Matthew 14:1-12 How to Get Ahead in this World

To the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in.

The Church as a Community of the Redeemed

Good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to welcome you. I hope you haven't just gathered to take in a show this morning. I hope you realize that the church is not just a program or a location or an audience to participate in.

We are a community together of the redeemed who gather together to share in our love for our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ by learning together, by worshiping him together. And we need each other. We need each other to gather together, to rub shoulders with one another, to be encouraged by one another.

And I'm going to be picking up for a few weeks where I left off around Christmastime this past year in a series called Not Your Average Savior. It's been kind of a go-to series that I've gone back to from time to time.

And I started this series years ago, but I use it at times to kind of bring our attention back to the Lord and Savior. And so we're going to be picking up in Matthew. And again, the whole series has gone through Matthew, but it's Matthew chapter 14.

And this title, Not Your Average Savior, for this series is obviously a little bit of a play on words because at the end of the day, there's not another Savior. There isn't any others. But there's a lot of things that we might turn to for our, quote-unquote, salvation.

Things that we turn to to help us cope or things that we can turn to in life. Things that would, in our culture and society, seem to be promising us salvation, promising us an opportunity to get ahead, promising us things that it cannot fulfill.

And so Jesus stands out against all those other things that you might think will help you ultimately. The things that you are tempted to think and our culture is tempted to think are going to be the solution for you, which often lead us down roads of being worse off than when we started.

But Jesus is not like that. So in that sense, that's why this title, Not Your Average Savior. And anyone who is committed to preaching through the entire book, really through the entire Bible, is going to have some very serious sermons.

And then there's going to be some light sermons. Some are going to be stern warnings, while others are going to be uplifting and encouraging and just really connect with you. And I hope that you've experienced both here at Recast.

I hope that you get a balance in that of some that you feel like, wow, that was heavy. And some that you're like, wow, that was encouraging and that was uplifting. And I think you get a balance in that as you walk through the pages of as we walk through entire books.

And even in our text this morning, we are going to see a pretty heavy, dark text. It's pretty intense. But even in this dark text, we see a silver lining. And my hope and prayer is that by the end of this message this morning, you'll be changed in the way that you view this account of the death of John the Baptizer.

I call him John the Baptizer, and I'm going to try to do that throughout the message primarily because he wasn't from the denomination of the Southern Baptists. And we can have a tendency when we hear the word Baptist, that's a word that's loaded.

But the most unique thing about John and one of the most standout things, and the reason we call him John the Baptist or John the Baptizer, is because he is, of course, the one who baptized our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ himself, which is a pretty amazing thing.

And so that's kind of one of his crowning things that happened in his life. But John was a faithful servant in a world that is faithless. And in this, we see John as a model for what went on before him in the lives of the Old Testament prophets from our text this morning.

And John, we also not only get a glimpse of those terrible things that happened to those Old Testament prophets who stood strong on the word against their culture, or at least in a counter-cultural message to say, there is hope, but it is not in you.

There is hope, but it's not found in you being strong enough or being able to fix yourself. And they suffered for it, and John shows us as a more contemporary model of that. But in John, we also see a foreshadowing of what we know happened to Jesus Christ.

And in John, we also see a model for our own calling, our own calling to stand strong in a world that is increasing animosity towards what is true and what is good. So if you're not already there, please open your Bibles or navigate in your app or whatever you use to Matthew chapter 14.

Then we'll be looking at the first 12 verses there, or 1 through 12. And if you need a Bible, Mike has some back there. Just please do me a favor, raise your hand so that you have a copy of God's word on your lap.

And he already has those open there. He keeps them open so that we've got one down here. And yeah, don't be shy so that we can follow along and see the things that God has written to us. Again, Recast Church, Matthew 14, 1 through 12.

And this is what God desires for us to hear this morning. Again, a fairly intense text, but one that is here for our encouragement and for our challenge. At that time, Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus.

And he said to his servants, this is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead. And that 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 is 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 oath 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. And his disciples came and took the body and buried it. And they went and told Jesus. Let's pray. Father, we come to this text and it's dark.

It's sinister the way that the world works. It's sinister the way that the corruption is there. But it's also sinister the way that the corruption is in here. It's in our own hearts. It doesn't cut some line outside of this building.

