In this insightful message, Pastor Gary Thomas at Cherry Hills Community Church explores the Traits of Toxic People, helping us identify and understand the challenging individuals who may carry spiritually and emotionally harmful characteristics. With biblical wisdom, he encourages us to set healthy boundaries, discern the impact of such relationships, and lean on God for strength to cultivate life-giving connections.
Joshua 24:15
Revelation 3:20
1 Corinthians 14:32
John 8:44
John 10:10
Colossians 3:12, 14
Colossians 3:8-9
Matthew 7:6
Acts 13:9-10
John 8:59
Matthew 12:14-15
Matthew 10:16-17
Genesis 49:23
Genesis 49:24
Names are a tricky thing. Have you ever thought that when you’re naming your child, you’re trying to choose a name that they will live with for maybe 80 years? You’re saying, will it still be in fashion? So like imagine if you had to choose your daughter’s wedding dress on the day she was born saying, how will I know that that’s in fashion 30 years from now? I think that’s what my parents face when they named me Gary. My wife was behind two women at a coffee shop a few years back and she heard him say quite loudly, Gary, they named their baby boy Gary. Like, that’s so bad. It’s almost funny. But why? While names can be tricky, labels can be as well. But I talked about last week in a series, it’s not me, it’s you. That sometimes that’s a label that we need to keep.
It’s important. If you weren’t here, I’ll give you a little bit of backup. We talked about to do the work of God, to glorify God. We do that by producing much fruit. That means investing in reliable people, which is why we need to watch out for toxic people who dissuade us from healthy relationships and doing the work that God has called us to do. And we define toxic people, not as just difficult people. Every toxic person is difficult, but not every difficult person is toxic, but are particularly kind of difficulty, the kind of people that are taking pieces out of you. So there’s not enough of you left to be engaged in healthy relationships or to do the work that God has called you to do. One of the members after last week said, Gary, I get that piece bit about pieces. My toxic person hasn’t been taking pieces out of me.
She’s been taking chunks outta me. So if that resonates at all, we’re we’re gonna do this week is to get a little more specific, we’re gonna talk about three of the most common traits among toxic people. So you can set yourself free to do the work that God has called you to do. But can I just say, as a pastor, I want us to approach this in a healthy way instead of just saying, this is what we want to look out for and this is what we wanna identify in other people. I hope we’ll let the Holy Spirit speak into our own hearts and that we might say, God, if, if there is any part of this in me, if I’m drifting in this direction of being toxic to others, please point it out. That’s not how I wanna be. So let’s pray toward that end.
Before we get started, father I, I thank you for your love for each person here and how your word is such a helpful tool to warn them about those that Jesus warns us about. But I pray that your spirit would be very active in the service. Open up our minds and hearts to your conviction that we could be aware if there are areas that we need to address. We just wanna be a people in a church that honors you and we pray for your help in doing that. In Jesus name, amen. The first trait of toxic people that I want to talk about are control mongers. Control mongers, toxic people want to control you. Now, you’ve heard me say this so many times, Matthew 6 33, every Christian should have as their first name to seek first what The kingdom of God. That’s what we’re called to do and that’s what I as a pastor, a brother, a father, a son should encourage you to do.
I want you to give your heart to seek first the kingdom of God. Not what I want you to do, but what God wants you to do. In all my interactions, that has to be my focus. Now, if I was just building my own kingdom, I would say to my kids, God’s will is for you to live across the street from me. As a pastor, I would say to to Theresa and Matt Weisner, who are moving to Iowa, that can’t be God’s will for you. We need you here. But it undeniably is no. We wanna free people up to seek first the kingdom of God. But for toxic people, they want you to seek first their kingdom. You will do what they want you to do. You will say what they want you to say. You will believe what they want you to believe, or they will unleash a whole strategy.
