Focal Point

Dave Drouy: Today on Focal Point, with Pastor Mike Fabarez.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: How good and blessed it is, how happy it is, when the brothers dwell together in unity. It's a great thing. Everyone enjoys that. Everyone likes going to a church that's unified. Everyone likes going to a small group where everyone is friends and when they wrong each other, they forgive. That's a good place to be.

Dave Drouy: When you hold on to a grudge, who's actually paying for it? Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez keeps working through the short letter of Philemon in a series called Fighting for Peace. Forgiveness, it turns out, was never just a private transaction between two people. There's a whole cast of others watching, waiting, and quietly affected by what you decide to do with your grudge. Pastor Mike names them one by one, and one of them might genuinely surprise you. Here's today's message titled When the Price Tag Is High.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Turn to the book of Philemon. Philemon verse 17. For if you, Philemon, consider me, Paul, your partner. That's the word for fellowship or sharing it. But he says, if you consider me your fellow fellow shiper, okay? Then receive him, who's that? Onesimus, as you would receive me. And he goes further, verse 18, if he's wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge it to my account. Then he picks up the quill. I, Paul, write this with my own hand. And if you look up at the beginning of this book, the first verse, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus and Timothy our brother.

Timothy is probably serving as his amanuensis in this. If you're not familiar with that word, that just means he's taking the dictation for Paul. But at this point, he picks up the quill and he says, I write this with my own hand. And in his own handwriting. It's like it's like calling in the notary public, right? He's saying, I'm showing this is from me. I will repay it. To say nothing of you owing me even your own self. See, in other words, I've already done so much for you. I won you to Christ. You should look at me as the one who because of the human instrumentality of my evangelism, you're not going to hell.

I know that you you feel indebted to me just for the ministry I've done in your life. And if you feel any indebtedness to me, I just want you to charge it to my account. Right? And I don't think Philemon, the rich man is going to say, well, Paul, you owe me, you know, 315 denarii. I don't think he's going to say that. He's going to go, wow. You know, if if Paul needed 350 denarii, I'd give it to him. And so he says, just just count it against me. Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord.

Refresh my heart in Christ. In other words, he's saying, do me the favor. Do it for me. Make make the benefit here for me. Charge it to me. Do it for me. You owe me your life. Do me a favor here. Philemon, forgive Onesimus. Jot that down. Number one, let's just start with the whole argument. Forgive for others' sake. Just like Philemon was supposed to forgive for Paul's sake. I want us to think about forgiving for other people's sake. And if you're a parent or you were a parent raising kids in your home, I just think you understand.

It's good when you care about your children if they get along. That would be good. And if there's a grievance, that they forgive one another and be reconciled. All right? There's no joy in being the parent of of of Cain and Abel. Would you agree with that? You don't you know, that's not a good day. You don't like that. You want there to be harmony. You want them to be you want there to be peace. And and I will say just like Paul is a ecclesiastical authority, right? He's an apostle and he's looking at as the preacher there who's preached many times in in Colossae.

He says, you know what, Philemon, I'm I'm kind of over you in the Lord. Not kind of, I am over you in the Lord in terms of my authority, apostolic authority. And it would be good for me as a leader to see this happen in your life. I just want you to know that there are people watching you in your conflicts that would be very much blessed by you forgiving. Hebrews chapter 13 verse 17. Hebrews 13:17. Let me read it for you as you think I would read it. Obey your leaders and submit to them.

But that's not how I'm reading it. But it is what it says. Obey your leaders and submit to them. Why? What's the rationale? For they're keeping watch over your souls. They're trying to do the right thing as those who will have to give an account. One of the reasons they care about how you live the Christian life is cuz they're going to have to answer for how you live your Christian life cuz their whole job is trying to disciple you and equip you and train you. Okay? And then it says this, let them do this with joy and not with groaning.

And and I can tell you there's lots of reasons a pastor might groan in his pastoral ministry. But let me be super clear. One of the things that absolutely is near the top, if not the top of the list, is you being at odds with people in the church that you will not forgive. People that you're bitter toward. People that you feel wronged by and you won't make it right. Factions, division, argument, bitterness, aversion, anger, malice, slander, gossip, all of that certainly makes pastors groan. And I would say this, let's just go further through the whole ministry structure.

