What Would You Do?

Matthew 3:4-6 ESV
Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Random Chapter Day!!!!

They say teenagers today are focusing too much on the way people look and using that as our judgment of their character. Here's a perfect example of someone who does not conform to public image.

If a man walked up to you wearing weird clothes with a bug-and-honey sandwich on the street and started talking to you about God, what would you do? Would you listen to him preach full-heartedly? Would you listen to him, doubting everything he has to say? Would you smile and nod, while looking for an escape route? (Response Question!!! What would you do?)

He's out in the middle of nowhere, wearing clothes made from camel hair and a leather belt, eating bugs that God uses for punishment and wild honey. He's weird, to us. But God used him anyways. Why? Because God didn't really care that John (the Baptist) was a little off, in our standards. He didn't. God cares about where our hearts and souls are.

God uses people who are socially acceptable to us (kings and queens, for example) and then He has those who aren't (John the Baptist). We're all children of God. Those people who were baptized by him and listened to him preach didn't care that he was weird. They cared that he was a man of God and preached God's word, and would go to any length to listen to John preach.

And by only caring about John's heart and not how he looked, these people got to hear a great preacher and prophet. As we're examining how we would act, consider this: What did Jesus do? (later on in the chapter, Jesus asked John to baptize Him, John refused because Jesus is the Messiah and he wasn't worthy to carry His scandals, but Jesus said that it was God's will).

In His Service,
Joyce