Herod’s Birthday Party (Mark 6:14–29)

It rarely happens that I am called upon to lead the discussion at the Lord’s table on my birthday. As a matter of fact, as far as my recollection is concerned, it has probably never happened before. Naturally I was thinking to myself, what could I possibly present that would be relevant to a birthday?

It occurred to me that there is at least one birthday party in the Bible that is described. And just to satisfy my curiosity, I’m wondering if any of the men know whose birthday party that was. Herod’s. And you’ll find one of the accounts of Herod’s birthday party in Mark chapter six.

So if you have your Bibles, will you turn to Mark chapter six? Mark chapter six. And we want to begin reading from verse 14 of Mark chapter 6.

Now King Herod heard of Him, for His name had become well known. That is, Jesus. And he said, John the Baptist is risen from the dead, and therefore these powers are at work in him. Others said, It is Elijah. And others said, It is the Prophet, or like one of the prophets. But when Herod heard, he said, This is John, whom I beheaded. He has been raised from the dead.

For Herod himself had sent and laid hold of John, and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, for he had married her. For John had said to Herod, It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife. Therefore Herodias held it against him, and wanted to kill him, but she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just and holy man, and he protected him. And when he heard him, he did many things, or as we probably should translate it, when he heard him he did this many times. And he heard him frequently, and heard him gladly.

Then an opportune day came when Herod on his birthday gave a feast for his nobles, the high officers, and the chief men of Galilee. And when Herodias’ daughter herself came in and danced, and pleased Herod and those who sat with him, the king said to the girl, Ask me whatever you want, and I will give it to you. He also swore to her, Whatever you ask me, I will give it to you, up to half of my kingdom.

So she went out and said to her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist. Immediately she came in with haste to the king and asked, saying, I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

And the king was exceedingly sorry, yet because of the oaths and because of those who sat with him, he did not want to refuse her. And immediately the king sent an executioner and commanded his head to be brought. And he went and beheaded him in prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took away the corpse and laid it in a tomb.

The birthday party that we have just read about is probably the most infamous birthday party. It is probably the most notorious birthday party that we know anything about in the history of the world. Because this birthday party became the occasion for the death of the greatest prophet that ever walked the earth, a man of whom the Lord Jesus Christ said, Of those born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.

Now a birthday party really ought to be a celebration of life, don’t you agree? And in our society each candle on the cake represents a year of life. And the longer you last, the more grateful you should be for the privilege of living.

But in a very real sense the birthday party we’re looking at here was a celebration of death. First of all because, as I just mentioned, it occasioned the death of a man of God. But secondly because this birthday party puts on display some of the traits of the human heart, some of the traits of human nature that create a deadness between man and God, that in fact break man’s fellowship with the living God.

And so as sad an occasion as it turned out to be, it is profitable for us to take a very close look at it and to find out what is revealed here about human nature and therefore what is revealed about the nature in which we ourselves participate.

Now this was a king’s birthday party, or at least ostensibly on the surface it was. Herod is called the king here in the Gospel of Mark. But in the parallel passages in Matthew and in Luke he’s simply called a tetrarch. And the chances are very good that he did not have the official title of king. That was the title he obviously preferred. That was a title that probably everybody who wanted to curry his favor addressed him with. But actually he was only a tetrarch. And he had been appointed as the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea by Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. And therefore he really wasn’t a king and really didn’t have a kingdom.

And when he now swears to this dancing girl that he will give her anything that she asked for, even to the half of his kingdom, he was definitely exaggerating. Number one, he couldn’t have divided his kingdom if he wanted to without the permission of Rome. And number two, he didn’t have a kingdom to begin with. He only had a tetrarchy. So at this birthday party, folks, there’s a little bit of what we would call play-acting. There’s a little bit of a charade. Herod likes to think of himself as a king and he likes to look like he has authority. But it’s kind of an illusion.

And I want to suggest to you first of all that all forms of human authority, all forms of power on earth, are illusions. I don’t care whether you get it in the political realm or whether you get it in the business world, whether you get it in the church or in some religious organization. That power is not really real. Because first of all you only hold it at the behest of God who permits you to have it. And secondly you can’t hold it any longer than He will allow you to have it.

Remember when Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate was not very happy that Jesus wasn’t very forthcoming with him. And so he said to Jesus, Don’t you realize that I have power to crucify You and power to release You? And Jesus’ answer was, You could have no power at all against Me unless it was given to you from above. And the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 13, There is no power but of God and the powers that exist are appointed by God.

And one of the things that happens to us as human beings is that you give us a little power and we think we’ve got big power. We think we are big shots. We think we are important. We think we can throw our weight around. Why, my father was a supervisor of personnel and one of the things he used to say to me is never put a working man in charge of anything because he doesn’t know how to use authority. He throws his weight around. And that’s a natural human tendency. And that’s what Herod was doing here. He’s putting on an appearance of greater power than he really has.

