Focal Point

Dave Druey: Welcome to Focal Point. I'm Dave Druey, and we're back with another edition of Ask Pastor Mike Live, where we pull some of the sharpest exchanges from Pastor Mike Fabarez's weekly call-in broadcast and bring them straight to you.

Today's questions run the gamut: a wife wrestling with whether to leave the church she loves to follow a husband who isn't following the Lord, a pastor who's told his congregation he'll walk if the attendance numbers don't reach his goals, and a pointed question about whether Jesus was actually an immigrant. Pastor Mike doesn't dodge any of it. Let's get started.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Savannah, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help?

Savannah: Hi, Pastor Mike. Yesterday, I believe you touched on the question I had submitted last week about switching churches. We moved 30 minutes away from our church we've been attending for about five years. I just wanted to give some more information. You said you wanted a little bit more information just to give me clarity on the situation.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: It was about your husband, right? He was for moving to a church closer, and that was a struggle for you because of all your connections there, which I totally understand. I was just wondering, what is his interest? Does he want a church closer because he's going to get more involved? That's the piece I was missing. So go ahead, Savannah. What is the story with your husband?

Savannah: I kind of want to make sure I start with that I love my husband. The only thing that I want for him is to have the gift of salvation, for him to have a relationship with the Lord, and for that to be his number one priority. I'm not trying to pick him apart, or put him down, or point all the things he does wrong. I don't want to do that.

That's where I'm coming from. But I would say, probably in the last two years since we had our son—I've had two children in the last two years—so that's really kind of been a driver. I can't do this without you, Lord. I need you. I would say that I've been growing closer to the Lord, and he has just kind of been staying where we were.

He doesn't really have a desire to read the Word. I haven't seen him do it, which doesn't mean he doesn't. But he doesn't talk to me about the Word. He doesn't want to be involved in the Bible studies I'm involved in. I've been going to one for two years, the couples' Bible study, and I just go by myself, which sometimes feels a little awkward. But I just have to do what I can do in my walk with the Lord.

It's just been wearing on me because I want him to have a relationship with the Lord, not only to better our marriage but to set an example for our children. I want to encourage him and hold him accountable. I just hope I'm doing that in the right way.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Still, I'm wondering, why would he suggest a closer church? Is it because he has intentions of getting more involved, or because he doesn't like all the time it takes you to get there and he wants more of your time at home? Why did he suggest that?

Savannah: Well, his parents go to that church and his friends go to that church because we moved back to where he's from. So he has a lot of friends and family that go there. It was the church we were married in, but we didn't regularly attend it before because we lived an hour away from it.

So I guess he just wants me to be involved in this community, and he wants me to feel like I belong here. That's fine. That's a good thought. But I feel like I already belong at the church we've been going to. I don't want to give up everything if you're not going to meet me and do these things and get involved.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: If that's the extent of why he's saying you should switch, then I'd say no. I'm not going to switch. I've got my church and I'm plugged in here. I like my church. I like my pastor. I like what I'm learning. I'm going to stay here.

But if there were any negotiation—if you could have an Esther banquet with him and say, "You know what? I'll make you a deal. Let's go together. Promise me you'll go together, and then I'm willing to go where you are willing to go, assuming it's a good Bible-teaching church. I'll go with you because I'd much rather go to the couples' Bible study with my husband than by myself."

I would make an appeal. It's not manipulation; it's just a deal. You've got to make the deal because it doesn't make any sense to pull you out from a church that you're willing to commute to, where everything's going great. You'll end up at another couples' Bible study at the new church without your husband, and that's a deal breaker. I've already got that, and I've got a place. I'm not going to lose these relationships. I would be bold.

Savannah: I guess I have just a couple follow-up questions because when I challenge him and I say, "We're supposed to be reading the Word and doing what the Word says. How do we do what the Word says if we don't know what it says? We've got to be reading it and applying it to our lives."

And I said, "We've got to get involved and be in fellowship." And he's said, "I have friends. I don't need more friends," which is just a response I hate. And then he says, "I give monetarily." And I'm like, "Okay, well, you don't just give money and think you're good." That doesn't work for me, and I don't think it works for the Lord either.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: It sounds like his heart is really resistant to doing what he knows he needs to do. The great thing about any kind of evangelism or persuasion—the good news is, you've got someone inside of him that agrees. It's not God, because he's not a Christian; he doesn't have the Spirit living within him. But he's got a conscience that God has written.

