Dealing with Problem People

The church grows in direct proportion spiritually to how well it deals with the sin within it. The process of church growth then is the process of the elimination of transgression, the elimination of sin. If the church is to move ahead powerfully and be all that God wants it to be, then it has to be dealing with its own internal sin. Welcome to this Friday edition of Grace To You. John MacArthur is continuing his look at the Bible-driven church. Today's focus, how to honor Christ in the way you minister to people in your church who, well, might not be so easy to love.

It's a message titled, Dealing with Problem People. John, before we get to the lesson, every year at the end of the year, we stress how important year-end giving is to this ministry, and we encourage people to remember that and be faithful, and they are. And I think it's appropriate now, at the beginning of a new year, to say thank you to those who have been so generous in their support for the ministry. Yeah, of course, Phil, it's a joy to be able to say your outpouring of support was generous. In fact, it was sacrificial.

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Thanks again for all you've done to help us start 2021 on sound financial footing. And now to continue his study on the Bible-driven church, here's John MacArthur. We find our text in chapter 5 of 1 Thessalonians verses 14 and 15, and I would invite you to turn to that text in your Bible. Henry Ward Beecher said, the church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

He's right. The church is not a place for perfect people, it's a hospital for people who know they're ill. We don't claim for a moment that the church is perfect. In fact, we would eagerly claim that it is not. Charles Morrison wrote, the Christian church is a society of sinners.

In fact, he said, it is the only society in the world membership in which is based upon the single qualification that the candidate shall be unworthy of membership. The church is full of problems because it's full of problem people, because everybody in it is a sinner, albeit saved by grace but nonetheless with unredeemed human flesh, consequently battling with sin. The church grows in direct proportion spiritually to how well it deals with the sin within it. The process of church growth then is the process of the elimination of transgression, the elimination of iniquity, the elimination of sin. If the church is to move ahead powerfully and be all that God wants it to be, then it has to be dealing with its own internal sin. The world has yet to see what an absolutely pure, holy church would do. The closest thing to it would be the early church.

In the fire and the heat of the purity of its birth came an energy that perhaps has been unequaled in the subsequent history. Church growth from the spiritual standpoint, which is the only standpoint God has any concern about, is in direct proportion to how well we deal with the failures in our midst. Paul wants to help us to do that by giving us these two verses in our text, which we'll look at in a few moments. But if we were to sort of step back and take a look at the church and say, well, how could we categorize the problem people in the church? We might come up with five categories...five categories of problem people that retard the growth and the power of the church.

Group number one we'll call the wayward...the wayward. They're never in step. They're always out of sync. They're always out of line.

They're never with the program. When everybody else is moving ahead, they're going backwards. When everybody else is filling up the ranks in proper order, they're outside that somewhere, failing to do their duty, not particularly interested in serving, sometimes not at all interested in giving, idle, perhaps even loafing. They're in the way of the progress, disorderly they might be, even AWOL they might be, apathetic they might be, sometimes contentious, sometimes rebellious. And I suppose they fill up the spectrum all the way from apathy to rebellion. They're the wayward.

They're just never going the way everybody's going in the proper line. The second group we might identify that hinder the growth and the life and the power of the church, we'll call the worried...the worried. This group is basically motivated by fear.

These are the people in the church who have no courage, who will articulate, you know, the famous words, we've never done it that way before, who can give you ten reasons why you can't do anything you propose to do. They have no sense of adventure. They hate change. They love tradition. They fear the unknown.

They want no risk. They worry about everything. All the issues of life are far more than they can bear.

They're usually sad, always worried, sometimes in despair, often depressed, discouraged and defeated. They carry none of the zeal, the joy, the thrill, the exuberance that adventure brings. We could probably identify a third group, we could call them the weak...the weak. They're just spiritually and morally weak. Christians who because of their weak faith, because of the weak disciplines of their life are susceptible to sin and they fall into the same sins over and over and you barely get them up and dust them off and they're back in the same hole again.

They find it very hard to do God's will consistently. They embarrass themselves. They embarrass the church. They embarrass the Lord. They take an awful lot of attention.

