Luke 3:10–18

¹⁰The crowd asked him, “Then what are we supposed to do?”

¹¹“If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do the same with your food.”

¹²Tax men also came to be baptized and said, “Teacher, what should we do?”

¹³He told them, “No more extortion—collect only what is required by law.”

¹⁴Soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He told them, “No shakedowns, no blackmail—and be content with your rations.”

¹⁵The interest of the people by now was building. They were all beginning to wonder, “Could this John be the Messiah?”

^16–17But John intervened: “I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”

^18–20There was a lot more of this—words that gave strength to the people, words that put heart in them. The Message!