How to Get Ahead in this World

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

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called
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Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Well, good morning.
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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.
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I hope you realize that the church is not just a program or a location or an audience to participate in.
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We are a community together of the redeemed who gather together to share in our love for our
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Savior and Lord Jesus Christ by learning together, by worshiping him together. And we need each other.
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We need each other to gather together, to rub shoulders with one another, to be encouraged by one another.
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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
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Not Your Average Savior. It's been kind of a go -to series that I've gone back to from time to time.
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And I started this series years ago, but I use it at times to kind of bring our attention back to the
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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
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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
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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.
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And so Jesus stands out against all those other things that you might think will help you ultimately.
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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.
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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 and really through the entire
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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.
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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.
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And I think you get a balance in that as you walk through the pages of Scripture, as we walk through entire books.
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And even in our text this morning, we are going to see a pretty heavy, dark text.
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It's pretty intense. But even in this dark text, we see a silver lining.
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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
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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
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Southern Baptists. And we can have a tendency when we hear the word Baptist, that's a word that's loaded.
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But the most unique thing about John and one of the most standout things and the reason we call him
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John the Baptist or John the Baptizer is because he is, of course, the one who baptized our
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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.
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But John was a faithful servant in a world that is faithless. And in this, we see
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John as a model for what went on before him in the lives of the Old Testament prophets from our text this morning.
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In 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 countercultural message to say, there is hope, but it is not in you.
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There's hope, but it's not found in you being strong enough or being able to fix yourself.
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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.
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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.
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So if you're not already there, please open your Bibles or navigate in your app or whatever you use to Matthew chapter 14, and we'll be looking at the first 12 verses there or one through 12.
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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.
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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.
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Again, Recast Church, Matthew 14, one through 12. And this is what God desires for us to hear this morning.
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Again, a fairly intense text, but one that is here for our encouragement and for our challenge.
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At that time, Herod, the Tetrarch, heard about the fame of Jesus. And he said to his servants, this is
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John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead, and that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.
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For Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother
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Philip's wife, because John had been saying to him, it is not lawful for you to have her.
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And though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people, because they held him to be a prophet.
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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.
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Prompted by her mother, she said, give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.
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And the king was sorry, but because of his oath and his guests, he commanded it to be given.
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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.
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And his disciples came and took the body and buried it. And they went and told Jesus. Let's pray.
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Father, we come to this text and it's dark.
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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.
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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.
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But the very nature of sin and brokenness cuts right down our own hearts.
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So I pray that you wouldn't allow this message to be lost on us this morning and the things that you want to communicate to us about our own brokenness and our own fallenness.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You have forgiven us. You have washed our sins away as far as the east is from the west and our corruption, it's not that we are no longer corrupt, it's that we are declared righteous because of what
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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.
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Father, that we would make a joyful noise to you because we love you and we recognize what you have done for us. In Jesus' name, amen.
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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.
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And then if the seat that you're getting in gets uncomfortable or is distracting you from paying attention to God's word,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But I studied it down to the level this week of words and phrases. I broke apart sentences.
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I peeled back the layers and studied historical relationships between these real -life characters that are well -documented in secular histories.
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And I was left with the overwhelming sense that this text is written for us intentionally to showcase the darkness of our world.
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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.
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It is not particularly one that you read and go, whoo, it's great to be alive. It's great to be a
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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.
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There is no candy coating to this account. It isn't pretty. It's not cute.
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It's not here to make you feel good. Within this text, we come face -to -face with our own human condition.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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Don't take, 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.
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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.
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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, 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.
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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.
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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
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Roman appointed Jewish leaders, leader of the area named Herod, and it just says Herod in the text, and we'll get down to which
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Herod and all of that, but that guy caught wind of the fame of Jesus, okay, Jesus' name was being spread and he, 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.
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But Herod's opinions and thoughts about Jesus are conveyed in verse two, and they're a little bit strange to our ears.
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They require 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.
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Herod thought that Jesus was John the baptizer, come back from the grave with miraculous powers.
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Now does anybody think that that sounds a little bit superstitious? Does that sound a little bit strange?
