We've seen the name Herod before in this study and in chapter 2 speaks of Herod the king, but this is Herod the Tetrarch who it's believed was Herod the king's son and He Herod the king had ordered the deaths of every male child in the in Bethlehem and all the coast thereof from two years old and under and because he had heard that Christ was born.

So he hated God so much that, and he hated him for the reason that everybody hates him, because he was a rival. The reason people hate the Lord Jesus Christ is because sinners, we believe that we're God by nature, and we will abide no rivals. We won't abide any rivals to our free will, to our ability to decide our own fate. We will abide no rivals as far as telling us how to live or what to do by nature.

So Herod was just like the rest of us. He wanted to kill God. That's what happened on Calvary. That's what happened in the Garden of Eden. So this is the wicked son here of a wicked father and is a monument to the depravity of man and defines what we are by nature. Our problem is not that we ate the wrong fruit.

Our problem is that we despised God and his word and his son. And doing that which was forbidden We showed that we are more important than God and his truth in our own hearts. And that's what sin is. It's a rejection of God's law, of God's word, of his gospel. The only thing that sinners hate worse than the law is the gospel of grace.

So this is our depravity, all of us by nature. And all of us would express it like Herod did, if not for God's grace. And Herod is a warning to us. If God gives a man some success, some prosperity, and especially that mixed with authority, it's our tendency to think that we should have whatever we want. The reason that many do not express the evil in our hearts is because we don't have the capacity to. You make me rich and make me king of the world, I'll express more of my depravity, because I'll have the means to do that, without the grace of God.

How many politicians are corrupt? How many are involved in scandal because they're overpaid, they're able to gain lots of money just for their influence, and they have influence. They have some power, some level of power. And so we've just recently seen in the news the corruption that exists among those like Herod who had authority and means They voted down the resolution to reveal where the money's going. In other words, a list of the people who've been involved in defending themselves against sexual charges in Congress. The lunatics are running the asylum, aren't they? They voted down, they're exposing their own evil by an overwhelming number. So that's what we see here. It's the same thing.

An absolute power corrupts absolutely, but that's a false statement. They say money corrupts, but that's not right. Authority does not change the human heart. It just gives a sinner the means to express it. The heart is what it is from birth. The nature does not change just because social status changes or just because your pay grade changes. Power doesn't corrupt. But when corrupt people by nature get power, then their corrupt is open and evident and unfeathered, except, of course, the Lord uses it for his glory. He uses all of our sin for his glory. The cross is the ultimate example of that. It just gives the sinner freedom to express what has been in their heart all along.

We're born. We go astray from the womb, speaking lies. David said, I was conceived in iniquity. Now Herod wanted Herodias, but Herod Herodias was Herod's brother Philip's wife. But Herod's attitude was, look who I am. I can do what I want. I can have what I want.

Does that remind you of anybody, by the way? We think, oh, that wicked Herodias. Yeah. But also think that wicked King David, who had the exact same attitude. I'm king. She's beautiful. Nobody can stop me. Who's going to stop me? Who's going to question me? That is the epitome of our sin. We think we're God. We will have what we want. We will do what we want. We will not be restrained by what God said. Garden of Eden.

Somewhere along the line, Herod met John the Baptist. And he liked John the Baptist. But John did something that nobody had probably ever done to Herod in his whole life. John told him the truth. He told him the truth. John, in essence, told Herod, you're not God. God is God. You can't do as you please. You can't do what you want. You may have a puny throne here on earth, but there's one on the throne of glory, whose word contradicts your word. It exposes the evil of your heart.

He told him the truth about his sin. just like the Lord Jesus did with the woman at the well. What's the first thing that he brought up? When he began to converse with this woman, he asked her to, told her, I guess you'd say, to get him a drink of water from that well. And then he began to talk to her about her husband, and how that she had had many husbands, but the man she was living with at the moment was not her husband. You see, the gospel It is not a set of doctrines. We don't need to know what total depravity means in order to know the truth. We need to know what we are. Does that make sense? There's a difference. Are we totally depraved? Yes.

But you can't learn that in a book written by men. You find that out when God shines a light in your heart and exposes the depths of the depravity and the evil of your heart. And the essence of that is our desire and delusion in thinking that we're God. And that is, the gospel begins with the problem. You're never going to seek a solution until you understand the problem. And the thing about it is, is you don't really learn the problem by looking at yourself. You learn the problem by looking to the solution.

He has to shine in your heart. The light of his glory has to reveal your depravity. you're gonna have to love him to the point where you take sides with him against yourself. When he says you're a dog, you have to be in such reverence of him that you say, yay, Lord. If you say I'm a dog, I'm a dog. And so it's looking to him, it's knowing him that reveals what we are.

And so, and John was a preacher of the gospel. He wasn't going around telling people how to live. That wasn't his message. He was a preacher of the gospel and like our Lord who exposed that woman's sin, but he then spoke to her of water that she could drink and never thirst again. He revealed himself to her because she ran into town and said, is not this the Christ? And no doubt, John, he didn't just expose Herod's sin without telling him how sin can be put away.

Look at all of Scripture. I'm not guessing on that. All of Scripture, when David, we mentioned David a while ago, when his sin was revealed, what did the prophet say then? Thou shalt not die, because God hath put away thy sin. The gospel reveals our evil, but it's a message of good news in how that a wretch like us, that hell is crying out for justly, can be acceptable, can be forgiven, can be justified in the sight of God by Christ and His precious blood. I think David learned, he had offered so many sacrifices or overseen the worship of God and the offering of sacrifices all his life, and I don't think he probably understood what any of that meant like he did the day that Nathan told him, God has put away your sin.

