GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 6:18
Tough Messages
An acquaintance went to the hospital for a test. After the test, the physician came back into her room, in tears. He had to deliver a tough message. The thirty-three-year-old woman had colon cancer. The woman had surgery, radiation therapy, and today is cancer-free. In this episode, however, she remembered the weight that rested on the physician when he delivered the tough message.
King David’s wayward son Absalom died during a battle, and someone had to tell the king. Joab commissioned a Cushite to carry the message to the king, and the messenger ran quickly to deliver the message. When he arrived, David wanted to know the fate of his son. “Is the young man Absalom safe?” King David asked. The messenger appeared to hesitate to deliver the tough message about his son’s death, so he gave a circuitous answer: “May the enemies of my lord the king and all who rise up to harm you be like that young man.” (2 Sam. 18:32)
Along with his message about repentance, John the Baptist had a tough message for Herod Antipas: “For John said to Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have the wife of your brother.’”
It appears that Herod respected John and talked with him on several occasions, but John always delivered the same message: Herod did a grave wrong in seducing and taking away his half-brother’s wife. Aside from its moral implications, the seduction also violated Jewish law, to which a Sadducee such as Herod was expected to adhere (Lev. 18:16; 20:21), and John pointed that out to the tetrarch, perhaps even in the presence of Herodias.
It’s easy to pass over this story in a pedestrian, superficial reading of this account, but it must have been difficult for John to deliver such a tough message to a ruler who had the power of death, especially with a weak, capricious person like Herod. It is probable that John understood that such a message could lead to his death, but he delivered it anyway.
How one responds to a tough message says much more about the character of the recipient than about the message itself. The young woman had surgery and treatment to beat the cancer. David went into mourning for his dead son. Herod eventually approved the death of John the Baptist.
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