Lake Martin Presbyterian Church May 24, 2026 Podcast

Join Rev. William Skinner for this week’s message from Mark 6:14-29, "One king falls, another rises". Explore Scripture, hear thoughtful teaching, and be encouraged in your walk with Christ. For more information and resources, visit lakemartinpca.com.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Lake Martin Presbyterian Church Podcast. We're glad you're listening. Lake Martin Presbyterian Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America, located near Lake Martin, Alabama. Each week we share the preaching ministry of our church and pray it encourages you in your walk with Christ. Here's this week's message.

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Please turn with me in your Bibles to Mark's Gospel, Gospel of Mark, chapter 6. Mark's Gospel, chapter 6. We're going to be looking at verses 14 through 29. Last Sunday we looked at the first 13 verses of Mark chapter 6, where Jesus was rejected in Nazareth, his hometown, by his own family and friends, the people that Jesus grew up with. And despite that rejection, Jesus launched an aggressive new phase of his mission. He went to preach in other villages and sent out his disciples in pairs of two to do the same. They were preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons. This was an incredible boldness. This was an increased boldness and urgency in the mission. In verse 30 of Mark chapter 6, we'll pick back up where verse 13 left off, but the passage that we're going to look at this morning is a brief intermission in the story. This passage is going to tell us how people were reacting to the spreading fame of Jesus. Fame, perhaps, brought about by this increased urgency in the mission. And this intermission is going to focus on one man in particular, one man's reaction in particular. The reaction of Herod Antipas. Now, when I say Herod Antipas, most of you probably don't know who that is. So I'm going to do some history before we begin. Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great. Herod the Great was the one who launched the infanticide in Judea to try to snuff out Jesus' life. If you remember, the wise man, the wise men, I should say, came and they went to see Jesus. And upon doing so, they were questioned by Herod the Great, and then Herod the Great thought that he needed to eliminate Jesus and launch an infanticide. Antipas, Herod Antipas, so that's his father. His grandfather was Antipater, who was a power-hungry man. He was an Edomite by birth who converted to Judaism. And he had secured the governorship of the Jews in cooperation with the Roman government. So he was kind of playing between two camps. He was playing between the Jews and the Roman government, and he was the governor over the people of the Jews. And what's clear about this family, this lineage, is that these men did not care at all about the people of God. They simply wanted to have power. They wanted their own kingdom. They wanted power and wealth, and they were willing to compromise with the Roman government to get it. In reality, Herod Antipas was not a king at all. He was a provincial ruler. He was a Tetrarch over Galilee. A Tetrarch, literally translated, means the ruler of a quarter. A quarter. It's a title for someone who had the blessing of Caesar to rule a small portion of the Roman Empire as a governor. But Herod desperately wanted to be king. He wanted the title King of the Jews. And he called himself king within his own region. In verse 23, we're going to see that he promises Herodias' daughter half of my kingdom, anything that you want, up to half of my kingdom. And ironically, it wasn't his kingdom. He didn't have a kingdom to promise her. It was Caesar's kingdom. Herod was a desperate and power-hungry man. And eventually, years after Jesus was crucified and raised from the grave, Herod would ask Caesar, Caesar, will you name me king of the Jews, king over Galilee? And when he asked, Caesar denied his request, and exiled him to France, or as it was called then, Gaul. And nothing else is known about Herod Antipas. The three things that Herod Antipas is known for historically are first attempting to move the capital of Galilee, the capital of Israel, to Tiberius. Tiberius was a city that he built over an ancient graveyard. And if you know anything about Jewish people, they can't come into contact with dead bodies. So the king of the Jews, as he wanted to be, built a city that no Jews could live in. And he showed that in his only major accomplishment as Tetrarch, he didn't care at all about the people he was supposed to govern. So that was his only major accomplishment. Secondly, the thing he's known for was killing John the Baptist. That's what we're going to see in this text today, is that he killed, uh he's famous for killing John the Baptist immorally. And then thirdly, the third thing he's most famous for is the ironic way in which he was exiled from Galilee. By asking to become king, he lost even the small title that he had. So I hope you're getting the picture. In summary, Herod Antipas was a joke of a king. He was not a king. And his memory is a laughing stock. And in the text this morning, you're going to see something very interesting. Mark relentlessly calls Herod Antipas king. It's almost like he overuses the title of king in this text. And what's ironic about that is when Mark was writing this gospel, Herod had already been exiled to France. Herod was already out. He didn't have any title when Mark wrote this. But repeatedly, Mark employs the title