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 back with you again today on the program, answering your questions about the Bible, the Christian life, whatever's on your mind. If I can be of help to you, give me a call 1-877-913-5357. Go to YouTube. You can get involved in the chat there, chat with each other, or you can chat with me just by asking a question in the chat window there on YouTube. Just look for Ask Pastor Mike live. That should get you to our Mike Fabar's page, which will have the program streaming live or go to Facebook live. You just go to Facebook and you can go to the Focal Point Ministries page. We should be streaming live there. Get involved in the chat. You can chat with each other or you can chat with me just by asking a question there or text the word ASK to the number in your texting app, 90398. and that will give you a chance to click on the link that is sent right back to you immediately, and that'll give you a chance to ask me a question, whatever is on your mind regarding your Christian life, and we will do our best here to answer your question. Call in, and our Nice man will answer the phone and then he'll put you in the queue here and we'll get you on the air 1 8 7 7 9 1 3 5 3 5 7 that's the number to call we've got some questions that are coming in through the ASK the ask texting the ask 9 0 3 9 8 so I'm going to tackle some of those while you Get your phone out of your purse or your pocket and you give me a call. 1-877-913-5357. My name is Mike Fabarez, by the way, the voice you hear on Focal Point every day. I hope you listen every day as we go verse by verse through the Bible. I am the pastor of Compass Bible Church in Aliso Viejo, California. And yeah, we're doing ministry here in Southern California. A few of us left preaching the Bible. There's plenty of us out here, but I say that because most of you think there's no Christians in California. There's some of us here. We're doing the work. We're doing the best we can. Let's answer some questions. Melody asked, do you have any books on what God says about marriage? Yeah, I got plenty of those. You got a friend here, da-la-la-la-la-la, yeah. Okay, well, you want books on marriage, yeah. I guess there's a lot of books I could give you on that. OK, Piper wrote a book on this momentary marriage. It's good about the permanence of marriage. John and Noel Piper. R.C. Sproul wrote a book called Intimate Marriage. That's a great book talking about the practical guide to building a better marriage. A little deeper about the importance of marriage and family, the Kostenbergers, Andreas and Margaret Kostenberger. We recommend that often by Crossway Publishers. Andreas Kostenberger and his wife Margaret, a great couple, great theologian. It's called God, Marriage, and Family, Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation for Marriage. Wayne Mack, that's a great book too, called Strengthening Your Marriage. There's a few. That'll get you started, Melody. All right. Marie has written in, I'm a mom of a teenage girl at youth camp. The pastor said that basically every guy, even married men, struggle with pornography. Is there a better way to teach on this or should all women just assume every man has an issue with pornography? All right. Well, that sounds really depressing, doesn't it, Marie? Well, yeah. Yeah, how do I answer this question? Well, I guess here's the thing. No, not every single last man in the world, but in some ways, Marie, it's like asking this. Does every woman love a warm hug and a man saying, you're a wonderful woman, a beautiful woman? Does every woman love that? I mean, really? Are we supposed to believe that every woman loves to be held in a warm embrace and told that she's beautiful and wonderful? Yeah, I think just almost every woman loves that. Well, yeah, and in return, men are wired to love beauty and the form of a woman without clothes on. Yeah, that's kind of how it's made. That's how the world works. And so that's always going to be an issue. read the first 10 chapters of Proverbs and you'll see that that's going to be the challenge in this world. So, I don't mean to depress you, Marie, but I am going to say that is going to be an issue that, I'm not trying to pile on what your daughter has heard at camp, but yeah, it's going to be an issue. That's why modesty is important for gals. And I am going to say there's plenty of sins the Bible talks about that women are prone to, And some sins men are prone to. And I'm not saying every last man in the world, but yeah, it's certainly one that most are prone to. And men have to work to make sure they do all that they can. to strengthen their lives against those kinds of things. And there are certain things that everyone, equal, men and women are equally prone to certain sins. You know, I think of gluttony, right? I guess we all have an appetite to overeat, all of us men and women are equal in that regard. But we're wired differently when it comes to gratifying the desires of the flesh in certain ways that relates to the opposite sex. So, yep, sorry about that. All right. 1-877-913-5357. Let's go to the phones. Matt, you're on the air with Pastor Mike Fabarez. How can I help? Hi, Pastor Mike. I got a question that I think I've misunderstood for a long time. I tend to oversimplify wanting to make everything black and white, and I miss the deeper meaning. The Kingdom of God, there's places like in the Beatitudes where it says, you know, certain people inherit the Kingdom of God. Then there's other places where there's warnings of, you know, we'll not inherit the Kingdom of God. I tend to think, okay, you'll go to heaven or you won't go to heaven. But I'm finding out, I'm hearing that that also means could mean, if you don't inherit the kingdom, God means, doesn't mean you necessarily won't go to heaven, but you may not have the power of God in your life here on earth and now. Can I get your take on that? Yeah. People make a separation between inherit the kingdom or enter the kingdom, and I think that's a false distinction. And I don't think you should make that distinction. Now, people make that distinction usually when they're trying to say that you can become a Christian simply by believing the facts of the gospel, but it doesn't have to transform your life. And that's why you can kind of go unchanged as a Christian and not have any real fruit in your life. And those are the kinds of people that aren't going to have any real rewards in the kingdom. They'll enter the kingdom, but they won't really inherit anything in the kingdom. And that's how they kind of talk their way through what it means to be a fruitless citizen of the kingdom, but they won't get any real rewards in the kingdom. And then they'll