Hello, and welcome to Ask Pastor Mike Live with pastor and Bible teacher Mike Fabarez. The live call-in program answering your questions about the Bible and the Christian life. Call us right now with your questions at 1-877-913-5357. That's 1-877-913-5357. And now here's Pastor Mike. Well, hello everybody. It's good to be with you today again, answering questions, talking to you about whatever's on your mind related to the Christian life. If you have a question, a concern, you're facing a dilemma or something's going on, give me a call. You heard the number 877-913-5357. Write it down, put it in your phone. Put me in your phone. There you go. Contact, questions, Bible questions, life questions, questions related to doctrine, theology, Christianity, whatever it is. Just put me in there, ask Pastor Mike, and then put in the number 877-913-5357, at least during the time that I'm on the air. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays right now. And if we get enough calls, we may just go, we may go a few more days. You never know. Maybe eight or nine days a week. You never know. There you go, that's the mood I'm in today. 877-913-5357 or text the word ASK to 90398, 90398. If you text the word ASK to that, A-S-K, it will pop back a link and you can ask me the question there or go to YouTube, which is a lot of fun. depending on what you're watching. And you can watch what's going on here in the studio, in my office, in this, the magic here of radio. And we will let you get involved in the chat there, keep it civil. But if you ask a question, it'll pop up on my screen here and we'll talk about it on the air if we can squeeze it in. We're gonna try and squeeze a lot of this in today if we can. Or you can do the same thing on Facebook. Go to Facebook Live and Just look for us on the Focal Point Ministries page or just look for Ask Pastor Mike Live. Ask Pastor Mike Live. You just type that in either on YouTube or Facebook. You should be able to find us. All right. 1-877-913-5357. Let's start with Rita. Rita, you're on the air today with Pastor Mike. How can I help? I have got a question for you. Is there anything in history that's recorded after Nicodemus helped They put Jesus in the grave. Did he, I know, I think he secretly was following him, but did he actually become, after Jesus' resurrection, did he actually quit being a religious leader and follow Jesus? Well, if you're talking outside of the New Testament, we certainly know by the end of the Gospel of John, we have Nicodemus there bringing spices to the grave and that certainly shows he had some devotion to Christ, right? So, he comes in John 3 and just so we catch all our listeners up here, he comes to John 3 at night. And that's a very important thing, I think, both grammatically for the themes of John, but he's coming under the cover of darkness, and that shows the sense of what is said elsewhere in the Gospel of John, that many people are afraid of being put out of the synagogue, like in John 9. People were afraid that if you identified with Christ, you would lose your position in the synagogue. Well, someone like Nicodemus who was a Pharisee, I mean, and a ruler of the Jews, probably on the Sanhedrin, that was huge, right? So, we assume he becomes a follower of Christ just because by the time the end of his ministry is wrapped up, he's there aiding Joseph of Arimathea, another Jewish leader. He gives him the tomb and Nicodemus is bringing spices. I would have to dig deeper in history to find out if I have extra biblical writings that are reliable. Because you've got to remember, some of these statements that leave the door open in scripture, by the second and third centuries, you had a bunch of people writing fictional accounts, and they were intended to be. I mean, some people believed them when they uncovered them years later in some of the Alexandrinus and some of the, you know, the Nag Hammadi discoveries in Cairo or in Egypt, and they said, oh, look, everyone understood this to be history. They didn't. A lot of these writings were clearly fictional. They were mythical. And so there may be some things there I'd have to bone up on the history of that. I don't have anything outside in my memory right now be outside of John chapter 19. So, the emphasis seems to be that John leaves us with the impression that Nicodemus, yes, became a follower of Christ, started secretly, seemed like he was at least out in the open enough to be identified as going publicly to put spices there on the deceased body of Jesus. And that's all I know, but I can do some homework on that. And maybe next Tuesday on the air, I can deliver what I've learned and I'll have someone write that down in my office here and I'll see if I can find anything reliable. I want to stay away from the Gnostic writers. The Gnostic writers always pick up on these open doors in the text and they will write crazy things. But if there's something in the second, third century that I can find, and I don't think I'm embarrassing myself by forgetting something obvious because I don't think there is anything obvious, but I'll find out by next Tuesday for you, Rita. No, that's fine. Nobody knows everything. I've just been doing a lot more Bible digging, reading Old Testament, New Testament. I have a ton of questions, so what do you do? You go ask, you know, YouTube, and they say... Some people say blah blah, and some don't believe them. I'm like, well, who knows? So, you know, you've got to be careful, like I say, you can't believe everything you hear. Well, listen, if you call me back, I don't know what you're doing next Tuesday, but I've got a ton of reliable resources in my library and I will look up to see what we find and I can certainly figure that out next week and we can talk again. Oh, I would love that. Okay, let's do that. All right. It's a date. Okay. Very good. All right, Rita. Thanks for calling 1-877-913-5357. 