Ask Pastor Mike Fabarez

Speaker 1

Sunday sermons are important, but have you ever wished you could chat informally with a pastor outside the pulpit to get some direct answers to your questions? Well, you're about to get that chance today on Ask. Pastor Mike, welcome to Focal Point. I'm your host, Dave Drewy.

Well, at the end of each week, we sit down with Pastor Mike Fabarez to talk about some important issues. Today we're turning our attention to the subject of reading. We've got smartphones, blog posts, and dozens of entertainment options. So whatever happened to reading a good old-fashioned book? Is it an obsolete practice doomed to disappear?

Well, let's join Pastor Mike and Focal Point's Executive Director Jay Worton inside the pastor's study. Jay?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Dave. Pastor Mike, today's question is about reading. Today's attention span seems to be that of about 140 characters or we want things done in 30 seconds in the microwave. We just can't keep our attention on anything for very long.

Speaker 3

That's right.

Speaker 2

But so many people don't even want to pick up a book. And that's what I want to talk about today is why is this still important?

Speaker 3

Yeah, well, you've just said why it's important because we don't have the discipline of keeping our mind tracking some linear thought for more than 30 seconds. So books do that for us. Books will allow us to concentrate and focus our minds, train our minds like we would our muscles in the gym. To sit down with a book is doing that with our brain. It's getting our brain to follow and track the idea of an author and to do that in a way that's more than a minute, more than two minutes. That's important.

And we need this. We've got to get back to reading good books. And of course, the Bible is the first book that we read. I know we always discuss that on this program. But if I understand your question right, we're talking about just books in general.

And I'm all for that. We need to be readers. Christians need to be readers. Reading.

Speaker 2

What kind of books would you recommend people be reading?

Speaker 3

Yeah, well, of course I'm going to say that we need books that help us to process the principles and truths of the Bible from people who have thought these things through and have, you know, a great grasp of whatever the Bible might have to say on a particular topic.

And we can stand on their shoulders and have clarity because of all the hard work that they've done. That's the great thing about a good book. It is the result of someone's hard thinking and the processing of that truth.

And now we get to glean from that. We get the finished product and we get to have that served up on a platter.

Speaker 4

To us, that's great.

Speaker 3

I mean, that's what books do. They give us the results of someone's hard work. And I love that when it comes to issues of truth and God's word and a Christian worldview, these are very important things for us to study.

Speaker 2

I guess one of the benefits of having such a digital world is anybody can publish a book and we can have a lot of information out there. But with so much information out there, how do we make a right decision on what to be reading?

Speaker 3

Well, yeah, that's why, as a lot of our listeners know, if they've ever been to our website, every sermon that I preach, I will publish a short reading list on the back of our worksheet. I will let people know, here's what I think are some good books to read, to take these principles that I've just preached about and to examine them further.

The great thing about publishing, I suppose for some people, is that anyone can be a quote unquote, published author—not by a publisher, but they can put their stuff out, you know, in some digital format and post it on the web. However, this just creates a much more difficult challenge of knowing what's worth my time, what's worth reading.

That's why I would like to at least have people benefit from my reading and say, okay, here's someone who's kind of weeded through books on the topic, and he's brought some things to me that at least he thinks are some of the better books on this topic.

One of the things I try to give to all of our listeners, and of course, the people in our church, is the ability to build a library of books that I believe stand out from all the things that are out there.

Speaker 2

Print, maybe you could speak to somebody who isn't really a reader and how they can get started and maybe just a little plan of action that they could take.

Speaker 3

Yeah, and I hate to, you know, I don't at all want to be condescending, but I do find that so many people in our generation, they just don't read. They haven't picked up a book and read it from cover to cover. I just think even if you were to go online or to a Christian bookstore and look in the junior section of a biography that's written for teens, that would be a great place to start.

