Divided Loyalties

Therefore there arose a discussion on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purification. And they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him." (John 3:25-26)

What is coming out this morning as I look at this is the contrast between the tension caused by John's baptizing activities in conflict with the mainstream Jewish religious people, and the unity and peace that was felt between John's ministry and the ministry of Jesus. John's disciples noted this even in their complaint to John. As disciples of one who was at odds with the mainstream religion and was the target of attack and discrediting by religious leaders, these disciples had become embroiled in the arguments put forth by religious leaders to diffuse the effectiveness of John's ministry.

Becoming a disciple of a teacher aligns you with what that teacher stands for. As a result, you will also find yourself out of sorts with all those who strongly oppose those teachings or that lifestyle. John was sent by God to disrupt the status quo of society and religion. He did not fit the mold and was not reinforcing most of the religious assumptions and expectations about the coming Messiah. There was certainly no lack of enthusiasm and interest in the doctrine of Messiah in John's day; it was not a neglected teaching by any means. But the popular desires for power, control, revenge and the prevalence of pride in the hearts of religious people had fatally distorted their ability to properly understand Scriptures about this subject and caused them to misrepresent God.

Although John was a very bold and unique preacher and prophet, he did not share in the pride and self-seeking attitudes of the popular religious teachers of his day. John had a vital connection with heaven and an extremely humble heart. It was his intimate connection with heaven and his perspective of seeing things from a completely different angle that gave him the ability to speak strong truths with such great boldness and yet maintain a humble spirit at the same time.

The world and counterfeit religion always depends on fear to control and manipulate others into compliance with their ways of thinking and living. John lived outside the atmosphere of this fear for several reasons. First of all he was filled with the Holy Spirit from the time even before he was born, and God's Spirit is never a spirit of fear. Secondly, he was raised in an environment mostly free of the strong influences of the religious leaders and the deceptive philosophies designed to neutralize everyone who might rock the boat. John grew up out in the isolated places, the wilderness where he cultivated his close relationship with God and lived an extremely simple life free from many of the temptations that compromised nearly everyone else. Thus he developed a perspective of reality that was mostly foreign to everyone else, a perspective that viewed reality in ways that were startling to the average person.

John lived in the atmosphere of heaven's perspective and filled his mind with the Word of God. As his character and personality firmed up in this unique environment he was fitted to preach with confidence and boldness things that would confront the deceptions of counterfeit religion and expose its weaknesses. Counterfeit religion is not necessarily always based on false doctrines. People can have intellectual truth and can prove all of their teachings from the Bible but still be trapped in a false view of reality that results in a subtle counterfeit to the real plan of salvation as viewed by heaven. That is because true religion must be aligned properly from two different directions – intellectual truth and a right condition of the spirit or heart. In the next chapter of John Jesus makes this very clear in His words to the woman at the well in Samaria.

Because John was largely not infected with the spirit of selfishness, pride and human value systems like the rest of the religious leaders had become, he was empowered by God to be a striking contrast to the philosophical religion, the self-serving religion, the fear and control-oriented religion that had taken overGod's chosen nation. Many people had become very disillusioned with the emptiness of religion as it was promoted and imposed by the religious elite and were disgusted with the selfishness, greed and abuses promoted by those claiming to represent God. They were hungry for something better, for a real religion that would speak to the heart and bring life and hope and healing to their souls.

So when John showed up on the scene exposing the hypocrisies of the religious establishment, while he was not making many friends among the brokers of religion he was addressing a deep and intense need in the hearts of thousands of listeners hungry for a word from the real God. His words brought conviction of people's misalignment with God's ways and offered a way to repent and turn to a more effective religion, a religion of the heart that promised to meet the real, deep hunger of the soul that the religious leaders had failed to address. John was offering people true spirituality.

