Seventh Day Baptist
Christian Education Council
PO BOX 1678
Janesville, WI 53547
—Matthew 3:7-12
by: Jo Anne Kandel.
The Jewish leaders must have thought that John the Baptist was a very strange individual indeed. He lived in the desert eating wild honey, wearing strange clothes and proclaiming crazy ideas about the kingdom of God. He lived like the prophets of old (see Isaiah 40:3, Jeremiah 2:2), yet he had a more urgent message of judgment. The Sadducees and Pharisees were probably angry when they went to see John and were called a brood of vipers. Jesus would continue to challenge their assertions of ethnic and social superiority, affirming that “there is no partiality with God” (Romans 2:11).