Focal Point

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

Pastor Mike Fabarez: The whole point of the Christian faith is that Christ paid for your sin, but when you think about people that have sinned against you, do you think of it as profoundly as you think about your own forgiveness? If we're forgiving for God's sake, we're forgiving for God's sake because Christ has paid the penalty for every sin against you. Every sin against you.

Dave Deway: Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez brings our study in Philemon to a close and reveals two of the strongest reasons for forgiving. One reaches all the way back to the cross and what was actually paid there on your behalf. The other reaches into your own heart and the quiet cost of holding on to something you were never actually meant to carry. If you missed an earlier part of this study, Fighting for Peace, just go online to focalpointradio.org. Well, now let's join Pastor Mike for today's message when the price tag is high.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Number two, you need to forgive for God's sake. For God's sake. 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 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. 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, they 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.

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. Now 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 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. Now we think of Isaiah 53. I hope you think of Isaiah 53 at times like taking the Lord's supper. He said, do this in remembrance of me, my blood, my body broken. And we remember Christ and we think, oh, I'm so glad. I get to walk to my car and drive home knowing I'm forgiven. It's a good thing because I've sinned.

I sinned before I was a Christian. I've sinned since I've been a Christian. It's so good that my sin was absorbed on the cross. But what we may not think about is this little analogy of Paul saying, you know what, if this guy has done you wrong, if Onesimus has stolen from you, I just want you to see it as though I will absorb the payment. I'll take the payment. As a matter of fact, you owe me your life. So I mean, we should really be all even at this point because I will pay for it.

The whole point of the Christian faith is that Christ paid for your sin, but when you think about people that have sinned against you, do you think of it as profoundly as you think about your own forgiveness? When David sins, right, he sins and he says, I know I've sinned against people, but against you and you only, as he says to God, I've sinned. All sin against you is a sin against God and God looks at someone. Let's say we're talking in the church now, a Christian. Right? God has taken their sin and he cried out on a cross 2,000 years ago, the embodiment of deity in bodily form.

Here's what Christ said. It is finished, right, to tell us that paid in full. Here's what I'm trying to say to you. If we're forgiving for God's sake, we're forgiving for God's sake because Christ has paid the penalty for every sin against you. Every sin against you. And let's first talk about the atonement, the substitutionary atonement, the imputing of your sin to his cross is not just your sin, but everyone who's sinned against you. If they're Christians, it has been imputed to the cross. That's huge. That makes forgiveness for Christians. It should make it theologically really easy.

Cuz as relieved as I am that Christ paid for my sin, that person's sin has been paid for by Christ. Does it feel unjust as the voltage of electricity is running through my palms and I want to hang tightly onto the injustice? Yeah, it feels unjust to let it go, but you're not letting it go into the the ether. Right? This is something that Christ has paid for and Christ has said I paid the debt for that person's sin. And that's how it helps you, especially when they apologize, especially when there's repentance, to reach my hands out and kerygma I and say we embrace you, reconciliation.

What about non-Christians? I'm still supposed to me. I'm supposed to let it go. Why? Because it says in Romans chapter 12, God's to repay. Now for Christians, he's already paid for the debt of every Christian who sins against me. Every non-Christian that sins against me, God says, let me deal with that. Vengeance is mine. I will repay. So I know this, God is going to settle the score with him. If he has wronged me, betrayed me, hurt me, there's injustice and I know I want popcorn and a soda and I want to cheer when they get torched.

But the reality is, right, I know that God is going to deal with that and the Bible says you should see that as a dreadful thing. That's a scary thing cuz God is certainly going to protect me as one of his children. He trusts me. There's going to be punishment for those that wrong us. So I stand back with humble trepidation cuz God will pay for the sin, every sin against you. He's either paid for on the cross or will be paid for in the lake of fire. So in a sense, do you need to get your pound of flesh?

