Focal Point

Dave Drewy: Welcome to Focal Point. I'm Dave Drewy and this is Ask Pastor Mike Live, pulled straight from Pastor Mike's weekly call-in broadcast. Today we wander into some surprising corners of scripture: what it costs to stand up front and teach, whether hell might someday sit empty, why a garden tree from Genesis turns up again at the very end of the Bible, and finally, what happens to the four-legged members of the family once this life is over. It's a wide-reaching discussion here with Pastor Mike, so let's get started. Joseph, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help?

Joseph: I was reading James 3:1. In the New King James Version, it says, "My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment." I wanted to know, as a pastor, what's your perspective on that? What does it mean by a stricter judgment? Also, what positions in the church or in your life are you considered a teacher? At my church right now, in our small groups, some of the leaders and some of the pastors have asked me to become a leader of a small group.

Mike Fabarez: It's certainly true in every area of our lives. Even a parent is teaching a kid not to lie, and if he turns around and lies, there's a stricter judgment in the sense that there's no doubt that you know not to lie. You're teaching others not to lie and therefore you have no excuse. You can't claim that you don't know what the rules are because you're teaching other people the rules.

Two things you need to write in the margin of your Bible in James 3:1 would be Romans 2:1-5 because that's exactly what he says to the Jews who know the law of God and they are telling other people to do what the law of God says, but they themselves turn around and do the same things. They violate the laws that they're telling other people. That's the thing about it. If they didn't teach those things, perhaps they could have an excuse that they didn't know them, but if they're teaching it, they know them.

The reason I'm saying it involves not just someone who stands in a pulpit and teaches as a pastor is because Romans 15:14 says even in the church, people that sit in the pews every week are able to instruct one another. In every church, I hope that mature Christians at least have enough knowledge to instruct one another. Even if you're in a small group and you're teaching each other, you don't have to have a seminary degree to be able to say to each other, "Here's how you should overcome temptation," or "Here's how you should persevere in prayer," or "Here's how you should get through that particular trial."

You're teaching other people that, so of course you're going to have an expectation that you're doing the things you're teaching someone to do. That's just common sense. It is the thing that obviously gets more and more intense the more you become a stated teacher, a defined teacher.

That's what James has in mind, and that is someone who stands up in a congregation and teaches. That's why he says not many of you should sign up for that too quickly, even though it does say in 1 Timothy 3 that if you desire to be a leader and a teacher in the church, you desire a noble thing, but it comes with some fearful concerns about the judgment that you're going to get. You're going to have a stricter judgment for sure.

Joseph: Stricter judgment, like when we come before God and answer God. Does this mean that there's really a separation between how people in teaching positions are judged against the standard that a regular Christian is judged?

Mike Fabarez: Don't think just about the future. Let's think right now about the present. Hebrews 12 talks about the fact that we're judged right now in our Christian lives with something called discipline. We should know that we're being disciplined by the Lord when we sin.

Think about that as your first week of your Christian life. God let a ton of things slide because you didn't know a ton of things. I don't know how long it took for you to start giving in the offering plate because you didn't even know you had to, or you didn't have a quiet time, or you didn't read the Bible, you didn't memorize scripture, or you didn't do a lot of things because you didn't know a lot of things.

Discipline comes to people who know the right thing to do but don't do it. That's the kind of discipline that we can call judgment because that's exactly what it is. As 1 Corinthians 10 says, "If we would judge ourselves, then we wouldn't be judged." That's what we're talking about is the judgment that comes now.

Now, is there a judgment that comes after this life? It's called the Bema seat judgment in 1 Corinthians 3. Yes, there's going to be a judgment, but it's not going to be punishment. It's going to be suffering loss that we could have had rewards, but instead of rewards, we get wood, hay, and straw and it just goes away. You could be doing a lot of great things that God could reward you for, but if you're not living up to what you're teaching, then it's just going to be a waste of time and you're going to suffer loss in the fact that you could have done something good here.

