The Bondage of Sin & the Sedition of Repentance

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Rosebrook. The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, Chapter 6, verses 14 through 29.

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King Herod heard about this, for Jesus' name had become well known. Some were saying,

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John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that's why miraculous powers are at work in him.

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Others said he's Elijah, and still others claimed he's a prophet like one of the prophets of long ago.

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But when Herod heard this, he said, John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead.

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For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison.

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He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, whom he had married.

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For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him.

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But she was not able to, because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man.

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When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled, yet he liked to listen to him.

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Finally, the opportune time came. On his birthday, Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.

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When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests.

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The king said to the girl, ask me for anything you want, and I will give it to you. So he promised her with an oath, whatever you ask,

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I will give you up to half of my kingdom. She went out and said to her mother, what shall

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I ask for? The head of John the Baptist, she answered, and at once the girl hurried in to the king with a request.

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I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist by the bladder. The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her.

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So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. The man went, beheaded

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John from the prison, and brought back his head on a bladder. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother.

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On hearing of this, John's disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. In the name of Jesus.

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So when you travel around on the roads out here, every now and then you see a barn or an old building, or at least what looked like it might have been a barn or an old building.

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It's gone derelict. You ever see these things and you just think, man, that must have been beautiful to look at when it was new, but now there's boards missing, it's leaning to one side, it looks like it's about to fall over, right?

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I want you to keep that in mind as we work through our text this morning.

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This is what sin does to us, and it blows us out, destroys us from the inside out.

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Today's gospel text, if you think about it, reads like one of today's supermarket tabloids with a parade of adultery, raunchy, lewd, dirty dancing, yes, they even had twerking in the ancient world, boneheaded rashness, a murderous grudge, and the blood of a man of God who preached against those who would sin against the

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Lord God Almighty by destroying the sanctity of marriage, and he called people to repent of their sins, be baptized, believe in the

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Messiah for the forgiveness of their sins. Has anything really changed, if you think about it, right?

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So this is the cataclysmic destruction of sin. Now you who would think that you can flirt with sin, you know, indulge a little evil in your life, excuse it by saying, oh, the air is human,

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I need to warn you that you are literally playing with fire, and not just any fire, but you're playing with the fires of hell.

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Sin is not to be trifled with, and the devil, he never offers sin without invisible chains attached to them, and those chains are designed to lock you up and drag you into hell.

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Remember that it was the mere eating of a forbidden fruit, you know, just eating, right? The mere eating of a forbidden fruit that plunged all of us into this curse that we are now in, we're all now made to suffer greatly in this life because of that curse, through the toil of our work, to the unpleasantness of dealing with each other's sins and baggage, to the wake of destruction that we've all left behind us, even in our own lives, to the diseases, wasting illnesses, and eventually the death that we all face, all of this is because of just eating a fruit.

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So sin is not to be trifled with. And Paul himself, in several passages, but Romans 6 in particular, makes it clear that sin is slavery.

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Sin is not freedom, it is slavery. Romans 6 .12,

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let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body. This is Paul writing to Christians, to make you obey its passions.

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Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, instead present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness' sake.

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For sin will not have dominion over you. You Christians, this is what

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Paul says, since you are not under the law, but you are under grace. And see, many people, they get that wrong.

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They think that because we're under grace, well, that means we can just go out and sin all we want. You know, the text says, sin will not have dominion over you since you are not under the law, but under grace.

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In other words, if you're really under grace, you're no longer under the dominion of sin. And then Paul says this, what then, are we to sin?

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Are we to sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? By no means do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.

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So be warned, sin is not a small matter. There's no such thing as a small sin at all.

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So let us return now to our text, and we will begin reading at the beginning.

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King Herod heard of it, is where our text begins. And that's kind of an odd place to start, because you think, he heard of what?

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Right? Well, the answer to that question is actually found in last week's pericope. If you remember last week, we were looking at Jesus sending out his twelve disciples.

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He had given them authority over unclean spirits, charged them to take nothing for their journey except for a staff.

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They went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons, anointed with oil, many who were sick, and healed them.

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This is what Herod had heard about. He was getting reports about Jesus, which should have been good news for him, because the one thing that Herod needed was the forgiveness of his sins.

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But keep in mind, sin has utterly decimated him. So the text says,

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King Herod heard of it, heard the report of Jesus, for Jesus' name had become known. Some said,

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John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him. But others said, he's

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Elijah. Others said, he's a prophet, like one of the prophets of old. But when Herod heard of it, he said,

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John, whom I beheaded, has been raised. And believe me when

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I tell you, he said this in fear. He was terrified of that thought.

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So rather than hearing the report of demons being cast out, of sins being forgiven, of Jesus and his disciples performing miracles, and seeing that as good news, the only thing

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Herod can think about is, oh no, it's John the Baptist, he's come back to get me.