You don't. You don't. Is it hard to forgive for God's sake? It is hard, but you need to remember the debt was settled on the cross or the debt will be settled in fire. Can you go to Ephesians chapter 4? That was heavy stuff, but I'm forgiving for God's sake. I'm forgiving because when I reconcile, I'm reconciling with a child of God if it's a Christian and even if it 's a non-Christian, I'm I'm reconciling with someone made in the image of God, which according to James chapter 3 is also a profound thing. I treat them differently than just my enemy.

I have to see them as made in God's image. And in that sense, I'm forgiving someone that God has made and I know their debt will be paid one day for all the sin against me. Ephesians chapter 4. I know we quote this often, but we don't often remember the context. Are you there? Ephesians 4:30. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. It's amazing to even think you can. Now I believe in the impassibility of God if you know the doctrine of impassibility. I I I'm a believer in that traditional doctrine of God.

But there is something about this, right? There's something about the fact that my behavior has an effect on on God, right, in the sense at least speaking if not anthropomorphically. I at least know I read Genesis chapter 6 and I think God is grieved to his leb, to his heart. And I understand that. There's something about your sin and my sin that can grieve God. And here it says, don't grieve him. By whom you were sealed. I mean, he's right there and he's he's going to be in your life until the day of redemption and beyond.

And here's the context. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. But why would that be in the body of Christ at at the at the church at a church level? Why? Because there's sin against me, cuz I'm mad at that person. Be kind to one another, be tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. Now I quoted this earlier in the series and I got to quote the beginning of chapter 5, therefore be imitators of God. Be like God. Be beloved children.

Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. It is paid for my sin. It's paid for their sin in the church. I need to be forgiving and if I don't, it grieves God. I'm going to forgive for God's sake. And he's not going to be pleased if I don't. Go to the Psalms with me. Psalm chapter 11. Let's transition into the last part of this, verses 21 through 25 in Philemon. Keep your finger there in Psalm 11. But would you look at the last part of Philemon?

It's printed there on your worksheet. Paul says, confident of your obedience I write you knowing that you will do even more than I say. Verse 22. At the same time, prepare a guest room for me. I'm hoping that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you. So Paul says, I know you got a big estate there, you got a big house. I'm going to be released here. Hopefully just pray for me that I will be and when I get get out of this, I'm going to get on a ship. I'm going to go across to to Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey.

I'm going to get to Colossae and we're going to have fellowship together. I want to stay in your house. So get a room ready for me. Okay, that's great. Can you just think how awkward it would be if he shows up and says, where's Onesimus? And he goes, oh, he's in jail. Where was that letter I wrote you? Oh, I tore it up and burned it in the fire. It didn't going to go well, is it? Paul said, no, no, no, you got to be obedient, you got to forgive. And you know what, I want you to forgive for my sake as well.

And we've talked about this now theologically. We got to forgive for God's sake. It would not go so well for Philemon if he didn't do what he's supposed to do. I just love that. I I want good fellowship with you when I get there. So be obedient and I think you're going to do even more than I'm asking. Now Psalm 11, go to the last verse. Powerful verse. The Lord is righteous, right? Yahweh is righteous. He loves righteous deed. Now please do not confuse in your mind justification and sanctification. The imputation of God's son's righteousness to your account does not mean he doesn't know what you're what you're doing this week.

When you do the right thing, not only is Paul pleased with this and said we have great fellowship and there's going to be no awkwardness between us because I know you're going to do what I say and and you 're going to do the right thing and I even think you're going to do more. I think your magnanimous response to Onesimus is going to be a great example of your love for the saints. It's going to be great. And we're going to have great fellowship when I get there. Paul loves righteous deeds and here's the core of the righteous deed we we've been looking at in the last three studies, right, is forgiveness.

The Lord loves forgiveness. That's a righteous deed. The Lord is righteous. He's forgiven us. He loves righteous deeds. Okay, look at this last line now. The upright shall behold his face. God said that about Moses. You know, me and Moses are tight. He says to Miriam, the sister, don't start criticizing Moses in his choice of a wife. If you do, I'm going to get involved in this. He's like my friend. I mean, that's how it was described, right? It's like I'm having face-to-face conversations. Not that God has a face, but that was the picture. I I'm there at the tent of meeting.