Let's put it this way. It's like going to the county fair and you could have gotten a great big reward for cooking an amazing crock of chili because you were teaching other people how to make amazing crocks of chili, but you made a terrible crock of chili because you didn't live up to what you were teaching other people. Instead of getting a wonderful reward that came with a wonderful gift card and all these great rewards that God wanted to give you, you got nothing. God just took your crock of chili because it was bad for all this thing you could have gotten rewarded for and he just poured it out and said it's nothing.

You suffered loss and you're not going to feel happy about that according to 1 Corinthians 3:15, but it doesn't mean you're going to have any condemnation. You're not going to hell. There's no purgatory, we know that's not true. We just know that we're going to have a suffering of loss, which means we're not going to feel good about that. You may even shed a tear, but Christ is going to wipe away your tears and we're going to move on to whatever rewards you do have, whatever gold, silver, precious stones you do inherit, and we'll be able to have the rewards that God's going to give us. He talks a lot about those in the Gospels.

Think more about the present age because there's more discipline that really we should be concerned about in the present age regarding the Christian life. God is a disciplinarian. You and I may not have grown up with one, I did, but if you didn't, God is a disciplinarian. If you don't do what you know you should do, God is going to discipline you.

When you're a teacher, you're going to be disciplined more often because God makes sure that he disciplines you for what you should do. When you're a teacher, you're researching the scripture, you're studying the scripture, you're understanding the scripture, then you're teaching people how to do what the Bible says. Even in a small group, you're teaching people how to study the Bible, how to pray. What if you don't pray for three days in a row? You don't think God's going to respond to that? You're going to be more strictly judged than if you hadn't taught people how to do that. That's just how it goes. The things we know, we should live up to what we know.

Dave Drewy: Joseph, thanks for the call. It's a good question. Let's go to Patrick. Patrick, you're on the air with Pastor Mike Fabarez. How can I help?

Patrick: Hello. I have a friend who's in quite a famous band and I'm always edifying him and sharpening iron. He believes in universalism, which basically teaches that everyone will be saved no matter what and it will result in an empty hell. We know through scripture that we have to go through Jesus in order to be saved. I would love to hear your thoughts on universalism.

Mike Fabarez: I don't believe in universalism because the Bible doesn't teach universalism. It talks about a big gate and a wide road that leads to hell and many are those who enter by it. Hell is a permanent place. There's a chasm fixed according to what Jesus taught, and no one's going to cross out of hell. It's going to be a place that's confining people.

Because it's confined and it's real active punishment by God for what people have done, there's no way I can say that someone's going to get out of it and it's going to be somehow salvaged. The Bible doesn't teach that. It talks about day and night forever and ever and a torment that's described according to Revelation 19 and 20.

As a matter of fact, there's a thousand years that are described between Revelation 19 and 20 where the false prophet and the beast are thrown into this and they're still there a thousand years later, and after a thousand years, they're still said to be confined there to be tormented day and night forever and ever. Ongoing, eternal reality. It's conscious reality according to Luke 16 and it's something that the Bible says where the worm doesn't die and the flame is not extinguished and it's going to be a place that is not pleasant.

The whole point of this where a great chasm is fixed according to verse 26 of Luke 16 is something that's supposed to frighten us, which it should frighten us. Some people say I don't want to be scaring people into heaven. I have no problem with that because Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about heaven and I want to make sure that I tell people that the wages of sin is death and it doesn't mean the lack of existence, it means that you're going to go and have a just response to your sin.

When people rush real quick to universalism as you said, Patrick, where people think that everyone's going to get out of hell eventually or going to end up in heaven because God is gracious, you just need to remember that we don't define the realities of what Christ taught us by what we think in our sentimental view about God makes sense to us. We've got to go by what God says himself, what the Bible says. The Bible is very clear about the reality of his judgment upon sinners.

We've got to realize that judgment is variable and that's what most people miss when they have a cursory reading of scripture. They don't know that people are judged according to what they have done. That means that everyone's judgment is different and Jesus taught that frequently. He said some people in Capernaum and some people in Galilee and cities that he spoke in, Chorazin, Bethsaida, they're going to be judged more harshly than even people that did more morally repugnant things like in the cities of the plains in the Old Testament, like Sodom and Gomorrah, because they had a lot more truth and a lot more light and a lot more reason to repent than the people back in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Therefore, we know that the punishment's going to be harsher for some than others. Hell is not the same kind of place for everyone. Therefore, when people get sentimental and think I can't believe my neighbor is going to go to a place with the most intense kind of punishment that anyone could ever have, the same place that Pol Pot and Hitler and Charles Manson are going to be, I'm going to say you don't understand what the Bible has to say.

