There are those that are weak because they're new in the faith and don't understand their freedoms. There are those who are weak because they just don't seem to be able to get the victory over temptation. What do we do with those people? It simply says in verse 14, help them. Put your arms around them and hold them up.
They're too weak. You need to embrace them and they need your strength. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. We all have those people in our lives who are, well, difficult.
maybe a co worker who makes the office an unpleasant environment, or a friend who betrays your trust, or family members who mock you for your faith in Christ. You may even know some difficult people in your own church. You know, all of those people, really everyone in our lives, needs our compassion. And today on Grace to You, John MacArthur is going to help you cultivate genuine biblical compassion, continuing his study called The Pillars of Christian Character. Here's John with the lesson.
There are internal systems in the church. They are made up of spiritual attitudes that flow and carry the life of the church. And we've been talking about those various attitudes, and there are many of them in the scriptures, and we're kind of taking them one at a time. Spiritual attitudes like faith, which of course is a starting point, obedience. Things like humility and love and unity and forgiveness, and two very important spiritual attitudes: joy.
and thankfulness. Very, very essential in the life of a church that its people be filled with joy and gratitude. But I want to talk about another absolutely essential component that has to be a part of the church to make its life flow and to make it what God wants it to be, and that's the spiritual attitude of compassion. compassion. All of us who belong to the Lord, all of us who are the chosen, the holy in Christ, the beloved of God, are called to compassion.
Not just compassion toward lost people, and sometimes churches have more compassion toward the unregenerate than they do toward their own. But we are to show love to all men, but especially those of the household of faith. And so we are to Be compassionate. Let's look at this issue. Through the pen of the Apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 2.
Chapter 5. First of all, let's talk about the wayward. The people who get out on the edge and just test the edges of everything. They live right on the fringe. He addresses them in verse 14.
He says this, We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly. The word unruly attacked us Used only here, though it has cognate forms used elsewhere in 2 Thessalonians. The word basically had the idea of being out of line in a military column. When the troops all lined up, as they are wont to do in every army, when it's marching time, they get into. To rank and file, and they stand appropriately in perfect order because that's.
The design There would be a soldier out of rank, out of line. And that would be the word to describe him.
Somebody who's unruly, disorderly conduct. Secondly, let's talk about the worried. These aren't the people who test the edges. These are the people who huddle in the middle. They're sort of the no-faith group.
It says, encourage the faint-hearted. Fainth-hearted describes the worried. Fainth-hearted, literally in the Greek. I don't, that's kind of an interesting translation because it's. I suppose it does get at the point.
But the Greek word is small soul, psukas. From which we get psyche, psychology, psychiatry. That's the Greek word soul. And this word, oligopsikos, means a small soul. A small soul.
It's the opposite of megalopsicos, large-souled person. Aristotle, he defined the ideal man as large-souled. In other words, he could embrace all kinds of things. He was adventurous, he was courageous, he was bold, he had room in his heart for many things. And he could reach out.
The Sanskrit, interesting, the Sanskrit equivalent for that word is Mahatma. That's the ancient Sanskrit word. And Gandhi, the Indian leader, took that word Mahatma and used it as if it were his name because he wanted to identify himself as a man with a large soul, with great cause and great capacity to embrace a great nation with all of its needs. This is the person with great courage. Boldness, willing to risk for the noble cause, who has a sense of adventure, who is willing to put his life on the line, who's eager to confront challenges, who's fearless in the face of difficulty, who's not afraid of persecution, who has great vision, who can mobilize people to a great cause and ennoble their hearts.
To that cause. That's the large-souled person. But in the church, There are the small soul. who hate change. Fear the unknown.
Worry about everything. They're the negative people. They see the downside of everything. The woe is me. They lack courage.
They don't want to attempt anything. And if you change their routine, they go into panic. They are the traditionalists. They want what is secure, they want what is risk-free. They're not sure they want to get associated with unbelievers because somehow they might get corrupted.
And so their evangelism is minimal, if not non-existent. They huddle in the middle and sort of contemplate their sanctified navels together and feel safe and secure in their little group. Easily discouraged, easily defeated. They lack the strength to move out. They lack the strength to lead.
