Introduction

The following message by Alistair Begg is made available by Truth For Life. For more information, visit us online at truthforlife.org.

Opening Prayer

Father, we’re going to study our Bibles now, and it is our earnest longing that the Spirit of God might be our teacher. We are in total need of this. We remember Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” And so we acknowledge our need, and we pray that coming in our helplessness, we may find your strength; coming in our ignorance, that we might know your wisdom; coming in our darkness, that we might know your light; and coming in our spiritual death, that we might know the life that is found in trusting the Lord Jesus. For it’s in his name we pray, Amen.

A Pattern in the Chapter

In studying this week, I became more than a little convinced that the first thirty-six verses of this chapter possess something of a pattern to them. It breaks down into six paragraphs here in our English translation, and while I know that there were no paragraph breaks or sentences in the way that we know them in the original, nevertheless, I think the way in which the translators have put them is very helpful for us and somewhat illuminating.

Let me explain to you what I mean, and then we’ll follow along on the strength of this outline.

The first paragraph comprises the first six verses, as you will see, and it has to do with the sending out of the twelve. You remember Jesus has just told the healed man, the demoniac, that he should go away and “tell how much God has done for you.” Now here he sends out the twelve, and the commission is largely the same.

In the second paragraph, verses seven to nine, we have this question of the identity of Jesus as it is raised by Herod.

In paragraph three, which is in verses ten to seventeen, in the feeding of the five thousand, the camera lens, as it were, comes back again to the people of God and the responsibility that they have to feed the hungry who are present on that occasion. And Jesus quite remarkably says to his followers, when they come to say to him, “You know, we’re in a bit of a bind here, and the people need something to eat,” Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.”

In the fourth paragraph, it returns again to the identity of Jesus. And the question is asked between verses eighteen and twenty-two by Jesus this time, rather than by Herod, “Who is it that people are saying that I am?”

Immediately following, in the fifth paragraph, Jesus explains to those who are his followers the cost of following him.

And then when you come to the sixth paragraph, verses twenty-eight to thirty-six, again the matter is the identity of Jesus. And this time we have the declaration of heaven, we have the divine attestation, the voice out of the cloud saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen. Listen to him.”

So, if you like, paragraphs one, three, and five provide instruction about the followers of Christ, while paragraphs two, four, and six focus on the identity of Christ himself.

The Approach

What I’d like to do is to take them in reverse order. We’ll deal with the even-numbered paragraphs—two, four, and six—this morning, concerning the identity of Jesus, and paragraphs one, three, and five, concerning the nature of following Christ, when we come to study the Bible again tonight.

Herod’s Question (Verses 7–9)

So then, let us look at the paragraph which begins at verse seven and goes through to the ninth verse, which I’m referring to as the second paragraph because it is, and it has to do with Herod’s question. If I were taking notes, I would simply write down “Herod’s question.” That’s exactly what I have written in front of me here.

Now, some of you will be saying, “Who is this Herod?” And of course, that’s the question that should immediately come to mind. Is this the Herod of Luke chapter one and Matthew chapter two? Is this the one before whom the wise men came looking for “he who was born king of the Jews”? Is this the Herod who, as a despot and in his fiendish jealousy, established a pattern whereby all of the boys two and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem were to be put to death?

The answer is no, that is not this Herod. That is, however, this Herod’s father. This is the son of Herod the Great. And this particular Herod, we are told, is particularly perplexed. The word there in verse seven means that he was utterly at a loss because some people were going around saying that John the Baptist had been raised from the dead. That, as we’re going to see in a moment, was a real dilemma for Herod.

But the real issue for him was simply in his question in verse nine: “Who then is this I hear such things about?” He just was unable to make sense of all that he was hearing concerning the words and the works, not only of Jesus of Nazareth but also those that were being accomplished by his followers. And it was rattling him. It was unnerving him. It was perplexing him.

Herod’s Conscience

Now, it’s one of Shakespeare’s characters—I don’t recall which, and I didn’t have time to look it up—that says, “Conscience doth make cowards of us all.” And Herod’s conscience here was at work.

In order to understand that, you need to have a little background, and I encourage you to turn to Matthew chapter 14. Let’s just note how it came about that Herod ended up calling for John the Baptist to be beheaded.

Herod had arrested John. He put him in prison because John was preaching too forcefully. Actually, John was mentioning things that Herod didn’t want mentioned, not least of all the fact that he had an adulterous relationship going on with his brother’s wife, his brother being the ethnarch of another region, and his name was Philip.

So annoyed was Herod that verse five tells us that he wanted to kill John, and the only reason that he didn’t kill John was because he was afraid of the people—they, in turn, considered him to be a prophet.

On the occasion of his birthday, as Matthew recalls, Herodias’ daughter did a dance for them, a dance which so struck Herod that he offered to her on oath to provide her with whatever it was she asked.

And so she went to her mother, and she said, “Uncle Herod has said, ‘I can have anything that I want. What do you think I should ask him for?’”

And Herodias said, “Why don’t you ask him for John the Baptist’s head on a plate?”

So she went back and she said, “Uncle Herod, I’d like to have John the Baptist’s head on a plate.”

And he was trapped, and although he was afraid of the people, and perhaps afraid of the implications of this, nevertheless, he granted her request, and verse ten says, “John was beheaded in the prison,” and verse eleven, “his head was brought in on a plate and given to the girl who carried it to her mother.”

What a dreadful circumstance. You can just imagine the debauchery and the drinking and the craziness that was going on in that circumstance that would allow such an event to transpire.

Rumors About Jesus

Well, now the word is going around that John the Baptist is back out on the streets. That’s one of the rumors that’s flying around.

One of the others, verse eight—back in Luke nine now—is that Elijah had appeared, because Malachi 4 had said that Elijah was going to come. Jesus has elsewhere explained that that prophecy, Malachi 4:5, found fulfillment in John the Baptist, whom Jesus said, “came in the 􀀁