Hello, and welcome to Ask Pastor Mike Live with pastor and Bible teacher Mike Fabares, 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. It's good to be back again with you today. on Thursday, answering your questions about the Bible and the Christian life, trying to help you through this thing we call the Christian life, trying to honor our maker and live faithfully for our Redeemer here in our world with plenty of landmines and challenges and a lot going on in our world to sort out. So if you have a question or you're facing something you could you could use a little help with. I would love to try to help you. If I might be able to do that, you'll have to call me. And that number is 1-877-913-5357. That's the number to call, 877-913-5357. Or you can go jump on YouTube Live. And that's on the Mike Fobaras channel and you just search for AskPastorMikeLive and find it there or you can go over to Facebook Live which we're back up on for some reason. We weren't there. We had some glitches for a little bit but we're back up on that page. Go to the Focal Point Ministries page. and you'll find us there, or you can text the word ASK, and I'm sorry, I've got a lot of those backed up, I haven't gotten to yet, but we're gonna get to some of those today, I hope. Text the word ASK to 90398, that's the number on your texting app on your phone, and we'll... We'll tackle those on the program. We'll get through as many of those as we can. But the number is, it's a little more fun, I think. So give us a call. 1-877-913-5357. If I can be helpful, I will give it my best shot. Let's go to the phones. Chloe, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Pastor Mike, I know you're going to say that's a bad thing. is I've had so much crazy things happen. Like one time I went to church and a lady came up to me and she yanked my hair because she didn't believe it was mine. She wanted to see if it was a wig. Hey, Chloe, Chloe, Chloe, Chloe, I think it's a cell reception, but I missed like the first half of your sentence, maybe the whole first sentence. So just let's start at the beginning and then I can hear the whole sentence. Let's, I'm sorry about that, but I'm pretty sure it's a on your end, not mine. So let's try it again. Okay, so I stopped going to church altogether. Okay. And the reason why I stopped going is so much crazy stuff happened to me at church. And it's like, my stomach is a knot every time I think about having to go back. Okay. Like a lady came up to me in church and she was, you know, say, hey, how you doing? How are you? And she just yanked my hair. She wanted to see if it was a wig to see if it was, and I was so shocked. I didn't even, I just stood there and I walked away. I didn't even know what to do. I've never had a woman yank my hair in church. And then, like, there's always something weird like that, or if you're a single woman like me, and if an elder or something comes up and says hi to you, the wife runs over there and stands there with a scowl on their face, like, what are you doing speaking to my husband? And it's just too much for me. I mean, I've already had a traumatic life as it is. And I know one other pastor said, if you don't have a church home, you're probably going to end up going to hell. And I don't want to be thrown in the lake of fire. for all eternity. But I don't, I'm serious. I don't even want to go. It's like, whenever I think about going to church, my stomach is like in knots. Literally like, oh my gosh. It's really hard. Okay, well, let's talk that through, Chloe. Number one, you know that salvation is not based on a track record of keeping a set of commands, although I understand the spirit of someone saying, according to James 2, verse 14, that we should see fruit coming out of our commitment to Christ. If we say we have faith in Christ, we should see some evidence of that. And of course, even the way you've worded your statement about why you don't go to church, it's not that you're not desirous of that, but you're saying you've had a horrible experience at it. So let's put that aside, right? I mean, it could be that you have some traumatic experience, as you said, that makes this particularly hard. So, you know, going to church so many times per year does not earn your way to heaven, and you know that. So I hope you know that at least. So that's off the table. But you do know this is what God has designed for you, to be in church, and we'd like to get there if we can and get over whatever traumatic experiences you've had and try to get you there. But I think it would be helpful for me to go back in your life and at least say, is this something that you have in terms of kind of a trauma in every group setting. In other words, is there any group setting that you're comfortable in, or is it all group settings you're uncomfortable in, or, you know, gripped with fear, or you don't want to be a part of it? You know what? I think you're right. It's all group settings. Okay. It's all. It's all. Okay. When I was growing up, my mom made us go to this church, and my mom used to date this guy that was a Satanist, and the lady was into that, like, that slavery kind of witchcraft that Africans brought over, you know, when they came from slavery. And I remember stuff with with all kind of weird things. I'm not going to go into detail, but, you know, it was just it was nuts, Pastor Mike. It was absolutely nuts. And and I'm not saying that to throw my mother under the bus. She's gone. She's entered into eternity. I don't know where she is, but I do love her still and I am forgiving her. But it's like I can't deal with the crazy. And then I'm thin, even though I'm an old lady, I'm thin, and I don't look old, I'm almost 60. And every time, like, if there's somebody that's, like, morbidly obese, and I am in the singles women's group, they're so mean to me. I mean, like, really, really mean. I mean, horribly mean. Like, one lady came up to me, I won't say her name, and she goes, your name's this? That's an odd name. And I was like, that's a weird, odd name. And I was like, why would you say that to somebody? I don't get it. Right, right. This is really, really, really, really, really, really morbidly obese. And let's go back. I don't get that a lot. Chloe, I know that we could go through plenty of examples as to why you feel that way, and we could take the whole hour doing that. But let me ask you another question. Do you have a close friend that you do like spending time with in person? I just moved to another state, so I haven't found any friends yet. How long have you been there? They're all back in California. They're all in California. Okay. Okay, how long have you been where you're at? Um... Maybe two months. Okay, well then that's reasonable. Yeah, well then here's