Jesus or John the Baptist?
John the Baptist played hard to get. He hung out in the desert, wearing funky clothes and eating strange food. Under a Nazirite vow from birth, he was what we would today call an ascetic—someone characterized by self-discipline and the commitment to abstain from all forms of self-indulgence.
Large crowds came to hear him. But to do so, they had to make a difficult trek into the wilderness. That alone separated the window-shoppers from the serious seekers.
He also had a major thin-the-herd message. In essence, John told the people who showed up that they were going to hell. He told them that if they didn’t repent and get baptized for their sins (something Jews thought only Gentiles had to do to get right with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), they were doomed and would suffer the judgment of God. Even more astounding, John told the religious leaders the very same thing. Maybe that’s why they weren’t too fond of him.
But Jesus’ ministry was radically different.
While Jesus wasn’t afraid to say hard things and draw lines in the sand, he didn’t hide out in the wilderness. He went toward the people. He made it easy for them to hear him. He did things designed to draw huge crowds. He even healed people before they made a commitment to follow him. His entire life and ministry had such a populist tone that the religious elite wrote him off as profane. They falsely accused him of being a glutton and a drunkard. Even John the Baptist was confused by Jesus. John eventually sent some of his own disciples to double-check: was Jesus really the promised Messiah?
I find that amazing, because if anyone should have been certain that Jesus was the Son of God, it was John. After all, when he baptized Jesus, he saw the Holy Spirit alight on him like a dove and then heard the Father say, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
That’s pretty straightforward. There’s not much ambiguity there. I think that would be hard to forget. Yet apparently Jesus’ ministry with the crowds was so different from what a radical ascetic like John expected that it caused him to wonder if perhaps he’d gotten it all wrong.
Many of today’s spiritual elite seem to wonder the same thing. Presented with a Jesus-style ministry that attracts large crowds of spiritually uncommitted what’s-in-it-for-me window-shoppers (and then meets their needs and teaches them the counsel of God in a palatable way that leaves them longing for more), the spiritual elite write it off as a compromised ministry with a watered-down gospel.
The thin-the-herd crowd even has a derisive name for the people who attend these churches. They call them consumer Christians. And woe to the ministry or church that does anything designed to reach out to them or keep them around for a while. So we’ll need to look at them next.
This excerpt is taken from Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith by Larry Osborne. © 2012 by Larry Osborne. Used by permission of Zondervan.
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