You know, I know we read to our kids at home, and even though they're not little kids anymore, we have those times of reading together. A lot of times, because my youngest is several years behind my other two kids, we're reading books that she can understand, but they're great for everyone. I mean, I benefit from hearing about missionary biographies that are written for junior hires. I can sit there as a pastor who is fairly well-read and enjoy that book, gathering good things from it.

So, if you're not a reader, one of the discouragements is to get a book that's really beyond your reading level. Unfortunately, that can turn people off to reading altogether. So, you know, start easy. Get books that are manageable. A lot of times, those are good Christian books that you might want to pick up for younger readers. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a great way to start getting that appetite wet for good content and good Christian books.

Speaker 2

Pastor Mike, maybe you could talk. Talk about what we do here at Focal Point. Every month we choose a book that has some relevance to what's being broadcast on the radio and offer a book along with that. Each month you can talk about that.

Speaker 3

And it's hard, of course, on our radio, to our radio audience that just narrowed down to one book because every sermon I preach, I'll put out a list of, I don't know how many, 12, 14 different books that I think will be helpful for that topic. But, you know, we do try to our listeners and, you know, those who support the ministry, we like to send them a book that we find helpful.

And so hopefully even that. I know some people feel like, well, I keep getting books from Focal Point. They feel like they can't even get through the last book from last month or whatever. That's fine. Build a good library. I like to say, have good books around everywhere. You might sit in your house, throw one in your car, bring one to work. You might sit at a lunch break or an afternoon break and read.

Put good books everywhere where you've got a chair and you're going to sit for more than five minutes and spend less time, you know, on your apps and your social media and less time watching television and just pick up a book. And if we can help provide some of those at Focal Point, we're happy to do that.

And certainly we've got the leads that we give on our website, but then we'll we do put out, I think, a book a month. Almost every month we'll send out a book to our supporters.

Speaker 2

Yes, we do. Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. I hope that conversation was helpful for some people. And we're going to pick this up and continue it with a message you did called Striving for punctual Spiritual Progress in a message called Growing Up.

Speaker 4

Most of you know I have three children: a nine-year-old, Matthew; a seven-year-old, John; and a three-year-old, Stephanie. We weren't working for the whole gospel set; we just wanted the bookends. Of course, a lot of things we do, they're in tow. We bring them along with us, and inevitably, when we're out and about, you find people that come up and say, "Oh, you've grown so much, Matthew! Look how big you are!" And John, "Oh, you're just growing like a weed! What do you feed those kids?" You know, you have all that kind of stuff. I never know exactly how to respond to that. I mean, what do you say? "Well, you know, we feed them almost every day. We're working at it." It’s just kind of a natural thing.

The reason you don't know what to say is that it's the reaction you expect. Now, if people came up to us and said, "Boy, your seven-year-old sure is puny," or "That nine-year-old, what's wrong with him? He's a lot shorter than we thought he'd be," then we'd be concerned, right? We would definitely be concerned. That would stop you, and you'd want to say, "Oh wow, that's interesting." By the way, that's why the doctors are into that little, it's a little doctor conspiracy among pediatricians where they have this well check. I thought you were supposed to go to the doctor when you're sick, but they have the well check. They bring them in, strip the baby down, and throw them in this little banana scale-looking thing to see how much they weigh. Then they lay them out like a fish on a pier, mark them off, stretch them, and find out how long they are. Then they pull out their little chart or their little book, or the nurse looks at her things and says, "Well, they're in the 65th percentile," giving you a sense of where they are in terms of growth.

I remember that was no surprise because, of course, my wife got all those books for new moms. They tell you exactly at 18 weeks how big they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to be able to do. So moms can think all their kids are geniuses because they're doing, you know, their head is bobbing before it's supposed to or whatever. We kind of knew that and tracked with it. The underlying assumption with all of that is that if our kids are healthy, they ought to be growing because good physical health means good physical growth. If you don't see it, there's a problem.