hope that maybe you'll go from being a believer in Christ to a disciple of Christ and they'll say, well, that's the second tier Christianity. You go from just a rank and file Christian to a real, you know, varsity Christian. And that's a false dichotomy that's been created in Christianity and I reject it. And I think all, well, I don't think, I know, I mean, 19 centuries of Christianity have rejected it. It's a modern creation and only the last hundred years or so of Christianity have even dabbled in that kind of dichotomy. So if you've heard it, and you may have heard it in a sermon, you may have read it in a book, but I have messed with it. I dove deep into kind of hearing the argument and I have come out of it rejecting it completely. But I've heard it and I understand it, but I think there is nothing to it. So every time you hear inherit the kingdom or enter the kingdom, there's no difference. To enter it is to inherit it. To inherit it is to enter it. So if I'm living a fruitless life, I say I believe in Jesus and I trust him as my Lord and Savior, but I've got no fruit, it's possible that and it says you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, that means you're not going to heaven. Correct. You're not a real Christian. That's correct. That's correct. Yeah, James 2.14, what good is it my brothers to say I have faith and I don't have works? Can that faith save him? That's a rhetorical question that's answered in the rest of the passage, and the answer is no. And the whole book of 1 John is about that. If I say I have faith and there's no fruit, then I'm lying, I'm deceiving myself. And so this has been a convenient way people have kind of two-stepped their way through saying, well, maybe there is a way that you can enter the kingdom but not inherit the kingdom. But that's not true. It's just not true. then trying on your own power to make fruit, you can't do that unless you're abiding. It has to happen naturally. Correct. I tend to want to, okay, wait, I got to make some fruit. I got to show that I'm saved. Right. But you're going to, here's the thing, people like to conform externally to their environment, and a lot of churchgoers say, well, I'm going to try really hard to fit in here. But what we need is an encounter with God, with real abiding trust in Jesus, that changes us from the inside out. And this is the whole promise of regeneration. The Spirit of God invades our life, changes our heart, the Spirit envelops us. Here's how it's put in the Old Testament. The Spirit of God invades us in Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, the Spirit of God dwells in our lives and moves us to keep the precepts of God. God is going to work from the inside of us to move us along. Or as you just quoted, or at least you alluded to, as it says in John 15, we're going to abide in the vine and we're going to bear fruit. This is an organic thing. This is the Spirit of God working within us, as though we're drawing that sap from the vine, and we're going to bear fruit because we're connected to God. And it's the Spirit of God within us that's going to produce this, the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians chapter 5. We're going to have the fruit coming out of us because God dwells in us. Now, does it feel like work? Of course it does, right? We're going to have to say no to the flesh. We're going to have to say yes to God's Spirit. But it's going to happen because God is going to make sure it happens because we're abiding in Christ and Christ is in us and therefore it's going to happen. But it's going to be work. We're going to have to do all that we can, as Peter says, make every effort to add to our faith and then he lists all the virtues. Yes, it's going to happen, and we can't say, like some people do, just believe the facts in your mind, and then, you know, if you want to get serious about this later, then you can do that. But you've got your insurance policy in your back pocket, so you'll be fine. That's not how it works. That's a false assurance. Go ahead. So is it oversimplistic or insufficient? the verses that say, call upon the name of the Lord and you will be saved. Is that too oversimplistic? So you got to take the whole of scripture, not just one of those. It says right here, just call upon the name of the Lord and you will be saved. Well, yeah, you're quoting Romans 10, and I'm all about that, but you've got to read all of that in context, right? The whole point is, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. everyone who believes will not be put to shame. There's no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the Lord is Lord of all and bestows riches on all who call on him." And this concept of him being the boss, the king, Lord, right? We're not used to that word, but that word means you're the boss, you're in charge, you're the one who's going to call the shots, right? I'm calling on him as my king. And we just throw that around today in religious contexts, right? At least if we would go back a thousand years, we would at least be living in the time of kings and lords and ladies and bishops and, you know, we don't have that anymore. But we need to think about when we use the word Lord, we're talking about the boss, we're talking about the king, we're talking about the one in charge. So, if we read the whole context of Romans 10 and we're calling on the Lord, you're calling on the one who's going to now be in charge of your life. So, it's not just saying, hey, I'm going to ring up the Roto-Rooter and he's going to fix my eternal problem, right? It's not just saying, hey, help me out here and give me my insurance policy so I don't go to the bad place. This isn't just making a phone call. This is laying my life in the hands of the King And now I'm saying, I'm yours. I'm a servant of the Lord, right? I'm now a living sacrifice saying, here, take my life and I'm yours. That's how this works. The whole point of the book of Romans is saying, now I'm a slave of the one who has redeemed me. The whole concept of redemption is taking me out of the slave market of sin and becoming a servant and a slave of Christ. Now again, you don't read Romans 10 until you've read Romans 6 and Romans 6 has already said, I've become a slave of God. okay, well, I can't think in those terms and then just kind of parachute into Romans 10 and think, oh, I just make a phone call to God at camp. Well, I've already grappled with the concept of no longer being enslaved to sin and being a slave to God. See, so I just don't like the cherry picking and some guy preaching from camp you know, Romans 10, well, the book of Romans was meant to be read to the Roman church in the first century and understanding one chapter at a