Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: This is the God that we have. Our God believes in spanking. Our God does spank his children. And when you experience it, I hope you can have the maturity at some point in your Christian life to be thankful for that very fact. So thank God you're his child. That would be a good thing. You're a true son if you experience this. We want to be glad that we're really loved that much that you love us enough to correct us on our path.

Guest (Male): And welcome to Focal Point with author and pastor Mike Fabarez. When it comes to discipline, we often see correction as a necessary evil, something we know is good for us, but we certainly don't enjoy. But today we'll learn to have a different attitude toward God's intervention in our lives.

Before we get started, if you're new to Focal Point, let us know online and we'll send you a free copy of Pastor Mike's newest booklet called Storing Up Treasures. Go to focalpointradio.org. Well, now here's Pastor Mike with his message Reexamining the Nature of the Church.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Here's the problem. You'll say, "Wow, every time I have something go wrong in my life, it must be discipline. I've got a sore throat. I wonder, God must be spanking me for something." That's not it. "I had a money problem. I lost my job. It must be God's discipline." Don't get into that. You need to consider other possibilities because there are others. You have to be able to discern when it's discipline and when it's not. That's critical.

Think about this. If I tell my kid, "Hey kid, go take out the trash," he might say, "Oh, I'm being punished." No, you're not. You're just taking out the trash. There are other reasons for unpleasant experiences in the Christian life, and it's not necessarily discipline. So don't get to that place, because that will really mess up your relationship with God if every time you have an ache or pain, you're thinking, "Oh God, you're disciplining me." He may be, but we need to sort it out. There are other biblical reasons you may be incurring suffering. Let's just use the categories: health problems, money problems, emotional problems. You may have all kinds of issues that aren't related to discipline, but we need to sort them out. If you get the buckets clear in your mind, we can figure this out and have some discernment.

Let's start with the first one. It could be, according to verse number three in our passage, the world's opposition. Look back to verse three once you write that down. This is Hebrews 12:3. We need to consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men. Did that cause pain in Christ's life? Absolutely. That caused a lot of pain in Christ's life. Was it because he was being disciplined by his Father for doing something wrong and he didn't stop sinning, so God had to bring this into his life? No. That was just because he was the light in a dark world, and because of that, he incurred the hatred of sinful men. God promised that in your life too. If you are going to be salt and light, you're going to incur some difficulty. You may lose your job and have monetary problems because you're standing up for what's right. Is that suffering? Yes, it's suffering, but it's not discipline. It's just the opposition of the world because of your commitment to follow Christ. That's one big category that we need to recognize.

Secondly, it could be sin's consequences. Now, that's not directly in this passage, but it's all over the Scripture. For instance, you might want to put it down this way because you remember the passage. It's in Galatians 6:7, which says, "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. A man will reap whatever he sows." You did something wrong and you're having to pay that back. There are consequences—residual consequences that have nothing to do with God's discipline. Because, follow me now, you can do something wrong that carries consequences with it, and you can confess it and get right with God, and those consequences will continue.

Thirdly, let's talk about when God is doing it specifically and personally. God could specifically and personally bring pain into your life because he is testing you. That doesn't sound good. We've moved now from the analogy of a father to a teacher, and the teacher is applying a test to see if you'll pass the test. I'll give you an example. Let's turn to this one: 1 Peter chapter one. First Peter chapter one is very explicit—a clear statement about the fact that God may bring suffering into your life. Personally, he doesn't just allow it; he's bringing it into your life for a very specific reason. And it's to test you, to test the reality or the genuineness of your faith.

Let's start in verse six. As you glance down to verse six in 1 Peter 1, be sure and pick up a few other verbs there and the adjectives in verses three, four, and five, because it's a great description of our salvation. That's where the demonstrative pronoun points back to. It says, "In this," in what? In this incredible salvation that we have that is protected by God. It's reserved in heaven for us. It's all because of the work of Christ. "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials." Now, those are three big words: grief, suffer, and trials. The key word here is the last one, trials. Grief and suffering come because it is a test. That's what the word means. It is a test. And the Bible says here you may have had to suffer that.

Here's the reason, verse seven, a purpose clause. Here it comes: "So that your faith," now skip the dashes for just a second, skip the parenthetical phrases and go to the bottom of the sentence. "These have come so that your faith may be proved genuine." That could be the reason you're sick. That could be the reason that you lost your job. That could be the reason that your checks are bouncing, because you are going through a trial to see, is this real to you, or is this just some Sunday school club that you're in? That's the testing of your faith.

