Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. When Pastor Paul told me the focus of this podcast, I was intrigued. And when I went back to edit and get it ready for release, I was hanging on every single thought and word. This is another podcast that I’ve listened to three times so far, so I suggest you listen intently to what Pastor Paul Nitz is about to say. Matthew chapter 14. Have you heard what happened to John the Baptist?

When I began reading and rereading Matthew chapter 14, like I do every week looking for the New Testament’s biggest ideas in our upcoming chapters, I of course was struck by the feeding of the 5,000 miracle, as it’s called, the only one of Jesus’ supernatural acts during his public ministry years to be retold by all four Gospel writers. But I remembered we did an episode early on from John chapter 6 completely focused on that event and what Jesus, on its heels, taught it meant. It’s episode 6 in our series, I believe. And then next, my mind went to the account in this chapter of Jesus walking on the sea and Peter’s failed attempt to do the same. That was tempting because I like to retell the Gospels’ compelling stories and then extract the likely lesson the writer had in mind when he included them.

In that case, to tell how Jesus, as night fell on that day of the remarkable feeding miracle, sent the disciples back across the lake telling them he wanted to stay behind for a while for some solitude and some prayer time. If you’ve read chapter 14, you know how on the return crossing, the disciples’ boat got caught up in strong opposing winds, so much so they were not making any progress no matter how hard they rowed. For hours, the exhausted disciples toiled against that headwind, making little if any progress. When, through the mist, a figure appeared moving across the water just before dawn, not far away from them. Someone said from the boat, Look, what is that? Another person answered, Yikes, it looks like a ghost.

Then out of the semi-darkness, a voice called out, Friends, don’t be afraid. It’s me. You can’t tell me Jesus didn’t have a sense of humor. Why else would he have done this? Recognizing Jesus’ voice, and he’s come more into view now, walking on the sea, Peter says, If it’s you, Lord, really, let me come walking on the water to you. Jesus motions and calls back, Come on.

Peter says, Here goes nothing, climbs over the side of the boat, and for a second it seems like he’s going to do the impossible. Then he gets scared with the high winds and the waves coming at him, and he goes down in the rough sea. Lord, save me! Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. And immediately, strong hand latches hold of him, and Jesus is right there pulling him up out of the water, hoisting him back into the boat. You have such a little faith.

Why did you start to doubt? Jesus consoled Peter. Yeah, I could have built out that story and made all kinds of applications. I’ve often heard preachers do that, like, Peace is found not in the absence of storms, but with the presence of Jesus. Or, No faith is needed to do what’s comfortable and easy. Faith calls us to step outside the boat.

Or, We go down when we take our eyes off the Savior. All true. All important lessons. And I expect we may well get back to some of them as we go through Matthew’s Gospel, because that gentle jab. Why do you have such little faith? Kind of actually a refrain through the Gospel of Matthew toward his disciples, repeated four or five times, if I remember right.

But I didn’t land on that story this time because something wouldn’t let me slide by the first several verses, about a dozen verses in this chapter. I hope that something was a prompting of the Holy Spirit. You see, what took Jesus across the Sea of Galilee in the first place was a disturbing report. It was after hearing some awful news that Jesus decided to try and get away from the multitudes and their demands and find some solace and some time for prayer. That’s why they crossed the lake. They were going to a place where there would be less people on the east side of the lake, where there would be less confusion and less distractions.

He wanted to be there, and he was not as well known over on that side of the lake. He was not a celebrity over there, we would say. What was the report? Well, someone reached Jesus in Capernaum to ask, Have you heard what happened to John the Baptist? The prophet had been murdered. So in the first part of his chapter, Matthew updates us on what’s happened with the prophet John the Baptist.

As mentioned a couple episodes ago, John had been imprisoned for publicly calling out Galilee’s ruler under the Romans, the tetrarch Herod Antipas. That whole Herod family was a just total mess. Antipas’ brother, Philip, had married their niece, Herodias. But then at some point, Antipas stole her away from his brother and married her himself. This was one big adulterous, incestuous scandal. John the Baptist, who had been calling on the nation to repent.

