Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: We need to be thinking beyond the borders of our church. Colossians chapter 1, verse number six says all over the world, the gospel is bearing fruit and it is growing, just as it's been doing among you. God is doing his work everywhere. And we need to be thinking and praying with ambitious, optimistic faith about God doing his work all over the place. Do you have a passion for that?

Dave: In a family business, it's important to prepare the younger generations to be equipped and confident to take over the company one day. Every parent wants his or her children and grandchildren to succeed. Well, today on Focal Point, we'll learn how to have a lasting impact on the generations to come.

Before we dive in, if you're a first-time listener, we invite you to get your free copy of Pastor Mike's brand-new booklet, "Do the Right Thing." Just reach out online at focalpointradio.org. Well, now here's Pastor Mike with today's message.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: It's interesting how physically, biologically, all of us are going to—we're not going to be tolerant of myopia. We're not going to be satisfied with it. But spiritually, it seems that we're okay with it. We never say it, but really in our hearts and in our minds, when it comes to our lives, it seems like if it's far away, well, it's far away. But if it's close, then it matters.

Our eyesight gets really focused on what's going on right here. We talk a lot about the me and mine and the here and the now. As a matter of fact, churches seem to cater to this all the time. You listen to what people are preaching, and it's always about the here and now, and the me and mine, and how can we fix tomorrow and today for you.

And yet you open up the Bible and you see all of a sudden that God wants us to have a bigger view. He doesn't want us to be myopic spiritually. God is really clear in the scriptures that he's never going to really use you in the body of Christ and you'll never maximize your efficiency and your work for the kingdom unless you have real, clear, unobstructed biblical eyesight.

You've got to spiritually be able to see beyond the me and mine and the here and now. You'd better have a broad view and a long view. And if you don't have that, God's saying, "Oh man, you got a problem." When God sees myopic spiritual eyesight, he says we got to fix this. He knows the fix, but we're not real keen on fixing it. A lot of times we don't even want it fixed.

We have to realize that it's critically important to have a broad and a long perspective. Thankfully, in Hebrews chapter 11, when you make this marriage in your mind real quick, you can see that if it's ambitious faith, it's clearly going to be something that is required for a broad and a long view. Because it doesn't take any faith to be concerned about the here and now and the me and the mine.

But it does take some faith to concern ourselves with things that aren't going to happen in this lifetime, and things that aren't going to happen in my county or my state or my country. It really is going to require some faith. In verse number 20, we see examples that though there are no verbal imperatives for us, there's certainly an instructive example, an example that seems to get even more challenging with each passing verse.

Begin in verse 20 of Hebrews chapter 11 and look at verse number 20 with me. We looked at Abraham's life and Sarah's life, and we just introduced a little bit about Isaac, who cooperated with that amazing scene on Mount Moriah. But now it says much later in Isaac's life—as a matter of fact, if you look at the Genesis account, it's at the end of Isaac's life—by faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.

Those are his two sons. His sons he's going to bless, and he's thinking about their future. This is a future he won't live in because he's about to die. That's the context in Genesis. It's this sense of, "Well, I'm not going to be here, but I'm concerned about your life in the next generation."

By faith, Jacob—that was Isaac's son—when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons. Now, who was Joseph in relation to Jacob? His son. Now he's not blessing his sons; he's blessing his grandsons. Do you see the concentric circles getting a little wider here? You have Isaac blessing his two sons, but then you have Jacob blessing his grandsons.

This was not just, "Oh, I hope you really prosper and have a really fun life." The concern was a spiritual one, as verse 21 says, he worshiped leaning on the top of his staff. He was concerned about God and God's agenda, and he looked at his grandsons and was concerned with their life, a step removed from him. He's concerned how that goes with them.

Still familial, though; it's still family. Look at verse 22. It gets even more broad and longer. It says, by faith, Joseph, when his end was near—at the end of his life—he spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Not just his biological progeny, he was concerned with the spiritual descendants of Abraham, the whole community.

His view was broad. He was concerned not only about them leaving Egypt, but he gave instructions about his bones. He even wanted his remains to be a monument of God's faithfulness in bringing Israel out of Egypt and into the promised land. He was thinking down the road. "I know I won't experience it and I won't be there, but I'm concerned about those future generations, that God would fulfill his plan for them."