Or it could be, fourthly, that God is training you. He's training you. He may have great things planned for us. I'll give you an example. John 15:1-2. It's like the vine and the branches. When the branch bears fruit, the father—this is the word we get from cathartic—he cleanses us. He prunes us. He strips back stuff on the branch so that it will bear even more fruit. And the point is, it's not to prove that you're real. It's not discipline. It's that he's trying to get you ready for bearing more fruit. So suffering—cancer could be in your life because God is getting you ready for an even greater ministry. You may have financial problems, relational problems, emotional problems. Things may be going wrong in your life right now because he's getting you ready for something great. And he doesn't, as Spurgeon said, and this is maybe not an absolute statement, but he doesn't use anybody greatly until he hurts them deeply. And there's a reality to that.

Our passage started this way: it is a word of encouragement addressed to you as sons. Why is it encouraging? Because if we have it, we know we're really his children. If you're not having the discipline of God in your life, if you can never connect the dots between financial problems and your sin, if you can never connect the dot between a health problem and your rebellion or compromise, if you can never see the connection between relational problems and some kind of cowardice in your life and you don't stand up for doing what's right and God is causing that pain to point out this sin, and they're not always perfectly related, if you don't see that, the Bible says you're not even a child. It's a very strong word: illegitimate child. You're not even a real child of God. I've said this many times before, but my dad never spanked the next-door neighbor kids. He may have wanted to a few times, but he didn't do it because they weren't his. And if you don't have this in your life, you're not a child of God. If you do have it, why don't you stop and maturely say, "Hey, that's a good thing."

As a matter of fact, look back at our passage. Hebrews 12:9 says, "Moreover, we had human fathers who disciplined us and," look at this now in maturity from adulthood, "I hope we can say this, we respected them for it." I hope that's the whole point of this. It's an encouragement to us because we respect and love our Father that he cares enough for us to discipline us. And I know it's hard, but let's try and maturely say, "Thanks God, we want to be glad that we're really loved that much that you love us enough to correct us on our path." Now, that's not bumper sticker theology. So the point is this: this is the God that we have. Our God believes in spanking. Our God does spank his children. And when you experience it, I hope you can have the maturity at some point in your Christian life to be thankful for that very fact. So thank God you're his child. That would be a good thing. You're a true son if you experience this.

Number two, you've got to clearly identify the sin. The whole point of this is getting us to share in his holiness, which means that when I'm getting spanked, I know exactly what the sin is. He wants to reveal it to us. Be though very careful in going to figure it out. Let me give you three sub-points to this. Here we go. First one: when you're identifying the sin, know this. It could be something that is a violation of Scripture but doesn't violate your conscience. It violates the Scripture, but it doesn't violate your conscience. God will get off the couch for things that don't even violate your conscience. First Corinthians 4:4 says, "My conscience is clear," Paul said, "but that doesn't make me innocent. It's the Lord who judges me."

Now I know that's a judicial analogy, but let's picture a parental analogy. I know my conscience is clear, but it doesn't make me innocent before God because the Lord is my disciplinarian. He's my dad, and he will punish me—and by that I mean he will chastise me, he will spank me—based on his rules. Therefore, if the Bible says, "Don't look at a woman lustfully," and I'm doing it but I don't feel any conscience about it and everybody does it and that's just the way I think, well, here's the deal: God will get off the couch for that if you keep doing it, even if you're not convicted in your conscience by it. The Bible says, "Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth," but you at work, you talk like everybody else because you just want to fit in. That's what I grew up with, and so I let those things roll out and the Bible says don't do it. He will get off the couch for that if you don't stop. It doesn't matter if you feel convicted about it or not. The Bible says let not there even be a hint of immorality among you. You may not even be convicted by it because we live in such a sexualized culture, but if that hint of immorality is in your life, God the Father will get off the couch and discipline you if you don't stop. You may not feel the conviction. It doesn't mean God isn't going to hold us accountable as a holy Father disciplining and correcting his kids.

Secondly, let's invert that. He will also get off the couch if you violate your conscience even though there's not a verse on it. He will get off the couch and discipline you if you keep violating your conscience on an issue even though you can't turn to chapter and verse. It may be how you dress. Pick on that one for a second. There's no verse about how long your skirt needs to be or your collar or your blouse. It may not be in here. You can't look it up. Oh, here it is, it's the two-inch rule over the knee cap. Whatever, you can't find that. But in your conscience, you keep looking in the mirror going, "I don't know, I don't feel right about this, but everybody else does it. That's the way they dress. I'm just going to do it." If you violate your conscience even though you can't find chapter and verse on that specific issue, God will discipline you. He'll do it. If it's a purchase, there's no verse that says, "Thou shalt not buy an RV." That's not in there. But if you and your wife are struggling in a conscience, your conscience is violated because of that purchase, it doesn't matter if other people can do it. It doesn't matter that it's not a problem for someone else. If it's a conscience problem, a violation of your conscience for you, the Bible says God is going to discipline for that if you don't respect your conscience in that.

