Hey wait a minute. Lent doesn't just have 40 days! Apparently, you're not supposed to count Sundays, which I did. So I'm a little ahead of the game perhaps.
Matthew 3
There's an interesting difference between Mark's account of what John the Baptist was doing, and what Matthew records here. In Matthew, John is preaching a baptism of repentance (Matthew 3:11), but Mark adds for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4). I wonder why. Perhaps for Matthew "repentance" is assumed to be equated with forgiveness. If I remember correctly from what I read in Mark, he seemed to be much more interested in sin and forgiveness than Matthew is at this point. Matthew is giving details related to his Jewish audience. He mentions the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the "we are Abrahams' children" bit. I think both Matthew and Mark are using this story to try to relate to their audience. Different people can relate to what Matthew is talking about compared to what Mark has to say. They aren't just reporting what happened, but they are trying to make it relevant to the reader. It's kinda nice that there are different angles presented of these stories, because we're not all the same and I think different people will be touched in different ways by these accounts. I think I relate more to Mark's version, which would make sense since I'm not Jewish.
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