When you are a preacher, some people will support you as long as you are a mouthpiece for their pet doctrines, but they will turn against you when you say something that challenges them. Even if you are right, they just don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to change. They don’t want to think that they are wrong, especially when it concerns an area of life that they are proud of, like religion. You are challenging a part of their identity, something that makes them who they are. You are killing them. This is why they become angry, and they will try to kill you first. But Jesus said, if you try to save your life, you will lose it, but if you will lose your life for his sake, then you will find it.

As long as you do not offend them, they will support you, because they consider you their champion. You clear the way for them to believe what they want to believe and to be who they want to be in this world. As a preacher, perhaps your only interest is to speak the truth for Jesus, but these people do not want you to speak for him, but for them. The two might appear to overlap, because some of what they wish you would say will coincide with what you should say anyway. At least on paper, some of the truth of the gospel agrees with what they affirm as their personal philosophy. So they support you, not because you speak for Jesus, but because they feel like you are speaking for them. Their faith is fake. Their approval is an illusion. And they become a drag. It is better to take out the trash early and clean up your audience. This is why it is important to offend them. As you continue to speak for Jesus, eventually you will say things that they cannot accept, because they have never really accepted him in the first place.

Jesus would cut off the dead weight. Once he told the crowd, “Eat my flesh, drink my blood!” The people were confused and offended. Speak the truth bluntly, so that they will hear you. Give them a chance to be offended, or else they would never snap out of the illusion that they agree with you and the truth. Jesus would speak the truth in outrageous ways. If the followers had truly respected him enough to pay attention, they would have heard, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” Their loyalty was a pretense. It was never really about Christ, but themselves. So the Bible says, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:66). Good riddance.

Then Jesus asked those who remained, “Aren’t you going to leave too?” It is pointless to keep disciples and supporters, if they are only using you to pursue their own agendas — not your mission from God, and not the gospel of Christ. But those who stayed said, “Lord, where would we go? You have the words of life.” True followers of Christ will know that you are a man, not God. They will not worship you, but they will recognize the voice of the Great Shepherd in you, that you care about God, that you speak the truth, and that you labor for them to know God intimately and accurately.

Preach the word. Preach Jesus Christ as he is in the Bible. Don’t be an echo of the people and their traditions or opinions. Don’t let them use you as their mouthpiece. Resist the pressure to keep them around just so you will have a bigger crowd. They will become a liability. If they are going to be offended eventually, then offend them early, and offend them deeply. Your work will be better and cleaner for it.