They’ll flatter you, they’ll attack you. They’ll threaten you because their purpose is to get you to fulfill their agenda. Now, this could not be more distant from who God is. When I was writing the book, when to Walk Away, what struck me is how unrolling God is. Even though he’s almighty, even though he’s perfect. In fact, if he were to control me, I would make better choices. And what says I wouldn’t mind so much, but that’s not how God operates. There’s a famous passage in the Old Testament. Moses has died. Joshua has risen up. Now he’s in charge. They’ve seen the miracles, they’ve heard the words of God. But Joshua says, you gotta make a choice. Joshua 24 15, choose for yourselves this day whom you will choose. Then you go to the last book in the Bible, revelation chapter three, and you hear Jesus saying this, here I am, I stand at the door and I’m gonna kick it in.
If you won’t open it, I’ve got my disciples and angels with a battering ram. I will have my way. No, if you’re watching online, you don’t see these slides. This is not what he says, this is, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person and they with me. Throughout scripture, God proclaims his truth and he tries to persuade this is what is true. This is what I want you to do, but you must make a choice. Now, his enemy, Satan operates an entirely different dynamic. The New Testament has several instances of people who are called the the, the possessed by demons, demonic possession where Satan just takes them over. You never see God doing that. Not once does the Bible talk about God possession, say, well, aren’t we filled with the spirit?
Yes, but Paul says to the Corinthians, very clearly, the spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. So humans attempting to control other humans is a direct denial of the nature and ways of God. Kurt and I are committed to teach you and persuade you, but if we ever try to control you or manipulate you, that’s spiritual abuse. It’s why I’ve mentioned, I mentioned this last week, we’ve got Trisha’s book out in the back. You are safe. Now, she’s a member here. Her story of spiritual abuse, she’s such a great writer and there is a twist in this book that will totally catch you by surprise. When she told me she was writing a book on spiritual abuse, I thought, okay, and I was like, wasn’t expecting that. But we want you to be aware. We don’t put any of us above drifting in the wrong direction.
We think a healthy church is aware of all of these dynamics and control is one to watch out for. Now, caveat, if you’re eight years old, I don’t want you to come up to me, say, pastor Gary, I think my parents are toxic because they want me to go to bed at 9:00 PM and they won’t let me eat Skittles for breakfast. Okay, we’re we’re talking about exercising proper authority and adult to adult contact. The second mark of toxic people is that they have a murderous spirit. There’s a swath of death everywhere they go, they destroy family gatherings. You know, if this person is at the family gathering, they’re gonna cause drama. They’re gonna make it an upheaval. They destroy office environments. Instead of working and helping people produce a product or a offer, a service, they’re getting throwing intrigue in there. They’re getting people to gossip.
They’re spreading division. They might wanna do that with the church. We’re gonna take over if you individually interact with them, we talked about this last week. They will murder your joy, your peace, your happiness, your sense of sanity. You just see a wide swath of death everywhere they go. Jesus called the Pharisees out as toxic when he said in John 8 44, you are of your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning. Now, murder is more than bodily assault. There are other passages of Jesus where it can even be malice. So it could be the murder of reputation, it could be the murder of ministry, family gatherings, happiness, joy, and peace. It’s interesting. In the New Testament, the word encourage is used two dozen times. Toxic people seek to discourage. Why? Because they’re bringing death.
Discouragement brings death and it causes people to give up. It’s a murderous spirit. Encouragement, which is what we should focus on, brings life. It keeps people and vision alive. You see, a big difference between Jesus and Satan should be a big difference between the followers of Jesus and the followers of Satan. And that is what’s one’s bringing life and one is bringing death. John 10 10, Jesus says, Satan, the thief comes only to still and kill and destroy. That’s what he brings with him. But here’s Jesus, I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. So it’s a new way of looking at your interactions. Do they bring life or death? Do they bring encouragement or discouragement? Do they bring vision or despair? And this can happen in intimate relationships. Tom brought so much death to his wife Alice. He brought death to her when he had his first affair so that she felt like she wasn’t beautiful or cherished or wanted or desirable.