Sub congregational staff pastors would certainly be refreshed if you could forgive. Small group leaders, right? Just volunteer lay leaders would be certainly blessed and refreshed if when there's a conflict and there always will be conflicts, that you forgive and you you let it go. You drop it. And you and you're willing to reconcile. That would be super super good for all the leaders, just like parents, right? They they they are they are blessed when there's when there's joy in their heart, as it says in 3 John chapter 4, right? There's no greater joy than to see my children walking in the truth, particularly when they're walking together in agreement.

That that's a good thing. Paul says it often as he he talks about his his his apostolic authority. Think about Jot this one down. Philippians chapter 2 verses 1 through 3. He first starts with how great it is to be in fellowship and unity with one another. Let me summarize, paraphrase. It's great when the church is all unified and there's no divisions between you. And then he says this, so make my joy complete. Remember that line? Make my joy complete. By and then he goes, just be of the same mind, right? Be the same heart.

Do the just get it together. There's no greater joy for a pastor and a leader, a ministry that are a small group host to see everyone getting along. Now we know people are are imperfect. We know that they're going to sin against each other, right? But there's forgiveness. There's reconciliation. That's a great great thing. And it's going to make others outside of your conflict really you're going to be blessed by that. And you don't think about that often. But that's what the whole book of Philemon is about. Some third party injecting himself into your conflict with someone else saying, I would really be refreshed if you get this right.

That is an argument. That is a motivation and it should be in your mind. People will be blessed if you'll get along with each other. That's a good thing. And then I could go just to anybody. And it's not just the leaders that are particularly blessed, but um you know, the group itself. And I think that's where the very last phrase of Hebrews chapter 13 verse 17 goes. Do you remember the rest of it? For this would be of no advantage to you. Well, to you plural. How is it that it wouldn't be of no advantage if if you're an unforgiving, bitter, grudge holding group?

Well, it wouldn't be a very good church to go to. That wouldn't be a great place to be. So just think about I've quoted this one early in the series, a Psalm 133:1. Do you remember that verse? How good and blessed right it is, how happy it is, when the brothers dwell together in unity. It's a great thing. Everyone enjoys that. Everyone likes going to a church that's unified. Everyone likes going to a small group where everyone is friends and when they wrong each other, they forgive. That's a good place to be. Matter of fact, I often quote if you hear me talking about some of the good days of the early church.

Did it have bad days? It had some bad days. But the early days, I often go to the end of chapter 2 and the end of chapter 4. Do you hear me talk about that like Acts 2, Acts 4? These are two great little parenthetical statements, summary statements that Luke makes about the early church. Let's look at chapter 4 real quick. The end of chapter 4 and I just want to show you both sides of a themi and karisemi. Dropping matters and reaching out with full free favor to one another. Look at this great text.

Acts chapter 4 verse 32. Now the full number of those who believed. Okay, so that's all the Christians. It's not part of them or the cool cats or you know, click A and click B. No, the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul. One heart and one soul. And no one said that any of the things that belong to him was his own, but they had everything in common. You need something, I'm there for you. You need someone to help you move, I'm there for you. You need someone to borrow you can borrow my car.

What do you need? You want to test whether or not you've dropped the matter and you have full favor. When you reach out your hands, look at what's in them. Right? Are you willing to give? Are you willing to be generous to others? And I'm just telling you, the early church here, I love the way it says the full number. There was no one at odds with each other. Now there were going to be problems in chapter 5 if you know the flow of Acts, but man, right now everyone is firing on on on on all cylinders and every everybody's on the same page.

That's just a beautiful statement. And that not only is a joy for leaders, as a joy for congregants. So would you forgive for others' sake? I'm going to I going to I'm going to add one more person. I want you to forgive for one other person's sake. Let's read this little paragraph here starting in verse 5. 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 5. Let's start there. Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure, not to put it too severely, to all of you. Now here's the context. Paul had called out someone for sin in the church.

