How Many Did
You Drive Away?

What is this page about?

Every ministry keeps one number, and the number goes up. It counts decisions, baptisms, people at meetings, and money given. There is nothing wrong with counting. The book of Acts counts too.

Nobody keeps the other number. No leader stands up at the yearly meeting and says, “This many people left the faith because of our preaching.” These people were not offended by Christ. They were tired, or frightened, or used. Or they were taught a new kind of Christianity and told that it was the old faith.

In any other kind of work, a report with only good numbers is half a report. Is the Bible happy with half a report?

The short answer

The Bible keeps the second number. The words in the title of this page come from the Bible.

God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah to the leaders of his people. He called them shepherds, and the people were the sheep.

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” says Yahweh… “You have scattered my flock, driven them away, and have not visited them. Behold, I will visit on you the evil of your doings,” says Yahweh.

Jeremiah 23:1–2 · World English Bible

In simple words: The Lord says: “How terrible it will be for the shepherds who destroy and scatter my sheep! You have scattered my sheep. You have driven them away, and you have not gone to see them. So I will come to you and punish you for the evil you have done.”

See three things in these verses.

1. God does not complain that the flock did not grow. He says that the flock is gone, and the shepherds are the reason.
2. The sheep were “driven”. Someone pushed them.
3. The shepherds did not visit the sheep. So God will “visit” the shepherds. The punishment uses the word for the duty they did not do.

The prophet Ezekiel says the same. God lists what the shepherds did not do:

You haven’t strengthened the diseased. You haven’t healed that which was sick. You haven’t bound up that which was broken. You haven’t brought back that which was driven away. You haven’t sought that which was lost

Ezekiel 34:4 · World English Bible

In simple words: You have not made the weak strong. You have not healed the sick ones or cared for the hurt ones. You have not brought back those that were driven away. You have not looked for the lost ones.

A few verses later God says that he will do it himself: “I will seek that which was lost, and will bring back that which was driven away” (Ezekiel 34:16).

So this is not a subject without hope. God himself looks for the people who were driven away. That is good news for the sheep. It is not good news for the shepherd.

Who are these hard words for?

Think of the frightening passages in the Bible. Who receives them? Most people think of an outsider: a cruel king, or a person who prays to false gods.

The full page studied the seven hardest messages about religion in the Bible. Every time, the person who receives the message is a priest, a prophet, a shepherd or a teacher of God’s law. Jeremiah 23 is not for Babylon. Matthew 23 is not for Rome.

And what did Jesus say against the religious teachers of his time? It was something very exact. They stood in the way of other people.

Woe to you lawyers! For you took away the key of knowledge. You didn’t enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in, you hindered.

Luke 11:52 · World English Bible

In simple words: How terrible for you, teachers of the law! You took away the key that opens the door to knowing God. You did not go in yourselves. And you stopped the people who were going in.

In Matthew 23 Jesus says the same thing: they shut the door of God’s Kingdom in people’s faces.

The people in this verse did not refuse to come. They were going in. The men who held the key stopped them. This one verse says everything that this page wants to say.

Teachers will be judged more strictly

The New Testament has one passage about becoming a teacher. It is a warning.

Let not many of you be teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive heavier judgment.

James 3:1 · World English Bible

In simple words: My brothers, not many of you should become teachers. You know that we teachers will be judged more strictly.

James says “we”. He is a leader of the church, and he puts himself under the warning.

The same rule is in other places.

• A watchman who does not warn the people must answer for it. God says: “I will require his blood at your hand” (Ezekiel 33:8).
• Church leaders watch over people “as those who will give account” (Hebrews 13:17).
• Paul speaks of two men whose teaching was “overthrowing the faith of some” (2 Timothy 2:18). He measures their teaching by what it did to other people’s faith.

And Jesus speaks about only one person:

whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a huge millstone were hung around his neck, and that he were sunk in the depths of the sea

Matthew 18:6 · World English Bible

In simple words: Suppose someone makes one of these little ones, who believe in me, fall into sin. It would be better for that person to be thrown into the deep sea with a very heavy stone around his neck.

One person. A report with only large numbers cannot see one person.

Four speeches about God

The book of Job tells of a good man who lost his children, his wealth and his health. Three friends came and talked to him about God. Here are four speeches from the book. All four are in the Bible. Three are by the friends, and one is by Job. Which one did God say was right?

A. The friend Eliphaz: “whoever perished, being innocent?” (Job 4:7) He means that good people do not suffer like this. So Job must have done something wrong. He says this to a man whose children have just died.

B. Eliphaz again: “happy is the man whom God corrects” (Job 5:17). This sounds beautiful, and people often preach it. Other parts of the Bible say something like it. But here it is used against a suffering man who has done nothing wrong.

C. Job: “I will maintain my ways before him” (Job 13:15). Job says that he will argue his case in front of God. He does not accept the explanation that his friends give him.

D. The friend Bildad: “God will not cast away a blameless man” (Job 8:20). This is a clear, simple rule about how the world works. The whole book of Job shows that it is not so simple.

At the end of the book, God gives his answer. He says to the three friends:

you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has

Job 42:7 · World English Bible

In simple words: You have not said what is true about me. My servant Job has.

So the answer is C. God said that Job spoke rightly. Many readers choose B, because it sounds so good.