of king. Repeatedly. And what Mark is doing here is he's highlighting that Herod was not the king. Herod was not of the line of David. He was not the Lord's anointed king. And the main thing you see in this text is the fall, the downfall of the little fake King Herod. The fall of Herod Antipas and the rise of King Jesus. And that's the main thing that I want you to see in this text this morning. The juxtaposition between the folly, the fear, and the bondage of Herod Antipas, and the freedom, the love, and the power of King Jesus. That's the main thing for you to see in this text is the fall of the false king and the rise of the true king. And as we consider this text this morning, I want to draw your attention to three headings. First, the reactions to the true king. Reactions to the true king in verses 14 through 16. Bondage of the false king in verses 17 through 20. The bondage of the false king, and thirdly, the weakness of the false king. I'm sorry, the fall of the false king. Reactions to the true king, bondage of the false king, and the fall of the false king. Verses 21 through 29. Before we consider these three things, let's pray and ask God's help upon the reading and preaching of his word. Abba Father, Holy God, we thank you. For you've set a table before us in the presence of our enemies. You're feeding us richly on your word week after week. And we know the power of your word. It's sharper than any two-edged sword, able to divide between soul and spirit, it will not return void. And yet our hearts are hard, our ears are stopped up, our eyes are blind. Would you pour out your Holy Spirit? Would you unstop our ears? Would you open our eyes? Would you soften our hearts that we might see Jesus Christ? We pray this in his name. Amen. Mark chapter 6, beginning in verse 14. King Herod heard of it, for Jesus' name had become known. Some said, John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him. Others said he's Elijah. Others said he's a prophet, like one of the prophets of old. But when Herod heard of it, he said, John, whom I beheaded, has been raised. For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because he had married her. For John had been saying to Herod, It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death, but she could not. For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. When he heard him he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders, and the leading men of Galilee. For when Herodias's daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guest. And the king said to the girl, Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you. And he vowed to her, Whatever you ask me, I will give you up to half my kingdom. And she went out and said to her mother, For what shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist. And she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her. And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. This is God's word. Look with me at verse 14. The reports of Jesus' evangelistic campaign had reached all the way to the ears of Herod, the Tetrarch of the region. Everyone had caught wind of what was happening in the ministry of Jesus. The preaching, the healings, the miracles had spread far and wide. So here, when the news of Jesus reaches Herod Antipas, Mark takes this opportunity to record for us some of the reactions that were happening to Jesus' ministry. And remember, this is the fundamental question that the Gospel of Mark is asking. Who is Jesus? Who is Jesus Christ? And here we're going to see three responses. Mark offers us three responses to that question. Who is Jesus? First, some were saying the resurrected John the Baptist. That was a popular answer to who was Jesus. It was the resurrected John the Baptist. Now the rest of this text is obviously going to tell us precisely what happened to John the Baptist. But he had died, and some people thought that this was John the Baptist. And it's interesting to note, John didn't do any miracles or signs or wonders during his public ministry. But people superstitiously assume that if John had been raised from the dead, he now had unlocked some sort of supernatural powers, and so naturally this must be John the Baptist raised from the dead. The second option of who people thought Jesus was was Elijah. Elijah returned to earth, the great sign of the new covenant age. The third option was that Jesus was a new prophet. A new prophet who was like the prophets of old. And that's significant, meaning that God had again sent a prophet after the 400 years of silence following the exile to Babylon. That God had again sent a prophet. Now we could spend our time looking at each of these three options and the nuances of what each of them mean and why each one of them are wrong. But the important thing that we see in each of these responses is that the people were beginning to see something different about Jesus. People were beginning to see something different about Jesus. Elijah coming back, John resurrected, the return of a prophet like the prophets of old. All three of these options were beliefs that something was happening in redemptive history, that God was doing something. God was acting in history to redeem his people. Now, all three of these guesses about who Jesus were are obviously wrong. Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. He's the center of all of redemptive history. But these guesses are getting closer to who Jesus is. These guesses are getting closer. Remember, the last time we saw Mark offering us reactions to Jesus, what the people said was, he's a magic man, a magic healer, he's a demon-possessed man or a lunatic, as his family accused him of earlier in the Gospel of Mark. These guesses are much closer than a demon-possessed man, a lunatic, or a magic man. Jesus' identity as the true king of God's people is beginning to rise to the surface. He's rising. People are thinking more of him. Slowly but surely, people are realizing there's something different about this Jesus. Look now at verse 16. Mark focuses in from the broad reactions to Jesus to one particular reaction to Jesus, to one man's beliefs about Jesus, Herod Antipas. Who did Herod think that Jesus was? Herod said it's John. I know it's John. It's John the Baptist resurrected from the dead. And in a moment we're going to see why Herod thought this was John the Baptist. It was because he was in bondage to his sin. He was in fear. So in these three verses, we see the popular reactions to Jesus, and then Herod's reaction in particular. And all I want you to see here is the juxtaposition that's beginning to form between Jesus and Herod. Jesus is not grappling for a region to rule. Jesus is not seeking a throne to sit in. He's not playing his political cards. He's not going around rubbing shoulders with the elites of Galilee. No, Jesus is going around preaching the same message to all people, great and small. He's going out to the villages to reach all people. He's healing them of their sicknesses, freeing them from demons, and ultimately freeing them from their sin. Jesus is on a mission of love, a grassroots mission where each individual person must decide who is this Jesus? And do I trust him? And from these three reactions, the people of Galilee are convinced that he must be a man sent from God. There must be something important about Jesus. He must be someone powerful. He's made no claims. He's asserted no rights, but the people believe that Jesus is something great. And all the while, the fate king of Galilee, Herod, is scared. He's scared of who Jesus might be. Could this be that John that I beheaded? Who is this Jesus? Herod is fighting tooth and nail to retain the power that he already has. And so in these reactions to the true king, you can already see Jesus is ascending and the false king is falling away. Look with me now at the bondage of the false king. Let's look in verse 17. The first word of verse 17 is for. For. Herod believed that Jesus was the resurrected John the Baptist for. What is the for there for? Mark is about to tell us why Herod Antipas missed the person and work of Jesus. Why did Herod miss Jesus? Well, he's going to tell us. We're told that Herod bound John and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias. And that's the answer. Herod Antipas had taken the wife of his brother. Herod Antipas was sexually immoral. He was compromised in sexual sin. And John, John the Baptist, had not shied away from calling Herod and Herodias out for their sins. So Herod arrested John, and he kept him confined in his own prison. Herod and Herodias were busy silencing their critics. No one could speak out against the Tetrarch of Galilee. No one could throw shade on their power if they could help it. But notice how Mark is careful to tell us that Herod Antipas is torn over this. This is eating away at him on the inside. Herodias, Herod's illegitimate wife, she wanted her husband to have John executed. Permanently silent. Silence the critics. It appears as if Herodias was more ambitious for power and autonomy than her husband was. And she was willing to kill to get it. But Herod seems to be on the fence. When he heard John, when he heard the truth in John's preaching, it seems to have been attractive to him. Verse 20 tells us that Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man. Herod recognized there was something godly about John. And it gave him pause. John's sermons, presumably John is still preaching to Herod while he's locked away in Herod's prison. Or maybe Herod would go fetch him out to hear a quick sermon. But these sermons gave Herod pause. They made him think about things. It made him fearful of the way he was living. He was perplexed and fearful. And at the end of verse 20, we're even told that Herod heard him gladly. Herod liked to listen to John preach. John was Herod's favorite preacher. Ironic, but he was. He preached the truth. Herod heard something in John's preaching, and it was true. It was attractive. It was as if Herod heard John and he heard the truth. A man shrouded in lies, living a lie himself, claiming to be the king when he was merely a Tetrarch. When he heard John, he heard the truth, and the truth would set him free. And he wanted to be free. Somewhere deep down, under all the lies and sin, Herod wanted to be like John. He wanted to be righteous. He wanted to be holy. He wanted to live with a clean conscience. You can never put too high of a value on a clean conscience. The past few weeks in our officer training for deacons, we recently studied the Westminster Confession on Christian liberty. And we talked about Christian liberty as the blood bought freedom from Jesus Christ, the blood bought freedom from the guilt and power of sin in our lives. That on the cross, by his death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus Christ secured for us. For you, freedom from the power of sin and from the guilt of sin, that in Jesus Christ, you can really live before God without guilt. You can live wholeheartedly before God. One of the early church fathers, Irenaeus of Lions, don't try to spell