Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Choosing your church and your pastors is such an important moral decision in your life. Do you understand that? There's nothing more important than that when it comes to your spiritual growth because you're called to submit to the authority and obey your leaders, and the choice that you make and who your spiritual leaders are is critically important. You've got to make that decision very carefully.

Guest (Male): American history is filled with lone rangers. It might even be an American ideal, but that doesn't make it a biblical ideal. Isolation makes us vulnerable to the enemy and keeps us from the community that God intended. Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez shows us from scripture that we're designed to belong to a local church. We're not meant to go it alone in this life, and church pastors are an important part of God's plan. Now let's get started with today's message titled "Deference instead of Autonomy."

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Preachers who proclaim the word of God are led to proclaim that people should respect those who proclaim the word of God. And that just is kind of weird. That's the dilemma that the preachers have always encountered throughout the centuries when they've been preaching through the book of Hebrews and they've run into these middle verses in chapter 13. Stand up and tell people, "Hey, you need to respect me. You need to obey me." That's just an odd-seeming, self-serving kind of passage.

So, a lot of preachers have just decided not to preach on it. They just skip it altogether. Other preachers have made it kind of their favorite preaching text and preached on it often, reminding you every week that you should obey them, which is worse than weird. It's indicative of some deeper problems, I suppose. So when I encountered this in study and we're trying to move verse by verse through the book of Hebrews, I had to make some decisions on how to deal with it.

So I thought a reasonable option would be to address these verses in Hebrews 13 head-on and unabashed and just take the bull by the horns and say this is what the passage says, but not turn it into a 15-week series. How's that for a compromise? Now, number one, you need to be reminded that the application of this particular passage holds the blessing of every other passage in the Bible if you do it. James 1:25 says if you do the word of God, you'll be blessed.

So just realize that if we do it, I know that I might be blessed in the process, but so will you. That's what the Bible says. Obey the word and you'll be blessed. Secondly, let me point out that I'm not the only one in your life who is a leader who speaks to you the word of God. Men's or women's Bible studies, there's other people in your life that this applies to. It's not just about me. So maybe that'll soften it just a little bit.

But I suppose I should address this group, and I'm reluctant to do so, but there are some listening to this that are likely to be a part of a group, a growing group in our culture of people that have given up on having any spiritual leaders in their life at all. They've just said, "I don't really... I'm not into that. Christ is my pastor. And I listen to preachers and all of that, but I don't have spiritual leaders in my life."

And I understand why people do that, and it may be because they've had a really bad experience with a batch of bad church leaders. And I get that. Or it may be that you're really sharp and smart and bright and spiritually mature, and you're looking at the options out there and saying, "Well, I don't find anybody I can really put myself under." And I can understand that too. I mean, the options out there are not all that impressive in some places.

But the bottom line is if you don't have any spiritual leaders in your life, I can say unequivocally that you're outside the will of God and that it's not a good place to be and that God would have you change that arrangement in your life because the way God has set things up is for you to have pastors and spiritual leaders in your life. That is God's will for you. Not just in the church. God has made the world that way, and he says that he has set up authorities in just about every arena of life that you are called to submit to and defer to in your life.

You've probably got bosses at work. We have city councils in cities. We have governors in states. We have whole governmental structures in nations. And God says you should submit to them and obey your leaders. So that's true outside the church, and it's certainly true in the church. Though some look for a respite in the church and hope that maybe we can be just some kind of loosely associated group of self-governed autonomous believers, that's not how the Bible arranges things.

So we need to, for all of our sakes, defer to the biblical model, which calls the average Christian to recognize that he has a need in his life, whether he feels it or not, to have spiritual leaders who speak the word of God to them. So with all those preliminaries out of the way, was that uncomfortable enough? That's just the introduction. Maybe we should look at this passage.

Hebrews chapter 13, beginning in verse number seven. That's where the topic of leaders comes up and it says in the text to remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Be like those guys. Drop down to verse 17. Hebrews 13, verse 17. It says, "Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy and not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you."

