Managing Sin

If you have a Bible, let's open to Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

While you turn there, I want you to think about this.

Imagine that somebody gave you a brand new free puppy.

And you were a puppy lover.

So you were excited about this free gift.

And this puppy was very unique looking, very unique sounding, but you love this puppy.

It's very playful, wonderful.

Like to gnaw on you a little bit.

Teeth seemed a little sharp, but it's a puppy.

You like the puppy.

And you're raising it, you're training it, and as it grows, at some point you're falling more and more in love with it, you come to realize this is not just the normal puppy, this is a wolf.

What would you do?

Would you get rid of it?

Would you put it down?

Would you think, I got this, I can tame it, I can domesticate it, we've already got such a bond.

Just think about that.

We're gonna look at a passage today where we see somebody trying to manage their sin and it doesn't work out very well.

Now, uh, Jesus' disciples, where we were last week, they've gone out preaching, the 12.

So his fame is spreading.

They're healing, they're preaching, they're exercising.

People are hearing about the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And as his fame spreads further, John, excuse me, Mark tries to give us this uh pretty lengthy flashback.

And I think you'll understand why when we read it.

Let's look at Mark chapter 6, starting verse 14.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

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.

Speaking of Jesus.

But others said he is Elijah, and others said he is 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' daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests, 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 of my kingdom.

And she went out and said to her mother, For what should 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 guest, 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.

And when his disciples, that's John the Baptist's disciples, heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

Now, because John has kind of given this as a flashback, I'm gonna give it more in chronological order of what happened.

King Herod was a Roman-appointed governor, essentially, over Galilee, where Jesus and John the Baptist had both been doing their uh ministry.

He was Jewish, but he was a proxy of the Romans.

And he fell in love with his brother's wife, Philip.

And almost certainly, history tells us they had an affair.

They both decided to divorce their living spouses and get married.

And this was sinful, certainly for a Jew.

And so John the Baptist, the Jewish prophet, was preaching publicly against it.

This is sin, what you're doing.

And Herod didn't like it.

Herodias really didn't like it.

Uh there's some saying about hell having no fury.

Um, well, Herod, though, still had some sort of Jewish respect for the law, the word of God.

He kind of liked John, which this is weird to us, but it shouldn't be that weird.

Uh, you know, George Whitfield was maybe the greatest preacher who's ever preached in America back in the 1700s.

But history will tell us that Benjamin Franklin in America and David Hume in England, George Whitfield preached there as well, uh, were outspoken religious skeptics.

They were not Christians, but they eagerly loved to hear George Whitfield's preaching.

That's kind of what Herod was like.

And he, you know, he said, man, this is a righteous guy, he's holy.

I don't want to kill him.

My wife wants to kill him.

Uh, and so what I'll do, I'll arrest him.

In a sense, I'll shut him up, lock him in the dungeon, and hopefully it'll shut my wife up.

Uh, didn't seem to work.

Because then he has a party for all the big shots in Galilee.

And it was probably a drunken affair.

And Herodotus' daughter, presumably from her first marriage, probably a teenage girl, comes in his dances.

John MacArthur said it would probably be comparable to a modern-day strip tease.

The men really liked it.

And so he makes a drunken oath.

What do you want, baby?

Up to half my wealth, I'll give it to you.

And she goes out, asks mom, what do you want?

I want John the Baptist's head.

She comes back in, she adds, I want John the Baptist's head on a platter.

King Herod is not excited about this.

He's deeply grieved, affected.

He doesn't want to do it.

But he also has pride.

And I've made this powerful oath in front of all the leading men.

I don't want to look like a fool.

I don't want to look weak.

So he says, Go do it.

Chops his head off, brings it in, gives it to the girl, to mom.

John the Baptist hears, his disciples hear, excuse me.

They bury the body.

But then fast forward.

Later, when Jesus is becoming famous, and people are like, Who is this prophet with great powers?

Some say Elijah, some say one of the other old prophets.