He knows that what you're saying is right. He knows exactly your logic is ironclad. You can't live for God and know what to do if you don't study His Word. He needs to be studying it himself. He needs to be reading it daily. He needs to be seeking the Lord. He needs to be in a church. All of that is what his conscience is already dinging him on.

That's good. I wouldn't do it every day, but I would certainly revisit it because you certainly want to make sure that he knows you haven't lost that desire for him to do what he needs to do. But this kind of resistance with those kinds of responses—"I give monetarily" or "I don't need more friends"—these are frustrated responses from your husband because they're just defensive statements.

That's why I would say it doesn't sound like he's going to go with you to this new church. He's not going to be a part of it. I would say, "No, I go to a church that I'm a part of, and that's where I'm going. I hate that I have to go alone, but I'm going to continue going." I would put my foot down.

Savannah: And just bring my kids with me. It's going to be rough for a bit.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: And it will. All I can tell you is First Peter chapter three says if you just keep living a good Christian life as a good Christian wife and you do all that you need to do, God can use that testimony to keep dinging his conscience to where maybe by God's grace—and it's a work of God—God is going to have to convict him of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and lead him to his knees. Keep praying, keep being a godly wife, and keep going to the church that's feeding you and that you're a part of because he isn't going to go with you if the church were next door. Savannah, thanks for the call and the clarification. I certainly needed that.

Dave Druey: You're listening to a pre-recorded segment from Ask Pastor Mike Live. If you have a question for Pastor Mike, join him live on the air, Tuesday through Thursday at 1 PM Central, or reach out through our website at AskPastorMike.live.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: John, John you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help?

John: Hi, sir. I've just got a quick question for you here. I just wanted to get your opinion on this. We go to a small church where the previous preacher pretty much ran the whole church off down to three people. A new preacher came in, and he was really like a friend of ours.

He was there to preach for just a couple months at first, but then he felt like the Lord put it on his heart to be the full-time pastor. We voted him in, but he keeps telling me just when me and him are talking that the church has set a goal to reach 300 people in two years—from three to 300 in two years.

He keeps telling me when it's just me and him talking that he didn't come back to preach to 30 to 40 people, and that if he isn't preaching to 300 people, then he's going to walk away and turn the church over to somebody else. I just wanted to know what you thought about that.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Well, that doesn't sit right with you, and it doesn't sit right with me because that doesn't seem like the right perspective. Here's one thing that is in his favor: healthy churches should be growing. That's the picture, at least in the book of Acts. I can understand why that may be your desire and it should be your ambition that you're trying to reach people in your community and you want to teach them the Word.

It's better if you have 30 instead of three. It's better if you have 300 instead of 30. That's a good thing, just like it's better if you are gainfully employed and can buy a house as opposed to renting a studio apartment. That's better. But just like we see in First Timothy 6 about your money, we've got to be able to be content in serving right wherever we're at.

I would love to reach more people in my community, but our church is the size that it is. I can't say, "Well, if we don't double in size in the next three years, I don't want to do this." It's something I think he needs to be more committed to the task, always having an ambition to see God grow it. That's good. That's a good ambition, but it cannot be the condition.

I'll give myself to this if this number is met. I just think that's the wrong approach. I don't mean to throw goals under the bus because I've set goals in ministry and I've had other pastors criticize that I've set some goals. I think goals are a good thing. So he can have a goal, and I like that. But it's not, "Hey, if I don't get this goal, I'm out of here."

I just think that's probably not a wise way to view ministry because ministry is about me teaching, discipling, reaching, teaching, training people, and it's not about, "I'll only do it, God, if you give me 30,000 people in this church, or 3,000 people, or 300 people."

I would pray for him. I would even say, "The 40, 50, 60 we might end up having instead of 300 are reliant on your feeding and your gifts to teach us. We need you. Don't leave us. We need you. This is an important role, the pastor-teacher role." I would appeal to him like that. I wouldn't want to ever confirm that that's a good thing that he's doing to set a conditional goal or he's not going to be a part of it. I'm with you, John.

John: Awesome. I sure appreciate your help.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Okay. I think you're right. I get the desire. You want to, especially as a man and even in our flesh, we want to be ambitious about doing something that matters. Sadly, we need to know that it matters even if it is as Jesus said about the people following in His generation—even if it's a little flock.