what needs to happen. Well, let me go back to California in your mind. When you were in California and you had some friends there, you said they're all there, so you had more than one friend. Did you enjoy spending time with friends, let's just say more than one friend, in person? Did you enjoy that? Yes. And you could get together with two or three girlfriends and it was fine? You enjoyed that time? Yes, it was two. It was usually two. OK, so three people didn't bother you? You and two others? No. OK. All right, good. Here's what I think needs to happen. First of all, we need to start, I would say, with finding. And here's what I'm going to recommend. If you go and look for a biblical counselor, I would go to the ACBC website. the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors is where I would take you and have you go and find one, a gal that can sit down and just tell her exactly what you've told me and say, I'm new here to this town. I just want to talk through my concerns. And I know you're going to list a lot of the reasons why you've gotten to the place of dealing with this anxiety and this pressure and feeling like you're done with this. And start with, I need to find friends. The problem with me telling you to go get some friends and start there is that, you know, I want you to find the right friends. So usually most people go to a new town, they find a church, then they find those friends, and then that makes church a whole lot easier because they surround themselves with a few friends that, you know, they're comfortable with and it creates that layer of insulation because if you get your hair pulled or someone says, you know, you're hitting on my husband, you're going to have two or three close friends around you at that church that's going to make sure that you're not sitting there as a victim to someone's nasty words. We can't get the cart before the horse. We've got to get you in a place where you can find the courage, the strength, and the ability to be in a church long enough to find a couple of good friends where you're spending time with them on a weeknight, you're connecting with them, and then getting injected back into their church, maybe in some small groups, and then finding your way in. If I were a female and I were your counselor, then that would be my strategy. I'd map it out. And I definitely get that I would just drive to the fact that this is where we're going to work toward and get you in there. I'm not just trying to, you know, have you, you know, I don't want you to have some trauma by going to church this weekend, but we can get you there by addressing some of this. Because I doubt, I mean, there are millions of people, what, over 330 million people in America, and I don't know how many have had their hair pulled at church to see if they're wearing a wig. I mean, you're in a very rarefied small group of people. So it's not gonna happen again. And if it does, we're going to put you in the Guinness Book of World Records. This is crazy. So we don't have to fear a lot of this. We just need to say, yeah, everyone's going to get insulted. Everyone's going to get their feelings hurt. I get my feelings hurt all the time if I gave it much thought. And I could say, well, I don't want to do that again. But I have to do that again. I've got to get involved in people's lives. And I have to get involved in conversations. And I have to meet new people. I have to do all that. And you do too. It's just that, you know, you've been so hurt that it's going to take you a little bit of thinking through all of this and putting it in the proper perspective and then getting re-injected into a few close relationships. And you're in a unique situation. You moved right in the middle of a time when it was really hard to reintegrate into a church because now you've been stripped of your closest friends. So it's going to take some time. And I would start with someone that's going to sit across from you and start delving into some of these things with an open Bible. And I just like the ACBC because, you know, they're going to go straight to scripture and deal with what the Bible has to say, and surely there are some there within your own group. And if you don't even know where to start, call our church line. We're a certified training center for the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors and we can, wherever you live, we can figure out how to connect you with someone and at least you can get going in that. And this is not, you know, they don't charge for that. This is all about just trying to get you on the path of getting to a place where you can have some of those girlfriends in your life that will allow you to go with them to a church and just start to reintegrate. And if you have to make sure, if you're sitting in the back corner and they're surrounding you and you're flanked by them, we'll get you reintegrated in this and this will happen. Just make it your endeavor, right? Don't give up. And that's all I'm trying to say. And a lot of times in the Christian life, some things are so difficult, so hard. And if I could tell you some of the stories about guys that are in a bad situation and they're giving up, you'd say, oh man, that's terrible what you're telling me, but I don't want them to give up and I don't want you to give up. And everyone listening to me right now doesn't want you to give up. So don't give up, Chloe, and that's where I'd have you start. Because I want someone to go back in your life, and it probably will take you all the way back to your mom and the situation that you started talking about. And we need to put all that out on the table and get you strong enough to get back into church. Okay, Chloe, if you don't know where else to turn, just call Compass Bible Church in Aliso Viejo, California. We'll get you on the right place to get you connected with someone in your town, okay? Yes, sir. Thank you. Thanks, Chloe, for the call. 877-913-5357. That is the number to call, and we'd love to be of help for you, whatever the situation is. Make you rethink whatever it is that you're dealing with from a biblical perspective. That is the goal. You can definitely give us a call, 1-877-913-5357, or you can text the word ASK to 90398, or you can go to Facebook Live or YouTube and just text your question. Michelle on YouTube has just written and said, I'm a surrogate. I was a surrogate in 2018, surrogate mom, I'm assuming. And through that journey, I found Christ and A lot of my faith was developed, of course. Well, that's great. And I've been feeling the pull to be a surrogate again, but I'm unsure if it's for selfish reasons. I'm wondering if I'm going to be against my Christian faith by being a surrogate again. How and where does being a surrogate fall