Sermon - May 24, 2026 - Gospel of Mark 6:14-29 - The Death of John the Baptist

 This section of scripture is completely different from the rest of the text, as everything that we have read prior to this, the main character has been Jesus, He has been the focus of the entire narrative, now the narrative shift to another person, John the Baptist, now our Roman reader is going to see what we refer to as a literary flashback.

Mark 6:14 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.”

Mark 6:15 But others said, “He is Elijah.” And others said, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.”

This part of scripture starts out with Herod who was not an actual king, but for simplicity sake, Mark calls him a king, in fact what Herod was a Tetrarch, his father was a king, he ruled over the entirety of land in what was Judah and Samaria, but after he died, the Romans, who were the ones really in control, split the area up into three area, one for each of Herod’s son, this one known a Antipas, would be the tetrarch over Galilee.

Mark 6:16 But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”

Mark 6:17 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.

This starts the flash back. In the first section John the Baptist is already dead, and now Herod is worried that John as returned in the form of Jesus to seek revenge again Antipas. This would tell us, that he was pretty isolated from the events that were taking place in the area he ruled over. And the problem here easy to see, even our Roman reader would see the immorality of what Herod and his former sister in law, and now his wife have done. A man being unfaithful to his wife in the 1^st century, many men of power and position had numerous other women. But what Herod did was taking that too far, if a man has another woman you could rest assured that she was single, no man is going to sleep with another man’s wife that would be to invite death, so they would be single, either never married, or widowed, which given Rome wars there were many widow.

In the case of Herod who was married to another women, he divorced her, which was permissible in the Jewish context under some interpretation of Jewish law, remember that Jesus is asked about his in Matthew 19.

Herod then allows Phillip’s wife, who is Herod’s brother to divorce him, Herod is the ruler, he can get away with that, see Henry the VIII who would pull this same type of thing, except he was not trying to marry his brother’s wife, he was trying to find a woman who would give him a male heir, little did Henry know that he is was the problem, not the wives. But we digress.

So Herod divorces his wife, allows his brother’s wife to divorce the brother, and then they get married.

 

 

 

Mark 6:18 For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.”

Mark 6:19 And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death. But she could not,

John calls out the behavior, tells them straight up, what you have done is wrong, but I want you to notice who is it that wanted John dead for saying what he said.

The new wife. Why, because she wanted to be with the man in charge, not his brother, being married to Phillip the brother of the ruler was nice, but nothing compared to being married to the ruler, so she is the one who most likely instigated this whole thing. She went after Herod, she wanted to be queen, and now that she had the job, she was not going to allow some backwoods preacher come ruin her plans. That dude needs to be shut up and the best way to do that is to kill him.

Our Roman reader is seeing here that these people where Jesus lives they pretty much function like everyone else. These are not special people, they are just as depraved and sinful as all the people around him in Rome.

The teaching here is clear, while there maybe surface level difference within a culture, in the end, humans are all the same, they are totally depraved, whether in Rome, Athens, Jerusalem or Galilee.

Mark 6:20 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.

Herod knows that allowing his wife to have John killed would not be right, and he keeps John locked up, and he knows that what John is teaching is right, it is correct, he knows this. The Gospel message is a message of conviction, it convicts the heart of sin and unbelief, of not being faithful to God, so we see here in the text that Herod is convicted, that is the word perplexed.

Now this is a teaching moment on how we do translations back in the past to how we translated today.

If you are reading in your KJV the text says that John “did a many things”, which is not untrue, John did do many things, but is that what the text actually says and is it in context to the narrative?

Well contextually John doing many things is not relevant to the events that is taking place, the phrase is out of context and we will see this as we read, but why the difference in the phrases?

kjv

“For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly.”

esv

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.

See the KJV translators were not working from written Greek text, they were working from printed Greek text done by three guys, Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch Catholic monk, Robert Stephanus who was a printer in Paris and Theodore Beza the man who would take John Calvin’s place as the leading Calvinist theologian of the time, Beza’s Greek New Testament was largely based on Stephanus just with more footnotes. But in all cased these were printed Greek New Testaments, taken from a very limited number of Greek manuscripts that dated from the earliest the 11^th century. These men also only knew Classical Greek, or the Greek of literature, they did not know that the New Testament was written in a sightly different type of Greek called Kione Greek.

So because of the limited number of written manuscripts, and because of the limited knowledge of the language, those early translators, Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza, did not under certain words, so they did the best they could, and hence we have the translation in the KJV the way it is.

But today, we have 5,000 Greek New Testament documents, today we know that the New Testament was written in Kione Greek, not classical, and so now we have a better understand of what the text says, and while the KJV is not wrong in that John, did do many things, the actual word in the text is Are pro ret to, in this case translated as perplexed, showing us that Mark wanted to tell us, that even Herod was being convicted by the preaching of John the Baptist.

Our standard should always be, that we want to know what was written, by Mark, by Matthew, by John, by Luke by Peter, by Paul, not what Erasmus wrote, not by what Stephanus wrote, these men did the best they could with what they had and what they knew, but God has given us the means to know more, He has enlightened us with more knowledge, and He has given us more manuscripts, from numerous sources that are spread throughout the world, and God has given us the ability to compare all of these and see that He has preserved His Word, so that we can be assured that the message, not a perfection of the text, because only God is perfect, but that His message of the redemptive narrative found in the Bible is without error.