Moses and I are tight. Is that good for Moses? It's great for Moses. It's great for family disputes at least. I know that from Numbers 12. This is a good thing that he's tight. I want to be like Daniel. I I want to be like like Moses. I'd like to be like Abraham. I'd like to be a friend of God. That would be good. Well, the Lord is righteous and he loves righteous deeds. Am I am I accepted in the beloved? Am I accepted because the imputed righteousness of Christ and that my sin has been imputed as gross?

Yes, of course. But you know what, my relationship with God is improved and all I want to say, the second point has been all about that, but let that come back on you. What does that do for you? What is a friend of God? What advantage is there to being tight with God? All kinds. Just study Moses's life, study Daniel's life. Right? The whole point of God having his good hand on those people and all that he did. You think about Joseph in prison. All that he did. Why? Because God God loved him. God looked at him and saw his his integrity and he loved him and he he he poured out his blessings on him.

Number 3, you need to forgive for your own sake. You need to forgive for your own sake. It is a good thing for you to do a righteous thing like completely dropping the charge and if there's repentance, taking your free favor and flow that favor to the person that you're mad at. That that's an amazing thing. It's a righteous thing. God loves that. It is good for you to forgive and one reason is Hebrews chapter 10 verse 15. If you hang on to your bitterness, I like the way it's put here. It's a root. Make sure that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.

The last verse in verse 25 of the book is, right, about the grace of God. That's the whole thing, right? He says, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. And it says there in in Hebrews chapter 12, I don't want you to miss the grace of God. You need the grace of God, the favor of God, the empowerment of God to do this, that no bitterness spring up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled. Not only will you be mad at yourself for the wave of division that takes place through your unforgiveness, but the bitterness that you hang on to, it's caustic and it is contagious.

That's my point. It's caustic. It's going to do bad in your heart and it 's contagious. It will spread until finally you'll look like 1st Corinthians where they're saying, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas. You cannot let bitterness be held onto in your heart. Even secular pop psychologists will talk about that. There's something about letting it go. At least it's not something you're harboring in your heart. The more aversion, the more grudges, the more anger, the more bitterness, the more slandering clamor and gossip and all that you do because you're mad at someone.

Right? It it's bad for you. If you study about Greco-Roman slavery in the 1st century, you'll learn that Onesimus is not unique in running away. Of course, many people did it. But when the Romans caught a slave with so many of them, as many as 6 million in Rome itself, when they found a runaway slave and they determined that he was a runaway, they did a few things. One of them is to beat them publicly. They put them on a pillar or somewhere and let people see. This is what happens to runaway slaves. Don't run away from your master.

And then many times, historians tell us, they would take a brand and they would make an F. Right? This is Latin now. Make an F on his body somewhere where they could see it, an F. And the F, right, it stood for the Latin word uh fugitivus. Fugitivus is the word we get the English word fugitive from. So they'd have to run around with this scar on their body that reminded everybody kind of like Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, if you remember that old book, right? It's like he's branded F, fugitive. Sometimes then they would put a collar that they would lock around their neck and remind everyone.

Here's a fugitive, runaway slave. Now you may not think you've branded certain people in your church, in your office, in your neighborhood, in your family, but many of us do. And I love that it's an F cuz some of us feel like that's the kind of relationship I have with them, F, failure, right? No good. I just want to tell you there's nothing better than for you, for the sake of everyone around you, including your leaders, including your boss at work, including your pastors. For God's sake, most importantly, and for your own sake, we got to get rid of these kinds of brandings on our relationships.

It's time for you to Let it go. And if there's repentance, kerygma I. And you want a picture of what that looks like when the F turns into an A? I just want to ask you what kind of relationship did the prodigal son have with his father when he repented? You want to talk about holding your hands out and freely giving favor. I just want you to think about when he comes back and says, father, I've sinned against you. I'm not even worthy to be called your son. Just make me one of your servants. Make me a slave in your household and your estate.