it. Google can help you later. He put it this way: the glory of God is a man fully alive. I'm going to repeat that. The glory of God is a man fully alive. Meaning that we truly glorify and enjoy God when we're living before him fully alive with a clean conscience. No guilt, no anxieties, no fear. Living before God is a man fully alive. And when John preached, Herod could taste it. He could taste that before him was a man fully alive. And he wanted it. He wanted to step into the light. He wanted to leave the darkness, but he couldn't. For Herod, the cost was too great. His lust for his brother's wife was too great. His lust for power was too great. And it's such an irony, isn't it, that Herod was keeping John in prison, and yet Herod was the one who was truly in prison, wasn't he? To Herod, John the Baptist appeared to be the freest man who walked the face of the earth. Yes, John, while he was bound in prison, was fully alive. He was preaching to the ruler of Galilee, telling him, You are condemned in your sins. He was unafraid of the consequences, totally committed to the truth, committed to righteousness, committed to holiness. At the end of the day, John could lay down in his prison cell and sleep. And he could get a full night of sleep. While Herod tossed and turned in the governor's mansion, riddled with guilt and with fear. Herod couldn't be free. Herod was in bondage to his sin. His lust was preventing him from repenting. His lust was keeping him ultimately from seeing who Jesus was. Why did Herod think that Jesus was John the Baptist resurrected? Because of his sin. And Herod, you see such a great picture of the bondage of sin. The man who ruled the whole region of Galilee was in bondage. He couldn't do what he really wanted to because of his sin. He knew it was wrong. He was in fear over it. He protected it. He cherished his favorite sin. He wasn't willing to put his sin to death. Herod, who was so intent on gaining power and prestige, became a shell of a man, a weak man because he cherished his pet sin. He couldn't do what he really wanted to. And ultimately, he was unable to accept who Jesus really was because of his sin. I want you to know that if you're cherishing your own pet sin, your own secret lust, your own favorite sin, that you can only expect one thing bondage, shame, fear. Instead of freedom, instead of living as a man or woman fully alive before God, you will experience anxiety, bondage, fear, isolation. You could be the most powerful person in your community, you could be the Tetrarch of your region, but you will feel like you're in prison. And God created each one of you for so much more than that. God created you to be free, to know the truth, to love righteousness, to be fully alive in his sight. And Jesus went to the cross and obtained that freedom with his own blood. That is blood-bought freedom for you. So how can you keep back a secret sin and subject yourself to bondage? As the Puritan John Owen put it, you must be killing sin, or it will be killing you. You must be killing sin or it will be killing you. Look at Herod, the shell of a man, and run to the truth. Lay down your sins in the dust, kill them, and run into the light. Run to Christ, who shed his own blood, so that your conscience could be free. And live before God as a man or woman fully alive, no guilt to the glory of God. That's the bondage of the false king. Now let's look at the fall of the false king. Look with me in verse 21. We're told that an opportunity came. An opportunity came, and I think this is rather revealing. Now, Mark is chiefly telling us that an opportunity came for Herodias to convince her husband to behead John the Baptist. But I think there's a rather ironic double meaning here. That Herod too had an opportunity. That Herod had an opportunity. He had an opportunity to say no. He had an opportunity to step into the light. To repent, to give up his pet sin. In fact, every day when John the Baptist sat in his prisons preaching to him was an opportunity, was it not? It was an opportunity to repent of his sins, to repent of his lust for his illegitimate wife. Or an opportunity to give in, to fall further, to get deeper into his own prison. In this particular opportunity, Herod was throwing his own birthday party. And like always, he and his illegitimate wife Herodias were using this celebration not as a mere celebration, but as an opportunity to advance themselves politically and socially. They invited the noblemen, the military commanders, and the leaders of the region of Galilee. Invited them to a banquet. And this was not a nice banquet. This was not a southern banquet. This was a drunken party. At least that's what you assume by the actions of Herod at his birthday party, when he brought his stepdaughter, who is also his niece, in to perform a sexually provocative dance before all of his guests. And at this point, you may assume Herod had already made his choice. It was clear how he would use this opportunity. He was cherishing his sexual lust, having his niece, his own stepdaughter, come in and perform this erotic dance before the noblemen, the military commanders, and the leaders of his city. He didn't care at all about this girl. He cared nothing for her. He was using her in the worst of ways to advance himself. And in the heat of his lust and this drunken party, he makes a foolish bow to her. He promises to give her whatever she asked for, up to half of his kingdom. And there's the great irony that he didn't have half of a kingdom to give away. The mere Tetrarch of the region of