Matthew 14:1-12
At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, 2 and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.” 3 For Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, 4 because John had been saying to him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.” 5 And though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people, because they held him to be a prophet. 6 But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company and pleased Herod, 7 so that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask. 8 Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.” 9 And the king was sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he commanded it to be given. 10 He sent and had John beheaded in the prison, 11 and his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother. 12 And his disciples came and took the body and buried it, and they went and told Jesus. [1]
To people who read the Gospels for the first time, especially if they do so superficially, as most of us tend to do, they seem to be more a collection of stories and teachings with little to connect them besides the obvious flow of events that mark the life of Christ. Even the order of events is sometimes puzzling. But there is far more to the arrangement of the Gospel material than this, and the more we study the Gospels the more profound the arrangement of the material seems to be.
We see an example of this as we approach Matthew 14, the beginning of a section of the book in which Jesus begins to withdraw from the crowds (chapters 14-17). The chapter begins with a mention of the death of John the Baptist, which seems to have little to do with the ongoing story. What is worse, John’s death is not in the correct historical sequence. Verse 3 clearly describes a past event, a death that happened earlier. All that happens in our text is that Herod Antipas, the one who had John killed, hears about Jesus, and thinks Jesus may be John risen from the dead.
To understand what is going on, we need to remember two things. First, we have just finished chapter 13 in which Jesus predicted there would be opposition to his Kingdom. The parable of the sower taught us that even though Christ sows himself into the entire world, only a part of that seed will bear fruit. The parable of the wheat and tares pointed to the work of Satan as the kingdom’s enemy. We must expect opposition to the message of the gospel.
That is exactly what we find now. Chapter 13 ended with Jesus’s rejection in his hometown. Here in chapter 14, we are reminded that Christ’s forerunner was also rejected even to the point of being killed. Are we to expect that Jesus himself will receive any different treatment from the authorities?
Second, we have noticed a change in Christ’s teaching. He has turned away from the public preaching that had marked his work earlier to teach his own disciples in private. The parables of chapter 13 showed this, for Jesus told only the first four to the crowds, who did not understand them. Jesus explained them to his disciples later. Jesus told the last three parables to his disciples only.
That means our text this morning forms a kind of transition, and the reason Matthew includes the account of John’s death becomes clear by the last verse of the account and the way it leads into verse 13. Verse 12 explains that after John was buried, his disciples “went and told Jesus,” after which we read “When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.” After John’s death, the handwriting was on the wall, and Jesus responded by withdrawing from the crowds and beginning to teach privately those he was going to leave behind.
JOHN’S MURDER
There are several Herods in the New Testament, the best-known being Herod the Great, the founder of the Herodian dynasty. He was the one ruling at the time of Christ’s birth and was the one responsible for the murder of the infants in Bethlehem. The man who killed John was Herod Antipas. He is called a “king” in verse 9, but he was actually merely the tetrarch of Galilee, meaning he had a lower status than a king.
Tetrarch is a Greek word that originally meant “a ruler over a fourth part of a Kingdom.” In Matthew’s day, the word had come to mean only a lesser prince or governor. Harrod’s tetrarchy included Galilee and Perea. John’s work had been in the area of Perea (John 1:28) and Jesus’ early work was in Galilee, both of which fell under Herod’s official jurisdiction.
Herod Antipas ruled for more than 30 years, most of the time from the town of Tiberius on the southwest shore of Galilee. He was not far from Capernaum or Nazareth. But at the point he beheaded John (which happened about a year earlier) he was at the fortress of Macarius, about 7 miles northeast of the Dead Sea since that is where John the Baptizer was imprisoned.
Herod’s first wife was a Nabatean Princess who’s land bordered Parea. Theirs was a political marriage. Herod divorced this woman to marry Herodias, the wife who appears in this story. Herodias had been married to Herod Antipas’ half-brother, Herod Philip, and when Herod Antipas seduced her away from his half-brother it created a festering political situation. In fact, some years later it led to a war in which Herod was defeated and only saved by the Romans. Because Herod Antipas’ had created an extremely sensitive political and moral issue, John the Baptizer’s criticism was like throwing sparks on dry tinder.
When John denounced Herod for his immoral behavior, it likely had little to do with his divorce, which was allowed under both Jewish and Roman law. The problem was that the second marriage was incestuous because Herodias was his half-brother’s wife. Such a marriage is explicitly condemned in Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21. John did not merely speak out against the marriage. The text says that John was continually speaking out against it, using the imperfect tense of the verb “to say” in verse four. Herod imprisoned him to shut him up, wanting to kill him but afraid to do so because of the people who considered John a prophet.