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A strange comment from a, from a king, from a ruler over a territory? 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.
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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.
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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.
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I think it's an interesting combination. Superstition and guilt are an intriguing combination.
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Superstition and guilt, when they're brought together, can do strange things. Edgar Allan Poe exploits that combination in his brilliant book, short book,
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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.
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Guilt can play tricks with our own logic, right? Guilt can play tricks with our health.
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Physical manifestations of pent -up guilt that we're not expressing and we're not dealing with and we're not seeking forgiveness for.
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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.
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Guilt has a way of working itself out into the light, and I think we see that in Herod's life here.
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So Matthew takes us on a little trip back a little to the relationship between Herod and John the
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Baptizer. And in verses 3 through 12 are that flashback. The first we see is Herod arresting
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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 back story here.
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John was seized. Some very strong Greek verbs are used here in Matthew for what
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Herod does to John. He seizes him, he binds him, and he imprisons him.
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Now all of those three things are happening to a Jew at the hands of a fellow Jew. Herod is not a
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Roman. He is certainly somewhat of a puppet of the Romans, but he is supposed to be a religiously abiding
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Jew, which he wasn't, according to historians, very well. But Herod was, of course, no ordinary
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Jew. He was born the son of the notorious Herod the Great.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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?
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So that was his father that did that in Bethlehem. So you get a picture of what kind of dad this guy had.
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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.
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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?
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Some of you might be informed about that. And his father had divided his territory upon his death, and so Antipas is a
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Tetrarch, which is a ruler over a fourth of his father's kingdom. That's simply what that word means.
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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.
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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.
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So this would have been the most powerful Jewish leader over Jesus in his youth.
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That's who this guy is. And many gave him the title. It was not his right to call himself king, according to the
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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.
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He was not supposed to be titled king, but people who would kind of try to get on his good side.
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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.
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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
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Aristobulus and Philip. Don't worry, this isn't going to be a massive history lesson. But Aristobulus and Philip, two of his brothers.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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He was born into leadership, but didn't have that skill set. And we're going to see that here.
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He did not certainly have character. He lacked a moral compass.
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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.
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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,
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Herod wanted John dead. So his wife has him put to death. You see the, there's a little bit of a conflict in some strange things that are going on there relationally as well.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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John the Baptizer, thinking about the contrast, we've got two kind of opposite characters in the text that we ought to understand.
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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
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Messiah. He's the very last in that line of Old Testament prophets, almost bridging a gap between old and new.
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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.
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He lived alone for long periods of time in the wilderness, that in itself made him stand out. Scripture seemed to indicate that he stayed out on the margins of society, and even when we see him, you kind of think, him interacting with crowds, right?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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Yeah, maybe it does connect. None of that was in my notes. But he was granted, really,
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John the Baptizer is an amazing figure in history, and I think we kind of sell him short.
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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.
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But there's some significant things. His eyes were opened to see the
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Messiah was in the crowds at the shore. His eyes saw the Messiah, and not just saw him physically.
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Many people were alive in that day and age that saw the Messiah, but John saw the
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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.
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His heart was moved to recognize his lowly position, even though he has had such a high calling in life.
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His hands were used to lower the divine Son of God into the waters of the Jordan at his baptism.
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What an amazing calling for this one. John said, these things, this is a quote from John, I'm not worthy to even untie
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Jesus' sandals. Further, John said this, I must decrease, and he,
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Jesus, must increase. John said some amazing things.
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Jesus himself spoke of John in these terms. This is what Jesus says, testifying about John.
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Among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the
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Baptist. That's a pretty big guy, a pretty big deal. Pretty amazing guy in the function and role that he had in history.
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We know him as the quirky prophet, and maybe even some of you know that guy with some locust and honey stuck in his beard, right?
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A little bit strange, a little bit weird. Honey and beards don't go well together. Some of you know what
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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, if we could, how many of you know that we have a tendency to look on people from the outside?
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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,
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John the baptizer sits as a pendulum between the old covenant and the new covenant.
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He sits as a pivot point for all of history. He's in an amazing spot.
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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 very river.
