Faith Reformed Church Stevensville, Ontario March 11, 2-12 Morning Service Text: John 18:38 Luke 23:4-12 Sermon: Jesus before Herod
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; AMEN. We are going to take a bit of a detour today. When we left Jesus last week we were with him in the Praetorium, the residence and hall of justice of Pontius Pilate when he stayed in Jerusalem. The members of the Sanhedrin had dragged Jesus there that Pilate might sentence him to be executed. Pilate did not do what the Sanhedrin had anticipated, however. He gave Jesus a full-fledged Roman trial. He insisted on an indictment being handed down and when it was he examined Jesus, allowed the Lord to present a defense, and then entered a verdict. The verdict was innocent of all charges. Pilate declared, I find no basis for a charge against this man. And it is here that our detour has to take place. When we follow along in the other accounts of Jesus trial before Pilate, we find that there is a break between verse 38 and 39 of the gospel of John and an incident John does not record. Before giving the crowd an opportunity to grant amnesty to Jesus or Barabbas, Pilate first sent Jesus to Herod Antipas. The details are found in Luke 23. So let s pick things up in Luke 23, starting at verse 4. Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, I find no basis for a charge against this man. But they insisted, He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here. On hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean. When he learned that Jesus was under Herod s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod who was also in Jerusalem at that time (vv. 4-6). 2
When Pilate declared that Jesus was innocent of any charge he had a duty to do one of two things. He could have released Jesus and let him go, free and clear. That would be the usual course of action. If, however, Jesus were in danger from the growing and restless crowds, Pilate had the option of taking him into protective custody. That s what happened, for example, to the apostle Paul when he was threatened with assassination (cf. Acts 23:12-35). Pilate, however, did neither. Pilate s verdict was met with such opposition and hostility from the leaders and the gathering crowds that he immediately backed away from his duty and sought other avenues to bring about Jesus release. He tried three things, in fact. He tried to have Jesus free by honouring the custom of providing amnesty to one prisoner during the time of the Passover feast. It didn t work. The crowd insisted Barabbas, a notorious criminal, be freed instead. He had Jesus scourged. It was a terrible punishment. Jesus was whipped with a flagellum, a whip with two or three leather thongs imbedded with sharp pieces of iron and zinc. In having Jesus whipped Pilate hoped to move the crowds to sympathy, that they might call for the Lord s release. That didn t work either. In fact, it seemed to incite the crowd to a greater hostility. The first strategy Pilate attempted, however, was to ship Jesus off to stand before Herod. Normally a Roman procurator would not have so honoured the court of an underling in this way. Herod s power did not take precedence over Pilate. But in 3
rendering of his verdict, Pilate had learned that Jesus was a Galilean. That bit of information was offered up by a member of the Sanhedrin in an attempt to smear Jesus with guilt by association. Galileans were notorious both for their general hostility toward the occupying forces of Rome and their insurrectionist tendencies. Naming Jesus as a Galilean was meant to move Pilate to condemn the Lord. It didn t work; instead, Pilate used it as an opportunity to pass the buck. His thinking would have been along these lines: Herod is in charge of Galilean territory, a territory not under my direct rule. Not only that, Herod is in Jerusalem this very day and close by his palace is but a short, ten minute walk from the temple grounds. I can kill two birds with one stone: I can get rid of this troublesome king of the Jews and improve my professional and political relationship with Herod. We have been hostile for a long time; if I build a bridge to him he may yet prove useful to me as an ally. Let me make an application. Pilate tried to put off the responsibility of dealing with Jesus. He wanted nothing to do with the man. As we will see, it didn t work. Jesus came right back to him. If Pilate couldn t escape, neither can we. We all have to do something with Jesus one way or another. Earlier in his public ministry Jesus had asked his disciples, Who do men say I am? (Mark 8:27). Then the Lord asked the important question. But what about you? Who do you say I am? (Mark 8:29). Sooner or later, if you haven t already, you will 4
have to come to terms with that question. Jesus will not let you put it off indefinitely. You will have to say, Yes, to Jesus or you will have to say, No, to Jesus. It will be one or the other. There is no in between and there is no escape. You see, Jesus really is the Lord of the universe; he really is the Saviour of all who call upon him with humble and contrite hearts. He is exactly who the Bible reveals him to be. The only question is whether or not you will acknowledge him as such and turn and follow him or not. In a very famous passage C. S. Lewis put it this way. It is a quote you know but one that bears repeating from time to time. I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Let me introduce you to Herod Antipas. He was the son of Herod the Great, the ruler who had commanded the boy babies in Bethlehem to be slaughtered in hopes of destroying the king of the Jews the Magi had told him about. Herod the Great had 10 wives nine of them at the same time but he trimmed down that number by murdering several of them along with a number of his children. 5
