Herod Antipas was a man who liked good preaching, and listened to John the Baptist gladly. A man who had great respect for the preacher, knowing him to be an upright and holy living man. A man who did many things because of what the preacher said. A man who had at one time many twinges of conscience and uneasy exercises of soul. A mart who knew that he was living a bad life. A man who was afraid to do what he knew to be right because of what others would think of him. A man who had false notions of Honor and did wrong deliberately. A man who had no love for the truth, but a great dread of the future. A man who was brought face to face with the claims of Christ and mocked Him. A man to whom Christ had nothing to say, for words would have been entirely wasted on a man who had silenced the voice of God as Herod had silenced John’s in death. A man whose day of opportunity was gone, for Herod had never mocked John, he feared him; but, spite of his early liking for good preaching he finally mocks at the Christ of God. And mockery of the Highest seems to be the final stage on the road to perdition. For the positive, unpardonable guilt of mocking the Christ of God, the Saviour, there can be no forgiveness. When Christ is presented to the soul then the crisis of a human life has come, and upon what we do with Him of necessity depends what God in righteousness does with us. If we accept Him, God justifies us freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, but if we despise Him we shall wonder and perish.
Herod is dead, but the modern counterparts of his character are with us today. The warning note is: Beware lest, by easy stages, we be found traveling on the same road, which inevitably ends in perdition. “Turn ye for why will ye die?”
This is the voice of the God, who is not willing that any should perish, and who in love to the world of mankind “sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)). And the claims of Christ presented to the reader are the claims of the love of God in Christ. For it was truly by the grace of God, He tasted death for everything. All that God’s holiness of necessity demanded, and all that man’s desperate state as a guilty, ruined sinner needed, was supplied in the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross at Calvary. Now through His Name forgiveness is proclaimed, and the reader may reverently and gratefully accept so great salvation, for this is the acceptable time.
None can come, who will not find,
Mercy called whom grace inclined;
Nor shall any willing heart
Ever hear the word “depart.”
Will you, as you read, lift up your heart as a sinner in simple confidence in the sinners’ Saviour, who still waits to be gracious.
W. G. Turner.