Focal Point

Mike Fabarez: The help that we need is something that God is going to give us, but it's wrapped apparently in these two wonderful attributes of God: mercy and grace. He's going to give you what you need, but you know you've got a Christ who wants to walk you through what you need with a real sense of compassion.

Dave Drewry: Life can be so unsure. One minute we're on firm footing, then suddenly the bottom drops out from under us. The next thing we know, we're in a proverbial hole looking up. Of course, we could try to dig our way out, but today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez explains there's a much better option.

When life caves in around us, there's someone who has the power to pull us out. The message today is titled "Reaching Out to Christ When Life is Caving In."

Mike Fabarez: In Hebrews chapter 4, we've learned about all the elements that were involved in our quest or our walk between conversion and the coming kingdom, which in Hebrews 4 is called our ultimate rest. Now the encouragement that we tried to see, at least compartmentalized in the paragraphs, the last one was the help that Christ wants to give us.

The battle that we face in trying to live a Christian life from day to day is one that's got a lot of help that is offered and that's available to us if we would just recognize it and reach out for it. And God has said repeatedly, it's not that the help isn't there. A lot of times it comes down to that basic James chapter 4 verse number 2 problem, that we don't have because we don't ask. And we've got to reach out for the help that's available to us.

Take a look at Hebrews chapter 4, this great text. The focus of this text is on the sympathetic High Priest. Verse 14 says, "Therefore, since we have a great High Priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess because we don't have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness. We have one who's been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin."

Number one on your outline, let's jot this down: we need to learn to value our helper. Christ has said, "I will help you. I will help you hold firmly to your faith, and I will help you avoid temptation." But you've got to know I have a special quality about me, an ability to do that, that ought to give you a great sense of confidence in your helper.

He's a High Priest that has gone through the heavens. Think that one through. He is the High Priest. Now, the Old Testament had priests. They all came from the tribe of Levi and you know the story. The priests were kind of the upper echelon of Israel. They were looked up to. They were supposed to live to this high standard. They were supposed to model righteousness and all of that.

But among the priests, there was a certain priest who was the CEO of the priests, the president, if you will, of the Sanhedrin, which was the upper echelon of the upper echelon of the whole priestly group. And that guy who was at the tip-top was called the chief priest or, as this text puts it, the High Priest.

Well, what's interesting about our text, if you see in verse number 14, there is a word that comes before the word High, or maybe you've got a translation that says Chief Priest. The word in front of that is another word. It's the word in Greek *Megas*. And we know that word from Costco potato chip bags, right? Mega. Mega. He is not just big; this is the mega-arch-priest. He is the top of the top.

Now, if you think about the High Priest, there was one priest who was allowed every year to go into the Holy of Holies, which was a little cube where they kept the Ark of the Covenant, the box of the promise where they kept the tablets and the jar of manna. You remember that and Aaron's rod that budded. They had that one room and between those angels' wings on the top of that box, you saw the movie, there was this Shekinah glory, this representation of the Almighty God.

And once a year, the CEO priest, the High Priest, was able to go in after all this elaborate symbology and all this cleansing and washing and sacrifice, and he was able to go into that one little cubed room and represent the people to God on a very special day called Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

And that priest would go in there and basically, symbolically, be saying, "God, please accept your people for another year. Be gracious to your people, and I just want to represent the people as someone with clean hands and a pure heart, and I want to say that I am here for you to be gracious to the people." And then, by the way, he had to quickly scurry out of the Holy of Holies. He was just in for a little short period.

Now, the Holy of Holies, the Bible's really clear, is a symbolic picture of heaven. And he dwells in a place like Isaiah 6 says, full of glory, and there are pillars and all this. Symbolically, the temple and the tabernacle were a picture of that great place. And the Bible says, look at this, we have the mega-arch-priest. We have the great High Priest, and he hasn't gone into the Holy of Holies; he's actually gone through the heavens.

He's actually in the presence of the Father. And this person who's come to represent us before the Father is the great High Priest who doesn't just slip into the Holy of Holies and slip out, which is nothing more than a mere box, a representation of God's presence. He actually has gone through the heavens. And we learned in chapter 1 of Hebrews, he's taken his seat at the right hand of the Father.

He's there permanently. And his role as our great High Priest is to represent us. Our helper, look down if you would in verse number 14, after that, he is designated Jesus the what? What's he called? Son of God. He is there at the right hand of the Father, this great picture, this familial picture, Father-Son. He is there representing us, and that, by the way, is the one that can help us.

