24. When John’s messengers had gone, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?
25. What did you go out to see? A man dressed in fancy clothes? Look, those who wear fancy clothes and live in luxury are in kings’ courts!
26. What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
27. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’
28. I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he is.”
29. (Now all the people who heard this, even the tax collectors, acknowledged God’s justice, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism.
30. However, the Pharisees and the experts in religious law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.)
31. “To what then should I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like?
32. They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, yet you did not dance; we wailed in mourning, yet 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 drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’
35. But wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”
36. Now one of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table.