time. It's like reading, you know, Huck Finn and only dropping into chapter 22 and reading one paragraph and forgetting that it's part of a whole book. So, yeah, I'm not saying I'm against Romans 10. I'm just saying let's read it all in its context. Right. Okay. To tie it together, and I'll be quick, I don't want to take everyone's time. If I could just ask one last question to tie it together. What about someone who would say, man, I believe in Jesus with all my heart. I worship Him. I praise Him. I count on Him as my only hope. I truly believe that with my heart. And yet, I deal with a sin problem. I mean, I know we all do, but I mean, for someone who has a sin problem, how do they get that assurance that, look, I'm not producing any fruit. I've got this sin problem. And I'm afraid that I'm not going to go to heaven because, you know, it says here I'm not going to go to heaven, but I believe in Jesus with all my heart that that's my only way in and I can't earn it. but I've got this sin problem. Well, yeah, a problem. I'd want to make sure it's the problem, the kind of problem that Peter describes in 1 Peter 2, verse 11. He says, we're sojourners and exiles here. First of all, I want to start with that. Is this problem the kind of problem I cozy up to? Because the Bible says if I'm, in James 3, if I'm a friend of the world, Well, then I'm an enemy of God, right? So, I've got to be a sojourner and an exile to the kinds of things that someone might call a problem, right? I'm supposed to abstain from the passions of the flesh. Now, here's what it says in 1 Peter 2, verse 11, which wage war against my soul. Okay, if you're willing to call your problem a war, that it's waging against my soul, because I really don't belong here in this world, I'm a sojourner in exile, then I'm fine with that. Okay, you got a problem with sin? Let's just call it what it is. I got passions, and I've got these desires, they're waging war against my soul, because I don't even belong in this world. Okay, and I hate it, right? And then you can say with James, in James 3, 2, hey, we all stumble in many ways. I'm fine with that, right? We have problems. We're sinners. And he says in James 3, right, that the easiest sin to commit is the one with our tongue as it flaps around as a deadly, you know, fire within our own mouth. So, I can hardly control it. Right? So, yeah, I'm fine with Christians admitting that they're sinners, as 1 John 1 says, if we say we're without sin, we're lying. So, yes, absolutely. But I want to put it in its proper context, because a lot of people shrug their shoulders and say, nobody's perfect, you know, but I believe in God. No, no, no. You've got to make sure you're putting in its proper context. I want Christians to weep over their sin. I want Christians to say, yeah, I hate my sin. I hate the fact that I'm embattled over this. And if that's the case, then I'm with you, man. Every Christian feels that way. And I'm a friend of every Christian who's fighting their sin. Absolutely. Because I am too, and every Christian is, and we all hate our sin and we're fighting it every day. and may God give us all the strength to fight it. I often talk about being friended with the embattled saints because we are all embattled in this world. There's lots of scars that we bear because we fight the flesh, we fight the devil, and we fight this world as sojourners and exiles. Oh, thank you. There's a lot of hope in that, and that really has helped me a lot. I hope maybe it's helped somebody else, too. I'm sure it has, Matt. Thanks for the call. Appreciate it. 1-877-913-5357. That's the number to call. Let's talk to Jeff. Jeff, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Well, hello, Pastor Mike. My question has to do with, I have a family member that has dropped himself and his family out of church, except when we take his kids. When asked for part of the reasoning, the big part of the reasoning that he has is that we have a security team, we have a safety team, and that he feels that it's not right that if someone were to come into the door that we might actually defend the congregation and shoot someone that's unsaved, thus possibly causing them to go to hell. And therefore, it's his reason for not wanting to be involved with church. And I'm going to be sending this to this individual, sending the link and so on. But I'm hoping for your take as a pastor and why it's important to, in this day and age, unfortunately, and I'm 58 years old and I would have never dreamed when I was even 20 years ago that we'd have to have guns in church, but why it's important to be able to protect the congregation and kind of my thought on this was was, well, he's concerned about the person coming in the door with nefarious thoughts in mind that's unsaved. But what about the unsaved that's sitting in the pews, that perhaps we should protect them as well as, of course, our own families? So it's kind of the opposite. It's the other side of it, that we need to protect those that are there for good reasons, and not those that are there necessarily for bad reasons, if they're there to kill and aim and destroy. And I'd just like to know your thoughts, and like I said, I'm going to send this to him, and see if he can pass on your thoughts as a pastor. All right. Well, let's think of your friend for a second. Is he employed? Yes. Where does he work? Do you have a sense? Not just the general, what kind of business is he involved in? City government. Okay, city government. So he works at a city government. Does he work in an office, let's say? No, sir, out in the field. Okay, he works out in the field. Let's say he's working out in the field, I don't know, let's just pick a kind of work that he does. Let's say he works building roads out in California, we call it Caltrans, and he's building bridges and so forth. Let's just say he's got 30 guys in his team, he's building a bridge and he's fixing a road or whatever, and all of a sudden a van pulls up and six guys come out of the van and they've all got chains and clubs and knives and they start charging after his team. And his team, they're stuck under this culvert there and under this underpass. And he's sitting there with his cell phone and thinking, oh man, maybe I should call the police. Is he going to call the cops that have guns on their on their hips and he's going to have them come, like my dad was a cop, my uncle was a cop, my cousin was a cop, he's going to call my father and my uncle to come and possibly shoot them with a .40 caliber handgun and kill those men and send them to hell. Is he going to do that? and really have their souls go directly into some time, a period of torment, to save himself and those co-workers. I'm going to say, well, that's