24\u00a0<\/sup>When John’s messengers had gone, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John:\u00a0\u201cWhat did you go out\u00a0into the wilderness to see?\u00a0A reed shaken by the wind?<\/span><\/span>\u00a025\u00a0<\/sup>What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who are dressed in splendid clothing and live in luxury are in kings’ courts.<\/span><\/span>\u00a026\u00a0<\/sup>What then did you go out to see?\u00a0A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.<\/span><\/span>\u00a027\u00a0<\/sup>This is he of whom it is written,<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Behold, I send my messenger before your face,<\/span><\/span> 28\u00a0<\/sup>I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\u00a029\u00a0<\/sup>(When all the people heard this, and\u00a0the tax collectors too, they declared God just,\u00a0having been baptized with\u00a0the baptism of John,<\/span>\u00a030\u00a0<\/sup>but the Pharisees and\u00a0the lawyers\u00a0rejected\u00a0the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.)<\/span><\/p>\n 31\u00a0<\/sup>\u201cTo what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like?<\/span><\/span>\u00a032\u00a0<\/sup>They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another,<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201c\u2018We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;<\/span><\/span> 33\u00a0<\/sup>For John the Baptist has come\u00a0eating no bread and\u00a0drinking no wine, and you say, \u2018He has a demon.\u2019<\/span><\/span>\u00a034\u00a0<\/sup>The Son of Man has come\u00a0eating and drinking, and you say, \u2018Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard,\u00a0a friend of tax collectors and sinners!\u2019<\/span><\/span>35\u00a0<\/sup>Yet\u00a0wisdom is justified by all her children.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n John was handpicked and purposefully chosen to do God’s work. We touched on this during the previous chapters of when he had not yet been born, and we see how God’s plan had come full circle and now Jesus Christ was doing the work that John had preached about. There was no discrepancy in what John had preached. All of what he had foretold was happening right before their very eyes.<\/p>\n Jesus also uses this opportunity to reaffirm that John was indeed His messenger. There had been many prophets before that who had predicted the coming of Christ but none had lived to see the day in which it would actually take place. John’s role was unique in that he had the privilege of hearing about Jesus Christ’s work coming to light.<\/p>\n There is also the similarities being made about how just like Jesus, John reached out to the sinners and there were those such as the tax collectors that had repented, were baptized and had come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior. They were seeing who this man was right before them! In the same way, we see how John attempted to reach out to those who were in religious authority, such as the Pharisees and even with Jesus Christ standing before them, they still rejected the truth.<\/p>\n Miracles had been done, the gospel had been preached, Jesus acted in a type of love and compassion that the world had never seen and yet there were those who did not accept who He was and the message He brought. This world is filled with those who are skeptical and quick to dismiss the Gospel because it speaks to their sin and the temporary pleasures that they hold dear. It speaks to a God who loves unconditionally and a God who says there is nothing that we humanly can do to earn His Grace. Our human actions cannot win over God because we are flawed and filled with sin. The human world likes to think that they are in control of their own lives “fate and destiny”. It goes against living life for your own pleasures and thinking because you worked hard enough, you are\u00a0deserving<\/em> of blessings.<\/p>\n The Gospel preaches that we are not deserving of any kind of Grace or blessing and yet God freely hands it to us because He loves us and wants us to enter into an eternal relationship with Him that is filled with true hope, happiness, satisfaction and peace. The world can be crashing around us and yet the Gospel that John started to preach and Jesus finished preaching gives us a firm foundation to stand on. Let us have a heart like John’s that is ready to preach to those who are around us and let us pray that our hearts do not grow hardened to the message of the Gospel and pray for those who are called to be God’s messengers.<\/p>\n [Featured image from the Baptistery of St. John (Battistero di San Giovanni), Florence]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Messengers from John the Baptist 18\u00a0The disciples of John reported all these things to him. And John,\u00a019\u00a0calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord, saying, \u201cAre you the one\u00a0who is to come, or\u00a0shall we look for another?\u201d\u00a020\u00a0And when the men had come to him, they said, \u201cJohn the Baptist has sent … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12227,"featured_media":14168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2280],"tags":[1900,7265,2344,7268,7266,7346,7267],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>who will prepare your way before you.\u2019<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.\u2019<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nObservations and Reflections<\/h2>\n
\n![\"Lydia.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Picture-150x150.jpg\")
Hearing of all that Jesus was doing and confirming that He is indeed the one that John was preaching about, must have been of great encouragement to Him. The purpose of John’s life was to be God’s messenger in proclaiming the good news and telling the world of the coming of Jesus Christ, the true Savior of this world.<\/p>\n
\n