Focal Point

Dave Drewery: Pain we can't explain. Choices that test our convictions. Habits we inherited without ever asking why. Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez opens the phone lines to three callers, each wrestling with something most of us have wondered about, too. What does it mean when God feels distant or even hard on us? How far can we stretch the truth to protect someone we love? And how much of what we assume about giving actually comes from God's word? It's another round of real callers and honest answers in this week's edition of Ask Pastor Mike Live. I'm Dave Drewery. And now here's Pastor Mike.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Let's talk to Joseph. Joseph, you're on the air with Pastor Mike Fabarez. How can I help?

Joseph: Hi. I had a question regarding Psalm 32, verse four. It says, reading out of the NLT, "Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat." I was asking if that has to do with a physical condition? Did God punish him or discipline him with illness? Does that happen to us today? How do we discern whether that's illness from just the fallen world we live in or some kind of physical ailment or illness that God is using to discipline and guide us?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Great question. It is something that God is giving to David in this passage. It's a Psalm of David, and it is about him carrying guilt because he has not acknowledged his sin, as he says in verse five. Even in verse three, you can see he says, "I kept silent." Now we know in verse five, it's about his sin. He hasn't confessed it to God, and it says, "My bones wasted away." Remember, these are all lyrics of songs, so it's very poetic. His bones did not get smaller, but it felt like his bones were wasting away through my groaning all day long. For night and day your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as the heat of summer.

If you've ever experienced guilt when you don't want to admit your sin to God, it's like feeling like you don't want to even get out of bed and do anything, and you feel like your strength is all sapped. This can be, when you feel that way, that you're experiencing the hand of God's discipline upon you to get you to acknowledge your sin. Acknowledging your sin is simply another way to say confessing your sins, as 1 John chapter 1, verses 8 and 9 say. Confess your sins, and he is faithful and just to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. God wants us just to not cover up our iniquity, as it says in verse five, but to confess our transgressions to the Lord.

You've made a great comparison. There are times when you can get the flu and you can feel like your bones are wasting away. There are times when you might have some Crohn's disease or something and feel like your strength is dried up, and you can say, "What's with that?" It could be that. That's why I think you need to pray Psalm 139, verses 23 and 24, where the Psalmist says, "Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me, know my thoughts, and see if there's any grievous way in me." We need to ask God when we encounter this kind of feeling in our lives. "God, I'm feeling like things aren't right. I feel like my strength is dried up. Is there something wrong here? Have I done something? Is there some hidden sin in my life that I'm not seeing?"

Here's the great thing about God. Just like a good parent, a parent isn't trying to communicate something to a child and then the child says, "Am I doing something wrong? Are you not happy with me?" The parent is not going to play games with the child and try and hide it from the child. God definitely wants to reveal to us our sin if he's trying to put his heavy hand upon us to get us to see our sin. If you're honest with God and you say, "God, please try me, know my thoughts, and just reveal to me, see if there's any grievous way in me, because I want to be led in the everlasting way," as it says there in verse 24 of Psalm 139, God is going to let you know that.

It's going to take some quiet time before God to know whether or not the illness you're feeling or the sapping of your energy is part of just being a part of the fallen world we live in, or maybe it's your blood sugar, or maybe it's an illness, or maybe it's some connective tissue disease, or whether it is guilt. They can feel the same, but God is going to have to show you that. The first things that pop into your mind are often, "There it is. I know what it is. It's that thing I'm doing that I've been trying to cover up. It's the thing I'm doing that I haven't confessed to God." If you do that, I cannot in any way even imagine God trying to keep that from you. But you've got to ask the question honestly.

Joseph: I had a follow-up question on top of that. When I ask for him to search my heart and reveal those things to me, how could I also begin to pray for discernment about this? Because there are a few times where I would pray a prayer similar to that and feel like the Holy Spirit convicted me toward something, or just my mind being overly legalistic toward myself, like being accused by the enemy that nothing you're doing is good enough, everything is wrong.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I get you. I do think that you can play mind games with yourself. That's true. I don't want you to think that this is like, "I've got to be reading my Bible seven hours a day." If that's part of your makeup and you think that way, then you've got to be careful with that. But it would probably be something that you could try to look dispassionately and objectively at yourself and say, "No, it is this thing that I know is wrong, and I can look to a Bible verse and know it's wrong, and I just haven't confessed it to God."

All of us could pray more. All of us could do more. All of us could share our faith more. But we're not talking about that. The thing that God is trying to point out when he disciplines us is usually something we've done, something we've transgressed God's law. We've done something clearly that's wrong. Legalism, sometimes I don't like the word because if God's law is not to do something, then we shouldn't do it. If you're cursing at work and you're feeling guilty about that, then you shouldn't do it. You've got to take God's law seriously because if we love God, we'll keep his commandments, and commands are laws. We want to do what God says.