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It's John the baptist, this amazing guy who was at the right time born and called for that purpose.
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And he said, the Messiah has arrived, and it isn't me. It isn't me.
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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.
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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
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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
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Messiah. Just come on, somebody get rid of this oppression and save us. And so they were ready to elevate
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John, and John wasn't having any of it. No, no, no, you're misunderstanding me. It's not me. I'm not even worthy of untying the sandals of this one.
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He must increase. I must decrease. And this is the very
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John that Herod is holding in his prison. How many of you think that might have been a downer?
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Anybody think that that might be a downer? You're like at this apex, and you have this calling, and you baptize the
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Messiah, and you've seen him with your eyes, and then you're in prison. God, I thought we had a thing going here.
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God, I thought you had a plan for me. God, I thought you had, and all of that is going on. We see in the text that Herod had a motivation.
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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
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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.
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Somebody's come to him and said, could you arrest John for me? It was not his will that put John in prison.
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It was the request of his brother's wife that put him in, that had him in prison,
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John. And at first glance, we might think this sounds like a family favor. It kind of has that ring to it.
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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.
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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
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Jerry Springer wasn't inventing stuff, and it wasn't new to our generation. This kind of stuff that makes the
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TV show, those types of shows, is not new. It's not new at all.
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It's that kind of stuff that's been going on since the fall, and since the beginning of human relationships in a broken and fallen world.
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Jerry Springer just reports the news, if you will. Secular historians have enough data on the
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Herodian dynasty to verify the relationships between the people in our text. You can see the start of them up there.
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Herodias was Herod Antipas' brother's daughter. Now, if that got confusing, let me clarify.
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She is his niece. She's his niece, the daughter of his brother, Aristobulus.
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So Aristobulus has a daughter, and that is Herodias, and to make things more complicated, she married her dad's brother,
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Philip, which we, just like the Jews, have a word for.
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It's called incest. That's what's going on here. She marries her uncle, but as if that isn't bad enough, her uncle
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Antipas came to visit the family, and Herodias fell in love with him. So Herodias divorces
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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
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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
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I can say is, Springer, right? I mean, you see that, oh,
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Springer, there you go. This is made for TV, made for trashy afternoon
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TV. Do you get the tangle of these relationships? Do you see just kind of how tangled this is?
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I mean, 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 not, that's ugly.
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That's gross. So there's tangle in these relationships, and there's the foundations here we see of darkness, of self -centeredness, of lust, of greed, and general evil that has been the way of the world for centuries.
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So this is the relationship that's going on here, and you might at some point think, poor John, poor
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John, he was just simply caught up with the wrong people at the wrong time. How did he get tangled in this family mess and this web, and oh, poor
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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
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John, how did he get in this mess? I mean, isn't John just supposed to be down by the river baptizing people and proclaiming the coming of the
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Messiah? How in the world did he get wrapped up in this tangle of intriguing kings and all of that kind of stuff going on?
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But you would think about it wrong if that was your perspective on this, because John inserted himself into that.
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He put himself into that mess on purpose, because he could not avoid speaking the truth of God.
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He had to speak. He saw the corruption that was going on, and he knew it, and he was privy to it, and in that position that God had given to him as a prophet, he spoke truth into the brokenness of everyday life.
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And John, it says, continued to say, the verb there is not just said one time, but continually called out
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Herod into the crowds. It's not lawful for you to have Herodias, he said.
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It's not lawful for you to have her. Now, John was a peasant prophet. He was at the margins of society.
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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 a very demure way,
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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 creepy too, and so,
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I mean, hey, maybe you should cut this out. I don't imagine that it went down that way. I think he spoke openly,
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I think he spoke prophetically about the sins of this man who called himself the king of the
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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've got to go, what's my role in this society, what is that to go, let me just say, this is a complete caveat, but how many in the room have ever shaken
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President Trump's hand? Okay, how many of you have ever had dinner with President Trump?
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How many of you have ever had breakfast with President Trump, a meal? How many of you have ever been in the same building as President Trump?
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How many of you have some serious animosity towards that man? Don't raise your hand if you do, don't raise your hand.