in Christianity? Yeah. Circusy, like a lot of things, we have to be very careful when we're doing something so profound to the human experience, which is based on how people made in the image of God are propagated in this world. and we're taking a step away from what is clearly the natural design. And of course, many things are a step away from natural design, but before we get further from what is the most natural, which is things that happen all the time, young people fall in love, they get married, they have natural relations, they get pregnant and they have a baby. There are all kinds of issues that may lead someone to a fertility doctor, and there's all kinds of issues that then separate from the natural course of things to being removed from the natural course. So the further we get removed from what is normal, as we might say, or natural, and we start here trying to get to the end goal, that just complicates the issue ethically. It injects more problems, at least more options that make it more challenging. And what I would say for anyone who's only been a Christian, you know, a handful of years and is sorting through this, I wouldn't make any decisions about something that complicated until there's been some more work on this. Any book, any good book on Christian ethics, I think, is going to start to tackle this and at least say you're in some territory that is difficult. And if you were my biological sister, I would definitely say, hey, let's slow down on surrogacy. And certainly, if you asked me or said it the way you just said it, and you injected the word selfish reasons, If you were unsure about selfishness, I'd say, wow, let's unpack that. What is popping into your mind when you say that? Is there a selfish aspect to this? Or what is the selfish aspect to this? And usually when there's something injected in a question like that with that kind of phrase, then I mean, it usually answers the question before it's finished. But on its face, right, if we start dealing with issues like surrogacy, it is usually fraught with lots of issues, complicated, complicating issues that are hard for us to say, yeah, let's just jump into this because there's something for me in it. And that's what selfish means. And so I would say, Michelle, Yeah, I'd probably have to talk to you about this and something so personal related to your body and the issue of reproduction. Yeah, it would be maybe best not on the radio, but that is something you can even tell by the way I'm saying it. I would say caution, caution, caution, caution, caution. Alright, 877-913-5357, that's the number to call. Here's a question coming in through our 90398 number. Can you provide a verse on how and why we pray to the Holy Spirit and or your opinion? Well, I can't give you a verse because there is no verse. Plenty of verses about praying in the Spirit, right, or in the power of the Spirit. Think of Ephesians chapter 6, the passage about the armor of God. I just might as well quote it. Let me pull this up real quick. We're dealing with prayer at the end, which is not given a analogous part of the armor of a Roman soldier. But after it's all done, the last one there is the sword of the spirit after the penultimate Helmet of Salvation. So, we've got Helmet of Salvation, Sword of the Spirit in verse 17. Verse 18, praying at all times in the Spirit. Now that little preposition, Epsilon Nu, in the Spirit, right? That's the kind of connection that we have to the third person of the Godhead when it comes to prayer. the standard throughout Scripture is we pray, as Jesus taught us, Matthew 6, to the Father. I'm directing my thought, often I verbalize it, sometimes I don't, but I'm in my mind directing my thought, sometimes verbalizing my thought through my words to the Father. And I'm doing that as Jesus taught us, in his name, which means that I'm coming in his authority. He's the intercessor, 1 John 2. He's the one I come in authority, in the authority of Christ. He is the intermediary that makes me righteous. He's the great high priest, as the book of Hebrews says, even Romans 8. I'm coming as a person unworthy, but the Christ who has imputed his righteousness to me makes me worthy to even talk to him. So I'm praying in his name that has more to do also, not just my unworthiness, but has to do with me making sure I'm saying things that are in proper context of who Jesus is, like saying, stop in the name of the law. Well, that's one thing if I'm speeding, but if I'm just eating a donut, You can't tell me that because the law doesn't say I can't eat a donut The law may say I can't drive a hundred miles an hour Through the school zone and you can tell me to stop in the name of the law But you can't tell me to stop, you know eating a donut hole after I preach a sermon So the law right is is then the name of the law to pray in the name of Jesus You know that I get a new blue Porsche next month is is not is I can't pray that because that's not in the name of Jesus not in the accordance with the will and the wants and the revealed you know, character and attribute of who Jesus is. I can pray that I might be holy. I can pray that my neighbor might have their eyes open. All that true, you know, that they might come to the knowledge of the truth. But the Spirit, right, when we say in the Spirit, right, there is also a connection to that. Often the Spirit is in Scripture contra a lot of people that always see this as emotional. It's not emotional. The spirit is the author, right? He's the author of scripture, right? When we talk about God breathed, even the word breathe there is the word pneuma. It's a compound word. And pneuma is the word like a pneumatic drill, or you got pneumonia. This is breath, right? God breathed word. The spirit of God is, as Peter said, pulling these people along to be able to write something they couldn't write on their own, right? Because it's punctuated by predictive prophecy that comes true in space and time. And as it says in Isaiah, try that sometime. You can't do it. Only God can do that. And He uses people to do that. The Spirit is writing these things down. So much like praying in the name of Christ, which is heavily weighted on his authority, the spirit, praying in the spirit, clearly is about the things that he wrote, right? This is, there's a high emphasis on the things that he wrote. Now, what does the spirit want? This is, and again, there's been a lot of hijacking of this in emotional based churches where it's all about, you know, feeling something or doing some weird ecstatic thing. It's not, that's not what this is about in Scripture. We've got to read the Scriptures carefully. This is about me, right, being able to say, I want to pray in accordance with what the Spirit would want. Well, I'm reading