Boldly challenged these rulers to do the same. Highly offended, Herodias persuaded her new husband to arrest and imprison John the Baptist. And he said, Yes, dear, and he had the prophet locked up. Now Matthew recounts the tragedy for us. At one of Herod’s drunken parties with his friends, Herodias’ daughter danced for these men. It probably was not ballet or an Irish jig either.

And Herod was so mesmerized by the young woman, he told his stepdaughter he would give her whatever she asked of him up to half of his kingdom. Sounds like the kind of stupid thing a drunken king would say in such a setting. And he said what he said, and he said it in front of a number of friends. When the girl then asked her mother what she should ask him for, Herodias told her, The head of John the Baptist on a platter. When she told Herod that’s what she wanted, he was caught. He was afraid John was a real prophet of God, but his pride would not allow him to back out of the foolish pledge he’d made in front of a bunch of people.

And that was the absurd way the great prophet John the Baptist met his end: beheaded because a drunken fool and his pride, and it was hearing about that that caused Jesus to say, I have to get away for a while. Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake. Doesn’t this surprise you? I mean, what kind of an end is that for such a man? I read a commentary this past week on John the Baptist by a writer named Jason Bradley that made me really think, and which I hope will make you really think too. I’ve edited what he wrote a little bit, but you’ll get his point, I’m sure.

Listen. He said, I’m tired to death of self-help formulaic Christianity. For the last 25 years or so, I’ve sat through sermons and conferences and read books and articles, all implying there’s a cause and effect relationship between my Christian expectations—he means his personal faith in God—and God’s bestowed happiness and fulfillment on my life. We’ve been force-fed Christian steps to better health, more successful businesses, stronger interpersonal relationships, and unlimited joy. Do this and you will get that. And even though these steps never exactly delivered as promised, we keep showing up to receive more of the same.

But when I stop and think about John the Baptist, I realize they are mostly making all of this nonsense up. Jesus told the crowd, remember that John the Baptist was as great a man and as great a prophet as had ever been born. He obviously had the utmost appreciation and respect for him. But when the chips were down, did Jesus swoop in, guns blazing, break John out of prison, rescue him from his enemies, right the unjust situation he was caught up in? No, he did not. He did not intervene, and he went on with his business.

Despite those glowing words about John, he pressed on with his own agenda. Think about that for a second. John had apparently done everything right. Yet not only does God not deliver him from jail, he also lets him be murdered by a petty tyrant to fulfill the wish of a teenage girl who was put up to it by her evil scheming mother. Not just the manner in which John died that was awful. The reason he died.

It was completely ridiculous. Anyone deserved better, wouldn’t it be John the Baptist? Yet he had spent the last months of his life in prison, mourning the death of his expectations for Jesus, and apparently struggling with troubling doubts. And then he’s ignominiously murdered because of an angry woman’s personal vendetta against him. Is that what a life of obedience gets you? The most difficult part of this story now should be what it says about much of modern cultural Christianity.

We’re consistently spoon-fed the Jeremiah 29:11 diet, a Christianity that promises that our goodness, our self-discipline, our morality are all exchanges that we make for God’s blessings and personal comfort in our life. We’re given five steps to a happy marriage and rules for growing our kids God’s way. And if our marriages fail or our children struggle, we’re left to wonder which formula we screwed up. Despite the fact Jesus’ followers are promised difficulties and hardships if we read the New Testament unselectively, honestly, we assume every negative thing that happens to us must be personal and intentional on God’s part. We look in our hard experiences for the lessons that God obviously is trying to teach us, as if we can turn a key and discover what we’ve done to offend Him and be released from whatever crappy situation we find ourselves in now.

Because bad stuff has to happen for a reason, right? Jesus’ followers, the truly faithful, can expect much better. A lifetime of abundance, in fact. But John wasn’t learning some valuable life lesson in Herod’s prison. He didn’t have his head removed from his shoulders because of some secret sin or lapse in his personal piety. In fact, I don’t think John’s death played any major part in God’s righteous plan at all.