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Jeff. Jeff, you're on the air with Pastor Mike Fabaris. How can I help? Blessings to you, brother. I got a real quick question. I know it's already passed, but sometimes I struggle with my son married a Catholic girl several years ago, obviously, and they don't see anything wrong with Halloween. I think it's wrong. And I struggle to try to, I don't see anything in the Bible that supports that at all. And I was just curious if you could kind of maybe share your insight on that, because like I said, to me it's demonic, and I don't think it should be worshipped at all, or practiced. Well, there's two passages that I would turn to quickly to say this doesn't make sense, that anyone is a Christian claiming Christ or any adherence to the Bible would celebrate the things that are celebrated at Halloween. One would be Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 9 through 14, which is when the Israelites were coming into Canaan and they were told that things like, you know, witches and fortune tellers and, you know, sorcerers, all of that, they were said to be an abomination to the Lord and the reason God was driving the Canaanites out. So how in the world would we make that? Something we're going to celebrate even if we said, oh, it's all for fun I just picked this up at Home Depot and you know, we're just having fun with the witches in my yard it's not something that it would be like you coming out of Let's just say your grandmother went through the Holocaust and now all of a sudden we're decorating our yards with you know with with ovens and you know Hitler concentration camps. It's just be like, okay, you may be pretending, but it's ridiculously offensive. And if God says, this is an abominable thing to me, right? That's what he says. That's like, I mean, to use New Testament phrases in Revelation chapter three, it makes me want to throw up. I mean, that's the idea, right? It's an abominable practice. It makes me sick. And if it makes God sick in that sense, right, morally, why in the world would you put a witch out on your lawn, right? Sorcerers, divinations, charmers, mediums, necromancers, those who inquire of the dead. It's an abomination of the Lord. That to me, that should be the end of the discussion. And then I would turn to the positive. My other passage would be Philippians chapter four, verse eight, which says for us as Christians, and I go in verse nine too, whatever's true, right? Honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, any excellence, anything worthy of praise. Think about these things and what you've learned and received and heard and seen and meet. Practice these things and the God of peace will be with you." All of those things, right, seem to me to be clearly, logically, I think to any reasonable person, antithetical, right? This is the opposite of what we're doing when we're trying to scare people, right? We're not trying to get the God of peace to secure the minds of people when we're building haunted houses or whatever we're doing. No, we're supposed to be about what's true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, praiseworthy things, and we should do those things. We should practice those things. We should be about those things. We should think about those things. And we want to dwell securely with the God of peace. That's the opposite of what we're doing when we're, you know, putting fake blood on our forehead. touching America. It's about, you know, about children. Yep. And that to me is even worse. Yep. I agree with you, Jeff, a hundred percent. Yeah, young minds. Let's go scare young children, right? I mean, yeah. And then if you're going to say, no, I just want to make them see that this is all pretend. Okay, so I want to desensitize young children to things that God says is an abomination to the Lord. No, I don't want to do that. I don't want to pretend about homosexuality or prostitution or murder or, you know, black magic. I don't want to pretend about any of those things. Why would we do that? Why would we do that? So yeah, I'm with you, Jeff. So Deuteronomy 18 Philippians chapter 4 verses 8 and 9 those are my go-to passages I mean we could go further than that But it makes really no sense to celebrate that and then say oh, we're just we're just playing around We're just playing around the Bible says it's the fool. You know who says something That's not right, and then says I was only joking that a foolish person does that so we're not gonna joke around with things that aren't true that aren't good and This is clearly what's happening. It's the number two I think celebrated calendar event on the modern Western calendar. People are spending more money with costumes and parties at Halloween than any other holiday. So I stand with you, Jeff, and all you can do is make your case. And people make their own decisions, and I know it hurts when it's our family. But they set up their own household, and I would just say, they should know clearly where you stand, and I would quote some scripture for them, and they're going to have to wrestle at night in their own conscience about what the Bible says. Thank you, brother. Okay, Jeff. You're on the right track there. Okay. Okay, you too. 1-877-913-5357. 877-913-5357. You may be saying, that's crazy talk. That's crazy, you're crazy. Okay, well, give me a call. Let's talk about how crazy I am to make those arguments. Love to chat about it. Or if you have a question, a sincere question, let's talk about it. 1-877-913-5357. I got questions that have come in here. Let's see. plenty of questions. Got a little motivation to read and pray. Let's see how that was originally worded. Yeah, where did it go? Yeah. What do we do when someone has low motivation to read the Bible or pray? This is from yesterday's feed. What does that mean they're not saved? Okay. Well, there's plenty of reasons you could have low motivation to read the Bible or pray, and it may have nothing to do with your not being saved. Let's talk about plenty of examples. Job. Job clearly was a godly man, secured in his relationship with God in the Old Testament. And I guess we could say there's some kind of equivalency of New Testament justification in the sense that he was God's man. I mean, he was clearly in step and in harmony with God, opening verses, the most glowing report God could give to one of his people. And here he says, this guy's great, blameless in his generation. So here we have Job and by the third chapter, right, he's bummed, right? And of course you say, well, yeah, his family died, his kids died, his wife's turning on him, he gets sick, stuff is stolen. So, I mean, that's an extreme example. But it can be circumstantial that you just want to sit there like he did by chapter 4 saying, I wish I were dead. Yeah, I mean, you're not feeling like, hey, let's start a new Bible study or go to the Christian bookstore and pick out a new book to read. That clearly can be circumstantial. And by the end, right, it's going to take some time, God working through that, to get him back to where he needs to be by the time we get to the end of the book. Could be that there's some guilt. Think about David, Psalm 51, Psalm 32. He feels God's heavy hand upon him in Psalm 32 and all of his energy is sapped. He doesn't want to read the Bible. He doesn't want to pray, so to speak. He doesn't want to have those intimate experiences that he writes about in other Psalms because he's dealing with guilt. So that could be. Or, yeah. I mean, I don't want to dismiss completely the fact that it could mean you're not saved if you look back at why did you pray? Why did you read the Bible? It could be that your times with God were all compulsory, all externally motivated, all just to try and fit in. And if that's the case, okay. Fine. I mean, maybe you were doing this to try and