every day what the Spirit has written through the instrumentality of the apostles and prophets. I want to pray in line with that. which is not me, you know, calling fire down on my enemies. It's not me, you know, being self-aggrandizing or self-promoting. It's about me doing all the things that God says I should do as a person, as a Christian. So, I'm praying in the Spirit, right? The Spirit, too, is also trying to enliven my spirit. And I go back to Romans chapter 8 when it talks about Jesus is interceding for me. He's interceding by the fact that he has the credentials to even represent me before God, but the Spirit also says, the Spirit intercedes for me with groanings, with a kind of intensity, right? And again, people have twisted that passage as well, but you should read it all in its context. The idea is I can't pray as I ought, because I don't even know how to pray sometimes. And certainly when Romans 8 was written, We don't even have the full context or the full canon of the 27 books of the New Testament. So I needed the Spirit's knowledge of all that he was going to say, all that we know that the Spirit knows, which is beyond the 27 books of the New Testament. I want the right things to come before God the Father. So I'm relying on the Spirit, not only to give me the right kinds of requests. Basically, Romans 8 is saying, when I'm praying something, the Holy Spirit's trying to say, well, here's the right thing that Mike should be praying, and delivering a well-intentioned but misguided prayer request to the Father. So I'm praying in the Spirit. And even as Jesus said about Peter, James, and John in the Garden of Gethsemane at the base of the Mount of Olives, You know, your spirit is willing to pray. I know you want to pray with me. You want to intercede. You want to talk to God about me and my energy to go to the cross. But your flesh is weak, and here you are sleeping. And even in that, the spirit wants me, in that text in Romans 8, to continually passionately have the hope to keep going in my prayers. That's something that my spirit is weakened by in my flesh. And I'm tired and maybe my blood sugar has just hit a peak and now it's declining and my insulin level or whatever. I'm struggling in my flesh to maintain my passion in my praying and the spirit is going to help my weakness. That's actually the phrase in Romans 8. So I don't pray to the Spirit, at least there's no example of that in Scripture. The example is generally I pray and direct my thoughts to God. Sometimes I articulate those in words, and certainly if I'm praying out loud, I do that so you know what I'm trying to express to God, and you're jumping on in your brain to express those same things, I hope. And I'm doing it within the authority that comes as a child of God, only because the imputed righteousness of Christ, and I'm praying in line with all the Spirit would want, and I'm hoping the Spirit, as the Bible says He will, is going to translate my sometimes well-intentioned but misguided prayer requests to the Father. And that's the general pattern, I pray, to the Father, in the authority of Christ, in the intercessory interpretation of what is actually best in the Spirit. and that is the pattern. Now, there's a couple of breaks in the pattern when it comes to Jesus and that is like Stephen being stoned. In the book of Acts, he lifts up his eyes and says, right, he speaks to Jesus, right? In my hands he says to Jesus, receive my spirit. He's dying and he looks to Christ and because he sees Christ in whatever vision God allows him to have, he is expressing a statement of Christ. Now, it's cool when you're there in physical form to talk to Jesus and you're praying. That's what it is. You're talking to Jesus if he's there. You don't think of it that way when Thomas or Nathaniel or Didymus or Paul is, well, Paul is Paul later, but that's true. Peter is talking to Jesus, right? That's praying because he's the fullness of deity dwelling in bodily form. The point though is, Peter's getting this, I'm sorry, Stephen's getting this vision of this and he's praying to Jesus. Okay, two examples of that in scripture, but that's not the norm. So I would say, let's stick with the norm of the pattern that we're given and the instruction we're given in Matthew 6 and not pray to the spirit. And as I try to illustrate it, and people don't like my illustrations, well, I shouldn't say all of my illustrations, they don't like this one a lot of times, but the whole point in the Bible of the Holy Spirit is to keep us doing what we ought to be doing. And some people write books about, well, the Holy Spirit's been overlooked, we need to focus on the Holy Spirit. the whole point of the Holy Spirit throughout the New Testament and even throughout the Bible is to get us to be focusing on what we should be. And it's not him, right? He doesn't want the focus on himself. All of this, right, is to focus our attention ultimately for now at least on Christ, 1 Corinthians 15, the kingdom when it's all finished will be all delivered up to the Father and it will all be even now as we bow down to Christ all to the glory of God the Father, Philippians 2, but that picture of the Spirit as we think, well, he's co-equal with the Son and with the Father. I had to give him some props too. That's not the job of the Holy Spirit for us to be praying to him 33 and a third percent of the time. So that I hope clears up that. It's as clear as mud, Pastor Mike. Anyway, I hope that helps. No name attached to that question on the text, but yeah. I don't know if that was opinion. I tried to make that very textual. All right. Let's see here. 1-877-913-5357. You're listening to Pastor Mike Fabarez, Pastor of Compass Bible Church in Aliso, Vallejo, California. Let's go back to the phone. Cecil, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Hi, Pastor Mike. I have a question for when Jesus was on the earth. OK. When Jesus performed miracles, why didn't the Pharisees believe that he was the son of God at that time? Why didn't they or why did they? Why didn't they? Why didn't they? Well, even Pilate could see it's because they were envious of Jesus. And Jesus said as much in Matthew 23. They loved power. They loved position. They loved the seats of honor. at the banquets. They love to sit in the throne, so to speak, the seat of Moses in the synagogues. And Jesus came along speaking with authority, as it says in Matthew 7, and that authority, they realized, was genuine authority. And all they had was the authority of wearing fancy clothes, sitting in special seats at banquets, and sitting up at the front of the synagogue. And they were envious of him. The crowds were flocking to him. And because of that, they were envious. And then when he did miracles to where the