ἀπορέω 

Mark 6:20 ἠπόρει 

John 13:22 ἀπορούμενοι (doubting) ἀπορούμενος doubted

2 Cor 4:8 ἀπορούμενοι, perplexed Galatians 4:20 ἀποροῦμαι doubt

ποιέω

πολλός

Now back to our regularly scheduled message.

Mark 6:21 But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.

Mark 6:22 For when Herodias’s 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.”

Mark 6:23 And he vowed to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, up to half of my kingdom.”

So let’s give some context her, Herod has thrown himself a birthday party and he invites all the top people from all around, now his wife has a daughter, she is most likely a young girl, maybe 8 to 10 years old, wanting to please the adults in her life, so she goes out and dances for all the party guest, something that we have all have been a part of. My girls used to do plays for us, or they would play their instruments, or Ashlynne would play and Aftyn would sing, kids want to please the adults, and so this child goes into the party and dances for everyone, and of course everyone loves it, and so because this child has entertained everyone, Herod says something that a lot of folks would have said, dear you were wonderful, what can I do for you? Whatever you want, even up to half my kingdom, of course the child would be excited at such an offer, and of course would not know what to ask for.

Mark 6:24 And she went out and said to her mother, “For what should I ask?” And she said, “The head of John the Baptist.”

So of course the child goes to her mom, and tells her what the king has offered, and she is excited and wants to please her mother, just as much as she wanted to please the king and his guest, the child goes to her mom and asked her, what should she ask for.

Now see the evil in this woman, because this is true evil, and the evil is not that she wants a man killed, yes that is evil, the real evil is that she is willing to use the goodness in this child to accomplish that evil. How sick can you be, to use an innocent child for your evil means. This child has no clue what this means, she merely wants to make her mother happy, but this woman uses this innocent child.

Frankly our Roman reader should be shocked at her behavior, but maybe not his culture is wicked and evil so this may not be a shocking to him as we think now, but none the less, what this happen asked this child to do is a great evil, for she is asking her daughter to ask for someone to be killed, she is using her daughter as the means to have someone she hates to be murdered.

Mark 6:25 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.”

Mark 6:26 And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her.

Why is Herod sorry? See this is why the translation in verse 20 matters, is Herod sorry because John the Baptist has done many things, or was Herod sorry because of the preaching of John the Baptist was perplexing to his soul? Yeah he was convicted by his sin, and now because of that same conviction he was sorry because he has put himself between a rock and a hard place.

So you are saying to yourself, why not just tell the child, no we are not going to kill someone, that would be wrong, why not just do that. Well again that is the perplexity that Herod is dealing with, because he is convicted of his sin, because he is also under a great deal of peer pressure not only from his own wife, but because all this people in attendance, well they hate John just as much. John has called them all out about their lifestyles and their sin, and so when the child comes up to him and asked him to have John the Baptist head on a platter, they clap and cheer, yes, yes they cried out, yes, off with his head.

This is the conflict the perplexity that is in Herod, that makes him sorry, for what he said, and what he is about to do, because inside of him, he knows that killing John is wrong, but that if he does not, the all of these people will lose respect for him.

There is a conflict and a tension in this text, this is humanity playing out. Herod is not a good man, by any stretch of the imagination, however it does not mean that he is immune to the conviction of the Spirit of God.

Mark 6:27 And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison

Mark 6:28 and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother.

We should never assume to know the salvation of anyone, but if there is anyone who deserved to be in hell, it is Herod’s wife. The woman is vile, and how she taught her daughter that life is not to be valued.

You want a lesson for today from this, see how we act like Herod’s wife in our society today. We dehumanize anyone that we do not like. Dehumanization has deep roots in our American culture, it’s a sin we seem not to be able to purge ourselves from. In the founding we dehumanized the Indians, and the slaves, this mainly out of ignorance and fear, not everyone did this, the Puritans got it right, they saw the natives as being made in the image of God, when black slave traders came to the colony at Plymouth, the Puritans put the slave traders in jail and set the slaves free. But the rest of the nation did not fair as well, and because of the practice of dehumanization, our society today carries on that same tradition of dehumanizing the unborn, dehumanizing the mentally handicap, ill, the elderly through government euthanasia. Here is a shocking stat, 20% of all deaths in Canada are now done by the government under their euthanasia program, they are literally seeking to wipe out a fifth of their population. And here we dehumanize those who we politically disagree with. We need to be on our guard against dehumanizing those who are different who we disagree with, even in our sin, and we are all equally sinful, but even in sin we bear the image of God in that all humans, no matter who they have value, all have value, we just need to help them see it, and that sin in and of itself is the thing that dehumanizes them the most.

Mark 6:29 When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

John dies, and his disciples come and take his body to be placed in a tomb, and I want us to look back at how this story begins.

Mark 6:14 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.”

That perplexity that was noted in verse 20 is still at work in Herod, when he hears he news of Jesus, he is concerned that John the Baptist has returned and now he will be confronted for what he did. The conviction over being responsible for John’s death has not left him yet.

Is there hope for Herod? Is there hope for any of us? Glory be to God, there is, in Christ Jesus.

Darin Bracy is the pastor at Yorktown Baptist Church in Yorktown Virginia. He is a graduate of Veritas Baptist College with a BA in Ministry and a minor in History. He has a wife Stacy, two daughters, Ashlynne and her husband Justin, their daughter Harper and Aftyn, and her two dogs, Eddie and Lulubelle.

You can reach Darin at his email address, Darinbracy@gmail.com and you can see his video content on YouTube – Basic Baptist Guy