And that's not 1 Opinions 12:2. That comes from Romans chapter 14. Jot this down: Romans 14:22 and 23. The context here is what Paul calls disputable matters. People coming out of Judaism with kosher upbringing and now people are offering them non-kosher hot dogs. Here, have a ham sandwich. And they were struggling in their conscience. And even though they were perfectly okay to buy an RV or perfectly okay to eat a ham sandwich, the Bible says if you violate your conscience in it, it's sin. I mean the last line in that whole chapter is, "and everything that does not come from faith is sin." If your conscience is condemning you, it's wrong. Don't keep—I don't care what other people do, and I don't care if you can't find a verse on it. If it's convicting your conscience, God will get off the couch for that if you don't respect your conscience. It could be a violation of Scripture that doesn't violate your conscience. It could be a violation of your conscience that can't be found in Scripture.

Thirdly, it could be the subtlety of idolatry, the subtlety of idolatry. This is a verse we don't quote quite enough. You'll never find it on a Dayspring card, but it's Exodus 34:14. In speaking of the rivals in our hearts of idolatry, it says, "Don't do it, because our God, Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." And again, that is seen as a human weakness, so people don't like to see God as jealous because that seems like he's not totally confident in himself. That's not the point. It is a perfectly holy and righteous attribute. He is God and should be God in your life. And if you love your children more than you love God, God, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. Be careful, he'll get off the couch for that. If I love my job more than I love pursuing Christ, then you know what? Our God, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. He'll get off the couch for that if you don't stop. Make God the God of your life. I add that one because it's subtle. The subtlety of idolatry, it's easy to miss that.

If it's God's correction, respond biblically. Thank him. I know that's hard and very mature to do, but do that. ID the sin and don't be confused. If you feel that conscience issue and even though you don't find a verse, if you don't find the conscience issue, remember I told you to go into the prayer closet with your Bible and the Holy Spirit. You need both of those. And just remember subtlety, secret idolatry, something in my heart that no one ever sees could be an issue of God bringing pain into my life because he wants to correct me.

Now what do I do? This should seem simple, but let's state it clearly. If I'm going to share in his holiness and respond to correction as I ought to, a son responds to a father's discipline by changing his relationship to the sin. Two words for that in the Bible: confession and repentance. I need to confess my sin and I need to repent of my sin. Confess and repent. And if we do, the Bible says he's faithful and righteous to forgive our sin. And that's where some people, that's the last little stone people trip over. So let's jot that one down and let's knead it out from this passage.

We need to understand that the last responsibility I have after the spanking is not to cross my arms and doubt the forgiveness of my father. I need to embrace his forgiveness. Some of us struggle with that, right? I mean, we repent of our sins because we just got spanked and there are tears in our eyes and Dad goes, "It's okay, son," and we're like, "I don't really believe it. I don't know." You've got to believe that God is a God who does what he says. If you confess your sins, he's faithful and righteous to forgive your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. "But I don't really feel worthy." Stop with that.

As a matter of fact, let's go back to where we started, the broken bones of Psalm 51. Let's look at this in closing. Psalm 51: David is talking about the fact that not only has he messed up his life, but in discipline, God had to break a few of his bones. And yet in the midst of his confession and repentance, look at the way he is so ready to believe in God's forgiveness. That's where some of us struggle. That's the last challenge of this whole process. And let's look at what David says. Look at the superscript on the Psalm: Director of Music, a Psalm of David when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. You got the context here? I mean, he'd messed up royally and now he's here and he's dealing with God because Nathan had confronted him. And he recognizes, as we've pointed out before in this series, in verse number four, that he realized that he had sinned against God. Ultimately, I know he sinned against Bathsheba and her dead husband now, but he says, "You know what, ultimately it violated you." And he says, "So you're proved right when you speak and you're justified when you judge." And the spankings that he received for all of this, bottom line he says, "You were right in doing it." I mean, totally right in doing that, God.

Now drop down to verse number seven. He says, "Cleanse me with hyssop." That was the branch they'd dip it in blood. It was part of the ceremonial Levitical law in the temple and all that, but it was a picture of forgiveness. He says, "If you do that, if you provide me forgiveness, if I ask you to cleanse me," look at this next phrase. He says, "maybe I'll be clean." Is that what it says? Underline the word "maybe." Is that what he says? What does he say? "I will be clean." I love that about David. Even in his repentance, he's totally set on the veracity and truthfulness of God. He anticipates restoration. "I will be clean. Wash me and maybe I'll be white again, maybe I'll try to be white again." No. "You wash me, and I will be whiter than snow."