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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.
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The way that I experience President Trump is by my everyday life, and what is 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.
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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.
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Maybe you talk about things differently, maybe there's different things that you have conversations about, but at the end of the day, all that I would just suggest to you is that if you have definitive knowledge and personal awareness of his sin, then certainly feel free to call that out.
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But let me just caution you otherwise to just zip it. Our society needs more zipping it.
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That seems like a strange message in light of John the Baptist here calling out a leader, but he had knowledge of that to be able to affirm that, and it's obvious that he got imprisoned for it, and it didn't go well for him as we're going to see.
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But all that I'm saying here is that I see a lot of animosity and slinging and frustration, and I think our culture, whichever side of the aisle you're on, we need more civility.
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We need more wisdom and less just kind of taking what the media spoon feeds us.
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Either direction, whether you're watching Fox News or CNN or MSNBC or whatever your favorite poison is, stop drinking it.
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Sorry, that got really political, and none of that was in my notes. But I think that it is important for us to understand that is
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God calling me to tell all of my circle of friends on Facebook the terrible things that I feel about the president?
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I am not sure that that's what the application is of this text, but there is something that is true from this text, and that is where there is sin, we can't be silent, where we know that it is.
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And let me just suggest to you that first, my goodness, first and foremost, start with your own heart.
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I want you to admit that you've got a lot to work on in here, we've got so much to work on here.
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Yes, we should be engaged in a battle with sin, but let's start right here in our own hearts first.
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Let's get in here and dig in here and find what God wants to fix in us before we ever cast dispersions at others, especially speculative things that we don't really even know, we don't even know.
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John was a prophet, John was a prophet under the old covenant. His was a
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God -given ministry to call out sin so that people would see their need for the
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Messiah who had come and would be baptized and be prepared in their hearts for his arrival.
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Now let me just suggest to you that that's not super far off of your calling as a follower of Christ. You probably have a less public ministry, but you do have a role to play in calling people to see their own need for a
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Savior. That is a fundamental call for each one of us. But I would suggest to you that we're in a catch -22 of sorts regarding our calling in our current culture.
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We are holding the cure for a disease that our culture likes to have.
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We're holding the cure for a disease, we have the remedy for a disease that our culture has embraced.
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They like the disease. And so did we. So did we.
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Without the radical inbreaking of God's Holy Spirit to shake us loose from the moorings to sin, we would still be completely and utterly owned by it.
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It's only because of his sacrifice and death on the cross that we have the freedom to say no to sin and to be alive in Christ.
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We don't even do that perfectly. John, think about his culture, it wasn't different than our culture, it wasn't any different really.
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John was trying to show Herod that he was not doing what is good, not doing what is right. And Herod and Herodias just got angry at him.
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They didn't go, oh yeah, you're right John, the conviction, oh I get it, yeah, oh you're right, we should break this relationship off and this is incestuous and sinful.
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They got angry. And the truth is, even most Christians have dumbed down the importance of helping people to see their own depravity.
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It's a reality and a culture and a world that we live in, we don't want to offend anyone.
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The gospel, recast the gospel as a message that offends, it's an offensive message.
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It says, dude, you're a mess. You're a mess and you need help.
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And I know the one who can help. I know the one who's the solution. But that dude, you're a mess sentence, we'd like to leave that one out, wouldn't we?
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That's the messy one. That's the one that kind of gets a little like, oh man, that's a little brash, that's a little bold, that's a little direct.
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And so instead our gospel presentation often can be a false gospel that communicates, you're pretty good, you're doing okay, just add
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Jesus for that little extra sparkle and sprinkle of blessing in your life. Isn't that kind of the,
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I mean if we're honest, isn't that kind of the message that we hear a lot and can often be guilty of portraying?
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You're good, you're good, you just need a little bit more. You just need a little something on top of that goodness that you've got and that'll really push you over the edge into the kingdom.
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And that's not the message. That's not the message for me, that's not the message for you, that's not the message for your neighbor, that's not the message for your coworker, that's not the message for your children.