They even lack the strength to follow the leaders. They're afraid that They sort of live by Murphy's law, whatever can go wrong will go wrong. All the crises of life are more than they can bear. And they can find a reason why nothing ought to change ever. And these are difficult people to deal with.
They're the people who march in the church parade carrying the red flags. And when everyone is ready to move, They're ready to stop them. They lack vision, they fear failure, they lack the boldness to witness. And secretly Their hero is probably Indiana Jones or Rambo, but they can never get into that mode themselves, you know?
Now what do you do with these people? What do you do with these people? It says in verse 14, encourage them. Encourage them. What a positive approach.
The basic meaning of the verb is to speak to someone. close by his side. You get up next to these people. And you speak to them. Again, you have a teaching responsibility based upon a friendship.
You build a relationship with them, a friendship. You bring yourself alongside to comfort, console, strengthen, reassure, cheer, refresh, renew, revive. You're just there to pump them up. To encourage them, to build them up. What a tremendous and wonderful ministry of encouragement that is.
And the church needs to be busy doing this all the time. Don't look down on people like that. There are probably some reasons why they're that way. It might have been some things in their past, some failures, some insecurities that they carry, some difficulties in their childhood, and most of all, an immature understanding of the goodness and greatness of our God. Those kinds of things may be combined to make them that weak.
They need to be tenderly encouraged, they need to be brought alongside. And you bring them to the place of strength. You give them the comfort of your fellowship, the encouragement of prayer. Tell them you're praying for their strength and for the fact that they'll become bold and step out. You give them the comfort of hope.
What God has planned for them in the future, and that the Lord is building his church, and they're a part of it. You give them the encouragement of a secure salvation that can never, ever change. You give them the encouragement of God's sovereign purpose and providence working out everything to his good will and for their good. You give them the encouragement of the undying, undiminished love of Christ. You give them the encouragement of the final glorious resurrection, the encouragement of the privilege of sharing in Christ's sufferings and the encouragement of living by faith and seeing God demonstrate his power when you risk everything to do what you know his word has commanded you to do.
You come alongside and compassionately and kindly and tenderheartedly, you nurture those people to strength. Thirdly of the week. The weak. And I suppose in some way all of these are forms of weakness, but specifically are mentioned here, the weak. He says in the middle of the verse, help the weak.
These are people who lack moral strength. and consequently lack spiritual strength. These are not quite the fearful, worried kind. These are the kind that are just always knocked down by temptation. These are the kind of people who very often will come to me repeatedly over the years and say to me, I don't know if I'm really a Christian.
I still wonder if I'm a Christian. With some people in our church, I've been having that conversation, would you believe, for up to seven, eight years? Why? Because they get along for a while and then they go falling into patterns of sin and temptation, and the spiral is downward. And then, when you become operative in the flesh and you've lost the victory, and you fall into the pattern of sin, one of the things that goes is your confidence.
And your assurance. And then there's that struggle. People who are spiritually weak.
Now, there are a lot of reasons for this. Temptation, of course, is one very obvious reason. They literally have fallen into patterns of unrighteousness, and consequently, as Peter says, they have forgotten that their sins are forgiven and they can't hang on to anything because they have forfeited by their disobedience the The confidence and the assurance that the Spirit of God gives an obedient believer.
Some of them may be weak because they just continually lose to the same temptation. It comes back and down they go, it comes back and down they go, it comes back and down they go again, and they just are embattled and battered by that continual onslaught. They never can seem to get on top of that. Maybe they're spiritually immature. Maybe they have long-term patterns that are hard to break.
whatever it might be, or they're in positions where they are influenced. With evil things, and they can't stand against that very well. There are others who are just new Christians, and maybe like those weaker brothers in 1. Corinthians 8 and 9, and in Romans 14, they come out of a background that is so fraught with iniquity or so fraught with some kind of behavior. In the case of a Gentile, for example, in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul says there are some Gentiles who've come out of idolatry, and they were involved in it with all of its immorality and its gross wickedness and sin and prostitution and all the filth of the pagan systems.