Augustus said that it was better to be one of Herod s pigs than to be one of his sons. With Herod Antipas, in one respect at least, the fruit didn t fall far from the tree. He was a libertine of the worst sort. In his case, however, he coupled perversion with weakness rather than with his father s strength, focus and ruthlessness. His fecklessness was such that ultimately the Romans had to remove him from his post. Herod Antipas didn t rule over all the territory his father had commanded. Herod the Great had written in his will that Antipas was to take over from him, but unfortunately for Antipas his father had written more than one will. Caesar Augustus had to make the final determination about who would rule and where. His brother Archaelus was given Judea, Samaria and Idumea, the family home, in the south. His other brother Philip was given the Decapolis the territory on the east side of the Jordan River. Antipas received Galilee and Perea in the north. Antipas usually dwelt in his palace at Tiberius, a city on the west coast of the Sea of Galilee. It was a brand new city, barely a decade old, and one that he had built in honour of Tiberius to serve as the administrative centre of his territory. Josephus gives us an interesting story about the new town. When they were building the foundations for their large, public buildings the workers uncovered an ancient graveyard. As a result the whole city was deemed to be defiled and no law abiding Jewish citizen would step foot in the city. It was inhabited almost 6
exclusively by Romans and foreigners. There is no mention in Scripture of Jesus ever visiting Tiberius. It was Herod Antipas who had John the Baptist killed. It happened this way. At a family gathering Antipas persuaded his sister-in-law Herodias to leave her husband his brother Philip and come and live with him. (To make matters a bit more complicated Herodias was Herod the Great s granddaughter which made both of her husbands Philip and Antipas her uncles.) John the Baptist rebuked Antipas for this action and so Antipas has him arrested. Now here it gets interesting. Even though Antipas had John arrested, he liked to hear the Baptist speak. What John said frightened him, puzzled him and fascinated him and Antipas gave it great weight for the Bible tells us that he recognized that John was a righteous and holy man (Mark 6:20). Antipas went so far as to protect John because his new wife Herodias hated him fiercely for having been so outspoken about their sin. On his birthday Herodias threw a party for Antipas. She had her daughter dance for the king. The king was impressed and promised to grant the girl whatever she wished, up to half of his kingdom. After consulting with her mother she asked for the head of John the Baptist. Antipas was deeply conflicted. He didn t want the Baptist killed. He didn t want to look like a complete fool in front 7
of all his friends by denying this wish and his promise. Pressured, he gave in and had John killed. Mark describes it this way: The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John s head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother (6:26-28). This was, I think, the defining moment in Herod s life. This is why. When John the Baptist confronted Herod, there is no doubt that Herod felt the conviction of sin. He saw his wickedness; he understood he had broken the law of God. That is why he feared. Think of Isaiah, confronted by the holiness of God and calling out, Woe to me, I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the Lord. But Herod did more than simply fear. He recognized that John was a righteous and holy man and as such would preach the truth. That is why for all of his trembling he liked to hear John speak. Here, finally, was someone willing to tell him the truth. Perhaps he could even see that there was mercy, stern mercy, in John s message. Perhaps he could see in some way that John s confrontation of him had been an act of grace and mercy in the same way that Nathan the prophet s confrontation of David, when David was trapped in adultery and murder, was an act of grace. God was opening the door of forgiveness to him. But here, at his birthday party, in murdering John 8
the Baptist, Herod slammed shut the door of grace and turned away from forgiveness. The note of grace he had heard in the voice of John the Baptist he would never hear again. Beloved, there is a day of God s visitation in which we must respond because there is no guarantee that God will speak to us in mercy again. Everywhere in the Bible the message is the same and it is urgent: Today is the acceptable day. Today is the day of salvation. It is never tomorrow. It is always today. It is always right now. Who knows if we will be given another day in which to repent? Who knows when we will reach the point that we will be unable to repent because our consciences have been seared? King Saul stubbornly refused to heed God s word time and time again and so, finally, God stopped talking to him. When Saul was ready for a word from God, God had nothing more to say. Samson time and time again neglected the gift that was in him and the last time he went out to confront the Philistines he was captured, bound and had his eyes put out for he did not know that the Holy Spirit had left him. After Herod killed John the Baptist, God would speak to Him no more. Jesus stood before him and opened not his mouth, unwilling to cast pearls before swine. The day of grace had been missed. 9