Stop thinking in those terms. Start going back to what the Bible teaches and recognize everyone's going to get exactly appropriately what they deserve. Because of that, I trust God to do exactly what he says. The word itself, justice, means God's going to get exactly what he says they deserve, and I trust God to give them what they deserve. The only people not getting what they deserve is us, those who are recipients of his grace.

We've got to stick with what the Bible teaches. The Bible's very clear on this. Loving judges are not judges that say, "Vote for me and all will go free." That's not justice. That is a travesty of justice and God is a good judge. He's going to judge people appropriately and the only reason we get to go to be to a place of blessing instead of judgment is because God poured out his justice for us on his own son.

Dave Drewy: You're listening to a pre-recorded segment of Ask Pastor Mike Live. We invite you to join the live program every Tuesday through Thursday at 1:00 PM Central, and the call-in number is one click away at askpastormike.live. Or join the stream on YouTube on the Ask Pastor Mike Live channel. Now, back to the callers. Monty, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help?

Monty: Hi, Mike. God bless you. I was just wanting to know if I was right on a couple things with a couple questions, like the tree of life, which was in Genesis and then is again in Jerusalem, if I got that right, when Jesus is ruling and reigning. People who pay homage to Jesus, ask for forgiveness, are they then allowed to eat of the tree of life and then they're immediately transformed? Do I have that right?

Mike Fabarez: I was tracking with you for the first two things you said in Genesis and Revelation, but describe what you said there at the end and give it to me in different words. They give homage to Jesus with their words and then what happens to them?

Monty: If they ask for forgiveness, they're allowed to eat of the tree of life. Is that right?

Mike Fabarez: Only in the middle of the Bible in Proverbs, that's the only other time we see the tree of life mentioned. It's mentioned metaphorically, and by metaphorically, it just speaks to the fact that there's something about doing the right things, the righteous things, that brings a sense of rightness and goodness and real living to us. It's like Paul said in 1 Timothy 6 that when we're generous as people who have the means to be generous, we take hold of that which is really life, true life.

That's how it's used metaphorically, but the tree of life is a literal tree in the garden in Genesis 2 and 3 and it's a literal tree in the Book of Revelation, Revelation 22. They're eating from the tree that is sustaining life eternally. That's why the garden was protected by the cherubim that were keeping people from going back in there, Adam and Eve, because if they were to go back in there and eat of it, if they continued to eat from the tree of life, they would live forever. God wanted to graciously have their lives end physically so that we could start this thing over for them with what he had planned, which is a resurrection, so that we could reset this thing.

Adam and Eve could be resurrected after they got forgiven and could have a resurrected body because he was already looking to the resurrection of Christ. The point is that it was a gracious act for God to let them die because he didn't want them to live in their sinful state with a cursed body. The point is, yes, we're going to have resurrected bodies that Christ is going to give us based on the work of Christ and we're going to need this thing called the tree of life that God is going to provide in the eternal state and we're going to be able to eat it.

One day when we get our eternal bodies, this body that is going to be like Christ's body that doesn't stop living, it's going to be impervious to death and aging. One of the reasons it's going to be sustainable is because God's going to have something there that he knows is perfect for that body that we're going to eat from. I don't know how much we're going to need, I don't know how often we're going to need it, but we're going to need to eat it and it's going to sustain our lives forever. That's according to what the Bible says.

Monty: I was wondering, during that 1,000-year period, it sounds like there's a lot of people still reject Christ, they won't go to Jerusalem.

Mike Fabarez: Here's the thing. The tree of life is never mentioned in the 1,000-year period. The tree of life is only mentioned in the eternal state in a literal sense and in the garden. There's no mention of the tree of life in the millennium. You've transferred the tree of life into the millennium.

