Clough Proverbs Lesson 31
History of Herod’s Family: First and Second
Generations
I’d like to answer
some of the questions that people have handed in on the white cards. The first question is: regarding your comment
about the creation revealing clearly the nature of God, you sound as if you
ascribe to some sort of natural theology.
Some wings of the Church have carried in the past natural theology to
ridiculous extremes. Other more
conservative schools have rejected in practice or in doctrine any knowledge of
God from the creation, in spite of Romans 1:18-20. Does natural theology have any merit at
all? If so, how is it to be balanced
with the more traditional systematic theology from God’s Word? I wouldn’t want to attempt a detailed answer
to this because it’s already been well answered in a volume which is available
in our church library by Carl S. H. Henry called Revelation and the Bible.
And in there you’ll find a number of chapters devoted to the problem of
natural theology and special revelation.
Generally speaking it’s simply this, that the world being created by God
has a certain structure in it, and if you know special revelation then you can
turn around and interpret general revelation.
And there are analogies in nature with man because this is the basis of
all parables. When Jesus is teaching by
parable what is He doing? Isn’t he
teaching by citing truths from the natural system and applying them to
spiritual areas?
Second
question: I heard you say before that
there is godly use for defense mechanisms.
Could you explain in more detail and give examples from the Word. Many of the defense mechanisms are in use
most of the time, the only evil use of the defense mechanisms and the one that
I emphasize over and over here is when these are used against your conscience.
For example, take sanity or something, the idea of dreaming of another world,
there are various reasons why you might do that. One is to protect against the threat of the
world but another is the creative artist, who would be generating a fantasy
world because of creativity. So there
would be an illustration of fantasy applied in a creative way.
The third
question: I’ve been listening to the
psychology of the soul series; you speak there of a defilement of the
conscience by sin, and including the conscience in the category of the human
spirit. You also mention that 1 John 1:9
is a way of elimination for the spirit. Do you mean by this that sin and
rebellion originates in the human spirit?
Yes, there are two good Bible references that show the human spirit’s
defilement: 2 Corinthians 7:1 and 1 Thessalonians 5:22. If you look at those two verses you’ll see
where the human spirit is involved in personal guilt.
Another question:
is the kingdom idea that the Gentiles had was apostate, what was God’s
righteous outworking of the fourth divine institution into history before He
tried the kingdom? Well it also was part
of the kingdom and the answer is that there are two forms of kingdom, one is
the human viewpoint form and the other is the divine viewpoint form. Obviously it’s which is the king of the
kingdom, man when he tries to attain kingdom under Nimrod the first time in
history, he tries to center it upon man, so it’s the kingdom of man and it’s an
apostate kingdom. Why? Not because of its kingdom but because it’s
got the wrong king for the kingdom. And
if God is the king of the kingdom then you have a divine viewpoint kingdom.
Another
question: Does the cursing of the family
through the third and fourth generations happen only with believers and their
families? If not, why, then have
communist leaders and their families gone on?
The answer for this is that this is related to the third divine
institution, divine institutions apply to both believers and unbelievers and this
applies to unbelievers as well as believers.
And we’re going to see an illustration of that in about five
minutes. The second answer to the
question about why communism has gone is because obviously communism hasn’t
gone on for four generations. It only
started in
Shall we begin by
turning to Proverbs 4, we’re still in the fourth chapter, we’re still on the
family. As we took time out when we went
through Proverbs 3 to study the application of the personal discipline of Proverbs
3, we went to Hebrews 12 and other passages to show you how living the
Christian life is a deeply personal thing and how God treats each one of us
personally. We are not plugged into God
like an IBM machine; we are plugged into Him in no way like that; we are
actually part of His family, He treats us as a Father.
Now in Proverbs 4
we have been dealing with the principles of the family so that you could see
why in Proverbs 4 there’s this emphasis upon the father teaching the son, and
why Solomon says here that my father taught me these things. Proverbs 4:4, “He taught me also, and said
unto me, Let thine heart retain my words;” and we have studied two principles
of the family that are involved and these are part and parcel of the design of
the family. For example, we have the
cut-off principle and that is that God says He will allow –R learned behavior
patterns to go on and intensify from father to son only for four generations
after which He will break it off, some of them.
Now other –R learned behavior patterns He doesn’t seem to bother
with. But those that have particular
spiritual significance as to gospel hearing he breaks the family because of
this. For example, if you tend to have a
self-righteousness in your family, this is a very dangerous trait; this is
worse than having the flagrant seeds of immorality in your family. If you have a developing self-righteousness
this is always minus grace and always people that are brought up in a
self-righteousness environment are always down on grace, they can’t stand
grace, they make excellent legalists, often attend church regularly, but still
never really get with the Word. They are
just always up tight and never can relax and insist that it’s good works that
sanctifies the believer. And these
people are very miserable and they make their whole family miserable and
ultimately they will bring the cut-off principle in on top of them and their
children.
So the first
principle of the family is this cut-off principle. We illustrated this by
Abraham’s family; we showed how Abraham had a certain self-righteousness, a
certain tendency not to trust in grace in a moment of crisis; he passed this on
to the second generation, Isaac. Isaac
developed it, passed it on to Jacob; Jacob really developed it and passed it on
to his twelve sons, after which time God dumped the whole family in
Then we have a
second principle that we illustrated last time and that was the momentum
principle. Here we have an illustration
from Noah’s sons and we have an illustration from Solomon, in which we have the
father and the father is on positive volition, establishes positive learned
behavior patterns for his family, then his sons, though his sons later go on
negative volition, will inherit the blessings of his father’s positive
volition, so that God will not bring heavy discipline in upon the second
generation if the first generation has been very godly and the second
generation can more or less coast. And
it’s the understanding of this principle that will prevent misery in the third
generation because if you happen to be in this position, if you are a believer
and you have had godly parents, parents that have understood the Word of God,
who taught you the Word, led you to Jesus Christ, and you have not been up to
spiritual par, you have not gone along with what you inherited from your
parents by way of spiritual understanding and you still seem to be reasonably
blessed in life, the tendency you will have is to just relax further
spiritually because you can’t see any cause and effect, you can’t see how
departure from the Word has bothered your life that much and my father and my
mother, you can say, well, they were just old fogies and so on and I don’t have
to go along with all their views and all that baggage. Look at me, I’m enjoying myself, I’m relaxed
and I have blessing. Well, the reason you have blessing is simply because God
is allowing the momentum of your parents to affect you and you’re riding on
their momentum.
