Dealing with Problem People B

Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. They constantly criticize the preaching. They're never satisfied with the music or really with any part of the worship service. Every church has one or two, maybe more, people like that. Those who make life difficult for everyone else in the congregation. What does the Bible say about those people?

How should you respond to them? Find out today on Grace to You as John MacArthur continues his look at the Bible-driven church. Less entitled, Dealing with Problem People.

And now here's John. Dealing 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. 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.

Now in these two verses as he defines these five groups, he also tells us how to deal with them. They're not on the edge. They're huddled in the middle. They don't want to get near the edge.

They're huddled in the middle. Megalapsakas. Mega means big, large, great. So let's talk about the megalapsakas. They're the large-souled.

Aristotle said the megalapsakas is the man who has achieved much, claimed much and deserves much. Here are the alagapsakas, the small-souled. They hate change. They love tradition. They want to do it always the same way. They fear the unknown.

They worry about everything, bless them. They want to do anything that hasn't been done. They love what is safe. They only want to walk in a path that somebody has paved. They only want to repeat an act that somebody has done.

They want a risk-free life with absolute security. They're usually melancholy. They lack the strength to move out with the church and take challenges, strike out in new ministries. They fear persecution, don't like to communicate Christ. They're afraid of opposition.

Usually sad, all the time worried, very often depressed, in despair, discouraged. And surely the little group of them in Thessalonica that everybody was trying to get moving had suffered the most from the two big problems. Problem number one was persecution.

They were getting persecuted. And Paul says he should have expected it. I read that to you in chapter 2. You should have expected it.

I told you. But they were under and they were saying, oh, oh, surely the day of the Lord is here and we've missed the rapture. This is the day of the Lord.

We're all going to be destroyed. So he has to write and say, no, it's not the day of the Lord. And then they were probably the most deeply wounded by the death of their friends and they were saying, oh, look, they died and Jesus hasn't come. They're going to miss the rapture.

Oh, woe is me. So he has to write and say, no, no, no, the dead in Christ will rise first. They'll be there. In fact, they'll get there before the rest of you do. So go get those people and comfort them with these words.

But every church has them. They have no spirit of adventure. They can't rise above their problems. They're under everything. All the issues of life are more than they can bear and they are the crushed souls. They're like weights.

You sort of have to pull them around. And often if you looked at the church as a parade, they would be the ones who carried the red flags. Stop! Everyone else is moving and they throw up the stop sign because they lack vision, they fear failure, they lack boldness.

I think down deep in their heart their hero is Indiana Jones, but they'll never admit it. Now how do you deal with these people? He says in verse 14, simply encourage them.

Beautiful word. It means to speak to someone by coming close to his side. See there aren't any shortcuts, sheep to sheep, folks. You know somebody that's fearful and worried and under despair all the time and sad, can't get above the problems of life. You know, you've got to come alongside and speak to them, develop a friendly relationship with them, has the idea of coming alongside to console, to comfort, to strengthen, to reassure, to cheer up, to refresh, to soothe.

But there's no other way than in a relationship. We can get real academic about discipleship, but this is what it's all about. The idea is a personal, intimate fellowship of Christians who are stronger.

This can include the encouragement of personal fellowship, the encouragement of prayer to the God of all encouragement, the encouragement of gospel hope, the encouragement of a secure salvation, the encouragement of God as a sovereign God with purpose and providence to affect His will, the encouragement of the love of Christ, the encouragement of the final resurrection, the encouragement of sharing the sufferings of Christ, whatever encouragement. If the church is going to be powerful and grow and be strong, it's going to be when we deal with the wayward and we deal with the worried personally. Because when the wayward get in line and the worried get in on the adventure, we've removed the impediment so the church can move.

Then there's the weak. Verse 14, he simply says, faith is weak. He doesn't have a strong enough faith to experience all of the liberty and freedom that belongs to him or her in Christ. The faith is weak. A weak faith creates a problem.

What is that problem? A weak faith means that that person is very susceptible to temptation and sin. It's a hypersensitivity to sin. In fact, they're so hypersensitive to it that they see things as sin that aren't really sin at all. And so they tend to pull back.

And Paul says you can't push that. You can't force that person who's weak in faith too fast or you'll push them into some liberty or some experience that they really aren't ready to handle, some temptation they're not ready to handle. There were some who were weak, weak in their faith. They couldn't enjoy the freedom in Christ. They were susceptible to a wounded conscience that could lead them to more sin and more weakness. But there's another and perhaps a more direct group in view and that's those that are morally weak. Paul uses this word in the New Testament most often to refer to susceptibility to sin, to just be susceptible to sin. When you're spiritually morally weak, the church is full of these kinds of people. Believe me, they are impediments and stumbling blocks.

They retired the development of the church, the growth and the power of the church. What are we to do with them? Help them. Help is such a simplistic word for such a magnificent concept in Greek. The Greek word means to hold firmly to, to hold tightly to, to cling to, to support.

To hold them up. Galatians 6, 1 says, if a brother is overtaken in a fault, you that are spiritual, what? Pick him up.

