God"s Voice Silenced

We ask you to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 14. For those of you who are listening for the first time, we're going through the book of Matthew, and today we come to the first 12 verses of Matthew chapter 14.

In Matthew 13, we dealt with eight stories, eight parables told by Jesus. And he told these parables, these stories, to help us understand the meaning of the kingdom of heaven. And one of the things we learned is that the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is of supreme value.

It's of incomparable value. Nothing can compare with the kingdom of God. And so, we read earlier in part of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 6 that Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Many things in life, many things we could be doing, many important things, many things demand our attention, many priorities we could say. But the Lord Jesus is saying to you and me, if you're a follower, seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. That is, those who are in the kingdom of God, those who have repented and believe in the gospel are now following Jesus Christ must understand that Jesus is King.

He's King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is to be King of your life. You are to follow Him irrespective of the cost. You are to follow Him wherever He may lead. In fact, this commitment to the cause of Jesus Christ is so strong that one of His early apostles, the Apostle Paul, describes himself as a slave, as a servant of Jesus Christ. You want to be a slave? Be a slave of Jesus Christ. And that means as we follow Jesus, we follow Him not on your terms, but on His.

Not your will, but His will. That is, as a slave following Jesus Christ, we are totally in His hands to do His will. And we saw last time, as we concluded Matthew chapter 13, that Jesus is rejected by His hometown. And now as we come into the opening verses of Matthew chapter 14, we will read of the tragic death of a great man. In fact, of the forerunner of our Lord Jesus Christ.

A man prophesied in the Old Testament. A man of whom Jesus said, of those born of women, there has arisen none greater than John the Baptist. Yes, we're going to read of the death, the cruel death of this great man of John the Baptist. And Matthew is putting this in his gospel not only to give us the factual historical account of the death of John the Baptist, but to provide an example, an important example that following Jesus is costly. It's very, very unlikely that you're going to lose your head because you're following Jesus Christ. But following Christ for each one of us is costly as we will learn. So let's read this very interesting story of the death of John the Baptist.

And I think it will help us and encourage us. I trust and motivate us to be dedicated followers of Jesus. Matthew chapter 14 then, and I'm reading from verse 1, I'm reading from the English standard version, which is the version we use at Calvary and is a good modern version. Matthew 14 then verse 1, at that time Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus and he said to his servants, this is John the Baptist. He's been raised from the dead.

This is why these miraculous powers are at work in him. 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's not lawful for you to have her. And though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people because they held him to be a prophet. 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. Prompted by her mother, she said, give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter. And the king was sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests, he commanded it to be given. He sent and had John beheaded in the prison and his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl and she brought it to her mother. Verse 12, and his disciples came.