However, the
shocker is going to come when you deal with your children because they’re out
of the range of the momentum principle, it doesn’t carry two generations; it
only carries one generation and you’re going to be very lax in your taking in
of the Word of God and everything comes first, the Word of God comes second and
sooner or later your children wind up as monsters and are juvenile delinquents
and you wonder what happened. Well what
happened is that that they just went on the way you trained them to go on.
Today we’re going
to give an illustration from history, this Sunday and next Sunday of the family
of the Herods, and we are going to study Herod the Great and the three
generations of his sons. They occur, all
four generations, in the pages of the New Testament. We meet these great political giants and they
are a beautiful illustration of these principles operating in a family. Herod the Great was the man who was known in
the Bible as the man who slaughtered the innocents in Matthew 2. His son, he had several sons and one of
these, his name is Herod Antipas. Herod
Antipas is mad and he slaughtered John the Baptist. And both these men die in miserable
conditions. Then there’s another son
called Agrippa I; Agrippa I we meet in the book of Acts and he slaughtered
James. And then Agrippa II, we meet him
in the book of Acts; he hears Paul tell him about Christ and drops dead. So we
have four generations of people who are tremendous political leaders of their
time and we’re going to study those and study how they reach us in the pages of
the New Testament.
It’s a fascinating
story and several books have been written and are available to you; Perrone’s
book, The Life of the Herods, and
also Bob Thieme a number of years ago did a tremendous tape on the details of
this group and since that time a seminary professor at Dallas Seminary has done
work on some of the later Herods. There
are a lot of source materials for those of you who are interested in history
and would like to pursue this further.
We only are going to touch on the very, very slim details of this just
to give you an illustration from real history of how the cut-off principle
applies to a family of unbelievers.
Remember, divine institutions… always remember this; divine institutions
do not apply just to believers. Divine
institution number one is responsibility; it applies to believer and
unbeliever. Divine institution number
two is marriage; it applies to believers and unbelievers. Divine institution number three is family; it
applies to believers and unbelievers. So
we can expect to see these principles operate whether a family is made up of
believers or they are not. God is still
God; God has still made a family to be a family, and God is still the Creator.
So therefore, regardless of whether any given family is born again or not born
again they still encounter this principle.
Now first we have
to go to Matthew 2 where we meet the person of Herod. We will first introduce Herod from Matthew 2,
then we go to history to get some background on Herod the Great, then we will
come back to Matthew 2 so you can understand why he reacts the way he’s
reacting in this passage of Scripture.
Matthew 2:1, “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days
of Herod, the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem.” Now [can’t understand word] in verse 1 is a
member of [can’t understand word] which to understand you must have some grasp
of history. So therefore we’re going to
first go to history and understand who this man, Herod, is and what he was
like.
First of all we go
to the background of Herod. Herod was
born in the years 73 BC, he died in the year 4 BC which shows you, therefore,
Jesus Christ was born not on the year of zero or 1 AD, Jesus Christ was
probably born in the year 6 or 7 BC because He is born before Herod died and
Herod died in 4 BC. So Herod lived some
69 years. He died a reasonably old man
but as we’re going to see he died a very, very horrible death. His father was a man by the name of Antipas. This name occurs in the Herod family again as
they name their sons after this man, Antipater rather, and Antipater was an
influential Arab who had some, apparently, Jewish blood in his family but he
was a Jew by religion, not by race. And
during the first century before Christ there was a lot of political give and take
to Palestine. You remember the Romans
came in and conquered… first Alexander had come in and then the empire had
split up between some of his generals, and finally, you had some give and take
going on, to the Romans came into the area.
Well, there was a
lot of political intrigue, a lot of spying, a lot of warfare, and a lot of
changing political structures, power structures over that part of the world at
that time. But there was a family who
was involved in a revolt, a very famous revolt, you’ve probably heard of them,
the Maccabees. And the name of that
family was the Hasmoneans. The Hasmonean
family was a Jewish group, highly orthodox.
The exciting story of the freedom fighters of the Hasmonean family was
found in the books of the Apocrypha, which if you have a Roman Catholic Bible
will be found at the end of the Old Testament.
Protestants have this available, the RSV has a small volume of the
Apocrypha and it’s very interesting reading if you read 1 and 2 Maccabees,
because it’s the story of how the Hasmonean family attained political freedom
for a short interval before the time of Jesus Christ. We had certain emperors who came in and they
began to defile the thing and these men, (?), Judas Maccabeus, and his
relatives, his brother and his father, started off a one-family revolt against
the system, and finally freed the Holy Land so that by the time of Herod the
Hasmonean family was a very strong, strong family.
However, along
with the Hasmonean family there came this Arab by the name of Antipater;
Antipater was a man who was a tremendous businessman. And the first thing that he had against him
was that he had come from what was then called Idumea, which actually is a
derivative of Edom. And he is therefore
genetically related to Esau and he was an Arab.
And so therefore Herod’s father was never really liked by the Jews
because he always had Arab blood and the Jews always remembered this to his
dying day and to his son’s dying day, that these men who moved into the land
were part Arab and although Herod did everything he could to pacify the Jews he
could never get over the fact that his father was an Arab.
His father attained political dominance in the middle of the Roman politics; he
was able to advise his way in, he was able to sell and buy and so on, act as a
merchantman, and he got tremendous economic power and finally economic power
led to political power and he had himself appointed as the procurator of Judea
under the Romans. Then Antipater decided
he had a son by the name of Herod; Herod’s father, this Herod, the first Herod
is called Herod the Great. And Herod was
a man who was described in ancient documents as very tall, very handsome, he
had dark curly hair, he was an athlete and a wrestler, he was probably an
officer in the Roman army, and his father, Antipater, decided he had enough
money that he was going to provide the best possible education for his
son. So his son went to the best
schools, had the best education. His son
also had military training as all men who had a proper education in the ancient
world had at that time; he had a sound military training and was very good in
the Roman army.
Later, however, as
Herod came into political dominance the Romans would not let him engage as an
army officer because they didn’t want him killed. So Herod not only had a bad background as an
Arab father, but he also had something else to his character that the Jews
always were suspicious of and that was the he had tremendous alliance with the
Romans. He was very closely affiliated with
the Romans. So he already really had two strikes against him.
And there began to
be a rivalry develop between Herod, and this went on for generations, between
Herod and the Hasmonean family. The
Hasmoneans, remember, were all Jew. The
Hasmoneans had attained political freedom and they were connected with the
priesthood. We’ll see what Herod’s going
to do with the priesthood when he gets in office. But Herod had to fight the Hasmonean family;
he thought always that he was the underdog; Herod was the man who no one
appreciated, yet Herod was the man that had done everything for the Jews.