They test how good a church is at church discipline and usually run you all the way to at least step two. If we were to identify a fourth group, we could call them the wearisome...the wearisome. Another word for that would be frustrating, but it doesn't start with W. These are the...these are the wearisome, the foot draggers. They're in line but they're just going at the wrong speed. They never catch up. You keep teaching them and you keep training them and you keep discipling them and you pour all of this energy into them and every time you look around to see how close they might be, they look like they're farther away. Everything distracts them. They have a great difficulty concentrating, great difficulty focusing.

They're just very exasperating because you make the maximum effort and you get the minimum return. They don't move and grow at the pace that would be considered normal. Finally, group five would be the outright wicked. The wicked, they do evil, Christians who do evil. They commit sins against other Christians right in the church. They break up marriages, they defile daughters, they steal, they gossip, they slander, they falsely accuse.

They're just wicked. Now you understand that as the church endeavors to grow, it's got to deal with these five groups, the wayward, the worried, the weak, the wearisome and the wicked. And no wonder growing a healthy flock is such a challenging enterprise because all these folks need healing spiritually. The wayward need to get back in line. The worried need to have a stronger courage and faith and boldness and confidence. The weak need to be more disciplined in the matter of holy living and the worrisome need to get up to speed and the wicked need to do righteously.

There's a lot of work to do to bring all these in line. Now with all that's being said and all that's being written about church growth, all the sophisticated data, all the homogeneity principles, all the cultural demographics, all the subtle strategies, all the entertainment methods, all the advertising technique that are supposed to be the keys to building the church and growing the church, precious little is being said about how to grow a healthy flock spiritually into Christlikeness by eliminating these problems. The Bible never says anything about homogeneity. The Bible never says anything about cultural demographics. The Bible never says anything about subtle strategies.

The Bible never says anything about entertainment methodology. The Bible never says anything about advertising technique, but it does say if you want to grow a church, you need to get the impediments out of the way. You need to deal with whatever's retarding that church's growth.

And then when it gets pure and it gets holy, it will get moving and it will know the power of God and it will make a massive impact on its culture. The Apostle Paul understood this. And if you turn to the Apostle Paul to learn the principles of church growth, first of all, what you want to find out is what is his goal? What's he after? What does he want the church to become?

Bigger, wealthier, more popular, more accepted in the community? Boy, pretty clear in his mind what church growth meant to him. He was after deepening, strengthening of the lives of believers, knowing full well that as you eliminate the impediment presented by the folks that are retarding the church, the church begins to move in power. So Paul put his major energy, his resources, his prayer and his passion into growing a healthy spiritual flock by transforming the wayward, the worried, the weak, the wearisome and the wicked into the righteous and powerful and effective. A healthy flock is a beloved flock and Paul loved these people dearly. He couldn't resist them. But that is not to say...that is not to say that they didn't have any problems.

They did. And if you look at our text, verses 14 and 15, you will meet the problem people. Verse 14, and we urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with all men, 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. That's a marvelous, marvelous duet of verses because even though the church at Thessalonica was flourishing and growing, they had problems.

And whatever they weren't was a result of those problem people. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11, 28, it's the care of all the churches that is the biggest burden of the ministry. It transcends any physical pain I have endured, he says. On top of all of the pain that whips the rods that have bashed my body is this concern for the churches. Colossians 2, 1, I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf.

To put it in the vernacular, you are a big pain to me. This is a burden to me, carrying around on my back all the churches that need to grow. Now in these two verses as he defines these five groups, he also tells us how to deal with them. Verses 12 and 13, which we've already studied, talked about the relation of the shepherds to the sheep and the relation of the sheep to the shepherds. Verses 16 and following talk about the relation of the sheep to the great shepherd and our text talks about the relationship of the sheep to the sheep.