a horrible thing to do. Why would he ever do that? As opposed to, who cares where it's at? Is it at church? Is he saving some teenager sitting there studying the Bible or saving the pastor or the worship leader or the choir member? I mean, what difference does this make where this is, right? It makes no sense to me that someone would say, no, I'm going to let people kill people indiscriminately wherever they're at. This is absurd to me to think that it makes any sense that we are not going to protect myself or the people I love or even the people I don't even much love, I just work I just tolerate. Maybe the irritating coworker I've got, Charlie, who's always late for work and always leaves early and puts in a half-hearted effort all day. I still don't want him knifed by some guy who pulls up in a van and has got him cornered under an underpass. I want the cops to show up and to neutralize the threat. Of course, I'm going to call the guy with the .40 caliber to neutralize the threat with his Glock. Yes, I'm going to do that. I want deadly force used against someone who's going to kill my coworker. and I'm thinking to myself, why would I not? I don't want someone unjustly slain at work. Yes, and I don't care where it's at. I don't care if it's at the day school. I don't care if it's a nursery. I don't care if it's at In-N-Out Burger. I don't care if it's at the office that I work at. I don't care if it's at church. Yes, we're going to protect people, especially, and I'm thinking, my brothers and sisters at Christ that are gathered to worship, of course we're going to protect them. and you bet we're going to have gatekeepers or however you're going to call them, people that are going to protect us as security guards at church. Yes, of course. We're gathered there with our children and our teens and our elderly and we're worshiping God. Yes. and I have precedent for it in scripture, not only the Old Testament law that gives me the right to protect myself, not only in the scripture itself that gives the principle in the Noahic covenant that I know that the sacred nature of people made in the image of God are to be protected and that even the state is given the right to execute people that take anyone's life and the protection that's built into the Mosaic Law that I'm even able, if someone comes into my house at night under the cover of darkness, to steal something that I have the right and I'm exonerated completely to defend myself by killing him and God says, no, you're off scot-free, right? That kind of protection within the Mosaic law itself, not to mention the New Testament in Luke chapter 22 when the apostles are being told to go back to normal proverbial life after Jesus tests them without taking a wallet, a money bag, a knapsack, an extra set of sandals. He says, listen, if you don't have swords, right? You better go sell your cloak to get some swords." And Peter goes, yeah, we got a couple swords. He goes, great, I don't need you, you don't need an arsenal, but you better have a couple swords with you. And they have swords. These are the apostles. These are missionaries. Yeah, you need a wallet, you need a money bag, you need a knapsack, you need some sandals, you need a cane to walk with, a walking stick, and you need swords. Of course you need swords. You need to protect your loved ones. You need to protect your fellow missionaries. And in church, you better have some people that are armed who know how to defend people that they love, defend the pastor, right? I'm not packing on the platform. I'm worried about preaching out of the two-edged sword of God's Word. I need someone who's able to protect me from some crazy that's going to stand up and shoot me. So yes, of course I want that. and why wouldn't I want that? I would want that in any context. I would want someone who's out to kill my co-workers at work or someone at a restaurant who pulls a gun in the middle of dinner. So, I don't think it makes any sense, and I think he's got a double standard, unless he's going to offer up his children and his wife and himself in his own home late at night when he's having dinner, which I don't think he will. So, I have biblical precedent for it, and even if he's going to offer himself up, because he doesn't want to hurt the criminal. I have biblical rationale for saying I'm not going to do that. And I just think not only does the Bible give me that right of self-protection, but even our secular government still reflect enough of the biblical law to give me the right of self-protection and self-defense, and I'm going to take that, and I have every right to do it. And of course, the church I think we're sitting ducks if we don't and thankfully we've got some good examples of churches having good security teams protecting themselves and their congregations and sometimes that's taking place and we've seen some videos of that not too long ago out there in Texas and thank God that we have it in our church and many good churches that have large groups gathering together are well trained with law enforcement that are ready to protect congregations that are assembling together. So I don't know if that's going to convince your friend, but I hope he's not going to offer up his children or his daughter or his sons to criminals and let them be killed. I hope he's going to protect them. Loving your family, loving your friends, loving your co-workers, and loving your fellow parishioners, I hope would certainly do, would certainly prompt you to do what the Bible not only allows you to do, but I think love demands that you do to defend them. Well, as I like to say, somebody that walks into a church with those sorts of activities in their brains, well, they put a quarter in the jukebox. what their intent is, and they put a quarter in the jukebox, they get to pay the price. They get to dance. Yeah, and think about this guy shooting through the window of this Catholic church, you know, just this last week. I mean, if you could have seen him draw his gun outside before he shot through the stained glass, and you see him aiming his gun, put your friend who's against having any security at a church, and saying you could have saved those children from being shot in prayer in the church and the adults that got wounded or killed, right? And you wouldn't have taken him out, right? Are you telling me you wouldn't have done that? I'm thinking then I think there's something wrong with you. I really do. I'm sorry. I think you have a requirement in loving the people that you should be called if it's within your power to help them in that situation. You should definitely spare them that kind of harm. And in that case, they're being carried off to their own death by some madman. Yes. Anyway, all