Then he started to bring death to her sanity by denying the affair that was going on, making her think she’d lost her mind until it was proven that no, in fact, he was cheating on her. He brought death to her occupation by always assuming she would pick up her practice. She was a counselor. She had to develop individual clients. If he got a better offer somewhere else, she had to follow. He didn’t care what it did to her calling in Christ. He murdered her schedule regularly. If he needed her on a Wednesday night, she had to be there regardless of if she had appointments with clients or friends. And then he started murdering her reputation when he wanted to have a second affair. She saw the same signs going on with the first affair, strong Christian woman. And she warned him. She said, Tom, I’ve forgiven you once for this.
If this happens again, I will divorce you. Believe it or not, Tom had, it wasn’t pastoral ministry, but it was a Christian ministry. He knew it could wreck him if he was found out to have an affair and divorce his wife. So he sat about murdering his wife’s reputation, asking people in the church to pray for her insecurity and jealousy and mental health issues. And when he destroyed it enough, he divorced her because everybody thought, what else is he gonna do? And almost immediately married the woman that he denied having the second affair with. My son brought his Facebook post to the attention the day he got remarried. It was so disgusting. He said, I want the world to meet Mrs. Tom Atkins, obviously not his real name. And that had been Alice’s name. Now it’s kind of a narcissistic way to announce your life wife to the world, but, but it’s what Alice had thought of herself.
It’s like she’s gone now. And here’s the thing, I’ve spent my life trying to encourage marriages and bring life into marriages. But we have to know what is going on with toxic people because it is not God honoring to all but spiritually murder a person like that. That’s what toxic people do. A third trait of toxic people. I, I was so naive to this. I didn’t know why anybody would wanna be this way. But they love to hate. They love to hate. I’m one of the 15% of the population that just loaves cilantro. Do I have any fellow cilantro loafers with me? 85% of you think it’s delicious. I can’t stand it. And the the people that like cilantro say, oh yeah, you’re one of those that think that cilantro tastes like soap. No, that’s an insult to soap. I would suck on a bar of soap before I’ll put cilantro in my food and just a little bit of it wrecks it.
I call it the adolescent of herbs. Notice me, notice me. Notice me. I mean, just wants all the attention. But while we have different physical taste buds, there are different spiritual taste buds. Some actions and virtues and character traits should be delicious to us and some should be repugnant. But toxic people love to hate. What should be repugnant to us is something that they love. The list of good healthy traits. Paul lists in Colossians three, 12 and 14. And this is the beautiful person, compassion and kindness, which is the opposite of murder. Humility, which is the opposite of control. I don’t want to control you. I want to serve you gentleness, patience, and love. That’s the opposite of hate. That’s what we should aspire to. That’s what we should feel comfortable with. This is a healthy God-honoring life. Toxic people are marked by Paul elsewhere earlier in Colossians verses eight and nine.
He describes anger, rage, malice, which is ill will towards someone slander filthy language and lying and see with toxic people. It’s these latter acts that make ’em come alive. They never have more energy when they’re attacking somebody online or gossiping about somebody at church or causing a fight at the office or blowing apart a family event. That’s when they feel excited and energized and they just love it because to them, a healthy marriage, a healthy holiday, a healthy church is boring. It’s not delicious. To them, it’s repugnant. Now, there are two ways to air here. One is never admitting someone is toxic. And some very well-meaning Christians fall into that. They don’t always think it’s me. It’s not you, because that leaves them vulnerable to the prey of toxic people. And it gets in the way of them helping others be freed from toxic people.
The other error, of course, is assuming too many people are toxic. It’s a strong label. I’ll admit that. And I’m a little bit nervous because if if, if you think there are hundreds of toxic people in your life, you’re probably defining it a little too broadly because I’ve found that those who are most toxic are quickest to apply the toxic label to others, which makes me uncomfortable when I wrote a book about it. But it’s what I felt like God called me to do. But we need to distinguish between toxic acts and toxic people. When I read that list, anger, rage, mouth slander, filthy language and lying. A lot’s gonna, I do that sometimes I talk about control. Oh, I’ve done that. But here’s the difference. When a, when a mother has a son who’s been in and out of rehab a dozen times, she’s gonna be sorely tempted to control him.