We're never going to be righteous before God by keeping the law, but if we love him, we want to keep his rules. Don't put an unrealistic sense of, "I'm not getting 1,000% on everything I'm doing in the Christian life." That's unrealistic. Don't go there. It's going to be something obvious. If it's not obvious in the first hour with this at the most, and maybe even a half hour, then you say, "It's nothing other than me living in a fallen body in a fallen world, and I'm just going to move forward." I would pray like Paul did in 2 Corinthians 12, "Take this away from me." If God doesn't, you say, "Okay, this is part of my thorn in the flesh. It's my cross to bear, and I'm going to learn from the pain."

Joseph: Thank you.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: All right, Joseph. Thanks for the call. We all struggle with pains in this life, but sorting it out, Joseph's question is so important because sorting it out is so critical. Sadly, a lot of people aren't doing what Joseph has called to talk about, and that is to take time to figure it out. Is this really discipline or is this just part of living in a fallen world? Great question, Joseph. Thanks for the call.

Dave Drewery: 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 1:00 PM Central, or join in through our website at askpastormike.live. Let's go to Danny now. Danny, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help?

Danny: Thanks for taking my call, Pastor Mike. I had a question that might sound a little convoluted, but bear with me. A few years ago, I read an article by Norm Geisler about the greater good. The scenario he presented was that you go to your door, open the door, and there's a man there with a gun and asks you, "Are you the only one home?" Geisler's point was that you're not going to volunteer the fact that my wife and kids are in the basement. It would be okay in that instance to tell them, "No, I'm here alone," to basically tell a lie.

I presented that in a class once and was confronted a little later with someone who quoted the commandment that says thou shalt not bear witness, and said that the didactic of that is thou shalt not tell a lie. So it was ever tell a lie. They told me and quoted some scripture to me that you should never, ever, ever, ever tell a falsehood. Part of my struggle with that is the commandment says thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. So the falsehood, in my understanding of that, would be the falsehood that would do harm to thy neighbor. But the greater good. I did a little research on it and the idea seemed to come up as absolutism versus the greater good. Does that make sense?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: It does. Here is how I've sorted this out. Some people think I'm in the camp of the guy that confronted you, but I'm not entirely because I understand the distinction of certain arenas in which people are demanding truthful answers and they don't deserve it and they don't earn it. Let's put it this way. There are certain arenas in which there is a set of rules that are assumed. Let's think about those. Let's think about warfare. Camouflage.

Let's just say I join the Marine Corps and they issue me camouflaged outfits and I say, "No, I'm not going to wear those because I'm a Christian, I don't lie, and this is making me look like a bush and I should look like a human being because I want to represent myself accurately." They're going to go, "You're an idiot. This is what we do because we don't want to be shot." What if I go even further and I get into espionage and I'm going to be a spy? I've got to lie to be a spy, and I'm thinking that's an understood part of the game of warcraft and statecraft is to engage in that kind of espionage and I'm going to do things that are understood within the rules of the game.

Or let's go to the playground. I'm going to play basketball on the playground, and part of the game is I can't double dribble, I can't travel, I can't spend more than three seconds in the key. But I can head fake all day long. Head faking is deception. I'm pretending to go one direction and then I fake them out and go the other direction. Well, that's not fair. You're pretending and you're really not intending to go left, but you acted like you were going left and then you went right. I understand, but that's part of the game and it's part of what we decide to do. Or what if I'm a drug enforcement agent and I'm going to wear my hair long and I'm going to have tattoos all over myself and I'm going to infiltrate the drug gang? I'm going to do that and deceive. I'm going to do that for the sake of enforcing the law, but it's part of what we are doing and we all understand. The judges with their robes on are saying this is completely justifiable for the sake of what we're all agreeing upon in society to put away the drug scourge on our country.

Now, when you look at what the Bible is saying, things like testifying before people for the sake of Christ, I'm supposed to never deny Christ. I will not deny Christ before rulers, before people that drag me before the synagogue leaders. I'm supposed to truthfully say I stand with Christ. But if I'm dragged before a criminal, like Columbine, in Colorado some of those gals were asked, "Are you a Christian?" and they were shooting people if they answered yes. I have no obligation. I'm not taken before a judge. I'm not dying before the officials testifying to Christ. I have no obligation to answer a criminal in an act of violence to tell the truth about my commitment to Christ. I don't. Nor do I have to, to use Norm Geisler's example, if a criminal comes to my door.

You're a criminal, you're a violent criminal. I'm not going to play by any rules of virtue at this point. I can head fake you, I can do whatever it takes to protect my family at this point because I'm not sitting here testifying before a judge in a courtroom or standing before a civil official trying to represent my virtue as a Christian. There was a situation in a community college here in California where the same thing was happening. A guy was going through with a gun killing people who he was asking, "Are you a Christian?" I remember dealing with my staff and saying we have no obligation to submit to violent criminals. I would though, and look at biblical passages, and say I have an obligation though to stand and honestly confess Christ before officials of the government. I think that's a very important distinguishing feature of what it means to confess Christ before men.