And then he gets real personal. He says, "Pray for us." And he is certainly a leader in this church. He says, "We are sure that we have a clear conscience and we desire to live honorably in every way. I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon." Perhaps in prison, bereft of his congregation for some reason, but he's got some personal requests. He says, "You guys need to pray for us." So let's look at this and try and take this apart a piece at a time and see what God would have us do in response to it.

Verse number seven. It says remember your leaders. Keep them in mind. Keep them in your mind. Remember them, not just for the sake of honoring them, but the preachers who speak the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Now, we've already seen a lot about examples in Hebrews, haven't we? Chapter 11 is all about these great heroes of faith, people with sandals and robes from ancient times who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, conquered kingdoms, right?

We've even seen from New Testament times as he says in chapter two, the apostles who did these miraculous signs and all that's great and we should follow in the virtue of their faith. But now he makes it much more personal. Oh, the guys that you know, not just know about, but the guys that you know who open up the word of God and preach to you. He says those are the guys you need to keep in mind and remember the way that they live, the outcome of their faith, and you need to imitate that kind of faith.

That is putting the Christian virtue, Christian truth, and seeing it lived out in real life. Something close. And that's hard. It's easy to respect people far away. It's even easier to say I've got heroes that are far away and long since dead. It's hard to say, "Well, I've got some people I pattern my life after now." It's not thoughtless, it's not blind, it's not just this I'm just blindly following these people. It should be thoughtful because the assumption in Hebrews is that these leaders that are preaching the word of God are good leaders and they're accurately preaching the word of God.

There are exceptions, and we'll deal with those throughout the message, but the point is, assuming that you have good leaders who are teaching you the word of God, number one on your outline, jot this one down. You and I, if in a congregation we have pastors that are leading us and teaching the word of God, they're good ones we're assuming here, then you should, number one, you should thoughtfully follow your leader's example. Thoughtfully follow your leader's example.

Because I know about those big heroes of the faith that are thrown into the lion's den and that's amazing faith. But what about the 21st century when someone who claims to try and live according to the scripture hits real-life crises that we face in our day? What do they respond like when bad things happen to them or injustice intransverses their life and now they're oppressed or opposed? How do they respond to that? What's their marriage like? How do they keep priorities intact in the midst of the challenges and distractions of the 21st century?

You should have people in mind that you know who teach you the word of God that you say, "What would they do? How do they handle it?" That's not man-worship, that's not unbiblical honor. That's biblical and it's all over the scripture. And doesn't Paul say it? Follow me as I follow Christ. Isn't that everywhere in scripture? Look into an example with me in Philippians chapter three. Now, one of the first objections I think most people have is they cross their arms and lean back and say, "Well, these men have feet of clay. Just remember that. They're not perfect."

Now, no one said they were. And in scripture, even the apostolic band made it very clear, we're not saying we're perfect. But neither is your golf instructor, right? Think about that one. He hits a hole in one on every par three? No. But I trust he's a little bit better at applying the mechanics of the golf swing than you are. That's why you go to him for instruction. He teaches you the game. Oh, occasionally he'll hit it into the rough or the sand trap.

But one of the great things about having a golf instructor, which I don't have, is that he helps you get out of those with some skill, right? When you watch him hit it into the trap, he teaches you how to get out of the trap. We're not claiming that we need perfect leaders. But we do understand that in their imperfection, there is something about their leadership that we should follow. Look at this in Philippians chapter three. Just to give it some reference point in verse 12.

He's talking about these high virtues of this kind of life that we'll experience on the other side. And he says in verse 12, "Not that I've already obtained all this." Philippians chapter three, verse 12, are you with me? "Or have already been made perfect. Come on, I'm not saying that. But I do press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I don't consider myself yet as to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what's behind and straining toward what's ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which Christ Jesus has called me heavenward."