That's a help that can really help, see? That's a help that has all power to help. And if there's a few waves on the Sea of Galilee, he can point his finger at it and go "stop," and they go away. If there's hundreds of demons indwelling someone on the north shore of Galilee, he can say, "Get out of here," and they split.

If there's problems in your workplace or issues in your family or problems with your kids' life, you know what? You're dealing with someone who could snap their finger and change it all just by a word. You realize that. That makes me wonder why he doesn't, right? There are issues going on in my health. God, I know that you could go "boom" and take it all out of the way. Why don't you?

Back to Hebrews chapter 4 for an answer, which should help us realize that the kind of help that God wants to give us is not the genie in the bottle, "What are your three wishes? I'm here to help you." God has a much bigger and better plan for us than that. Verse 14, it says that Jesus, this great High Priest, lives in the presence of God. He's gone through the heavens and he is the Son of God.

His whole point is that we would, look at this bottom of verse 14, hold firmly to the faith we profess. His goal is for our faith to be strengthened, for us to be resilient about our commitment to following Jesus Christ. Furthermore, verse 15 gives us an answer as well. We don't have a High Priest who's unable to sympathize with our weakness. We have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin.

There's an inference there that one of the issues that I face is weakness that leads me to fall to temptation, and God would like to help me fight that, which would mean that I would be someone who says no to sin. So he wants me to hold firmly to the faith that I profess, and he wants me to say no to sin.

Now, if I hit a storm in my life and every time I hit a storm I said, "Christ, help me, I know you can fix it, calm the storm," I doubt he will accomplish the agenda of having me have a resilient faith that holds firmly to the end and has the strength to say no to temptation. Can you see that? That doesn't help if the goal is something that is ultimately for my development and strength.

Then it's not that he's going to calm every storm that I hit. God may want to do something with me to face the storm so that I can hit the next storm with a kind of resilient faith and not be someone who sits there and says, "God, fix my problem. Take the cancer out of my body, fix my marriage, make my kids obey, take my enemies out with a bolt of lightning, and then boom, everything would be great."

God says, "No, I've got a better plan than that." And that's why, number two on your outline, you and I, we should expect the best help. We should expect not the immediate gratification of a genie in a bottle; we ought to expect a God who says, "I want to help you." And it's a kind of help that isn't always immediate gratification. It's not always what you want; it's what you need.

And again, there you go. "Oh, bummer," you know? "Hope we could hear a sermon about giving us what we want." You know what? You can hear those sermons. As a matter of fact, they're filling up stadiums in Texas right now, right? You can have that message, but here's the thing: it ain't true. You can fill up stadiums by telling people God just wants to give you whatever you want.

The problem is, he doesn't want to give you whatever you want. He wants to give you what you need. And that sometimes is hard for us to grapple with. We have to expect the best help, which isn't always going to feel good. I always think of the doctors when I think of this. I called my friend and my physician, Pat Thompson, this week. I said, "Pat, you know, I'm struggling and you gave me this antibiotic and it's not helping."

And so here I am, calling out for help. "Pat, help me, please." And you know what he said? He said, "You know what? I'm available right now. Come on down. I can give you a shot." I said, "Well, can we go for tacos? Can you prescribe a, you know, I don't know, a massage or something? I don't want a shot," see?

And the thing is, when you call for help and you call your doctor for help, what you should expect from a good physician is he's going to give you what you need. It's not always what you want. But you see, someone who cares enough to give you what you need and not necessarily what you want is looking at a greater good down the road. Right? Isn't that what the doctor wants?

If a doctor says to you, and he's a good doctor, "You need this surgery and this will make things better on the other side," oh, it's going to hurt and it'll be tough and there will be anesthesia and you might be sick afterwards and there will be recovery and all that, but down the road, things will be better. You recognize that that's what you want from your physician.

And you're asking your physician for help. And it's amazing to me that people will gather in stadiums all over the country and say, "Tell me more about God giving me help that never hurts me, that's never inconvenient, that's never a trial." Here's a great verse and we need to remember it all the time. 2 Thessalonians 3:13, a great little memory verse.

Here's the Apostle Paul appealing to them as brothers. He says, "Never tire of doing what's right." That's the kind of help that God wants to give me. God wants to give me the kind of help that strengthens me like an athlete to continue to do the right thing. And this brings in another picture: a coach, a trainer. The coach and the trainer.

And sometimes I see these people and I'm sitting there on the cushy little bike at the gym riding the bike, which obviously doesn't happen as often as it should, but just go with me here with this. Occasionally when I'm on the bike, I'm watching the people over here that have the special trainers, right? And it's always hit me with the fact that I don't want one of those, right?