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You're pretty good, but you just need a little bit more. You're corrupt. You're broken, you're busted, you're a mess and you need a savior.
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And that's why people who hit rock bottom are often the easiest to come into the kingdom. That's why Jesus spent his time with prostitutes, tax collectors, the people that were marginalized and cast off of society.
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Why? Because they knew they didn't have anything. They knew they weren't good. They knew that they needed help.
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Zacchaeus is up in the tree and he's a mess. Nobody even wants to be around him. Nobody wants to be near him.
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Nobody will give him space to even get up to the front and so he climbs the tree and ends up making everything right in the end because Jesus comes in and Jesus changes him.
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The margins of society and the cast off and the people who were thought to be traitors and were way out there, they knew they needed a savior.
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John didn't back down even from those powerful in his culture who were in public sin. Herod wanted
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John dead, but he feared the people because they believed he was a prophet and so Herod was in a bit of a trap there.
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Putting someone to death who the people liked could result in an uprising and Rome didn't look very favorably on uprisings and so Herod was trying to do all that he could to appease those who were over him.
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But now we draw near to the end and I say the end even though we still have seven verses to go and you can kind of do the math, but the seven verses occur in one event on one day.
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Herod held a birthday bash. Yeah, he had a birthday bash.
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Probably wasn't quite, I mean that picture is somewhat representative of what we can imagine it might have been like.
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I'm sure it was quite a party since he was royalty. He was royalty and wealthy and a large wealthy royal family.
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By the way, Jews in this era and this time, Jews did not celebrate birthdays.
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It wasn't a common or routine thing even for leaders and royalty. He's following a very
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Greek tradition there by doing this, demonstrating kind of a little Greek and Roman influence in his family, kind of doing things the way that the master, the ruler does.
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But at some point during the feasting, we're told Herodias' daughter Salome, who was her daughter from Philip, got up and performed a dance and it pleased the king greatly.
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Now I don't want to get into any details and I would caution you actually. I wouldn't get into any details anyways because the text doesn't,
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I would caution you against too much speculation about this dance. There's a lot of things that fly around and what was it and what it wasn't, but I would encourage you to feel free, however, to speculate about inebriation.
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I don't know what the dance was and I don't want to speak to that, but I'm confident that this party was not that party, it was a kegger.
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That's very common in this time and I don't think I'm stretching any kind of notions of what was likely there.
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Herod offers her, she dances in front of the whole crowd and after the dance,
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Herod offers her anything she wants. Now Mark's account has up to half of the kingdom,
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Matthew leaves that out, so I think we could probably fairly say it's up to half the kingdom. And I just want to just suggest to you,
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Herodias' dance skills apparently were phenomenal. She apparently was a good dancer and some people just have it.
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Now personally, I would just say, I'm fairly certain that if I danced for you right here, right now, that some of you would offer me anything to stop, okay?
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I just think that that's probably likely that somebody in the crowd would be like, up to half of my kingdom if you would just stop trying to dance.
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Like it would probably be, you know, someone, maybe some of you would pool together resources to get me to stop.
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Come to think of it, I mean, that might be a good strategy, I don't know. There we go, raising money for the next missions trip right there.
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Me dancing on the street, I'll stop if you pay, that'd be good. Some of you, some of you would do that.
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My children are all musical, my wife teaches piano lessons and I like to listen to music, so that's how that all works out.
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But I could talk about rash oaths here, because this is obviously a rash oath.
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I believe, I genuinely believe this and the text doesn't say it, so you don't have to go with my belief, but I think the guy's a knee -breed,
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I really do. I think he's had one too many, probably more than one too many. So he offers something that's exorbitant, he issues a rash oath that's foolish at its bare minimum, it's incestuous, it's lustful in some degree.
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But rash oaths are a theme in scripture. King Saul took a few rash oaths and we see how that ended for him.
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Jephthah was the king of rash oaths. I will sacrifice whatever is the first thing that comes out of my house,
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God, if you give me victory. Very rash oath. There are proverbs that speak against taking a rash oath, pledging or promising something without thoughtful consideration.
