How to respond to unbelieving toxicity
Big Idea: Toxicity towards the Lord’s messengers of grace festers division, forms hostile alliances and can make the messengers flee.
1. Targeting the Lord’s messengers of grace
2. The Testifier’s response to toxicity
3. The prognosis of unbelieving toxicity
4. The prevention and treatment of unbelieving toxicity
Over the past two years, the phrase ‘toxic culture’ is gaining a lot of attention in our community.
Have you heard of the phrase?
Megan Woods, a University of Tasmania senior lecturer, describes a toxic workplace culture as one that creates and perpetuates fear or feelings of being unsafe.
Famous talk hosts from America, like Kelly Clarkson and Jimmy Fallon, had to apologise for the toxic culture of their workplace.
Other toxic workplaces on the news include councils, companies, charities and even hospitals have been named as places where the work environment is toxic.
I suspect even some of us here have experienced a toxic workplace as well, whether it’s where we’re working now, or where we used to work or even where we’re going now for school.
It’s a phrase that has become popular recently but toxic workplaces have been around for a very long time.
In fact, it’s what we read in today’s Bible passage.
In today’s passage, we’ll see a couple of faithful Christian leaders working in a toxic culture.
How do faithful Christian messengers respond to a toxic culture?
Please open up with me to Acts chapter four beginning from verse 1.
We’ll see four things:
1. Targeting the Lord’s messengers of grace
2. The Testifier’s response to toxicity
3. The prognosis of unbelieving toxicity
4. The prevention and treatment of unbelieving toxicity
There’s a lot in the passage so you may want to jot down some notes and questions in your Monthly Companion Booklet.
Let’s pray before we begin, “Father, thank you for giving us your message of grace. By your Spirit, please soften our hearts and open our eyes so that we can see the glorious Jesus even more clearly. For we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Targeting the Lord’s messengers of grace
Last week, we read that Paul and Barnabas were sent from the Church at Antioch to go on a mission trip.
They first went to the seaport of Seleucia, set sail for the island of Cyprus, and from there sailed north to Perga, and they stopped by briefly up north in Pisidian Antioch.
In the city of Antioch, Paul told them the good news about Jesus in the synagogue, where the Jews worshipped God.
However, some Jews who were jealous began opposing Paul.
In response, Paul and Barnabas said that they would leave the Jews and they would go to the Gentiles instead.
And so, they left the Jews in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch and headed towards Iconium.
Where did they go once they got to Iconium?
They first went to the Jewish synagogue, as usual.
In time, they would take their message to the Gentiles, but they still wanted to see the Jewish people know about Jesus so that they could be saved!
Look with me at verse one: In Iconium they entered the Jewish synagogue, as usual, and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed.
God was gracious to them both because, through their speech, a great number of Jews and Greeks believed!
Many Jews and Greeks were coming to know the Lord Jesus!
That’s awesome, isn’t it?
As awesome as it was, there were some who hated what the apostles were doing.
Look with me at verse two, “But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.”
There were unbelieving Jews at Iconium who stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds (literally, they poisoned their souls) against the brothers.
Over the past year, people all around the world heard about the Australian killer, Erin Patterson.
Erin Patterson cooked and served beef Wellington at her home in Leongatha, Victoria, a dish that required mushrooms.
But what made this dish of beef Wellington fatal was that Erin Patterson deliberately used death cap mushrooms.
Last week, she was found guilty of murdering three relatives who ate the and making a fourth person seriously ill.
Two of those who died were Don and Gail Patterson, former Christian missionaries.
The third was Heather Wilkinson, Erin Patterson’s mother-in-law, who was also the wife of the local Christian pastor, Ian Wilkinson.
It was a horrible and cold-blooded murder.
The murder weapon was a small but highly toxic piece of the death cap mushroom.
Like Erin Patterson, the unbelieving Jews in Iconium were putting small, and maybe even large pieces of poison into the hearts, minds and lives of the Gentiles against the Christian brothers.
The Bible didn’t say what kind of poison they were, but it wasn’t mushrooms. Death cap mushrooms might cause horrible deaths to the body, but these unbelieving Jews were poisoning the souls of these Gentiles.
Now, notice that the poison these unbelieving Jews weren’t just targeted at the souls of the Gentiles; they were poisons that were used against the Christian brothers.
They were whispering things in the ears of the Gentiles to turn them against Paul and Barnabas, the very people who had the message to save the Gentile people. Perhaps they were whispering lies about what these Christian leaders taught, “What they said about God isn’t true!”
