<p>1:5 <em>And there went out to him all the country of Judea and all they of Jerusalem</em>- The emphasis on &quot;all&quot; is perhaps to make the point that there was mass response to John's message about Jesus; and yet ultimately, his mission failed, because these large masses of people did not fully accept Christ despite their acceptance of John's teaching and baptism. &quot;They of Jerusalem&quot; are depicted as those who later refused or were at best agnostic towards the Lord Himself (e.g. &quot;they of Jerusalem&quot;, Jn. 7:25 s.w.). We get the impression that the Galileans were more receptive of the Lord than &quot;they of Jerusalem&quot;. They were eager enough to get caught up in a movement teaching that Messiah would soon come; but when He actually came, they didn't want Him. It can be that some are so enthused about &quot;the signs of the times&quot; that personal relationship with the Lord Jesus becomes subsumed beneath the interest in the search and expectation, rather than the finding. And that is observable in so many people today.</p><p><em>And they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins</em>- Judaism at the time believed that the Elijah prophet must appear and baptize a repentant Israel, and then Messiah would come and save them from Roman domination. Their confession of sin was therefore unlikely to have been totally genuine; as noted above, these mass crowds later rejected the Lord Jesus as Messiah. Repentance can therefore be insincere, or surface level, tokenistic rather than from the heart. And yet despite being aware of this, John made no attempt to judge or assess the sincerity of repentance before baptism; and neither can we.</p>