And Herod says, No, it's John the Baptist.

I should have never killed him.

I chopped his head off and he's come back more powerful with greater powers.

Kind of like when Darth Vader killed Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he comes back more powerful.

Herod probably wasn't thinking about Obi-Wan, but you get the point.

Now, Adam, our worship leader, Jim and Joy Wright's son, plans all our worship services.

He's done a great job.

I tell him what passage I'm gonna preach on, he does the rest.

This is the first week since I've been here.

He said, Oh, and I'm having a little bit of a hard time with the songs to choose about John the Baptist getting his head cut off.

Understandably so.

But there really is a lot of application here for us.

The first is this all of us should see some of ourselves in King Herod in this way.

I know I do.

We try to manage our sin.

We think that we can manage our sin, but it always ends up managing us in the long run.

Right?

We're torn between what we love, what we enjoy, and a guilty conscience, a knowledge of the truth.

He loves Herodias, he loves his relationship with her.

He feels guilty by John the Baptist preaching.

So he's like, ah, I don't want to get rid of her.

Don't really want to get rid of him.

What should I do?

I'll compromise.

I'll lock the prophet up in the dungeon, but I'll bring him out.

I'll bring him into court when Herodias is not there.

Let him preach because I kind of like listening to him.

He sounds crazy, but he's fun.

He'll be like entertainment for me.

And I wonder what lies Herod told himself.

I'm actually doing a good thing here.

Because my wife, she might send an assassin to kill him.

If I got him locked up in the dungeon, he's safe.

I'm actually doing a good thing.

I'm protecting God's prophet.

We tell ourselves lies like that all the time, don't we?

Little peace treaties that we make with sin.

I'm not doing near as much as I could be doing.

I'm not doing near as much as I know a lot of other people are doing.

What I'm doing is minuscule compared to that.

And I'm probably gonna stop real soon, like tomorrow.

But just one last time.

We tell ourselves these little lies.

But listen, guys, when we try to make peace treaties with sin, it's like making peace treaties with Hitler.

While you're thinking, I've kept peace a little bit longer, he's just building his army to overwhelm you.

I think it was John Owen that said, listen, when sin seems to lie dormant in your life, it's just like a tiger that's crouching, waiting to pounce.

You try to hang on to that cute little baby wolf puppy that somebody gave you, you'll manage it while it's a puppy, and then one day it'll eat you.

And that's what our sin does.

When we have a hard attitude, like St.

Augustine did before he became a Christian, he said, God, he loved his sex life just like Herod did.

And St.

Augustine said, God, give me chastity.

Just not yet.

I know John Owen said this: be killing sin, or it will be killing you.

There can be no halfway covenant.

It has to be an all or none repentance.

Get this out of my life, Lord.

And you may say, I'm not sure exactly where I'm doing that.

What about in this area?

Bitterness leads to death.

One of the sins that I think is so domesticated and it's so easy for people like us that may not have more scandalous sins in our life to make peace treaties with is holding a grudge against somebody.

Bitterness in our heart.

There's a sense in which when I have a grudge against somebody, sometimes it kind of keeps me warm at night.

Right?

You understand what I mean?

Like it makes me feel kind of self-righteous.

They sinned, they hurt my feelings.

How dare they?

I have a right to be mad at them.

I think it was Nelson Mandela that first said, bitterness is like the poison pill that I wait, I take, and I wait for the other guy to die.

He may not even know I'm angry at him, or he might not care, but I'm the one that's getting eaten up on the inside.

Corey Timboom, who was a woman who tried to hide Jews from the Nazis, got arrested, suffered greatly, lost most of her family in the prison camps.

And what she said is forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, and then only finding out you were the real prisoner.

And guys, I know that some of you have probably been hurt very badly by somebody.

My guess is nobody wants to say, I had it worse than Corey Timboon in the concentration camp.

And she learned that the only way to get out metaphorically of the prison of your heart is to forgive.

