WWUTT 2166 The Death of John the Baptist (Mark 6:14-32)

John the Baptist’s Rebuke of Herod’s Unbiblical Marriage

John the Baptist called out Herod Antipas for having an unbiblical marriage. And what happened to John the Baptist? He was beheaded because of it. And the world will hate us for having a biblical definition of marriage when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it. Visit our website at www .wutt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Reading Mark 6:14-32 and the Death of John the Baptist

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we are in chapter 6 and up to Mark's account of the death of John the Baptist. I'm going to begin reading here in verse 14 and go to verse 32 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

Hear the word of the Lord. And King Herod heard it, for his name had become well known. And people were saying, John the Baptist is risen from the dead. And that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.

But others were saying, he's Elijah. And others were saying, he is a prophet like one of the prophets of old. But when Herod heard it, he kept saying, John whom I beheaded has risen. For Herod himself had sent and had John arrested and bound in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, because he had married her.

For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. Now Herodias was holding a grudge against him and was wanting to put him to death and was not able for Herod was afraid of John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man and he was keeping him safe.

And when he heard him, he was very perplexed, but he used to enjoy listening to him. And a strategic day came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his great men and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.

And when the daughter of Herodias herself came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests. And the king said to the girl, ask me for whatever you want and I will give it to you. And he swore to her, whatever you ask of me, I will give it to you up to half of my kingdom.

And she went out and said to her mother, what shall I ask for? And she said, the head of John the Baptist. And immediately she came in a hurry to the king and asked, saying, I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

And although the king was very sorry yet because of his oaths and because of his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. And immediately the king sent an executioner and commanded him to bring back his head.

And he went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl. And the girl gave it to her mother. And when his disciples heard this, they came and took away his body and laid it in a tomb.

And the apostles gathered together with Jesus and they reported to him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. For there were many people coming and going and they did not even have time to eat.

And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now this is a story that really encapsulates something that is often referred to as a Marken sandwich. And it's the way that Mark will give accounts in his gospel where you have him beginning an account on one end and then he'll kind of rabbit trail or almost as if he speaks out of sequence.

Kind of like you watch a movie that's not given in chronological order and the movie will flash back to another time or it'll flash forward and then it comes back to the story that you were watching before.

And that's kind of what Mark does here. It's really brilliant storytelling. It's not rabbit trailing. He knows exactly what he's doing here. So he starts talking about how people are trying to explain how Jesus is doing these incredible miracles.

And even Herod himself is hearing of it and worried. He's greatly anxious to hear about these miracles thinking that John the Baptist has been revived. He's come back from the dead or been reincarnated and he's going to come back and haunt Herod.

And Herod is greatly troubled by what it is he hears about Jesus and the miracles that he is doing. So Mark kind of jumps away from the action that we've been reading about in chapter six thus far and flashes back to the arrest and death of John the Baptist and then comes back to the action which we have been in the middle of here in chapter six.

So we kind of go to another part of the story but then we come back again. So that's referred to as a Mark and sandwich and we've seen it before. Earlier we read about Jesus going and raising Jairus's daughter from the dead.

And in the middle of that you had the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years who touches Jesus garment and then she's healed. And then we come back to the episode regarding Jairus's daughter. So we've seen this in Mark.

But this whenever you will read about the Mark and sandwich or if some preacher talks about that it's usually this account here regarding the death of John the Baptist that they will use as an example.

And it's some of the most detail that we have on the death of John. It actually comes from Mark's gospel. Now before getting into this let's kind of review our context. At the start of chapter six Jesus went to his hometown of Nazareth and was teaching there but the people would not accept his teaching.

They were perplexed by him just like we read here about Herod being perplexed by John the Baptist that is kind of a running theme here in chapter six right. But though they were intrigued by Jesus teaching and they heard about the miracles they were not persuaded to believe in him.

And so Jesus could do no miracle there meaning that no matter what he did it would not have persuaded them to believe. He did do miracles there for verse five says that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.

But then he goes out with the twelve the next section we have in verses seven to thirteen he sends out the twelve tells them to go to the towns and villages and perform miracles gives them authority to cast out demons and heal the sick.

And so they follow Jesus instruction and do exactly that. This was the last account that we read last week on Wednesday. And so it's right after that hearing about the miracles that Jesus is doing not only Jesus but even his disciples they're hearing about these miracles.

And so in verse 14 King Herod heard of it for his name had become well known Christ name had become well known around the region even making its way all the way to the palace there in Jerusalem. And people were saying John the Baptist has risen from the dead and that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.