And then it says, bear one another's burden. That's the second step, hold him up. Hold him up. Support.

How do you do that? Again, it's intimacy. You come alongside. This is how the church grows.

When the sheep start to take care of the sheep, when they start to care enough to go to the wayward and admonish them, when they care enough to go to the world, when they're worried and encourage them, when they care enough to go to the weak and hold them up, that means involvement. Sometimes, and I can think of one particular young man who came to see me who was battling homosexuality, had given his life to Christ and was just in the terrible throes of massive battles with years and years of past living and homosexuality, not being able to divorce himself to it and finding himself falling victim to certain homosexual acts. And he came in in absolute despair, crushed and in tears. And he said, I can't get over...I can't overcome it.

I can't...I can't get past it. And I said, well, I want to help you. I said, I can't...I don't have the time, you know, to just be with you every day to guard you, but I tell you what I want you to do. Whether you were with somebody or whether you were just reading some material or whatever you were doing, anything that excited your homosexuality, anything that you feel was a defilement, I want you to write it down in detail and then at the end of the week I want you to bring it in so I can read all of it. But he said, there's very little on it.

Just a few times in my mind when I was battling temptation, but I never did anything. And I said, really? I said, what was the difference?

He said, you think I wanted to bring that pad in here and have you read that? Well that's a simple way for me to hold him up just by creating accountability. You've got to hold him up. You've got to get all that other stuff. We want to grow a church.

This is how you grow a church. Then there's group four, the wearisome. He says, be patient with all men. Well you have to qualify all men. The all has to refer to the people with whom we would easily become impatient. Be patient with all men. Be patient with all the men who try your patience. It's easy to get frustrated, it's easy to get angry, easy to get disappointed, discouraged, exasperated with some people. You give so much, you give so much, you give so much, you give so much.

You get so little. I've had that happen. You've had that happen in discipling relationships.

If you've discipled enough people for enough time, you know what it is to have a major disappointment, major. And the church is full of those people who sit and they get taught and they get trained and they get discipled and they get exhorted and they get strengthened, they get inspired, they get motivated, they get encouraged and they grow at an almost imperceptible speed. They never seem to be normal in their development. Everything distracts them. Everything slows them down in the race. They have a very difficult time focusing. They're undisciplined in spiritual matters, undisciplined in the means of grace. They can just really be heartbreaking.

There are many pastors who have survived the wayward, who have even survived the worried, who have survived the weak but been sacrificed on the altar of the exasperating. They've just finally caved in to the wearisome people. And they finally say to themselves, I'm pouring my whole life into this thing and the faster I move, the farther ahead I become. I can't get them moving. They're just not moving. They're trained but they don't do what we train them to do. They're taught but they don't live what we taught them to live.

That's very, very difficult. You can hear it in the voice of Jesus as He says, in exasperation to some extent, short of sin. Oh, you of little faith. I mean, when are you blockheads going to get this?

And what does He say we're to do with those people? Be patient. You say, how patient? More patient than you've been. You say, how patient? As patient as God is with you?

Oh, that patient? Hmm, that's pretty patient. We could go into the Old Testament had we time and study the patience of God. Read Exodus 34, 6.

Read Isaiah 63, verses 7, 8 and 9, lots of other places. But you know without going to a Bible verse how patient God is with you, isn't He? That's how patient you want to be with somebody else. Peter said, Lord, how patient? Seven times?

Lord said, no, 70 times seven. That patient? They keep doing the same thing. That patient? That patient? Come alongside those people who exasperate you and be patient.

Be patient. The wayward need admonishing, the worried need encouraging, the weak need support, and the wearisome need patience. You see, what it's saying is we've got to deal with each other in compassion, personal love, personal care. That's how the church grows. That's how it purges itself. Finally, the worst of all, the wicked.

What do we do with them? Well, let's meet them first there in verse 15. They've got a whole verse just for themselves. They've entered you evil, kakas, baseness, meanness, wickedness. This, I believe, is the most difficult circumstance that we as Christians face. The severest abuse, the most painful treatment is wickedness not from the world but from our brothers and sisters. That's the deepest pain. And our Christian faith must work at this level.

It must. So Paul is saying, look, there are people in the church that are going to hurt me. They're going to kill you. They're going to do evil to you. They'll harm you directly with wicked words that attack you face to face. They'll harm you indirectly by gossip and slander and evil speaking to others about you. They sometimes will harm you directly by shutting you out of their fellowship, by eliminating you from their social circle, by keeping you out of their ministry because of jealousy, envy, hate, bitterness, or anger. They may harm you directly by stealing your virtue in sexual sin, breaking up your marriage, taking something precious, influencing one of your children toward wickedness. They will harm you indirectly by leading you into sin. There are people in the church, believe me, who will do wickedness against other people. Before you do that, you need to take a very good look at Matthew 18 because Matthew 18, Jesus says, And if the eye is doing the harm, rip it out. Woe to the one who puts down the stumbling block to one of the little ones who belongs to Me.