I want you to see this. Herod had much going for him, but when he turned from the message of life and had John killed, all those gifts became useless. Turn to verse 8: When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him performs some miracle. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the teachers of the law were standing there, vehemently accusing him (vv. 8-10). First of all, Herod was curious about Jesus and the Lord often uses curiosity to great effect. He played upon the curiosity of Nicodemus, who came to him by night, puzzling him with the declaration that you must be born again. He moved Nicodemus to ask, How can a man be born when he is old? (John 3:4) and then used this puzzlement to open up Nicodemus to his teaching. He spoke of the water of life to the Samaritan woman at the well and caused her to ask, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep where will you get this water? (John 4:11, 12). He then quenched her thirst for good. Curiosity itself is not bad and Herod, curious and wanting to know all he could of the Lord, had learned much of Jesus. He had no doubt heard reports of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and healing the Galilean nobleman s son along with the other numerous miracles that Jesus had done throughout his Galilean ministry. Herod would have heard the news, just one week old, that a man named Lazarus had at the command of Christ risen from the 10
grave. He would have heard of Jesus from John the Baptist. We don t have any reports of what the Baptist said to him, but he well may have declared, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Not only that, there was a member of his own household, a manager, Cuza by name, who was married to a woman named Joanna who was a follower and supporter of the Lord (Luke 8:3). Herod had access to reports of Jesus from all these sources. And yet for all of that his curiosity was a vain, useless and idle thing that did not draw him to Christ that he might come to know him as his Lord and Saviour. He had turned away from that when he had killed John. He wanted to know Christ in the same way that people want to learn about celebrities from supermarket tabloids. His curiosity about the Saviour was of no avail. Jesus had nothing to say to him. There is a second characteristic of Herod we should notice. When he saw Jesus he was greatly pleased and full of hope for he wanted to see a miracle. That too is not a bad thing. We rejoice to see Jesus. We long to see him work a miracle. Is there anyone here who has not asked for the Lord to touch and raise the cold and stony heart of a loved one to everlasting life? We hope to see the dead in trespasses and sin brought to newness of life, lives turned from dissipation to usefulness, families brought into loving, harmonious unity. In the Welsh revival of the late 19 th century miracles were common place. A few days after his father had been converted a young boy said to his teacher with wonder, Miss, we had 11
meat and potatoes for supper last night; we even had pudding. It took nothing less than a miracle of the Sovereign Spirit of God to open that father s heart and turn him from the public house and his drinking to his home and his family. But God so moved and the miracle was done and we rejoice to hear of it. But that is not what Herod wanted to experience. He wanted to see Jesus perform a few magic tricks. He wanted entertainment for his bored and empty heart. Jesus has nothing to say to those who approach him in this way. seriously: This is how Spurgeon put it as he gives an application that should take Herod is a type of some who frequently come to this tabernacle and go to other places of worship occasionally people who were once under religious impressions, and cannot forget that they were so but who will never be under any religious impressions again. They are now hardened into vain curiosity. They want to know about everything that is going on in the church and kingdom of Christ but they are far enough from caring to become part and part of it themselves. They eat up the sins of God people as they eat bread. The church is their lounge, divine service is their theatre, ministers are to them as actors and the gospel itself so much playhouse property. God give us grace never to treat him lightly or to presume upon his mercy! Beloved, it is time for us to stand before Jesus as we gather around the Table of the Lord. It will not do for us to come lightly, with idle, vain curiosity. We must approach this Table with humble and contrite hearts, with faith and reverence. In the bread that we break we will see the body of Christ broken on the 12
cross. In the wine that we taste we will see the blood of Christ shed at Calvary. But more, as we approach in the proper spirit we will be able to proclaim, This is the body of Christ broken for me; this is the blood of Christ, shed for me. As I partake of his sacrifice through faith I find my sins washed away and the joy of new life bestowed. How can it be that he should love me so? I don t know why it should be, but by his grace I know that it is. And it is there, on the foundation of the cross of Christ, that I will take my stand. Let s prepare our hearts for the Lord s Supper. Let us pray. 13