No figure had the attention of the people in Judah like John the Baptist had. He was he was the most well-known person in Judah until Jesus Christ comes along. As we had read previously in Mark just about everybody in Judah was going out to where John the Baptist was to hear him preach and to be baptized by him in the Jordan.

But it was known that John the Baptist had been seized by Herod and had been put to death. So here's Jesus performing these miracles. And by the way Jesus is a cousin of John the Baptist. Remember they're related.

So the people know that maybe even bears somewhat of a resemblance to him. And so the people are thinking well John the Baptist is back and that's why he's able to do these miracles. The people are trying to explain the miracles.

Remember back when Jesus was in Nazareth and the people would not believe in him but they knew about the miracles and they were perplexed by it. Well they're trying to find some rational explanation. They know he's doing miracles but they won't believe in him as the son of God.

They won't believe in the gospel that he is preaching. So they're trying to come up with some explanation to this. And you see this a lot even today right. There are many scholars out there. They'll even write articles that will appear in the New York Times.

Trying to explain how these miracles of Jesus could possibly have taken place. Were people under some sort of mass delusion or is there some sort of naturalistic explanation? It wasn't long ago that Ben Shapiro who's one of the founders of the Daily Wire was on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Probably the most popular podcast out there is the Joe Rogan Experience. I don't recommend listening to either one of them but anyway. So he was on Joe Rogan's podcast and Rogan was asking him questions about miracles.

Ben Shapiro being a devout Jew by religious conviction. And so when Rogan and he were talking about miracles in the Bible, Ben Shapiro said there's just a naturalistic explanation for all these miracles.

Even the parting of the Red Sea. Because in Exodus it says there was a wind that was blowing. And so the wind blew and it was some natural wind that had parted the Red Sea or at least kind of pushed the water away a little bit.

So there was enough dry land for the people to walk on. But it wasn't really by some divine miracle that God had parted the waters so that you had a wall of water on one side and a wall of water on the other, which is exactly what Exodus says.

Shapiro wouldn't believe or buy that as the miracle. He said there has to be some sort of natural explanation for it. And even Rogan has talked about, you know, miracles in the Bible like Moses talking to the burning bush or the burning bush talking to him and Moses was high on mushrooms or something like that.

You know, there's always there's always some always some kind of an explanation from these guys. It's never really God doing something miraculous, which is exactly the definition of a miracle, something that would be supernatural, not natural.

That can't possibly be what happened. There must be some sort of naturalistic explanation. So you see that even today, people trying to do that. And here they were doing it even in Jesus time, not necessarily coming up with naturalistic.

Explanations.

But what could be the reason for why Jesus is able to do these miracles? It can't be that he's the son of God. It must be that he's John the Baptist who's come back from the dead, which really is even more ridiculous.

Right.

But that's that's their explanation. And so this troubles Herod when he hears this, because the people are saying John the Baptist is risen from the dead. That's why these miraculous powers are at work in him.

Others were saying, verse 15, he is Elijah, and others were saying he is a prophet like one of the prophets of old. But when Herod heard of it, he kept saying, John, whom I beheaded, has risen. And then we go into the backstory.

Why would Herod feel that way? What's the flashback on Herod's panic over this? Now, which Herod is this are we talking about? Remember, it was Herod the Great who was alive during the time of Christ's birth, who tried to put Jesus to death after the Magi came asking, where is he who has been born king of the Jews?

Herod the Great died a very gruesome death. He was a tyrant, probably the worst of the Herods. And so and so he died of an illness he was he was sick with already, even at the time of the Magi, when they came to look for Christ, Herod was already sick.

And it was shortly after their departure that he eventually died and killed a lot of people or even tried to kill more people than he did before he died, not counting the massacre of the innocents, the babies that were put to death, those children that were two years old and under the baby boys when Herod was trying to get the Christ child.

This Herod that we're reading about here in Mark 6, this is Herod the Great's son. This is Herod Antipas, and he is the brother of Philip, who was the first husband of Herodias. Now those names sound pretty close, Herod, Herodias, because Herodias is a feminine form of Herod, and it is to indicate that she is of the house of Herod.

Herodias was even a niece of Herod Antipas. So not only do you have Herod Antipas taking the wife of his brother, but you also have him committing incest. He's marrying his niece. This is like, I mean, the pagans are hardly even this bad when it comes to all the drama that you see that went on in the house of the Herods.

So in verse 17, it says, Herod himself had sent and had John arrested and bound in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, because he had married her. And we don't get any backstory on that as to how this marriage had happened, but we do know that it was adulterous.

It was unbiblical for Herod Antipas to have taken Philip, his brother's wife, so much so that John the Baptist rebukes him because of it. Now the Herods were not Jews. They were kings over the Jews, the Herod dynasty.