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And this is all the result of his sin. It's very much akin to Shakespeare's play,

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Macbeth. If you remember from Act 5, Scene 1, after the murder of Banquo, Lady Macbeth begins taking to walking in her sleep.

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And she begins doing strange things. And in that scene, you have a doctor, you have a gentlewoman who's a lady -in -waiting, and then you also have

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Lady Macbeth. And I'll pick up a part of it from Shakespeare's play. The doctor says, lo, here she comes.

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This is her very guise, and upon my life, fast asleep, observe her, stand close. And then the doctor asks, how came she by that light?

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So Lady Macbeth is walking in the middle of the night, and she's got a light. And the woman says, why it stood by her.

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She has light by her continually, tis her command. See, she's so guilt -ridden and destroyed by the murder of Banquo that now she can't even sleep with the lights off.

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She's got to have a light on all the time. The doctor asks, do you see? Her eyes are open.

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And the woman says, aye, but their sense is shut. And then the doctor says, what is it she now does?

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Look how she rubs her hands. And then we hear this from Lady Macbeth, yet, here's a spot.

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And then she says, out, damn spot, out, I say. One, too wide, tis time to do it.

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Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard, what need we fear, who knows it, when none can call our power to account?

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Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him? What a dark scene.

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This is a dark play. And it deals with really dark matters. But each and every one of us, if we've lived long enough in this life, have experienced that time in our lives when we have woken up one morning and said,

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I can't believe that I'm guilty of doing that. We've all fallen short of God's perfect law.

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And each one of us is guilty of things that we are all deathly ashamed of.

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And so, keep in mind, sin wrecks us. It wrecks us in much the same way that it wrecked

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Judas. Matthew chapter 27 tells us this. When Judas, Jesus' betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind.

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Literally, it says he repented. He changed his mind, brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priest and the elder saying,

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I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. And truly, he had.

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He was seeking an absolution, though, from his co -conspirators. And they're not about to pronounce

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God's absolution. They said to him, what is that to us? See to it yourself. And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed and he went and he hanged himself.

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And the chief priest taking the pieces of silver said, it is not lawful to put them into the treasury since it's blood money, to which

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I say, and yeah, you're the ones who gave it to him. So, they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers.

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And that field has been called the field of blood to this day. Now, keep this in mind. When we talk about saving faith, when we talk about biblical repentance, merely feeling sorry for your sins is not saving faith.

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It isn't. Herod felt sorry. He felt guilt. Repentance, true biblical repentance, is contrition for your sins and trusting in Christ for mercy and forgiveness.

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It's two things. This explains why King David is forgiven and continues in the faith while Saul doesn't.

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This explains why Peter is restored and Judas is not. It's sorrow for sin and faith that Christ has bled and died for that sin, trust that Christ can even forgive that.

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That's not where Herod is at. The text continues, for it was Herod who had sent and seized

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John, bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother

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Philip's wife, because he had married her. Now, keep this in mind.

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The sanctity of marriage is kind of a hot topic right now. People are talking about it in light of the Supreme Court ruling.

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But don't think for a second that those who are attracted to people of the same sex are the only people defiling marriage.

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Marriage is defiled when anybody defiles the marriage bed, heterosexual or homosexual.

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And here, Herod, well, he had the hots for his brother's wife and she had the hots back for him.

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I mean, after all, Herod has power and Philip, yeah, not so much. She's got to be upwardly mobile, right?

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And so it probably began with a look across the table, maybe playing footsie and things like that, secretly meeting and making out.

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And then ultimately to full -blown adultery and then divorce. Of course, what this text doesn't tell you is that, well,

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Herod, he was also married. And we'll get to that at the end of our story today. So what happened?

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Herod took his brother's wife, bedded her, and married her. And John the

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Baptist, the fiery grasshopper -breath preacher of repentance, what did he say to Herod?

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It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. You're defiling

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God's institution of marriage. And they're heterosexual, keep that in mind.

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And it says this, and Herodias harbored a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death.

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Yeah, that's right. You preach repentance to somebody who is dead in trespasses and sins and they're likely to want to kill you.

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And yet that's, well, it all goes with the job description. If you're a prophet, a preacher, somebody sent by God to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins, death is a real possibility.

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But it never kept John from doing what he needed to do and he was ultimately arrested. And something similar happened in our

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Old Testament text. If you remember Amos. Amos was not a prophet or the son of a prophet.

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He was a keeper of sheep and yet the word of the Lord came to him. And he went and he preached.

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He preached and proclaimed that, well, Judah is going to go into exile.

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God's going to punish them for their sins. And listen to what it began from Amos chapter 7. Amaziah, the priest of Bethlehem, sent to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying,

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Amos has fired a Jew in the midst of the house of Israel. That's right.

