YOU KNOW THE JOKES: the ones that play the good news and the bad news off each other. Like this: a man decides he needs more adventure in his life and takes a skydiving class. That’s good news! But on his very first jump, his chute won’t open. That’s bad news. The good news is that he sees a haystack below him where he can make a softer landing. The bad news is that he sees a pitchfork sticking up out of the haystack. The good news, fortunately, is that he manages to miss the pitchfork.

The bad news? He misses the haystack too.

In real life, there can be a complicated relationship between good news and bad news. Perspective matters; what’s good news for one may be bad news for someone else. If my favorite sports team wins, for example, someone else’s favorite team loses. Or when someone gets a promotion at work, someone else may resent being passed over.

Even the gospel won’t be received as good news by everyone. John the Baptist came preaching a message of repentance, and those who were convicted by it were told that they had to change their ways. People with more resources were to share with people who had none. Tax gatherers had to stop gouging people for more money, and soldiers had to stop shaking people down. Those who would live God’s way, in other words, must care more for the well-being and needs of others. Jesus would teach something similar as the second greatest commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.

Surely, however, there were people who scoffed at John’s words, perhaps including the Jewish leaders who had come out from Jerusalem. Some people may have been reluctant to part with their precious second tunic. If some tax gatherers and soldiers repented, there may have been others who balked at giving up their money-making schemes. To any of these folks, John’s teaching would not have sounded like good news. And yet, after describing how John challenged his listeners, Luke says this:

And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them. (Luke 3:18, NIV)

From the perspective of a willing heart and a godly faith, what John proclaims (and what Jesus will proclaim) is good news. But John’s ministry is already separating the faithful from the unfaithful, the ones who heed his message from those who reject it.

And when John dared to speak truth to power, there was trouble. As we’ve seen, the man Luke calls “Herod the tetrarch” was also known as Herod Antipas, and was ruler over the regions of Galilee and Perea. John insisted on his repentance too, and it didn’t go well:

But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison. (vss. 19-20)

Luke doesn’t bother to describe the other “evil things” Herod Antipas had already done, and later, he would do worse than merely imprison John: he would have him beheaded. Luke only mentions the execution in passing (9:9), but a more complete story appears in both Matthew and Mark, in which Antipas is manipulated into killing John by a cunning Herodias. Simply put, he chose to commit murder rather than lose face in front of his dinner guests.

The family of Herod the Great, the infamous “Herod” of Matthew’s Christmas story, would have made for an edgy reality show. According to Josephus, Herod had a total of ten wives over time; he married his first wife twice, making for eleven marriages. Herod Antipas was his youngest son by his fourth wife. Antipas divorced his first wife, a Nabataean princess, to marry a woman named Herodias—who was Herod’s granddaughter by the second son of his second wife, Mariamne, whom he had executed for treason and adultery. But Herodias was married to Antipas’ half-brother Herod II, also known as Philip I, Herod the Great’s son by his third wife. She was, in other words, already married to her father’s half-brother (does that make him a half-uncle?), and she divorced him to marry Antipas, another half-brother.

Still with me? I know: that’s a lot of Herods (and one Herodias).

You can imagine some of the trouble that ensued. John wasn’t the only one who disapproved of the relationship. The Nabataean king, Antipas’ former father-in-law, was incensed by the way Antipas cast his daughter aside for Herodias, and eventually went to war against him, winning handily. According to the historian Josephus, some people took Antipas’ humiliation to be his well-deserved comeuppance for the execution of John the Baptist. His story eventually ended in disgrace: he was deposed by the emperor and lived the remainder of his days in exile.

. . .

LUKE WILL RETURN to the story of John the Baptist in chapter 7. At that point, Jesus’ public ministry is in full swing: he has his own group of followers, has taught large crowds, and has performed several miraculous healings, including raising a young man from the dead. When John heard from his disciples about all the things Jesus had done, he sent two of them to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Luke 7:19).

Coming from anyone else, that question would have an air of nascent faith to it. But this is John we’re talking about: the forerunner of Jesus, the one who baptized him, the one who in the fourth gospel calls him “the Lamb of God” (John 1:36). Was John beginning to doubt as he languished in prison? Some have suggested that when John preached his message of repentance, when he told his listeners that the ax was already at the root of the trees, he expected God’s wrath to fall soon—perhaps very soon. If so, the questions may have swirled in his mind as he listened to the stories about Jesus: If this man is the Messiah, why hasn’t the day of judgment come yet?

In response to John’s question, Jesus doesn’t say, “Yes, John. Don’t worry, I’m the Messiah.” Indeed, throughout the gospels, Jesus seems reluctant to say that to anyone—which is understandable given the different and often inaccurate expectations that had attached themselves to that title. We’ll look at Jesus’ response to John when we get to Luke 7. For now, suffice it to say that Jesus challenges John to trust what he probably already knows: that Jesus’ actions are the fulfillment of ancient prophecy.

It’s a poignant exchange and a sobering reminder that even the most Spirit-filled of preachers may have to wrestle with hard questions when they’re forced to suffer. His preaching landed him in prison. That’s the bad news. But Jesus will remind him that the good news is still good.