It doesn't cut some line out there, some nebulous group of people which are on one side and then the rest of us are on the other side. But the very nature of sin and brokenness cuts right down our own hearts.

So I pray that you wouldn't allow this message to be lost on us this morning and things that you want to communicate to us about our own brokenness and our own fallenness. It would be very easy to cast judgment on Herod and Herodias and their daughter Salome.

And Father, just the corruption that we see here. But Father, we know that we are not perfect. We know that Christ died and went to the cross because we're sinners. Because we're broken and we're messed up.

And so Father, all the more I pray that you would help us to rejoice as we sing songs and have an opportunity to praise you in singing here in just a moment. Because although we're unworthy, you died for us.

You have forgiven us. You have washed our sins away as far as the east is from the west. And our corruption is, it's not that we are no longer corrupt, it's that we are declared righteous because of what Christ has done for us.

And His righteousness is accounted to us. So Father, I pray that you would help us to be attentive to you as we sing. That this would not be an exercise of our own ability to sing or our own vocal chords.

Father, that we would make a prayer. Amen. Amen. You can go ahead and be seated. And then remember, I know we just took a break, but if at any time during the message over the next half an hour or so, if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, you can take advantage of those there.

And then if the seat that you're getting in gets uncomfortable or is distracting you from paying attention to God's Word, I'd encourage you to get up and stretch out in the back or do what you need to do.

But the goal is that we would focus our attention on God's Word. The text that I read earlier was not just a scripture reading. It is the text that we're going to be going over during the next half an hour or so.

I read this text many, many times this week. It's a familiar story. It's one that I've heard many times since childhood. But I studied it down to the level this week of words and phrases. I broke apart sentences.

I peeled back the layers and studied historical relationships between these real-life characters that are well documented in secular histories. And I was left with the overwhelming sense that this text is written for us intentionally to showcase the darkness of our world.

I believe that that's the reason that it exists. I believe that's the reason that this text is here. It is not a feel-good passage. It is not particularly one that you read and go, woo! It's great to be alive.

It's great to be a Christian. It's great to be called to follow God. It's one that's a reality check, if you will, is the nature of this text. There is no candy coating to this account. It isn't pretty.

It's not cute. It's not here to make you feel good. Within this text, we come face-to-face with our own human condition. The tendency might be to look at the condition of others as we read this text, but we ought to make sure that we're listening to what scripture wants to say to us, and it is about our own human condition.

We are not merely victims of a fallen world, but we are people who are at least in part to blame for the fallenness of this world. We're not just victims of it, but we're causes of it. We have all done our part to bring this thing to the mess that it is today, every one of us to a person.

I confess that I'm going to be doing my best this morning to write a fine line between being direct and convicting to all of us in the room in the way that the scripture is pointing us out to, but at the same time, I want to be attentive to the fact that I know that we have many children that are in the room with us because of the programs that are going on and taking a little bit of a breather here this month.

But a quick word on that is just simply this. I believe that our kids need to know from an early age that there's darkness in this world. That's a reality. There's a truth to that, and they also equally need to know that there's a darkness in their own hearts as well.

Our message in our children's ministry, one of the things I love about the curriculum that the kids learn here that's going to be starting up in a couple of weeks, is that the message is not that you're good and you just need to act good.

That's not the message that we have for our kids. That's a message that I, I was a Christian education pastor for a few years at another very large church or larger church, and in that role I helped discern and figure out curriculums, and I researched a lot of curriculums, and a lot of curriculum out there is about being nice.

Don't take, don't, you know, be nice to your brother and your sister. Obey your parents. Do, do, do this. Do, don't do that. That kind of stuff, and that's not the message that we have to bring to any of us, let alone our kids, man.

We're setting them off on the wrong trajectory if that's the message we leave them with. You're pretty good. You're good, and what you need is just to act good. Our message is that we're bad, and we need a Savior.

Like that is it. That's it. That's the message that we have to bring, whether you're, whether you're five or whether you're 85. You, we all need that message, and we need to hear it, that we're, we're in a bad spot, and we need a Savior, and it's, it's not us.