be culturally connected with a group of people that for some reason you were drawn to and now you realize, you know, flash in the pan didn't, I'm not interested anymore. Jesus told parables about that. It's like the soil, the seed was sown and it pops up all of a sudden, receives the word with joy. But then, you know, the cares of the world get in the way and they fall away. They're not interested in all that. So it could mean you're not saved. But I would first confess your sins. I would, even thinking of Elijah, after the showdown with the prophets of Baal and Jezebel chasing him down, God says, you need sleep, you need food, let's get healthy and get back to where you need to be and stand up and get yourself together. So there's plenty of physiological, biological, and spiritual things that we had to deal with before we start saying, maybe I'm not saved. And if you really get to the place you're not saved, well, then throw yourself in the mercy of God and say, have mercy on me, a sinner, and pray. I mean, the most basic prayer in the Bible that God says, I'm not going to say no to, is those who ask for God's spirit, right? This is a regeneration verse, right? If you know how to give good gifts to your children, you're sinful. Doesn't God know how to give good gifts to his? And he says, you ask and say, God, I want your spirit. And let's just look at the broader New Testament theology. I want your spirit to cleanse me, to forgive me, to place me in relationship with the triune God. God's going to do that. Romans 10, call on the Lord. All who call on the Lord are going to be saved. So this is an easy fix if in fact the thing you fear is that, yeah, I don't have a love for the Bible. I don't want to pray. Maybe I'm not saved. Great. We can fix that before the program's over. All right. Hope that helps. 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Tracy. Tracy, you're on the air with Pastor Mike Fabarez. How can I help? Hi, Pastor Mike. Thanks for taking my call. Of course. I just wanted to know your thoughts on Charlie Kirk and some of the controversial racist comments that he made. Okay. Well, I'm not a Charlie Kirk expert. I have heard some of the things that his critics have accused him of that was accusing him of being racist. And then I've also looked at those in their larger context and I realize they're taken out of context. It's a lot like the classic discussion about Trump way back in the day in his first term when he talked about good people on both sides and everyone clips that one line out. and we don't get the full context where he clarifies what he means. I think in his DEI discussions about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and talking about, you know, a pilot, right, this black pilot, I think all of those things in their broader context, he's making the point of meritorious versus DEI promotions, and that is not a racist comment. That's just the problem of critical theory making its all the way into hiring practices. It's like that Wanda Sykes comment that was just made the other day, that I don't care if it's a woman versus a man, I'm gonna hire the woman, and if she's a black woman, I don't even care who's up against her, I'm gonna hire her. If that really is the thinking of people in hiring, then I'm certainly gonna have to become skeptical if my heart surgeon was hired by Wanda Sykes. I'm not interested in someone hiring because she's a woman or she's black. That's not how we should go about any kind of hiring, unless we're trying to put characters together for some play on Broadway where we need a black woman on the stage. So this is the problem I think that Kirk was dealing with, where most of the things that I've seen were quoted as, he's a racist, look what he said here. Now there may be more than that. I'm not his friend. I didn't know him. I've never met him. Well, I've met him once, but I never, I didn't know him. We just happened to be in the same event once, but I don't, I can't, I'm not going to vouch for him. I never, you know, we never studied the Bible together. So I'm just going to say, yes, he's a contentious figure. He was certainly about He was, as some rightly said, a provocative figure. So he puts things in ways to get a rise out of people, and sometimes those things make great little talking points for people to say there, you're Islamophobic, you're homophobic, you're misogynistic, you're racist. And today, just think about it, that's all the people are doing on the left is trying to say everybody is racist, fascist, whatever. And at some point, you cry wolf long enough it's hard to even listen to people today calling us names. It's like, whatever. I can't even give you the weather without being called a fascist. So at some point, it doesn't mean much. So I don't know. Other than the things that I have seen quoted, I've looked at in context, and I've yet to see anything that didn't have context to it that I thought, oh, okay, I see what he's saying there. That's different than what they're accusing him of. But there may be material out there. I don't know. Okay, thank you for that clarity, and I have one other question then. Do you think he was a good example of a Christian? Well, okay, here's what needs to be understood about Charlie Kirk. Okay, and when this whole thing happened and he was revered and venerated by everyone as though, right, he's some example of like a ministerial, you know, pastoral leadership in Christianity, I needed to remind people he's not leading a church, right? He may have been a hero to a lot of Christians, but he was leading a political action group, right? That was very different than what I do. I watched him in many contexts, speak to situations that I could never speak to the way he does because my job is very specific to represent God's Word, right, and therefore God and Christ in my generation. That's all I'm about, right? That's what I do. So I can't hobnob, and I don't know if you know this phrase, as a co-belligerent with people just because we have the same political views and say, okay, I put my arm around you and I don't care if you're a Mormon, I don't care if you're, you know, a Catholic, it doesn't matter, we're not gonna, we're not gonna quibble about theology because we're all still all against abortion or whatever. I can't do that. You call in today and say, I'm a Mormon, I would say, well, we're going to have to talk about your theology. Charlie Kirk didn't work that way because he had a particular agenda. Now, off of his agenda, and when he's not at work and he puts the microphone down when he's at church, okay, maybe he's a great congregant at his church. and that's fine. But when he's at work, and that's where we have all the videos, right? He's not doing what you would say in 1 Peter chapter 5. Well, here's the elders or pastors of your church, but follow their example. You should follow