But more likely, they were probably whispering gossip and personal attacks on the Christian leaders, “You know, he’s not really that good of a person.”
Or “Don’t take Paul and Barnabas seriously; they don’t know what they’re talking about”.
They were putting pieces of lies into the hearts of Paul’s and Barnabas’ hearers, to turn the Gentile hearers into a toxic, unbelieving community.
The Bible is full of warnings about speaking poisonous accusations against one another, and especially against Christian leaders.
Look with me at James 3:7-8, ”Every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and fish is tamed and has been tamed by humankind, 8 but no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”
The tongue is poisonous – it can say things that bring deadly consequences.
This especially applies to Christian leaders.
Look with me at 1 Timothy 5:19. “Don’t accept an accusation against an elder unless it is supported by two or three witnesses.”
That’s not saying that we can’t speak up when someone, including leaders, does wrong.
However, before we speak, we need to think carefully.
Is it true, is it kind, is it necessary?
Or is it toxic? Or worse, will it poison someone so that they will make the whole Church toxic?
This doesn’t just apply to the Church, of course.
This applies in your workplace, in your school, and in your homes.
Your words and your actions will have consequences.
Will they contribute to the toxicity of the place, or do they bring healing in a toxic environment?
Just as a small amount of toxin can poison the whole body, a small, unbelieving lie, a vicious whisper, or a loveless action can poison a whole community.
It’s particularly bad to bring toxicity into a Church setting because the Lord Jesus intended the Church to be a place of healing, not a place to poison one another.
Last week, I spoke with a sister who shared that someone she knew stopped attending church because they came across something on the internet that portrayed churches in general in a negative light.
The person was a false teacher who was spreading lies online.
Unfortunately, there are many false teachers like this, both online and in person. This false teacher planted a poisonous lie in our sister’s friend, and unless God shows mercy to the friend and people like her, they will continue on their way to God’s eternal judgment, believing a poisonous lie.
Don’t fall into the trap of being a means of turning the Church into a toxic environment.
Don’t lie, don’t curse others, and resist the urge to spread gossip and rumors, especially against Christian leaders.
Instead, see how the Ultimate Testifier responds to unbelieving toxicity.
The Testifier’s response to toxicity
Look with me at verse 3, “So they stayed there a long time and spoke boldly for the Lord, who testified to the message of his grace by enabling them to do signs and wonders.”
There’s a little word in the original text, translated in our English translation but not in the Chinese, that makes this such a strange response.
It’s the little word ‘So’.
The unbelieving Jews were poisoning the souls of the Gentiles against the apostles, so they stayed there a long time.
Their response to an unbelieving, toxic culture was to stay there a long time. Instead of scaring the apostles away, the toxic culture made the apostles stayed longer.
When I was studying at Moore College, we would often go on a short mission away to share the good news of Jesus. One of the things we did was to knock on the doors of our neighborhood we were visiting to share the gospel.
It was hard and humbling work.
We knocked on many doors, but either there was no answer or people refused to let us in.
One man even rudely closed the door on us before we could finish introducing ourselves.
Instead of giving up, this incident actually made me more determined to keep going to different doors.
Why? Because I wasn’t going to let this man stop me from sharing the message of Jesus with the residents of this suburb.
With people like him, it was obvious that this suburb needed to know about Jesus!
Despite the toxicity created by unbelieving Jews, Paul and Barnabas continued to speak about Jesus at Iconium.
In the face of this toxic, unbelieving culture, they remained faithful, boldly proclaiming the Lord’s message.
How could they endure the toxicity directed at them?
Look with me at verse three, “So they stayed there a long time and spoke boldly for the Lord, who testified to the message of his grace by enabling them to do signs and wonders.”
It was because the Lord Jesus was their ultimate Testifier.
Jesus himself testified to Paul and Barnabas’s message of His grace.
Paul and Barnabas were merely servants of the Lord Jesus, carrying out His instructions and sharing His message of grace with the people of Iconium.
It was precisely this message of grace that would heal the toxicity in the hearts of the people of Iconium.
Jesus affirmed their legitimacy by enabling them to perform signs and wonders. While the Bible doesn’t record individual signs and wonders, the earlier passages in Acts suggest they probably included many healings of the sick, the paralysed, and maybe even bringing the dead back to life.
Perhaps they healed those who were poisoned.
By the grace of the Lord Jesus, people deemed hopeless found hope, and those on the brink of death were given a second chance at life.