Then he says, "Let me hear joy and gladness." Here's the broken bone part. He says, "Let the bones that you've crushed," that was his discipline. You can read more about that in Psalm 32. It says, "Let the bones that you crushed rejoice." I'm ready for that. "Hide your face from my sins, blot out all my iniquity." Drop down to verse number 17. This whole description in Psalm 51 is a guy who is broken over his sin. He's repentant and confessing his sin, and he says, "Oh God, a broken spirit and a contrite and broken heart. Oh God, you will not despise that." I know that you'll accept that. Why? How would he know that? Because God said it. Do you see the faith of David? It's so great. Even in his failure, he says, "I believe your word, and if you say you forgive me because I confess it and repent, then I am, I'm clean."

Now some of us need to get there. Think of Jonah. He's a great example. Talk about a spanking, right? Jonah, he rebels against God's command. He's not doing what God told him to do. So talk about a spanking, three nights in a really bad hotel, right? And he gets vomited up on the shores. And there he is, and do you think he learned his lesson at that point? He expresses his heart in Jonah chapter two about his brokenness over his rebellion and sin. And he gets it. Like David, he says, "You were right to do this to me." And then he gets barfed up on the shore. And as he's still wiping off fish vomit, think of this, right? And he's there on the shore, here's what chapter three verse one says in Jonah: "And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time." And guess what he said? "Go to the great city of Nineveh and give them the message that I give you." God says, "Snap," and then he says, "Now, don't use your arms again, okay?" He says, "Now, have you learned your lesson?" And the greatest words in all of the book of Jonah, here it comes, Jonah 3:3: "And Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh." Good idea.

That's the picture, though. The picture is of a God who gives grace and not only says, "You're forgiven, now sit in your bed time out." That's not how God operates. God is not into time outs. God is into disciplining children, repenting and forsaking sin, and then hitting you on the rear end again to push you back in the game. John 21: "Oh, I'm just going to go fish," Peter says, "I'm such a failure." And Jesus said, "Get out there and feed my sheep. I love you. Do you love me? Feed my sheep." Here's the same deal for you and I. Are you willing to believe in the grace of God, the forgiveness of God? And once you recognize that the pain in your life is because of God's discipline, are you willing to forsake it and repent? And if you are, embrace his forgiveness and get back in the game. That's what God's looking for. God is a loving Father and he doesn't want you to be overwhelmed with your grief or sorrow. He wants to use the conviction and sorrow of your life to bring you to repentance and then repentance to put you right back in the game. Let's not doubt the grace of God. Let's pray.

God, help us as people in this world that are tempted by sin. Sometimes when our conscience sees it, sometimes when it doesn't. So many idols beckoning us to love them more than you. And God, in our hearts, we want to see the sin when you bring pain into our lives especially. We'd like to see it even before that, but sometimes in the stubbornness of our fallen humanity, our flesh, sometimes we engage in sin longer than we should, and it's something that gets you off the couch and then you have to apply an illness, a money problem, a relational problem, some dissatisfaction. You have to bring something into our lives to get us to wake up.

God, I pray that we wouldn't be like those Israelites in 1 Samuel chapter four who asked the question and don't listen for the answer. Help us to bring our Bible and our heart in submission to the Holy Spirit into the kitchen breakfast nook, into the closet of our house, into our study, and to say, "God, point it out. I'm ready to listen." And when you reveal that sin and you make it clear to us, "Here's why I'm doing it. You're not standing up for Christ at work. You're saying things you shouldn't say. You're thinking thoughts you shouldn't think. You're doing things I told you not to do," I pray we'd be quick to repent. That we'd recognize that that pain is helpful in motivating us to do the right thing. And then God, when we do, like Jonah, let us just embrace the grace of God and get about our task. And let's try and do it with a little bit better attitude than Jonah ended up doing it with. Let us say we're going to serve you, even when it's hard. We're going to obey you, and we're going to do the right thing. And we want to do it with a heart that, like a son that recognizes that the love of a father is enveloped in the parameters and in the protection and the security of our Father. Thanks that you love us that much, that you love us enough to correct us. God, thanks so much for this reminder from Hebrews chapter 12. It's been a great analogy, it strikes home to us, and I pray God it would be a great reminder the next time we run into something that is hurtful, that we might be able to sort it out quickly and that in our time with you, that if there's sin in our lives, we'd be quick to respond. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez. That's the conclusion of a message titled Reexamining the Nature of the Church. To listen again or share it with someone you know, just go to focalpointradio.org and for even more content from Pastor Mike, be sure to download the free Focal Point app.

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Well, that wraps up today's program. Now, next time, it's a brand new edition of Ask Pastor Mike Live. Why is Sola Scriptura true, and what was actually happening with the golden calf and the fire back in Exodus? Real questions, straight biblical answers Friday 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.