So, guys, even if somebody has genuinely sinned against you and hurt you, the best thing you can do, not for them, but for yourself, is forgive them.

Forgive them from your heart.

Hold on to that anger and it will lead to death.

Maybe you're on, it can burn you up from the inside.

Third thing, I already mentioned this, but and it was a point last week that this is important.

You can enjoy God's word and remain unchanged.

Like the people in Nazareth, in the synagogue that heard Jesus and they were astonished, he's so wise.

They weren't changed.

Jesus in Matthew chapter 11 says that John the Baptist was the greatest man that had ever lived up until Christ.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Herod probably often brought him into the palace for like a personalized hearing.

But it never changed.

Richard Nixon often brought pastors to preach in the White House because he didn't want to disrupt church services with the Secret Service, unless that's what he said.

And listen, some of the guys he brought were great, like Billy Graham.

There's no evidence Richard Nixon ever repented.

Be careful about coming to church every week or listening to podcasts every week and not repenting.

Fourth.

Feeling sorry for sin is not the same as repentance.

There's a verse in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 10.

2 Corinthians 7:10

Write this one down.

Maybe go look at it later, and it says, listen, there's two different kinds of sorrow over sin.

There's two different kinds of grief over sin.

One leads to salvation, one leads to death.

How do you know the difference?

Worldly sorrow grieves over the consequences of sin.

It grieves over I got caught.

I mean, basically, the bottom line is worldly sorrow is rooted in I love my sin and I don't want to lose my sin.

And I'm sad that I can't do my sin and get away with it.

We've probably all experienced worldly sorrow before.

Godly sorrow is rooted in I love God, and so when I sin, I grieve that I hurt the heart of God, who's such a loving and gracious father.

Worldly sorrow leads to death.

Godly sorrow leads to repentance.

Guys, when it says that Herod was deeply sorrow, look at verse 26 again.

And the king was exceedingly sorry.

It means he was deeply affected.

Literally, you could translate this way: he was afflicted beyond measure.

But he did it anyway.

I like to watch kind of crime mafia movies sometimes.

And I have there's been multiple movies where it'd be like, you know, the crime lord says, Well, you know, I really love this guy.

He's been a great friend since high school, blah, blah, blah, but I gotta kill him, you know.

It's part of business.

Hate it.

I feel terrible about it.

I'm gonna throw him a big funeral after I murder him, but it's just what I gotta do.

You can you can feel really, really, really, really bad about your sin.

You can pray, you can cry, and you can get up and do the exact same thing again the next day.

I've done it.

Why did Herod do it?

Because he loved his reputation, he loved his sin, he loved his pride, more than he loved God, more than he loved obedience.

Fifth, God's people are not promised a peaceful or a glorious or a dignified death.

I mean, just think about the kind of death you would like to have.

I think most of us would probably say something like, I want to be 98 years old and as healthy as I was as an 18-year-old, and sitting in my chair at home, I'm not even in the hospital, I'm not laying in bed, and I'm surrounded by all my loved ones, kids, grandkids, great grandkids, four generations of godly people, and they're just they're just telling me how great I am.

We love you, great grandpa.

You changed my life.

Okay, I mean that that'd be a good death.

I'll take that.

Or maybe it's like, oh, I don't have to have that, but I want to glory, I want to be like Maximus at the end of Gladiator.

I just killed the tyrant with my last breath.

I set the slaves free, and then I topple over.

He was a hero of Rome.

Who will help me care?

I'll take that death.

Jesus says John the Baptist is the greatest guy that's ever lived up until now.

He's in a hot dungeon.

A teenage girl comes in for a bunch of drunken old men and does a scandalous dance.

And these perverted old men say, What do you want?

We'll give you anything.

Chop his head off.

I don't want to, but okay.

I mean, this is about the so it's like a sick party favor.

Listen, we are not promised external peace and dignity or glory in this world.

And to whatever degree God gives it to us, enjoy it, relish it, be grateful, be thankful, but don't let your heart start to latch on to it, because he might take it away like that.