The Bible says the exact same thing about your relationship with Jesus Christ in Hebrews chapter five. I want you to pull your Bibles out and open up to that text. There is a well check going on for the people that the writer of Hebrews is writing to. He pulls out the tape measure and puts them in the scale, saying, "You guys are underweight. You are not growing like you're supposed to." The interesting thing about how he goes about this is that he tells them, much like we would expect for a little baby, that the time really matters. If you've been a Christian this long, you ought to be this far along. It's as though there's some kind of chart on the wall of heaven where the angels look at it and say, "Well, this is what we expect from a one-year-old. This is what we expect from a five-year-old."

So I guess the one question for us, before we even read the text, is: How old are you? How's your growth in relation to that age? How old are you in Christ? Are you a year old? Are you five years old? Are you eight years old? Are you 18 years old? Do we have some 28-year-olds here? Take a look at Hebrews chapter five. The writer of Hebrews knows how old most of these people are, and he says this in verse number 11: "We have much to say about this." What does that demonstrative pronoun point back to? Melchizedek. "We have much to say about Melchizedek. We got a lot to talk about this whole new priesthood, the Melchizedekian priesthood. But it's hard to explain."

And it's not because the writer of Hebrews doesn't know about it. We'll find out in chapter seven that he knows an awful lot about Melchizedek. He says it's hard to explain because you are what? "You're slow to learn, man. You're just slow to learn." In fact, though, by this time you ought to be teachers, but you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk, verse 13 says, still being an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Got a lot to say about Melchizedek, but it's hard to explain. You're slow to learn. In fact, if you have your pencil out, circle this word "time." By this time, you ought to be teachers. The great thing about the Greek language, as I've said many times, is that it's very exacting. We see the word in English, "time." There are a lot of Greek concepts you can relate to. Even in English, we use the word "time" in different ways. As a matter of fact, my wife will say something about cleaning the garage out, and I'll say, "Well, honey, I just haven't had the time." Then if she looks at her watch and says, "Well, how much time does it take?" then we're talking about two different kinds of time. In Greek, there are two words for that. There's the word "kairos," which is what I mean when I say I haven't had time. I haven't had the opportunity. "Honey, I got a lot of stuff going on, and you know, there's a lot happening, and American Idol's on. I just can't, I don't have time to clean the garage out."

Speaker 1

See.

Speaker 4

And she's saying, you do have time. What the word is here is not the opportunity because that would let us off the hook a little too easy. Because you know what my wife says in response to the garage? You'd better make time, right? And I can't make time, but I can make the opportunity. And that's what I'm getting at is that I'm thinking about opportunity. You can't make chronos, which is the Greek word here.

And what the writer of Hebrews is saying is you've had enough days now to be a teacher, but you're not a teacher. Number one on your outline, if you're taking notes, jot this down. We need to begin to, number one, care about the calendar. Start to care about the calendar because God does. He cares about the calendar and he's looking at your life and he says, hey, five-year-old Christian, you've had enough time to be here. A 15-year-old Christian, you've had plenty of chronos to be here. He's got an expectation for our growth.

And what gets me is again, the verbiage here is so exacting and so revealing that he doesn't say you ought to in terms of you. You should. It'd be a good thing. There's two words in Greek for should. There's the word day, transliterated D, E, I day, and that means you ought to. For instance, if it's secretary's day, you ought to get her a card. You ought to get her some flowers. That's not the word here.

The word here, athelo, is a different word. It's a strong word. It's the word that Jesus uses when he tells stories about money being owed to someone else. Because when Visa sends me their little love note at the end of the month, it's not, it would be really nice if you sent us some money this month. Visa says you a fellow.

Speaker 3

You.

Speaker 4

You owe us money. And if you don't, Bruno is coming out to break your legs or whatever happens. I don't know, if you don't pay your Visa bill, you get in trouble. This text says, you've been a Christian long enough, Chronos, that you are obligated. You have a debt. To do what, in this case, to be teachers. And a lot of people go, whoo, I'm glad that says that, because I don't have the gift, right? I've read the gifts list, and I don't have that one. This must be a passage for staff people at churches.