That helps us to understand why Herodias hated John and urged the tetrarch to kill him. One day, her opportunity came. The text tells us Herod threw himself a party for his birthday – something Jews did not do but Greco-Roman culture allowed. Herodias sent her daughter, in her early teens, to dance at the party before her uncle/stepfather and all his drunken buddies. This was highly improper for a girl of her class to dance in such a setting.
It was a risky move for Herodias. Herod could have easily been offended at this breach of decorum. But his second wife understood men and reasoned that Herod, and his well-lubricated friends would be more than pleased to see this young girl dance. Herod, no doubt 3 sheets to the wind by this time, rose in pompous extravagance before his guest and promised his niece/stepdaughter anything she wanted.
The promise is boastful since he was only a tetrarch, not a king. Prompted by her mother, the girl asked for the head of the prophet. Herod had made a foolish vow. He should never have made it, and having made it, he should never have kept it. But he wanted to save face and therefore granted her request and had John beheaded in the prison. So died the last of the Old Testament prophets. The former age ends in violence, and the stage is set for the unfolding of the new covenant of God’s grace in Christ Jesus.
JOHN’S CHARACTER
Matthew has already told us about John the Baptizer’s strange appearance and his severe sermons on repentance and reform. Here we learn several things about John’s character. First, John was a righteous man.
Mark makes this point in his parallel account, explaining that “Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man” (Mark 6:20). Although Herod was far from righteous himself, he recognized righteousness in John and tried to protect him. Matthew shortens Mark’s account and does not mention John’s righteousness explicitly. But he has Herod testify to the same thing indirectly by reporting his fear that John had been raised from the dead and now possessed miraculous powers (v. 2). He imagined that God had thus vindicated the character of his prophet.[2]
Second, John was bold. It was one thing for John to have a consuming desire for righteousness. It was another thing to be outspoken about it, especially standing before the important and powerful of this world. John was both of those things. He was a bold contrast to the meek religious leaders of his day. They should have been the most outspoken. But they wilted in the face of worldly power. They traded God’s righteousness for political clout and social gain. But John the Baptist did not bow before worldly power. And he spoke boldly concerning Herod’s incestuous relationship.
Finally, John was a courageous man. He knew the danger in which he was placing himself by continuing to denounce Herod for his unbiblical marriage. Rulers do not like to be confronted or have their egos ruffled. Even more dangerous and devious was Herodias’ hatred. Don’t think John did not know people well enough to know what was going on. Yet he continued to speak out and eventually died for his convictions.
John’s fate reminds us of the kind of world in which we live. It is a world that has rejected Christ and will reject his disciples too. The world does not want to be told that it is sinful, that it is spiritually dead, that it has broken the holy Law of God, that nothing it will ever do is good enough to please a perfect God, that it needs a perfect savior, who is Jesus. But those who seek to follow in the footsteps of John and the prophets who preceded him will be as bold as the prophets were. How are any to be saved if we do not speak the truth about sin and share the gospel boldly, no matter our personal cost?
HEROD’S CHARACTER
The story doesn’t simply tell us about John. It also tells us about Herod, and what it reveals is that he was nearly the opposite of John in every respect. First, Herod was wicked. Even if he was not a particularly bad ruler as rulers go, he was an evil man. He betrayed his corrupt nature not only by his own evil acts but by his guilty conscience. He seduced his brother’s wife, wrongly imprisoned John, and in a weak and drunken moment consented to John’s murder without any kind of trial.
The execution was an outrage by Roman as well as Jewish law. And Herod knew what he had done was wrong, causing him to suspect John had somehow come back to life after his unlawful execution. Moral guilt tortures our logic. Herod was a Sadducee and Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. But his guilty conscience reduced his skeptical beliefs to dust, and he trembled at the thought of God’s final judgment of him for this and for his other evil actions.
Don’t forget that all human beings by nature have a conscience. Fallen, lost, and desperately wicked as we are all born into the world, God has taken care to leave himself a witness in the heart of every human being. Without the Spirit of Christ, it is a poor and blind guide. It can save no one. By itself, it leads no one to Christ. It may be seared and trampled underfoot. But there is such a thing as conscience in every human being, accusing or excusing as the case may be. Both scripture and human experience alike declare it (Romans 2: 15).
Conscience can make kings miserable when they have willfully rejected its advice. It can fill the princess of this world with fear and trembling as it did to some rulers when Paul preached. God’s witnesses may be put out of the way, but their testimony often lives and works on long after they are dead. God’s prophets do not live forever on this earth, but their words often survive them.
Second, Herod was devious. He was crafty, shrewd, deceptive, hypocritical, and sly. He wanted to kill John but was afraid to do so for fear of the people. Mark wrote that Herod “liked to listen” to John (Mark 6:20). That passage indicates Herod and John talked together several times. Likely, John would have spoken of God’s demand for perfect righteousness and of the judgment to come, as Paul did in a similar setting before Felix (Acts 24:25).