He knew what sacrifices were for. They were for atonement. They were for atonement between the sinner and God. They were for the putting away of sin. But when you see your own sin, when somebody, by the authority of God, from the Word of God, says, David, you are the sinner. You're the one that deserves death. You're the monster. Then we begin to understand something about what sin being put away is all about. And we'll fall in love with the Savior who gave Himself in order to do that.

But he didn't just preach against sin. John the Baptist, he pointed to Christ and said, behold, the lamb of God. He didn't stop that when he met Herod. That was his that was his ministry. That was the ministry of the Lord given to him. There's the lamb, which take it the way sin.

You think you're God now, you think you can have whatever and whoever you want. But God Almighty has spoken. And you're not God. God is God. And the way your sin can be put away is by submitting to God, by submitting to His Word, by submitting to His righteousness in Christ.

John did not compromise the message for anybody or anything. That's evident here, is it not? To tell the one who had the authority, very much so. demonstrably to cut his head off. So John spent his final years on this earth in prison and then he was beheaded for telling the truth.

I read a book by John Bunyan old preacher of the gospel. I don't remember what year, I suppose in the 1800s. In his autobiography, he writes of being thrown in prison for preaching the gospel. For many years, he was very sick in prison. Prisons weren't what they are now.

And he writes of being visited by his wife and children and how it broke his heart that he was unable to be with them and he had a little blind daughter. And this is an excerpt from his autobiography. It says, the parting with my wife and children is as the pulling of the flesh from my bones. What hardships and miseries and wants my poor family are likely to meet with if I am taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who is nearer to my heart than all beside. Oh, the hardships that this poor blind one will have to undergo will break my heart to pieces. And she being blind, he tells of how that he would often try to hide the fact when she was there that he was crying. But he wrote of how she would feel of his face, and if she found any tears there, she would kiss them away.

And the ones who put him in prison said, Mr. Bunyan, all you need to do is promise not to preach this message anymore. If you stop preaching the gospel, we will let you go. And John Bunyan's answer was, if you let me go, I'll preach the gospel ere the sun sets. He was in prison 13 years, but he wrote nine books while he was there.

He was bound, but the word of God was not bound. The prison bars couldn't stop him from propagating the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a prisoner of Jesus Christ, just as surely as Paul was and Barnabas. And Herod's reaction to the truth, I want to emphasize this, was the same as that of every sinner without grace. He put John in prison for telling him the truth of Christ. Well, you might think, well, nobody goes to prison these days for preaching the gospel.

But those who hear the gospel and hate, continue to hate, absent of God's grace, the Son of God, in effect, that's exactly what they do. They will shut you up. Though they may not have the earthly authority to incarcerate anybody, but in effect they do the same thing. Not being able to deny the truth, not being able to discount the truth that he heard, he shut up the one who told it. And those who hate God will separate themselves from the voice that speaks the gospel. They will run from it, they will hide from it, they will find refuge in lies. And they'll do that by whatever means they can.

And I want us to see here, we'll read verses one through 12 and we'll stop there for now. But you might say at first glance here that this is a story about John and Herod, that this was a personal matter between them. But let's look at verses 1 through 12 and notice the language here.

At that time, Herod the Tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus. and said unto his servants this is john the baptist he is risen from the dead and therefore mighty works to show forth themselves in him for herod had laid hold on john and bound him and put him in prison for herodias's sake his brother philip's wife for john said unto him it is not lawful for thee to have her and when he would have put him to death he feared the multitude because they counted him as a prophet but when herod's birthday was kept the daughter of herodias danced before them and pleased herod whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatever whatsoever she would ask And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, give me here John Baptist's head in a charger.

And the king was sorry, nevertheless, for the oath's sake. And them which sat with him at meet, he commanded it to be given her. And he sent and beheaded John in the prison. And his head was brought in a charger and given to the damsel. She brought it to her mother and his disciples came and took up the body and buried it. And went and told Jesus.

This is a story about the Son of God. Heard this tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus. He heard John the Baptist preaching. The Lord Jesus. And he said this is John the Baptist. Because when what the Lord Jesus Christ was saying was exactly what John had been saying. You see that? In verse 3, 4, Herod had laid hold on John and bound him. And so he said, this Jesus is John the Baptist, risen from the dead. therefore mighty works to show forth themselves in him." And so having killed John, and then the Lord Jesus Christ comes along, and Herod thinks they're the same person.

No believer would ever want to be compared to our Lord. No believer would ever countenance that comparison. When John bowed before the angel in the book of Revelation, the angel said, see thou do it not. Worship God. I'm not God. Don't worship anybody but God. Simon Peter said the same thing to Cornelius. When they began to think too highly Of him, Simon Peter said, Get up off your knees. Let's go in your house and worship the Lord together. And so no. Believer would ever want to.

Hear what Herod was saying about them. About him. But what a testimony to the grace of God that when the Lord Jesus spoke, when the gospel came forth from the one who is the gospel, Herod said, that's John. That's John. And so we see the problem here. Herod's adultery was a symptom of the problem. The problem was that he equated the Lord Jesus Christ with John the Baptist, and what did he do with John the Baptist?

He killed him. He chopped his head off. And John had ingratiated himself to Herod, Herod knew he was telling the truth. I imagine he respected his honesty and his boldness to stand before a king and tell him the truth. And yet that didn't mean anything when it came down to his own lust, his own pleasure, his own satisfaction, his own flesh, his own self. That's the problem. The adultery is the symptom. The problem is he despised the Lord Jesus.