The Disruptor Anointing

John the Baptist was a disruptor. Before he prepared a people, he confronted everything standing in the way of the King.

In this episode of The Myrrhologist Podcast, Marissa Saint Luc explores the wilderness message of John the Baptist and why his voice still challenges us today. Why did people leave the religious system to hear him? Why did he confront leaders first? Why did he care so deeply about fruit? And what would John challenge if he walked into the modern church?

Jesus said that from the time of John, the Gospel of the Kingdom has been preached. Long before the cross, John was preparing hearts for the arrival of the King and calling people to repentance, transformation, and readiness.

This episode explores:

• The wilderness as a place of preparation
• The Gospel of the Kingdom before the crucifixion
• Why John confronted religious confidence
• Repentance as a lifestyle, not a moment
• Fruit as the evidence of transformation
• What John the Baptist would challenge today

The voice in the wilderness is still speaking.

The question is: are we listening?

Transcript

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Welcome to the Morologist Podcast. I'm your host, Marissa St. Luke. There is a voice rising from the wilderness, the place where comfort dies, the place where identity is stripped, the place where God speaks without competition. And this is not a new voice, it is the echo of Elijah resounding through John the Baptist, a voice that isn't interested in building temporary platforms. It prepares a people. And before we give all the credit to Elijah or John for hosting this disruptor anointing, we have to lift our gaze a little bit higher. Because John didn't originate the disruption, we don't see Elijah lighting his own fire. The wilderness voice came from a man. This disruptor anointing belongs first to Jesus Christ. He is the one who breaks up fallow ground. He is the one who exposes what religion has buried. He is the one who shakes every system that has learned how to survive without fruit. Elijah carried a measure. John carried his witness, but Jesus carried the fullness. John was the voice crying out in the wilderness, but Jesus is the word made flesh. John prepared the way, but Jesus is the way. John held the axe, but Jesus cut down the root. John called men into repentance, but Jesus brought them into right standing. So before we magnify the mantle and study the voice, we have to first honor where it belongs first to Christ, the holy disruptor, the king with the winnowing fork in his hand, the shepherd who divides sheep from goats, the prophet that was greater than Moses, the priest greater than Aaron, and the king greater than David. And he wasn't disrupting for attention. He is disrupting for harvest. He is shaking the ground because fallow soil cannot receive seed until it is broken open. Scripture says, sow for yourselves righteousness, reap in mercy. Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord till he comes and rains righteousness on you. Fallow ground is ground that could be fruitful, but it is gone untouched. So it became hardened and unused, and now it feels resistant. It has potential, but it has not been broken open yet. And this is what Jesus came to do. He came to break us open. He came sowing the seed of fruit before anyone had witnessed the fullness of evidence. He came looking for the ground that would yield to the kingdom. So that is why John's voice carried so much weight. Those that had an ear could hear. And that voice was announcing the one who was coming to shake everything that could be shaken, so what was truly kingdom could remain. And there is a boldness returning, an unction of the Holy Spirit. There is a people who refuse to dilute the truth to stay accepted. God has always confirmed his word through witness. And what is rising in the earth right now is a two-witness anointing. Those who are no longer afraid to stand as witnesses, those that are shaking off the old dust. They are consecrated and are stepping forward into deeper clarity, into greater obedience, and into weightier responsibility. And for some, it feels very sudden. Mantles are falling without warning, and revelation is accelerating faster than you can process. Yesterday's understanding is already too small for today. And Jesus keeps pushing us forward, saying, Keep walking, keep ascending. And every day the question keeps echoing: Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? And the answer has not changed. It's he who has clean hands and a pure heart. Jesus said, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses. And I think that we've misunderstood something extremely important. If you ask believers what the gospel even is, most don't really have the full understanding. Most people think that the gospel began at the cross, but Jesus was preaching the gospel long before he was crucified. In Luke 16, 16, Jesus said, the law and the prophets were until John. And since that time, the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached. Come on, I want you to see this today from the time of John, not from the resurrection, not even at Pentecost, from John. Because the gospel was not the announcement of the crucifixion, it was the announcement of a king and his kingdom. The cross was the final seal. The cross secured what had been proclaimed. But both John and Jesus were preaching the gospel before Calvary ever happened. He said, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That was the message. A kingdom was approaching, a king was arriving, and people had to decide whether they would leave their old allegiance or enter his. And we don't even realize the incredible fact that we are the only people on the planet who operate in the power of the age to come. Those who tasted the powers of the age to come, Hebrews 6 says, We carry foretaste, a glimpse, a witness of what is coming. And this is a clarion call for those who already claim to know the power and the anointing of Jesus, who believe that they are alive, but they are dead. John the Baptist did not go to pagans. He went to the house of Israel, to the ones who had scripture, to the ones with history, the ones who believed that they already belonged. And he knew that the kingdom was a person. And the people who thought they were ready were not. So they left the system. They walked away from the noise. They stepped outside of the structure and they entered the wilderness because the wilderness produces something that the system suppresses hunger and thirst. In the structure, they had activity. In the wilderness, they had appetite. In the temple, they had their little routines, but in the wilderness, they had real survival needs. In the structure, they had inherited confidence, and in the wilderness, they had to face the condition of burying every trace of their ego. And then John brought them to the Jordan, the place of crossing, the place where the house of Israel crossed over into promise. This is where the wilderness generation ended and inheritance