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Amos is preaching the word of the Lord. Telling the truth. And the priest, man of God, high official, right?

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He says to the king, Amos has conspired against you in the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear his words.

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For thus Amos said, Jeroboam shall die by the sword and Israel must go into exile away from his land.

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That's not a conspiracy. That's not sedition. That's the word of the Lord. It's the truth.

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And here you have a man of God comforting the king and saying, oh, Amos, he's conspired against you.

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He's speaking against you. That's how it goes. Is it not? Same thing happened to John the

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Baptist. Again, it's all part of the job of being a prophet or a preacher or even a

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Christian. So we then continue with our text. But Herodias could not kill

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John the Baptist. For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe.

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So notice that John's integrity. John's message and his life proved to Herod, that wicked man, well, that John was a man of God.

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And it says this, when he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, yet he heard him gladly. And so here's the weird thing.

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There's John in prison at the citadel of Machaira, by the way.

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We learned this from history. He's in prison. And John, what's he doing? He's preaching to Herod.

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And Herod's perplexed. What is these strange words that I'm hearing from this man? Repent. And it's weird.

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He smells like grasshoppers. But, you know, and he's perplexed. He can't put it all together.

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And yet he enjoyed hearing him. Boy, he's fiery. He's got a lot of passion. That guy really gets worked up.

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I enjoy hearing him. And yet the word of the Lord, it's like shooting

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BBs into a brick wall. It's going nowhere. The man has been blown out by his sin.

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And so then this is what happens next. Perfect setup for getting rid of John the

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Baptist. An opportunity came when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.

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Notice Herod is putting on his own birthday party. That should tell you something about his character.

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As if the adultery doesn't already. And when Herodias' daughter, the daughter of an adulteress.

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And believe me when I tell you, your sin impacts your children. I want you to think about that.

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When Herodias' daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests.

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And yes, this is seductive, dirty dancing that's going on here. And everybody thought it was quite the thing to see.

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And the king said to the girl, ask me for whatever you wish and I will give it to you. And he vowed to her, whatever you ask me,

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I will give you up to half of my kingdom. Rash words.

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Stupid oath. There's many instances, even in the Old Testament, of men who made dumb oaths.

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You think of King Saul who basically said, any man today in battle who eats before we've won, that he will be put to death.

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And of course his son Jonathan ate, had some honey. And, well, he had to be put to death, right?

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And his men prevailed against Saul to keep him from doing that. Even King David made a rash vow one time.

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If you're familiar with the story of Nabal. Nabal means fool, which is a fitting name for this man.

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Nabal was a man whom David's men were actually guarding and protecting from the Philistines.

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And Nabal, being as dumb and foolish as he is, said harsh words and basically insulted

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King David. And King David basically said, that's it. I vow that I'm going to have his head.

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I'm going to kill him. And you know who saved Nabal? Nabal's wife, Abigail. She came and she spoke words of sense to King David.

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And David relented of his oath. And no one thought the lesser of him for not killing Nabal. And eventually the

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Lord did kill Nabal. Had a big old heart attack. And then the widow, Abigail, married

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King David. It's an interesting story. You should look it up. God has a way of working things out, right?

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So here he's made this foolish, rash, stupid oath. Just the perfect setup.

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So she immediately went with haste and said, well, she went and said to her mother, what should

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I ask for? And she said, well, the head of John the Baptist. And she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying,

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I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter. To which he should have said, no.

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No, you don't get to ask for someone's murder. But Herod being who

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Herod is, remember, his sin has completely decimated this man. Totally morally derelict.

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The king was exceedingly sorry. But because of his oaths and his guests, he didn't want to break his word to her.

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And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. And he went and beheaded him in prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl.

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And the girl gave it to her mother. What a lovely gift. When the disciples heard it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

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Now, that's where our text ends. But I want to tell you a little bit more of the consequences of Herod's sin.

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And we get this from the church historian Eusebius. From his work called

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Ecclesiastical History, written in the 4th century. And he quotes Josephus, the Jewish historian who is the author of Jewish antiquities.

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And here's what Eusebius says about Herod. He says, not long after this,

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John the Baptist was beheaded by the younger Herod, as is stated in the Gospels. Josephus also records the same fact, making mention of Herodias by name.

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And stating that, although she was the wife of his brother, Herod made her his own wife after divorcing his former lawful wife.

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Get this. Who was the daughter of Eratos, the king of Petra. And separating

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Herodias from her husband while he was still alive. In other words, Herod, not only did

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Philip, his brother, have a wife, Herodias. Herod had a wife. And it was the daughter of a king.

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King Eratos of Petra. Now I don't know if you know where Petra is. But if you remember the third movie in the

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Indiana Jones trilogy. I refuse to accept the fourth movie as part of that series.