However Herod is not the only player at this party. And in fact you could say that the key player at this party was somebody who wasn’t even there. And that was his wife Herodias. This is evidently a men’s party. And the nobles and the important people of Galilee and the army officers and so on, they’re all there. But apparently no women. And Herodias is not present.

Now however Herodias is the chief player here because, you see, she had been the wife of Herod’s brother Philip, probably a half-brother. But she had met Philip, divorced him according to one account, and she had moved in with Herod. And Herod himself had already been married but his wife had to leave. And so now he is living with Herodias. And obviously the relationship is an adulterous and sinful relationship.

And John the Baptist has had the courage to confront her about this and to say to Herod, probably on more than one occasion, It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife. Now this displeased Herod and was evidently the reason he had put John in prison. But Herod kind of softened his attitude toward John a little bit and he would have interviews with him. I’m sure John talked to him about his spiritual need and the things of God. But Herodias did not soften her attitude. She had a grudge that she was not going to give up.

I suppose it’s fair to say and to confess that all of us men know perfectly well how to hold a grudge. We hold grudges for very silly reasons a lot of times and we hold them sometimes for long periods of time. But when it comes to holding a grudge, holding grudges is an equal-opportunity sin. Holding grudges is an equal-opportunity sin. And ladies are every bit as good at it as men are sometimes. But this may be because I’m a man and I suspect them of being better at it than us men are. But that’s probably not true. So I’m satisfied to say this is equal time and both ladies and men have a tendency to hold grudges.

Now when a Christian holds a grudge they are behaving contrary to the very basic nature of our religion. Because do we not believe, and we’re here at the Lord’s table to remember, that when the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world He made provision whereby God could forgive each of us all of the innumerable offenses that we have committed against Him? And He’s forgiven us for every one of them. God does not hold grudges. He doesn’t. Human beings do. That’s why the Bible says, Be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ has forgiven you.

And so it’s very important for us to realize that one of the symptoms of the working of the flesh and sin in our lives is the holding of a grudge. And it was the grudge of Herodias that turned this party into an occasion for murder.

Now there’s another player in the story here also. She’s the young lady who does the dance. And she is the daughter of Herodias and Philip, that is the daughter of Herodias by her previous husband. Her name is not given here but we learn from a history outside the Bible that her name was Salome. And here is this men’s party and Salome comes in and does a dance for the men.

Let me just say to begin with this is a little surprising. I mean after all Salome belonged to the upper crust of society in Galilee. She probably lived right there in the palace. The kind of dance she was doing for the entertainment of the men is the kind you would expect lower-class ladies to do or maybe even slave girls to do. And although the Scripture doesn’t specify this, it is very likely that one of the reasons she got the enthusiastic approval of everybody was that her scanty clothing and the movements in her dance were very suggestive.

So when Herod hears the applause he loudly promises to give her whatever she wants to be given. And probably to his surprise she requests permission to go out for a little while and she goes and consults her mother. And she says to her mother, What shall I ask for? And her mother says, The head of John the Baptist.

Now it is not recorded, and I don’t think it happened, that this little girl—I don’t know how old she was, I’d say she was a young lady—she did not apparently say to her mother, Oh mother, what a terrible thing to ask! He’s John the Baptist. He’s a prophet. He speaks the Word of God. You want me to request that he be executed? No record that she said that. I don’t think she did. She comes promptly out to Herod and she says to Herod, What I want is for you to bring me right away the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

Now as far as the record is concerned the mother didn’t ask for his head on the platter. She just asked apparently for John the Baptist’s death. But whether she had mentioned the platter or not, the girl has no inhibitions about asking for that. And she said, I’d like his head to be delivered here on a platter. My response to that is, ugh! Oh! I mean isn’t it bad enough to ask for the death of a holy man like John the Baptist? Do you have to have this ugly demonstration that he’s dead with his head on a platter delivered to the party?

My suggestion to you is that Salome is a girl of low moral standards—no moral standards. And she has no level at which she seems to be embarrassed or ashamed. And do I need to tell you that one of the problems in our society and culture is the loss of moral standards and the fact that our culture in a lot of cases is no more even embarrassed by things that are hideously wrong in the sight of God.

When I go out to a mall these days I see young women dressed in such a way that it makes me think they ought to be at the beach rather than at the mall. When I was growing up if a couple got a divorce it was disgraceful and it was a kind of a social stigma. That’s not true anymore. The figures suggest that fifty percent of all marriages now end in divorce. And if you’re watching television you may watch a man and a woman who work together in the police department and they arrest the criminals and put them in jail and help the victims. And then what do they do a lot of times? They go to the man’s house and they go to bed with each other even though they’re not married. There’s no sense of shame, no sense of embarrassment.