That's clear. But look a few verses down. Even though he claims, "I'm not perfect, I'm not saying I am." Look at verse 17. He said, "But you guys should join with others in following my example." And how different is that from modern-day leadership conferences, right? I mean, most people in this kind of self-imposed false deprecation in my mind, we say, "Oh, don't watch me." We've got these little trite things. I'm just one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread.

You don't hire a golf coach or a batting coach for your kid who's lousy at it, right? I mean, you don't want the wounded healer mentality. I mean, you really want to have somebody who has some competence in this. I mean, that's who your spiritual leaders and Bible teachers should be, people that know what it is to apply these principles. Do they do it perfectly? Didn't say that. But you should have and choose biblical churches and biblical leaders who you say they're living this stuff as well as can be expected in the 21st century and we're following their example.

And Paul says, "Hey, no, don't look at me." He doesn't say that. Instead, he says, "No, look at me. Join with others in following my example and not only that, take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you." Because Paul was gone now and he says, "If you see people living like the way I lived, then you need to watch them and you'll learn to live the Christian life by watching them." I know we can read the Bible stories and we can see the people from the past, but if you want to know how it's done in Philippi, you need to watch the people who live like I did when I was there.

I know that's tough. But that's the biblical picture because there are a lot of people yacking about God, and that's where he goes in the next verse, who don't live it. He says, "I've often told you before and now say again with tears, many live as enemies of the cross." Oh, they talk about it. This has been a theme in the book so far. Their destiny though is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things, but you haven't seen that in us, Paul says. We're not in it for money, we're not in it for the wrong reasons.

He says you've watched that our citizenship is in heaven as we eagerly await a savior from there. Look across the page, chapter four, Philippians chapter four. These familiar verses about setting our minds in verse number eight on what's true and noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable. If it's excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. And then verse nine says, "You want to know what that looks like in real life? Those are great abstract virtues, but here's what it looks like in real life."

He says whatever you've learned or received or heard or, underline this phrase, or seen in me, put it into practice. If you've watched me apply the Bible this way, you need to apply the Bible that way. And the God of peace will be with you. I understand that your pastors aren't perfect, I'm the first to admit that I certainly am not, but I would hope that there would be a pattern in my life that you would see or the people that preach at the men's Bible study or the women's Bible study or your small group leader or the teenagers can look at the youth pastors and see when I face the challenges of life, I want to respond like that.

That's what church is all about. People that are called to be leaders. As a matter of fact, this word in Hebrews chapter 13 that's translated leaders is literally the word guide. They're showing you how it's done. Walk this way, let me show you how it works. Guides. And by the way, let me speak for a second to those of you who want to be pastors, want to be Bible teachers, or you want to move up even in the ranks of the church as it were in being leaders and teachers in the church.

A lot of people want that, but they don't want the fishbowl. I know the pastor's got a fishbowl. Absolutely, it does, and it's supposed to. I mean, that's how it's supposed to work. I mean, you should follow me around... don't follow me around, but if you were to follow me around, you'd see that people are following me around. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, I can't... we go to restaurants and they're watching us. We take our kids into Lowe's and they're watching. I'm in Lowe's on Monday and this guy's watching me. And I'm lost... you know how you get lost in Lowe's for like three hours, right?

I'm lost in Lowe's looking for stuff I can't find, not remembering stuff I should have written down. And this guy finally comes up and says, "I know who you are." And then I gotta think, what was I doing for the last hour in there? Was I frustrated? Did I look angry? Was I throwing things? Whatever. Because my life's a fishbowl. It is. Last night, I go to dinner, I think I had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people come up and interrupt my dinner. Not that I mind. But I'm eating dinner with my family and people are observing.

And so those of you that want to be pastors and Bible teachers, the more you teach the scripture, the more your life will be put on display. Accept it and embrace it. Because pastors' conferences today are all about how to try and buffer the people, try and live many miles from your church and make sure that you have the kinds of phones and emails that can filter all this out. The problem is you're going to live in a fishbowl. Just get used to it. That's the reality.