Here's the thing about the father. There's no getting any of that money back. He spent it all on prostitutes and gambling and all the stuff that he did. He lost all the inheritance that was given to him. Half of the the father's estate was lost. Is he going to get that back? Never going to get that back. How did he hold out his hands of kerygma I? I know that he dropped it, right? me was done. But here's what he says. Get a robe, get sandals, put a ring on his finger. Hey, get the fattened calf and slay it cuz we're going to have a feast.

We got to celebrate. What kind of favor did the father put on the son when he repented? That is maybe easy to do if you think about a biological parent. But the relationships we have with each other, they need to be as intentional and even if we can by God's grace reflexive and intuitive enough to be like the father who says, I'm going to make this right. Every offense we can drop. Is there consequences? Yes. We dealt with that briefly on the last one. That's a whole different sermon series. There are things that need to be done sometimes.

I get that. But most of the offenses we carry around and the F that we put on the forehead of people walking around on this campus that we're mad at, they need to be released. Release it and extend favor. Think about all the favor the Lord has bestowed on you. This is a good thing. It's good in God's heart. It's good in your church's heart. It's good in the people around you that know both of you, you and the person you're angry at. And it certainly will be good for you. Let's be a forgiving people.

Let's pray. God, help us in the midst of our fleshly battle to want our pound of flesh from our enemies, people that wrong us, people that stab us in the back, the injustice of being betrayed or whatever the issue might be, small and large. Help us for sure to not carry the bitterness, to have it defile us and other people. Let us drop it, palms down, letting it go. And knowing that you are the one who will deal with that either on the cross for Christians or one day in the judgment for those people. We trust you with settling the score and then God, if there's repentance, we want to extend favor freely.

kerygma I. Please, God, let us be great at this. Let us follow the example of your love for us, which we know is being illustrated there in Luke 15 and let us be forgiving people. Let us please you in our forgiveness. Thank you for this short study in Philemon. May you take it and apply it to our heart. And if we're not in the middle of meeting it right now, I pray we'd store it in our minds and our hearts and pull it out cuz there's going to be a time we need this. It could be next week, next month, but God, please prepare us ahead of time to deal with these conflicts well in Jesus's name.

Amen.

Dave Deway: That's Pastor Mike Fabarez here on Focal Point, wrapping up our study called Fighting for Peace. If you'd like to hear this message or any part of this series again, you'll find it anytime at focalpointradio.org or through the free Focal Point app. This week we're very excited to bring you something special from Pastor Mike, his brand new book called The Bible, A Book Like No Other, where he gives his own answer to the questions he hears again and again. Can the Bible actually be trusted? What sets that apart from other religious books? Well, Pastor Mike walks through the archaeology, the history, and the fulfilled prophecy that gives you the powerful answers in plain language that's easy to follow.

Get your copy of this brand new book when you give a donation to Focal Point this month. Call 888-320-5885 or give online at focalpointradio.org. You can also mail your donation to Focal Point, Post Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654. We hear from listeners like Chad who wrote to us recently, Pastor Mike's call-in show has really helped me when I have a problem or a struggle that I'm dealing with and I don't know exactly how to handle it biblically. I trust Pastor Mike and he's put my mind at ease many times with his teaching straight from the Bible.

Well, if you've never caught Ask Pastor Mike Live, this is exactly what Chad means, real callers, real struggles answered live from scripture, Tuesday through Thursday at 1:00 p.m. Central. You can listen or call in yourself at askpastormike.live. Well, stories like Chad's or why this ministry keeps going week after week. Nobody who's truly grasped what Christ already paid needs to be talked into generosity. Gratitude tends to do that work on its own. And that's really what a Focal Point partnership is, not a transaction, but an ongoing thank you that helps someone else hear the same good news that changed you.

Join us as a Focal Point partner today at focalpointradio.org or by calling 888-320-5885. Well, I'm Dave Deway. Tomorrow Pastor Mike begins a brand new study about what to do when life truly knocks you down. That's Thursday 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 Deway: Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.