Title: Let's Live and Die
Contents
1. Words that begin
There are very few people who live like themselves and die like themselves.
To live like one's self and die according to one's self, as God intended, does not mean that we live and die as we rise in a career, enter a position, become a scholar, become a ruler, or become a leader of a sect.
Thousands of people became unhappy because they made a career that was not what God intended, or they had entered a post, became a university student, a ruler, or a leader of a cult, and there are many people who themselves have been beaten with tragic words or committed suicide.
There are people who do not live like a high-ranking self, but like a thief or a beggar with open hands.
There are many people who become unhappy because of excessive greed or wrong greed.
Each person is a dream of God. Therefore, the most important thing is to live according to God's will and die as one's self.
Contrary examples are the prophet John the Baptist and the tetrarch Herod Antipas.
2. Herod is afraid of the dead John the Baptist
The Lord Jesus, who preceded John the Baptist, taught the gospel in his hometown of Nazareth, and although the people of his hometown admired his wisdom and power, they did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah.
The rational knowledge of the hometown people who knew Jesus and his family well as a child became an obstacle to realizing that Jesus was the Messiah, leading to rejection of Jesus.
Jesus did not perform many miracles because the people of his hometown did not believe.
At that time, Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, heard of Jesus.
Herod Antipas was a tetrarch who ruled Galilee and Perea from 4 BC to 39 AD, but was a very dull political sensibility. They ruled the Jews and chose the old cemetery as the seat of the capital, Tiberias.
This choice resulted in the expulsion of Jews who knew the law, which was considered unclean if they came into contact with the dead.
Herod Antipas' character is closely related to his family, which is characterized by intrigue, violence, and homicide.
He was a carnal, cunning, capricious, cruel, immoral, foolish, superstitious, frivolous, cowardly, and tyrannical lord.
When Herod Antipas heard about Jesus, he told his servants,
“This is John the Baptist, who has risen from the dead, and therefore these powers work in him.”
After hearing about the proclamation of Jesus' words, and the wonders and miracles, it was just a movement of the reincarnated John the Baptist.
Previously, Herod Antipas had imprisoned John the Baptist for giving advice and eventually put him to death.
As a result, he was unable to control his thoughts internally. His thoughts were always bound to be trampled upon by the command of sin. Outwardly, he had no choice but to live in fear that sin would be discovered and that one day the consequences of sin would take hold of him.
If Herod Antipas had known that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, or that John the Baptist performed wonders and miracles that John the Baptist could not perform, he would not have mistaken Jesus for the reincarnation of the dead John the Baptist.
John the Baptist, who was born according to the will of God to prepare the way for the Lord Jesus to come, lived like himself.
The people admired, cheered, and applauded him as a great prophet, and even believed and followed him as the Messiah.
But John the Baptist turned all those people and all their cheers and applause to Jesus Christ.
With religious leaders who try to create pseudo-cults because of lust for honor, lust for authority, and greed for water, or who are trying to create a cult, or follow money or a faction that is not God’s will, or follow money and a faction. He was a spiritual leader on a different level.
In Acts 13:25, we read, “As John finished his course, he said, “Who do you think I am?
It is a confession that it is undeserved to be called a slave of Christ, the Lord Jesus.
Christians who call Jesus “Lord” and treat them like slaves to accomplish their will or desires must repent.
In John 3:30 we find the wonderfully wonderful confession of John the Baptist.
“He must increase and I must decrease.”
3. Herod who killed John the Baptist
Born on the mission of preparing the way for the Lord Jesus to come, John the Baptist, who lived like himself, was put to death for speaking the right words to defend the law like himself. Live like yourself and die like yourself.
Herod Antipas, who ruled the Jews, divorced his wife and took Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip.
Herodias married and divorced her half-uncle Herod Philip, and remarried another uncle, Herod Antipas.
However, none of the king's servants spoke about it. However, John the Baptist rebuked Herod Antipas, the tetrarch, who had committed incest as a messenger of God.
John the Baptist rebuked according to God's decree, not his own ethical judgment. He was a courageous prophet who shouted only the word of God in any situation, unlike the false prophets who presented their views under the guise of God.
However, the ruler Herod Antipas was the epitome of a married man who lived in the comfort of his wife, who was more cunning than a warning from God's messenger. He was not a man of courageous decisions for the sake of righteousness, but a servile thug dragged by the temptations of sin. There are many such people in power.
Eventually Herod Antipas put John the Baptist in prison. The Jewish historian Josephus
“It was because of his vast influence over the people that Herod Antipas imprisoned John the Baptist. The people seemed ready to do whatever he said, and he might have told them to revolt. This was an additional reason to put him in prison.”
Herod Antipas, angry after imprisoning John the Baptist, wanted to kill him, but he could not be carried out because the people who regarded him as a prophet were afraid. In the corner of such a heart was engraved the awareness of his own faults, the high religious character of John the Baptist and the validity of his warnings.
But it was not enough to overwhelm the murderous intent. Herod Antipas, who was trying to kill himself, had an opportunity to do a greater evil.
On her birthday feast, Salome, the daughter of Herodias and her ex-husband Philip, performed a sensual dance to please Herod Antipas and the crowd. Herod Antipas, drunk and merry, even swore to give Salome anything she asked for.
When Salome's mother, Herodias, had a golden opportunity to kill John the Baptist, she gave horrendous instructions.
As directed, Salome pleaded with Herod Antipas, “Put the head of John the Baptist on a platter and give it to me here.”
The vicious mother and daughter were ignorant of the dangers involved in killing John the Baptist, revered by the people as servants of God.
Mother and daughter were evil women who did not know that God was afraid or that the people were afraid.
In particular, Herodias was one of the evil women who did not choose any means or methods, such as abusing her husband and daughter to achieve her goals.
When Herod Antipas heard the outrageous and horrific demands, he was deeply troubled.
In one corner of his heart, he recognized John the Baptist as a righteous, holy and upright speaker, and it was also because of the Jewish uproar that might arise if he killed him. But because he was afraid of the oath and the accusation of cowardice of the crowd, he ordered it to be done.
Herod Antipas knew his mistake, but did not have the courage to turn around.
Perhaps, he may have rejoiced that he was given an excuse to get rid of John the Baptist, a thorn in his eyes.
Eventually, the head of John the Baptist, who had been decapitated, was placed on a platter and brought to Salome, who took it to her mother Herodias.
The fact that this horrific and horrific evil took place naturally, and at the banquet hall, shows how corrupt and depraved the high society was. Even more shocking is that no one objected to the evil deed.
There are many people around the powerful, but there are not many true gods or true friends who live like themselves.
However, God, who is in charge of life and death, and history, forewarned and punished all these evil deeds.
The disciples of John the Baptist took the risk, took the body, buried it, and went and reported it to Jesus.
4. Conclusion
There is nothing more important than living like John the Baptist and dying like himself.
A Jewish merchant is dying. The old man who looked at his wife and children who were sitting around him with a hard time heard the sound of death.
“If everyone is here, who will look at the store?” he said.
However, even though Herod Antipas was a tetrarch, he did not live like himself, and he did not die like himself.
In the “ancient history” of Josephus, King Arethas, father-in-law of Herod Antipas, annihilated his army, who had divorced his daughter. Herod Antipas was exiled to Lyon for life on charges of rebellion against the Roman emperor Caligula.
(Poongseong Methodist Church. Book: Complete Commentary on 27 New Testament Books/ Interpretation of Difficult Scriptures I, II/ Salvation Before Jesus Came/Paul’s Understanding of Man/ Prosperity Prayer/ Seasonal Sermonbooks/ Sermonbook 18. -3051)