He had fulfilled his calling. His unseemly death, his untimely death, was just the terrible fallout of a complex collection of free will decisions in a horribly unjust world. If you embrace a theology that assumes life’s injustices are only for the people outside of God’s favor, you’ll only compound your suffering when it comes. Instead of enduring trouble with patience and stamina, you’ll writhe around looking to decipher the mystery of why you’re not being delivered or why you’re not being blessed like someone else. Is God to blame, or am I somehow? I’m not saying God never intervenes.

Sometimes he does. Sometimes he heals. Sometimes he rescues. Sometimes he hears our Lord save me, as Peter cried out from the depths. But truth is, he often does not. God doesn’t do quid pro quo.

The reasons for what he does and what he allows to be done are complicated and largely unknown to us. When the prophet’s disciples returned to him after questioning Jesus over whether he was really the Messiah or whether John’s ministry of calling the nation to repent and get ready for the kingdom of God was all based on some misunderstanding, remember Jesus’ reply? Go and report to John what you have heard and seen. The blind receive sight, and the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. Blessed is he who does not take offense at me. Blessed is he who does not take offense at me.

Boy, that line sticks with me. John the Baptist, this man Jesus could not have spoken more highly of, was killed only a short time later after getting that message. He was still a young man. He died disappointed, somewhat confused. He almost certainly did not understand that his rejection and death was a part of Jesus’ own coming rejection and why it had to be. The last word he had from Jesus was, Blessed is he who does not take offense at me, as in, You don’t understand all this now, John.

I get that, but just keep trusting me. If you’ve been listening to Share the Word for a while, you’re probably aware that I am sometimes critical of Roman Catholicism, religion, any religion really that strays from the authority of the Word of God. But Catholicism in particular troubles me because of the way and the sway that it has over so many people. It seems to me that after a lot of interactions I’ve had, pretty much their religious organization is built on three verses of Scripture, three kind of pillars, if you will, on which the whole ginormous superstructure rests. Three verses they always go back to, claiming they authorize all the rest of what the Church teaches. One in Matthew 16 that we’re going to get to soon, where they base their key claim about Peter being the first pope and so being the only true Church.

Another in John chapter 20, they claim gives their priests the authority to forgive sins. And third, in John chapter 6, where they base their doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the whole premise of the Catholic Mass. Every time I talk with a knowledgeable Catholic, I always go back to those same three verses. They seemingly pay little to no attention to the other 8,000 verses in the New Testament that do not support most of their interpretations. So, what’s that have to do with what happened to John the Baptist? Probably are thinking that about now, and you have the right to be.

Almost nothing except, except that I’m going to call out a religion for picking a few verses here and there from the Bible to prop up their key ideas while ignoring their context and a majority of Scripture that tells a different story. Then I must be willing to do the same thing when so-called evangelicals make the same mistake. Jason Bradley, in that commentary on the John the Baptist account, mentioned Jeremiah 29:11. He didn’t quote the Old Testament verse, but here’s what it says: For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Sound familiar? Who is the you being addressed in that passage?

This is something God told the exiled nation of Israel when they were in Babylonian captivity. They had been overrun by Babylon and ceased to exist as a nation in the 6th century before Christ. If you read that chapter, God sent this hopeful message through Jeremiah, telling them that their captivity in Babylon would last 70 years, but that after that sentence, they would be released. It was a promise to defeated and displaced Jews living more than 500 years before Jesus’ time. So, why has it become a theme verse for so many of today’s preachers? Good question.

It’s not a promise to us, neither individually nor certainly to the church, which didn’t even exist then. The why is because, apparently, it’s such a positive message, and it’s in the Bible somewhere, so hey, let’s pluck it out and use it. Print it on some sweatshirts and on some coffee mugs. Let’s tell people that if they become a Christian, God has a wonderful plan for their life that’s all about future of good things and prosperity. That’s a compelling invitation, isn’t it? Another verse conveniently plucked from its context and brought up in sermon after sermon these days.

One from the New Testament this time is John chapter 10, verse 10. Jesus, speaking this time, said, The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. At least in this case, the they does refer to believers in New Testament times, to followers of Jesus. But what does that they may have life and have it to the full, or have it abundantly, as another translation puts it, what does that mean? Listening to an awful lot of American preachers today, it’s made to sound like, for those who choose to believe in and follow Christ, the reward is a life of material abundance, the good life, like life you’ve never even imagined possible. But is that really what Jesus meant?