Now Herod, besides having a good education, he was also a very smart man. Now some people have a good education and are
still stupid and a good education isn’t going to solve their problem. But Herod was a genius as well as having a
good education and not only was he smart in the academic area, he was also an
excellent leader. So when he came back
from Rome after his education… by the way, all these families used to ship
their sons off to Rome and this plays a tremendous role in some of the
political intrigues of the New Testament.
That’s why Jesus Christ Himself makes mention of one of these little
trips to Rome in one of His sermons.
But Herod came
back from Rome and Antipater, his father, was procurator of Judea, and he had
two sons and Herod he appointed over Galilee.
Now this is also giving you some background as to Herod’s certain… how
he acts toward Galileans and people from that area. Herod was appointed over Galilee as the
military commander in that area and in Galilee at the time there were these
bandits. They actually controlled a lot of the roads that went up through here,
the Sea of Galilee, and travelers would travel around the Sea of Galilee and
get raided, robbed, raped and killed by these goons that inhabited the
hills. So Herod took that as a personal
challenge and moved in with his soldiers and killed every one of them. And he didn’t follow the Supreme Court and
everything else, and he decided he’d execute them on the spot. And one day after a raid he found the chief
of the bandits, and he interviewed him, and he took his sword out and cut his
head off right there. And the Sanhedrin
down in Jerusalem resented this very deeply because they said they alone had
the right of capital punishment in the land, and Herod should have cleared it
with them before he went ahead and executed this head of the bandit.
So now Herod has
three strikes against him. Not only is
he an Arab, not only does he have marked affiliations with the Romans, but now
he has offended the Sanhedrin. And the
Sanhedrin never forget and never forgive.
So Herod decides later on in his career, he just takes care of the
problem by having an assassination squad go in and he eliminates the
Sanhedrin. And so this is the give and
take that goes on; this is the kind of person that Herod’s come to be.
Now in 34 BC his
father is poisoned. This again is part
and parcel of the whole thing; his father is poisoned and he becomes the
tetrarch. But no sooner does Herod become
the tetrarch when the Parthians invade.
Now to the northeast, and this is background, you remember this because
in Matthew 2 you watch where the wise men are from. To the northeast there’s a group of people
called the Parthians. The Romans had
trouble with the Parthians for generations; they never could seem to quell the
Parthians. So therefore Palestine acted
as… the Romans wouldn’t see it on a military map, as a buffer between these
Parthian bands, and they always had to have somebody in charge of Palestine who
had the military capability of defending the eastern boundary of the Roman
Empire from the Parthians.
Well the
background goes back to the year 34 when Herod is appointed as the Tetrarch in
this area. He succeeds his father and
immediately he’s deposed; the Parthians invade and take over, largely through
an alliance with the Hasmoneans. Herod
decides the only thing to do is to go to Rome, and you’ll see this tendency in
the Herod family, any time they’re in trouble they run to Rome. So he takes a boat to Rome and goes to Rome
and He gets Mark Antony and Octavius to declare him as the king of the
Jews. This is also background for the
Gospels. And Herod’s official title now
is “the king of the Jews.” Antony and
Octavius both agree to officially call Herod king of the Jews.
But there’s only
one problem; though he has the title “king of the Jews,” he’s not king of the
Jews because he doesn’t have a kingdom.
So Herod, with the title, king of the Jews plus nothing, goes back and
raises an army, and he is going to conquer the Jews, destroy the Hasmonean
power, and throw out the Parthians, which he does; this happened in 37… no,
excuse me, I’m wrong in this date, it was 44 BC, He was appointed the king of
the Jews in 40 BC, he was appointed the king of the Jews in 40 BC, and in 37 BC
he had eliminated the Parthians. So for
three years Herod struggled to attain his kingdom.
During this time,
after he settled down in 37, he threw the Parthians out, he was a building
contractor. He got in the building
contracting business and built a large number of buildings. In fact, the city of Samaria, which we meet
in John 4, was actually a produce of Herod’s.
He called it Sebaste which is the Greek word that answers to the Latin
word for Augustus, and he built Sebaste after the Caesar, Caesar Augustus. He built also Caesarea which we meet in the
New Testament. He also built
fortifications and one of his great accomplishments was that on the hills he
would set up signals, signal devices, and Herod had a system of signal corps in
the Roman army where he could find out what was going on in any part of
Palestine within two hours, and that was without telegraph, that was without
any modern system of communication but simply through this signal system that he
had. And on many hills… in fact
archeologists still find these foundations where he had his soldiers up with
various systems of signaling.
So Herod was a
great contractor and I want you to see these details for one reason: they show
that Herod tried to pacify the Jews; in spite of his background Herod realized
that he must pacify the Jews to hold the ground. And he did it by the system of good works. He did everything he could for the Jew;
beginning in 19 BC he began his most ambitious project which was reconstruction
of the temple. Jesus Christ refers to
Herod’s construction in John 2. So Herod
begins constructing the temple again, not that it had fallen down but that it
was small and he wanted the Jews to have a magnificent structure so that by the
time of Jesus’ day Herod’s temple was a fantastic wonder in the ancient
world. This is why Jesus Christ in
Matthew 25 walks by that Herod’s temple and He says to His disciples: disciples,
you see these stones, do you see this wonder of the ancient world, I tell you
that one stone shall not remain upon another.
And so Christ is actually preaching against Herod’s temple in Matthew
25. Herod was also interested in
cultural things; he hired a historian by the name of Nicolas of Damascus;
unfortunately this man’s books have been lost, preserved only in Josephus. But he originally wrote a 144 volume universe
and history of the world and this was one of the major cultural projects of
Herod.
So I’m giving you
this to show you that Herod was not just some sort of a goon. By the time we meet him in Matthew 2 things
have happened to him, but originally Herod was a genius; he was a man who had
done lots for the ancient world. By the
way, Herod was the one that started the Olympic games up, after the Greek
culture declined the Olympic games died out and Herod was the man, as a
wrestler he decided he had to have a place to wrestle and so he wanted… he was
a sports fans and he wanted a place for going and viewing the games. So he built up Athens and started the Olympic
Games again. So you can see that Herod
did things, not only for Palestine but he did things throughout the ancient
world. He was brilliant, he was a
contractor, he was a historian, he was also raised as a Jew. Antipater raised his son as a Jew and made
him study the Old Testament, so that Herod not only knew the Roman history, he
had a vast knowledge through Nicolas of Damascus, but he also was an ardent
student of the Old Testament. So Herod
had a tremendous background.
