Ask Pastor Mike Fabarez

Speaker 1

Pull up a chair and get yourself a steaming cup of coffee. It's time to sit down and spend a half hour getting to know our pastor and teacher Mike Fabarez on another edition of Ask Pastor Mike right here on Focal Point.

And welcome to Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez. I'm your host, Dave Drouy.

Well, you hear it in the news, on late night shows, at school, and even in the office. Foul language grabs our attention with all its built-in shock value. But what if you hear it coming from the pulpit?

Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez discusses the current fixation on cursing and swearing. Our executive director, Jay Worton, kicks it off for us as we step into the study to ask Pastor Mike.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Dave. I am here with Pastor Mike and Pastor Mike. Today's question has to do with with pastors using foul language. May it never be, but is this ever acceptable?

Speaker 3

Yeah, well, I mean, this is a hard question because you can look in the New Testament and you can see Paul using some very graphic language to describe things, like in the book of Philippians regarding our own righteousness and counting it as skubalon. That's the Greek word. That's a very harsh word, you know, regarding our waste product, feces. It's rough. And yet I don't think it has the kind of vulgarity to use a word that we would use in terms of someone speaking in vulgar terms like a sailor or whatever. It doesn't have the crudeness in that respect. It's colorful. But it's not the vulgarity that sometimes we do see pastors or other people using.

I think whatever applies to anyone would apply to your pastor. And let me break this into three categories. I think, you know, Ephesians is so helpful in this regard. Ephesians, chapter five, when it speaks of our words, brings my mind to three different categories, two that are embedded in the text with two different phrases. One is obscenity. One is that kind of corrupting talk. It's called the kind that tears down. It's a statement regarding words that just don't belong in our mouths and usually have that connection to things that would make people just like fingernails on a chalkboard. Words that just are not appropriate; they're not fitting for who we are. It says that we shouldn't be speaking about things that people do in darkness, that they do in secret. So it has that sense of kind of this is not appropriate talk in open conversation.

So obscenity is the kind of language that just wouldn't be appropriate. It's the kind you wouldn't want to use in front of children or, in the olden days, at least they'd say in front of ladies. I just think there's no place for that as part of our conversation, just to color up our conversation. The other thing it says in the very next verse, verse four—I'm sorry, earlier in the passage, I just quoted verses 11 and 12—but Ephesians 5:4 talks about crude joking, which I do think is probably a bigger problem in our society than just obscenities. Although obscenities are a problem, crude joking is trying to get a laugh because you're talking about impure or sexually immoral things, or even in a more juvenile way, kind of bathroom humor.

If it's crude, even saying that, I mean, we can identify things that fit into that category, certainly for the sake of a laugh or to spice up a conversation, make someone smile or whatever. That's the kind of stuff; the locker room joking never should be a part of what goes out of a Christian's mouth. Saying things that build up, they're going to make someone smile. The things that I say, I want them to be because they're positive, not because they're crude. And so, I mean, those are kind of a nuanced distinction between obscenity and crude joking. But, yeah, I don't think that has any place in our lives.

The third one that I think of when I think of that maybe fitting as a subset under obscenity is blasphemy. This is something I hear as a problem. I heard a Christian just yesterday use kind of some, at least a modified kind of blasphemous phrase. And when I hear that, I struggle with that and often get a chance to correct that when I can, if I can do it graciously in the setting to say, listen, we shouldn't be using words like hell, for instance, unless they're being used in their proper context. That's blasphemy. That's taking something that has a very important and sacred meaning. In this case, hell, I think it has an important meaning, a meaning of something that is set apart to represent God's just judgment on the ungodly, and then using it in kind of common ways. Hell shouldn't be used like that. I think that's Satan's tactics to kind of get it to be commonplace. Hell should make everyone shudder, Christians and non-Christians alike.

So when it comes to obscenity, crude joking, and blasphemy, those are the kind of the three things I think of when you ask the question. And I don't think they have a place in Christians' lives.

