John preaching

John the Baptist
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John and Herod
by Charles H. Spurgeon
(Continued)

"For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and holy and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things and heard him gladly."   Mark 6:20

II. There were six good points about Herod, then. But now, very sorrowfully, I want to indicate THE FLAWS IN THE CASE OF HEROD.

The first flaw was that though he feared John, he never looked to John’s Master. John never wanted anybody to be his disciple, but he cried, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Herod was, after a sort, a follower of John, but never a follower of Jesus. It is easy for you to hear the preacher and love him and admire him and yet the preacher’s Master may be unknown to you. I pray you, dear Friends, do not let this be the case with any of you! I am the Bridegroom’s friend and I shall rejoice greatly when the Bridegroom wins your hearts.

God forbid that my ministry should ever lead you to myself and cause you to stop there. We are only signposts pointing to Christ. Go beyond us! Be followers of us as far as we are followers of Christ, but in no other respect. It is to Christ you must go—the end of all our ministry is Christ Jesus! We want you to go directly to Him, to seek pardon from Him, redemption from Him, a change of heart from Him, a new life from Him—for vain will it be if you have listened to the most faithful of preachers and have not listened to the preacher’s Master and obeyed His Gospel! You will be Herods and nothing more unless Grace leads you to Jesus Christ!

The second flaw about Herod’s case was that he had no respect for goodness in his own heart. He admired it in another, but there was none of it in himself. Our Savior described Herod admirably. What a master-sketcher of human portraits was Christ! He said of Herod, “Go you and tell that fox.” Herod was a foxy man, selfish, full of tricks—timid when he was in the presence of his superiors—but both cruel and bold when he was in the presence of those who could not defend themselves. We sometimes meet with these foxy people—they want to go to Heaven, but they like the road to Hell! They will sing a hymn to Jesus, but they also like a good roaring song when they get merry companions together.

By all manner of means, they are a guinea to the Church of God. Oh yes, admirable thing! But how many guineas are spent upon some secret lust? So many try to dodge between God and Satan. They do not want to fall foul of either—they hold with the hare and run with the hounds—they admire all that is good, but they do not want to have too much of it themselves. It might be inconvenient to carry the Cross of Christ on their own shoulders and become precise and exact in their own lives, yet they never say a word against other people doing so. It is a fatal flaw to have no root in yourself—a damning flaw, condemning yourself—to know the right and disregard it, to feel respect for it and yet trample it under foot. I judge that the doom of such will be far more dreadful than that of those who never knew the good, who were trained up in the purloins of vice and never had a glimpse of holiness or purity and, therefore, never deliberately turned away from them.

Another flaw in Herod’s character was that he never loved the Word of God, as God’s Word. He admired John and probably said, “That is the man for me. See how boldly he delivers his Master’s message? That is the man I should like to hear.” But he never said to himself, “God sent John. God speaks to me through John. Oh that I might learn what John is speaking and be instructed and improved by the Word of God John is uttering, because it is God’s Word.” No, no. I do pray you, ask yourselves, dear Hearers, whether this may not apply to you. May it not be that you listen to a sermon because it is Mr. So-and-So’s discourse and you admire the preacher? It will be fatal to you if you treat the Word of God in that way! It must be to you what it is in truth—the Word of God—or it will not save you! It will never impress your soul unless you accept it as the Word of God and bow before it and desire to feel all its power as coming to you fresh from the lips of God and sent into your heart by His Holy Spirit.

We know Herod did not receive the Word as the Word of God because he was a picker and chooser in reference to it. He did not like John’s discourse when he spoke of the Seventh Commandment. If John spoke of the Fourth Commandment, Herod would say, “That is admirable! The Jews ought to keep it.” But when John dealt with the Seventh Commandment, Herod and Herodias would say, “We do not think preachers should allude to such subjects.” I have always noticed that people who live in the practice of vice think the servants of God ought not to allude to things so coarse! We are allowed to denounce the sins of the man in the moon and the vices of savages in the middle of Africa—but as to the everyday vices of this city of London—if we put our finger upon them in God’s name, then straightway someone cries, “It is indelicate to allude to these things!”

John dealt with the whole Word of God! He did not only say, “Behold the Lamb of God,” but he cried, “The axe is laid to the root of the trees.” He spoke plainly to the conscience. Herod, therefore, had this fatal flaw in his character that he did not attend to all that John delivered of the Word of God. He liked one part and did not like another. He resembled those who prefer a doctrinal discourse, but cannot endure the precepts of God’s Word. I hear one exclaim, “I like practical discourses! I do not need any doctrine!” Don’t you? There is doctrine in God’s Word and you are to receive what God gives you—not half a Bible, but the whole Truth of God as it is in Jesus. That was a great fault in Herod. He did not receive the testimony of John as the Word of God.

Next, Herod did many things, but he did not do all things. He who receives the Word of God in truth does not only attempt to do many things, but he tries to do all that is right. He does not give up one vice, or a dozen vices, but he endeavors to forsake every false way and seeks to be delivered from every iniquity. Herod did not care for a thorough reformation, for that would call for too great a self-denial. He had one sin he wished to keep and when John spoke plainly about that, he would not listen to him. Another fault with Herod was that he was under the sway of sin. He had given himself up to Herodias. She was his own niece and had been married to his own brother and was the mother of children by his brother and yet he led her away from his brother’s house that she might become his wife—and he cast off one who had been a good and faithful wife to him for years.