That's some pretty broad thinking. He's concerned about life where he wasn't going to be the direct spectator. He's got a long view and a broad view. So we go from sons to grandsons. It's the expansion of our picture. When it comes to blessing—and this is what I hope to accomplish, that we would all be blessing by the time this is done—I want to make sure that we recognize that it's a very broad and long-based kind of thing.

Therefore, if we're going to do this right, we've got to have a bigger picture of God's plan. We've got to begin to see that God's plan and therefore my prayers need to be more than just about my life, the here and now, and me and mine. If you really analyzed your praying, most of your prayers are all about you and the here and now. Even if it relates to your kids, we're often only thinking here and now and in the next few years.

These prayers are about beyond the span of my lifetime. If you start to catch this, you might find out it's a more profound reorientation than you've ever thought. If you really start to pray the way these guys did in verses 20, 21, and 22, you might find out it's kind of a 180 reversal of what a lot of Christianity is today.

A lot of people are invoking blessings on their family and on their children, wanting God to bless them for the here and now. In their minds, it's all about their kids' life or their life and God coming in and being a part of that. That is not the biblical view. That may be modern Christianity for a lot of people, but it's not the biblical view.

The biblical view, because it's broad and it's long, is that I am asking that I might participate in the work that God is doing, and that's different. A lot of people want God to be a part of their thing. Blessing biblically is about us being a part of God's thing. In their reference point from Hebrews 11, it's the Abrahamic covenant.

They wanted their sons to fulfill and be in keeping with and a part of God's work in the Abrahamic covenant. "May my kids be blessed by being a part of what God is doing in the future." That's different. It's radically different if you ponder it for a while. That's a big deal. Now I'm asking for God to give me a big picture. I want my life, the future generations, and people around the globe to be a part of God's thing.

They could look at the Abrahamic covenant, which ultimately led to fulfilling the promise of land in Canaan in a specific place, starting a theocracy, and having a kingdom there. That's not what we're doing. We're not a part of that. So what's our reference point? If we're going to preach this with any application to the modern age, we've got to find out what it is that we're praying that we and our progeny would be a part of.

What do we want our spiritual descendants and people around the globe to be a part of? It's not occupying land in the Middle East and setting up a theocracy. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 16. If you want a reference point that is the parallel concept of the New Covenant, we've got to look beyond God's plan for Israel in the Old Testament and say, what is he doing in the New Covenant?

There's a new thing going that Paul said was a mystery in the past that was hidden, that is now revealed. God is working this thing out as the Old Testament foresaw in something called the times of the Gentiles, when the Jewish and Gentile people would come together in one new organization. Paul called it one new man, one new thing.

This new thing would be there, and it would have this course of action that would come to culmination at the return of Christ. This thing is called the church. Matthew chapter 16, verse number 18. This is the first time Jesus uses the word. It's the first reference in all of the New Testament. This is about Peter, who's going to serve a very critical role as the quarterback and first senior pastor of the church in Jerusalem.

He's just confessed the primary theological understanding of Christ and who he is. Upon that, he's going to build—"I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock"—which I think did include Peter in some way, but was not the papacy—"I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." Does that sound like a movement? Gates never are a threat unless you're moving.

There's some kind of thing that he's starting that is going to start after the gospels are over. In the book of Acts, it will be established and it will be moving into history like a freight train, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Our goal as followers of Yahweh, as disciples of Christ, is not to find our way to the Middle East and establish a theocracy.

Our goal is to get on board with the freight train called the church and see it accomplish its mission. Its mission, according to scripture, is to be the pillar and foundation of truth, as Paul put it in 1 Timothy 3, and to take this message of the gospel from here to the ends of the world. It's to infiltrate the world with the message of the truth about forgiveness of sins, to preach the gospel in the whole world, and to see every seat on God's spiritual locomotive called the church filled.

When the last seat is filled, our work is done and we get to go home. But the goal is to fill all the seats. Not the seats of this church necessarily, but the more we fill with this church of repentant people, the more the locomotive of the church is filled and people from every tongue, tribe, and nation get on board.

We then get to see the coming of Christ and the foundation and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven. The goal of this thing called the church is to go and infiltrate, to hold up the truth of the gospel, and to penetrate the world. That's our calling. When we look back, we're looking back at what Jesus established when he set up the church.

For them, it was, "I want my kids to be on board with the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant and the Palestinian covenant and the Mosaic covenant, that they might dwell in the land and that they might have it from Dan to Beersheba and they would have this place and occupy it." That's not our plan. God said to us in the times of the Gentiles, you got a message, you got an organization, and you got outposts in every place in the world.