Because they're always pushing these people more than they want to go. And I'm always watching them. The trainer, though, putting these people through all this mess, they want what's good for the person that they're helping. And they're going to press them. And especially if you picture an athlete, which no athletes hang out at my gym, but you know, you go to a place if you were to meet a trainer in a professional team or something.

They're so focused on getting the best on the other side of the training that they will put the people through pain to make it happen. And God is saying, "I want you to persevere in trial. I want you not to stand back or stand down when you face the enemy. I want you to be able to never tire of doing what's right. I want you to be willing to not take revenge when you could and follow the example of Jesus."

In 1 Peter 3, what a powerful statement that is, that he didn't even open his mouth. Instead, he entrusted himself to a faithful judge who's able to judge justly. I just love that. Didn't open his mouth. And God says, "I want you to have that kind of fortitude and resilience and I want you to be Christlike." He's a trainer.

Christ is saying, "I want you to do that and I'm willing to help you." You don't hire a trainer and expect them to take you to tacos every Tuesday, right? You hire a trainer and you recognize the fact that they're going to push you to be what you're supposed to be. So you picture the trainer, right? Big trainer, tight shirt. "Get down, give me 20! Now!" Right?

No. As a matter of fact, the great thing about this text is it's tempered with an interesting mix, a very rare mix in verse 16. Take a look at these words. I know the goal is that we would hold firmly to the faith we profess and that we would avoid temptation, verses 14 and 15, but look at verse 16. It's tempered with this: "that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us."

Now think about that. The help that we need is something that God is going to give us, but it's wrapped apparently in these two wonderful attributes of God: mercy and grace. Now think about that. Those are truths in tension. It's like that passage in Ephesians 4:15, that we're called to speak the truth in love. Do you remember that?

I mean, you've got two conflicting issues here. If I really love you and I feel with you and I want you to feel good, I don't want to say anything that's going to make you feel bad or embarrassed. See, here's this weird tension. If I really love you, I'll let you do whatever you want. No, that's the indulgent parent. That's the Proverb 13:24 parent who lets their kids do whatever they want, and you see them in line at Costco and you say, "Disaster."

You know something's wrong with that. "He who spares the rod," that verse says in Proverb 13:24, "he hates his son. But the one who loves his son disciplines him diligently." And you realize that if you love someone, it's not that you give them whatever they want. But then on the other hand, you've got to somehow find that interesting balance of speaking the truth in love.

Or in this case, giving the help that you need but having this empathy as you do it. Christ wants you to stand firm and not fall to temptation. Okay? That's what he wants. But the way he's going to help you is not some tight-shirted trainer going, "Suck it up, man," right? That's not it. "We're going to do surgery on you and cut you wide open, man, and it's just going to..."

No, he wants to do it with a compassion, an empathy, a kind of mercy and grace. So what does that mean? I only get half a surgery if I need a whole surgery? Do you see what I mean? You can't mitigate the first part of it. He's going to give you what you need, but you know you've got a Christ who wants to walk you through what you need with a real sense of compassion.

Which sometimes means the grace to go at it slow. Sometimes it means that he'll mitigate the circumstance. God is just a God who loves us so much. He loves us enough to not give us just what we want. He's going to give us what we need, but as he does it, he's going to do it with a kind of compassion that we as good parents, I hope, have for our kids when we discipline our kids.

And we give that little speech, right? "This hurts me more than it hurts you." And the kids never believe that, right? Did you believe that when your parents said that to you? Until you were a parent. And if you've got a good heart, a good heart that loves your kids and wants to allow consequences of their behavior to change their direction so that they don't incur very devastating, life-altering consequences once they get out of your purview, then you start to realize it does hurt.

But you've got to do it. You've got to correct and you've got to give what's needed. But the way you do it is with a heart of compassion and sympathy and understanding and mercy and grace. We have got a God like that. You've got a God with a deep compassion for his children, but a God who's going to make them eat their vegetables. See what I'm saying?

You've got a God like that. And it's an amazing kind of God. And you and I ought to say that's the kind of value that we have in knowing that the Christ that we rely on that wants to help us is a Christ that wants to give us the best help. And please see it, and I know you can, I trust that you can. You turn on the TV and you watch these guys who try to tell you that Christ is a genie in a bottle. He's not.