But now we begin
to watch a man who goes on negative volition.
He had the Old Testament and he went apparently on negative volition to
the revelation that he knew from the Old Testament, even before Jesus Christ. He had gone on negative volition; he began to
develop two peculiar behavior patterns in his life. One behavior pattern was a behavior pattern
of salving his conscience by good works.
Instead of dealing with the problem he would try to gloss over the problem. Now obviously you can see how he go in this;
as an Arab he never was respected by the Jew so he had to sell himself to the
Jews by a system of good works. At one
time the Jews were dying of starvation and he took five million dollars out of
his personal treasury and paid for their food bill for a whole year. Herod was a man who made about fifty million
in several years of his life and he had all the money that was necessary so it
didn’t bother him. But he was
philanthropic, he centered on great good works.
And the other
phase to his life that we see is the developing paranoia. This is actually part of what we would call
isolation and when he faces a problem he begins to isolate himself from people
and begins to feel that people are picking on him. And he develops this concept that everybody
is out for him. Now obviously he had
some evidence that people were out for him.
First of all, he was an Arab, and a Jew, the Hasmonean family didn’t
care for Arabs, so he obviously… they had poisoned his father so he had some
evidence that people were out for him.
However, Herod also had access to the pages of the Old Testament where
there are tremendous promises. He knew
the psalms of David; Herod could have trusted those promises and relaxed and
said all right, I have political enemies, I know people are after me but I’m
going to just trust the promises: casting all my care upon Him for He cares for
me. Herod could have responded to the
Word of God but he didn’t.
And now we begin
to watch his life develop and these two patterns of behavior become
common. First of all, he marries a girl
by the name of Doris, and out of this union he has a son by the name of
Antipater, whom he names after his father, obviously. Antipater is the firstborn son of Herod. But after he marries Doris he gets his eyes
on another girl and this particular girl has two things going for her as far as
Herod is concerned. Her name is
Mariamne; Mariamne turns out to be a daughter of one of the noble women in the
Hasmonean family and so Herod says aha, not only is this girl a looker but she
has political influence. And so he dumps
Doris, divorces her, gets rid of her, and goes over to Mariamne. And the thing of it is, of all the… he had
five wives eventually, and of all his wives he really loved Mariamne. So this was not just a political marriage, it
was also a marriage based on love. And
he loved this girl, she was a very attractive Jewish girl and she was a member
of this noble family, the Hasmoneans, against which he had all of his problems.
Now everything is
going along fine until he discovered that Mariamne had a very domineering
mother, and so Herod’s first problem was his mother-in-law, who was in the
Hasmonean family. And no sooner had her
daughter married Herod but Alexandria, who was this woman’s name, and a very
eloquent noble lady in the Hasmonean family decided she was going to push her
son-in-law a little bit and she had a son and she said now Herod, I know all
the shenanigans that you did to get rid of Doris and if you don’t want this
spread across the land, and you don’t want me to irritate the Jews some more,
you make my son high priest. And Herod
was politician enough to realize that for the moment the old lady had him. And so he went along and removed the man that
he had appointed as high priest and he put in this lady’s son. He never liked this thing and Mariamne put
pressure on, although Herod loved Mariamne, Mariamne always knew that it was
basically a political marriage and she never really lover her husband in
return.
And she and her
mother got together and got this high priest thing going and Herod says all
right, and here his works come out as a politician, he decided to arrange a
little accident and so he invited the high priest in for a swim in one of the
swimming pools around Jerusalem and he had a little accident happen where he
fell in the pool and somehow he drowned in the pool, and it turns out that only
three or four people were present and all were members of Herod’s personal body
guard and nobody understand what happens, but this boy somehow drowned in the
pool. Now after this, Mariamne, of
course, and her mother suspected foul play but they never had any evidence of
it because nobody was there, it was just one of those accidents that happened. And interestingly, after this man was drowned
in the pool guess who became high priest?
Herod’s friend. So this is how he
worked with his in-laws.
Now after that he
had two sons by Mariamne, and these two sons play a vital role in the
subsequent life of Herod. One was the
name of Alexander, and the other was a name by the name of Aristobulus. Aristobulus and Alexander were two sons
raised under Herod. Now watch what is
happening. First we have a –R learned
behavior pattern on the part of Herod the Great. What are their sons exposed to all the time
in the palace? What do they notice their
father doing? Political intrigue, good
works, if you have a problem get the other person before they get you. So Alexander and Aristobulus were shipped off
to Rome for their education. But while
they were in Rome they decided that they had learned some things from their
father that they’d apply on their father.
And since they were sons of Mariamne and since, therefore they were
strong Jews, they were related to the Hasmonean family, while these two sons
were away studying in Rome they decided to get friendly with Caesar. And they tried to get some plots going where
they could take the throne away from their father and use it for
themselves. Plus the fact during all of
this Antipater, who was Herod’s other son by Doris, he got involved with the
same thing.
Well, Herod
finally finds out about this and so in 7 BC he brings his sons home and he says
I hear you boys have been playing games in Rome. And they say what do you know about
that? And he says I have friends in
Rome, and so therefore my friends, this is it, and he slaughters these
sons. And in 7 BC he kills both
Alexander and Aristobulus. And it was
this act that prompted Caesar Augustus to make a quip in the Roman court that
was famous in the ancient world. To get
the background for the quip you have to understand the Jews don’t eat
pork. And in the Greek the word for pig
looks like this: hus and the word for
son looks like this, huios, and
Caesar August said it is better to be Herod’s hus than his huios. And this went around and was a symbol of
Herod’s tremendous cruelty, Caesar Augustus’s statement. The Caesars were cruel but Herod outdid the
Caesars; Caesar Augustus just was amazed.
At one point before Alexander and Aristobulus were executed, Caesar
Augustus tried to intervene on behalf of Herod’s sons and Herod would have
nothing to do with it. And this just
amazed, a man as cruel and as tough as Caesar, just was appalled at the cruelty
and the toughness of this man Herod.
By the way, before
he killed this he finally got fed up with Mariamne and her mother and destroyed
her. So he murdered the women he loved
and then he murdered both sons that he had by her. And people say, historians say that by this
time Herod was becoming mentally off; obviously. And so it’s at this point that we meet him in
Matthew 2. So by the time we meet him in
Matthew 2 you see a lot of things have happened.
Now let’s see… you
can imagine with this background now this hits him. Wise men come from the East. Now that’s the first thing that’s wrong as
far as Herod’s concerned. Let’s try to
look at this thing from Herod’s point of view.