Not because she’s toxic, because her heart of love is breaking for what she sees her son is getting into. Jack Deere wrote about being married to an alcoholic wife and he tried to control her because she was destroying her relationship with her kids. She was destroying their marriage. She was destroying her health until he woke up and said, look, I was asking her to act like an adult, but I was treating her like a child. Control is wrong and it doesn’t work. But it’s not because he had a toxic heart, it’s because he wanted his family to be healed. But see, so individual acts don’t make a person Toxic. Toxic describes someone who feels comfortable in those acts, energized by those acts. Who makes those acts, the common policy of their relationships to toxic people. Those things, they don’t stink. They enjoy the stink. They like it, they love it with all apologies to Tim McGraw. They want some more of it. Have you ever heard that song? Let’s let Tim preach to us for a second.
I I love it. I want some more of it. That’s what toxic
People are saying when they get into those things. Now. Now men, David Brooks has written about what he calls the resume virtues and the eulogy virtues. And we men tend to focus on the resume virtues. I’ve accomplished this, I’ve done that. I’ve made this much money. This is my golf handicap or whatever. This is how many animals I put up on my wall. The eulogy virtues are what Christ calls us to. It’s what our families want of us as fathers, as children. They want to be married to a man. They want to be raised by a man who’s, he was so compassionate. I remember dad, he was so kind. He was so patient with me. His love lifted me up every day. That’s what we should aspire to. That’s what we should focus on. We don’t wanna be remembered as men who provided really well and were at the practices, but we were always angry. We were using filthy language. We were doing all of that. Wives, isn’t that what you want? Is that what you want? If you do, I’m gonna let you sing along with Tim McGraw. Tell your husband Sink. Your husband’s right here. 1, 2, 3,
I, I love it. I want some more. Okay, I try.
Maybe y’all just aren’t into country music. All right, but there we go. If you’re trying to discern then whether you’re dealing with a truly toxic person, finding that name or label, here’s some questions. Now, if you can’t remember this or write it down, all of these are on the app every week. All of the slides that you see, it can be found on the app. And here’s some questions to consider. Do your interactions with them require long periods for you to recover? Does your relationship with them destroy your peace, your joy, your strength, and your hope? Are they interfering with your availability for and participation in other healthy relationships? Do they exhibit a murderous spirit? Do you just see a wide swath of death everywhere they go? Are they controlling? Are they trying to manipulate you even though you think they’re taking you in the wrong direction?
Do you feel minimized by them dehumanized to be around them? Does the person seem to come alive when exhibiting anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language and lying? Lemme stress. All of these don’t have to be true in the wrong concentration. One of them can be enough for you to say, I can’t be who God called me to be. I can’t do what God has called me to be. If I’m around this person. This is toxic enough that I need to learn to walk away. So I wanna bring in a little bit of last week, you can hear it on the app if you didn’t hear it about the need to play defense. We want to go on the offense and produce fruit, but Jesus is the one who warned us about playing defense. Remember Matthew seven, six, Jesus is talking, don’t give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs. Or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces.
I’m just trying to help you understand and label the dogs and the pigs and some of you’re appalled that a pastor would say that it makes you so uncomfortable that we would ever use that label or talk to others just like some of you can’t believe that people would name their baby Gary, how? How could this pass or talk about dogs and pigs? We wanna think the best of others. And I love that about you. And it was so hard for me. I talked about last week how I never imagined it could be God honoring to walk away from a relationship like that until I saw how often Jesus did. And the same thing is true this week with applying labels. It felt so wrong until I saw how often Jesus did it. We’ve already talked about Matthew seven, six when Jesus refers to spiritual dogs and pigs.