They were to discipline him. And what we what we know from reading this paragraph is he is repentant, right? And and they had shunned this guy. They had kicked him out of the church, but he repented. And so he says, yeah, there were some pain in all this and I get that. And and and it hurt me in a sense, but really what mattered is it hurt you. So this is a little bit of the inverse of everything I just said, right? It pains leaders, it pains congregants when we don't get through things and we don't reconcile.

Verse 6. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough. Right? The church said you're not welcome here until you repent. So you would rather than, right? Turn and to to forgive and comfort him. Or he might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. The guy's repented and you're not going to receive him back. Of course you should. So I beg you. I love this. Talk about the karisemi part of open-handed free favor. He says, reaffirm your love for him. This is why I wrote that I might test you, right? Are you going to deal with this matter biblically?

Well, the first side is, can you deal with the person that's sinning? And then can you reconcile whether you're obedient and everything? For anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. I'm not sitting here in in across the the the the channel of the Adriatic saying, I don't I don't forgive. No, no, no. If you if this guy repented and you heard it and you saw it, I forgive him too, of course. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I forgiven anything, has been for the sake for your sake, the congregation's sake, in the presence of Christ.

Okay, so far. Now here's the person. Here it comes. Verse 11. So that we would not be outwitted by Here's a new person in the middle of all this outside of the conflict, Satan. For we're not ignorant of his schemes. This may sound weird, but I'd like you to forgive for Satan's sake. Does that sound weird? Right? I'm not Anton LaVey. I'm just I'm it's not for his good, it's for his bad. I want you to forgive so that Satan would not be a winner in our church, in your small groups. And by the way, do you think Satan only cares about the church?

He cares paramount about the church. But he didn't he also cares about families, he cares about workplaces, he cares about offices. Does all this apply even in a secular context? Wouldn't it be great bosses, managers, supervisors if all your employees got along? I mean, if you're a manager, I don't go you're a Best Buy with the blue shirts, right? Wouldn't it be great if you were leading those employees and they all got along? They all high fived each other and walked by. Everything's good. You you would you would appreciate that. And here's the thing, Satan loves to destroy.

He loves to tear up. He loves to steal and kill and destroy. It says in John 10. And he'd love to do that in your family, in your workplace, and certainly paramount importance in the church. But we will win if we can forgive. We drop the matter, which we must do even in church discipline, right? We turn them over. God's going to have to deal with this person. But you're not welcome here. But then there's repentance and then hands of karisemi. Favor goes out and we embrace and we reconcile. That's a great great you know, analogy of of of karisemi and afemi.

Uh but here's what we need to realize, Satan is is is working against that. So we get to shut the doors to Satan. And again, Satan, I hope we're not on his radar. Uh God please. I hope you're not we're not on Satan's radar. But he's got demons dispatched. And clearly, all I have to do is look at James chapter 3. The demonic wisdom always wants its pound of flesh. Demonic wisdom is not open to biblical reason. It's earthly and demonic, James says. And in the church, the conflicts, the kinds of things that go on that that result in bitterness, harboring grudges and all the rest.

Satan Satan would love to smile at all that and the demons at at work at Compass Bible Church would love to see the division and unforgiveness settle into your heart. So I I want for his sake, for his demise against our church. I I I want to forgive in here. And I'd love for that to happen in your workplace too cuz some of these principles will work even in a non-Christian context, some of them. We forgive for others' sake. It's a good thing. Think about leaders, think about fellow congregants. Even think about the enemy who can be defeated as we forgive.

Now let's go back to the text. Start in verse 17. We'll take the first half of it and I want to read this as some of you probably read it just intuitively. When you read the first few verses, 17 through 20, you probably thought about something that stands behind the godly leader and you probably looked right over his shoulder and say, this sounds like God. And certainly there's a lot of parallel there. So let's telescope beyond Paul's shoulder and let's look over his shoulder and look at these concepts. Look verse 17. If you consider me your partner, if you're in fellowship with me, then receive him as you'd receive me.