began. So when John stood in the Jordan baptizing Israel, it was prophetic geography. It was a reenactment of crossing over. And now John was calling Israel back to the Jordan to cross out of dead religion and prepare for the kingdom and enter the promised land. Israel, the person. And hear me, the promised land is a person. And before we talk about what John built, we need to understand what he broke. John the Baptist was not just a prophet, he was like a walking earthquake. He started breaking up what Jesus was coming to uproot. So John wasn't the source of disruption, he was the witness of it. Because when Jesus comes near, false peace cannot remain undisturbed. Fruitless trees can't hide behind leaves. And fallow ground cannot stay sealed shut. This was the ultimate kingdom confrontation. If John walked into most of our churches today, people would think he was a heretic. They would try to cast out a demon or assume that he had a mental illness because he could not be boxed in. He didn't fit the system, and the authority he carried could not be argued away. He confronted leaders first by saying, You brood of vipers. He started with the ones who thought that they were good because they could recite the Old Testament word for word. Can you imagine knowing the Bible and not being able to be ready to see and hear God? John left the temple because people trusted the process and their traditions and their inherited understanding more than God. And he challenged inherited confidence. John said, Don't say we have Abraham. In other words, don't trust your bloodline in your life that's not bearing fruit. John was confronting spiritual nepotism. The idea that proximity and family name and religious history or inherited access could make someone ready for the kingdom. The kingdom can't honor empty inheritance, it can only honor fruit. You could inherit the language and still lack obedience. You can inherit access and still lack repentance. And John shattered the illusion that God doesn't need your last name. If sons refuse to bear fruit, he can raise sons from stones. Some people think that they're living in freedom while God sees chains. So John was making repentance a reality and a lifestyle. In Luke 3, the crowd asked, What are we supposed to do then? And John answered, Anyone who has two shirts should share one with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same. And then he had tax collectors ask, Teacher, what should we do? And he said, Don't collect any more than you're required to. And then he had soldiers ask, What should we do? He said, Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely, be content with your pay. So when you summarize all of this, he is giving foreknowledge of kingdom customs. He was saying, Stop taking advantage of people, be honest, and share what you have. This is the spirit of counsel. He was teaching them that repentance wasn't for this moment, that I'm baptizing you in the water. Repentance is every day. And I gotta break it to you: repentance doesn't happen at an altar. An altar may be where conviction begins, but life is where repentance is proven. Sometimes it doesn't even involve crying, it's simply turning, it's every day, being in agreement with God's word, hating what he hates, loving what he loves, and obeying what he said. Real repentance leaves evidence. And this is one of the heaviest parts of John's witness. He didn't protect himself, he protected the truth. He confronted a ruler and he lost his life for it. He didn't weigh the risk, he just told the truth. And the reason he was able to move like this is because he refused to build a movement around himself. They tried to make him the center, but he said no. He said, I'm not the Christ. People love to give unwarranted honor and respect to leadership they do not know. Scripture says, know those who labor among you. Jesus warned that many would come in his name, many would claim his authority, many would claim his anointing. When you know you're not the king, you don't even waste time protecting your own image. You spend your breath preparing people for his arrival. John said the axe is already at the root, and he was trying to shake their shoulders to wake them up because he cared about fruit and not experience. He said, bear fruit worthy of repentance. He wanted to show Jesus evidence. We see major fruit evidence that he lived differently. John didn't just preach repentance, he exposed a gap between what people said and what was actually true. And people came to him because something in them knew. They heard the cry, they saw prophecy in how he was dressed, in what he ate. Would we recognize the spirit of Elijah today as he judged our obsession with platforms? Would we cancel his? He would be challenging our confidence in experiences that never become evidence. And what would we say back? But I felt God in that moment. But the service, it felt powerful. People were crying, it felt anointed. I had shills. I saw 444 on the clock before I got here. And John would still ask, Where is the fruit though? Or has the house been lulled into spiritual hypnosis and rocked to sleep by atmosphere, calling sedation, anointing, and mistaking feeling for fruit? You know, John would challenge the gap between what we profess and what we produce. And if John stood among us today, he would still be asking the same question: where is the evidence? John cared about the fruit because fruit tells the truth. Rotten fruit, it starts smelling. You start noticing the bruises on the fruit. It can't be faked forever. And eventually the tree reveals itself. Repentance is agreeing with God enough to change direction. It has nothing to do with emotions, it's transformational and it is visible. And that's why going into the wilderness is necessary because the wilderness removes all distractions, the wilderness strips away performance, and it produces those who fear God more than they fear rejection, a people who would rather lose everything than lose their witness. Jesus said, Don't let anybody take your crown. And that is what the wilderness protects. The crown and the witness and the voice that cannot be bought, branded, or buried. So do not despise the wilderness. The wilderness is not rejection, it is refinement. And John carried that sound. He carried the sound of the one coming after him. A sound that still cries, prepare the way, make the path straight, break up the ground, because the king is near. Jesus is coming for fruit that is produced in every season. Fruit that ripens in every season and that proves the tree belongs to him. The fruit coming out of our lives should be echoing the throne, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. You can visit MarissaSaintluke.com for Hebrew crest designs and Hebrew name scrolls. This message has been brought to you by Ahava Overflow, where we believe that Jesus is the key that unlocks every door to your soul, body, and spirit. Until next time, come meet me out here in the wilderness. We're eating locusts and honey. This is where your voice becomes dangerous.