In Luke 1332. Jesus calls Herod a fox. Now, if you’re my age, I was in high school in the seventies and 1980 when I wore my star jeans and clogs and had long feathered hair. Somebody called me a fox, it would make my weak. Herod didn’t feel that way when Jesus called him out as a fox. In his famous seven woes speech in Matthew 23, Jesus called out the Pharisees saying they were blind fools, hypocrites, blind guides and snakes referring to Judas in John six 70. He said, yet one of you is a devil. There are other places I don’t have time to get into, but I wanna show how the disciples followed this same practice. The Apostle Paul in Acts 13, we read this Paul notice filled with the Holy Spirit. He’s not speaking out of his fleshly nature. He’s not letting a toxic actor hold him.
He is filled with the Holy Spirit. When he calls out this toxic man, he looked straight at Aus and said, you are a child of the devil. An enemy of everything that is right. You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of Lord? Why are these labels necessary? ’cause Healing and understanding come from telling the truth. Labeling isn’t name calling. Name calling is a weapon. It’s trying to hurt someone. It’s trying to demean someone. It’s trying to ostracize others from them. Labeling isn’t about a weapon, it’s about a ministry. It’s about a place of healing to call somebody to repentance and to help others find their hope. Reason I stress this is that if you treat toxic people with normal methods of human relationships, they don’t work if you don’t label your toxic boss as toxic.
And so you think you can just plead with him and say, Hey, what you do hurts me. It feels demeaning. You’ve just told him he’s succeeded. He’s like, yes, it happened. I was I, I did what I want. He gets some sick thrill out of doing that your way. And I know that sounds perverted, but then some of you like cilantro. So we’re just different in that way. And can I say and, and this is gonna be sensitive, but I’ve been so hard on men, but it’s not only men who can be toxic and if we’re afraid to apply the label to women, we can keep men in its great frustration. I think of one relatively young husband that I worked with named Tim. He felt so beaten up by his church. He was in a tough, tough marriage. And in the evangelical church, when a husband is in a tough marriage, people just assume, what is the husband doing wrong?
They had some intimacy issues. And so when he would talk to his friends and pastor and even a counselor, they just made the common assumptions, well Tim, maybe you’re not doing your share of the housework. So your wife is too tired all the time. Tim did more housework than his wife did, even though he worked outside the home and she didn’t. Well, Tim, maybe there’s not enough non-sexual touch and words of affirmation. He felt, I I I’m doing that all the time. Well, maybe you’re just selfish in the bedroom. And even his wife shot that down. No, she said she would rave about him. Well, Tim, maybe you’re just not you. You’re just generally failing as a husband. And if you can do this and this and this, then everything will be fixed. And Tim felt like he was going crazy. He said, Gary, I I, I don’t know what more I could do.
Now let me take a step back. I hope, and I believe our pastoral counselors are asking those questions. Those are fair questions. A lot of times that’s the issue. But to assume that nobody can be married to a toxic woman is sometimes to apply the right medicine to the wrong ailment. In this case, Tim found sanity when they became good friends with another couple. She was a godly woman, the wife was. And she’d spent some time with Tim’s wife and even alone and together. And one time he was just collapsing in front of me ’cause I don’t know what more I could do. And she said this, Tim, you’re married to a very selfish and manipulative woman. And, and instead of being discouraged, Tim finally felt like, okay, life is starting to make sense. She had seen what was going on. She knew that Tim’s wife spent hours on TikTok and Instagram hoping to become an influencer.
She knew she was more energized by the success of her tennis game and she was as a mom or as a wife. And that she kinda liked the power of saying yes or no to Tim whenever she wanted. She liked how what that gave her. And here’s what the wife said to Tim as he recounted it to me, Tim, you can’t do more than you’ve already done. No husband could. No husband is perfect, but you’re loving and serving her about as well as any wife in our church is being loved and served. This isn’t about you, it’s about her. Now let me stress, Tim wasn’t looking to divorce his wife and he didn’t, I don’t think he a wife for being selfish or a little manipulative, but it helped him understand what is the approach for my family and my marriage to be healed? Now some of you still in the back of your mind said, Gary, you talk so much about playing defense, but wasn’t Jesus crucified?