right. Well, I greatly appreciate that. I'll be passing this on to him. Okay. Maybe he'll listen to this. I appreciate it. We'll see. Okay. All right. Thank you, Jeff, for the call. 1-877-913-5357. Maybe that was passionate because that story is so fresh on my mind from the news. And yeah, it's insane what has been happening. And certainly churches are increasingly a target of all of that. And let me look up a passage that may help. Yeah, I'm thinking of this text and I got to find it here. It's lurking in Proverbs. Proverbs chapter 24. Verse 11, "...rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling toward the slaughter. If you say, behold, we did not know this, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it?" Okay. Proverbs 24, 11 and 12. If I see this guy taking aim through a stained glass window, shooting people in his And the Catholic school he went to, right, and he's aiming to kill children assembled in the chapel that he graduated from. If I have a chance to rescue those children by neutralizing that threat and I don't rescue them, right, and I don't hold back the threat in that case and say, well, you know, I'm not going to do that. Here's the threat from God. Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? And will he not repay you according to your work? I just, yeah, I just think there's too much in scripture for me to sit back and say no. Anyway, all right, Jeff, thanks for the opportunity for me to rant on that a little bit. 1-877-913-5357. Let's go to Roger now. Roger, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Hi, Pastor Mike. In my tradition growing up, John chapter three, In particular, verse number five, this is when Jesus is in dialogue with Nicodemus. My tradition has said that this has been a proof text for the salvific necessity of water baptism. I don't believe this is the case. So, could you please ask or answer what is the significance of the water in John 3, in particular verse 5? Yeah, this is a reference to what is being told in the Old Testament about the water description in the promise of the New Covenant. the promise of the New Covenant was that we would be washed clean. This was what Jeremiah 31 talks about. And he chides him, remember, because he's a teacher of Israel and he doesn't know these things, right? And he says, you should know these things because you're like the Old Testament professor, right? And you should know how this works. And you don't know it and you ought to know it. And so, the water is not about baptism. It's an anachronism to say that. And by that, I mean, you know, we don't have the institution of the New Testament form of baptism. And by that, I mean the kind we see in the book of Acts that hasn't been inaugurated yet. And what we see, though, throughout the book of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, when we see the coming of the new covenant, is that God is promising the sprinkling clean of the idols and all of the sin being removed and that is symbolized by the water. Forgiveness is symbolized by water and spirit is symbolizing our hearts being made from stone into flesh. and that we are made new from the inside out. So, heart of stone being made into a heart of flesh, and my forgiveness being symbolized by the water. Ezekiel 36, 26. And when that takes place, right, I think a teacher of Israel should know that. Verse 25 says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit, and I will put that within you. I'll remove a heart of stone from your flesh and give you a new heart. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules." And to say, well, you know, the water's literal. I'm going to say, no, it's not literal any more than putting a new heart in you is literal, right? The spirit is being put in you, that's clear. But spirit, remember, is also the word for wind. And he uses the concept of wind, saying you don't know where it's going, you don't know where it's coming from. So, I just think there's too much connected to the image of forgiveness being connected to water and the newness of life being connected to spirit and God's spirit changing us from the inside out. Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, Ezekiel 34, all the promises of the new covenant coming down to two basic images of water and spirit and that's where I think Jesus ties that all together in John chapter 3. I preached a sermon on this. Actually, I think I preached it on Easter, not this year. But if you go to pastormike.com and look at my John 3 sermon, I kind of leaned into this to make really clear why I think this is all about water of the new covenant promise. And I did it much more eloquently than I did here in the three minutes I explained it just now. But yeah, I don't think it has anything to do with water baptism. That wouldn't make sense in the context and I don't think it makes sense in the timing. I think one of the parallels that has been used is that just a couple of chapters earlier, when John the Baptist was baptizing for repentance, and then he himself was looking forward to someone greater to come, which is the one who will be baptizing with the Spirit. Right. Does that make any sense? Well, remember, even that, you've got to make a decision whether or not we're talking about something good or something bad. When he talks about what the Spirit is going to do there, he talks even about the fire that's going to be, baptism with fire. If you look at all that's said about the baptism that's coming, And that, unfortunately, is a scary kind of baptism in Matthew 3, 11, and Luke 3, 16. And the concern I have about the baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire is those are both a negative that you're going to be either You're either going to be baptized with a kind of cleansing or you're going to be baptized with a kind of judgment. So, yeah, I get the fact that the Spirit is going to divide you, just like it says in Luke chapter 1, Israel is going to be split into two camps for the rise and the fall of many in Israel. And I think that's the picture there. And of course, the spirit is laden throughout the book of John. You see it in the first chapter, right out of the gate in John 1. So, You know, I don't think just a mere reference of the Spirit is going to change my view that he's speaking to a teacher of the law in John 3 and he's referring to the new covenant because clearly I think that's what's in view in John chapter 3 is the new covenant promise. And he's trying to say, I'm the one and you're a teacher of Israel and you don't know this and you're a Pharisee and you should know this. Wonderful. You have answered my question. Thank you so much. Okay, Roger. Thanks for the call. 1-877-913-5357. 