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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Friday, April 29, 2022
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :The Death of John the Baptist Bible Verse:Matthew 14:1-12 (ESV) "At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.” For Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because John had been saying to him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.” And though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people, because they held him to be a prophet. But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company and pleased Herod, so that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.” And the king was sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he commanded it to be given. He sent and had John beheaded in the prison, and his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother. And his disciples came and took the body and buried it, and they went and told Jesus." Message:
When word of Jesus’ miracles reaches Herod, he reacts with paranoia, believing that John has been raised from the dead, i.e., that Jesus is the resurrection of John the Baptist. Matthew uses the incident to introduce a flashback, giving us an account of John’s death. Remember in Matthew 11, John’s followers came to Jesus to tell him Herod had thrown John the Baptist into prison. So John must have been beheaded just a few weeks or months before Herod heard about Jesus.
We will not try to untangle all of the Herods — there were nine of them, five of which are mentioned in the Bible — but there are two we need to know.
Herod the Great ruled Judea when Jesus was born; it was he who slaughtered the innocents, causing Jesus to flee to Egypt. When he died, Judea was split into three parts, each ruled by a “Herod”, but the important one is the one in today’s passage, “Herod the Tetrarch” (Herod Antipas). He ruled Galilee and was the Herod responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, as well as John’s beheading.
This Herod stole his half-brother Philip’s wife, Herodias. In doing so, he broke two major laws: he put away his own wife without a legal divorce (Deut. 24:1-4), and he married his sister-in-law (Levit. 18:16), both acts specifically prohibited by the law of Moses.
John the Baptist — who was a prophet in his own right, as well as the specific prophet of Jesus — railed at the evil of the marriage. So Herod arrested John to shut him up. But he was loathe to kill him, because he feared an uprising from John’s followers.
Salome and John the Baptist by Onorio Marinari
We read today of a plot by Herodias to have her daughter, Salome, trick her husband into executing John. (This girl’s name is not given in the Bible. We learn her name — Salome — from the book Antiquities of the Jews, written around 92 A.D. by the great Jewish historian, Josephus.) It is a colorful drama and has been the subject of many works of art, including a famous opera by Richard Strauss. The moral debasement of Herod and Herodias is compounded by Herod’s apparent lust for his stepdaughter. And, even worse, Salome’s own mother used that lust to induce Herod into murdering John, by having her teenage daughter perform a lascivious dance for him.
We must, at this point, look all the way back to Matthew 1:1 — “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” David was the king appointed by God to rule Israel; thus Jesus, his direct descendant, had a legitimate hereditary claim to be the king. Herod, on the other hand, was not even fully Jewish and had no divine right of rulership; in fact, the last of David’s heirs to rule Israel (or Judah) had been deposed in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians.
This is why the Hebrews longed for a Messiah: they believed a descendant of David would return as a great military and political leader, to overthrow Herod and Caesar and restore Israel under Yahweh. The Messiah, a direct descendant of David, did come — but He was something utterly different than what the Jews expected! They rejected Christ so vociferously that they eventually demanded his death.
In today’s reading, however, we see a second, entirely different motive for the crucifixion. Herod is paranoid; Jesus has a legitimate and divine claim to a throne that Herod occupies. So Herod will also want Jesus killed, for entirely different reasons than the entrenched religious establishment.
There is an irony in all of this, because the Jewish leadership (Sadducees and Pharisees) were in many ways the utter enemies of Herod, for Herod was beholden to Rome for his position. As sometimes happens in established religious organizations, politics reared its unholy head, bringing enemies together in a common cause — the elimination of Jesus.
Meditation : “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against cosmic powers, the spiritual forces of evil. ” ~Ephesians 6:12 Prayer : Let me not forget you as I go forth into the world this day, blessed Lord; may my every word be a prayer, and my every act be testimony to your love and truth, and may I know your presence every second of this day........Amen |
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