Didn’t he say that we would be persecuted? Why? Why talk about defense? Well, yes and yes, but when you look at the life of Jesus, what’s astonishing is how many times before he went to the cross that Jesus said, you don’t get to beat me up today. You don’t get to kill me today. You don’t get to persecute me today. I could give you many instances, but let me just give you two. From the gospel of John 8 59 at this, they picked up stones to stone him. But Jesus hid himself slipping away from the temple grounds and from Matthew 12. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. Aware of this, Jesus withdrew. He walked away from that place. The practice and pattern of Jesus’ life when persecution arose, was not today until it was the father’s will. He would not lay down his life.
We must be willing to be persecuted, even martyred. But here’s what I wanna say to some of you, sensitive souls always assuming that letting yourself be beaten up by toxic people, dehumanized, demeaned, terrorized regardless of the kind of relationship, that doesn’t mean it’s God’s will. Jesus loves you. You’re not a kleenex to him that he wants to use and discard throughout scripture, he warns us. Look at Matthew 10 16 through 17, Jesus speaking, look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves. Beware of them either. Jesus, why would Jesus say beware that He said, I don’t want this to happen to you. So how do we put all of this together when we think we might be dealing with a toxic person in general, it means we walk away. We don’t engage. Charles Spurgeon has a powerful section.
And when Isaac, or sorry, Jacob who became Israel, bless Joseph. Joseph was his favorite child. For good reason. God used Joseph to transform the world. Certainly Egypt that he was at. But because of that he was hated. And Genesis 49, 23, Jacob says this with bitterness, archers attacked him. They shot at him with hostility. If you go on the offense and God is using you, you will be shot at. Remember what I said last week? Satan will send his messengers to distract you. Spurgeon emphasizes this. None of you can be the people of God without provoking envy. And the better you are, the more you will be hated. The righteous fruit is most pecked by the birds. If God loves you, men and women, men and women will hate you. If God honors you, men and women will dishonor you. You. But Spurgeon goes to the next part of the blessing, verse 24, describing Joseph.
Yet his bow remained steady and his strong arms were agile by the hands of the mighty one of Jacob, he was seeking first God’s kingdom and he could have shot an arrow through his detractor’s heart. He was strong enough to do it, but he didn’t. Why? He doesn’t want to ra. He doesn’t want to waste his arrows. He wants to stay focused on the calling that God has given. He’s gotta run Egypt. So he has to learn how to choose his battles and so do we. I love this image that Joseph rests while his enemies rage. And that’s what we must learn to do. Enemies will rage. If you’re doing what God has called you to do, we must find our rest in the Almighty God. He will protect us. He knows what’s going on. And we thus must not make it our aim to attack toxic people.
I’m not labeling toxic people to call ’em out. I’m just running by ’em so that I can invest in God’s kingdom. It’s not my job to to, to take them on or to call them out if I don’t have to in a pastoral or a family situation. And the reason I like to walk away is I found I’m never more tempted to act in a toxic way than when I’m dealing with a toxic person. So I wanna be like Joseph. I wanna stay focused on the task that God has given me, which means to glorify God by producing much fruit. And what is good fruit? Investing in people, healthy relationships, including our family. So let’s do that. That’s why I use the label. I know from statistics. Nobody in this church is gonna name their baby Gary. In 2021. Only 250 boys in the entire United States were named Gary. It’s a dying name. I like it, but most of you don’t.
But a label we need to keep alive for us to be the people that God created us to be, for us not to be terrorized in a way, Jesus doesn’t want you to be terrorized for us to produce fruit. It’s uncomfortable, but we’ve gotta speak the title late, toxic, and name it so that we can be the people God has called us to be. Let’s pray. Father, I hope your people can receive this as words of love. Maybe some are astonished that so much of Jesus’s teaching was warning us and wanting to protect us. Saying that, you know, you’re sending us out like sheep among wolves. So you want us to be wise and to be aware. Or maybe this morning you wanna set somebody free from a murderous relationship or a controlling relationship or a hateful relationship. Father, I pray they would have the courage to go to Trailhead and not face this on their own, but to get wise counsel and encouragement and support. Thank you Lord for these words of love. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.