Monday, January 21, 2013
Matthew 3:7 ... when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"
GROUPED WITH GOD'S PEOPLE
John the Baptist had no room for the two-faced Pharisees and Sadducees, and neither did God. Not if they continued to embrace sin. Not if their confidence of heaven continued to rest on their own ethnicity, or on the goodness of their own lives.
But when JESUS stepped into the Jordan River to be baptized by John, John's fiery tone changed completely. John knew Jesus. How much John knew about Jesus is a bit unclear, but from the story of Jesus' baptism alone (Matthew 3:13-17) it's obvious that John considered Jesus much holier than himself. The idea that Jesus would come to John for cleansing seemed all wrong to John. John should be baptized by Jesus, not the other way around! But what John didn't understand was that Jesus wasn't coming to His baptism as a sinner seeking cleansing.
John's baptizing had created a division among the people. There were those who accepted God's prophet and his message and therefore came to be baptized, and there were those who rejected God's prophet and his message and therefore refused to be baptized. Jesus didn't need cleansing from sin because He had never sinned. But He certainly wasn't going to associate Himself with people who rejected God's message, so Jesus came to be baptized anyway, even though He was not a sinner. He would be grouped with God's true followers, and not with the hypocritical Pharisees.