Perhaps Herod trembled as Felix did. He might have even partly agreed with John. Herod had enough of a conscience left to be partly attracted to John’s message. Yet, he was also greatly troubled by it. And he hated the fact that someone else saw his sins so clearly. So at the same time he partly liked listening to John, he still wanted to kill him. John’s message was the stink of death to Herod.
Third, Herod was weak. As many who are concerned more with their reputations than for what is just and right, Herod was feeble. He knew it was evil to order John’s execution. He knew that he had blundered in promising his niece/step-daughter anything she wanted. But he was too weak to admit his mistake and too frightened of his wife’s temper tantrums to uphold the moral law, which was his God-given duty as the tetrarch.
Fourth, Herod was superstitious. Many people who reject God’s truth but are nevertheless aware of the concepts of right and wrong become superstitious when they do wrong. They sense that this is a moral universe, and things cannot possibly go well for evildoers. Many follow horoscopes and believe almost any bizarre “spiritual” idea that comes their way. This is sad, but it always happens when people reject God and his written self-revelation in the Bible. People who do not believe the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ do not believe in nothing. They believe anything – anything that does not force them to confront their lastness, lostness, leastness, littleness, and deadness before a Holy Creator.
THE TRUE KING
What a collection of characters we see in this story. They provide a sad glimpse into the high life of the antiquity, as well as what people are like today. There is Herod with his evil conscience. There is Herodias, a wicked and vengeful woman. There is the stepdaughter, whom the Jewish historian Josephus said was named Salome. Carefully trained by her mother to use sex as a means of power, what sad future that poor girl must have had! There are the wealthy, powerful, drunken friends of Herod who revel in his debauched cruelty. Against them all is John the Baptizer, whom everyone knew to be an upright, outspoken, and courageous man – not because of his own moral fiber but merely because God had called him and empowered him to be a prophet.
But there is one character about whom we have not talked. He does not enter into the specific action of this story, though he is the most important person of all. That character is Christ himself, mentioned in the first and last verses of this story. Matthew wrote in 13:57, “57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.’”[3] That word, “scandalized” or “offended” is predominantly applied in the New Testament to describe how people outside the Kingdom react to Jesus, the true King.
We have a good example of that in our story. Neither the citizens of Nazareth, nor Herodias, nor Salome, nor the drunken guests were offended by Herod because they were all like him to one degree or another. All of the guests got along for the same reason. Non-believers like other non-believers because they feel at home with them, and if their consciences bother them for some evil acts, they can always point to some other sinner who is worse. It is comforting to have someone as openly evil as Herod around because you can always point to him and say, “I might not be perfect, but I am not nearly as bad as that guy.”
Only human beings find comfort in the false presumption of relative morality. God demands perfection. He does not ever accept, “I am better than that person” as a merit badge in your favor. God judges solely on the basis of Christ’s perfect performance on our behalf and his infinite suffering as the wages of our sin. You do not get help from other sinners who are still dead in their sins. Other people do not enable you to live an upright life, nor do they provide salvation from your sins. Only Jesus does that. Only Jesus can.
The real contrast in this story is not between Herod and John the Baptizer, as interesting as that is, but between tetrarch Herod and King Jesus. What happened to Harold? A few years after this story, when Harrod’s brother Agrippa (the Herod of Acts 12) had been appointed king over the former tetrarchy of Antipas’ brother Philip (Herodias’ first husband), Herodias convinced Herod to go to Rome and beg to be appointed king. But instead of being made a king, he was deposed and banished to Gaul where he died.
Think of the contrast. Herod did what those in power always do. He used his power to preserve his power. But in the end, he lost it and died a pauper’s death. Jesus laid his power aside to die for his people, but today he rules in glory. Herod was not even a king, merely a petty tetrarch. But he looked and acted king like. Jesus was the King of all kings, but he appeared in the days of his flesh as a humble Galilean peasant.
Outward appearances are deceiving. But if you look beyond the appearance to who Christ really is and listen attentively to what he said, you will find yourself agreeing with John’s testimony about him. John said, “I have seen and I testify that this is the son of God” (John 1:34) and “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). John trusted in Christ and stood resolutely in Christ’s righteousness. He died for it. But now John is with Christ and will rule with him one day along with all who willingly and joyfully confess Christ as Lord and savior.
Paul writes in first Corinthians 1: 18 of the “foolishness” of the cross, because that is the way it seems to non-believers. But the gory and humiliating cross of Christ is actually the power of God for salvation for those who are being saved. It is for you if you take it. It is for all who believe on Jesus. As Paul wrote to the struggling congregation of Phillipi:
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [4]
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 14:1–12.
[2] James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001), 258.
[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 13:57.
[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 2:5–11.
