The Death of John the Baptist, Part 1

Driving home: And when we become wiser than God, it is right for God to curse us with spiritual blindness.

Martin compares the passage's content—violence, sensuality, manipulation, and murder—to a modern Harlequin novel or soap opera to highlight its disturbing and unvirtuous nature.

if there be any praise, these things, we are to aligns with the beautiful, with the virtuous, and with the praiseworthy. And apart from the virtue of John's fidelity to Jesus Christ, even unto death, this passage is not a deposit of the record of human virtue. Rather it contains the sordid like a modern Harlequin novel or soap opera, like a modern Harlequin novel or soap opera, like a modern Harlequin novel or soap opera, it has a bloody violent death. Some of the modern pictures that are made with unbridled violence, sensuous semi-drunken climate, in which men with lustful gazes look upon the...

7:43 - 9:08 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: This section details Herod's incestuous and adulterous marriage to Herodias, explaining the historical context and John the Baptist's courageous public denunciation of this sin…

Martin uses the analogy of a modern public figure's scandal being widely known to illustrate how Herod's adulterous marriage would have been scandalous and known throughout Palestine, even without modern media.

Word gets out his affairs. To divorce me, she runs back to her papa. Disappear into this fracas and Herod was troubled and ultimately brought to ruin because of this lustful desire for this wicked and unprincipled woman. Anything like this in a public figure doesn't get done in a corner.

30:40 - 31:23 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: This section recounts the 'convenient day' of Herod's birthday feast, where Herodias's daughter danced, Herod made a rash oath, and Herodias manipulated her daughter to demand…

Martin observes that human nature hasn't changed, as people still seek 'state occasions' or holidays like Memorial Day, Christmas, or Easter to justify parties and excessive indulgence, rather than reflecting on God's goodness or mortality.

with her murderous passions she finds the day of Herod's birth when a convenient day was come that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords and the high captains and the chief men of Galilee you see human nature hasn't changed men today look for any occasion that will give the semblance of justification to party Memorial Day Christmas Easter anything you see people can't keep their self-respect and call their neighbors together and say on any Saturday let's and sip mixed drinks on now you lose your respectability young people may do that but for the most part respectable middle class p...

43:16 - 44:44 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It is the heart, the worm that never dies.

Martin recounts a pastoral experience with a man raised in a Christian home who, despite having a tender conscience as a boy, abandoned himself to sin, eventually reaching a point where he couldn't kill himself because he knew he'd go to hell, illustrating the torture of a seared conscience.

The head you go off with a torch. In my pastoral experience, a time ago, I spoke to a man who had the benefit of being reared in a Christian home. Taught his Bible,

61:17 - 61:32 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine if your conscience is defiled, neutralizing the means of grace in your life.

Martin uses King David's sins of adultery and murder as an example of a Christian who played with his conscience, leading to horrible depths, to warn believers against similar spiritual dangers.

There's an issue. There are issues that you will not learn the lesson from Herod sometimes abandons a Christian to horrible, horrible depths to convince him he ought never to play with his conscience. He lets King David stoop to adultery and murder. Sound familiar?

65:50 - 66:13 Read in full sermon