That Savior is not us, and the fact is that we, we need to see the darkness in our own hearts first, and once we realize just how bad off we are, only when we see the depths of our own sin and depravity, it's only then that we will give up hopes of our own self-improvement and recognize that we need to run to Jesus for salvation.

Once we come to the end of our own self-improvement projects and trying to fix it up ourselves, if we think we are pretty strong and we can fix ourselves, we will not run to God for the help that he alone can provide.

We'll just keep slugging it out on our own, but the stage for us is set in the first two verses here. Verse one just informs us here in this text of the fact that the Roman appointed Jewish leaders, a leader of the area named Herod, and it just says Herod in the text, and we'll get down to which Herod and all of that, but that guy caught wind of the fame of Jesus.

Okay, Jesus's name was being spread, and he, he hears about him, and a large part of the ministry of Jesus took place in Herod's territory, so it makes sense that he would have heard this up in Galilee, and he heard that Jesus was performing miracles, but Herod's opinions and thoughts about Jesus are conveyed in verse two, and they're a little bit strange to our ears.

They required a little bit, they require a little bit of explanation that we get in verses three to twelve, trying to understand why he would say the things he says in verse two. Herod thought that Jesus was John the baptizer, come back from the grave with miraculous powers.

Now, does anybody think that that sounds a little bit superstitious? That sound a little bit strange, a strange comment from a, from a king, from a ruler over in a territory? It's, it's kind of a strange thing that he says there, and there seems to be a level of fear in this declaration from Herod, that John the baptizer would be raised from the dead, and would be gallivanting across the countryside with a following, and doing miracles and things.

It seems strange, it seems superstitious. Herod hears about the wandering teacher who claims to do miracles, and he jumps to the conclusion that John the baptizer has been raised from the dead, but that strange assumption will make more sense as we study a flashback that were given in the text, verses three through twelve in our text this morning are a flashback to something that happened to prior events that have resulted in a very heavy and guilty conscience for Herod.

I think it's an interesting combination. Superstition and guilt are an intriguing combination, right? Superstition and guilt, when they're brought together, can do strange things. Edgar Allan Poe exploits that combination in his brilliant book, short, short book, The Tell-Tale Heart.

Has anybody read that? It's that place where guilt and superstition meet, and something happens there that's kind of intriguing and strange. But guilt can play tricks with our own logic, right? Guilt can play tricks with our health, even physical manifestations of pent-up guilt that we're not expressing, and we're not dealing with, and we're not seeking forgiveness for.

And if any of you have ever lived in a season of intense unforgiveness towards another, or something like that, you could probably testify to some of the sleeplessness, and some of the frustrations, and even some stomach issues, or something that you wrestled through during that time, because it can definitely have an impact on us.

Guilt has a way of working itself out into the light, and I think we see that in Herod's life here. So Matthew takes us on a little trip back a little to the relationship between Herod and John the baptizer.

And in verses three through twelve are that flashback. The first we see is Herod arresting John. That's how we're introduced to the relationship between these two. Now this is going to give us a little bit more of the backstory here, but John was seized.

Some very strong Greek verbs are used here in Matthew for what Herod does to John. He seizes him, he binds him, and he imprisons him. Now all of those three things are happening to a Jew at the hands of a fellow Jew.

Herod is not a Roman. He is certainly somewhat of a puppet of the Romans, but he is supposed to be a religiously abiding Jew, which he wasn't according to historians very well. But Herod was of course no ordinary Jew.

He was born the son of the notorious Herod the Great. He was born to a wealthy family. And Herod, by the way, is his last name. The name was so well known and so popular that most of the descendants went by the first name.

Kind of like, I mean, you can think of some famous names like Kennedy or Rockefeller or some names that would have a pretty powerful impact in our culture and in our society. Herod was one of those kinds of names.

It was a big deal. So he's born to that wealthy family and his father went by the inflated title, of course, Herod the Great. The Great One. The Great Herod. And his father was the one that was responsible for that sad part of Christmas that never quite finds room on nativity scenes or hallmark cards, right?

So that was his father that did that in Bethlehem. So you get a picture of what kind of dad this guy had. But the Herod in our text seems to have learned some things from his daddy. I think he followed daddy's footsteps to some degree.