You're infiltrating society, you're holding up the truth, and you're getting more people under the umbrella of the lordship of Christ seated in the seats of the locomotive called the church. When every seat is filled, the kingdom will come and Christ will return. And we'll see him with our eyes. If that doesn't happen in our generation, which every generation hopes it comes in theirs, then we sure hope that my kids get involved in that.

We sure hope that our kids' kids get involved in that. We need to see our future eyes of faith praying with the kind of ambitious optimism that these guys had, that our spiritual descendants will get on board with that big picture. To do that, you've got to think in three ways. I, like these men, need to root my concepts of the future and my blessings for my kids and my kids' kids and their kids' kids in the past.

What I want to do to broaden your view and lengthen your view is to get you thinking about God's work at least 100 plus years ago. We can do this in segments. Let's think all the way back to the early quarterbacks of the church. Think about the fact that we stand in the long line of Peter and the apostles who stood on the temple mount proclaiming a message to all those people.

We can look in the scripture of the early churches, and we can say the churches in Galatia or the church at Ephesus or the church in Colossae. We stand in that long line of work that God was doing that he started in the Bible, and he's moving it forward. That is what your calling is. It's not to survive; it's to get on the locomotive of the church and help it make progress in our generation.

Today's message is about seeing that this work needs to be done beyond our lifetime and outside of our county. Let's start getting excited about it. Let's start praying for that with a kind of ambitious optimism. How about nationally? Think about our spiritual forefathers that went before us in this country. We are in the United States of America, where our spiritual forefathers came here not only to free themselves from some kind of taxation.

They came to establish a place where the preaching of the gospel could be done uninhibited from ecclesiastical concerns, to separate the concept of some kind of tyranny of some political, ecclesiastical conglomerate, to be able to stand up in pulpits across the country and say, "This is the truth of the gospel," to spread the gospel unfettered. Our spiritual forefathers fought wars for this principle.

I know we've a bit lost it in our country. We don't understand it and we're so busy debating whether they were real Christians or deists. At least read that their concern was to open up the doors that we are not seeing open in other countries. Praise God for our spiritual forefathers that opened the doors for us here. We're in a long train of people that have gone before us to try and do the things that Matthew chapter 16 would hope that we would get excited about, to see the church busting through a few more of the gates of hell.

Not only do we need to think about God's work 100 plus years ago, we need to start thinking about God's work 100 plus years from now. For them, Joseph was thinking about the exodus. That was a long ways off. They weren't there right at the exodus. That was years away. There was a lot that God was going to do.

For us, we need to start thinking, okay, maybe Christ will come back, but if he doesn't, then we need to start thinking about where it's going to go. What is the church going to be like? Are you just worried about our generation? We're a vapor; we're here today, we're gone tomorrow. And we're going to leave this church and all the other churches in this world to the next generation. They're going to leave the steering wheel to the next generation.

Are we concerned about that? Do you pray about that? I want to pray a blessing on that generation and say, "God, please bless them. Please make them all that they should be in their quest to continue on this thing that we have a very small part in called the church of Jesus Christ." Ephesians chapter three. When we think about the long 100-year plan, we're not good at that as Americans. We have five-year plans, 10-year plans, maybe.

But what's the 100-plus-year plan? Do we have a sense of that? Do we pray about that? Ephesians chapter three, verse number 20. In the middle of the end of this doctrinal section, Paul breaks out in this great benediction, this doxology. He says this in verse 20: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine according to his power that works within us. We stop there.

Do you recognize that the context for this continues on? Look at verse 21. The goal is to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations. Do you think Paul was looking over his shoulder for the return of Christ? Absolutely. It did not prevent him from praying for the continuation of the glory and the growth and the power of the church throughout all generations.

To him be glory in the church throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Do you pray like that? Don't just think it's about, "God, you're going to do great things for me this week." Really the context is, God, you can do immeasurably more than we can ask or think through the power that works in us because we're a part of this thing, too. We're moving this locomotive forward by the grace of God and we really want to see the glory of God in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations.

Let's get a broader and more realistic view of the future. These kinds of blessings that we're talking about, it's not just a good idea; it's essential. It's the biblical pattern. We talk about a long view. We also need to think about a broad view as well. Can we think beyond the borders of our county? We have a hard time thinking beyond the borders of our little world that we live in here.

