Dealing with Problem People – John MacArthur – Grace to You
This message is an excellent supplement to our study in Revelation as we go through chapters 2-3 regarding the seven churches. The following excerpts should whet your appetite. 🙂
- Henry Ward Beecher once 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 inequity, 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.