Matthew 3

http://www.esvbible.org/Matthew+3/

John the Baptist appears in a similar story to what we saw in John 1. John the Baptist is a little crazy. He lived in the wilderness, wore strange clothes made of camel hair, and ate locusts and wild honey only. By this description, you would think that everybody would stay away from him. The opposite is true. People came to him in mass to hear about how they should change the way they think and act and be baptized by him to remember what they need to do. God's power is so vast, that he can take this strange, crazy man and  give him a huge following. When John the Baptist saw the Pharisees and other high religious figures, he called them treacherous snakes, like Jesus later would. He told them that when they stand before God at the gates of Heaven, they better have a better reason to gain entrance than that they descended from Abraham. If God wanted to, He could create descendants of Abraham out of rocks. The time had come when ancestry meant nothing anymore. You can see it in the layout of the Bible. The Old Testament is full of family trees, but the last one is in Matthew 1, which is the first chapter of the New Testament. We no longer worry about who are family was because we are all now Children of God. He continues to tell them that the (family) tree roots are cut, and any branches that don't produce fruit will be cut off and burned in the fire, just like we heard Jesus say in John. The other metaphor John the Baptist uses is that Jesus wil remove the wheat from the husks. He will take the wheat into the barn but burn the husks in a never ending fire. This is one of the places that makes people think that Hell is a never ending fire. In reality, nobody alive has been there, so we cannot be certain, but based on this section of Matthew, that seems like a true statement. The main part of John the Baptist's message is that while he baptizes with water, the one coming later will baptize with the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist says that he is not worthy of untying His sandals.

I like the way Matthew sets this next story up because just above, John the Baptist says that he is not even worthy of untying Jesus' sandals, but later, Jesus comes to John the Baptist and asks him to baptize Him. John the Baptist tries to stop Him and tells Him that he should be baptized, but Jesus finally gets John the Baptist to do it by saying that this is the way things are to be done now. This is the reason that baptism is so important. Jesus declared that we should all be baptized. After He comes up from the river, Jesus looks to the Heavens and sees God tell Him that Jesus is God's son and that God's favor is on Him. He says this same thing whenever any of us are baptized, and He always means it. We are God's children, and through faith, we have His favor.