Mark 6:26-27

ONE SIN

‘And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison.’

Mark 6:26

The power of one sin. Remember Herodias! There was one admitted wrong affection (we do not read that Herod had any other), and yet that one wrong affection, daily allowed, was enough to countervail all John’s preaching, and all Herod’s resolving! It was quite compatible with many good feelings, and many religious actions; but it was incompatible with the comforting, sanctifying, saving grace of God.

The three miserable and invariable consequences of such a life of conflict and vacillation came on.

I. A reckless self-indulgence.—What an image does it not give us of the abandonment of licentiousness! The birthday rout—the daughter’s unblushing dance—the probably half-drunken oath—the riotous and cruel court—the mad, desperate, and horrid catastrophe of bloodshed within the prison walls—and the ghastly charger in a maiden’s hand! And this is he who used to sit so rapt at the preacher’s solemnising word!

II. A miserable cowardice.—Or look again at the crouching of his dastardly cowardice. He ‘fears’ his God, and he ‘fears’ his wife; but the ‘fear’ of the creature is greater than the ‘fear’ of the Creator, and he gives up his religion for a woman! He issues the order; though it be contrary to every better principle of his heart, he issues it, and commands the murder which, all the while, his soul abhors!

III. A perverted judgment.—Has not reason left her seat—is not the moral judgment of that unhappy man destroyed—when he is willing, for one guilty pledge to man, to break every pledge to God?

Do you see these things well? You see the hand of a man who, like yourself, plumed himself once on his soft, tender emotions; who, like you, drank in ‘gladly’ the Gospel sound; who, like you, ‘did many things’ for God; but like you, in opposition to conscience and the Word, retained one sin, and for that one sin’s sake incurred such guilt and wrath that the name of Herod is left but as a beacon by the way, to warn every future traveller over life’s deep waters!

Illustration

‘Sin is the most expensive thing possible. It wastes money. It wears the body into decay. But, bad as these things are, there are even worse behind; for it blights the intellect and withers the moral nature of the man. It weakens the will; it blunts the conscience; it hardens the heart. It dries up all the finer feelings of the soul, so that ultimately all regard for truth and holiness and purity is gone. But worse yet. Sin is an enslaving thing. It becomes the master of the man who indulges in it, and sets him to do the hardest drudgery.’