1-877-913-5357. That is the number to call. Let's see what else we've got going on here with the written in questions. David says, hold on, I'm going to reload this page here. It's not reloading now. It's reloading. Very good. Garcia, family of six, do you find a difference in the way you preach the three sermons? Okay, well now you know enough to know I preach three sermons every week. I preach the same sermon on the weekend three times. I end up preaching three times, three different sermons every week just about. What's your favorite and your hardest one? That's a personal question, but I'll talk about that. Yeah, I preach the same sermon for the weekend just because we don't have Well, we're in the middle of a remodel right now. And even in our setup, we don't have enough space to do one service. So I do three services, five on Saturday and two on Sunday morning. And so I preach the same sermon three times. You say, What difference? Yeah, the difference is there are differences. Yeah. And you say, which is your favorite? And I always tell each of the services that they're my favorite. And I do that tongue in cheek, of course, because they're all my favorite. It's like children, right? They're all my favorite. Which is the hardest to preach? Yeah, that's hard to say. I always tell people this, when they find a difference between my sermons, like, we have small groups based on my preaching. I write questions for every sermon I preach, and if you hear my preaching locally, you'll know that if you happen to be listening and you're part of my church. If you go to small groups and somebody in your small group went to like the Saturday service at five and then someone else going to the 11 and they say, oh, yeah, he didn't say that in my service. When you hear the distinction between the services, that's a service probably you're going to know Pastor Mike probably wasn't happy with that weekend sermon, at least what didn't come out as well as he wanted it to on the Saturday, because if there's changes, you know, that's a sermon that needed some work overnight or between services. So Yeah, those are weekends that probably aren't my favorites because I struggle. But yeah, the best sermons are the ones where there's not much change between the three. So hardest ones, I mean, on a hard weekend like this last weekend where it was hot and I was preaching outside, yeah, the last one can be the hardest one to preach just because I'm spent. It takes a lot out of you to preach, believe it or not. Okay. Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. Let's see. Colleen asks, is it wrong to use the name Yahweh? I'm doing a study on the names of God and came across a few articles that due to the nature of the holy word, it's better to use the word God or Lord. Yeah, Jews don't, they don't articulate the word Yahweh. They call it the tetragrammaton. They think it's too holy to articulate. I don't believe that's the case. As a Christian, I don't think that's the case, but that is how the Jews treated it. So I don't have a problem using the word Yahweh, and I think even sometimes as I'm preaching through an Old Testament book, when I have taught through an Old Testament book, sometimes it's helpful to use the word simply because, you know, when you start just using the convention of the capital L capital O-R-D, if they're all caps, and sometimes you're using it next to a word that, the word Adonai, which is also translated Lord. If it's not in caps, sometimes it's just helpful to use the word Yahweh, which is translated into our English translations, capital O-R-D, and it's just an English convention. If all this is confusing to you, just go to the beginning of your Bible and there's a section at the beginning of every translation, English translation of the Bible, that's going to explain how they use the word Lord in translating both the word Yahweh, which is used over 7,000 times in the Old Testament, and the word Adonai, which is also translated Lord. So, Yeah, I don't think it's wrong to use the word Yahweh. I don't think so, no. Not a problem. Alright, Colleen's question. Paula says, I've had a concordance for years, but all it's done is sit on the shelf. Yes. How do I use it to help me better understand the Bible? That's a great question, Paula. I love that question. A concordance. Here's what a concordance is. It's a weird word. A concordance is a book that is pretty much passe these days because of computers. And even if you don't have Bible software, which I think everyone should get some Bible software, if of course you have a computer, If you don't have a computer, well, then you should pull your concordance out because the concordance is helpful. Concordance takes every English word and it does two things. It assigns, well, here's the simplest thing it does in English. It takes your English word, it lists them in alphabetical order, and it will give you every reference Every biblical reference, an address for every time that English word shows up in your Bible, which is helpful. If you want to see the word endurance, and you'll find every time that it's used in your Bible. But, you'll also assign it a number based on the Greek word, like the word hububene. Hupomone is the Greek word normally translating the word endurance. But you might find in some passage, maybe the word macrothymia, which is another word usually translated patience, that could be in some passages translated endurance because of maybe how the sentence is working. And they'll say, oh, that too is translated endurance in this passage. And so, It'll help you kind of understand the underlying text and sometimes you'll understand why it's translated the way it is. So, it's just going to help you get around in the Bible. But here's the thing, most of you have a tablet or a phone, obviously, that has the internet access. Here's a way for you to understand what a concordance does, and it's a lot easier than flipping pages, even if you don't have Bible software, which you should all get. If you don't know what Bible software to get, here's what I recommend. Download, go to Logos.com, L-O-G-O-S.com and download. Just the engine won't cost you anything and click around on it. You can download the free versions of, you know, King James Version. I don't know, and probably get the NIV. I don't know what else it'll give you for free, but get all you can get for free. and it'll certainly have a concordance for free. And you can click around on all of these things and it'll do it automatically at a touch of a mouse button. And that'll be easy to start to understand how you can do some concordance work. Or another way to do this is to go to the Blue Letter Bible. Blue Letter Bible, you can start with, I would go to the New American