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And that's a lesson for all of us, right? Even when it comes to, yes, I will help you move, or yes, I will do this, or I will do that job for you, or I will be there for this, we ought to be cautious and careful about what we think to say to somebody before we actually do it, and then actually do it if we say we will.
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In the book of Acts, we see a really strange, bizarre, and almost kind of humorous rash oath that's taken.
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Some of you might not recognize it, but there is a group of Jews who pledge to not eat food and they say we won't eat until the
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Apostle Paul is dead. He didn't die. I wonder if they did.
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My hunch is that that's an oath that was broken. But Herod here in the text makes a very rash oath.
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Would you guys agree with me on that? Rash oath, just a quick, foolish thing that he says. And he offered her up to half of anything that she wanted.
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So she consults with her mom, and mom asked for the head of John the Baptizer here on a platter.
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The word here is now. Okay, so it makes it clear that she says I want this to happen now, and I'll be waiting.
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I'm going to stand by and expect this to happen now. And so think about this for just a moment.
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To have anything in the kingdom, up to half of the kingdom available to you.
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Anything. And to ask for the head of John.
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Highlights the extreme animosity that was in the heart of Herodias. There's not a lot that we know about this woman, but we know this.
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She was bitter. She was angry. And she was cruel.
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She had plotted and planned and apparently longed for the day that this follower of Christ would be done.
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Would no longer be a thorn in her side. She despised the truth that he brought.
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She despised the conviction that he offered. She despised that this crazy young nothing could have an impact on her rightfully powerful husband.
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And the weak and waffling Herod, it says in the text, was sorry for his oath. I don't believe he was sorrowful in the sense that he loved
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John. I believe he was sorrowful in the sense that he knew that this was going to have ramifications for his kingdom. But he was sorry nonetheless.
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But he had sworn a pledge in front of so many guests that he had been backed into a corner. He phoned down to the prison and had
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John beheaded and the head was brought on a platter to the gathering that very night. And in verse 12,
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John's disciples came out of respect and gave his body a proper burial. And then they went and told his cousin
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Jesus. We'll pick up in the story next week and see what Jesus does with this information. It's a sordid story.
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It's a dark story. And we may be tempted to think of it as an exceptional story.
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As an out there kind of story. These kinds of things don't really happen. We may be tempted to think that it's just not reality.
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I don't know anybody who's been beheaded for their faith. I don't know people who have even died for their faith. Let me just suggest to you that the animosity that the world has for conviction has not changed.
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Still. We might be more civil in the way that we process things, but even that can change in a heartbeat.
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I believe that we're at a stage in history and our culture where animosity toward the message of sin, the message that redemption can be found in Jesus Christ through repentance and by faith,
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I believe animosity toward that message is increasing. In other words, it will be more and more difficult to call sin sin and to encourage people to repent and turn from it as we advance down this culture and this brave new world.
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We quite frankly no longer see eye to eye with our culture regarding the fundamental problem facing humanity.
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I think that if you would ask people a hundred years ago, what is the fundamental problem, they may well have got sin, and I'm just speculating, but I'm guessing that a large number of people would have got that right.
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What's the real problem in the world? Sin. But that's not the case anymore.
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I don't think our culture would be able to identify that very clearly, and then when they do, they're off the mark widely.
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According to Scripture, our fundamental problem is a problem of sin against God and against others.
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That's the problem that we face as a people. But we disagree with the world regarding that problem.
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Ask people in your workplace, ask people in your neighborhood, ask people who don't attend a church, what is the problem facing humanity, and it's probably just as likely to be global warming as anything, or a whole host of things.
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Take the song, Imagine, by John Lennon. Some of you know that song? Have you heard it before? Anybody?
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I mean, really? Okay, more than that. He issues in that a diagnosis of sorts, and I don't know if you realize it because it's kind of a feel -good song, and there's an emotional connection, but he's trying to paint a picture of a perfect world, and so in that painting of a perfect world, you might miss the opposite of what he's saying.
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You might miss that he's actually suggesting to you that there's a problem, and if we could get rid of these problems, then we would all live in peace, and we'd all live in love if we could just get rid of these things.