masses were seeing, this is exactly what the Bible said in the Old Testament would happen when Jesus came. He would come with the power of heaven and the power of God, and here were these things he was doing to suspend natural law before their eyes. All they could say was, he's doing it by the power of Beelzebul, which was their expression of Satan. He's using Satan's power. They believed in the supernatural. They just said, it's not God. It's not heaven. This is hell. This is the power of Satan. So, you know, it's people, here's the thing about people. You can give them all the evidence you want, And if their desire for whatever reason is to the contrary, they're going to find another explanation for it. And that's precisely what the Pharisees did. And it's why Jesus said, the one time he said, there's a sin that will not be forgiven. And he called it blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Now, here's what happened in that context. Jesus had done miracles and the Pharisees who knew the Bible better than anyone else, at that point was 39 books of the Old Testament. They knew the Bible and they knew everything that was predicted about the coming Messiah. Jesus is fulfilling all that. And they now attributed his miraculous works, they attributed those to Satan. And he said, you know what? That's Blasphemy. Blasphemy means you're making something that is holy, something that is exalted, something that is heavenly, something that is divine, you're making it low. You're making it base. You're making it, in this case, demonic. So you're calling something divine, something heavenly, something godly, you're making it demonic. You're making it sinful. And he says, all other sins will be forgiven, even if you were to say something bad about the incarnate Christ can be forgiven. But if you're saying that when the incarnate Christ does a miracle by the power of the Spirit to suspend natural law, and you say that's of Satan, that will never be forgiven. So those Pharisees, out of envy, because they wanted to be the big shots, because they said, I don't even want to believe that those miracles are from God. Well, I believe in a miracle can happen, but you know, I believe Satan can do miracles too. So it must be from Satan. They just could not take the blinders off of their eyes. Jesus said that'll never be forgiven. So that's the problem. It goes back to, it's like asking this question, Cecil, Why would a man kill his brother, right? You think of all people, right? There's people, some people might say, well, I'm tempted to kill that guy, but it's not my brother that I grew up with. Well, the first murder in the Bible that's described in the Bible, in Genesis chapter 4, is Cain killing his brother Abel. And the problem was envy. I just wrote a book. The last book I wrote was on envy. And envy is such a bad problem when a girl looks at another girl who's more beautiful than her. She's got a lot of reasons, if she's a selfish girl, to start being envious, which means she's starting to be bitter and resentful toward that girl just because she's more beautiful or she gets more attention or she's more talented or she gets better grades or she plays an instrument better or she's better in sports. Same thing with men all the time. This is the problem of the Pharisees. They were envious of Jesus. That's why they didn't believe it. You could pile all the evidence on. He could have floated up to heaven and floated back down to earth and they all would have said, I don't believe it. It's all just by the power of the enemy. So Cecil, it's envy. Have you ever felt envy before, Cecil? That you thought, that guy, he's getting all that attention and I'm not. I don't know why. And you start to feel like you don't like that guy. That's the feeling that the Pharisees had toward Jesus and that's why they didn't believe his miracles. That help, Cecil? Okay, good. Thanks for calling. 877-913-5357. Pat, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Thank you so much for taking my call. I really do enjoy your ministry. You're such a blessed man with God's Word. I'm not saying that to blow you up. I'm just saying thank you for doing what you're doing and call to do. Okay, two things. When we were here before Christ came, when we sin, God dealt with us directly by sacrificing animals or whatever, but when Jesus left and He said, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit here to help you, when that Holy Spirit comes back and says, hey, you messed up and you go to Christ and you ask for forgiveness, He's already forgiven you, but you still have to ask for forgiveness because that's just love. That's just what love is. I just thought that was pretty cool. I heard that the other day and I thought, man, that's That's pretty powerful. The next thing is, because the Jews are always being attacked by Satan, or whoever he can use to do that, the more Jewish people that are done away with or killed, then Satan's odds are he gets to stay on this earth a little bit longer because God's favorite people are the Jewish people. And if he can eliminate the Jewish people, then he gets to stay here and do his evil that he's doing. He's just mean. To say that, I heard that too, and I thought that was pretty cool. I don't know if that helped some of your congregation through the radio or not, but I really got a good blast out of it. I'll let you go, and I'll listen to you if you want to comment. Thanks so much. compliment. That's humbling. Thank you. 1-877-913-5357. One thing I would say, Pat, certainly about the first thing, is sometimes we think so time-bound about forgiveness that we think, oh, in the Old Testament, right, there had to be some waiting for Christ to be crucified, for sin to be dealt with. And we think, well, it's paid for us in the past. Well, even in the Old Testament, right? When David sinned with Bathsheba, for instance, and worse with Uriah, right? It's one thing to commit adultery, but to kill her husband, right? This is terrible. All of it's bad. It's terrible. And say, okay, he pleaded for forgiveness. in Psalm 23, he writes a song about it. In Psalm 51, he writes another song about it. And here he is praying at his heart and confessing his sins, just like we might run to, you know, 1 John and say in 1, 8 and 9, we need to pray for forgiveness. We need to confess our sins because God's faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us. Well, we pray those same prayers of confession and we think, oh, it's already been paid for. Well, in David's case, right, we say, well, he's got to wait all those years, so he's going to go sacrifice an animal. Well, the animal didn't do it. We know that, right? They knew that. It's like the temple. They knew God didn't live there. I mean, when it was