If you want a template for this really, really quick, first Timothy chapter four, which by the way, you gotta know, one of the problems and the beefs that Paul had with Timothy was that his humility had turned to timidity, and that was sin. See? His humility had turned into some kind of timidity, and that was sin. And Paul says, "Step up, man, step up. You got to be an example." Look at this, first Timothy chapter four, verse number 12. And he was blaming a lot of things like, "Well, who am I? I'm young in this and all that."

He says, "No." Because we already know he wasn't so young in this thing that he wasn't qualified to be a pastor and Paul says, "Don't let anybody look down on you because you are young." And I hate to blow it for your teenagers, this is not a verse about being a teenager and kind of being a upstanding teenager. This is about being a pastor and in a church, stop it with this, "Well, don't look at me and who am I and I don't really know." No, no, no. You need to set an example for the believers in speech.

How do you talk? How do you talk when things are hard? How do you talk about people? How do you respond to issues of difficulty? In life, what do your priorities look like? How do you prioritize your relationship with your wife or your kids? How about money? Faith and how you trust God? How about when things are dark, when things don't go your way, when you have trials or health crises? How do you handle that? What does your trust in God look like? And in purity, how do you avoid temptation?

Well, we know you're not perfect, but how is it that you battle these problems in your life? And the Bible says that you need to step up. You're going to teach the Bible, you're going to have to be an example in these things. You have to step up and be an example. Do you have to be perfect to be a pastor? Absolutely not. There are no perfect pastors. The apostles weren't perfect, and they readily admitted it. But they had to serve as a template for the congregation.

And the Bible is clear it is a godly thing for you to say, "What would my pastors do right now? I'm hit with an issue at work. What do I do? What would the pastor do in this situation?" That is a good and godly thing to affirm in your thinking. It's not ungodly. You need to thoughtfully, not blindly, but thoughtfully follow your leader's example.

Verse seven of Hebrews chapter 13. Now, if you think verse seven was uncomfortable, here comes verse 17. Are you ready for this one? All right, role models, I'm not real big on that, but okay, I guess I should have a Christian role model, fine. The pastors who preach, okay, great. Now we'll get Jim Jones on you. Are you ready for Jim Jones? Verse 17. Kool-Aid, here it comes. "Obey your leaders. Submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy and not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you." Obey, obey, submit, submit.

Now, I know a lot of people are not going to do that. I understand the reluctance here. And the scripture knows there are limits to this. This is not blind, mindless allegiance to doing whatever people say who hold a Bible and call themselves pastors, okay? There are limits, and so we need to affirm that up front before we can ever even wrestle with what this means for us. We need to know the biblical limits. Because from the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament all the way through the book of Revelation, the warning is watch out for false teachers. Is that not a theme in the Bible? Watch out for false teachers.

They'll come in among you like wolves, but they're dressed in sheep's clothing. But look out for them. You have to look closely and see if you can tell who they really are. Paul even says to the Ephesian leaders, he says, "They're even going to come from among your own number. Watch out, be careful. You gotta filter. You gotta know who to listen to." So just because someone stands up and says, "Hey, I'm a pastor. Listen to me, obey, obey, obey, obey, submit." That's ridiculous. You've got to know when and who.

That's why, by the way, choosing your church and your pastors is such an important moral decision in your life. Do you understand that? There's nothing more important than that when it comes to your spiritual growth because you're called to submit to the authority and obey your leaders, and the choice that you make and who your spiritual leaders are is critically important. You've got to make that decision very carefully.

In scripture, it's clear, watch out, not everybody who calls themselves a pastor do you need to obey. As a matter of fact, look at this passage with me in Titus, Titus chapter one, okay? Before we talk about what it means to obey my Bible teachers and follow their examples to the place of obedience, then I need to know the limits. I need to understand when it's right and when it's wrong. Attitude is a big part of this. Look at verse number 10. And this is a description of these false teachers. Verse 10, Titus 1:10.