So this little section covers it all. In verses 12 and 13, he talked to the shepherds as to how they were to treat the sheep and he told the shepherds, labor among the sheep, take authority over the sheep and instruct the sheep. He told the sheep how to treat the shepherds. He said to the sheep, appreciate the shepherds, esteem the shepherds and submit to the shepherds. Starting in verse 16, he's going to tell the sheep how to relate to the great shepherd.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks, don't quench the Spirit, and so forth. And right now he's talking to the sheep about how to deal with the sheep. The key word then in verse 14 is the word brethren. While certainly there is a responsibility on the part of the shepherds to exercise unique authority in confronting these five groups of troublesome Christians, the lines between the shepherd and the sheep in this regard are very fluid. He uses the word brethren and just to give you a comparative note, verse 12, we request of you brethren that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction.

Appreciate your shepherds. So brethren in verse 12 is directed at the congregation. We assume therefore that brethren in verse 14 is also directed at the congregation. He's talking to the sheep about how they deal with the other sheep.

It does not exempt those of us in leadership, but it includes everybody. And by the way, you note also Romans 12, 14 to 17 is a very close parallel to this text and it obviously is directed at the whole congregation. He also notes that there's an urgency. We urge you, uses that familiar Greek verb parakaleo, to come alongside someone and help them.

It has a tone of urgency in it. So he is urgently, zealously, eagerly encouraging the sheep to get involved in helping the sheep that need the help. You see, church is not showing up on Sunday morning patting yourself on the back about how deeply religious you are. Being truly involved in the church goes far beyond the audience mentality and attendance.

It gets all the way down into involving yourselves with these five groups of people that are retarding the development of the church and therefore it's all of an impact. Let's begin with the wayward, group one, the wayward. Verse 14, Paul writes, And we urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly.

Now that little phrase, admonish the unruly, introduces us to the wayward. The word ataktas, often was used in a military sense. Often used in a military sense, it had the idea of a soldier who was out of line, a soldier who was out of rank, a soldier who was guilty of disorderly conduct, who was insubordinate non-submissive, disobeying orders, not following through on his duty.

He was out of step. It eventually came to mean anybody who doesn't do his duty, anybody who doesn't follow through on his responsibility. Moffett translates it loafers. Some have suggested quitters, idle, lazy, indolent, apathetic. But it doesn't have to mean just that. It can mean someone who doesn't do his duty not only out of apathy, but someone who doesn't do his duty out of a rebellion. In 2 Thessalonians where some cognate forms of this word are used, this word is used only here in the New Testament, but where some other forms of it are used in 2 Thessalonians 3 verses 6, 7 and I think 11, in that particular text it is used to refer to some lazy busy bodies who don't work and expect everybody else to do all the work and take care of them.

For us, it refers to the wayward. They're out of line. They're out of step.

Everybody's going one direction, they're not. Everybody else understands spiritual duty, is willing to do it. Do whatever God's gifted them to do, get involved in the service, whether it means that I'm serving the Lord with my gifts, I'm giving as God has prospered me, I'm behind the leadership of the church, I'm supporting the direction we're going, I'm on board, I'm on the team, I'm participating, I'm a part, I'm involved.

That's the kind of person that makes the church move and grow. These are the kind of people who reject all that. They're out of step. It may be that they're not doing their duty because they don't care. It may be that they're not doing their duty because they're angry and rebellious and contentious. They're just not supportive. They're not a part of what's going on.

Sometimes they hang on the fringe for a while and finally they are so bitter they just leave and go somewhere else. They're the bench warmers. And I learned a few things when I was in athletics. One of them is bench warmers become critics.

The people who do the most criticizing are the people who fail to do their duty. I can remember sitting on the bench through a football season and I had the privilege of being starting running back and there were a few others that didn't start because I did. And at first they would be somewhat encouraging to me thinking they were going to get their moment and when their moment wasn't coming, then they would be secretly wishing I would break my leg. And when I didn't break my leg, they would then begin to take it out on the idiocy of the coach who didn't know talent when he saw it. And eventually they would root for the other team.

That's the progression. People who resist involvement, who never want to get beyond the audience mentality either for apathy's sake or for rebellion's sake, they come to hear, to watch and then to just criticize, perhaps at worst, do nothing at best. One preacher said, usually they sit in the back, but I wouldn't want to say that. But I would say that sometimes you can watch a person who becomes critical systematically move back.