John, if you're still listening, a book that may be helpful that I would have him read is *The Master Plan of Evangelism* by Coleman. That book is helpful because what it really does is it gets me to see that the people that I have right in front of me, those are the ones who as I invest in them, there's all kinds of potential beyond them that maybe I won't even see.

He basically takes the method of Christ and says, "Okay, I've got 12 apostles. I'm going to spend most of my time investing in these 12. Even among the 12, I've got three—Peter, James, and John. Those are my special investment." Why did He invest in those relationships? Because He knew there was a downstream multiplication effect.

That's why I would get that book in his hand, John, if you're still listening. *Master Plan of Evangelism* by Coleman. It's helpful at least to get us to see that if the church is 30 and not 300, it still can be a major investment in something that you may never see the net result on. But throw yourself into it. Give yourself to it.

Jesus died without a big church. Let's just put it that way. A lot of the people that followed Him—look at John 6—they followed Him, and crowds were following, and then He taught something hard and they all left. It's a fickle crowd sometimes even who are listening to the teaching of the Word.

I think about Luke chapter 14, verse 25, where there were great crowds following Him and He stopped and said, "Wait a minute. Unless you take up your cross and follow me, you've missed the whole point." The idea is He had to say, "Wait a minute. Why are so many people coming right now? You might not understand the call to come," as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, "Come and die."

You've got to die to your own desires. Any pastor should be committed. I think another one by Oswald Sanders, *Spiritual Leadership*. Those two books, they're classics. *Master Plan of Evangelism* and *Spiritual Leadership* by Sanders. Those two books were very helpful for me early on in my ministry to where I said, "I'm going to leave the growth up to God. I'm going to have ambitious goals, sure. I'm going to pray for goals. I've got some private prayer requests I often talk about in the back of my prayer journal."

Those are the things that I've been praying for, and sometimes I don't even share those. But I've got ambitious hopes and plans and prayers. I want the kingdom to grow like the mustard seed and become this big branchy tree where all the birds can make their nest in it. But if it doesn't turn out to be all that, it's okay. I want to be faithful because a steward should be faithful to discharge his ministry gifts.

That's what I want your pastor to do, John, and certainly that's what I want to do. I want to train up men that care about that. I want to have us invest in people. Second Timothy chapter two: the idea of I want to entrust my teaching to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Sometimes that group's a lot smaller by the time I die, but who knows what's going to go on after that because of a good investment.

The church has been built in that first generation on the apostles and prophets, and that was a small group, and that created a worldwide movement. Bigger picture might help in that regard.

Dave Druey: You're listening to a pre-recorded segment from Ask Pastor Mike Live, and we invite you to join us when Pastor Mike is live on the air and call in with a question of your own. Tune in for Ask Pastor Mike Live, Tuesday through Thursday at 1 PM Central, or join in through our website at AskPastorMike.live.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I'm Mike Fabarez on the voice you hear on Focal Point radio. If you listen, I hope you do. Go to FPR.org/live; that gives you information about what we're doing here and gives you links to the podcasts that I talked about.

I talk a lot about our September vacation my wife and I are taking. We want you to come with us. We're going to go out of a ship out of—it's not the Titanic, you'll be glad to know—but a ship out of Boston and we're going to head up the coast of New England and into Canada.

It's going to be a great time of teaching God's Word. I'll be teaching every day, and good worship, good fellowship, getting to meet other listeners to the program. I'd love for you to join us. Just go to PastorMike.com, scroll down to the Focal Point cruise. That would be great.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: All right, let's see what else we've got. I heard a pastor saying that Paul was married, being that it was a requirement to be part of the Sanhedrin, which the pastor says he was. Have you heard of this before, Kirk? Yes, I've heard it before.

But the idea of Paul clearly saying in contrast to Peter—you know, Peter, he's not the only one that has the right to take along a wife, but I haven't. His whole point in saying in First Corinthians 7 that singleness is to be preferred, and he's holding himself up as an example of that preference—all of that's based on the fact of having contentment without romantic fulfillment, and he's predicating the whole argument on that.

If he was in a marriage, that just negates the whole argument. He was on his way to the Sanhedrin. I think that's what Philippians chapter 3 and 4, in just dealing with who he is, he talks even autobiographically about his up-and-coming, he was a Pharisee of Pharisees.

I think he was heading to the Sanhedrin, but I don't think there's any definitive ironclad proof he was already attained to that. Even that, I'd have to really look at the sources that say you had to be married to be on the Sanhedrin, the 70 top ruling class of Jews, and I'd have to refresh my memory on that.

