Who is our model?

The answer is a no brainer really. We hear it all the time that Jesus is our highest model and He is. But I have really been thinking about John the Baptist lately. And when I say thinking I really mean he has been consuming my thoughts. JTB is perhaps the most under rated man in our modern church. He is almost never taught and yet Jesus, himself called him the greatest man born of a woman. And don't even get me sidetracked on to the implications of that. But JTB is our perfect model. We so desperately want to be sort of like Jesus in the western church. We would love to do a few healings; maybe gather a few disciples. We also love talking about how Jesus hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes. And really we love these things about Jesus that allow us to really be very unlike Him in most ways. We love how He died for us and that He paid our price and that we are saved if we believe in Him and again that really is a way different tangent for me. But JTB, if you model him, then you cannot hide. You cannot be lukewarm or apathetic. If you are modeling John the Baptist, the man that is fully man and zero God, then you are proclaiming the truth of our Lord and you are living the reality that we are called to. John pointed everyone to the Christ. He glorified God every single day. He pointed every single person who would listen to the one who was coming. He cried out "people get ready." His message was not culturally relevant, it was bold with an occasional side of "you brood of vipers." He turned his would be followers to follow Christ. He sends Andrew who tells Peter of the Messiah. He is filled with the Spirit and he is on fire in every way for the coming King. This is the man who knows the Messiah when he sees him. This is the man whose first and foremost calling was to know the savior. And I look around and we have placed the hanging out with sinners and the being kind aspect of Jesus so far ahead of the knowing Him. Oh we can feed five thousand if we pull our money together and so often that is what we do. But we can turn those five thousand who are hungry to Jesus if we know Him. Because if we know Him then we know He can feed the five thousand with nothing but some kid's lunch. We would rather solve the world's problems with the world's resources than cry out the truth that our Lord is coming and what He has is better than food. We would rather entertain the masses with niceties of our our Jesus than cry out "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?" See John wasn't messing around. He new the truth. And the truth is that we can sell our Jesus any way we want but God is not changing and we have sold congregations worth of people a half truth. And  to how many of them will God say "I never knew you" even while they spent their years on earth, sitting in a church, feeding five thousand.