And now they've come to Christ, and you've got to be very careful that you don't feed them meat that was sold in the idle place. Butcher market because they can't eat that, because it brings back all the past filth that they were saved from, and it grieves their conscience, which reacts to that stuff. And they're still weak in the faith. They don't understand that an idol is nothing. They don't understand they can eat that meat, it doesn't matter, but their conscience won't let them because of the way they used to be.
It's, I remember a conversation with a Or the young man Who said he could never listen to rock music because he was involved in drugs and sex, and he was deep into the culture of that stuff, and it represented all that was dirty and evil and filthy. And when he came to Christ and was totally washed and cleansed and transformed, every time he heard that, it just reintroduced to his mind all the trash that the Lord had washed away. And that was too much, too close to his past. And there would be some time before he could ever treat that with a level of indifference that a lot of us are able to treat it with. There's the typical story of the Jew who comes to Christ and can't have pork roast.
Even though there's no longer a ceremonial law, his conscience is going to take some time to accept that liberty because he lived under Mosaic restrictions for so long.
So there are those that are weak because they're new in the faith and don't understand their freedoms. There are those who are weak because they just don't seem to be able to get the victory over temptation. They're not faithful in the disciplines of spirit, the spiritual disciplines of the word and prayer. discipleship worship and all of that and so they struggle. What do we do with those people?
It simply says in verse 14, help them. Help them. Literally, the the verb here means to hold firmly to. Put your arms around them and hold them up. They're too weak.
You need to embrace them and they need your strength. This is where we call for intimate relationships. Compassion is delivered one-to-one. It's delivered one to one. There's an illustration of this that I think is helpful in James 5.
In James 5, There's a very interesting portion of Scripture, and if you want the full thing, of course I've... Preached on it in the past. The believers to whom James writes were being persecuted. Seriously persecuted by the rich. The rich are condemned, starting in chapter 5.
Come now, you rich, weep in hell, for your misery is coming upon you. And he says, Your riches have rotted, your garments moth-eaten, your gold and silver rusted. And the reason for this was because of the way they treated the righteous. Verse 6: You have condemned and put to death the righteous man. He doesn't resist you.
What they were doing was persecuting believers to the point of death. And so James is writing these believers who are under this terrible persecution.
Now he says to them in verse 7: be patient. Just be patient. Hold on. Accept this persecution. Verse 8, be patient, strengthen your hearts.
It's not easy. It's easy to become weak under the terrible pressure of persecution. It becomes a temptation. to distrust God. To become even angry toward God, to lose trust and lose faith and lose joy.
And he reminds them. In verse 10, to take the example of suffering and patience from the prophets, and then in verse 11 to see the endurance of Job and the outcome of the Lord's dealings with him, how that the Lord is full of compassion and merciful. God understands that you suffered. He understood the suffering of Job and all the prophets, Isaiah, who was sawn in half, and Jeremiah, who was thrown into a pit. You need to be patient.
Don't get angry. In verse 13, he says, Is anyone among you suffering? Then pray. Anyone who's cheerful, you're not suffering, praise. And then in verse 14, is anyone among you sick?
A better translation, I think, would be weak. That's the primary translation that I find in many of the lexicons. He's talking about someone who's literally collapsed under this onslaught. Difficulty, temptation, suffering, persecution, whatever it is. And if that's you, Then here's what you do.
Call for the elders of the church. Here's a person who's weak, a person who's committed sin in weakness. Get to the elders and let them pray over him. Anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
Now, what does that mean?
Well, there's two words for anointing in the Greek. This one has to do with giving someone a rub-down with oil, not some ceremonial anointing. He's not talking about some ceremony here. He's saying, go to the elders. And let the elders Massage him.
It could be metaphoric that you're just going to massage his wounds and his bruises from the weakness. It even could be that he had been whipped and beaten and abused by the rich. And maybe he did need an actual physical anointing. to heal some of his wounds. But the idea is that the elders become to him A source of strength and encouragement.
And the prayer, verse 15, offered in faith by those Spiritually strong will restore, revive the one who is weak, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he's committed sins, they'll be forgiven. I think this is talking about not a healing. but a spiritually weak person going to the spiritually strong.
So they can hold him.