Speaker 2

As a pastor, are you held to a higher standard?

Speaker 3

Well, yeah. I mean, in all things. When you think about the book of James, it says that we're going to incur a stricter judgment. He's talking about people in the church that are called to teach. He says we all stumble in many ways in that context. And then he says, you better be taking care of what you say and be super careful about what you say.

So you know, pastors are going to stumble in what they say. That's true. Where there's an abundance of words, transgression is unavoidable. The scripture says so. I understand that. But they are going to be held to a higher standard and they ought to be very careful.

I mean, tons and thousands and thousands of my words are recorded every year and it's hard to keep a reign on every single word. I just thought of one this morning. You know, it wasn't a blasphemous or obscene word, but it just wasn't the right description of something I was trying to teach in a classroom. And I grieve over that.

And I think I don't want to lead anybody astray because of the words that come out of my mouth. And I don't even want to leave the wrong impression. Sometimes that's impossible, but sometimes we fail at that. And we need to be very sensitive if we are teachers or preachers to put a tight rein on our mouth and be very careful.

Speaker 2

As a Christian, what should we be striving for in our language? How do we kick like a foul language habit?

Speaker 3

Well, I do think we need to think about what we're putting into our ears, at least when we are free to put in our ears what we are free to put in. In other words, there's maybe guys at work and you work in a context where you're going to get some foul language as a regular diet of what you hear throughout the day.

But then at lunch, if you get in your car and you turn on music that's got foul language in it, well, that's on you. I mean, that's a situation where you shouldn't be feeding your mind this. So, yeah, you need to filter what goes in because sometimes what goes in will often translate into how you speak and how you kind of spice up your language when you're trying to be animated about what you're saying.

Instead of using words that are still appropriate and have that kind of sense of propriety to them, you start saying things that are vulgar and obscene.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. You know, before we go on Focal Point, this month, we're offering a book you might be familiar with. It's called Lifelines for Tough Times by Mike Febaraz. You've heard of him, right?

Speaker 3

I spent a few hours with that little book.

Speaker 2

I was wondering if you could tell us a little about that book and how you came about writing it.

Speaker 3

Well, yeah, actually, Harvest House, the publisher, we had several ideas we were talking about when we were talking about putting this project together, and we settled on that. It was really a good thing, I think, for me to work through. As I've said before, the impetus for this was my daughter's serious diagnosis that I share about in the book, her prenatal diagnosis.

Going through the process, I remember interacting with Joni Eareckson Tada, who was kind enough to endorse the book. I thought, what a great example of someone who has understood what it is to have an irreparable problem. You know, here she is with her four limbs that don't work, and yet she understands something about the goodness of God in spite of her own pain. She also knows what it is to recognize that goodness and be able to promote the glory of God in the midst of that pain.

Just having that real connection with so many other Christians who've gone through things that are difficult, would want them to be different, have prayed for them to be different, and yet God has said no, like in that Second Corinthians text about the thorn in the flesh for the Apostle Paul. Instead, he said, my grace is sufficient for you.

In our family, as we dealt with our own medical issue there with my daughter, who's now 13 and still struggling with a lot of the medical issues related to her diagnosis, we wanted to have a book that would give that perspective: that God's grace can be sufficient for your struggle, even if God doesn't answer it the way you want. Like Paul, who asked to take this thorn away, God said no, no, no—three times he said no.

Then Paul resolved that, you know what? Listen, God is going to do what he wants. He's going to accomplish good through this. And that's the promise of Romans 8, that he's going to work all these things together for good. We look for that in the book, and we say, God's grace can be sufficient to get us through it.

Speaker 2

Well, thank You, Pastor Mike. I'm sure this conversation has been informative for our listeners and I trust, helpful. And we're going to continue this topic with a message you gave called Taming the Fight to Harness Our Words.