It is a mess of filthy incest one hardly likes to think of. The influence of this woman was his curse and ruin. How many men have been destroyed in that way! How many women are ruined daily in this city by coming under the vicious influence of others! My dear men and women, you will have to stand before God on your own account! Do not let anyone cast a spell over you. I pray you, escape for your life—run for it when vice hunts you! I may have been sent on purpose, at this moment, with a word for you, to stir up your conscience and awaken you to a sense of your danger. It is always perilous to be under the influence of an unconverted person, however moral he may be, but it is supremely dangerous to be under the fascination of a wicked woman or a vicious man. God help you to rise above it by His Spirit, for if you are hearers of the Word of God and doers of evil, you will end in being Herods and nothing more.

I will only allude to another point in Herod’s character, that his religion, although it made him do many things, was rather one of fear than of love. It is not said that Herod feared God, but that he, “feared John.” He did not love John—he “feared John.” The whole thing was a matter of fear. He was not a lion, you see. He was a fox—fearful, timid, ready to run away from every barking cur. There are many people whose whole religion lies in fear. With some it is the fear of men—the fear of what people would say if they did not pretend to be religious—the fear of what their Christian associates would think of them if they were not reputable.

With others there is the fear that some awful judgment would come upon them. But the mainspring of the religion of Christ is love. Oh, to love the Gospel! To delight in the Truth of God! To rejoice in holiness! This is genuine conversion! The fear of death and the fear of Hell create a poor, poor faith which leaves men on Herod’s level.

III. I conclude by showing you very sorrowfully WHAT BECAME OF HEROD.

With all his good points he ended most wretchedly. First, he murdered the preacher whom he once respected. It was he who did it, though the executioner was the instrument. He said, “Go and fetch John the Baptist’s head on a platter.” So it has happened with many hopeful hearers—they have become slanderers and persecutors of the very preachers before whom they once trembled and, as far as they could, they have taken off their heads! After a time men dislike being rebuked and they proceed in their dislike till they scoff at the things they once reverenced and make the name of Christ a football for their jests. Beware! I pray you, beware! For the way of sin is downhill!

Herod feared John and yet he beheaded him. A person may be evangelical and Calvinistic and so on and yet, if he is placed under certain conditions, he may become a hater and a persecutor of the Truth of God he once avowed. Herod went a step lower, however, for this Herod Antipas was the man who afterwards mocked the Savior. It is said, “Herod, with his men of war, set Him at nothing and mocked Him and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe.” This is the man that “did many things” under the leading of John. His course is altered now! He spits on the Redeemer and insults the Son of God!

Certain of the most outrageous blasphemers of the Gospel were originally Sunday school scholars and teachers— young men who were “almost persuaded”—but they halted and hesitated and wavered until they made the plunge and became much worse than they possibly could have become if they had not seen the light of the Truth of God. If the devil needs raw material to make a Judas, “the son of perdition,” he takes an Apostle to work upon! When he takes a thoroughly bad character like Herod, it is necessary to make him plastic as Herod had been in the hands of John.

Somehow or other, border men are the worst enemies. In the old wars between England and Scotland, the borderers were the fighting men and so the border people will do more harm than any until we get them on this side of the frontier. Oh that the Grace of God may decide those who now hesitate! I must mention to you that before long Herod lost all the power he possessed. He was a foxy man and always tried to win power, but in the end he was recalled by the Roman emperor in disgrace. That was the end of Herod.

Many a man has given up Christ for honor and has lost himself as well as lost Christ. Like the man who, in the old Catholic persecuting times, was brought to prison for the faith. He said he loved the Protestant faith, but he cried, “I cannot burn.” So he denied the faith and in the dead of night his house was destroyed in flames—the man who could not burn was forced to burn—but he had no comfort in that burning, for he had denied his Lord. If you sell Christ for a mess of pottage, it will scald your lips. It will burn within your soul like molten lead, forever, for, “the wages of sin is death.” However bright the gold coins shine and however musical may be their chink, it will prove an awful curse to the man who sells his Lord to gain it!

Today the name of Herod is infamous forever. As long as there is a Christian Church, the name of Herod will be execrated. And is it not a solemn reflection that, “Herod feared John and did many things and heard him gladly”? I know that no young man here believes that he will ever turn out to be a Herod. I might, like the Prophet, say, “You will do this and do that,” and you would answer, “Is your servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” But you will do it unless you are decided for God! An appeal like this once startled me. When I was young and tender, there was a hopeful youth who went to school with me who was held up to me as an example. He was a good boy and I used to feel no particular affection for his name because I was so perpetually chided by his goodness and I was so far removed from it.

Being younger than he, I saw him enter upon his apprenticeship, enter upon the gaieties of a great city and come back dishonored. It horrified me! Might not I dishonor my character? And when I found that if I gave myself to Christ, He would give me a new heart and a right spirit. And when I read that promise of the Covenant, “I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me,” it seemed to me like a Character Insurance Society! If I believed in Jesus Christ, my character was insured, for Christ would enable me to walk in the paths of holiness! This charmed me into desiring an interest in Christ. If you would not like to be a Herod, be a disciple of Jesus Chris! But there will be no choice for some of you. Some of you are of such powerful natures that you must either thoroughly serve Christ or serve the devil.

An old Scotsman was once looking at Rowland Hill and the good old gentleman said, “What are you looking at?” He said, “The lines of your face.” “What do you think of them?” He replied, “I think that if you had not been a Christian, you would have been an awful sinner.” Some people are of that sort—they are like a pendulum—they must swing one way or the other.

Oh that you may swing Christ’s way tonight! Cry, “Lord, help me to cleanse my way! Help me to be wholly Yours! Help me to possess the righteousness I admire, the holiness I respect! Help me not only to do many things, but everything You would have me to do! Take me, make me Yours and I will rejoice and joy in Him who helps me to be holy.” God bless you, dear Friends, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

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