Here's what we do learn about the millennium though, which I do think makes people maybe assume that the tree of life is in the millennium, is that the Book of Isaiah talks about people dying at the age of 100 and people considering them accursed because they mourn them like they're infants, which assumes that they live for a really long time. If you're mourning a 100-year-old man like an infant, then obviously people must be living for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

So we do know that lifespans are massively extended in the millennial kingdom, and yet there's still death. We know the curse is still active in the millennial kingdom, but God has done something. As it's put in the Book of Acts, it's called a renewal. God's doing some kind of renewal to the earth as he fulfills the promises to Israel and we have the resurrection of people like David and obviously all of us and Christ is ruling and reigning on the throne, but there is no mention of the tree of life.

What we do have is bodies that are living for long periods of time, even people that have come through the tribulation and are having children. They're living for long periods of time. Of course us, if we have our resurrection bodies and we're a part of the church, we don't die at all. The Bible's clear about that, but we still have no mention of the tree of life. Only mention of the tree of life is the new Jerusalem and the Garden of Eden. Metaphorically, it's mentioned a few times in the Book of Proverbs, but only as a metaphor. "A gentle tongue is a tree of life," or "The fruit of righteousness is a tree of life," and it's just spoken of in a poetic way.

Monty: Because at the end of the millennium, Satan is for some reason, people still reject Christ during the millennium and then when Satan is set free, there's a big rebellion right at the end of the millennium.

Mike Fabarez: That's correct. And here's the reason I think that takes place. A lot of people have been born during the millennium. Remember all the people that refuse the mark of the beast, they don't follow the world system, they faithfully persevere to the end of that tribulational period that Matthew 24 talks about and the Book of Revelation talks about, they get to inherit that kingdom. They walk into the millennial kingdom. They are people that I think are sealed in their salvation.

But their children, and their children's children, and their children's children's children, all these people that are born, they've never even had any kind of test of their loyalty to Christ. All they've known is the face of Christ. They've seen Christ in Jerusalem, I'm sure they've seen his picture on TV screens or whatever we have to have the image of Christ all over the place. They're going to see the Christ and they've never had any temptation because Satan has been bound.

But at the very end, for all those people that have had no other choice, they've had no other option, Satan is going to be released and there's going to be a rebellion. The sad thing about that passage in Revelation 20 is it says there's going to be a huge rebellion. A lot of people are going to fall to Satan's temptation at the end of that. And so that's going to be a sad, sad, sad period of time as we watch that take place at the end of the millennium.

Monty: That really clears things up. Thank you very much.

Dave Drewy: Monty, thanks for the call. Thanks for calling in today. Let's talk to Peter. Peter, you're on the air with Pastor Mike Fabarez. How can I help?

Peter: Yes, good afternoon. I appreciate you taking my call. My question is, is there a pet heaven? In other words, do you have animals like dogs, cats, or whatever if they die, do they go to heaven?

Mike Fabarez: I don't think so, although I do think there is an immaterial part that's animating animals. I believe that, and I think Ecclesiastes speaks to that. I think that the difference is, even though it's posed as a question in Ecclesiastes about the soul of these animals going downward and the souls of humans going upward, I do think there's something to that.

That's Ecclesiastes 3:21, and I do think the spirit of man goes upward, returns to God, and the spirit of the beast goes downward into the earth. Whatever that means, I think they're onto the reality of the fact that Christ comes to save human souls and to judge human souls. And as C.S. Lewis I think rightly wrote, the dignity of being made in the image of God is that we're held accountable morally and there's no other soul that is made in the image of God.

Animals have souls, but they have souls in the sense that they animate inanimate things. The cells of these animals move, they work, but the soul of the animal itself isn't made in the image of God and therefore it isn't held accountable to God and therefore I don't think it has an afterlife like the soul of a person made in the image of God.

That does not mean, and I want to make this very clear as a caveat, that there won't be animals in the eternal state. I think there will be because God has chosen, much like with trees and plants and the earth itself, has made these things as an expression of his glory. If there's going to be trees as he clearly says there will, and rivers and all the rest, I think there's going to be animals as well.