Speaker 4

Well, I did have the opportunity this week to be out at our junior high and high school camp preaching all week. And the first night I was there, we passed out over 512-inch tactical hunting knives to all the campers. It was great because we sent them out there just to have fun with them, do a little, you know, knife throwing, play with them. I didn't want to get into the rules a lot because I didn't want to burden them with rules. So I did say just kind of try to put them back in the sheath at night between midnight and 6. Don't pull the knives out then. But other than that, have fun.

You may say, "Well, that sounds dangerous, Mike. I don't like that. I don't want to send my kids to camp anymore if that's what you're doing." But I would say, you know, if there were intruders in the camp, they'd be great for protection. They were so shiny and sharp that they could just hold them up against the sun if, like, they had to signal a boat way out there or if a boat broke down, they could flash the sun on the blade. So there's a lot of upside to these knives that they all got.

And you might say, "Well, I don't think that should happen. You could cut someone; you could kill someone. I think you should take them away." Well, that's going to be hard because by the third day of camp, I flew in all these surgeons that surgically attached the knives to their forearms. I may say it's hard to function, but I put like this titanium hinge on every kid's forearm so it can kind of retract back on the forearm. I got it to where they could just go like this with their forearm, and that knife comes right back in their hand. So it's good; you can put it away, and you can have it right back out.

You know, it's really cool what I've done. You might say, "Well, I'm not going to send my kid to camp anymore. That's what you're doing with our kids, and we're going to go to another church." Now, if that were all true, that would concern you, wouldn't it? I just think, "Pastor Mike, it's just a bad idea all the way around."

Well, here's the thing. Every retreat I've ever done, they came to camp with knives. The Bible says that it is your tongue that, if it's used rashly—I'm quoting now the Bible—it's like thrusts of a sword (Proverbs 21:18). If you're not careful, your mouth is like a knife, and it can cut and wound, as it says in Proverbs 18. The power of life and death is right there in the tongue. Now, the rest of the verse, and I only quoted half of it here, goes like this: "But the tongue of the wise brings healing."

So the mouth and the words that we use can certainly damage and hurt and cut and even kill in many ways. But it can be trained to be used in a manner that is healing and helpful and constructive. I'd like to reflect a lot of what I preached on in this sermon from one text: Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 29 and 30. I'd like you to turn there.

The Apostle Paul, by the direction of God's Spirit, says to us, "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths." Dramatic way to put it. Instead, here's the healing part: "But only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear." And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. What's the first word in verse 30? And we don't read the word "and" because we like to divorce this word from its context. The context here is our words and our mouths. Can we grieve the Spirit with our actions and our thoughts? Absolutely. But the context here is our words.

In light of our words, that can either be, as it says here, corrupting talk or fitting and grace-giving talk. Well, you've got to be careful how you do that because the Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption, can either be grieved or pleased by the words that we use. "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." If you've quoted that out of context enough in your life, you may need more proof that this is tied to the context.

So let me read for you, though it's not a part of our preaching portion, verses 31 and 32. Notice how this continues: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor." All those things are the emotions that drive these words. And then he gives one word that is a speaking description: "and slander." Let it be put away from you, along with all malice. So get rid of those corrupting words.

Verse 32: "But how about those grace-giving words?" Here it comes: "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you." Well, let's work with the first verse, verse 29: "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths." Now, I mean, you picture someone almost putting their hand over their mouth going, "No, no, no, no, no, don't say that." You may feel it; you may think it, and all of a sudden it's about to come out. Man, jam that back in your mouth. Don't let it come out of your mouth.

Because it's worded so dramatically, I want to introduce this phrase into our first point: We need to be ruthless about harmful words. Ruthless. We need to be implacable and careful and merciless about the things that come out of our mouths. And we're ready to shut it down. Now, I can't use the word ruthless, I hope, without you thinking of Jesus's words in the Sermon on the Mount when he was talking about sin and avenues of sin. He was talking about the eye and the hand, and he said this: "If your eye causes you to sin, close your eyelid and make sure you don't look out your eyeballs." Is that what he says?