Here he is; since 40 BC he has fought, killed, destroyed, built
buildings, engaged in every form of how to fit the whole new kingdom together
and now come these three wise men from where?
From the East, out in the area where the Parthians are. And this is an area where his enemies
are. Furthermore, in the city of
Jerusalem he had an underground Parthian party that were always ready to
assassinate him and his family and take over the government. So immediately what hacked off Herod is the
fact that these wise men are coming from the East, from exactly the place where
his enemies are.
And then they
said, Matthew 2:2, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” Now that was a deliberate slap at Herod
because he was decreed king of the Jews by Antony and Octavius in 40 BC. So here comes people out of the area of the
Parthians, they walk into his city and they start asking who “is born King of
the Jews.” And the Jews don’t have any
king you see; the only king they’ve got is Herod, and he’s the only king
they’ve had since 586 BC. And along come
these people, suspicious, coming out of nowhere, suddenly looking around for
“he that is born King of the Jews.”
Well, now with the historical background I’ve given you, a man who is
already slaughtered his own sons because they were trying to get his throne
away from him, a man who has murdered the woman he loved, what’s he going to
do. –R learned behavior patterns takes
over right here. Now watch what
happens.
Matthew 2:3, “When
Herod, the king, had heard these things, he was troubled,” and notice, “all
Jerusalem with him.” Do you know why all
Jerusalem was troubled with Herod? They
were afraid of a blood purge. It wasn’t
that they worried about Jesus Christ, they were worried, oh no, Herod thinks
that someone’s born King of the Jews, well we know that means, that’s going to
be a political purge. And so all
Jerusalem was shaking with Herod. Herod
was mad and the Jews were afraid, and Jerusalem was a mess as a result of these
wise men coming in.
Matthew 2:4, “And
when he had gathered all the cp and scribes of the people together,” notice
what he did in verse 4, “he demanded of them where Christ should be born. [5] And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of
Judea; for thus it is written by the prophet, [6] And thou Bethlehem,” and so
on and so on. Now in verses 4, 5 and 6
it shows something else about Herod.
Remember I said he wasn’t a Jew by birth but he was a Jew by the way he
was raised. Herod knew the Old
Testament. Herod had rejected the Old
Testament and here you see his rejection coming out into force. Here the light of the world has come in and
because he did not like the [light of the] world but he preferred darkness he
rejected. And so here we have Herod
knowing clearly, a supernatural prophecy that there’s a village down the road
from the city of Jerusalem, Herod, you know it, you studied the Old Testament,
you’ve gone over these Scriptures as a young man and you know all about it,
because notice even in verse 4 when the wise men come and they say “Where is He
that is born King of the Jews,” what does Herod ask? Where is he born? No, in verse 4, “Where should Messiah be
born.” Herod knows enough about the Old
Testament to know there’s got to be a Messiah, and Herod knows enough about the
Old Testament to know that in the Bible there are prophecies about Messiah and I
want to find out where they are.
So here you have a
man who has been on negative volition for at least a decade, a man who has
consciously rejected the Word of God, a man who therefore in rejection has
begun to develop these patterns in his life, now is faced with a greater light
of the Word, as Christ Himself, and rejects again. Matthew 2:7, “And Herod, when he had
privately called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star
appeared?” Notice the word “diligently,”
Herod was a thorough going politician; he was a military commander, he did an
interrogation of these wise men and he knew every single detail about this
star, he marked it on the calendar, he had tremendous information about the
birth of Jesus Christ. Herod had the
opportunity right here to believe but Herod rejected.
And then
furthermore, in Matthew 2:8 what does he say?
“And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for
the young child; and when you have round him, bring my word again, that I may
come and worship him also.” And this
shows you even more his negative volition.
Herod knew enough about Messiah that he knew Messiah had to be God-man,
and he knew that if that was the Messiah he, Herod, would have to worship. And so he plays the game with the wise
men. See his rebellion? He knows what the Scripture said, he has
heard the Scriptures taught, but he still rejects and hardens his heart. And so he says yeah, go ahead, find him, I
know Messiah has to be God and I want to come worship him. And so he puts on the front to the wise men.
And then Matthew
2:14, the wise men come, band by the way, interesting historical detail,
obviously you see in this there are two provisions of God the Father to
Joseph. Joseph is the head of the
family; the girl that he’s about to marry has just had a virgin birth and you
imagine how that went over. And then he
decides that we’ve got a problem here, the wise men have gone out of town and
we know that Herod’s going to come in and destroy and so Joseph being a poor
Nazarite, where do you think he’s going to get the money? Here is God’s provision; what do you think
the three wise men gave Mary and Joseph?
They gave them enough money so that Joseph could take the family down in
Egypt and stay there for a long vacation, until Herod died; it must have been
at least a year or two. And so there you
see, involved in all of this, one reason why the three wise men came and gave
valuable gifts to the family. Those
gifts Joseph probably had to sell in order to live and make the trip all the
way down to Egypt and back again.
So they go down
and in Matthew 2:16, “When Herod saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was
exceedingly angry,” and by this time people in history can relate to us how
cruel Herod was, and remember he is the murderer of his wife, the slaughterer
of his sons, so he decided he’d “slew all the children that were in Bethlehem
and all the boundaries thereof,” that’s not the coasts of Israel, that’s jut
the town of Bethlehem, “from two years old and under, according to the time
which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.” That is, the star had appeared two years
prior to this time.
So now Herod does
a genocide; this is an act of genocide against the Jewish males of the village
of Bethlehem, and he slaughters them.
And you say what a horrible thing.
Well, this was unnoticed in the ancient world because Herod the Great
was known for his cruelty. Hadn’t Caesar
August said it’s better to be Herod’s pig than his son? So if he killed his own sons it’s obvious
that this is just a small drop in the bucket as far as Herod is concerned.
Now it’s
interesting that right after this, or somehow during this time period, the
latter days of his life, he fell into a tremendous disease, and many people,
including Josephus, though they don’t mention the slaughter of the innocents in
Matthew 2, point out that the disease of Herod the Great was a judgment of God
upon him. And Herod the Great, the man
who was so handsome, the man that had everything, the man that was the great
military genius, a man who had a great education, he was a great leader, he was
a wonderful politician, who had such influence in Rome, this is the man who is
going to die a very horrible death.
And I’m going to
read you some excerpts from Josephus to describe how his death occurred. Josephus’ source is Nicolas of Damascus, who
is the court historian in Herod’s palace.