dedicated, Solomon said, I can't live here, right? Isaiah 66, right? Heaven is this throne, the earth is this footstool. God can't live in that building. It was known, right, from Acts 17 when Paul was talking to the Athenian philosophers or when, you know, Solomon was praying at the dedication. This is just a building and we know God's bigger than this and he's not physical, he doesn't live here, but there's a special attention he has here. same with the atoning work of Christ. It's as though, and there is a Greek grammatical concerning way to translate it, could go one way or the other in the book of Revelation, but to talk about the crucifixion of Christ, that he was slain from the foundation of the world, could in fact mean, and maybe perhaps should be understood, is in God's mind, This was a done deal from the time it was decreed. And if you go back to the time when the theologians used to lean into this hard about the order of Christ's decrees in terms of theology, if you're familiar with this stuff, lapsarianism, right? Superlapsarianism, sublapsarianism, whatever. That's for the nerds. But the idea of, like, what were the order of God's decrees? It was a done deal when the decrees of God about his redemption took place. So in a sense, David's sin, I mean, God could have fellowship with David after his sin, after the confession and repentance, the same way we can after our sin, hopefully, you know, lesser sins, but you can have that fellowship based on the same payment. It's like you can go home with a pair of speakers from Best Buy and enjoy them. And you can do that whether you do it on a debit card or on a credit card. David did it on a credit card, and we do it on a debit card. In other words, the forgiveness is there, drawn from the cross, either way. The payment comes either in the future, at least on the timeline, but it's done. Or in the past, from a debit card. Well, it's done. And in God's mind, right, this God who steps outside of time and space, he's not bound to energy and mass and physical material stuff. So... Time is different for God, as we can speculate. All right. Pat, good, good word. And the second one, too, about the people of God and, you know, some of that speculative in terms of, you know, the attack of the enemy. Surely if the enemy had his way, as Jesus said, he's a murderer, and he loves to steal, kill, and destroy, to quote some of the words of Christ from John. That is indeed the case. I mean, you just look at Job 1. He would love to take out people who God loves. And, uh, all it needs is, it's like those weird leashes. You always see these people walking their dogs. And they, when I was a kid, walked the dog, I just, I had a rope and it didn't extend. But today they got those leashes that extend. That's the kind of leash God puts the enemy on. And, um, you know, he lets, uh, he, he lets it out from time to time. And if he were to let it go, uh, yeah. the whole nation of Israel, not to mention the church, and not to mention everyone on the earth that's made in the image of God, Satan would love to destroy. 1-877-913-5357. If you want to talk to me about whatever's on your mind related to the Christian life, if I can be of help to you, that's my goal here. Let's talk to Scott. Scott, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Hi, Mike. First-time caller, long-time listener. I want to start off by giving you a little contextual history here. I'm 50 years old. I've been married about 20 years. My wife and I, I guess you could call us cultural Christians when we got together, and have slowly moved the arrow to the right to get closer to the Lord. You know, in retrospection, looking back, we might not have been saved when we were first married. Now, one of the things that I had, my question for you is this. When we first got together, um, I come from a really traumatic background and I have a lot of baggage. Um, one of the things that I brought into the marriage was cross dressing and I didn't tell her about it. And I decided that, you know, as I grew closer to Christ, I needed to be open and honest with her about this. And so I did. So, which, you know, she said, if you're being honest with me, she doesn't necessarily have a problem with it. Okay. So I'd say this is within the last five or six years that this has been open and on the table. And I guess working through my marriage, I came to the conclusion that, you know, I want to be honest with her and tell her, you know, what goes through my head all the time. But I guess for the past five or six years, as I've been drawing closer to the Lord, I've realized that, you know, my thoughts about an issue are really irrelevant. Now, her and I have both poured through the Bible looking for, I guess, more information about it, right? And in the Old Testament, it's strictly prohibited. But neither of us can find any, I guess, prohibitions within the marital boundaries for this type of behavior, and I was just kind of curious what the Lord would think about this, and if this is something that I need to crucify so that I can, you know, fully be His. Yeah, well, you're fully His with whatever sin problem you have, if you're a Christian, if you genuinely are His. So, but here's the deal. Yeah, we always want to be progressively sanctified and purified, and I think the parallel which of course you've discovered, Deuteronomy 22 verse 5, of course, you know, that there's a clear statement about this. But the parallel I think that you'll find in terms of the concept, and maybe you'll want to go to PastorMike.com and at least hear my teaching on this from the New Testament, would be the passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 when there's a discussion about how people are wearing their head covering and their hair in the Church of Corinth. And a lot of people have, I think, mistaken this as some kind of supracultural expression when I'm saying, you know, it's a supracultural truth about gender expressed in a cultural way. In other words, if you ask what is women's clothing in Deuteronomy 22, well, that was given, I believe firmly, in the 13th century BC as some of Moses' last words as they were going to enter into Canaan. And in Canaan, there was all kinds of cross-dressing going on and effeminate behavior among men. And there was a lot of homosexuality, a lot of man-boy love, as they would call it today, nambla. There was a lot of temple prostitution with young men. All of that was going on, including just men that were effeminate and liked to dress like women. That was going on and he was routing, God was routing that out with a complete cultural change by having this replacement of a nation. So, in the New Testament, right, when Paul is discussing matters of how the church at Corinth is supposed