Sons of Snakes

Since it seems like I generally won't have time on Sundays, I think I'm going to switch Friday to a New Testament day, just so I at least get it twice in the week.

[Matthew 3:1-5]
There was on Old Testament prophecy that, before the Messiah came, there would be a forerunner who told of His coming and warned people to get their act together. This role was filled by John the Baptist, who spent the time before Jesus started His ministry telling people to repent, because stuff was about to go down. It wasn't hard to him to get people's attention, because he was quite a character who wore patchwork clothes he probably made himself, he lived in the desert, and he ate bugs.
Even by Old Testament prophet standards (except possible Ezekiel), John was a bit eccentric. I'm sure God got a huge kick out of sending someone like John to be the first step in His plan, just because of how much it likely bothered the persnickety religious folk of the time. God likes to disrupt our views of how we think things should go, so it fits that, in a culture that valued proper behavior, nice clothes, and clean temples, that God would kick everything off with a bug-eating hobo.
Never get so wrapped up in your image of what Godly person looks like or how God works in general, because it's easy to miss it when God decides to use someone outside of your mold. The people at this time were waiting for a Messiah, and probably assumed He'd be a rich, attractive political powerhouse who would lead an army to Rome and win everyone their freedom, so the leaders missed this stinky crazy guy in the desert for not fitting their image. Nowadays we look for the eccentric poor underdog to be the source of God's work so much that we balk at any rich eloquent people who dare to be rich AND sincere. The minute you think you know the kind of person and events through which God works is the minute He throws something outside your comfort zone at you to see if you'll break down your perceptions.

[3:6-10]
John, like Jesus who will soon come after Him, is not a fan of Pharisees, who were the higher-ups in the church at the time. When the Pharisees come into the crowd, John immediately begins insulting their mothers and telling them to repent, certainly winning him lots of points back in town.
Being the spiritual leadership at the time, the Pharisees were the ones who read the Scriptures, interpreted the rules, and passed them on to the common people who mostly couldn't read. They were quite proud of their knowledge of all of the Old Testament laws and the extra laws they had come up with to make sure no one got close to breaking the real ones. The law said that you couldn't work on the Sabbath, so they determined that it you couldn't walk more than a certain amount on the Sabbath. They spent a good deal of their time arguing rules like this and informing people of any new ones they came up with.
The law was for the Jews, who were the descendants of Abraham (Abram currently in our Old Testament reading, but we'll get to his name-change soon.) Being God's chosen people, the Phraisees and all of Israel took pride in their heritage, so John was making quite the stir when he said that it wasn't that big a deal and that God could give Abraham children from rocks. When seemed to downplay the importance of Abraham as an ancestor and said an ax was going to the tree,he was foreshadowing how Jesus was about to come and open up a covenant with everyone, not just the Jews. The ax was going to the root of the old Covenant, and a new one was going to be planted in tis place where the children of Abraham don't get special treatment just for their family tree and memorizing long books and getting punches on their good deeds card. He was calling for repentance and realization of their sins to prepare them for the covenant that was coming.
So you can see why John was really popular with the religious folk.

[3:11-12]
When John  baptized, he was making people aware of their sins, and getting them prepared mentally and spiritually for the message Jesus was going to bring. John submersed them in water to represent their death to the old ways and their birth to the new one, but physically he was just getting them wet. He was doing this to prepare them for Jesus, who was going to baptized them with the Holy Spirit and with fire, both which have a much more noticeable effect upon submersion that you can't hide with a dark t-shirt.
John was a big deal. He was prophesied centuries before he came on the scene, he was bearing the most important message of all time, and he had the whole country's attention. But John knew his place. John knew that what he was doing was merely symbolic, and that his job was just to prepare the way for Jesus to come do His work.
In whatever ministry you're called to, you are merely preparing the way for Jesus to come do His work. You are not the star, Jesus is the star. You're not worthy to carry Jesus' shoes for Him, so you are definitely not worthy of taking credit for His work. It would have been easy for John to get a cocky "I'm in the freaking Bible!" attitude and feel good about himself, but he knew his place. You should know yours as well.

[3:13-17]
So it was probably pretty awkward for John, with this realistic attitude of his, when Jesus Himself comes up and asked to be baptized. John was likely hesitant to let Jesus go through this symbolic shedding of the sinful nature and rebirth into the new nature, because the entire message here kinda revolved around Jesus being the one who does not sin. But Jesus insisted, and John knew better than to argue.
When everyone else was baptized, it represented death to their old, sinful self and rebirth to the new, fulfilled self. Jesus chose this act to mark the beginning of His ministry, not because He had sin to repent of, but because His entire reason for coming was to take the death that everyone else deserved for the sins, and rise again, victorious over these sins. His baptism did not represent exactly the same thing, but He too agreed to a symbolic death and rebirth, to signal to everyone present and to God the Father up in Heaven that He accepted His purpose and was ready to begin His ministry.