So that they can rub him and massage him and help him with his wounds and encourage and comfort. And pray for him. He's leaning on their spiritual strength. I've often told the students at the college that if my door is open, you can come in and pray with me when I'm there. One day I was in my office and a young man came in, who was in his senior year, an outstanding young man.
from a wonderful Christian family who Was devoted to serving the Lord in his future. He came in and he said, I just need to pray with you. And I said, Well, why? Steve, and he said, Well, he says, I'm just weak. I'm really weak.
I've lost my interest in prayer, and I just can't seem to study the word, and I'm just being hammered by temptation, and it's the same thing, and I keep falling, and I just need somebody that I can. Lean on and would you pray with me? And I said, sure. I'll never forget, I pulled two chairs together and I said, let's kneel down. And he was wanting to lean on one that he perceived as spiritually strong in the time of his weakness.
And I knelt down knelt down and put my hands and my head down in the chair. Put the chair beside me for him, only he didn't use it. He knelt down and put his whole body across my back. And his body language was saying what his heart was saying. I am weak and I need to lean on someone who is strong.
And with tears in his eyes, he He stayed that way while I prayed that God would forgive any sin that he had committed in this process and that God would pour out his strength on his behalf and renew and revive and refresh him. And we prayed quite at length, both of us. And when we were done, I remember standing up and he embraced me. I'm thinking of that verb here: hold firmly to, and he just held on to me for a long time. And finally, he let go.
And we parted, and within a couple of days, he came back to tell me that his heart was so encouraged and renewed, and God had answered our prayers, and he was well on his way, finished his year, and went on to serve the Lord. I think that's the spirit of this. And when you find someone who has been caught in some time of weakness in their life, this is absolutely crucial, personal ministry to be available for the spiritually strong. lift them up. Galatians 6 says the same thing.
You that are spiritual, restore such a one in love. When someone has fallen, tripped into some sin, the spiritually strong put their arms around them and lift them up. And then fourthly are the wearisome. The wearisome, and we'll just mention them briefly. The wearisome are described at the end of verse 14, where it says, Be patient with all men.
There are going to be all kinds of people who test your patience. That's what he's saying. The wearisome. They just drive you crazy. They just exasperate you.
You deal with them, and you deal with them, and you deal with them, and you deal with them again, and again, and again, and again. And they marginally comply, or they don't comply, or they do, and then they fall back, and they just continue to exasperate, frustrate, disappoint, discourage, and even anger you. because they never seem to catch up. They never seem to catch on. They resist all the efforts to teach them, train them, discipline them, exhort, strengthen, inspire, motivate, encourage.
They they just exasperate you. Never seemed to get it, never seemed to get up to speed, always run the race with the weights on. Always carry all the encumbrances, lack the ability to focus, are undisciplined in matters, spiritual matters. And these These dear folks. Test everybody's patience.
How do we deal with them? He says, be patient. The word is long-suffering. Get ready for a long-term deal. You can't fix them quick.
Hmm. They take a lot of work. And God is patient, isn't he? That's a godlike quality. Patience with people.
And it tests us. I think sometimes they're there. I think sometimes the Lord is saying, this guy is your test. to see if you have Christ-like patience. I think about that sometimes when I tend to get exasperated and Say, oh boy, not him again, not her again, please.
What else can I say? What else can I do? And you remind yourself this is a test. of your Christ-like patience. You remember his patience exhibited with his disciples who never seemed ever to get it?
Even down to the end? What do we do with them? Just be patient, suffer long. Just like the Lord suffers long with you. And finally, the wicked.
They're the subject of verse 15. See that no one repays another with evil for evil. But always seek after that which is good for one another and for all men. Here you have the evil. the people who just do wicked things.
And this is the most difficult, the severest problem of all because these people do evil. They harm directly with wicked words that attack the church and attack people. They harm indirectly by gossip and slander and evil speaking. They harm by Shutting someone out of the fellowship. By being jealous.
Hateful, bitter, envious, angry. They say things that aren't true, they sow discord. They steal virtue. They lead people into sin. They commit iniquities that pollute the church.
They work malicious harm. What do you do with him? It says Don't repay Evil for evil. But Always seek after that which is what? Good.
Seek what is good for them. Don't turn to vengeance. Personal vengeance, retaliation. Not required. Not allowed.
What do you do? You seek what is good. What is good? To bring them to what? Repentance.