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That's another story altogether. But in the third movie, talking about the

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Holy Grail. There's a scene that takes place where there's a city kind of built into the rocks.

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You go through a canyon and you get there. And you can see this elaborate city kind of built into the rocks.

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That's the city of Petra. It's in Jordan today. And so Herod was married to the daughter of the king of Petra.

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And his name was Eratos. So it says this. On her account, on the account of the daughter of the king

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Eratos, also that he slew John. Waged war with Eratos because of the disgrace inflicted on the daughter of the latter.

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In other words, Eratos ended up declaring war against Herod for insulting and basically disgracing his daughter like this.

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And Josephus relates that in this war, when they came to battle, Herod's entire army was destroyed.

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And he suffered this calamity on account of his crime against John. So what starts off as, you know, those googly eyes across this table.

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You know, and ooh, she looked at me. To now we're playing footsie. To now we're committing adultery. To now we're divorcing our spouses and shacking up together.

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You know, all of this, right? To now John the Baptist is beheaded because how dare he tell us what we're doing is wrong.

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This ultimately resulted in a war. And in that war, it was a war for the honor of a woman who had been disgraced by Herod, his own wife, his lawful wife.

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And it resulted in Herod's entire army being destroyed. Here's what

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Josephus says. Josephus confesses in this account that John the Baptist was an exceedingly righteous man and thus agrees with the things written of him in the

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Gospels. He records also that Herod lost his kingdom on account of the same Herodias. And that he was driven into banishment with her and condemned to live in Vienna.

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Now Vienna wasn't quite the neighborhood that it is today. Okay. So these are the wages of sin.

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These are the wages. And so the idea here is that when we trifle with sin, when we say, oh, to err is human.

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Oh, it's just a little sin. You have no idea what you may be opening up in your life.

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Sin does not desire to be your pet. Sin is like a pet. It's like the foolish guy who goes to Florida and finds himself a baby alligator and thinks it's so cute.

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Why people think this way, I do not know. But there are some who do. And so they end up smuggling that little baby alligator back to North Dakota and having to keep it in their bathtub.

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And eventually, you know what little baby alligators grow into? Full -blown alligators.

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And they're not happy to eat small rodents and things like that. And the guy ends up going to feed his alligator and he becomes the alligator's meal.

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That's what sin is like. And we see this playing out in the life of Herod. And keep this in mind. He truly felt bad.

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He felt guilt for what he had done wrong. But his sin had him so turned around that when he heard the report of Jesus, the one who can truly save him, he couldn't understand the words or the message.

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All he could think is that, Oh, the man I murdered, he's come back from the grave. I'm doomed.

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When in reality, Jesus was there to bleed and die for him and die for his sins. So understand this.

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Sin is not a small thing. And sin utterly consumes and destroys and takes control over a person.

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There are chains and slavery that go along with sin. And you are incapable of breaking those chains.

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You cannot. I cannot. Try as you like. You will not have the power to break the chains of sin.

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And so there is one who has broken the chains for you. And that's our Lord Jesus Christ. And we read again from our epistle text.

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In Jesus, we have redemption. And that's an important word.

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Redemption. Do you know what redemption means? Redemption. Well, redemption is a slave term.

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Redemption is the price that you pay to purchase a slave to set that slave free.

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In Jesus, we have redemption. Each and every one of us were born enslaved to sin.

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We were just like those poor souls in the 1900s. Those poor Africans down in the south.

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Enslaved. Incapable of setting themselves free. That's all of us.

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Buffeted by beatings. Not having any freedom to do anything. Only being able to obey our master, sin.

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And the devil, who is over it. But in Jesus, our text says from the epistle, we have redemption.

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We've been purchased off the slave block. We have redemption through his blood. And the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of God's grace.

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Which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. Making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose.

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Which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him.

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Things in heaven and things on earth. So the idea is this. Born in sin.

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In chains. Under the power and dominion of darkness and the devil. Derelict just like Herod.

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And the difference between you and Herod. The difference between me and Herod. Is not that we are holier or good or better people.

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All of us are derelict in sin. It's that we know that we are guilty.

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And we trust in the good news that Christ has redeemed us and purchased us off the slave block.

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Set us free. That's the difference. Herod was never set free. He remained in the chains of his sin.

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And went to his grave in bondage to darkness. We on the other hand by the grace of God have been set free, redeemed, purchased off the slave block.

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And now we do not have to present ourselves to sin anymore.

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We can say no. Herod could not. We can.

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Because we are free in Christ. In the name of Jesus. Amen. 470th

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Avenue NW Oslo, MN 56744 And again that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church 15950 470th

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Avenue NW Oslo, MN 56744 We thank you for your support.

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