And then you may find some other people that say, "Well, Christ is some, you know, tight-shirted trainer that just wants you to go through hell on..." No, he's not. He's a God who wants to give you what you need, but he wants to do it with a kind of grace because he's walked in your sandals. He's felt the sting of betrayal. He knows what it is to do what's right and still be impugned by your so-called friends that you're wrong. See, he knows all that. He's experienced it.

Expect the best help, which I think may change your expectations about what you expect when you pray. And speaking of that, that's where our text goes, isn't it? Verse 16. The point is, we've got to start praying. We've got to start asking. I quoted it earlier, James 4:2, and though there's much more to this verse than that one phrase, it is a phrase that we've got to contend with, and that is we don't have sometimes because we don't ask.

And the invitation in verse 16 of Hebrews 4 is that we approach the throne of grace, and that we don't do it halfheartedly. That we walk in behind the shadow of our intercessor, the mega-archi-priest, the great High Priest, and we say, "I need help." That we start to reach out to God. And I'm telling you, there's a kind of Christianity that is so contorted that it has this weird sense of independence and pride that misses the whole reliance and prayerful dependence that God has called us to as Christians.

Think about it. How often we think that somehow God just gives us a few principles in our brain and we're supposed to go out and fight this world and conquer it. No, he wants daily, broken, contrite reliance on him. We say as one of our values here at Compass is a reliant commitment to prayer, that we are committed to relying on God on a daily basis. That we can't do anything without him.

Does that sound biblical? I mean, John 15 says we, he's the vine and we're the branches. And if we abide in the vine, it's great because then we bear fruit. But if we don't abide in the vine, if we're not reliant on the vine, if we're not dependent on him, here's the way it's put in verse 5 of John 15. He says, "Without him, we can do nothing." Not "very well." Is that what it says? "Not a lot. Half as much." You can't do anything.

And that's hard for us. Number three on your outline, let's just put it down this way: we need to start asking. And we need to start asking and allowing ourselves to realize that there is a real sense of utter dependence on Christ, which kind of grates against the old heart, the old life, the old, "I don't need to depend on anybody."

As a matter of fact, when your non-Christian critics come to you and they say, "Well, your Christianity, it's just a crutch," you ever heard that one? Just a crutch. We want to somehow fight against that. "No, it's not!" When in reality, man, it's way more than a crutch. It's a gurney. I mean, you've got to lay on this thing.

As a matter of fact, you're believing passages like John 15:5 that say without Christ you can't do anything. Now go in there and say that to your friends, and you seem pathetic. "What do you mean you can't do anything? You're so brainwashed," right? No, no, I understand the issue that the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 said, that my weakness is the thing that actually is the trigger to God's power in my life.

Remember that great thing? Here was Paul praying for the thorn to be released. "Please take this thorn away." And Christ says, "No, no, for power is perfected in weakness." And what that means is that here was a guy with tremendous responsibility and tremendous privilege in the body of Christ, and he says, "I just want you to stay dependent on me, please."

And I'm telling you, there's another example of God not giving Paul what he wanted but what he needed. And where did that leave him? With a contrite heart that was daily dependent on Jesus. And maybe that's one reason he's got you where you're at. Because he wants you every day crying out to him in utter dependence on him, asking every day, "God, help me, help me."

I look around at the things that God has done in my life and I say, "God, why is this here?" And I think, well, one of the reasons that this happened, and one of the reasons my daughter was born with this paralysis, one of the reasons this is going on, and one of the reasons, it just drives me back to dependence on Christ, which is exactly where he wants me.

And that's where he wants you too. And sometimes we've got to see that sometimes our thorns are the triggers to bring us back to a daily, contrite repentance and reliance on Christ.

Dave Drewry: There's only one place to turn when we're in need, and that's to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You're listening to Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez, and today's message is called "Reaching Out to Christ When Life is Caving In."

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Stay connected wherever life takes you. Grab the free Focal Point app from your App Store, subscribe to our podcast, or follow along on social media at facebook.com/pastormike and x.com/pastormike. Well, I'm your host Dave Drewry, and tomorrow Pastor Mike wraps up our study on reaching out to Christ for help when life gets tough. Join us for the conclusion of "Reaching Out to Christ When Life is Caving In" Tuesday on Focal Point.

Mike Fabarez: Pastor Mike here. You know, we live in a culture where every point of view demands affirmation. It would be easy to tell people what they want to hear, but we must teach the Bible accurately, unapologetically, and without compromising and without editing it. God's Word is truth. If you want to send me a question, I encourage you to get in touch with us at focalpointradio.org.

Dave Drewry: Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.