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I Must Decrease…Or Must I? (Part 1 of 3)
Finally moving on from Matthew 3! Here’s a story about John the Baptist from the book written by another dude whose name was also John: After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because…
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Where have all the young people gone?
For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. -John the Baptist (Matthew 3:9b) Right after John tells a bunch of religious leaders that claiming a lineage from Abraham can only get them so far, he declares that God is able to raise up children for Abraham…from stones.…
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Spiritual Heritage
And you should not think to say among yourselves, “We have Abraham as father.” -John the Baptist (Matthew 3:9a) The Pharisees who came against John’s baptism thought that they did not need to “make fruit worthy of repentance,” because they could trace their lineage back to Abraham. They claimed Abraham as the forefather of their…
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Brood of Vipers (Part 2 of 2)
But when John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Matthew 3:7). (Same verse as yesterday, new thought.) It must not have been very fun to be called a brood of vipers―the offspring of a venomous…
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Unsatisfying Apologies
And they were baptized by John in the Jordan river, confessing their sins. (Matthew 3:7) Confession can be a vague thing. It might sound like someone is confessing to a crime, or confessing their love. It might conjure up images of a confessional booth in a Catholic church, where a priest listens through a little…
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Paul the Idol
Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region along the Jordan went out to him. (Matthew 3:5) One of the church-y things churches sometimes talk about (because church-y people like to make up new words) is being “attractional” vs “missional.” Sometimes it feels like there is a kind of tension between the idea of…
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Into the Wilderness
In those days John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the wilderness of Judea. (Matthew 3:1) Of all the places John the Baptist could have gone to preach, the wilderness was an interesting choice. This was not a fun, lively, well-developed national park with a nice visitor center (my kind of wilderness). This was wilderness-y wilderness.…