These were all signs and wonders the Lord Jesus gave through Paul and Barnabas to affirm their truthfulness in speaking about the Lord Jesus.
Isn’t it good to have the Lord Jesus as your Testifier, affirming what you’ve said?
However, this doesn’t happen in every Christian mission.
Not every mission has spectacular signs and wonders.
While the Lord doesn’t always perform the same kind of signs and wonders as Paul and Barnabas, He occasionally provides glimpses of His grace to affirm His work through the people he’s sent.
This may be an answer to a bold (and seemingly impossible) prayer request, the repentance and salvation of a stubborn and toxic person in the community, or even the inexplicable healing of a terminally ill patient.
These may not be as spectacular as the signs and wonders performed by Paul and Barnabas, but they serve the same purpose: they affirm that Lord’s messengers faithfully and truthfully proclaim the sweet message of His grace in a world that desperately needs to hear it.
While nowhere near the same level as the signs and wonders in Acts, God is doing something remarkable in our church at the moment.
For a long time, we’ve been exploring how to better utilise our site.
One of the four goals we set for our five-year mission plan in 2019 was to produce a campus feasibility masterplan.
We’ve been exploring various options to enhance our use of the site.
Since then, we’ve engaged in significant projects to improve our church’s meeting spaces.
We renovated the toilets, repainted the church, and made the backyard accessible to the community once again.
Over the past year, the wardens, the Parish Council, and I, with the assistance of the diocese, have been negotiating with School Infrastructure NSW to partner in the redevelopment of Kogarah Public School.
After much negotiation, we’re very close to entering into an agreement with them, allowing them to use our rectory and backyard while the new school hall and building are constructed.
I’ve made it clear to the school that we’d like to move into the hall once it’s ready.
How is this remarkable?
As a Church, we’re anticipating meeting every Sunday in a new, much larger hall that we didn’t pay to build.
We’ll also have significantly more room for morning tea if we can use the church grounds and the school grounds.
If the agreement goes ahead, they’ll be paying us during this time.
And the funds they provide will allow me and my family to move into a new house by next Friday.
With the Parish Council’s help, we’ll use the money to enhance the safety of the church’s car entrance for everyone.
Our Lord Jesus didn’t just give us a campus feasibility plan; he’s planned it and even prepared the funding for us.
Isn’t that an incredible answer to prayer?
I’ve been involved with this since the beginning and I can hardly believe that it’s happening!
On paper, there’s nothing about our Church that we can boast about.
However, we do boast in our Lord Jesus, who is with us and gives us according to his marvellous grace.
If you haven’t thanked him yet, please do so in your prayers today.
Friends, don’t take this for granted.
Our Lord Jesus has given us all these so that we can keep pointing people to him and speaking boldly for him.
The prognosis of unbelieving toxicity
However, even as the Lord Jesus gives signs and wonders affirming that his messengers have been telling the truth about Him, there will be those who refuse to recognise the Lord’s grace.
Back in Iconium, the people of the city were divided – some sided with the Jews and others with the apostles.
Even with something as extraordinary as the signs and wonders, the unbelieving toxicity that poisoned the community sank deep into their souls.
It has blinded them from seeing the sweetness and the glory of the Lord’s signs and wonders.
The prognosis of those with unbelieving toxicity is grim.
What’s a prognosis?
According to the Cleveland Clinic, prognosis is a medically informed prediction about the likely outcome of a condition.
It’s when a medical professional tells you what’s likely to happen to you according to your medical condition.
For example, if you have a serious condition, they will be able to give you statistics about your survival rate (for example, whether you will still be alive in five years) or treatment success rate (how likely you would be cured following a treatment).
What’s the prognosis of someone who doesn’t treat his or her unbelieving toxicity?
They will die in their unbelief and after death, suffer under the judgement of God.
What are the symptoms? There are many, but a few were mentioned in today’s passage.
These include becoming toxic towards the Lord’s message and his messengers, remaining stubbornly blind to the testimonies of Jesus himself, and siding with those who actively feed toxic messages about the Lord’s messengers.
In fact, those who have ingested unbelieving toxicity will form hostile alliances with others who share their toxicity.
In Iconium, the Gentiles, Jews, and their rulers banded together to mistreat and even stone Paul and Barnabas.
This is a twisted reflection of what the Gospel does.
The Gospel was proclaimed to Iconium, and many people, both Jews and Greeks, believed the message.
