Getting to Know Jesus #25

After His encounter with the disciples of John the Baptist, then explaining the place of John in the plan of God, the real issue, Jesus said, was the lack of response on the part of the hearers:

31 “To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another,
“‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
    we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’
33 For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ 34 The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ 35 Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”

Jesus said: "You're treating this all like a child's game, as if it doesn't matter if you participate or not." That's not true.  The message of God to man is serious business, whether it is bad news: "You need to repent", or good news: "you are being offered the free gift of salvation."  Whether it was John or Jesus, many who heard responded with either silence or rejection; there was spiritual apathy. The last statement means: "just because you do not accept and receive the message does not make it untrue." The "children of wisdom" receive and embrace God's revealed truth, showing Him to be righteous, while those who reject it prove nothing but their hardness to the truth.