to function, what's happening in Corinth is a very metropolitan, cosmopolitan, we are progressive as a culture kind of place. And all you do is read the Greco-Roman history of Corinth. It's at a crossroads, it's on an isthmus, there was a northwest, I'm sorry, north-south travel on land and east-west travel across this isthmus where there was traffic on the sea. And so they had all of this cultural, you know, snootiness about them. And part of this led to a kind of feminism and a kind of, you know, masculine, feminine, you saw a lot of what was going on in the Roman Empire settling in in this particular place. you know, we had Nero was marrying a teenage boy and all kinds of things were going on in the first century. And you had, I think, Paul's concern about the head covering issue wasn't about, hey, we need to be like the Muslims and, you know, lock in our dress in a particular ancient time. It's not like we're trying to find fourth century dress for women and have them all dress like we're living in the deserts and we're nomadic people. That's not the point. The point is men should look like men and women should look like women, whatever the cultural expression is, as long as something called modesty can still be given to it. The modicum of modesty, and that means that I'm not trying to elicit a sexual response to you, should be there And in other words, I can't exploit parts that would arouse you, and that's obviously mostly women have that power, and that shouldn't be ever said of you, but women should be dressing like women and men should be dressing like men. And that was something that was not happening in Corinth, and women were cutting their hair really short because that was something that was saying, hey, we're very progressive, and there was this feministic movement in that day. I try to go into some of that, and of course they only give me an hour every weekend to preach, so I can only go so far, but you can read a lot about it in plenty of commentaries and textbooks, but I would go there, and I think that is a New Testament expression of the Old Testament truth in Deuteronomy 22, which some would even say in the Hebrew text is even referring to things like women serving in men's roles, like in the, you know, the putting on uniforms, putting on things that they shouldn't, and men, you know, abdicating all that. But I think clearly throughout the scripture, God creates male and female, and there should be no gender swapping there, and there should be no expressions of ourselves to where it doesn't reflect our are sex, and the sex should be related to masculinity if we're male and femininity if we're female. Now, I allow for, as I understand this, I wrote a book on raising men, not boys, and as I wrote that, I understand that it doesn't mean I want your boys to be raised to where every one of them, if you succeed, they're going to be the middle linebacker on the football team in high school. they might be the captain of the chess team, or they might be the lowest member of the chess team, or the drama club. It doesn't mean that they're knuckle-draggers, but it does mean, right, that whatever it means in Scripture to be a man, and whatever culturally that looks like in terms of being a man, and I tried to find that in the book, That's going to be expressed. And so, if there's something feminine that is expressed as femininity, and I'm now trying to assume that in how I dress, then I'm going to say, yeah, I think that's out of bounds in terms of what God has intended. And even in the words in Scripture, some of them are used regarding, at least in combination to the word homosexuality in Scripture, and don't let the moderns tell you the word's not in the Bible, and it just was a late injection. That's a long discussion, but we can get into that another time. Oh, yeah, I understand. I'm not homosexual at all. I know, and I get all that, but I'm just saying there's a word associated with that, it's in combination with that, which is the word effeminate. It's the word makalos, and makalos is the word, when Jesus was talking about John the Baptist, right, who's dressed really strangely and eating locusts and all the rest, he said, what did you go out Tuxi, a man dressed in makalos, in fine clothing, right? And it was just soft clothing, sometimes translated that way. And the point is, is not so much that it was effeminate, although that word can be used in a Greco-Roman context for someone who's dressing, trying to dress more soft, right? But he says, oh, you'll find that in the king's palaces. the extreme. That's on the spectrum. You can cross a line at some point that says, oh, in the culture, now, you know, we've gone into frills or, you know, veils or something else. So, yeah, I would say, just because if I were to go home, my wife says, I don't mind how you dress in the bedroom or whatever. I don't think that gives me license before God to do whatever I want. I do think there are boundaries that God would say, you still need to be a man behind closed doors. And that doesn't mean I'm the knuckle-dragger middle linebacker, but it does mean I can't leave the boundaries. And I got to be careful because this is an open conversation on radio, but I can't leave the boundaries of what it means to express masculinity in how I present myself. So that, I think, can be explained at least for 55 minutes in a sermon, and I spoke a few of these, both for men and women, in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. You can find it on pastormike.com. Does that help at all, Scott? Yeah, actually, you know, it does quite a bit. You know, there's a lot of, you know, there are resources out there that, you know, muddle things up with what the Word says, and I just wanted to get a, you know, find a source that actually knows what they're talking about. So, I'd rather be, you know, lockstep in his will than my own, so that's kind of why I was calling. Well, yeah, it's a complicated topic, but the answer is a yes, but it's qualified with I don't just want to say, I want to put in context all that I'm saying, because there is context for all of this. And having thought it through and had to counsel people through a lot of stuff and knowing the implications of this, both not only in an ancient Near Eastern culture, of the Old Testament, but Greco-Roman culture in the New Testament, and then how does that express itself today? Like, you know, I wear pants. And if I showed up in a kilt or if I showed up in a first century robe, you know, it's different. And expressions of culture, which I've thought through at great length, I do think you know, there's male and there's female and every culture would recognize that I know I preached in in Papua New Guinea and You know, the women don't wear tops there and it's that's just how they do it and it's it's it's not it's not unusual So all I'm saying is that every culture is going to define that within within a certain context and that's it's you've got a recognize that in different cultures. Well, there's more I could say to that, and I probably shouldn't have thrown that last line in because there's some 16-year-old boy going, that's impossible. You talked about the modicum of modesty that can't be, well, it can be, and that's just a whole other discussion. All right. I should have stopped with that was helpful, Scott. So I appreciate it. I'm glad it was helpful. Okay. Okay. We'll talk to you soon. 1-877-913-5357. Sometimes I talk myself right into a wall. There you go. 