Is there anything in scripture that might remind you of that principle that relates to God himself? And it's all over the Bible. Think about Matthew chapter 10 verse 40. Matthew 10:40 says, if you're linked with me and I send you into these villages and they receive you, guess what? They are receiving me. The whole concept of the body image, which is a an analogy in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians in particular. And if we're part of the body and he's the head, right? When the body members, when the parts of the body, when they work together, right?

It it's like we're receiving part of Christ. When I'm right with other people, then there's a sense in which I'm right with God. The Bible says I'm to welcome others, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. So all of this is very biblical. It all relates to God. And then even further, look at verse 18. If he's wronged you, right? At all or owes you anything, charge it to my account. I, Paul, write with my own hand, I will repay it. To say nothing of your owing me even your own self. If you didn't look over his shoulder at God in that statement, cuz I don't you know, Paul didn't do anything for you.

I mean, I guess he did indirectly, but right? We know Christ did everything for us. So in that sense, we realize, wait a minute, that goes right back to the beginning illustration we gave of Jesus talking about the forgiveness of the master to the servant. And the servant can't forgive his fellow servant? No, that's bad. Right? I need to remember what Christ has done for us in forgiving us. So all of this reminds us of this simple principle. Let's look over the shoulder of the apostle Paul, not just the godly leader, but God himself. Number two, you need to forgive for God's sake, for God's sake.

You need to forgive because all of these principles are triply true, infinitely true, if we apply them to God. Do you owe God everything? Yes, you do. And what does he ask you to do? Forgive. Right? Is there a sense in which Christ says this? Now here's the real challenge. That Christ says this, that I will pay for the loss to you. Well, in two senses it's true. Because the the Bible's really clear, when we turn over a matter to God, then God will deal with us. And if there's a wrong, he can certainly fix it.

Right? If somebody keys my car and I don't get money out of the guy who keys my car, here's the thing that a real Christian understands, God can take care of the repair bill. And I know that God can do that and I'm okay. I I think that God will be he'll he'll be compensating. But more than that, I know something much more profound and it's the cornerstone of evangelical orthodox Christian theology. Go to Isaiah 53 and let's just revisit this cuz if you have been influenced by the skinny jean goatee preachers, sorry, not all of them, some some of them.

They have taught consistently in the 21st century that the concept and doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Christ suffering on your behalf is nothing more, as they like to say, than cosmic child abuse. They've taken the core doctrine of substitutionary atonement, that the father treated the son as an enemy so that he could see you as his friend. They say that's just that's egregious. Right? In in this real sentimental kind of theology of the modern era, people have dismissed the core of our theology. There's no salvation, by the way, outside of the concept of substitutionary atonement.

And it's all over the Bible starting in the Mosaic law. In Leviticus chapter 1 verse 4, if you're going to go to worship and you bring your animal there, it's a whole reminder of the kafar, the Hebrew word kafar, of the covering of your sin. How is it covered? Well, the illustration is I put my hand on the head of the animal and then the priest comes and takes his sharp knife out, slits the throat of the animal, the blood spills out, the animal collapses, the blood goes onto my sandals, his sandals, and we take that animal and hoist them up on the altar.

That animal didn't do anything morally wrong. As a matter of fact, I picked a blemishless animal, the best animal in my flock to bring it to worship. And the picture is, I get to go home in peace with God even though I'm a sinner and this animal, right? Gets consumed by the fire or depending on what kind of sacrifice it is, it gets consumed by the priest after it's burned up for for lunch. So this is like this is the core of of the image of the sacrificial system. And of course in Isaiah 53, if you know your Bibles, this is the prophetic view prophetic view of the coming servant of Christ who's going to be the strong arm of the Lord to accomplish salvation for his people.

And it puts it this way in the prophetic perfect. It puts it in the grammar of it already happening because really in God's mind from the foundation of the world, Christ has been slain, right? At least in his mind this this reality took place in space and time 2,000 years ago. But this is the whole basis for redemption and forgiveness. Take a look at this Isaiah 53. Let's start in verse 5. Isaiah 53 verse 5. But he, this suffering servant, was pierced for his own transgressions. Is that what it says? No, not for his own transgression.