the examples of the pastors at your church because they are trying to do specifically and singularly what all Christians should do in whatever context they're called to do it. And the problem is, whatever context you're called to do it is going to be shaped. Like, say you're a cook, right? You're a chef. Okay, you're clearly not going to live your job the way I live my job. Doesn't mean every Mormon that walks through the door, you're going to have to go, well, let me talk to you about Brigham Young or Joseph Smith and the Pearl of Great Price. You're not going to do that. You're going to look past that, but having the opportunity, you're going to talk to them about the fact that we should follow the Bible. And I'm not going to let the Mormon undercut the Bible's veracity. And you're going to deal with doctrinal issues because you care about their soul. But your job at work is to be a Christian chef. And so I'm going to expect something different coming out of your mouth, even though never contradictory to the gospel. but there's going to be an emphasis, as opposed to someone walking into my church or my office at my church, and I am a pastor. That's my singular job. So Charlie Kirk had a different mission statement at his job than I have at my job. And so every Christian in their job, whether they're selling insurance or fixing teeth or putting glasses on people or fixing the plumbing in a house or cooking food for people, they're Christians in those settings, making sure they're doing their jobs well, never violating God's word and being salt and light in their work. I think Charlie Kirk, from what I've seen, was salt and light and he was doing what his mission statement of Turning Point was, to try and convince young people to consider conservative politics that somehow comport much better with biblical Christianity and absolute truth than the liberal nonsense that's out there. And I'm all for that. Fantastic. Just like I want Christian chefs and Christian insurance. Sure, I like it. But I'm not saying, hey, take what he says on these videos, and just do what he does. Well, if you're not in that same line of work, you can't do what he does because his mission statement is different than whatever you do, right? Don't do what he does. You can't say everything that he says because he's got a particular mission statement and agenda. That nuance was missed on so many people, right? It's like they wanted to say he could do no wrong in what he says, and we should do and say exactly what he says. And we like it in part because it's like watching a shoot-em-up Western movie. And we think, okay, well, the good guy with the badge, he's standing up for justice and righteousness and he wins. Okay, well, I can get the fact that there's some nice cheering that we all have when someone that we know stands for the right things wins an argument because he was really good with his six shooter, right? His mouth was sharp and his brain was sharp. And so we all go, oh, I like the way he put that guy in his place. Well, that's great, right? I get all that. But it is like watching a movie and recognizing, okay, that may not be the world that I live in that I'm called to engage in, particularly when I realize the things that he's often standing for are really going to make sure that he's aligning with the mission statement of his organization. That takes nothing away from him. right? I praise God for good, smart, articulate Christians in every line of work, but I don't want to conflate that here is the quintessential Christian man, or here's the quintessential Christian leader, simply because we're watching his videos and saying everything you do should be done like he does it. And I just want to make that distinction. And not that he's not better at doing his job than I'm at doing my job. Fine, whatever. He may be more talented at doing political action persuasion than I am at persuading people to understand the Bible. Great. He's a gifted man. But I don't want to lose sight of what he's doing is different than what pastors in America are doing. And if you can understand those distinctions, then I can say, that's what I think about him. Does that make any sense, Tracy? I really appreciate your perspective. That really cleared things up for me. So thank you for taking my call. OK, Tracy. Yep. That's good to say that out loud. I've said that in some of our pastor's meetings and trying to talk about this in the wake of it all, because I saw people just hook, line, and sinker everything he said. It was like, that's what we need to have in our pulpits. That's not what we need to have in our pulpits. Not that I'm afraid. Not afraid. I'm not afraid to talk about, you know, whatever, abortion, homosexuality. Let's stand up for truth. But there is a very different mission statement, and hopefully I was able to not just speak to you, Tracy, but others maybe who, I hope I can clarify, doing my best here. All right, 1-877-913-5357, let's talk to Ben. Ben, you're on the air with Pastor Mike, how can I help? How are you today? Good. Yes, okay, so I'll try to keep it short. I'm currently working on a position that I've been at for about five years now. And it's a very ungodly place. The man is a very hard, just a hard man to work for, very ungodly. We've kind of had our battles here and there. And me and my wife have been praying for me to get out of this position. It's a great, as far as financially, it takes care of my big family that I have. It's just really hard on my soul and on my mind and everything, just working here. Anyway, so I currently have an opportunity to leave. But the problem is, is instead of an hour away from home now, like I drive, I'll be driving two hours away. It's a little bit more money. I'll be having more responsibilities and everything. I'll technically get more time with my family because I'll be gone for longer, but I'm finding a hard balance to say, well, because there's another job opportunity as well, but it's less money than I'm making now, but I'll be home closer to home. I just, I don't know if I take the job with more money that's further away. I'll be home still every night, but if it's further away, am I, Am I saying, oh, I want to take the money over, you know, less responsibilities, and am I not trusting in God? Does any of that make sense? Yeah, I think so, but there's one sentence that didn't make sense, and I want to clarify what you meant, and maybe you said it right, and I didn't understand it. You said this job that's further away, two hours away, you said, even though you're commuting now for four hours a day, right, you said... Right now it's two hours, but yeah, go ahead. Okay, but you said it will give me more time at home. Is that true, more time at home than your present job? Sorry, yeah, I didn't mean it that way. It'll give me more time with my kids because right now I currently get