Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, 6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
“The clothes make the man.” We have all heard that phrase but, to Jesus, that is the outside of the cup. By today’s standards, John the Baptist had it all wrong. He dressed very strangely, had a strange message of repentance and, instead of making people feel good about themselves, exhorted people to confess their sins. He even had the temerity to preach about sin! His church had no prayer of growing. Oops. It would seem that being different from the surrounding culture met with favorable results after all. People came from all around to be baptized by him. The question is, why is this not happening in all our churches?
Perhaps in our quest for the perfect church growth model, we missed the John the Baptist model; preach repentance from sin and strive to be different from the culture, standing out so they can have no doubt that we are faithful to a faithful God, eager to forgive. Do you think it can work? There is one way to find out. Let’s emulate John the Baptist and his proclamation that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. Let’s stop worrying about the outside of the cup and how cool people think we are. Let people marvel at how forgiven we are. John wore strange garments and we do too. Let’s show off our…
Wedding garments.
Pastor Brad Boyer
Cape Community Church