His name is Herod Antipas, for those of you that are into history and kind of want to know that kind of thing. Which Herod are we talking about? Some of you might be informed about that. And his father had divided his territory upon his death and so Antipas is a tetrarch, which is a ruler over a fourth of his father's kingdom.

That's simply what that word means. So you see that in there, you're like, I don't know what that means. It means a fourth ruler or a ruler over the fourth of the kingdom. His precinct was the area of Galilee.

Picture the north where a lot of Jesus's miracles, where Jesus literally came from, was raised in Nazareth, in that district. So this would have been the most powerful Jewish leader over Jesus in his youth.

That's who this guy is. And many gave him the title. It was not his right to call himself king, according to the Roman occupation and according to even what his dad left him. Tetrarch was the right title.

There were multiple levels and clear hierarchies and structures. He was not supposed to be titled king, but people who would kind of try to get on his good side. Can you imagine somebody this powerful and it's kind of like, call him king and then maybe he'll do you some favors or at least not harm you.

So people would call him king and you see that here in Matthew. But Herod Antipas has had several brothers, but the only ones that factor into our text this morning are Aristobulus and Philip. Don't worry, this isn't going to be a massive history lesson, but Aristobulus and Philip, two of his brothers.

Antipas was a conflicted figure, as our text is going to indicate, and I believe he was a weak man, a weak man born into a leadership position. So how many of you know that often what's happened down through the ages is that leadership has been conferred by birth and it doesn't take into account the character, the qualities, even the capacity for the individual.

So somebody can be born king and kind of just wish that it wasn't, right? They don't even have the skill set to be a leader. And I think we see a little bit of that in Herod. I think you actually get a vision that he wasn't a natural born leader.

He was born into leadership, but not, didn't have that skill set. And we're going to see that here. He did not certainly have character. He lacked a moral compass and it's shown by his waffling back and forth until, we're going to see in his text, his wife has to take charge and carry through business for him.

Terrible business, business that he had no business doing. And at the same time, his wife literally, even in the bad things that Herod wants to have accomplished, it's going to tell us in the text, Herod wanted John dead, so his wife has him put to death.

Do you see the, there's a little bit of a conflict and some strange things that are going on there relationally as well. He was not a man of principle as far as we can tell historically. He was not a man of action as far as we can tell historically.

But one thing that we can say for sure is that, and I'm going to use a very technical term here, he was a player, okay. We see that in the text and that's pretty clear historically that that's at least one thing that we can definitively say about Herod Antipas.

John the Baptist as a Prophetic Contrast to Herod

John the Baptizer, thinking about the contrast, we've got two kind of, two kind of opposite characters in the text that we ought to understand. John the Baptizer was the cousin of Jesus. He was the last of a long line of Old Testament style prophets that proclaimed the coming of the Messiah.

He's very last in that line of Old Testament prophets, almost bridging a gap between old and new. He was a quirky man who probably would have been given a diagnosis if he lived today. He would have been kind of a strange bird to be around.

He lived alone for long periods of time in the wilderness, that in itself, you know, made him stand out. Scripture seemed to indicate that he stayed out on the margins of society and even when we see him, like you kind of think him interacting with crowds, right, like that's our tendency.

So why would I say he's out on the margins? The only time we see him interacting with crowds is when people went out into the wilderness to see him. It says that the people left Jerusalem and went down in droves to the river out passing through the wilderness places to get to John in order to be baptized by him.

He didn't come into the city. He didn't come into Jerusalem and speak to the masses. They came out to him and what did they go out for? What was, I mean, the indication is that some just went out to take in the circus sideshow down by the river because there wasn't much of entertainment in that time.

So, hey, what are you doing? What do you want to do tonight, honey? I don't know. Let's go see John. Let's go see the show. You know, I think that might have been kind of a little bit of the picture of what's going on here.

It's like, well, I mean, there's not much going on but we can just take in the crazy guy down by the river in a van under a bridge. That's a different story. That doesn't even fit in here anywhere. But, yeah, he was down there and probably homeless as well.