home around 4.35 and that job, since I'll be starting earlier, I'll actually get home around three. So it's not very much more time. No, but it is more time, and that's exactly what I needed to understand. So you're just getting up earlier. Okay, couple things. Of course, I'm going to say, as a pastor and knowing life, I don't take the job with the most money just because it has the most money. But everything you've just explained, to me, the first thing I thought of with a longer commute is, Redemptive, doubling up, useful time. I do think your commutes can be so productive. I mean, if you've got a phone and you've got Bluetooth or a way to plug your phone in, you've got a great opportunity to grow spiritually, to stretch your mind. You know, all it takes is just having the right free podcast downloaded to your phone to get your brain and your life enhanced with private time in a car for two hours. Assuming it's not like bumper-to-bumper traffic where you're just going to be like completely stressed out by the commute. If you're in a place where the commute, right, can be somewhat peaceful where you can really concentrate on what you're doing in the car, which is learning, growing, uh, not that every minute can't, you know, it has to be that, but you, you know, even if you just said, you know, 15 minutes, I'm going to chill out, pray. And, and, but then the rest of it, I'm going to, I'm going to hear sermons. I'm going to hear books on, on, on audio. I'm going to, I'm going to grow. That would be huge. And I would say, Hey, that's not lost time. That's personal spiritual enrichment time that is now basically slotted for me that I really can't get out of because I'm stuck in the car and this is good. It's like God locking you, to quote Matthew, in a closet where you're going to have to pray and you're going to have to commune with God through good preaching or good books or good interactions with good Christian podcasting. That to me is a helpful thing. And when you just said you're moving your time up to where you're getting home, like just after your kids get home from school or whatever, when they may be homeschooled or whatever, but when they're free, dude, that to me, another plus. I like that. And then you throw the extra money on top of it. That's a good thing too. You're called to provide for your family. I'm sure your kids, you know, could use the money and savings and all the rest. I think that sounds good, and I wouldn't start feeling like some people do, like, oh, I don't want to sell out for the more money. It doesn't matter. So they're going to pay you more. It doesn't, I mean, great. We can't look at it like it's wrong to get paid more. It's of course not wrong. If it fits and if it's a good job and it's not going to be in a bad environment you're in now, and you can redemptively use that time on the road, which I think is great. Here's what I know from people, I'm in South Orange County and we do have a bit of a hectic commute, but people that commute, here's what I learned about these people that commute. I used to commute a little bit when I first moved here to go to school an hour away, but that time starts to get really short in your own experience. I don't know if you can have that sense, but you can, that time just gets crunched, and your brain just, you expect it every day, and it goes by fast, particularly if you have purpose things to do, like pray through a prayer list, get a couple sermons in, have an audio book read to you, all of that becomes really helpful. And I think it can go by fast, and it won't fatigue you, it'll just enrich you, and then you're getting home at a good time, and getting up early, I think the older you get, I don't know how old you are, Ben, The older you get, the easier it is to get up early. And I'm just saying, get up early. Jesus did long before dawn and go out, spend that time with the Lord in the car. Hopefully you have a good car. And yeah, I think I like the sound of what you explained and I like that you're getting home earlier. I like that it's paying more, and I like that it can be a double-up of time on the commute. So that'd be my vote, and again, you know more about it than I do, but you asked for advice, and that's my advice. No, no, thank you, thank you, and I just want to say thank you for all that you're doing. I love your ministries, I love your podcast, I know you hear it all the time, but thank you for, you know, basically taking whoever made an answer and doing it yourself on top of while doing To Every Man an Answer. It's so helpful, and I just want to thank you, and thank you for doing God's work for us. Well, great. And if you like me on that show, let them know. I certainly enjoy it. I never say no unless I'm traveling, but when they ask, happy to do it, and yep. I was able to do it this week on Tuesday with John Randall. But love this time too. I wish it were on more stations, but we're on a handful of stations. So that's a good thing, and I appreciate those kind words, Ben. Pray for me, and we'll have some of us pray for you. I'll pray for you today at least. All right, 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Hector. Hector, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? God bless you, Pastor. Thank you. I just have one question. What are your thoughts about the worshipping on wearing hats and earrings on the altar? It's just something that is on my mind that I feel like it's not right. So I just want to hear your thoughts on it, and if you don't mind, can I listen over the radio? If I don't mind what? Give me the last line. I didn't hear it. I would just listen on the radio. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, before you go, let me ask, can I ask you a question, Hector? Yes. If we were to get on a plane and I were to take you to Papua New Guinea and I were to take you to a worship service or like our church, we've got a bunch of them just got back from Africa and they had worship there. And I said, hey, we're going to go here. But you know, the people leading worship, you know, they've got rings and they've got turbans or whatever. I'm sure that you would be like, oh, That was really cool to see all those people in their native dress leading worship. You wouldn't mind it, right? You wouldn't stumble over that. Because you'd say, well, it's a whole different culture. Correct? Yeah, okay, okay, okay. Now, that's all I need to say. You can drop off the line if you want, but here's the thing. This is the challenge of us saying, well, I don't mind going to Papua New Guinea or, you know, the outback of Australia or somewhere in Uganda. That's fine, but I don't want that to be my church. I want the church to be something I'm used to. I don't want hats and nose rings or whatever. okay, well, that's fine because you are of a particular cultural persuasion. You don't want men in kilts on the stage. You