Is that really what he was promising? That kind of quid pro quo, to use the term again, as Bradley did. Not one of Jesus’ disciples who saw what happened to John the Baptist or who heard Jesus repeated warnings to them about the cost of discipleship would ever, ever have interpreted it to mean that. You can only get to such a wrong interpretation by taking the verse out of its actual historical context and pretending it was said by someone very different than Jesus, than the real Jesus. What the real Jesus was offering his followers, if we read a little more of the story in context, was eternal life. And if we listen to all he had to say, at best, while we are on the journey to eternal life, he’s promising some peace and some purpose in our lives that other people don’t have.

I’ve made this point before, but it’s important, so I’m making it again. If your interpretation of Scripture wouldn’t fit everywhere and at any time during the Christian era, then it’s almost certainly a bad interpretation of Scripture, because the inspired Word of God is for everyone, everywhere, and at any time during this whole age. I’ve been following the news story of what’s going on right now in the country of Nigeria, a large country in West Africa that’s culturally divided between professing Christians and Muslims. If you’re a professing Christian in Nigeria, wow, we’re praying for you. Many of the Muslims in Nigeria are extremists and are fueled by jihadist organizations like Boko Haram, for one. They’ve been raiding Christian villages and churches and committing unspeakable atrocities.

Tell me, would the message of become a follower of Jesus and enter into a new life of abundance and fullness even make sense in Nigeria today? Of course it would not. No one would preach that there. That interpretation would seem so absurd to those people. I hope you see the point. God’s Word needs to be used honestly.

We should never pluck verses or ideas out to say what we want them to say. That is twisting the Scripture, as the apostle Peter called it once. Always be sure you understand the context, understand who’s being addressed, understand what the whole weight of Scripture’s teaching is on a given subject. That’s called handling accurately the word of truth, cutting it straight, which anyone who teaches it or preaches it should be diligent to do. I’m concerned that much of what’s being called the gospel today is really foreign to the message Jesus preached about what it would mean to follow Him. Overwhelmingly, His offer and promise was that by believing into Him, we could have eternal life because He’s the only answer to our separation from God, our sin problem.

He told people, though, to count the cost of following Him and to not be surprised that if they made that choice, the world would hate them for it. There were no promises about being healthier or wealthier or safer than anyone else. No, the positive side of the ledger beyond reconciliation to God and eternal life is that we needed more, were only promises of God’s peace and of a new sense of purpose and of the Holy Spirit to enlighten and guide us. These things are the abundant life Jesus was talking about. He wanted us to have His peace, His sense of purpose and understanding of His will, and most importantly, to share in His life forever. I said a few moments ago, the reasons for what God does and what He allows to be done are complicated and largely unknown to us.

The most I would venture to say about what happened with Peter and John the Baptist in this chapter is Peter was saved by Christ from drowning because, apparently, God had future plans for him. John the Baptist, on the other hand, had fulfilled God’s purposes for him and his generation, and Jesus felt no need to intervene. And from where they both sit now, I can assure you, they’re both okay with that. We don’t need to understand it all now, friends. We need to keep trusting and following the One who does. This is Paul for Share the Word.

Thanks, Paul. Jesus said, He who has ears to hear, a total of fourteen times, urging listeners to pay attention to the spiritual meaning of his words. You see, Jesus’ teachings focused on the kingdom of God, love, compassion, forgiveness, and a personal relationship with God, not abundant riches, large homes, and overflowing bank accounts that many prosperity gospel preachers would have you believe. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the blessings of God, but if the reason you’ve accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior has to do with a payday here on earth, my friends, your focus is in the wrong place. And I suggest you go back and listen to this podcast again and again. Look, I challenge you to examine the lives of each of the apostles after Jesus returned to heaven, and then ask yourself, what would they have focused on?

Their physical well-being and amassing fame and fortune on earth, or their eternal life and building the kingdom of heaven.