JAMES 5:10, 11a SAYS, “As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast.” In this tract we will behold the greatest of the prophets—John the Baptist—and will consider the blessed example of his life and especially his last hours.
MATTHEW 14:1-12
AT THE BEGINNING OF MATTHEW 14, we are presented with two characters who are spiritually worlds apart. To use the language of Psalm 1, we have “the wicked” man and “the righteous” man. The wicked man is Herod the tetrarch (or Herod Antipas as he is also called), and the righteous man is John the Baptist.
WHY DOES THE GOSPEL have so little impact on the world? Why isn’t Christianity the one world religion that is embraced and lived out by all? Why does anyone reject Jesus? And why do some of those who don’t reject him but call him “Lord” live so little under his Lordship? In other words, why is there so much sin and evil and hypocrisy in the Ecclesia?
LET'S PLAY A GAME I’ll call “an exercise in ignorance.” Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Let’s pretend we all live in a remote region of the world where we have never heard any of Jesus’ parables before. Let’s also pretend that we have recently discovered an ancient parchment in an underground cave that contains what other less remote folks would call the Parable of the Sower. We don’t yet know what to call it or what to make of it. However, we sure are curious.
USUALLY WHEN I AM STUDYING A TEXT for a tract I look first for what Martyn Lloyd-Jones called “the great theme.” The great theme is just the main theme, but I prefer the word “great” because it reminds me that the truth emphasized in a particular portion of Scripture is great, eminent, extraordinary, and important!
GIVE ME A SIGN, and then I’ll believe. Give me some sign that Jesus is the Son of God, and then I will gladly become a Christian. I'll go to church, say my prayers, read my Bible, and do the other things Christians are supposed to do. Just give me a sign.
WHEN I SAY THE WORDS "POWERFUL KING," what sort of a man do you envision? For me, kings like Henry VIII of England and Leopold II of Belgium come to mind, and also other world leaders like Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon, Hirohito, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao Tse-tung—mighty men who had absolute rule over a certain country or region or empire, and who all just happened be notoriously wicked.
HE WHO HAS PRIDE as his mother cannot have God as his Father. That’s the first point I derive from Matthew 11:25-30. I borrow the language from Cyprian, the early church leader, who said, “He cannot have God for his father, who has not the Church for his mother.”