want men in pants. I mean, you have a particular cultural expression of what you expect. And some things would make you uncomfortable. And I hate to sound weak. I'm not saying that's weak. We all have things we're like, I don't like that. And that's discomfort, I suppose. It's not our proclivity. It's not our interest. It's not our penchant. And so we say, yeah, I don't care for that. So you use the word wrong. And that's where, Hector, I would say, I don't want to say that it's wrong. I will say that doesn't seem like it's the kind of church that you're going to be able to look past that. If you can't look past it, then, okay, then that shouldn't be the church you're in. Because there are plenty of places where people put things on their head. You want to talk to me about 1 Corinthians 11, we can talk about it. That's a whole different discussion and I'm happy to tackle that because if the Bible says put something on the women's heads or take things off your men's head, I'm happy to do that. If it says, you know, put whatever stuff, Kleenex up your nose while you pray, I would do whatever the Bible says. That's a whole different discussion. We'll get to that if you want to call and talk about it. But here's the deal. Whatever the culture is that's acceptable to the people that gather, that's fine. I don't want anything avant-garde in church, whether we're in Uganda or whether we're in some outback village up the Wahweap River, right? Okay, great. Do whatever is culturally normative And that's how you should dress, leading worship or preaching. And if you're in a church, and certainly we have a very wide spectrum of cultural expectations in our culture, don't go to that church. Right? Just say, I stumble over this. It's not what, I can't look past it. And if you can't look past it and the people you can't say, I love them more than I'm uptight about this, then great, go to another church. And there are places where they love their pipe organs and they're going to sing out of a hymnal. And if you were to take the score of music off the page, they're going to go, we can't sing harmonies, right? Because we all read music here. Okay, great. We can't read, we can't have a projector. I've had people tell me we shouldn't have projectors in church. Okay, you say that all you want, but there was no projectors, right, when Christ led worship services as he traveled around Galilee. So stop saying it's wrong. Say, that's all I want to say, Hector. And I have no problem with you saying this is what I prefer. just like Paul could go around as a traveling missionary and say, to the Jews, I'm going to become a Jew, right? To the Greeks, the Greeks, right? All the fine. That contextualization, which can be a bad word in people's minds, doesn't have to be, but my adaptation to a cultural layer, not the core, not the point, not the message, not the lyrics, right? What we're going to sing has got to be faithful to Scripture. All of that right, has to be distinguished from the cultural expression, right? And that gets down to a lot of things, right? Decibels, instruments, dress on the platform. I get it. And I lead a church, and I have to make those decisions. I mean, in concert with, in our case, the worship director. I've got a full-time worship director, and I've got to be able to say, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to try and hit the middle of our cultural you know, a group. It was easy when I pastored a church of 100, then it became 200, and then 500, and then, you know, thousands. And then it was like, okay, now I got to be careful. What are we going to do? We don't hack people off unnecessarily. Is that hard? It's hard. And guess what? We're never going to please everyone. And you kind of look for the complaint letters to be on both ends of the spectrum because we want to hit the middle. And so we can stand before God and say, God, we tried to make sure we did not violate the sensibilities of people. I got young people, some of them leading worship, that they had to go out and buy pants that weren't jeans because they said, let's not Let's not lead worship in jeans, just because certain groups may not like that. So, I don't know. Hector, it's not wrong. Wrong is the wrong word. Let's just use this word. It's not my preference, and I can't look past it. Okay, fine. want to discuss 1 Corinthians 11, call me back or anyone who wants to, we can talk about head coverings if you want. All right. 1-877-913-5357. That's the number to call. Or you can go on YouTube and give us some questions like we've got here. My dad passed away. This is from YouTube. Dad passed away seven years ago now. My mom's living with a man we don't trust. He's been divorced multiple times, has a temper. She defends him even when he mistreats us. I know the Bible calls me to forgive and honor my mother, but how do I do that while still setting boundaries and keeping my distance when the relationship feels harmful and dishonored to God? Well, it's harmful in your description so far, only to you, which isn't good. I get that. And then you talk about distance. Well, if someone's harmful to me, I certainly want distance. So there's something greater if it's harmful to your mother, right? That's a bigger thing. And all I'm saying in that is, right, don't make friendship with a man given to anger, right? The Bible's saying, okay, if I've got a situation where someone is spewing their outburst of anger toward me, well, then I'm not gonna be close to you. Therefore, if mom's inviting me over all the time and her new husband is angry all the time, I'm gonna say no more often than I say yes. And if I say yes, it better be an important meal like Thanksgiving or something. So you can distance yourself But your mom, if she's fallen in love with this guy and married him, and I don't think you ever said that, she's with a man. Oh, living with a man. Well, even that, okay? Doesn't matter if you're 80, 90, or 109. You shouldn't be living with a man, mom, grandma, if you are unmarried. right? And you have some kind of romantic companionship with him. You need to get married. So that's where I would go first of all, right? The Bible calls you to tell your mom, shouldn't be living with a man that's not your husband. And she may not be a Christian, and if that's the case, okay, I get that. You're not living by God's rules. Still be good for you not to pile up sin, so I would still say that. How do you honor your mother? You honor your mother by saying, Mom, I'd love to honor you by being here more often, but your husband really is a mess to my kids or my family or me, and I just, I can't come over quite as often, because he's a mess, to me at least. And I know you love him, so you just, excuse me, you're gonna have to be diplomatic and you're gonna have to get your space and not feel bad about the space if in fact the guy is, what did you