Now I don’t know what kind of beverage they were serving at Herod’s party. I suspect it was the best available wine in Galilee. But what I’ve just described to you is a spiritual cocktail with deadly ingredients: a love for the vanity of human power, a willingness to hold a grudge even if it means the death of the person that we have a grudge against, and thirdly a low moral level of life that has lost the capacity for shame. That’s a deadly cocktail. That’s what was going on at this birthday party. No wonder that the birthday party ends the way it does.

You see, Herod was not predisposed to kill John the Baptist. He had resisted the entreaties of Herodias to do so up to now. However this is a new situation, right? He’s sworn publicly that he’ll give this girl anything she wants. And now if he backs down, guess what? He’ll look bad. He’ll look bad in front of all of these important people who are sitting at his birthday party. And in order to save face Herod beheads John the Baptist. We’re aware of the awfulness of this. In order to save face Herod beheads John the Baptist.

Well you say, I would never give in to public opinion like that. Well that’s probably as much as anything because we’ll never have a chance to order anybody executed. But isn’t it true that we have a very strong temptation to tailor what we say and what we do for the approval of other people whether it’s at work or in our social life. And it’s amazing what we as human beings can do that is absolutely wrong because we don’t want to lose face. We don’t want to look bad. We don’t want to look like one of these fundamentalist Christians, you know what I mean. And man can find himself engaged in the worst of sins simply because he’s trying to look good to other people.

I want to close my talk by telling you a birthday story that I’ve never told before. And it may be obvious to you why I haven’t told it because it’s a little embarrassing to me. But nevertheless I think it could be useful. So here goes. I think I was in second grade at the time and my parents gave me a birthday party. Now the guest list was to be fairly limited and most of the guests, this was taken up by kids that went to the same church that my family and I went to. But at the end of this there was one spot. My mother said the limit of course. There was one spot that I could use to invite somebody from school.

Well folks, in those days I was madly and head-over-heels in love with a little second-grade girl named Annette. And of course she would have been the obvious candidate to be invited. But for some reason or other either I didn’t have the courage to invite her—I was very shy in approaching this gal—or she couldn’t come. I don’t remember which it was. So now I was faced with what I considered were two options. Option number one was my very best buddy at school. Option number two was a gal named Sonia. And I wasn’t particularly interested in Sonia but she was a good friend of Annette’s. And it occurred to me that to invite Annette’s friend might somehow build a bridge or something. I don’t know how my second grade mind was working in those days. But you understand I had to choose between my best friend and Sonia. And I chose Sonia.

And then I remember that afterwards—I don’t remember how long afterwards but not long afterwards—I faced my buddy and he probably said something to me like, I heard you had a birthday party. And I remember that I was intensely embarrassed. And to his credit he did not criticize me. He did not express displeasure with the fact that I had not invited him. But he gave me a look that I have not forgotten to this day. That look said to me, I’m your friend. How come? And you know what? That’s the only image that I have of this young fella in my memory. He’s a blonde headed fellow with glasses. And I can remember that look as clearly today as if it had happened last week or last month. I had a party and I had left out my best friend.

Now life is not a party but it’s awfully easy for us to leave out our best friend. If I am really enamored of earthly authority and power I am probably leaving out my best Friend who left the glory and splendor of heaven, grew up in a carpenter’s home, and from the day of His birth to the day of His death He never had any position of authority while He lived here on earth.

And if I am holding a grudge against somebody or several somebodies who have done wrong to me, I’m leaving out my best Friend because He came down here to make possible for me the forgiveness of all my sins and a total acceptance with the God that I’ve offended in innumerable ways.

And if I live by a low standard of morality and can no longer be embarrassed by the sinful things that I do, then I have left out my best Friend who had such a high sense of the standards of God and the holiness of God that He died on the cross to take the penalty for our sin and to satisfy God’s holiness so that you and I can be saved.

And if I allow myself to do things that are wrong or say things that are wrong because I don’t want to lose face, I don’t want to be embarrassed and shamed in front of other people, then I’ve left out my best Friend because He went to the cross and in the process endured unspeakable shame: the insults, the ridicule, the spitting, the slapping that He went through in order to save us.

So it seems to me that one of the lessons of this story is that this is a story in which God was left out. And we want to be careful that we never leave Jesus out of any part of our life.

When I was going to the Baptist Church we used to sing the song that kind of went like this: Take the name of Jesus with you, child of sorrow and of woe. It will joy and comfort give you. Take His name where’er you go. Precious name, O how sweet! Hope of earth and joy of heaven. Precious name, O how sweet! Hope of earth and joy of heaven.

The Bible says, Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill it in the lusts thereof. So what’s the bottom line? Whatever you do and wherever you go, take Jesus Christ with you.