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What does he imagine there is now? Heaven. He says if we could remove heaven, if we could remove hell, if we could only have the sky above us, what is he alluding to there?
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What's above you besides the sky? God. If we could just only have the sky above us, if nothing but the sky was above us.
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That's not a pretty line. It sounds pretty when he's singing it. That is
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Satan. That is evil. I'm not saying John Lennon is Satan, but I'm saying he's giving us a picture of a message of what the world thinks the problem is.
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If we could get rid of this fuzzy notion of God, if we could get rid of judgment, if we could get rid of heaven and hell, and he outright says it, if we could just get rid of religion as well, throw that out.
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Because that's the problem. That's what John Lennon is identifying or was identifying as the problem.
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Heaven, hell, God, religion. He believed that faith was a fundamental problem that would need to be removed before the world could be one.
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And that flips reality on its head. Herod and Herodias fully agreed with that song.
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It might have been their theme song. Get rid of judgment, they would have cried.
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Get rid of all those religious types like John who believe in sin. Oh my goodness, what an archaic thought.
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And then we can all just live in peace with our own standard of morality, without much logical thought to the fact that when my standard disagrees with your standard, all of a sudden we're back to conflict again, right?
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We can just pretend that we could all come up with laws and rules that would work for all of us. No. We all, like John, have a message to bring to our world that's going to ruffle people's feathers.
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And we should bring it in a loving way, but we should bring it in a clear way. Do we mourn for John?
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Do you mourn for John? Are you sad when you see him go here in the text? You're sad to see him there, confused and kind of frustrated in prison, kind of going,
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God, where are you? And even sending his disciples to Jesus to say, I'm sorry, I'm having a season of doubt here.
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And Jesus quells those doubts, and I believe John went in his faith to be with his
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Lord. Do you feel bad for the way that it comes down? John's not mourning.
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John's not sad. John's gone away for just a little while, just as all bodies cease to breathe, just as every servant of God who has ever walked this earth, including
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God's own Son, John is in heaven. John's in heaven.
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Is it fair that his death served as a study for all of us in the wicked ways of the world, that he died so that we could be having this lesson today?
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Well, I would just suggest to you, I know I'm going to die, and so I hope that my death can be of benefit to someone, because it's going to happen, so why not make it good?
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Not only that I'm an organ donor, but the death of a follower of Jesus Christ is a step out into another part of the stage.
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History is all together, but death is like a curtain drawn between the living and the dead.
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I'd suggest to you they're still on the stage of God's play, God's big act, God's big thing that he's producing and putting on here for all of us, including all of us.
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They all have a part to play, and even those who have gone before us are still on the stage, they're just in a different part of the stage.
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And every single person in the story gets ahead.
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At first blush, you look like when you read that, and I don't know if you caught the play on words when you saw it on the front, and I'm not just strictly trying to be disrespectful.
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It could appear like a disrespectful play on words, right? Like, oh my goodness, how could Don do this?
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It's a pun that I use intentionally because I think this is a shocking message to us.
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Only one person in the text truly gets ahead. Ahead, like forward.
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Only one is truly blessed. Only one is doing better by verse 12 than he was at verse 3.
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Only one. And it isn't Herod. It isn't Herodias. It isn't
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Salome. Who do you pity the most in this account when you read it? Poor old
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John? Or do you feel pity and compassion toward Herod and Herodias? Poor little
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Salome who is a tool of her mother's wrath. Why include a story like this, by the way?
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Why is this included here? It kind of could, when understood the wrong way, make
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God look bad. If I were writing a PR brochure for the Almighty, I probably wouldn't include stories of the beheading of His servants or the scandalous causes of death of His followers.
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Scripture isn't here to make us happy. If I were trying to have a pep rally this morning,
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I would never speak on this passage. But there are times when we are called to look at the reality of this world and recognize the powerful forces of evil at work under the everyday current of our lives.
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So how do we apply this? Wrap this up. First, just like John did in life, trust
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Jesus as the Messiah. John went through seasons of great faith and seasons of great doubts, but in the end,
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I have no question that John died with trust in Jesus. Second, consider your call to stand strong on the truth.