Standard. And if you pull up the New American Standard, Let me just do this with you real quick and this will help you. Blue letter Bible. Let me get this pulled up. If you go to the NASB 95 and then you click on the thing, the little button that says Strong's, which is a concordance, a Strong's concordance, every word will have a number next to it. I don't need to explain this, but it'll have a G and then a number, which is the kind of concordance number because they had to change the numbers. I won't explain all that, but later they had to add the G because they had to renumber them because of a few words they left out when they first did, when Strong's first did this, but blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, I'll pull up John 3.16, for God so loved the world. Okay. Well, next to the word love, there is a G25. If I click on G25, it'll take me to the Greek word, Strong's Greek word, agapao. Agapao, right, is going to get, it's going to spell it out with the English letters. Then it's going to give me the Greek letters, which if you don't know Greek, it'll just look like Greek. It's all Greek to me. It will then give you the transliteration, which is great because that's in English. It'll give you a pronunciation and even the blue letter Bible will give you a little speaker there. You click on it and it'll pronounce it for you. And then it'll give you some etymology, like what's the root of it. It'll tell you how many times it shows up in the New Testament. It'll give you a little dictionary form from one of the oldest and, you know, common Bible dictionaries, the Vines Expository Dictionary, which is a great resource, and it will go and tell you how many times it's translated in certain ways. Like, it's translated 135 times into the word love in the New Testament, it's translated seven times into the word beloved in the New Testament, and it goes on to explain all that it explains, which is a lot of different things, a lot of different ways that it's translated in different forms in the New Testament. Anyway, that's all that a concordance does. It just does it a lot easier by the click of a mouse here, which is great. And you can search by book, eight times in the book of Matthew, five times in the book of Mark, 13 times in the book of Luke, 37 times in the book of John, which is interesting, right? You say, wow, he's really, right, the apostle that Jesus loved, he uses the word love, agapao, 37 times. 8 times in the book of Romans, 2 times in the book of 1 Corinthians, anyway. And by the way, 1 John, 28 times in the little book of 1 John. So, great way to use it. Blue Letter Bible. If you don't have any Bible software, it's got a lot of cool things. You can check it all out. Better yet, invest a little money in Bible software. I like Logos because it's got the most resources available. But anyway, that's what a concordance is, Paula, and hopefully that'll help you. All right. 1-877- 9, 1, 3, 5, 3, 5, 7. All right. Kimberly, my, oh, let's see what we got here. First Corinthians 11, 10. What does this mean? Oh, that's a good question. I know this passage. First Corinthians chapter 11, verse 10. Uh, yeah, wife ought to have a symbol of Florida in her head because of the angels. I love that, uh, that we're bringing this up because we just talked about a concordance. Um, yeah, angels. Uh, angels is a word that is a Greek word. It's, we're not translating it. The word angels. Here's a few places where the word angels maybe should be translated. Well, it should, I don't know. It's like the word baptizo. I always say this to my church when we have baptism. It's good if we were to translate it because we would always wonder if we're talking about, are we talking about being dunked into water or being dunked into Christ? Are we being placed into water or being placed into Christ? We'd want to know the context. If I said, does baptism save you? You'd want to know, what do you mean? being placed into Christ, right, judicially, legally, right, by the Spirit, being placed into a relationship with Christ, that does save me. Being placed into water, no, that doesn't save me. Angolos, in Greek, right, that's a Greek word, we just transliterate that into English, like we do the word baptizo, we just turn it into an English word, baptize, right? Angolos is the same way. We just turn it into an English word. which I wish we translated, because if we did, we would translate it into the word messenger, because that's what the word anglos means. But instead, we just turn it into an English word, anglos, or angels, is what we did. Well, here's one place, and in the book of Revelation, where it may be helpful if we did translate it, because then it would read this way. The wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the messengers. Okay, Paul's talking here about the practice in Corinth. Paul has got messengers going back and forth with these letters. Verse 16 says, if anyone is inclined to be contentious about this matter, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God. Paul can't get a letter to the Corinthians without messengers. Messengers are bringing these letters to them. I've said this just recently, I was preaching Second Corinthians to my congregation and this last week and I reminded them that Corinth is the Orange County of the ancient world, right? It's at the crossroads on an isthmus. It's just got a lot of money there and it's progressive. And so, you know, feminization of this area in terms of feminist movement and the empowerment of women and all the rest of the cutting-edge stuff. And it showed here in 1 Corinthians 11 when you had a lot of feminists saying, we want to take the pulpit and we don't care about gender roles and we're going to do all this stuff well. they wanted to press the limits of gender distinctions and they were wanting to cast off women being feminine and men being masculine and there was blurring of the lines here that Paul's trying to correct. Well, even this picture of why women should be covering their head and having, you know, even it depends on how you read this text, the covering of their hair as their glory, this is in verse 15, a woman has long hair, it is her glory, it's given to her as a covering, uh, you know, the women cutting their hair off and trying to, you know, wear man's hair, uh, styles, all the rest. He says, no, that shouldn't happen. At least, it says, for the sake of the angels. Well, what angels? When we hear the word angels, we think these, this other class of beings that, that, you know, are, are angels like Gabriel and Michael and Satan. No, that's not what we're talking about. Probably talking here about the messengers that are bringing these letters back and forth for Paul. and they