Many of the Pharisees and Sadducees came to the place where John was baptizing people. When John saw them, he said: "You are all snakes! Who warned you to run away from God's anger that is coming? You must do the things that show that you have really changed your hearts and lives . . . I baptize you with water to show that your hearts and lives have changed. But there is One coming later Who is greater than I am. I am not good enough to carry His sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He will come ready to clean the grain. He will separate the good grain from the chaff. He will put the good part of the grain into His barn. And He will burn the chaff with a fire that cannot be put out."

   Thus says the Lord, "Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant.

   "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.

   "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds. As a partridge that hatches eggs which it has not laid, so is he who makes a fortune, but unjustly; in the midst of his days it will forsake him, and in the end he will be a fool."

   A glorious throne on high from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary. Lord, You are the hope of Israel. Those who leave You will be shamed. A person who quits following the Lord will be like a name written in the dust. That is because he has left the Lord. The Lord is the spring of living water.

Taken from Mt. 3, Jer. 17, The New American Standard and The Everyday Bible.
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