So, motivational speaker too. Yeah, maybe it does connect. None of that was in my notes but he was granted, really, John the baptizer is an amazing figure in history and I think we kind of sell him short.

Oh, yeah, he's the guy who was before Jesus and kind of did some stuff there around the river and baptized him and that's about all we know but there's some significant things. His eyes were opened to see the Messiah was in the crowds at the shore.

His eyes saw the Messiah and not just saw him physically. Many people were alive in that day and age that saw the Messiah but John saw the Messiah. He knew. He was like, this is the one and I know him and he's here in the crowd and this is him.

His heart was moved to recognize his lowly position even though he's had such a high calling in life. His hands were used to lower the divine son of God into the waters of the Jordan at his baptism. What an amazing calling for this one.

John said these things, this is a quote from John, I'm not worthy to even untie Jesus's sandals. Further, John said this, I must decrease and he, Jesus, must increase. John said some amazing things. Jesus himself spoke of John in these terms.

This is what Jesus says testifying about John. Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. That's a pretty big guy, a pretty big deal. Pretty amazing guy in the function and role that he had in history.

We know him as the quirky prophet and maybe even some of you know that guy with some locusts and honey stuck in his beard, right? A little bit strange, a little bit weird. Honey and beards don't go well together.

Some of you know what I'm talking about unless you're planning on saving stuff for later. But if we could peel back the material world and see spiritual realities. How many of you know that we have a tendency to look on people from the outside?

What they're wearing, what they look like, all that kind of stuff. And we are poor assessors of people's character. Even if you get to know someone over the course of time, how many of you would admit that you're a poor assessor of character?

And I mean, I'm not just saying that in a general sense, like you actually know that that's true of you because that's a good thing that you know it because it is true. We are, I mean, even the best of us at assessing character, even the ones who kind of have been through some courses or some classes to really determine those kinds of things, or maybe some of you have a psychology degree or something like that, or sociology degree.

We're not very good predictors of people's behavior or what's really going on inside of their hearts. And so we look at this guy and he's just kind of this quirky guy. But if we could peel back and really see what's happening on the spiritual realm through people and in them, John the baptizer sits as a pendulum between the old covenant and the new covenant.

He sits as a pivot point for all of history. He's in an amazing spot. The last prophet of the old covenant telling the most blessed generation that the one is here, that all of this ancient history has been for and he's here and he's standing on the banks of this river.

That's John the baptist, this amazing guy who was at the right time born and called for that purpose. And he said, the Messiah has arrived and it isn't me. It isn't me. People were ready to make a big deal of John.

People were ready to elevate him and he had to tell them, no, no, no, no, guys, it's not me. I'm not the one. The people were hungry. They were ready for a Messiah. They had years and years of practicing, trying the law out and it wasn't working and it wasn't functioning and they were promised a Messiah and they were just eager and waiting for him to show up and they misunderstood a lot of things about him.

But they were ready for anybody to be their Messiah. Just come on, somebody get rid of this oppression and save us. And so they were ready to elevate John and John wasn't having any of it. I'm not, no, no, no, you're misunderstanding me.

It's not me. I'm not even worthy of untying the sandals of this one. He must increase. I must decrease. And this is the very John that Herod is holding in his prison. How many of you think that might have been a downer?

Anybody think that that might be a downer? You're like at this apex and you have this calling and you baptize the Messiah and you've seen him with your eyes and then you're in prison. God, I thought we had a thing going here.

God, I thought you had a plan for me. God, I thought you had, and all of that is going on. Well, we see in the text that Herod had a motivation. He had a reason to arrest John. And so it kind of takes us back a little bit.

It says he did so for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife. So even in the arrest of John, we see that Herod did so at the request of another for the sake of somebody else. Somebody's come to him and said, could you arrest John for me?

It was not his will that put John in prison. It was the request of his brother's wife that put him in, that had him in prison, John. And at first glance, we might think this sounds like a family favor.

It kind of has that ring to it. Imagine somebody that's a Tetrarch, a ruler over this district or this area, has some authority, has some power, and one of the guy, that guy's king, and so his family keeps coming to him for favors.