We need to be thinking broadly. We need to think about God's work 100-plus miles away. Do we think that way? Do we think that really the kinds of things that we're up against are things that everybody on this locomotive that's penetrating every culture and every country of the world, they have the same kinds of issues and concerns that we do?

Friday night, our youth pastors put together this great program, 100-plus kids in here just for the junior high grad night alone, and I'm thinking, "That was great." Do you recognize that all over the world, there are people with the same concern? Let's get these teens when they're young, let's get them connected to the church, let's get them understanding the word of God, and let's bring them to the point of repentance and faith.

We want to make them Christians who stand up strong in this world. That's the passion our youth pastors breathe every day. That is a passion all over the planet. That is a passion for every real Christian in every real church. In the underground church in China, that's the concern. That's a concern in Moscow. That's the concern in Hong Kong, in Jakarta, in São Paulo.

That's the concern all over the world of every genuine Christian. Paul's trying to get the people to get a broader view. Colossians chapter one, verse number six says all over the world, the gospel is bearing fruit and it is growing, just as it's been doing among you. Do you think that way? Paul's trying to think it's not just you guys. God is doing his work everywhere.

We need to be thinking and praying with ambitious, optimistic faith about God doing his work all over the place. We need to be thinking beyond the borders of our church. Do you have a passion for that? There's some ways that you can start thinking that way. Patrick Johnstone's book, *Operation World*. I've got multiple copies of that at various venues in my life.

When I'm watching the news and I hear something going on, pull that book off the shelf and I say, "Okay, God, what's going on in that country in the church? I want the church to be glorious. I want to pray for the church right now in that country." That should be a part of our lives. If you have kids in your house, teach them now to be thinking broadly. Daphne Spragget and Jill Johnstone's *Windows on the World*.

That little prayer atlas. Just go on Amazon and order it. Get that and set it by your dinner table, and at dinner pull it out and say, "Kids, we got to pray. We're going to pray for this country." That's the kind of broad-minded ambitious optimistic blessings or prayers that were being prayed by people that we should respond to.

In all the pains and struggles we go through, caring for the souls of people, you just got to know, as Paul said in 1 Peter 5:9, you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of sufferings that you are. We have a fraternity of people that care about the same things we do. False churches, I recognize, there are. But the real church of Jesus, we need to recognize that we are brothers and sisters with them and they stand everywhere around the globe. They will be, until the return of Christ, moving this thing on. Let's pray for those folks. Get a bigger picture of God's plan.

Dave: It's exciting to think we can have such a profound impact on generations to come. Let's start praying for those we may never meet to thrive. This is Focal Point, and you're listening to a message from Mike Fabarez called "Living and Dying with Biblical Confidence." Anything from this series you'd like to hear again is right there waiting for you at focalpointradio.org.

And while you're on the site, take a look at this month's featured resource, *Songs of the Son* by Daniel Stevens. It's a biblical study built around nine psalms that are quoted directly in Hebrews, offering a front-row seat to how the Old Testament psalms were always pointing to Christ. Short chapters, reflection questions, and a format designed for re-reading make this one equally at home on your nightstand or your small group table. Get your copy of *Songs of the Son* when you make a donation today by calling us at 888-320-5885 or donate online at focalpointradio.org, or mail your donation to Focal Point, Post Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654. Well, now Pastor Mike has a special announcement.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Thanks, Dave. I'd like to invite you to join me September 19th through the 26th, 2026, on a Christian cruise through New England and Canada. We'll sail Holland America's *Zuiderdam*, known for its elegance and exceptional hospitality, to historic cities like Boston, Halifax, and Quebec City.

We'll gather for devotional times in God's word, followed by thought-provoking Bible teaching throughout our journey. Grammy-winning musicians Keith and Kristyn Getty will lead us in worship. You'll enjoy the stunning autumn landscapes as we explore charming coastal villages, all while building friendships with like-minded believers. It's a unique opportunity to deepen your faith and see some of the most beautiful scenery on the eastern seaboard. Space is limited, so don't wait to sign up. Secure your cabin today at focalpointradio.org.

Dave: Well, tomorrow Pastor Mike Fabarez answers real questions from real listeners in our new Friday feature of "Ask Pastor Mike Live."

Pastor Mike Fabarez: We're discussing Paul, Egypt, and changing churches. Friday on Focal Point.

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.

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