this commission is not to see how many groups we can make happy. The purpose of this commission is to establish justice, to see who is the wrongdoer here, and to vindicate the innocent. They didn't want to do that because that was not the political thing to do. And so the minister was banished. The three elders won control, and when the pulpit was vacant, the chairman of our commission sent his resume and asked to be considered to fill the pulpit in place of the man that was kicked out. I see this day in and day out where people in authority are supposed to seek truth, and instead their decisions are guided by who do we have to appease.

From Neville Chamberlain with his umbrella hanging over the balcony in Munich when he said, We have achieved peace in our time, to this commission I just mentioned, it is human nature not to seek justice but to seek appeasement of people in political intrigue and political solutions. Now what happens here with Herod's attempt to appease his wife, which ends in the death of John the Baptist? I will leave, God willing, till next Sunday because we cannot miss even at this point the parallel between the way in which John the Baptist was unjustly killed for political reasons and the way in which the one to whom he bore witness was killed by an equally treacherous ruler who sought to appease a screaming multitude. The tragic end of John the Baptist life teaches us so much about our own call in this world.

When we faithfully speak biblical truth, many times we will cause controversy. We've heard a message from Dr. R.C. Sproul's series from The Gospel of Mark today on Renewing Your Mind. It is our practice to return to the series each Lord's Day, and we're glad you've joined us for today's edition.

Studying verse by verse through the Gospels provides us with insight into the life and ministry of Christ, and we'd like to help you in your further study of this gospel. When you contact us today with your donation of any amount, we will send you Dr. Sproul's commentary on Mark. It's a 400-page hardbound volume that will be a great addition to your library. You can make your request online when you go to renewingyourmind.org. And in advance, let me thank you for your gift. If you enjoy this program, I hope you'll take the opportunity to share it with your social media friends.

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