But I see a lot of categorical situations where I'm going to say all bets are off. I'm not interested in trying to apply biblical virtue in situations where you're trying to make me a victim of your crimes. Not interested in that. I don't have to tell you the truth. I don't have to tell you where my wife is and my kids are. I'm not going to answer you because whether it's warfare or crime or drug enforcement or whatever it might be, this is a whole different thing. Even basketball on a junior high playground, there are understood rules of engagement, and I think that's where there's latitude in starting to quote verses about God never lies and God doesn't want us to lie and we don't bear false witness. I think those categories, if you carefully think them through, it's not situational ethics, it's not bending the rules, it's not relativism. It's understanding context of how it is that God is wanting us and where he's wanting us to reasonably understand our call to truthfulness.

Danny: I appreciate that. It sounds again like you made a very positive, strong argument and gave me a whole bunch of stuff to look at. I didn't respond, I just told him I'd think about it. And I have thought about it and still feel like basically what you said. I thought of that recently and thought if he pointed a gun at me I could shoot him in self-defense, but I wasn't supposed to lie to him, which made no sense at all.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Exactly. I could pretend I can't speak English. I could do whatever it takes to try and keep the violent behavior from happening on my doorstep. Absolutely. All right, Danny. Thanks for the call. There's so many situations where I preach from the pulpit on situations where I do think God in situations that work or before a manager or in the government can do more with the truth than we can do with a lie. I don't want to start lying just to get ahead with the planning department or with my boss at work or fudging on time sheets. All of that is wrong, but not when I'm sitting here dealing with situations like a criminal at my door. That's a whole different ballgame.

Dave Drewery: Let's talk to Jamie. Jamie, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help?

Jamie: Hi, Pastor Mike. I just wanted to know, how do you reconcile the Old Testament with the New Testament when you were referring to tithes? The Old Testament says over 600 commandments, but the New Testament doesn't say it. How did you reconcile that, especially when a lot of ministers tell people that we still have to pay 10%? Do you base it on we're not under the law?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: No, and I don't want to use that phrase, even though I could use that phrase. I don't like using that phrase because when people don't understand what we mean by the law, we are under the moral law of God, but we're not under the Mosaic law of God regarding the nation. There are national or civil laws, and the tithes in Numbers 18, Deuteronomy 12, Deuteronomy 26, all of those are the civil law for a nation.

The difference is the Church is an international organization living under the governments all over the world. The Old Testament was a law given, the civil law through Moses was given to a nation that lived among other nations. The laws regarding restitution, how they were supposed to set up their courts, how they were supposed to pay their tithes, all of those things related to how the nation was to function. That's why those don't apply to us any more than when if you had someone steal something, you don't run to Exodus and say, "Okay, what does Exodus say I'm supposed to do right now?" You're going to call 911 or you're going to call your local police and fill out a form.

Why didn't you go to Exodus to figure that out? Because you know that you don't live in Israel under the Mosaic civil law. You live under wherever you live, in the United States. You go to your government. Well, you don't live under the government of Israel. You live under the government of wherever you live, in the United States. That's why we don't have a tithe, because the New Testament is speaking to an international organization living under most of them, a Roman government. Some of them in Asia Minor, some of them in Greece, some of them in Rome, some of them in Israel.

All these Christians spread around the New Testament world, they were living under different governments and they were not supposed to pay a tithe. They were supposed to pay an offering to their spiritual teachers who are teaching them the Bible. 1 Corinthians chapter 9 says yes, of course, you pay your pastors. You pay your pastors because they're supposed to be giving their full-time attention to shepherding, administrating, and teaching God's word. Yes, we pay them, and they, depending on how big the church is, start doing a lot of things with it in our day. Of course, it goes to buildings and leases and water bills and electric bills and all the rest.

The amount is not given, and tithe means a tenth. Since tithe is never repeated in the New Testament because it's not a nation, that's why I say I don't have to reconcile the Old Testament with the New Testament. The Old Testament is about a nation that lived among other nations. We're a New Testament international organization living among a lot of different nations. And they are already taxing us because I'm living under that nation. I'm living under the United States of America and the State of California and Orange County, California. In my case, they're all getting my taxes. I hope that helps.

Jamie: Thank you.

Dave Drewery: Today's callers remind us that following Christ gets worked out in the actual mess of daily life. You've been listening to Ask Pastor Mike Live here on Focal Point. If you missed any part of the conversation, catch it anytime at focalpointradio.org or carry it with you on the free Focal Point app. And remember, Ask Pastor Mike Live airs Tuesday through Thursday at 1:00 PM Central, and the phone lines are open. Everything you need to join in can be found online at askpastormike.live.

This month, we're offering a book called Making a Difference: Impacting Culture and Society as a Christian by R.C. Sproul. Sproul tackles a question so many believers quietly avoid: how do you hold your convictions steady when the culture around you keeps pulling the other direction? He offers an answer that doesn't require a theology degree to put into practice. He walks through real arenas of everyday life—work, politics, entertainment, relationships—and shows what it looks like to bring a genuinely Christian mind into each one. It's the kind of book you'll find yourself returning to whenever the pressure to blend in feels stronger than usual.

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