There are many rebellious people. And you'll find that. They're rebelling against God and his word, but they're up there talking, they're mere talkers. And one thing you find if you look deeply enough is that they're deceivers. They don't tell the truth. There are many rebellious people, mere talkers, deceivers, especially among the circumcision group. And in their historical setting, the problem was this group of what Paul or we sometimes call the Judaizers who wanted to get people to compromise this clear, clean biblical new covenant position to kind of embrace the rituals and the outside forms of old Judaism, and they were trying to get everybody to compromise.

And they're constantly pointed out in scripture, if you look carefully, that they're deceptive and hypocritical liars. That's what they're called in the Bible. And he says about this, he doesn't say blindly obey them because they got a Bible in their hand and they claim to be pastors. He says they must be silenced. That's his prayer for those people. Shut them up because they're ruining whole households by, now underscore this, teaching things they ought not to teach. You do remember that the assumption in Hebrews 13 is that the teachers he's addressing or presenting to the congregation are good teachers, biblical teachers.

And he says here, there are people that teach things they ought not to teach and for the sake of dishonest gain because you look under the surface and false teachers, you usually find some twisted self-motivated interest. So this is not some kind of open-ended, mindless droning of I just got to obey the pastor, whatever the pastor says. But you do need to choose your pastors wisely. And you need to recognize that when you make that choice to say this'll be my church and those will be my pastors, that's a moral choice that you make.

Because we're assuming that you're choosing people whose lives are integrous enough for you to say, "Hey, he's got a golf swing I'd like to copy. He gets out of the rough in a way that I'd like to get out of the rough in my life." And you're saying, "I understand as a good Berean, Acts 17, that when he speaks about the word of God, it checks out. I can see that he's speaking the truth, not rejecting the truth."

Guest (Male): You're tuned to Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez, listening to a message called "Deference instead of Autonomy." We'll continue next time, but remember you can always revisit these messages by going to focalpointradio.org or take it wherever you go on the free Focal Point app. And if you've got a Bible question or topic that's been weighing on your mind, you can bring it directly to Pastor Mike. The phone lines are open Tuesday through Thursday, 1 p.m. central on Ask Pastor Mike Live. Can't catch it live? Well, every episode gets posted to the Ask Pastor Mike YouTube channel, ready whenever you are. Find everything at askpastormike.live.

Speaking of questions, what does faithfulness actually look like in a culture like ours? Well, this month, Pastor Mike has a book he wants to put right in front of you titled "Making a Difference: Impacting Culture and Society as a Christian" by R.C. Sproul. Sproul isn't asking you to pick a side in some culture war. He's making a calm, careful case that ordinary obedience matters, starting exactly where you are. We'll send you Sproul's book as our thanks when you make a generous gift to Focal Point today. Call 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.

And friend, this program stays on the air because there are listeners who believe that careful, text-driven teaching is worth putting something behind. If that's you, thank you. You're part of what makes this work. And if you've been thinking about stepping up as a monthly supporter because these messages have genuinely shaped your own walk with God, we'd love to have you join the team. Become a Focal Point partner with a recurring gift today at focalpointradio.org or call 888-320-5885. And for first-time listeners, Pastor Mike's got a booklet called "Battling Sin." Reach out at focalpointradio.org and we'll send you a copy. Well, I'm Dave Druey. Join us for part two of Pastor Mike's lesson "Deference instead of Autonomy" Wednesday on Focal Point.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Hi, Pastor Mike here. God's word promises it'll never return void. So I wonder, how is God's word moving in your heart right now? Drop us a line, let us know. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to be praying for you here. Just go to focalpointradio.org. And then be sure to join us again tomorrow right here as we continue to explore the depths of scripture. We'll see you then.

Guest (Male): Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.