You know the verse: "If your eye causes you to sin," the ESV translates, "gouge it out." I don't want to picture that. And yet the Bible says that's how you ought to respond to the avenues and conduits of sin in your life. Now, is this literal or is this hyperbole? Well, if it's literal, we got a problem because the next line says, "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off." And he's very specific: "your right hand." The problem is, if I cut my right hand off, I got another hand over here. Same with my eyeballs.

So I think even just reading this with any objectivity, we're talking about hyperbole here. The hyperbole is trying to get to something that I think is well described with the word ruthless. If you have something that keeps on happening that is an avenue of sin, it needs to be dealt with in a very vicious, merciless way. Sometimes I say things and I think, "Oh, Mike, you should have bit your tongue." Now that's an idiom; that's a figure of speech. But literally, I suppose, it's not a bad idea to bite your tongue and cause just a little bit of pain. No blood, no blood, just pain. Just to say, "Hey, Mike, that should not be said."

Be ruthless about those bad words. Now, the word here that's translated in ESV as "corrupting," some translations say "unwholesome," is the word "sapros" in Greek. The Greek word is helpful because it describes something that's rotting or putrid. Putrid words, stinky words. Speaking of stinky things coming out of your mouth, that makes me think of bad breath, does it not? We've already got a lot of unpleasant illustrations in this sermon, but let me pile on at this point: bad breath. No one likes it.

Isn't it amazing? People that walk up to you and talk to you, especially those people that get right up near into your comfort zone who have bad breath. It's like you want to say, "Don't you realize you have bad breath? How can it be in your mouth and you don't taste that and you don't even know that it's going on?" It's interesting how people can have bad breath and not know they have bad breath. I think it's the same way with corrupting talk—halitosis, if you will. Verbal halitosis. It's when we often say things. We'll see it in other people when they say something that seems harmful, hurtful, corruptive. But when we say it, we don't really see it.

Now, that's a universal problem. Romans chapter two says we're great at seeing sin in other people; we just have a hard time putting the mirror up and seeing it ourselves. When it comes to words, I guess there's some kind of spiritual exercise where we need to do a lot of this with our words, whatever that is. I've got to learn to assess my own words to see whether or not what I'm saying is corruptive. Now, God's word's got to be the standard, so let's look in the context.

Go up, if you would, to verse number 25. He's spoken here in verse 25, written to us about a kind of speech he calls falsehood. "Therefore, having put away falsehood," let's talk about lying words. Lying words. Now, I'm never going to advocate full disclosure of every thought you ever have. Don't say everything you think. But when it comes to what I do say, it ought to be truthful; it ought not be false. Think about the deception of flattery. Flattery. Jot this reference down, and it's very insightful: Psalm 12:2. The Psalmist is talking in Psalm 12, verse 2 about the problem of flattery.

And here's how he puts it: "Everyone utters lies to their neighbor with flattering lips and a double heart they speak." There's the picture of deception. When I'm speaking to someone and I have one kind of apparent heart toward you when I speak to you, then I turn my back and speak to some confidant of mine, and I make it very clear. It may just be self-reflexive thoughts I have that make it clear I didn't mean anything I just said to you. Why would anybody flatter? I don't confuse this with some kind of compliment. A real compliment in the scripture is me giving you a gift, a verbal gift with no strings attached that is sincere and accurate. The Bible would encourage that.

See, but the thing about flattery is they're the same kind of complimentary words; it's just I don't believe it. I don't buy it. I'm not sincere about it. "Everyone utters lies to his neighbor with flattering lips and a double heart they speak." We need a singular heart, a sincere heart. Flattery. How about this one? Boasting. Boasting is some kind of exaggerated expression that embellishes the reality of myself. We got flattery and boasting.