Now why this is important is because later we are going to watch his
sons who commit the same sin of their father and we’re going to watch how they
die. So it’s important, therefore, that
you see how Herod dies.
In Book 17,
chapter 6 of The Antiquities of the Jews,
Josephus, “But Herod now fell into a distemper, and made his will,” so obviously
he’s becoming mentally unstable, he senses that he is going to die, “and as he
despaired of recovering, for he was about the seventieth year of his age, he
grew fierce, and indulged the bitterest anger upon all occasions; the cause
whereof was this, that he thought himself despised,” see the paranoia again
developing, -R learned behavior patterns, “and that the nation was pleased with
his misfortunes;” he never was acceptable to the Jews and he resented them. And
whether they resented him or not he resented them deeply; he said I have done
everything for these Jewish people and they still do not love me, they still do
not accept me. And he had deep
resentment in his heart.
At one point he
tried to commit suicide and started to plunge the knife into his chest, and he
was restrained by his friends nearby.
His eldest son, Antipater, who had not yet been slaughtered by this
time, you watch what happens here in a moment, he has slaughtered already
Alexander and Aristobulus. Well, while
he was in the palace one day he got despondent, he took a knife and he was
about to plunge it in his chest and some friends grabbed the blade and when
they did so the servants in the palace thought that he had killed himself. And so this moan went up through the palace
that Herod had killed himself.
Well down in one
of the dungeons he had put Antipater and Antipater heard this thing, oh, my
father is dead, great, great, and so he said hey, he called the jailor down to
his cell and he said listen, I’ll make a deal with you, you let me out now
since dad’s dead, and now I’ll put you in a big high position. But the jailor knew that Herod had not killed
himself so he went back to Herod and told him that Antipater had tried to make
a deal with him. And so Herod as he was
still having this tremendous disease, I’ll show you in a moment, he got off his
bed with one arm and he said guards, bring me Antipater, and they brought
Antipater in, now kill him right here so I can see it. And so one of his last acts was the slaughter
of Antipater, his firstborn, who was in line for all of this property. So his third son is killed this way.
But Josephus
describes how he died five days after he slaughtered Antipas. “A fire glowed in him slowly, which did not
so much appear to the touch outwardly, as it augmented his pains inwardly; for
it brought upon him a vehement appetite to eating, which he could not avoid to
supply with one sort of food or other. His entrails were also ex-ulcerated, and
the chief violence of his pain lay on his colon; an aqueous and transparent
liquor also had settled itself about his feet, and a like matter afflicted him
at the bottom of his belly. Nay,
further, his privy-member was putrefied, and produced worms; and when he sat
upright, he had a difficulty of breathing, which was very loathsome, on account
of the stench of his breath, and the quickness of its returns; he had also
convulsions in all parts of his body,” and this was how Herod the Great
died. Very nice and pleasant isn’t it;
it gives you all the gory details to let you see how God deals with this kind
of a man that you meet in Matthew 2.
But now we come to
the second generation. You say where’s
the second generation, I thought he killed them all. Well, he tried, but he also had three other wives
and so he didn’t run out of women any way; he had Malthace who was the wife by
whom he bore two men, and these are two men that we’ll meet later in the
Gospels. One is Archelaus and the other
son that he had by this woman is Antipas.
He is known in history as Herod Antipas or Herod the Fox. This is the man that Jesus Christ called,
“Herod, that fox,” it’s not the father, it’s the son, Antipas. And so we have these two sons by Malthace,
and then he marries another woman by the name of Mariamne and has by her a boy
by the name of Philip. He also has
another wife, Cleopatra, not Cleopatra the famous one, and by her he has
another boy by the name of Philip. Now
the Philip that he had by Mariamne, this later woman, he was a man who kept by
himself, was a private citizen and got out of the whole royal family; he
decided he’d had enough, he had seen… he probably heard about his grandfather
getting poisoned, he had seen his father die a very horrible death and he
wanted nothing to do with it so this boy gets out of the politics and goes into
private family. We’ll see, however, how
he plays a role later one.
But let’s go to
this Philip who is the son of Cleopatra.
He became a tetrarch. Now after
Herod died the Holy Land was split up this way: you have Archelaus given Judea;
you have Antipas ruling in Galilee, notice the Galilean theme that comes on
here again and again, and Antipas also had the territory to the south, the
territory to the north, Archelaus had the real territory centering around
Jerusalem and Philip had the area over to the northeast. Now Philip, the son of Cleopatra of
Jerusalem, was a very just and fair man.
He improved the just system; he inherited his father’s genius. But apparently, whether he was a believer or
not we don’t know, God’s Word doesn’t record much about this man but we do know
from secular records that he was a very just and fair ruler.
He was so just in
fact that he would bring his judgment seat… now this is the background, by the
way, you see the judgment seat in Corinthians; a judgment seat was an actual
seat that was brought by chariot into a market place, the ruler would sit down
on the judgment seat and he would judge right there on the spot. And in that day, as well as in our own, they
had problems with delay of justice. So
Philip decided he would speed the processes of justice up and he had a special
chariot built and he would haul his judgment seat around from town to town and
he’d judge people on the spot, guilty or innocent, guilty or innocent, like
this. And he was therefore known as the
man who did a lot of reform in the judicial system of his time and produced a
very wonderful area out to the northeast part.
So this man passes off the scene, he does leave some remembrances of
himself that we encounter; he build Cesarea Philippi, which is not the same
Caesarea as on the coast and that’s why it’s called Cesarea Philippi, it’s
called Cesarea that Philip built. So he,
like his father built a lot of buildings.
He died in 34 AD and we have little to say about him.
Now we come to the
other son, Archelaus; remember Archelaus and Antipas both are sons of Malthace,
and these are the men who rule all of Judea at the time that John the Baptist
begins his ministry. Archelaus was declared
an ethnark by Caesar; he went off to Rome and an ethnark is higher than a
tetrarch, an ethnark of Judea, he had a high office but he was not king and
right here we see one phase of discipline applied to the second
generation. Though Herod was called king
of the Jews, his sons never could aspire to the title of king. We’re going to watch a little thing that’s
pulled off by the wife of Antipas here in a little bit, and she tries to get
him declared king but doesn’t make it.
But all the sons of Herod never inherit the title that their father
had. So you can see that the glory of
the family begins to fade.
And you have
Archelaus; Archelaus is ethnark of Judea, he had a high office and he is
mentioned in Matthew 2:22. He is the man
that you meet here, when Joseph is down in Egypt, he’s waiting until Herod the
Great dies, and in verse 22, “when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea
in the room of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there; notwithstanding,
being warned of God [in a dream], he turned aside into the parts of
Galilee.” Archelaus knew the most and
probably knew the most about Herod and the incident of the Messiah so Joseph
decides to move out and take the family up here under the place where he can
live under Antipas.