No, that's normally what happens. If you sin, right? You you get punished for your sin. You get crucified on a Roman execution rack in the 1st century if you're a criminal. You've done the crime, right? Then then you get to be strung up on this cross. That just makes sense. But instead, here's the substitution. He was pierced for our transgression. Now wait a minute, I should be pierced. Yeah, I should be pierced, but I'm not going to be pierced. He got pierced for me. He was crushed. His human life was crushed for our iniquities. And now that we look with the advantage of time in retrospect, man, he was killed in the most torturous way.

I mean, the Romans flayed his back and put a crown of thorns and mocked him and he were hung naked on a cross. All of that crushed because of our sins. Upon him was the chastisement. That means whipping, right? The the the the lashings. On him was the chastisement that brought us peace. I go home in peace and he is the one who's acted like that God acts like he's the criminal. The father punishes the son and by his wounds, he gets wounded. My relationship with God is healed. That's crazy. All all we like sheep have gone astray.

We did the sin, we did the transgression, we did the iniquities. Right? We've all turned every one of us to his own way, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of all of us straying sheep. You've transgressed, you've done things that are perversions to God, you've done sin, you've done wrong. But God said I'm going to take all of that and I'm going to place it on him. If you take this out of your theology as so many cool cats have done these days, right? You've missed the whole point of forgiveness. We have nothing other than a book of morals and we hope we kind of pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and live better and hope that God likes it and hope he's going to let us into heaven.

That we don't realize God is so holy, it has to be paid for. Drop down to verse 10. It was the will of the Lord to crush him and to put him to grief when his soul makes an offering for guilt. It takes us all the way back to Leviticus. This is the whole point of the sacrificial system. Look at verse 11. Out of the anguish of his soul, he, the father shall see and be satisfied, propitiation. And by his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant make many to be accounted righteous. Now they're not righteous because they have iniquities, but he shall bear their iniquities.

Look at the very last two lines of of verse 12. He bore the sins of many and he makes intercession for transgressors. He's the holy one. He's done no wrong. He gets punished as though he is the wrongdoer. And now we walk away going, hey, our sins are paid for.

Dave Drouy: You're listening to Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez continuing our study called Fighting for Peace. You can walk back through today's message anytime at focalpointradio.org or take it wherever you go on the free Focal Point app. And if a question's been sitting with you, we invite you to bring it straight to Pastor Mike. The lines are open Tuesday through Thursday at 1:00 p.m. Central on Ask Pastor Mike Live. Find everything at askpastormike.live. Maybe you've got someone in your life who shrugs off the Bible. Maybe even you have on our day. Well, Pastor Mike heard that enough that he wrote a whole book about it.

It's a book called The Bible, a book like no other. And this week we're excited to offer it to you as our thanks for your generous donation. Pastor Mike walks through the manuscript evidence, the history, and the reasons this particular book has outlived every attempt to discredit it. So the next time someone tells you it's just an old book passed down and picked apart for centuries, you'll be able to do more than just give them a shrug. You'll have an actual answer. Request your copy when you give to Focal Point today. Just pick up the phone and call us at 888-320-5885 or give online at focalpointradio.org.

You can also mail your gift to Focal Point Post Office Box 2850 Laguna Hills, California 92654. Pastor Mike showed us that forgiveness reaches further than the two people directly involved, giving works the same way. Your gift doesn't stop with you. It reaches the next listener scrolling past static on their commute, searching for something true. Becoming a Focal Point partner means that search ends here every single week, not only on the weeks you remember to give. Set up recurring support at focalpointradio.org or call us at 888-320-5885. And for first time listeners, Pastor Mike also has a new booklet called Fighting for Peace.

Reach out at focalpointradio.org and we'll send you a free copy. Well, I'm Dave Drouy. Join us tomorrow when Pastor Mike brings this study in Philemon to a close. That's Wednesday on Focal Point.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Pastor Mike here, you know, it's an honor to be with you every day helping you explore the depths of scripture. But I want to be clear, no amount of Bible knowledge is ever going to save you. Be sure where you stand with God. Get in touch with us. We'd love to pray with you and for you. Visit us today at focalpointradio.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

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