The Conscience on the Fence, Pt. 1

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Ever caught yourself avoiding a decision hoping if you just waited long enough, things would work out? Maybe it was a conversation you needed to have or a choice between two paths. Pastor Nick Gatzke introduces us to a king who mastered the art of avoiding decisions and the consequences were devastating.

I want to ask you to open your Bible with me to the Gospel of Mark chapter 6. That’s our text for this morning. Mark chapter 6. You know, some people live their whole life on the fence, or at least they think they do. When we say that someone is on the fence, we’re using a word picture to describe indecision at an inflection point. Imagine that you have 100 acres of land and that your neighbor has 100 acres and between you and them is a white picket fence. The fence is the boundary between the two properties. And the fence is designed to keep things in your property and to keep some things out of your property. And the reason for it is that the goals and the characteristics of your property is different than that of your neighbors. The fence divides the line between the two domains. You might even say the two different ideals for the space, maybe even the two different mini kingdoms.

And if you go over the fence, you will receive the benefits and liabilities of that domain. But if you stay on this side of the fence, you will receive the benefits and the liabilities of this domain. And if you sit on the fence or ride the fence, you live in indecision because you want the benefits of both domains, but the liabilities of neither. And depending upon the decision, you might be able to do that, or that indecision might mean that you actually get neither. The full benefit or the liabilities. And so you might be on the fence. You might be on the fence about which college to go to. You might be on the fence about whether or not you should continue in a relationship. Or maybe you’re on the fence about which car to buy or which job to pursue or which fitness plan to go on. You could be on the fence about whether to stay or whether to move.

You could be on the fence about little things. Or on the fence about big things. Being on the fence is an inflection point. But it’s an inflection point that will ultimately require a decision. And some people try to stay on the fence for a very long time. And maybe even they think they can do it for the rest of their life. And some people are on the fence with God. Should I submit to him or not? Should I follow him with my whole life or just seek the ancillary benefits? Can I have it my way and his way? Can I stay on the fence? And that’s where Mark 6 leads us today. It’s the story of King Herod, his wife, and John the Baptist. And we learn something tragic about being on the fence.

So follow with me. In Mark 6, starting at verse 14, this is what it says. It says, “King Herod heard of it.” What did he hear of? He heard of the disciples going about through the region, casting out demons, anointing the sick and healing them, and many people coming to forgiveness in Christ. So “King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’s name had become known. And some said, ‘John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.’ But others said, ‘He is Elijah.’ And others said ‘he is a prophet like one of the prophets of old.’

But when Herod heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.’ For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, brother Philip’s wife because he had married her. For John had been saying to Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’ And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death, but she could not. For Herod feared John knowing that he was a righteous and holy man and he kept him safe. But when he heard him, he was greatly perplexed and yet he heard him gladly.

But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. For when Herodias’ 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.’ And he vowed to her, ‘Whatever you ask me, I will give you up to half of my kingdom.’ And she went out and said to her mother, ‘For what should I ask?’ And she said, ‘The head of John the Baptist.’ 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.’ And the king was exceedingly sorry.

But because of his oaths and his guests, he did not want to break his word to her. And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl. And the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.” King Herod Antipas was a man who tried to stay on the fence. In some ways, it was the way of his family as a whole, but nobody can stay on the fence forever. You see, Herod was a title. It was a kingly title, and he was part of a small dynasty. His father, King Herod the Great, had a long reign over the Jewish provinces. He himself was a Jew who governed the area for the Roman Empire.

Now talk about riding the fence. A Jew ruling over Jews against their will for the sake of the Romans. He was the leader who, upon hearing the prophecy about a coming king and kingdom and seeing the star in the sky over Bethlehem, ordered the slaughter of all the male children under two years old in the region surrounding Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph, of course, warned by an angel, fled to Egypt, and Jesus’ young life was spared. A few years later, King Herod the Great died. But before his death, he didn’t make his line of succession clear. And so for his many sons by his different wives, they all came forth and vied for power and position. And eventually the Roman Empire ended up dividing the kingdom of Palestine into four districts. One of his sons, Herod Antipas, that Herod mentioned here, became the tetrarch of the second most desirable region in Galilee and Perea.

He wasn’t actually a king like his father. He was a tetrarch, a governor of the region. But he thought of himself as a king and he made other people call him a king. And he tried to live like a king. Like father, like son. A Jew governing over a Jewish region against the will of the people for and under the authority of the anti-Jews, the Roman Empire, who had conquered them. Another Herod sitting on the fence. Herod’s goal was to keep the region calm, to gain… with the Roman emperor Tiberius. And so when John the Baptist went about calling people to repent and thousands of people wandered out into the wilderness to hear him preach and to be baptized, the commotion was a bit too much for the Tetrarch. And in political motivation, there was reason to arrest him. Didn’t want word getting back to the emperor that the region was unstable.

So John the baptizer was most likely in a dungeon in the massive fortress and palace that Herod had built on the cliffs of the Dead Sea. The walls of the fortress were thick. The walls were high, an estimated 240 feet tall, flanked by high towers around them. And inside the fortress was an ornate and beautiful palace and a dark dungeon. Herod’s personal life was anything but simple. Kings usually take what they want, and that was no exception for Herod when he saw a woman that he wanted. This woman was the daughter of his half-brother, and so that made her his niece. She was married to a different half-brother, Herod Philip, and that made her his sister-in-law.