Galilee, it was Caesar's kingdom. Herod was the steward of this kingdom. And so he's making a vow that he can't back up to impress his guest, to make himself look powerful. He could have done very little to fulfill whatever she might ask for. But her mother, Herod's illegitimate wife, asked for something that Herod could deliver. The head of his favorite preacher, John the Baptist, on a platter. And so Herod would have to decide. Did he want the truth? Did he want to be free? Did he want to be fully alive? Or did he want to keep his pet sins? Did he want to keep living this way? Did he want the power, the lust? Did he want to preserve this kingdom of lies that he had built? Who would Herod be? The fake king that was secretly in a prison of his own making? Or a man fully alive, willing to repent of his sins and do the right thing. Verse 26 paints the picture for us of Herod's inner turmoil in this moment. He was exceedingly sorry, filled with remorse. This decision was hard for Herod. It wasn't easy. He wanted to step into the light. He wanted to be like John. He wanted to be free. But the guests, what would his guests think? The noblemen, the military commanders, the leaders of Galilee, what would they think? Would he lose political capital if he went back on his word? Would he make a fool of himself in front of the whole party? And what would his wife, Herodias, and her daughter think of him if he chose John the Baptist? So Herod makes his choice. He took advantage of this opportunity to protect his secret sin. And this was Herod's fall. At this moment he was enslaved to his fears. The truth that was preached to him from within his own house, where John was imprisoned, was now gone. The voice of John had left him, and Herod was alone in his own prison. His fears and anxieties were taking over, and now his only advisor was his wicked wife, who would later lead him to make his fateful plea to Caesar that he become a true king and would land him in France in exile with no title at all. A fearful shell of a man with a seared conscience and no power. Herod had his opportunity, and he used it to plunge himself to a place of no return. He chose his pet sin, he chose his favorite lust over the truth, and he could never return. Won't you learn from the little false king of Galilee? Today is the day of opportunity. Today is the day to lay down your secret sins, your hidden lust. Today is the day to step into the light, to be free, to be a man or woman fully alive. Jesus came down. He came down from heaven to earth, was born of the Virgin, he fulfilled all righteousness, and shed his own blood on a Roman cross to make you free from the guilt of sin, to bring you into the light, to set you free. Won't you take the true king by faith? Won't you take this opportunity today, if you can hear the truth, to walk into it, and to be a man or woman fully alive? You've seen where Herod's fall brought him. He was a shell of a man, a prisoner to his sin, full of fear, full of shame, awake at night, thinking that the ghost of John the Baptist was haunting him. Jesus is the exact opposite of that. Jesus came down and did the right thing for you. He fulfilled all righteousness for you. He gave himself to pay the consequences for your sin so that you can step into the light, so that you can be free, so that you can live without guilt before God wholeheartedly with a clean conscience. In Herod's fall, you see the rise of the true king, the noble king, the only king. Let me tie all these things together. In this text, you see the reactions to the true king. People were beginning to realize that Jesus was something more than just a man. He was a man sent from God. He was more than a magic man, a demon-possessed man, or a lunatic. The true king was on the rise. But people still didn't know who he was. And then we've seen one man in particular, Herod Antipas, who was kept from seeing Jesus by his bondage to sin. The false king of Galilee was a man in bondage, a shell of a king, a shell of a man. And we've seen the fall of the false king. Herod had the opportunity to step into the light or to use the darkness to cover his favorite lust, and he chose the darkness to his own downfall. In all of this, what I want you to see is that the false king chose to protect his sin and shed the blood of John the Baptist in the process. And that the true King, Jesus, chooses life. He chose to give his life so that you can have life and have it abundantly. As the false king falls, Jesus, the true King, is rising. And his message is spreading, and you must decide how you will how you will respond. Will you step into the light? Will you put your pet sins to death? And will you be a man or woman fully alive? Let's pray and ask for God's help to do this today. I'm a father, holy God. In your word, we see ourselves in the false King Herod. We choose our pet sins and our pet lust. We aren't willing to let go. We hear the truth and it sounds great. It sounds like what we want, but we aren't willing to let go. Would you help us to taste the freedom that's found in Christ? Would you help us to know the value of a clean conscience? The blood-brought freedom that Christ brings us. Would you give us the strength today to step into his light? It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Would you please stand and let's respond singing God moves in a mysterious way?

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God moves in a mysterious way.

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Amen.com. We'd love to have you join us.