So I'm watching you. If you're going back two or three rows a week, I know what's happening. This is a culpable laziness. The people that want to sort of just hang on the fringe out there, just on the edge, they don't want to get involved too much, they don't want to have any accountability, they really don't want to get into it, they don't want to become a part of it, they're just not in step. That's intolerable conduct in a growing church. How are we to deal with it? Very simple, admonish them.

There's no formula, there's no program, there's no system. Individual sheep go to these sheep that are hanging on the fringes and not doing their duty, not using their gifts, not ministering, not on board, not supportive, not with the program, not going the way everybody's going. They're out of line, out of rank, disorderly, AWOL, and just coming alongside, A.T. Robertson said, the verb nuthaitaō means to put sense into, to come alongside and put some sense into their head. One writer says, it is the idea of coming to someone who is following a path that ultimately ends in serious consequences and instructing them about the inevitability of those consequences. In other words, the word can be translated to warn someone. It doesn't have the idea of distant judgmentalism.

It doesn't have the idea of criticism from a vantage point of superiority. It has the sense of coming along closely and intimately and showing someone the consequences of their conduct. It's as simple as saying, I've been watching you and I see your indifference. You come now and then, not faithfully to the church.

You're not involved in a ministry. You're negative about certain things or you're critical about certain things and saying to the person you realize, don't you, that if you continue in that path, these are the consequences and I don't think you want those consequences, nor do I want you to experience those consequences. It's that gentle kind of warning that comes alongside and says you're going in a direction, the end of which will be a major disappointment to you. It's a warning that Paul gave to the Ephesian elders with tears, according to Acts 20, 31. There's a passion in it. There's a hurt in it that says, I don't want you to keep doing that because the end of that road is major consequences for God will chasten such apathy, such rebellion, insubordination, such disorderly conduct. When you truly love somebody, you don't hesitate to warn them. I don't hesitate to do that with my wife and my children and the people that are close to me in my life.

Get in the line, not because there's some agenda that I've got, but I don't want you to deal with the consequences of living like that. I want you to know the fullness of God's blessing, the fullness of God's provision. And I want to see the church all it can be. I'm not under any silly illusions that if we could be more clever in what we do on the stage, we could have a more powerful church.

No, no. If we're going to have a more powerful church to impact the world, it isn't a question of how clever we are on the stage, it's a question of how willing we are to come alongside believers who are wayward and lovingly bring them into line. Then the power of God begins to flow. Then the church begins to cut a swath through the world. This is a necessary confrontation. Church isn't coming and sitting and staring at the back of somebody's head.

That's not it. Church is being involved in the lives of people, the troublesome people. We have to go alongside. The ones that are on the outside testing the edges, living on the fringe, going day to day in their waywardness, we've got to pull them in. We do it out of love because we understand the consequences. If the church is going to be powerful and grow and be strong, it's going to be when we deal with the wayward personally...personally. Because when the wayward get in line, we've removed the impediment so the church can move. And as a church takes that shape and that form, it will be a growing and a powerful church. We need to commit ourselves to being what the church really is.

And this is it. Father, we thank You for these brief moments that You've given us to worship and to have our hearts and minds confronted by Your truth. Seal this to our hearts. Help us to have the right relationship, sheep to sheep, that we might be the kind of church that You can use in a mighty way. And we'll thank You for such a privilege in Christ's name, amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. Today, John continued his series on what God intends a church to be and the role you have in that. The Bible-Driven Church, that's the title of John's study. Keep in mind, you can download today's lesson and the rest of The Bible-Driven Church study free at our website, gty.org. To get those lessons and to let us know how God is using grace to you and your life, contact us today. Our website address again, gty.org. And if you'd like The Bible-Driven Church in a CD album, you can order that online or call our toll-free number, 800-55-GRACE. And friend, as John said before the lesson, thank you for all that you do for this ministry, for partnering with us in prayer and through your giving, and playing a vital role in connecting people around the world with biblical truth. If you've never let us know how you're benefitting from grace to you, drop a note to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412.

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