Now this Archelaus
continued construction around Jericho and then finally he, like his father,
became a victim of paranoia, because he too, like his father, was hated by the
Jews. He had a wife and he divorced her
to marry the wife of Alexander, the boy that Herod slaughtered, so he married
his brother’s sister and this violated the levirate law of Leviticus. And so the Jews didn’t like Archelaus because
he could care less about the law.
Now where did they
get this defiance of the Word? Where did
they learn this, these sons? They
learned it from their father. This is a
family trait that they have learned from Herod.
Finally, he irritates the Jews so much that Augustus calls him back to
Rome and says Archelaus, you’ve had it, and he ships him off to France and
there he dies in poverty. And ever after
that there’s no ethnark that rules in Galilee, from this point on they’re ruled
by procurators, such as Pontius Pilate and others. This is how the procurators started. So Archelaus is out; and then Jerusalem falls
under direct Roman control.
Now what about
this remaining son, Antipas. He’s the
one that we meet in the pages of the Bible.
So let’s turn to Mark 6 where we meet the second generation of the
Herod’s, Mark 6:14. Now like his
brothers, Antipas learned a lot about the Old Testament, but he also learned a
lot about Rome. And he had that brother,
remember I told you one of the Philip’s disappeared and went into private
business and was a private citizen. And
he married a real good looking red-headed woman by the name of Herodias. And she was a very attractive woman but a
very ambitious woman; she is also related to Herod. Now you can see the intermarriages going on
here; it’s not incest but she is related to Herod also through various family
relationships. So both Philip and
Herodias, though they are married, man and wife, both of them have the genes of
Herod.
Now Herodias has
the ambition of her father; and she decides that what’s she is going to do is
that she is going to be queen and she doesn’t care to be married to this clod
of a husband that she’s has because she’s jut a private citizen. Every other one of Herod’s sons that’s still
alive is in politics and what do you do?
You’re just a businessman. And so
Herodias begins to nag, and she nags and nags and nags and nags her husband
because she was a very ambitious woman and she makes Philip’s life
miserable. And Philip doesn’t know what
to do about it; he’s calmed down and he’s all quiet and peaceful, he doesn’t
know how he inherited this thing, and so one day he sees an opportunity because
Antipas drops in for a visit, and he comes down from Galilee and in the
meantime Antipas had married an Arabian princess, a daughter of Aretas,
daughter of Aretas IV who was an Arab king, and Antipas has this dark-haired Arab
wife and he decides he’s going to take a visit to see his brother Philip and he
walks in and all of a sudden it’s love at first sight… not really, he sees
Herodias and Herodias sees him and she knows that Antipas, since Archelaus has
gone to France and he’s out of the picture that she’s got one chance to be
queen, and that is, I’m going to pull something off and I’m going to dump my
husband and get in here with Antipas.
So somehow in this
visit when Antipas drops in that he inherits Herodias and dumps his Arabian
wife for Herodias. So he takes Herodias
off Philip’s hands, Philip is probably glad to get rid of her by this point,
and so he just lets Antipas walk off with his red-headed wife. Now I don’t know if this means all red-heads
are ambitious or not but anyway she’s a very ambitious woman and now she thinks
she’s got it with Antipas. So she starts
to work on Antipas and she’s always in the background trying to work on Antipas
because remember, Antipas is only a tetrarch, he’s not a king like his father,
and she wants to be queen.
So therefore in
Mark 6:14 you watch what happens when John the Baptist is preaching. Now at this point in Mark he is hearing Jesus
preached but the text takes us back to an earlier event when he heard John
preach. Verse 16, he’s hearing Jesus
preached and he thinks Jesus is John the Baptist come back. “But when Herod hear this, he said,” now this
Herod is Herod Antipas, “when Herod heard these things he said it is John, whom
I beheaded; he is risen from the dead. [17] For Herod himself had sent forth and laid
hold upon John, and bound him in prison for Herodias’ sake, his brother Philips
wife; for he had married her. [18] For
John had said unto Herod, it is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s
wife. [19] Therefore Herodias had a
quarrel against him, and would have killed him, but she could not. [20] For Herod feared John, knowing that he
was just [righteous] man, and a holy, and protected him; and when he heard him,
he did many things, and heard him gladly.
[21] And when a
convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords,
high captains, and chief men of Galilee, [22] And when the daughter of the said
Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them who sat with him, the
king said unto damsel, Ask of me now whatever thou will, and I will give it to
you. [23] And he swore unto her,
Whatever you shall ask of me, I will give it to you, unto the half of my
kingdom. [24] And she went forth, and
said to her mother,” who’s her mother?
Herodias, “What shall I ask? And
she said, The head of John the Baptist.
[25] And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked,
saying, I will that you give me you give me by and by in a charger [at once on
a platter] the head of John the Baptist.
[26] And the king was exceedingly sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and
for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. [27] And immediately the king sent an
executioner, and commanded his head to be brought; and he went and beheaded him
in the prison.”
All right, now
watch what’s happening here. What’s
Herodias’ ambition? She’s going to be
queen. All right, now we have John the
Baptist move in and John all through Galilee is getting vast numbers of people
to trust the Lord. John the Baptist goes
before Christ. John the Baptist is
declaring the gospel. Herod Antipas
hears the gospel; why does he hear the gospel?
Because it says here, verse 20, “knowing he was a just men, and a holy
one, he observed him, and when he heard him,” so the second generation of the
Herod’s had a clear presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And yet this man, the second generation, like
his father, rejects the Word. Both men
had a clear presentation of the issue and both men rejected.
Now watch the
family curse, watch how God is going to clobber the second generation like He
clobbered the first. “I will visit the
iniquity of the fathers unto the sons, unto the third and fourth generation of
them that hate me,” including these families who are unbelievers.
Obviously by this
time Herodias becomes very upset because apparently when Herod was listening to
one of John’s Bible classes the topic of adultery came up and marriage and
divorce, and so then he announced the fact that there were no biblical grounds
for the divorce for Herodias from Philip.
And since there were no biblical grounds John said you are living in
adultery; I don’t care what the state says and I don’t care what divorce decree
you have, you’re wrong. And so probably
he went home and told his wife, we doubt Herodias ever heard John, but Herod
would come back home and he would say, say, you know Herodias, this guy John,
you know what he says about our marriage?