are not living in Orange County, right? They're from Cincinnati, so to speak, right? They're coming from other places and as he brings up in verse 16, they have the traditions or the practices and that's even where it starts earlier in the passage when he talks about the traditions and, you know, I think that's probably what's in view here. And even the ESV puts a footnote here next to the word angels and it says, or messengers, people sent to observe and report for the Apostle Paul. The other passage I said where it probably would be helpful if we did translate it is Revelation chapters two and three, because it says at the beginning of all those seven letters to the seven churches, to the angel of the messenger, I'm sorry, to the angel of the church of Ephesus, you know, and the Asperna, and it goes on Pergamum, Thyatira, and on through the seven churches. Well, the angel, probably not talking about an angelic being, we're probably talking about the pastor, the preacher, the messenger, the one who brings the message, the one who brings the sermon. And you know, the letter that Christ is bringing to these churches are going to be read by the pastor of those churches. So, that probably should have been translated there, too, I think would have been helpful. But every time the word angolosh shows up in the Greek New Testament, it's usually just transliterated instead of translated. If it were transliterated, we're left with a little confusion. If it were translated, we'd probably do better and think, oh, are we talking about a heavenly messenger from heaven? Are we talking about like a pastor, like, or a messenger from the Apostle Paul. All right. All right. All right. All right. Okay. What do we got going on here? Cindy writes in, in a marriage situation, is pinning someone down on a bed considered physical assault? Yeah, it is. Should police be called even if it's a month later? Well, it would have been better if it were immediate. Is a husband's apology or repentance enough to not see it as assault? Well, assault is assault, whether there's apology or not. I mean, what you want to see is repentance, and that's, I suppose, up to your discretion whether you're going to accept this repentance. And if you see change, then yeah, maybe it's worth moving forward, but your concern should be whether this is going to recur and whether you feel as though you are in danger, right? That's the concern. At least in the state of California, assault is different than battery, and even if you're pinned down on a bed, that may actually constitute battery. you need to look up in the California Domestic and Family Codes, you can do that online, what constitutes physical assault and battery, and those are distinguishable and defined very clearly in the California Family Codes. And anyway, yeah. So, what I say is the book of Romans chapter 13 is very clear that the government is there for the reason, and as an extension and minister of God, it says in that passage, to punish bad behavior. And when bad behavior takes place, right, it is, you know, your call to pick up the phone and to see this enforced when there's bad behavior to see it punished. So yeah, I think you should talk with your pastors, you should talk with your parents, your family members if you have some, and yeah, someone should be dealing with your husband in all of this. And Yeah, certainly we don't want to see you in danger and you probably are the best one to decide whether that's the case or not. And if this is a one-off in terms of your husband's never touched you in anger before, well then maybe this is a one-off. But if you fear that this is going to happen again, then yeah, maybe it's time to see the government do what it's called to do. Talk to your pastor and talk to your family if you need to. And again, if you ring the bell with the family, just remember that's a bell you can't unring. So start with your pastors and see the context for all this. All right. David, how can suffering and death on a cross for a few hours and not eternity in hell be enough to pay for eternal punishment we all deserve? for sin? Great question. Just like a lot of things, I see things all the time, like let's talk about a squirrel run over in the road. I don't see any out the window. I looked out the window to see if I could see a squirrel run over. I don't see any, but You see road kill all the time, and you probably don't think much about it. I don't know, maybe your eight-year-old daughter does, but if you saw a man killed in the middle of the road, man, yeah, it'd wreck your whole day. That'd be a big deal. If you saw your daughter killed, it would wreck your whole life on the road. So do you see what I'm saying? Who this is makes a world of difference, right? And when we're talking about who was crucified on a cross, who was punished, who was hit, who was whipped, who was beaten, who was spit upon, who had a crown of thorns on his head, this makes all the difference in the world. This was not just a human being. right? This was the Son of God. This was the one in whom the fullness of deity dwelt in bodily form. This is the eternal one. This is the one who was, who is, and who is to come. So, his suffering, David, was not just any suffering. One human suffering would be enough to save one person. And what we have in Christ is the eternal one. So you just answered it with your question, be enough to pay for the eternal punishment. The eternal one paid for the eternal punishment of eternity, right? Of all the eternal people, right? Of the eternal amount of people if he chose to. So this is where we have to remember who we're dealing with here. We're dealing with the one who is the infinity, right? He is the one who has all. power, all authority. I mean, read Daniel chapter 7. This is the one who has all things. And because of that, he can pay for our sins by his punishment in one second if he wanted to. But it was appropriate for what he paid for. And for that, we are eternally grateful for certain. And yeah. So David, that's how that happened. And just think about it, right? Even in our world, the difference between someone hurting a school kid versus hurting the president, these are two radically different things, not to mention, as I started with, a squirrel getting run over on the road. versus your family member. This is the creator of the universe who created the human hand being beaten in the face by human hands. This is an amazing amount of punishment. So for that, we say God has accepted that as a full payment for eternal punishment. All right, Mike Fobar is signing off for today. Thanks for everyone who participated in the program today. We'll see you next time. 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.