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Brandon. Brandon, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Hey, Pastor Mike. How are you today? I'm okay. Good. I'm still chuckling. I wanted to, if you'd allow me, just make two quick comments and then ask my question. Is that okay? Sure. Okay, first I wanted to tell you that I've actually started your, I can't remember what you call it, but Seminary Online, basically the series of videos, and I really enjoy it, so God bless you for that work that you did. It's being very fruitful in my life. Thank you for that. You're welcome. My second point actually ties into my question. So I guess I'll ask my question and then make my second little comment. My question is, I'm curious about your interpretation of 1 Timothy 3.2, specifically the phrase husband of one wife. I know this is, and it's of course referring to aspiring to the office of overseer and qualifications for elder, pastor, et cetera. I've been digging into this looking for interpretations of pastors that I respect, and I know that there's a debate on the Greek interpretation. One school of thought, at least that I've seen as I've been studying this, is that you can't ever have been divorced. Another school of thought is that a divorce in the past could be okay as long as you're, you know, a quote-unquote one-woman man presently. And so that ties into the comment I wanted to make. If I started looking for pastors that I respect, I went to look for David Jeremiah and John MacArthur specifically, and I just wanted to make a comment that I've really been deeply affected by MacArthur's passing. I wondered if you had any comments about losing a, you know, I would consider him, even though I never met him, I mean, he really influenced his teaching, has influenced me greatly. So that was my comment, but my question specifically is about First Timothy 3.2 and your interpretation of that phrase in the Greek. Pastor MacArthur, yeah, he's been very good to me through the years, and I've had the privilege of preaching not only in his seminary, but Sunday morning in his church a few times, and I just, yeah, of course, he'll be missed as a very direct preacher of God's Word, and he's done a lot and left a lot in print for us, and that's been great. You've done your homework. I mean, literally, a one-woman kind of man is what it literally means. Now, all of the requirements, you would assume, are talking about the Christian life of a man. And so you're thinking, okay, not a drunkard. That's the next verse, right? Not a drunkard. Okay, well, does that mean the guy, say he was a drunkard in college, But he became a Christian at 27, and now he's 52, and you're interviewing him for a job at your church. You'd say, oh, you know, what's your relationship to alcohol? And depending on your church, hopefully you'd say something like, ah, yeah, I don't have time for that. I don't do it. Or maybe if you're depending on your denomination, I drink a glass of wine every now and then, whatever. you wouldn't call him a drunkard. You'd say, oh, okay, great. Well, he was a drunkard. You should have seen him at his frat house at the University of Arizona, right? Wow. Okay. So we got to say, if this is post-conversion based on passages, maybe like 2 Corinthians chapter 5, a new creation in Christ, the old things pass away, new things come, or such were some of you, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 12. Great. So now we're not talking about a divorce in your non-Christian years, right? You'd be talking about a divorce in your Christian years, right? Now all of a sudden, I think you're starting to get into the issues of, okay, it seems like, well, what if you got drunk as a Christian? Maybe the guy became a Christian at 16, got drunk in his frat house, and he said, oh, this is post-conversion drunkenness. That may change your thinking a little bit about this candidate that's 52 sitting in front of you. But what if it's a divorce, right? When the guy was 25, because he got married at 18, I would say, OK, maybe you could say, OK, I know all of these are in the present tense, and so maybe he's qualified. But I think you're going to start to get into he's got a good reputation, right? And he manages household well. At some point, I think you're going to say, yeah, it may be technically on this particular qualification, he may be qualified. But as people learn of this, you may have to sweep this under the carpet so much because you know when people find out, oh, this guy was divorced as a Christian. As soon as there's any pressure put on this, this is the pressure point that'll break his ministry. So you say, wow, it's probably not the best choice. And most search committees are going to say, I don't think this is the guy for us because the reputational concern is all going to be piled on this one thing because of his divorce, at least post-conversion divorce. So I would say all of these are present tense, and by that it doesn't mean yesterday was a divorce. I mean, yeah, there's a period of time that would prove you're not a drunkard, you're not violent, you're a gentleman, you're not quarrelsome, you're not a lover of money. You might have been a lover of money when you were 25, but you're 50 now. But that's not enough when it comes to divorce. It's such a major breaking of a covenant. I would say that's why most search committees are going to say, I want a guy who's never been divorced. That's just the cleanest way, and hopefully we have enough qualified people for that. And I think that's where most people land. And with 30 seconds left, Brandon, does that help? It does help, yeah. And it's in line with something I read, an article that I found on Grace Hughes, Website that basically says the same thing while technically it may be allowed the reputational concern Yeah That's it Brandon. We're out of time with that music, but thanks for calling and it sounds like you've done your homework there. We'll talk to you Soon. 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.