Now I want to talk about slanderous words. Slanderous words are precisely the pattern and paradigm of boasting; it's just inverted. Boasting accentuates, it exaggerates, it puts a spin on things that have some kernel of truth in it. But it makes more of it than it is in my own self-promotion. Now I turn it around to slander. It's my making more of and exaggerating and elaborating on something that's bad in someone else to make a more serious response from the hearers in a negative way, a condemning way toward that person. So it's just the same as boasting, only it's turned from an angry heart to try and do some kind of damage in someone else's life.

Slander. There's much we could say about it, but it comes, as verse 31 says, from bitterness. And you're not going to have bitterness unless you don't deal with your anger before the proverbial sun goes down, which is a way to say right away. When you have wrath and anger and clamor, you're going to be sure to have a lot of slander pouring out of your mouth. Those are the angry words we need to be done with. "Be angry, but don't sin." There'd be sin for me to slander gossip. Proverbs, chapter 17, verse 9: "Whoever covers an offense seeks love." I'm not going to expose it. I'm not going to talk about it. I'm not going to embellish it. I'm not going to let people shine the light on it. I'm not even gonna. I'm just not even gonna talk about it. That's a loving person.

I'm not saying you lie to cover it, but I'm just saying it's not something you shine the flashlight on. Next line: Proverbs 17:9: "But whoever repeats the matter," whoever goes out there and continues to share it with people, "that's the hating heart." That's the heart that wants to separate people from each other, separating close friends. When there's a problem, if you want to be a solution to the problem, go deal with the person. Go talk to the person. You don't need to share it with all your friends. Be part of the remedy.

One more category: Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 4. "Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking." Let's call this crude words. Crude words. Words that are crude and usually, like this text says, a lot of times it's trying to be an attempt at humor. I want words coming out of my mouth not to be harmful, not to be stinky in God's perspective. Crude words, no subcategories there. It's not worth articulating. You know them when you hear them. And I hope as you breathe into your palm, so to speak, you'll start to recognize when they come out of your mouth.

Be ruthless about them, just like Jesus said. I know it's hyperbole, but look at those things and say, "I'm gonna bite off my tongue if I say that again." Bottom of verse 29, Ephesians, chapter 4: "Instead of that corrupting talk, that sapro stinky talk, that putrid talk, you need to only let words out of your mouth that are good for building up." Are these words going to help? Are they going to build up? That it may give grace to those who hear?

Number two on your outline: Let's put it this way. We need to be intentional—intentional, thoughtful, and strategic about helpful words. Be intentional about helpful words. Replace harmful words with helpful words.

Speaker 1

You're listening to Pastor Mike Fabarez here on Focal Point. You've just heard a portion of the message called the Fight to Harness Our Words. And you can get the complete unabridged study when you go to focalpointradio.org and look for the series titled Taming Fire.

Well, today Pastor Mike warned that unfettered words can destroy, but the right words spoken at the right time have the power to heal. This is all the more important when someone we love is questioning their beliefs or nearing the end of life. That's why we need a book like *10 Mistakes People Make About Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife*. Pastor Mike Fabarez writes in his own inimitable style, parsing through what the Bible says is true and dispelling any misconceptions along the way. While some things are a matter of opinion, truth isn't one of them. However, most people don't take the time to think through some of their beliefs, and this is especially true when it comes to the afterlife.

This book breaks down 10 common impressions of heaven and hell and explores the radical and fascinating truth straight from scriptures. The book *10 Mistakes People Make* is yours when you give a financial gift today by calling 883-205-885 or online at focalpointradio.org. You can also write to Focal Point. Our address is Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, CA 92654.

When you give generously to Focal Point, you're investing in the power of God's Word to clarify truth, and it's all made possible through the faithful partnership of listeners like you. In fact, our Focal Point partners value Pastor Mike's forthright teaching and prioritize their giving with an automated monthly gift. Join this vital team today. It's easy to sign up online, and we will automatically send you today's valuable resource as a thank you.

Call 883-205-885 or go online to focalpointradio.org. I'm Dave Droue, wishing you a restful weekend ahead. Be sure to come back next time when Pastor Mike Fabarez continues our journey through Luke, Monday on Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.

Speaker 4

Sam.