So you pursue them to bring them to repentance. The only one who has a right to retaliate is God. You just seek their restoration. You seek their purity. Always.
Look at it. Always seek after. That which is good. It's the verb to pursue. Always pursue what is good, noble, beautiful.
You give them acts of love in the face of their hostility. You find the path of goodness. Not the path of retaliation. Learning to do this is a very, very important thing. Whenever there is someone mistreating you, when someone is Causing problems, someone is iniquitous, you try to find the path of goodness.
Now, if they continue in that sin, there's a pattern of New Testament discipline that is laid out. But in your approach, you do everything you can to bring them to the place of repentance so that they may enjoy the goodness of God. in their obedience.
Well, so it is. A growing flock needs great care. Because the church is full of problem people. And the pervasive attitude that we must have toward them is an attitude of compassion. tender heartedness.
kindness. May God so grant us that. Let's pray. Father, we have covered so much so fast. And yet, really, just one great truth, and that is that we are to deal with folks compassionately, the same way you deal with us.
Who fail you so constantly, who violate your perfect standards so. regularly. And you are so compassionate. Your compassion is immeasurable. Unending.
unceasing. and great We thank you for it. And may we be as compassionate With those around us who are wayward. and worried and weak. and wearisome and wicked.
as together we struggle. with the flash. To gain the victory, that will conform us more and more to the likeness of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Important reminders from John MacArthur here on Grace to You, the title of John's current series, The Pillars of Christian Character.
Now as John described compassion, what it is, how it's practised, I imagine a lot of people might be thinking of someone they know, a parent or a pastor or a mentor, who has modeled compassion to them, With that in mind, we asked John MacArthur who exemplified compassion for him, who showed him what it looks like to put it into practice. Here's what he said.
Well, I think throughout my life I have been exposed to a lot of people who demonstrate compassion. It should be part and parcel of every Christian's virtue. The fruit of the Spirit is love. That's where it starts. Compassion is a manifestation of love, and believers who possess the Holy Spirit should be marked by love.
I mean, Jesus said, By this shall all men know that you're my disciples, that you have love. for one another. Every act of love toward me is in some way an act of compassion. The word compassion means to. suffer along with.
To feel someone else's pain, to identify with their struggle. And that's what love does. That's what love does.
So compassion is really kind of a subcategory of Christian love. And I can say, going back in my life, even to my childhood, I was born into the family of. A pastor and his wife. My dad was a pastor all the years that I was at home, all the years of his adult life. And my mom.
And both of them loved Christ, and so I grew up in a house full of love and consequently full of compassion. My friends were believers. My life was the church. I was surrounded by people who loved Christ and loved one another, and I've been a pastor for. many, many years.
I've been preaching for well, sixty years or so, and and I've been surrounded during all these wonderful years of ministry by those who exhibit compassion. And sometimes It's the The most unseen acts of love and affection that leave their mark on me. A kind note, a thoughtful word, someone who tells me they pray for me all the time, someone who expresses gratitude for the word's ministry in their life. All those are acts of love and affection that help me carry the burdens of my life. Be thankful for those who love you and provide that tender concern and mercy that we all need.
That's right. And friend, for practical help in cultivating the thankfulness and compassion that John talked about, I encourage you to get John's current study called The Pillars of Christian Character. It's available for free in mp3 and transcript format from our website, gty.org. and you can download the Pillars of Christian Character when you get in touch today. Again, all 10 messages from the Pillars of Christian Character are free to download, the MP3s and the transcripts from gty.org.
And while you're there, that's our website, gty.org. Make sure you take advantage of the thousands of other free resources there to help you understand and apply God's Word. Whether you're looking for biblical insight on parenting or what Scripture says about the spiritual gifts, Or, how you can know if you're called to ministry, you will find resources that will help. including blog articles and especially more than 3,600 full-length sermons by John MacArthur. Our website again, gty.org.
And thanks for praying for grace to you and for remembering that we are listener funded.
Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today. Keep in mind, Grace to You Television airs this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378. And be here tomorrow as we continue John MacArthur's study of the pillars of Christian character. With a look and an attitude that can help you thrive in any trial you might face.
Contentment. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth. one verse at a time. On the next, grace to you.