Now, remember the context. This is written not to Bible school students, not a seminary. You know, outline. This is for the rank and file who sit in church every Sunday. And he's saying, you ought to be teachers. Remember this, by the way, about the gifts list. There's lots of things on there that all of us are called to do. And just because you're gifted to do it doesn't mean you're the only people in the church that do it. Faith is on the list. Did you know that? Gifted to have faith. Now, does that mean that if I don't have the gift of faith, I don't have to trust Christ? Is that what it means? No, it just means that God specially endows some people with a certain kind of incredible faith that they can trust God in the most incredible situations and, wow, God gives them the gift of faith or giving.

That's another one that's on the list too. You know, gift of giving. And we don't wait to say, okay, raise your hand. Gift of giving. We're gonna pass the bag just to you people, right? We pass the bag to everybody. Why? Because the Bible says we all ought to give. But there's going to be people and there are that have a special endowment and they're gifted by God to give. And man, they're generous and they underwrite a lot of ministry around here.

Okay, so we understand that there are people that are endowed with a special ability to teach and to teach really well. And we put microphones on them and we put them on stages like this and they teach the big crowds. But just get that little luster off of this word because really what teaching is, the kind of teaching that all of us are obligated to do is the passing on of information. And if God has invested in us for, let's just say, 14 years, man, we are obligated to take what we've learned and pass it on.

This is a little note you remember. If you think back to the very beginning of our study of the book of Hebrews as we work our way through it, we said this book was probably written between 60 and 68 AD, 65, let's just say rough and dirty. This book in chapter two revealed that the audience, this church, didn't get the message of the gospel from Christ. It got it from the apostles who were sent out. So this wasn't something where you got a group of people that received the message early on. As a matter of fact, we're assuming that in the Book of Acts somewhere, probably, I don't know, 10, 15 years into this thing, they got the gospel.

So let's just say conservatively, 15 years. That would put us at 45 A.D. 45. This book was written somewhere in the mid-60s. You don't have anybody in this church that's over 20 years old in Christ. And assuming the church grew like most churches do, you've probably got a lot of 5 year olds, 8 year olds, 12 year olds, a lot of teenagers. Those are the oldest Christians in the group, the teenagers. And the writer of Hebrews says you've been Christians long enough to be teaching. What's that mean? Passing on what you've learned. Care about the calendar. If you care about the calendar, you'll feel that pressure.

Speaker 2

You'll feel it.

Speaker 4

And you know what? In verse number 11, we kind of skip by the diagnosis. Those are the symptoms. Slow growth. What's the diagnosis? You're slow to learn. And when I hear the phrase slow to learn, I think things like dumb as a box of rocks, you know, I think dunce. I think dull. But you know, that's not what this is. As a matter of fact, this is a Greek word in the New Testament only used twice. The other time it's used is right across the page in chapter six. Take a look at this. It's the word nothras. It's the only other time it's used in the New Testament. We do not want you to become. How's it translated? Lazy.

See, when you tell your teenager who you think is bright and you know is bright and has capacity, but they're not applying themselves in school, you may say they're slow, you're slow to learn, but what you're saying is not their capacity. You're not commenting on their capacity; you're talking about their disposition. It's not that they can't do it, it's that they're not doing it and they're not applying themselves. And the writer of Hebrews says, man, a lot of people have been Christians for a long time in that church, and they're not applying themselves. They're slow to learn, they're lazy.

Please recognize it's not as though God is in heaven going, oh, I need more workers and teachers, please, I need more workers. What am I going to do? The issue is about the blessing that comes in usefulness. God wants us to grow up just like you want your kids to grow up. Because there's something significant, rewarding, and satisfying about growing up and maturing.