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Despite our culture's slide into insanity, bring the remedy to those who know that they need one.
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Be attentive to that. And when you can, carefully but honestly let people know they need a remedy and that Jesus is the solution.
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I'd encourage you to have ears for that, by the way. What I mean by that is I think that there are times when somebody's talking to you and they're saying something they're not saying.
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I think there's times where you have built a rapport with somebody at your workplace where they're beginning to share with you the insides.
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They're beginning to share with you the struggle that they had this past weekend. They're starting to share with you the relational struggles that they're in.
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And what they're doing is they're opening up to you to show you the hooks in their lives where they're saying, I need help.
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I know I don't have this together. And are you a safe person for me to come to with this?
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Because everybody, every human being knows the mess is in their own heart. It doesn't matter whether we share that with somebody or not, whether we go to somebody for help.
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The flip side of that is true for each one of us in this room, by the way, and that's that you know the mess is in your own heart. And let me just suggest to you that you reach out and ask for help.
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That you don't go it alone. That you willingly find somebody that you can trust and say,
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I need help. Would you pray for me? Would you talk with me? Would you hold me accountable?
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Would you keep me in your prayers? But I need help. Lastly, seems kind of strange, but an application to this is just don't worry about death.
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Don't fear it. Death is not a good thing. People want to kind of trump it up a little bit and just kind of be like, oh, it's not that terrible at the end of the day for the believer.
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It's just crossing a line. It's just going, well, none of us want to die. That's the truth, right? But death is not an ultimate thing.
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We know that from the testimony of Scripture. It's not an ultimate thing. It doesn't have the last say. John had a transition, but not an end.
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John didn't go away forever. John is still on the stage.
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We're all going to go through that same transition. But for those who know Jesus has covered our sins, we have nothing to fear.
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He will carry us there. So we come to communion. And as we come to communion, we should allow our minds to consider how this world system is a product of our own sin -cursed hearts.
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Not just Herodias, not just Herod, but us. We can judge
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Herod and Herodias pretty harshly without taking a moment to consider the ways that we have been a part of this broken system.
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We all have a mini Jerry Springer show going on in our own hearts. Let's take time this morning to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that promises a restoration is on the way.
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He died to reconcile us with His Father. And so we take a cracker to remember His body that was broken for us, and we take the cup of juice to remember the blood of Jesus shed for us.
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And it isn't because we're better than Herod that we are saved. It's because Jesus has saved us from ourselves.
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The line of sin is not somewhere out there. The line of sin, as I said in my introduction, cuts down the center of every human heart.
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So let's rejoice that even though we don't deserve it, Christ has saved us.
01:00:02
If you haven't asked Jesus Christ to save you, please come and talk with me after this service. You can skip communion, take in the song, pray, and just come and see me at the end of the service, and we can talk about how you can start a relationship with Jesus Christ.
01:00:16
Let's pray. Father, I thank You that we do have hope.
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We have hope only in Christ. We don't have hope in fixing ourselves. We don't have hope in living a better life than Herod, or being more kind to others, or not taking rash oaths, when our hope rests firmly in Jesus Christ and in Him alone.
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Father, if there's anybody in this room that doesn't have that hope, that doesn't recognize what Christ has done for them, Father, I pray that You would move in their hearts,
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Father, to be bold to come and talk with me, and maybe we can start a dialogue about how they can come into an understanding of what
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Jesus Christ has done for them. Father, Your grace is amazing. Your love is amazing.
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The hope that we have through Jesus Christ is amazing. That this world doesn't get the last say, sin doesn't get the last say, death doesn't get the last say, but Your Son does.
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So I thank You that we have an opportunity to take the cup of juice, to remember
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His blood that was shed for us, and to take this cracker as a symbol, and a remembrance of His body that was broken in our place.
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Father, I pray that we wouldn't do this flippantly, but we would do it as a celebration. We wouldn't do it morosely or darkly, or we wouldn't fear
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Christ, but Father, we would recognize how much love You have for us in Your Son.
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And we'd do this as a celebration, remembering that our hope is in You. In Jesus' name,