This was a reign of kings over the Jews, but they themselves were not Jews. They were Edomites. They were descendants of Esau, not descendants of Jacob, because they would have had to have been descendants of Jacob to be Jews.

It's the descendants of Judah who are called Jews. That was not the house of the Herods. They were actually of the cursed son, the one of whom God said, Esau, I have hated. Jacob, I have loved. Esau, I have hated.

And it was from the descendants of Esau that we get the Herods. So you see all kinds of godless behavior in there, just as Esau had turned away from God. So his lineage was far from God. So Herod had sinned and had John arrested and bound in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, because he had married her.

For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. Your marriage is unbiblical. And for this, John was arrested and he was thrown in prison. My friends, we as Christians today still facing that same kind of persecution, aren't we?

For looking at the world, the culture that is trying to redefine marriage and saying, no, that marriage is not biblical. You can lose your job for that. You can lose opportunities for that. You might even be fined for that or thrown in jail for that.

Because you would stand in opposition to this culture's unbiblical definitions of marriage, their godless redefining of a sacred institution that God created and called it good for one man and one woman to be committed to one another for life.

So here, John the Baptist has rebuked Herod for this and has now been arrested, thrown in prison and is even going to lose his head over it. Verse 19, now Herodias was holding a grudge against him and was wanting to put him to death but was not able.

For Herod was afraid of John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man and was keeping him safe. And when he heard him, he was very perplexed, but he used to enjoy listening to him. So here, Herod, though, he won't believe the words that John said, John, who was a forerunner to Jesus Christ, who was always pointing to Jesus Christ, Herod won't listen to him.

Now John the Baptist never performed any miracles. Nothing in the scriptures says to us that he did miraculous things. Jesus did miraculous things. And so again, it's because Jesus is doing miraculous things that people are giving credit to John the Baptist.

Well, he must have come back from the dead, which would be miraculous. And that explains why he's able to do these miraculous things. But John himself never did any miracles. The people were not really paying attention to what it was that John had said, pointing to Christ, and neither did Herod.

He was perplexed listening to him, but didn't believe him. So verse 21, and a strategic day came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his great men and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.

So then verse 22, when the daughter of Herodias herself came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests. And the king said to the girl, ask me for whatever you want, and I will give it to you.

Verse 23, and he swore to her, whatever you ask of me, I will give it to you up to half of my kingdom. Now that's being hyperbolic. He was not really going to give her half of the kingdom. It wouldn't have been his to give anyway.

He was appointed to that position by the Romans. The Herods were able to hold their positions of authority because they had favor with the.

Romans.

And if he ever did anything that was outside of the favor of the Romans, well, he would have been removed. So he could not have just taken half his kingdom and given it to the daughter of Herodias because had he done that, the Romans very likely would have greatly disagreed with that move.

So it's not as if he had the authority to say that. He's not really literally going to give her half the kingdom. It's hyperbole, but nonetheless, he is promising her whatever great thing you want, I would move half my kingdom to give it to you.

And what is it that she asks for? It isn't wealth. It isn't power. So she goes out and says to her mother, what shall I ask for? And she said, the head of John the Baptist, which is, it just kind of demonstrates the hatred that was in the heart of Herodias and that you could have asked for anything, but that's what she wants.

She hates John the Baptist so bad for saying that your marriage is unbiblical. It is unrighteous. You are under the condemnation of God for your disobedience. It's because he has said this, that Herodias has said off with his head.

And we've seen this pattern throughout scripture, haven't we? I mean, going back to Cain and Abel, Abel's sacrifice was received by God. He had the favor of God. Cain resented him for it. And Cain, a doer of unrighteousness, hated the man of righteousness to the point that he put him to death.

The people who hate righteousness will kill you over your righteousness. And there will be persecution for those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus. It's not just, my friends, it's not just when we take stands against the world.

Because, of course, the world is going to hate us for the Christ that we follow. You will take stands in the church that professing Christians will hate you for. Because you want to be biblical. You want to be godly.

You want to stand with Christ and his word. And there are professing Christians that will hate you for it. It will come to light those who are truly with Christ and those who are not. You know, I don't have to go out into the culture and oppose the culture.

I can find enough animosity among those who call themselves Christians. Just by wanting to be biblical and just by saying, here's what the scripture says, and so here's what we must do. This is sin because God calls it sin.

That can make a lot of professing Christians really angry. And here you have people, even of the land of Israel, that hate Christ. When God's word is taught. Herodias putting to death John the Baptist because John the Baptist pointed out something in her lifestyle was sin.