But Herod… Antipas seduced her to leave her husband and to become his wife. And so Herod married his niece, who was also his sister-in-law, and her name was Herodias. I wonder what they named their kids. John the Baptist was unlike anyone else the world had ever met. That’s a strong statement, but it’s not a statement just by me. For as little as we know about him, he’s mentioned at a couple different places early in the Gospels, and then here upon his death, he received the highest regard from Jesus, who was his cousin. In Matthew 11:11, Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he,” meaning Jesus himself. John was a Nazarite, which meant his parents didn’t cut his hair and he didn’t cut his hair, that he lived by a strict purity code.

He functioned like a prophet of old and even dressed like the prophets of old to communicate his message. And his message was like the prophets of old as they came out of the wilderness and people came to hear them preach a gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of their sins. Get right with God, turn away from your sin and be purified. Jesus, in fact, called him more than a prophet. There was no sitting on the fence with John. He was the opposite of Herod in this way. He wasn’t trying to play both sides. He was full of conviction and resolve and prepared the way for Jesus. He was holy in his actions and represented holiness to those who he called to repent.

And when he saw that Herod had married his niece, half-sister Herodias, and still claimed to be a Jew, verse 18 tells us that John confronted him. And he reminded Herod that it was not lawful for him to marry her, no matter how attractive she was or no matter what his heart would tell him. John persisted with the message of repentance for everybody, including Herod, to repent for marrying Herodias. As a result, Herodias was embarrassed and angry. So Herod had him arrested politically to keep the peace in the region, and personally to keep the peace at home.

And verses 19 to 20 tell us a bit about the relationship between John and Herod. And these two verses are really the key to understanding what is all happening on the inside here. Because what you see is a conscience that is on the fence. It says, Herodias had a grudge against John and wanted to put him to death. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was righteous and a holy man, and he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly. Let’s make a couple of observations. Herod knew that John was righteous and holy, so he feared him. And his wife’s anger caused him to imprison John and to push him away. And yet, he still feared him. You know, sometimes when people are confronted with their sin and they’re engaged with a person who’s righteous, they immediately become angered or revolted.

They aren’t necessarily revolted by the person. They could be. But very often they’re revolted by the holiness that the person represents. Because holiness can have a repelling effect on people. The reason for this is that deep down inside, we all want to live our own lives our own way. That we want to be the king of our domain. And in ourselves, we certainly don’t want to submit to another king, a king named Jesus. And this self-determination and rebellion wells up within us. It comes out as anger at the even idea of righteousness or holiness. And we don’t want to recognize that there’s another way we should be doing something. I wonder if that’s ever happened to you. When you engage with somebody and they find out that you’re a Christian and they are automatically repelled, not because of anything you’ve said or even did, but because of what you represent.

R.C. Sproul illustrates this aspect of holiness, reminding us of a little book by a German theologist, called Rudolf Otto. And the book was translated under the English title, The Idea of the Holy. What Otto did, and that is so interesting, is that he went around and examined people from different cultures around the world, Aborigines and Europeans and different types of people, and he tried to find out what they regarded as holy or sacred in their culture. And then he did studies phenomenologically to see the normal human reactions to the holy. And after making this study, he tried to distill the essence of the human experience of the holy and come up with some conclusions. And he would come up with these conclusions and invent phrases to describe them.

And so if you would ask him, Dr. Otto, what is the holy? His answer, because he had a Latin term for everything, was the mysterium tremendum. What does he mean by that? He means that the experience that we have of the holy is an experience of something very strange, impossible to penetrate or fathom. It’s mysterious, but it is also powerful. The awesome, mysterious power provokes a sense of fear within us. Listen to how Otto describes what he calls this awful mystery. He says, the feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul as you interact with the holy, continuing as it were, thrilling, vibrant, and resonant until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its profane, non -religious mood of everyday experience.

Then he goes on to describe, it may burst into a sudden eruption from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. It has the wild and demonic forms that can sink into almost grisly horror and shuddering as you interact with something holy. He describes the fact that not everybody responds in the same way to the awareness of the holy. Some people become whirling dervishes and all kinds of flamboyant activity, and other people are moved to absolute silence and contemplation. And he detected in his study of the holy that across the board, throughout, varying civilizations, the basic response of human beings to experiencing something holy is to have conflicting feelings. There is something about the holiness of God that attracts us, and there is something that repels us or frightens us.

On the one hand, it fascinates, and on the other hand, it terrifies. And Herod and Herodias are angered by the holiness that John represents and it repels them. And Herod, at the same time being perplexed, listens to him gladly because it attracts him. That is the nature of holiness and our response to it. And so in verse 20, you see Herod’s interaction with John results in him being perplexed, but he would hear him gladly. And so you can almost imagine what that might have been like because Herod never had to hear him if he didn’t want to. You can almost imagine him summoning the prisoner to his chamber to discuss the things of life. And he would ask questions to John about God and this message of repentance and the coming of this. Jesus that he had heard about. And John would speak confidently and boldly, just as the prophet Elijah had done.

And Herod was perplexed. And he’d think on it. And he wouldn’t change his actions because there was so much to lose. But his mind wouldn’t let it go. He would stay on the fence.

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This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.