He is like a man building a house, who went deep and put the base of it on a rock; and when the water came up and the river was driving against that house, it was not moved, because the building was good.

But he who gives hearing, without doing, is like a man building a house on the earth without a base for it; and when the force of the river came against it, straight away it came down; and the destruction of that house was great.

He went into all the region around the Jordan River, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,

Now it was the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was ruler of Galilee, his brother Philip was ruler of the regions of Ituraea and Trachonitus [Note: These two men were sons of Herod the Great (See Matt. 2:1) and ruled over provinces east of the Jordan River] and Lysanias was ruler of Abilene [Note: This was a province just north of the two previously mentioned ones].