And in this case, it's his sister-in-law, and she happens to ask for a favor. Hey, could you arrest John? That's the way it looks at first in the text. But the more we read and study the scripture, the more we realize Jerry Springer wasn't inventing stuff, and it wasn't new to our generation.

This kind of stuff that makes the TV show is, those types of shows, is not new. It's not new at all. That kind of stuff has been going on since the fall, and since the beginning of human relationships in a broken and fallen world.

Jerry Springer just reports the news, if you will. Secular historians have enough data on the Herodian dynasty to verify the relationships between the people in our text. You can see the start of them up there.

Herodias was Herod Antipas's brother's daughter. Now, if that got confusing, let me clarify. She is his niece. She's his niece, the daughter of his brother Aristobulus. So Aristobulus has a daughter, and that is Herodias.

And to make things more complicated, she married her dad's brother Philip. Okay, which we, just like the Jews, have a word for. It's called incest. Okay, that's what's going on here. She marries her uncle.

But as if that isn't bad enough, her uncle Antipas came to visit the family, and Herodias fell in love with him. So Herodias divorces Philip. Antipas is married as well, and divorces his wife. And then the two of them got married, but not before she had a daughter, who historians call Salome, who's going to come into the picture here in just a moment.

And so we get to the end of the story, and the only thing I can say is Springer, right? I mean, you see that. Oh, Springer. There you go. This is made for TV, made for trashy afternoon TV. Do you get the tangle of these relationships?

Do you see just kind of how tangled this is? I don't know if you were able to follow all of that or not, but it's uncles fighting over a niece. That's just, that's just not, that's ugly. That's gross.

So there's tangle in these relationships, and there's the foundations here we see of darkness, self-centeredness, of lust, of greed, and general evil that has been the way of the world for centuries.

So this is the relationship that's going on here, and you might at some point think, poor John. Poor John. He, he was just simply caught up with the wrong people at the wrong time. How how did he get tangled in this family mess, in this web, and oh, poor John.

We know how the story ends. We've just read it together, and some of you already knew it before I read it, and you're going, oh, poor John. How did he get in this mess? I mean, isn't John just supposed to be down by the river, like baptizing people and proclaiming the coming of the Messiah?

How in the world did he wrapped up in this tangle of intriguing kings and all that kind of stuff going on? But you would think about it wrong if that was your perspective on this, because John inserted himself into that.

He put himself into that mess on purpose, because he could not avoid speaking the truth of God. He had to speak. He saw the corruption that was going on, and he knew it, and he was, he was privy to it, and in that, in that position that God had given to him as a prophet, he spoke truth into the brokenness of everyday life.

John, it says, continued to say, the the verb there is not just said one time, but continually called out Herod into the crowds. It's not lawful for you to have Herodias, he said. It's not lawful for you to have her.

Now, John was a peasant prophet. He was at the margins of society. Sure, he drew some crowds, and I'm sure that Herod knew of him, but I don't think that they had a sit-down meeting where they had a nice discussion about this, and in very demure way, John said, hey, I just kind of am thinking, you know, it's probably not the best idea right now for you to be with Herodias.

You know, the incest thing isn't so great, and then stealing her from your brother, that's kind of, that's kind of creepy too, and so, I mean, hey, maybe you should cut this out. I don't imagine that it went down that way.

I think he spoke openly. I think he spoke prophetically about the sins of this man who called himself the king of the Jews. He was committing incest while stealing his brother's wife. So let me be careful to delineate your role from John's role, because you got to go, what's my role in this society?

What is, what is that to go? Let me, let me just say, this is a complete caveat, but how many in the room have ever shaken President Trump's hand? Okay, how many of you have ever had dinner with President Trump?

How many of you ever had breakfast with President Trump, a meal? How many of you ever been in the same building as President Trump? How many of you have some serious animosity towards that man? Don't raise your hand if you do.

Don't raise your hand, but let me just suggest to you that there's a bit of inconsistency in the way that we as a society process our understanding of individuals. The way that I experience President Trump is by my everyday life, and what has his policy impacted me, and I would suggest to you that my life looks very similar to the way that it did before he assumed presidency.

Anybody would testify to that? Your life every day is pretty much the same thing. Four of us, the rest of you have been radically transformed since his presidency. Maybe you talk about things differently.