However, the lie of unbelieving toxicity was whispered to and believed by the Gentiles, eventually finding its way to the souls of Jews and the rulers as well.
This hostile alliance led to Paul and Barnabas fleeing from Iconium.
It might have looked like a victory for the hostile alliance, but it was actually a tragic loss for Iconium.
They chased away the messengers of the Lord, whose message of grace, that is, the gospel, is the only cure for their toxicity.
Without the gospel, they would sink deeper into unbelieving toxicity.
It will only be by God’s mercy that his messengers will ever return to Iconium.
As for Paul and Barnabas, they continued to preach the gospel wherever they went.
They could have stayed and fought to continue preaching the gospel at Iconium.
However, they were working according to God’s timing and they stayed at Iconium long enough.
God’s time of mercy in providing the apostles to the people of Iconium had come to an end.
It was time for them to move on.
I thank God for ministers and missionaries who faithfully remained to teach in toxic and hostile environments.
Despite the hostility and toxicity they faced, they kept proclaiming the Lord’s message of grace.
However, there are times when the toxicity and hostility have grown so overwhelming that they have had to leave.
I have a good friend who’s done a lot of research about ministers.
She’s found that in 2023, 35% of Australian ministers seriously considered quitting because of the stress of their job, loneliness and the suffering their family endures.
Some had to face conflicts, bullying, violence, slander on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis.
It’s no wonder that so many ministers thought about quitting.
Like Paul and Barnabas before them, ministers today can experience overwhelming stress from individuals and alliances that chase them out of ministry.
The prevention and treatment of unbelieving toxicity
What can we do about it? How do we prevent and treat unbelieving toxicity?
The prevention and the treatment is one and the same: it’s the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ guide our thoughts and our speeches.
Avoid exposing yourself to toxic influences that harm the gospel.
Remember, even small amounts of toxins can be fatal.
Instead, immerse yourself in the gospel of our Lord Jesus, as revealed in the Bible. Read the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but also explore the rest of the Bible.
Ultimately, the Bible is all about the good news of Jesus.
Don’t spread poison among the Lord’s people.
Be wise and avoid being stirred up by poisonous thoughts that contradict Jesus’ teachings.
Don’t form hostile alliances against those who bring God’s word to us, including KOGKids leaders, KOGYouth leaders, KOGGrowth group leaders, me, and Peter.
And let the gospel of our Lord Jesus treat our unbelieving toxicity.
There’s a cure to our unbelieving toxicity against the Lord and his messengers of grace – it’s the gospel.
It’s by God’s grace that toxic unbelievers can become loving believers.
Turn to the Lord Jesus in repentance and let him transform us by His Spirit – the Holy Spirit.
If someone who had shown you unbelieving toxicity has wronged you, forgive that person.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Don’t let that poison fester any further.
Sadly, there will be times when the hostility is too overwhelming.
Things won’t always work out just as they didn’t for the Apostles to stay at Iconium.
When that happens, keep trusting in the Lord, remembering that he’s still in control.
One Christian pastor who had experienced pain as a result of toxicity targeted at him was Pastor Ian Wilkinson.
Pastor Ian is the husband of the wife who died at the hands of Erin Patterson.
Six months after his wife died, he said this to his congregation:
“Wednesday was the day, the anniversary day of my induction as pastor.
Friday was my birthday to turn 70.
And yesterday was our 45th wedding anniversary.
Let me encourage you to keep on going.
The ways, sometimes are hard, but, God is good.
He is with us.”
It was painful for Pastor Ian, but he recognised that God is in control, even in the midst of tragedy.
Death will not have the last word.
The last word is and always will belong to the Lord Jesus.
How do faithful Christian messengers respond to a toxic culture?
We will keep proclaiming the Lord Jesus.
Toxicity towards the Lord’s messengers of grace festers division, forms hostile alliances and can make the messengers flee.
Don’t let toxicity fester; instead, let the grace of our Lord grow in you.
Here are the three questions for this week:
What does toxicity against the Lord’s messengers look like?
What happens if we let toxicity against the Lord’s messengers fester?
What steps can we take under God to prevent and to treat unbelieving toxicity?
Let’s pray, “Father, thank you for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loves and rescues flawed and toxic people like us. Please forgive us for our sin, our toxicity against you. By your Holy Spirit, do something remarkable in us – transform us so that we will be more like your Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of our stiff-neckedness, please open our eyes to see your signs and wonders by faith. Father, as you grow your Church here in Kogarah, may we be signs that point people to Jesus, in whose name we pray, Amen.”