Why this is bigger than false teaching

The three friends defend God for most of the book. They speak of his justice and his power. And God says they did not speak rightly about him. He is talking about truth, not about their manner.

They were wrong because their idea of God was too tidy. “Suffering is always punishment. Good people always do well. So this man deserves his pain.” A person could argue for each sentence alone. But the picture made from the sentences was false. And they pressed it on a man who could not argue back. The people in a church are in the same position.

Ezekiel makes it a clear charge against the false prophets.

Because with lies you have grieved the heart of the righteous, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way

Ezekiel 13:22 · World English Bible

In simple words: With your lies you have made good people sad. I did not make them sad. And you have helped bad people to feel strong, so that they do not turn from their bad way.

There is a sadness in God’s people, and God says, “I did not put it there.” Someone else did, with words.

But read the second half too. The same prophets also comforted people who should have been warned. One ministry made both mistakes. So nobody can use this verse only against hard preaching. It is against soft preaching too.

How serious is it to show God wrongly? Think of Moses. He led the people for forty years. Then he lost the right to enter the promised land. He had not stolen. He had not taught false things. He spoke to a difficult crowd in anger. He took some of the praise for a miracle. He hit a rock when God had told him to speak to it. God said:

Because you didn’t believe in me, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land

Numbers 20:12 · World English Bible

In simple words: You did not trust me. You did not show the people that I am holy. So you will not lead them into the land.

The fault was in what the people saw. The miracle worked, and the water came out. A person counting results would have written “success”.

“But Jesus drove people away too”

This is a serious argument, and it is right. In John 6, a crowd could not accept the teaching of Jesus. “many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him” (John 6:66). Jesus did not make his words softer. He did not run after them. When the Pharisees were offended, he said: “Leave them alone.” (Matthew 15:14)

So a ministry can lose people and be without fault. When someone is offended, that does not prove that the teacher did wrong.

But the Bible draws a line. The line is not about how upset people were. It is about what they were leaving.

People may leave because of Christ:

• the cross itself, which Paul calls “a stumbling block” (1 Corinthians 1:23), something people fall over;
• the cost of following Jesus, said honestly;
• a real command of the Gospel;
• true teaching that a person does not want to hear.

People may leave because of what the teacher added:

• rules that the Bible does not give, pushed on people as if it did (Matthew 23:4);
• “God told me”, used to end a discussion (Jeremiah 23:16);
• the idea that disagreeing with the leader is rebellion against God;
• fear that God did not send (Ezekiel 13:22);
• love of money or love of praise (1 Thessalonians 2:5-6);
• a leader who must be first and who puts out those who disagree (3 John 9-10).

So the question fits in one sentence. Did they leave because of something Christ said, or because of something you added?

Here is a good sign, in my opinion. Can the preacher name the teaching that cost him a family, and show it in the Bible? Then he is doing what Christ did. But another preacher says “the Gospel offends people” about every person who leaves. He says it even after a fight about money or about a rule he invented. He is not following John 6. He is using it.

The question, asked in a church service

This subject could end in fear and nothing more. The old church did something better. You cannot stop a man from showing God wrongly by telling him, “Be careful.” You must give him things that he did not invent, cannot change, and must answer to.

• A creed fixes what is believed, in words that nobody in the room wrote.
• A fixed plan of Bible readings makes a man preach the passages that speak against him. A man who picks his own passages never does that.
• The sacraments put a frightened person’s hope in a place where the preacher cannot take it away.
• A minister who can be removed by people outside his own church has a limit. A founder with a board that he chose has none.

The old Church of England service for making a new minister asks our question directly. The bishop says to the new ministers:

And if it shall happen that the same Church, or any Member thereof, do take any hurt or hindrance by reason of your negligence, ye know the greatness of the fault, and also the horrible punishment that will ensue.

The Book of Common Prayer, 1662, the service for new priests

In simple words: The church, or any one member of it, may be hurt because you were careless. If that happens, you know how great your fault is, and how terrible the punishment will be.

“Any member.” That is one person. It is the same as Matthew 18:6. The bishop says it to the man before he has preached one sermon.

In the same service, the new minister promises to “drive away” all false teaching. So the church has a right thing to drive away: false teaching. Jeremiah says that the shepherds drove away the sheep.

Nobody can count the number. But you can answer the question.

Be honest. Nobody can give the number in the title of this page. People who stop believing quietly do not tell you. Any number that someone offers is invented.

But look at what the Bible asks for. It does not ask for a number.

• Jeremiah asks the shepherds to see that the sheep are gone.
• Ezekiel asks if anyone went to look for them.
• James asks a man to fear the work before he begins it.

For this you do not need a number. You need to know that such people exist. You need to look. You need to know a name. And you need to go and see that person.

Check it yourself

This page does not say whether any person is saved. It is also not a tool to judge one minister. The full page has a long list of questions for teachers to ask themselves first.

1. Read Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34 in one sitting.
2. Read Ezekiel 13, and look closely at verse 22.
3. Read Matthew 23 to the end, and then Luke 11:37-54.
4. Read Job 4, 5, 8 and 11, and then Job 42:7-8.
5. Read the other side: John 6:22-71, Matthew 15:1-20, Acts 15:1-29 and Ezekiel 33:1-20.