When Jesus came onto the scene after John had gotten the attention of the whole nation, the attitude and message and spirit of Jesus was seen to be in alignment with John rather than with the rest of the religious establishment. John's disciples could not help but notice this alignment and John himself threw all of his credibility and support behind the ministry of Jesus. John declared that this was the whole reason for his life and his own ministry – to prepare the path into people's hearts for the true Messiah to come in and accomplish His desires and His plans.

This was in stark contrast to the ever-present conflict, arguments and tension that his disciples had encountered as they had aligned themselves with John the Baptist. This commonness of purpose and spirit between John and Jesus was so noticeable that a number of John's disciples were moved to began following Jesus themselves instead of John. But others decided to stick with John from a sense of loyalty and felt reluctant to abandon him for someone else. They may have felt that since John had introduced them to the real truth about God and had opened their eyes and their hearts in ways that no one else had ever done before that it would be wrong to turn away from him now.

But it was also obvious to them that the spirit of Jesus was very similar to the spirit of John. Like John, Jesus also found His ministry to be the target of attacks by the religious establishment. Jesus' attitudes and methods were very similar to John's though His personality seemed to be quite different. There was a sense of fellowship between the two groups of disciples that was not combative like what they experienced with all the other religious people. In the words of John's disciples quoted above, they noted that Jesus was with John and that John had testified in favor of Jesus.

This phrase about being with John was much more than simply a reference to a physical proximity with John. This clearly refers to their ministry, their attitudes, their shared goals and their views of reality. John and Jesus both viewed life and religion from radically different perspectives from what was taught and practiced by the pervasive religion of the day. And the same is still true today. Popular religion always becomes infected with the contamination of pride, the desires for power and control over others and a lack of true humility and a vital connection with heaven.

The problem that shows up in this verse is the fact that John's disciples were themselves already becoming infected a little bit with some of the contaminants that had ruined the religion of the Jews. They were starting to feel that loyalty to a particular religious leader was more important than complete devotion to a relationship with God directly. They were starting to depend on John as their primary source for truth in their lives instead of heeding his message to turn their hearts toward God and to embrace the new revelation of God that was about to be exposed in the person of God's own Son. John's disciples were already becoming infected with a spirit of jealousy instead of allowing the repentance and grace and truth from God promoted by John to continue its work of transformation in their own hearts.

But that is what John addresses in the following verses. He makes it very clear that the sole purpose of his life was to amplify the attraction of people to the One who was to follow up after him. While it was important for people to listen to John's calls for repentance and to respond to the convictions from God as a result of his preaching, this was not enough. People are never to stop at the places where their leaders take them. God sends reformers to His people to awaken them, to challenge their assumptions, to alert them to their darkness and to introduce more light and grace to them. But if people start to focus more on the person than on the God who sent the person then what will be seen is the same thing we see today – thousands of denominations all claiming to have the truth.

One reason that so many denominations exist today is because people who were challenged to think outside their existing ideas of God failed to continue on that path of progression. They chose instead to settle down on the teachings of their initial leaders and became afraid to follow the example of their founders by continuing to search out and experience more truth in the ever-increasing light and revelations about God. They allow fear to dominate their belief system and try to synthesize truth into neat intellectual packages that can then be enforced and promoted instead of pursuing an ever-deepening heart relationship with the real God of heaven.

John the Baptist refused to have his message be reduced to a set of doctrines and intellectual beliefs to be followed. The main focus of his message was that people needed to base their whole life and their reason for existence on a personal relationship with the coming Lamb of God that was the only hope to take away sin from this world. The same truth is just as much needed today as it was in John's day. It is very dangerous to look to any denomination or any teacher as the source of our beliefs instead of a vital and personal connection with God. That is not to say that we cannot learn and grow under the teachings of effective leaders sent by God. God is ready to use all sorts of resources to grow us in grace and a knowledge of Him. But we must not allow a sense of allegiance to some person or some denomination to eclipse our need to absolute allegiance and loyalty to a deepening and intimate heart connection with our Savior and our God.