It’s wrong. And she probably
flipped a lid and when she finally got calmed down and settled she realized
something; here is a threat to my desire to be queen.
She wasn’t just
worried about being accused of adultery; that wasn’t the point because these
women were accused of adultery all over the ancient world. Everybody knew that it was adultery, that
wasn’t the point. What so angered
Herodias was the fact that if that marriage was not legitimate in the eyes of
the Jews political pressure could be brought upon her and she couldn’t be the
queen that she wanted to be. And it was
political expediency of this woman with her negative volition and her drive
that she had picked up from her father Herod, and she began to work on her
husband over and over and over and began to nag him and nag him and nag him
until finally… she never could do anything with him directly until this
incident with Salome who was a very great dancer. And once Herod Antipas had made this promise
to her daughter, then the mother knew exactly that she had it, and you can
obviously see that it must have been something that she had prior arranged, she
must have had a hint that her husband would do this for her daughter because,
verse 24, when Salome “went forth, who did she go to to talk to? She went to her mother, Herodias, the woman
that was going to be queen. And so she
decided I am going to get John the Baptist out of the way; my husband is a
weakling, my husband won’t do anything, so I am going to do it, I am going to
make him get John the Baptist out of the way, I’m going to remove the threat to
my ambition. And so she did.
Now in Luke 9 we
meet another time with Herod Antipas faces the gospel of Jesus Christ. The second generation, the first generation
has rejected the gospel; the second generation is hearing the gospel. Now watch what happens. He has slaughtered John the Baptist under his
wife. But in Luke 9:7-9, “Now Herod, the
tetrarch, heard of all that was done by Jesus Christ,” so now not only does
Herod Antipas have all of the Bible teaching of John the Baptist, but now he is
getting all of the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself. Now think of this; here is a family in high
political office that had a clear presentation; his father through the prophets
of the Old Testament, and now here his son, twice, once through John the
Baptist, once through Jesus Christ.
Verse 7, “Herod, the tetrarch, heard of all that as done by Him: and he
was perplexed,” this is a guilt conscience, see, “because it was said of some
that John was risen from the dead. [8]
And of some that Elijah had appeared; and by others, that one of the old
prophets was risen again. [9] And Herod
said, John have I beheaded, but who is this, of whom I hear such things? And he desired to hear Him.”
Watch that last
word in verse 9, “He desired to hear Him.”
Now that looks like, on the surface, that Herod Antipas might be on
positive volition toward the gospel at this point, but is he? No.
Herod, like his father, has so much scar tissue, here’s his mind, here’s
his conscience, he has gone on negative volition, his conscience has testified
to the truth and he’s rejected it so that he’s got scar tissue up here, and he
doesn’t want to hear the gospel to believe, he wants to hear the gospel just
like his father wanted the report from the wise men, so that I can come and
worship the Christ. It’s the same thing
that his father did, and he’s going to get that chance, if you’ll now turn to
Luke 23; he desires to speak to Christ.
And then on the day of the trial of Jesus Christ the two men come face
to face. Jesus Christ and Herod Antipas;
Herod Antipas, the second generation of a cursed family, a man who desires to
hear Jesus Christ and now the God-man King, Jesus Christ Himself, and the two
men meet in Luke 23:7, “And as soon as he,” Pilate, “belonged unto Herod’s
jurisdiction,” remember I said Herod ruled in Galilee; Jesus was a Galilean,
“belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was
at Jerusalem at that time. [8] And when
Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad; for he was desirous to see Him for a
long time,” again, like his father, he wanted to trifle, like his father he
wanted to hear these spiritual things but never apply them. He wanted to know, but never to believe. And so he was very glad, “because he had
heard many things of Him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by Him,”
entertainment.
Luke 23:9, “Then
he questioned Him in many words;” and then the answer in verse 9, this is what
God gives the second generation, “He answered him nothing.” And the word in the Greek is that he kept on
questioning Him, and Herod had Jesus Christ standing within a foot of him and
he asked Him over and over and over, and Christ sat there and said
nothing. Nothing may be said to the
second generation because they’ve rejected the light that they’ve had and they
turned away from it and Christ is essentially saying I’m giving you no more;
you had all the light you could need to believe in Me; you heard John the
Baptist talk of Me, and you didn’t believe, I am not going to talk to you any
further; no more evidences will be given, the Word of God is cut off, and the
second generation receives no further light.
This is the
execution of God’s wrath upon this second generation. Luke 23:12, “And the same day Pilate and
Herod were made friends together; for before they were at enmity between
themselves.” Again, like his father,
what does he do? He makes a political
(?) out of the situation. It’s more
important for him to patch up his political relationships with the procurator
of Roman Pontius Pilate than it is for him to hear the words of Jesus
Christ. And so what happens and how did
this man, the second generation die?
In summary here’s
what happened. In 36 AD, several; years
after Christ was crucified, the father of his first wife, Aretas IV, came with
a great army and killed off and destroyed and defeated the army of Herod
Antipas. After this he retired northward
to
One day Antipas is
at a party and he has a relative by the name of Agrippa, whom we will meet next
week, and they’re in a city near Tyre, and they’re having a real party out
there and they’re all inebriated, and rolling on the floor and as the Romans
usually do, you know, they eat and then take a feather and tickle it vomit it
all up and then they eat again and fornicate in between, and so by the time
this had gone on for 2 or 3 days everybody was pretty loaded and out of their
mind. Well, about 2 or 3 days into this
party Antipas faces Agrippa and by this time Agrippa had become penniless,
we’ll learn about this next week, and he dropped in on Antipas to stay with
him.
Well, Herodias had
enough problems with her husband that wasn’t going to be king, and she was
going to be queen and then she has this no-good bum that camps on the family
doorstep. And so she starts aggravating
and agitating and agitating Antipas and finally Antipas blows up at this feast,
and he calls Agrippa a no good slob in front of all the people that are there
and this goes all up and down the (?) coast which provides the background for
something in the book of Acts.
So after the
party, Herodias has at least accomplished one thing, she’s gotten that no good
bum off the steps, because she made her husband mad enough to insult the guy so
he does to Rome. But what does he do
when he gets to
And he died in
poverty. So I want you to watch by way
of review what has happened. We have
Herod the Great; Herod the Great goes on negative volition to the Old
Testament, he commits an act of negative volition toward the slaughter of the
innocents in
Next week we’ll
take the third and the fourth generation from the book of Acts, where Paul and
James and Peter encounter these men and once again, the third and fourth
generations hear the gospel of Christ and once again they reject, because as
God says, I will visit the iniquity of the fathers unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate Me.