call, mistreating you. If he's mistreating you, yeah, I mean, you put up only so much mistreatment for the sake of your mom without saying, as you put it, boundaries. I'm not into the psychobabble, which that's a borderline psychobabble term, but I'm gonna say, listen, Mom, I'm not coming over this Friday. I'm not gonna come over Sunday. Maybe I'll get it next Thursday, but you just, limit the connection. That's what I would say. 1-877-913-5357. And forgiveness, by the way, you mentioned forgiveness. Forgiveness certainly should be done. I mean, forgiveness, here's how you should see the word forgiveness, as letting it go. You should let it go, right, with every offense, even when there's not confession, right? Even when there's not an apology, but you let it go with reconciliation when there's ownership and repentance. So I let it go when someone cuts me off in traffic, right? But man, I'm ready to let it go and reconcile when someone is willing to own whatever their problem is, which of course, I have no relationship with the people on the road, but you know what I'm saying. All right, 1-877-REPENTANCE. 913-5357. Let's talk to Robert. Robert, you're on there with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Hi, Pastor Mike. I have a question for you. A friend of mine in church uses the CSB, and I have a Holman CSB that I gave to him. He doesn't use that. Is that a trustworthy version? Yes. Yeah, CSV is a great translation. It's got some great men that worked on the translation. I know some of them and it's good and it's very readable. When it came out, And I got a copy, I read it from cover to cover, and I wanted to read. Because here's the thing about a translation, and I've been asked to be on committees before, I've never been served on one, but I know how they work, and you get assigned a particular part of it, and then there are editors that deal with you know, English smoothing and all the rest, but I know that you could read a section of it, maybe the Pentateuch or a certain book, and you could then go to another book. It's not as good. I've read it from Genesis to Revelation, and I liked it. I really did. I don't preach from it, but it's not because I don't like it. It's very readable. It's more smooth than the New American Standard. It reads more Clearly, I think, even in the ESV, which I preach from, but yeah, it's good. The Christian Standard Bible, CSB or CSV as they sometimes call it, or it used to have Holman and H in the middle of that acronym. Yes, it's a good Bible. It's a good, accurate, readable, modern translation of the Bible based on good scholarship, all the eclectic text, if you know what I'm saying, all the available manuscripts of modern textual criticism. And yeah, it's good. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Yep. Here's the thing I would say about translations. All of us, and I said this earlier on Tuesday in To Every Man An Answer, but I think you, I mean, you should have good translations by your side as you study the Bible throughout the week, but be good to have as your primary Bible translation the translation that your pastor preaches from. That's just a good practice, and it will certainly help you in church following along. And just find out what your church uses, certainly if they have programs like Bible memorization or curriculum for your kids or your teens, just be good to have whatever your pastor is using. If he uses the New King James, fine, use that. If he uses the ESV, the NIV, the CSV, use those because, at least bring it to church because that's going to help you through the sermons and just help you interface and get more connected with the church. Unless, of course, it's a cult and they're using the New World Translation or something. Paraphrases. I hope you're not going to church where the pastor preaches from paraphrase. I'm sure they're not. I hope not if you're listening to this station. All right. 1-877-913-5357. 1-877-913-5357. Any questions about the Bible or the Christian life? Okay. Let's see what else we got here. If Jesus plus nothing equals salvation, please tell me what Matthew 6.15 means. All right, let's look that up. I'm going to catch up with you here. Matthew 6.15. Oh, I see where you're going with this. Yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. and there's more to your question here. It makes me think it means Jesus plus forgiving others equals our forgiveness resulting in salvation, not the work of Jesus alone. Okay. Yeah. Nothing earns our salvation. It'd be like me saying I'm going to sell you California. You can't buy it. You can't afford it, right? You just can't. There's nothing you can do. And to try and offer me your bank account, whatever your bank account is, I don't care if you've got $10 million in your bank account, would be an insult. You don't get the Redwoods and you don't get the beaches of Orange County. You don't get San Diego. You don't get California and the deserts and the mountains. You don't get all that for your $10 million. That's not how this works. So you get to have this because I'm giving it to you. Okay, well, how do you become a recipient of this? Well, we get in a covenant relationship. And the covenant relationship is one where you are called here as my, in this case, this is terrible illustration because I'm not putting myself in the place of God in this illustration because you're my son, right? And I'm giving this to you as an inheritor because my real son has died for you and now you're in his place and with him because he's resurrected now and you're going to get all of this. What I expect now, right, is that my spirit in you is going to produce fruit and that fruit or that work or that set of good works that you're supposed to walk into and walk in that I prepared for you, It's just being a part of this family now because you're an inheritor of this state. And I'm going to give you all this, probably a bad state to choose because half of you out there rolling your eyes. I don't want California. Okay, I get it. Let's just say it was totally a great place to be in terms of its politics. And you had all these beautiful places that we have. We have great, beautiful places, but let's just say Just work with me on this illustration, would you? Okay, so all of this, I'm going to tell you, you're going to say, okay, I get that. There's some covenantal relational obligations here. And it's something that the Bible says, not only does God demand it, but his spirit is going to work to produce it. Now, you're going to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, but it's God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. So God is going to supply through his spirit what he's demanding. What he's demanding is that you bear fruit in keeping with your repentance, right? Just to quote Acts 26. You're going to do that because God, right, has made that clear in his