Instead of being convicted of it and repenting before God, she tries to get rid of the problem by killing the one who is pointing out that you're guilty of sin. So verse 25, immediately she came in a hurry to the king and asked, saying, I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

How gruesome is that? And although the king was very sorry, he didn't want to do this. He hated having to do it. But here he's made a vow and he has to follow through with his vow. He didn't really have to.

He could have said, no, sorry, not murdering somebody just because you want to. But he did not want to be embarrassed in front of his guests. So Herod had a fear of man, not a fear of God. So immediately the king sent the executioner, commanded him to bring back his head, and he went and beheaded him in the prison.

All of this happening while this whole dinner party is going on. John the Baptist is beheaded. He brings the head back on a platter and he gave it to the girl who gave it to her mother.

What a gift.

Happy Mother's Day, mom. And verse 29, when his disciples heard this, they came and took away his body and laid it in the tomb. Now, in the next portion, verses 30 to 32, you would expect that the next part of the story is maybe John the Baptist disciples come to Jesus and report to him what has happened or Jesus own disciples hear of it and they come and tell Jesus.

But remember, this was a flashback. So these things aren't happening in succession. So now the next event is, well, we're going to tell Jesus what's happening. Jesus will be grieved over the death of John the Baptist.

This has already happened. We just don't get in the narrative what Jesus reaction to that was, at least according to Mark's gospel. So it says in verse 30, and the apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported to him all that they had done and taught.

This is picking up after verse 13. So after Jesus had sent out the 12. And they go and perform these miracles, casting out demons and healing the sick. They come back to Jesus after the sending out of the 12 and report to him all that had taken place.

And Jesus said to them, verse 31, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest.

A while.

For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. In verse 32, they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now, where we go next, we'll get to this tomorrow is the feeding of the 5000.

And then on Wednesday, Jesus walking on the water, walking on the sea. Those are the next two miracles we're going to read about as we finish up Mark chapter six here. So as we wrap this up here, let's come back to this account that Mark has given of the beheading of John the Baptist.

My friends, we must love God's word and desire to obey it. Or else you may find yourself in the position of Herodias. And you will hate those who do love God's word and call for obedience to God's word.

Obedience to God's word is not legalism. That is exactly what we're supposed to do. We are supposed to obey Christ. Jesus said in John 14, 15, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments.

Legalism would be adding to the law or adhering to man's traditions rather than the law. Those things would be more akin to legalism. But being obedient to God is not legalism. That's what you should see in the life of a Christian.

And if that's not your desire to love God's word and obey it and do what it says, well, you might be like Herodias who will hate the one who will tell you what the Bible says. You love your sin and you hate God's word.

Far be it from you to find yourself in that position. Or to find yourself in the position of Herod who fears man and not God. And he wants to entertain people. He wants to please people. By his lusts, he even goes after his wife's daughter.

And so you have all these other sins that pile up on top of trying to satisfy these lusts that he has. Both of them, whether it's Herod or Herodias, are people of the flesh. You just see different reactions to their flesh.

Herod is willing to please anybody and doesn't want to make anyone upset. He doesn't want to be unpopular with the crowd. He doesn't want anybody to hate him. He wants to be loved by everyone. So it's just sin after sin after sin to please the people in his life and even get the things in his flesh that he wants.

Don't find yourself in that place. It's very easy to fall into those places. We are people in fleshly bodies, in bodies that are subject to the corruption that we see in the world. We are subject to the sin of our father Adam, but it's in Christ that we are born again.

So no longer walk in the ways of your former self. Put all of that away from you and walk in the righteousness of Christ. Love his word and do what it says. The more you're in his word, the more you store it up in your heart, the more you listen to the conviction of the spirit.

Whenever you do sin and you know this is contrary to God's word, don't try to cover it up. And then when somebody calls you out on it, you get mad at them instead of recognizing in yourself. Yes, I have.

I have disobeyed God. Love God and his word. Store it up in your heart so that you will continue in this word, not according to your ways, but according to God's ways. So you will have no fear of that day of judgment.

1 John 4, 18. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment. And the one who fears that day of judgment has not been perfected in love. Heavenly father, we thank you for what we've read here.

And I pray this conviction would be in our hearts to be obedient to you, to desire you to walk in your ways, to keep your word, to share your word with others, teaching others according to your word that we may all grow in this together.

As said in Ephesians 4, it's the saints preparing the saints for the work of ministry that we would all grow into the head who is Christ maturing together in this most holy faith that has been given to us according to your word.

Forgive us of our sins. Help us to be forgiving of others for their sins. And may we live righteously before you in these days, keeping us from the world and keeping us in Christ. It's in his name that we pray.

Amen.

Closing Exhortation and Ministry Sign-Off

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.