When Righteousness Seems To Lose | Matthew 14:1-12

Scripture

• Matthew 14:1–12

About this sermon

Introduction: Our Lord finished a series of parables that taught His disciples what to expect during the time between His first coming and His second coming. To put is simply, what we can expect is the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of Heaven even though it will advance in a world in which it will often seem like it is losing. The hearers who will receive the message will be in the minority. Those who will enter the earthly of kingdom of Christ when He returns will have lived their lives side by side with the sons of the evil one, and in a world that was saturated with Satan’s activity. The value of the kingdom of heaven will only be recognized by those who enter the narrow gate and travel the pathway of the few. And the task that has been imparted by the grace of God, is the task of declaring the whole counsel of God while we have opportunity, because the dragnet will surely reach the shore and the day of judgment will certainly arrive. Matthew now presents us with some scenes that demonstrate the reality of these things even while Jesus was on the earth. Christ is rejected even in his hometown. And now we are told of the death of John the Baptist. But he presents it to us in a retrospective way. He tells us how Herod responds to the news of Jesus — how he connects Jesus to John the Baptist because John is already dead — and then uses that as the opportunity to tell us about John’s death and about how Jesus and John’s disciples responded to that death. AND BY PRESENTING IT THIS WAY, THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE KING’S MISSION THROUGH SEEMING DEFEAT IS UNDERSCORED. This was a moment, this was an occasion, when it seemed like evil triumphed. And yet even as it seemed that evil was winning, there was evidence all around, that God’s sovereign kingdom was unabated. On display in our verses is a great divide between lost humanity and the kingdom of heaven. A divide that continues to be manifested in the same ways to our own day. Four demonstrations of the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of heaven even when it seems righteousness is losing. • LOST HUMANITY FEARS JUDGMENT (vs.1-2) This is something not only on display in Herod, but in all lost humanity. The awareness of something foreboding. Fearful apprehension. The feeling that something bad is on its way. The awareness that what I now enjoy will come to an end. The awareness that God’s judgment is on the horizon and that I stand in a place of wickedness. Something IS TRULY wrong AND THE LOST MAN KNOWS IT. The lost man’s fear testifies to the witness that God has put in his own conscience that the wrong will be judged. Herod was a tetrarch. τετραάρχης, ου, ὁ (some edd. spell it τετράρχης; on this s. B-D-F §124; W-S.§5, 24b; Mlt.-H. 63 al.) a petty prince dependent on Rome and with rank and authority lower than those of a king, tetrarch (Strabo, Joseph., ins: s. the reff. in Schürer I 333–35 n. 12. Also Plut., Anton. 942 [56, 7]; 943 [58, 11]; Polyaenus 8, 39), orig., ruler of the fourth part of a region This is Herod Antipas. He is the son of Herod the Great. His father died in 4 BC, and his kingdom was divided, and Herod Antipas became ruler of Galilee and Perea from 4 BC to AD 39. He is a weak and wicked man. Matthew’s account of the death of John the Baptist will make that clear. But first the Spirit of God wants us to know that Herod WAS A TROUBLED MAN. He was full of superstitious fear. He was troubled with a sense of impending doom. He has done something that is plaguing his conscience. He hears about Jesus, and His miraculous powers, and he is so troubled that he voices his fear to his servants. HE THINKS THAT JESUS REPRESENTS JOHN RETURNED. How exactly he conceived of that happening we are not told, but that really isn’t the point. THE POINT IS THAT HE WAS AFRAID. WHY? WHY IS HEROD AFRAID? Because he knows he has done something wrong, wicked, dangerous. That fear, that sense of dread in human beings, is a continual testimony to the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of God. ESV Proverbs 28:1 The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion. ESV Hebrews 2:14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. You see this all around in the world in which we live. People living as though they will never die. People refusing to truly acknowledge their mortality and the eternity that is before them. THEY ANESTHETIZE THEMSELVES WITH THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD. Death, for the believer, holds no REAL fear. But death for the unbeliever SHOULD BE FEARED. And it is. Lost mankind doesn’t want to think about death. Lost mankind wastes his life pretending that death isn’t real. Lost mankind seeks to provide himself false comfort by imagining that