word. And all I'm telling you is this is how the Bible tells us to see forgiveness. It's one of the primary things that God is asking us to do. And that is that we are people that bear the good work of forgiveness. Why? Because God has forgiven us. As God has forgiven us, we're demanded to forgive. And in that demand, right, we now have an outworking of this covenantal relationship of us being walking, being obedient children, walking in the good works he's prepared for us. 1 John would be a good example. All those discussions about loving your brother are impossible without forgiveness. You can't do that without forgiving. It's the number one thing in the book of 1 John, barring the overarching umbrella of obeying his commands, the specific thing of loving your brother, right? It's going to necessitate, unless your brother's perfect, forgiveness. And so we have in the text that you've got to forgive others their trespasses or your father's not going to forgive your trespasses. Well, what does that mean? That means that every real Christian is going to forgive the trespasses of their brother. You're going to forgive people. And that's the reality of real Christians. God works that out in us because his spirit indwells us. And that's how the Bible says this all works. So we're not earning anything by that. That's one of the good works that God has demanded that we walk in. And he's provided all the means for us to do that. All right. Let's see what else we got here. Melissa asks, how does a pastor go about telling parents, how does a pastor go about telling parents that he feels their seven-year-old child is too young to be baptized? How does a pastor go about Well, okay, I know that's not what you mean, but it'd be easy for a pastor to go about telling parents that. Maybe, I don't know, maybe your husband's the pastor and you're asking how he's supposed to tell. Okay, maybe that is what you mean. Or maybe you're saying how does the pastor think he has any right to tell a parent that their seven-year-old is too young now to be baptized? Let me answer that second question first, if in fact that's what you meant, Melissa. The pastor has every right to tell a parent that he feels the child's too young to be baptized because he's responsible for the ordinance in that particular congregation. And if he says, listen, we're going to wait He's not waiting on their salvation, right? He has no bearing on the salvation of the child if, in fact, the child is saved. But bringing that child into the ordinance, right? We're not Catholics here. We don't believe this regenerates anyone. But the ordinance of baptism, this public expression of faith in the congregation, the pastor is the one who's officiating all that. And the pastor is going to say, I can do this in clear conscience or I can't. I have no problem with the pastor saying, seven, not ready. I need this to be an eight-year-old or a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old or whatever the standard is to where he's saying, I'm ready to put my imprimatur on that, so to speak. Sorry to use a Catholic word in the middle of a non-Catholic discussion. So yeah, the point is he's got to put his his reputation before God on that. We have to answer to God. It's the whole Hebrews 13, 17 thing. We keep watch over souls as those who will give an account. So if someone came to me and said, my three-year-old is saved, sign him up for baptism. No, I can't, right? Even if you were right, and one day, you know, you had the John the Baptist baby, right? Filled with the Holy Spirit from birth. I can't. I can't. Because I have to answer for the solemnization, the officiating of the ordinance. So I can't. Now, let me answer the other question. How does a pastor go about telling parents that? Well, I would say it this way. It's easier for me at our church. Because what I do, first of all, is I'll bring the seven-year-old into the office and I'll say, okay, mom and dad, I know you're wanting to sit into this meeting, but just sit right outside. We'll keep the door open. You can hear it all, but you're not going to talk and you're going to be, the kid's going to be here by himself with the pastor. And I want him to answer my question by himself. And I'll ask him for his testimony. I'll ask him to explain what it means to be a Christian and how he became a Christian. And the reason this is easier for us is because in our church, when we do baptisms, we have them give their testimony. And so we bring them in the baptismal tank. It takes longer, I get that. We have many people, it takes up almost the whole service, where we have these baptisms and they give their testimony. So if a kid sits there and balks and can't articulate the gospel or his testimony, then I'm going to pull them out into the outside of my office and I'm going to say, hey, you heard that. I'm going to wait. Let's wait another year and we can discuss this next year. I'm not doubting your kid's sincerity of his faith. I'm just saying I want to get to the place where he can articulate this more clearly because I want him to make that profession publicly and profess Christ before men. And so let's wait till this can be articulated more clearly. That's how technically I'm answering your question the way you wrote it. That's how a pastor would go about telling parents that this is not quite yet the time. And because if you have the right understanding of baptism in scripture, not spiritual baptism, but water baptism, it's not salvific. So your kid can be saved for four years before they get baptized. And there's no problem there, especially because the pastors in the church are going to make the decision of how that ordinance is. administered. All right, go to pastormike.com as we wrap up the program this week and today, and you can learn about what's going on there. Lots of free material. And we talked earlier to Ben about his job. You want to commute, you could commute hundreds of miles to work and take you a while to get through our website with hundreds and hundreds of sermons, hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of sermons. And a lot of other preachers do the same thing. It's all out there for free. I'm so glad it's free. It used to be write in and pay for a cassette tape or a CD. Now it's all free. Get all that. PastorMike.com. Learn about our focal point cruise next summer. If you can afford that and you want to go, come and join us next summer. Pastor Mike signing out. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. You're listening to Ask Pastor Mike Live with pastor and Bible teacher Mike Fabares. For more straightforward Bible teaching from Pastor Mike, listen to our Focal Point broadcast on this station. And you can look up our full broadcast schedule on PastorMike.com. This is Dave Druey for Focal Point Ministries, hoping you'll join us next time for more Ask Pastor Mike Live.