No, I don't think Paul was ever married. I think the arguments in First Corinthians 7, his discussion to the Corinthians about Paul's right to be able to take a wife, but he's chosen not to—all of that is not divorced. Clearly, he's talking about the fact that he is content without that romantic fulfillment, which most of us are not. So there you go.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Let's go back to the phones. Chad, you're on the line with Pastor Mike Fabarez. How can I help?

Chad: Hi, Pastor Mike. Quick question. I've seen commercials in the past and it's been talked about—and I'm guessing they're referring to when Jesus went to Egypt as a baby—they say, "Well, Jesus was an immigrant." But I've also heard that Egypt at that time was under the control of the Roman Empire, so he really wasn't an immigrant. I guess it all goes back to the hot subject of immigration. So would Jesus have been legal or illegal in Egypt at that time, or was it under the control of the Roman Empire, so he wasn't? That was my question.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: No, he was not an immigrant, and that's ridiculous. Just like when you went to Europe, hopefully you did it legally and you're not invading the borders. You are going there the right way. I know that because not only is Jesus one who is keeping all the law, and he does that morally, ethically, and ceremonially.

Even his parents, if you study in Luke chapter 1 and 2, so much of what's done there is fastidiously done by Joseph and Mary. They make sure that everything in terms of the dedication, the presentation, the circumcision—it's all done according to God's law. That's the point. Mary is presented to us as a godly gal.

This parental guidance is not going to be Joseph saying, "Well, I'm just freaked out now, so let's climb through the barbed wire fence down there in Goshen." It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Here's what Jesus taught us to do: to keep the rules even down to paying the taxes to Caesar even if I don't agree with everything Caesar does.

So Christ is into paying taxes. He's into keeping the law, keeping the rules, keeping man-made rules. He's willing to do that. He even goes and submits himself to stand before Pilate and Herod and all the rest. No, there's no possible way you can compare someone sneaking through our border illegally and say, "Just like Jesus, just like Jesus."

"If you're going to condemn these guys, you've got to condemn Jesus." It's absurd. It's an absurd argument. It's ridiculous, and I dismiss it on its face because it does not square with Scripture. I guarantee the people telling you that—this is a talking point they saw on TikTok or something, and it has nothing to do with their knowledge of Scripture.

No, Jesus didn't do anything sinful. His parents did not lead him in his early years to do anything sinful. They kept the law. Even at 12 years old, they're still taking a trip as not wealthy people from Nazareth all the way down to Jerusalem because the law required it. They are supposed to keep the law.

There's no way they're going to go and not keep the law in any neighboring country. Yes, he did go to Egypt, but he didn't stay there long and God brought him back, even though he heard Archelaus was now in charge, he was going to go back to Galilee, to the cities of the area of Nazareth in northern Israel. No, it's a ridiculous argument, Chad.

Chad: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Okay. I know it's out there. You hear all kinds of people saying all kinds of things. It just needs to be corrected with a little bit of biblical truth and knowledge. Jesus wasn't breaking any rules. If he were here, guess what he'd do? He'd pay his taxes. He would properly do everything on TurboTax or whatever to make sure everything was claimed.

He wouldn't pocket his tips working in the carpentry business. He would do everything that you're supposed to do. He did everything including the words that he used without sin. He did everything right. He's not breaking rules internationally or otherwise, like immigration law.

You can hear my angst in that, and it's not for Chad. Chad's just asking a question, and I think Chad feels the same way. But here's the deal: I don't like people enlisting Jesus as a chip or a pawn in their argument. It happens all the time online, and it's just like, stop. Stop.

Don't tell me I can't love Jesus and believe in the rule of law. Of course I can, because Jesus was all about the rule of law even when the laws in his country seemed oppressive. Even when there was a two-drachma temple tax. Why in the world would he pay the Romans to put golden eagles on top of the temple in the first century?

Well, because he was submissive to the governing authorities, just like Peter taught that we should. We should honor the king. We should submit ourselves to every human authority because they come from God, as Paul wrote in Romans 13. This is what God has instituted, and we ought to submit to it. Taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, honor to whom honor is due.

Dave Druey: That's Pastor Mike Fabarez, and you've been listening to Focal Point and another edition of Ask Pastor Mike Live, where real listeners bring their real questions to Pastor Mike during his weekly call-in broadcast. Now if you want in on the next one, it airs Tuesday through Thursday at 1 PM Central.

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