They're so precious to Me that My angels are always beholding the face of the Father who is looking at His little ones and when the Father's face wrinkles with concern, the angels go to the aid of the little ones. So if you're fooling with God's people, you are fooling with those precious to God. But nonetheless, witlessly, you are fooling with those precious to God. Finally, Christians will sin against other Christians.

And what are we to do about it? How do we treat the wicked? He says, See that no one repays another with evil for evil. You don't retaliate. You don't retaliate. That's a command to the whole church in the plural imperative. There's no place for retaliation anywhere in the church. There's no place anywhere for personal vengeance. The only one who has a right to retaliate is whom?

God. Listen to Romans chapter 12 which is a very close parallel to this text. In Romans 12, Paul says it explicitly. Verse 19, Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God.

Don't you step into the gap and take your own revenge. You leave room for the wrath of God for it is written. And here he's quoting out of the Old Testament, Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.

Vengeance is mine. I will repay. I'll take care of that, not you. On the other hand, if your enemy is hungry, you feed him. And if he is thirsty, you give him drink. And in so doing, you will heap burning coals of guilt upon his head. Don't be overcome by the evil he does to you, but overcome that evil with the good you do to him.

See that? Now you can go back to 1 Thessalonians. The only one who has a right to retaliate is God. You say, what about an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life? That was a governmental mandate that the government had the right to punish equally the criminal.

The government had the right to exact a life for a life, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. That was never instruction for personal vengeance. That's what Jesus intended the disciples to understand and the Jews to hear in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, Yeah, you think you're supposed to hate your enemy.

You've perverted the law of God to that degree. I'm here to tell you, you are to love your enemy and you're to do good to those that do evil to you. So how do we treat those who do evil to us? We always, always, always seek after, pursue, pursue eagerly, pursue zealously that which is good, beautiful, noble, excellent. In other words, you say, Well, in spite of what they've done to me, I'm going to do everything I can to do what is good to them, to do what is noble and excellent to them.

In an act of love, I am going to return their hostility with goodness and not just for them, but for everybody. For all men, especially the household of faith, Paul said elsewhere, but to everyone, a growing flock...a growing flock is characterized by movement in faith, love, purity toward the fullness of the stature of Christ. That's a growing church. That growth is impeded by the wayward and the worried and the weak and the wearisome and the wicked. And if the church is going to grow, it isn't going to grow because somebody figures out some strategy to go around the problem.

It's going to grow because the shepherds and the sheep come together in intimate relationships in which they admonish the wayward, encourage the worried, hold up the weak, are long suffering with the wearisome and render loving goodness to the wicked. 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. That's John MacArthur showing you how to deal with problem people in your local church. John's titled our current study on grace to you, The Bible-Driven Church. Now John, dealing with problem people, that's something pastors do a lot of, isn't it? And I know you've talked before about the church being like a hospital. It's a place where imperfect people can come for healing, people can come for help with their problems. So is biblical preaching from the pulpit the only thing people should need from their churches, or is that just part of what we do?

I know it's the main thing. What else do you do as a pastor to help problem people? Well, the Word of God is clear that you are the shepherd of the sheep, and the Lord gives a beautiful picture of what that looks like in John 10, where you have the shepherd being the door, and as the sheep go in and out, he looks at every sheep, he checks every sheep to see where they're wounded, where they need oil to heal the wound. If one of them goes astray, he goes and finds the sheep and brings it back. All of those are pictures of pastoral responsibility. Dealing with problem people is certainly what we do, because there are no people other than problem people. That's right.

So that would include us. We all face problems in life, and there's a trend that is really not good in the evangelical church, and that is that preachers become sort of event speakers. They show up, come out on stage, and give a talk, and then disappear back into the darkness, and no one has a connection with them on a personal level. That is not what the Bible describes as a shepherd. It's your hands on with people, you're binding up their wombs, you're lifting them up when they're weak and weary, you're trying to find them when they're wandering astray. All of that is the essence of pastoral ministry.

That's why I have no interest in a multi-screen, multi-location, flat-screen video church. Where is the shepherd? You preach the truth, and then you live the truth, and then you with your own hands and heart and feet, you apply the truth in the lives of the people in your flock, and that's a biblical pastoral ministry.

Yes, it is. And friend, to make sure you know what God expects from pastors and elders, and what God expects from you as you serve in your church, I recommend you pick up John's book titled The Master's Plan for the Church. To place your order, contact us today. Call 800-55-GRACE or go to our website, gty.org. The Master's Plan for the Church will help you understand God's design for the church and the role he wants you to have in your local congregation. The book looks at the foundations of a strong church, the qualities of an excellent servant, and how to do the Lord's work the Lord's way. To get your copy of The Master's Plan for the Church, shop online at gty.org or call us toll-free at 800-55-GRACE. Also let me remind you about our Q&A line. If you want to ask John a question about the church, theology, or really any biblical topic, call our Q&A line and leave your question.

John might answer it in an upcoming broadcast. The Q&A number is 661-295-6288. That's 661-295-6288.

You can also find that number at our website, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for starting your week off with Grace To You, and be here tomorrow as John looks at why you can know true biblical joy no matter what circumstances you face. Don't miss the next 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.