Sixth and final point.

Long sentence here, okay.

We all like to use our power, our influence to silence our conscience, to silence any hindrance to our sin, but it never works in the long run because sin will always leave us with a guilty conscience.

And part of a guilty conscience is a fear of the consequences.

Haven't you experienced this in your own life?

I wonder who knows.

I wonder if they're talking about me.

I wonder if she saw.

I wonder if he heard.

I wonder if they remember.

It can haunt us.

At some level, we all face the same battle here that did between we love a certain sin, but this guilty conscience.

And the more powerful you are, the more you can do to shut it down.

It's pretty interesting.

Okay.

Um we all have, I think Matthew Henry called it a beloved sin.

Matthew Poole said it this way, another commentator.

He said, Listen, we can get so close.

I'm paraphrasing.

He said, we can get so close and yet never really experience any saving grace.

And oftentimes, why?

It's because we've got this one thing that we're coveting.

What's the one thing in my life?

What's the one thing in your life?

What's the one thing that the Lord is calling you this morning to repent of?

Why does Mark spend so much time on this flashback?

Because it's not just a flashback, it's a foreshadowing.

Herod's greatest fear after this, I mean, he listen, the guy that was causing him problems in his marriage, he's dead.

But his guilty conscience, he's worried.

What if somehow he comes back?

John the Baptist, second greatest prophet of all time, the Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest prophet of all time.

Jesus came and preached a similar message, John the Baptist.

Repent and submit to God's rule in your life.

Lots of people, tens of thousands, love listening to him.

Most of them did not repent that we know of.

I just I can't get over that.

To hear George Whitfield would be one thing, to hear John the Baptist would be another.

To hear God in the flesh and yet not repent.

I wonder what it will be like for those people on judgment day when they stand before that same God man on a throne, and they're like, I heard him on earth.

And I mocked him.

The leaders of that time, Jewish and Roman, they really hated him for different reasons.

They had him arrested.

No, Pilate, remember this story?

He's a lot like Herod.

He kind of likes.

Wife's having a dream, he's an innocent man.

He's like, I don't find any guilt in this man.

I don't want to do anything.

Look, I want to release him.

In fact, if the crowd, if you'll just ask me, I'm trying to.

No, we want you to crucify him.

I'll wash my hands of it, I guess.

So he was killed, guys.

And what a what a terrible death.

It was not a glorious death, at least externally.

Stripped naked, flogged, probably no skin left on his back.

Pick up the heavy wooden beam, walk through the streets, beaten, mocked, scorned, railroad spikes, putting him to the tree, hanging there alone, bearing our shame for our sin, because he didn't have any.

He was deeply afflicted.

He did not want to go to the cross and carry our sins.

And yet he did because he always submitted himself to whatever the father wanted.

And the father, because he loved us, he didn't just say, Hey, ask me what you want, and I'll give you whatever you want, up to half the kingdom.

When we were all still dead in our sins, the father decided, I'm going to give him everything I got.

I'm going to give him my only son to save them.

Now, the Jewish leaders that were behind him being murdered, that very night they started to worry, what if he comes back?

Or at least appears to, because he said something like that, and let's get a guard out there.

Let's shut this down.

Their greatest fear came true.

And our greatest hope came true.

Our greatest joy.

He rose from the dead.

And he conquered the sin and the shame of all of us who will put our faith in him.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, you are so wonderful.

You are so glorious.

You are so wise.

You are so beautiful in your character, in your humility, and your willingness to serve us with your life, your death, your resurrection, your ascension.

It is so encouraging for us who have been saved by your blood to think about you coming again to judge the living and the dead.

And that by your grace, we're going to pass judgment and serve with you, rule with you in heaven for all eternity.

It's seemingly too good to be true.

Father God, I plead with you for anyone that would be here this morning hearing this message that is not sure that they are in Christ.

That they would leave their sin behind and they would come to Him for salvation this morning.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.