I've told you before, my dad bought me a tool chest for my garage, and he's great at giving tools as presents. As a matter of fact, every Christmas, every birthday, I can count on a wrench or some kind of tool for my tool chest. So it's jam-packed full of tools. And the thing about my dad when he gives me tools is they're not always new in the wrapper. They're old from his tool chest. Sometimes he gives me new tools, but a lot of times they're hand-me-down tools. And so my tool chest fills up with them.

And I got one drawer. Don't you guys have one drawer? It's got nothing but screwdrivers in it. I pull it out and there's all the screwdrivers. And every time I need a screwdriver, it seems I go to the same two screwdrivers every time, right? Because they work, the ends aren't all gummed up or chewed off or whatever happened to them. The handle feels good. It works. So then you say, well, why don't you get rid of all those other screwdrivers? I wouldn't have anything in my tool chest for one. The real reason I wouldn't get rid of those is because a lot of them came from my dad's tool chest, and a lot of those came from my grandpa's tool chest. I've got screwdrivers with my grandpa's initials in it, right? We're not getting rid of those, but I'm not using them either. They don't work.

In John, chapter 6, verse 39, the Bible says that you are a gift from the Father to the Son. It's an amazing truth to ponder that the Father gives to the Son these people, and each of them is a gift from the Father to the Son. And Christ says, you will in no wise be cast out. We're not getting rid of you. But when he opens his tool chest to look for someone to do something in his kingdom, it seems he's always going back to the same two or three tools.

Have you noticed that pastors put it this way? 10% of the people do 90% of the work, and that's usually how it is. And when God here is in heaven looking into the tool chest, he sees those people with their hand up and they're saying, here am I. Send me. I'll do it. And I'm ready. I'm prepped. I'm spending time in the Word, I'm studying it. I'm making progress. And God goes, great. And you know what? They are the ones that receive the blessing.

Isn't that God's not going to get his job done without you. It's that he'd love to have you participate in the blessing of being used to advance the kingdom. God wants to bless us. God would love us to have the participation in ministry. And he's looking for people that are on track with the growth rate. We don't care about the calendar. Let's grow up in Christ.

Let's pray. God help us, please, to be the kinds of people that want to grow in Christ. We're not satisfied with the same old song, the same old truth, the same old slogan. We want to go deeper. We want to understand you on a different level—your holiness, your grace, your omnipotence, or your omniscience. There's so much we need to understand about you. God help us to grow in Christ. We got to explore passages we've never explored. We need to become familiar with characters in scripture that minister to our heart, that we've never even learned to pronounce their names before. God, let us go deeper in Christ, help us in this. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Speaker 1

Amen. May that be the desire of our hearts.

Well, what an important encouragement from Pastor Mike Febares here on Focal Point. If you missed any portion of today's program, visit our website to download this or any of Pastor Mike's messages free of charge. Just go to focalpointradio.org. While you're there, you can also sign up for Pastor Mike's newsletter and weekly devotional. Focal Point is here to provide you with biblical answers to the questions you face every day. We want to reach, teach, and equip you so you can reach, teach, and equip others.

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To say thanks for your donation today, Pastor Mike would like to send you a book that's been deeply influential in his own walk with the Lord. It's titled *The Glory of Christ* by the late R.C. Sproul. As Christians, we affirm that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. On the outside, he looked just like any of us. And yet, from the angels at his birth to his shining appearance on the Damascus road, there are moments when Christ's glory shines through, and we'll catch a glimpse of his full glory that'll be revealed when he comes again. This book will refresh and renew your joy in Christ and give you a greater longing for the second coming. It's a perfect companion to our new study, so be sure to request your copy when you donate today.

To support this ministry, it's quick and easy to give. Just call 888-320-5885. Or you can give and request the book online at Focal Point Radio.

Well, I'm Dave Drouy. Glad to have you with us, and be sure to tune in again next time as we continue exploring the depths of scripture right here on Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.