Focal Point

Dave Druey: Welcome to Focal Point. I'm Dave Druey and today we're rolling out something new: Ask Pastor Mike Live. Pastor Mike Fabarez's weekly call-in program, and we've pulled some standout exchanges from a recent broadcast to bring straight to you.

Whether the issue is personal, theological, or somewhere in between, Pastor Mike takes it on with scripture and straight talk. Today's questions touch on military benefits and remarriage, a union strike and crossing a picket line, and whether a believer can actually lose their salvation. So let's get right to it. Here's Pastor Mike live with his listeners.

Curtis: Yes, Pastor Mike. I've got a question for a young woman that had been married to a serviceman for about 30 years, raised about four kids, and he retires from the service and he tells her he wants a divorce. So she has to fight him for the benefits that she felt like she deserved. Now, she's wanting to remarry, but if she remarries, she loses these benefits. So I was wondering if there's any scripture that she could be helped with without the government knowing about it.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Well, here's the thing. The reality of it is that those benefits from the government are going to go away if she gets remarried. I've been in this situation so many times because I live not far from the gates, the north gates to Camp Pendleton. Sadly, with the sin and divorce rates, I've seen this all the time.

So here's what I'm going to say. I do have a verse and that's Matthew chapter 6 verse 34. Don't be anxious about tomorrow, and tomorrow's going to take care of itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. So what I would deal with is the reality of if this man wants to get rid of her and is going to divorce her and she remarries, she's going to have to trust God that the man she's remarrying is going to provide for her.

I know she is entitled to that. If this were some man who made a fortune in business or whatever, there would be ongoing support. But the rules, unfortunately, are such. The kind of pressure that people feel to keep their finances where they were or the income or benefits the way they were have caused people to do all kinds of sinful things. Get married just for the sake of money. That happens all the time in the military.

To do things like this where you say, "Well, if I can live with this new guy and call it a marriage before God and then I won't have to lose these benefits." We just need to be able to write off the benefits for the sake of what's right. God ultimately will deal with the injustice because it may be injustice. I get that. She's given her life to this guy. The guy goes on deployments and he's gone and she raises the kids. Now he shafts her by saying you're done, I don't want to live with you.

Now she's going to get remarried because he's dumped her on I'm assuming being unfaithful to her and now she thinks, "Well, I'll lose that money." Yep, you're going to lose the money. That's just how the rules work. Trust God when he says don't be anxious about what you're going to eat, what you're going to drink, what you're going to wear. Gentiles run after all these things, but your Heavenly Father knows you need them.

That's what I would quote. Seek first the kingdom of God, which means you should do things properly, which is not rip off the rules that you knew were in place and know you never expected a divorce. Now you're in the middle of it. So yeah, she's going to learn to trust God in all of this. Hopefully she's got a good new husband that she's looking at. He ought to be one who can provide and protect her and take care of the kids as best they can. That's what I would say, Curtis.

Curtis: Well, I appreciate it. I was studying on that and trying to get it in my head.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Listen, Curtis, here's the thing. We'll see this in not just this kind of situation but so many situations. It's like First Timothy 6 says money and our desire for money, our love of wanting certain levels of money or maintaining certain levels of money, it is the root of all kinds of evil.

Then Paul goes on to say there are people that are compromised, let me paraphrase, compromising what they know is right for the sake of that check. That's the problem. We cannot let money or our income somehow prevent us from doing what we know is right. We've just got to do what's right. I've seen so many people come to me here on the north side of the base say, "I got married six months ago just because I wanted that," or some even further than that before they went on a deployment because I wanted the extra money.

Now I haven't told anybody but now I want you to officiate a ceremony. It's not really a ceremony because we've been married for so many months. I'm not going to do that. We're not going to play games and I'm not going to lie to people and pretend you got married. You've got to own up to what you did, which is you got married for the sake of a paycheck. You timed it not for the sake of love and propriety and wisdom and planning and scheduling and all the things that made sense. You did it for a paycheck.

That's the kind of twisted pathway people are walking just because they're looking at the bottom line. I would just quote verse 32 again. It's the Gentiles that run after all that, not Christians. So Christians need to say I let the chips fall. If I have to have a lower standard of living because I'm doing the right thing, so be it. All right, Curtis. Thanks for the call. I just want to apply it because it's much more than just this gal. There are so many things that we need to look at in our lives. Is money a determining factor or is what's right a determining factor? If we're compromising with a client or a business or some account that we're dealing with just to have more money, it's just wrong. We have to make sure that money gets down in the priority list as opposed to what is right.

Jacob: Hi, Pastor Mike. Thank you for taking my call. I have a question. This is going to be going on at my company. We're going to be going on strike starting on January 26th and this is actually the second time that my company's going to be doing this. I wanted to know how to approach this as a godly man and through your eyes of how should I approach this. The union is currently asking for a lot more money and there's just a lot stuff going on and I'm very torn because God gave me the skills and the knowledge and the wisdom to do what I do and I'm torn. So if you can please help me out.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: This really does intersect a little bit with what we were dealing with with Curtis. I understand that we have so much capital in terms of our integrity, our reputation, what we're known for. If I'm going to be seen as a warrior, a contender, I want to do it for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, to quote Jude verse 3. I want to be known for that.

If this were some kind of, "Can I join the lines or be a part of this rally or whatever," if you have a union and this is a part of a union strike or whatever, let the leaders deal with it and just see what happens. I would stay out of the fray and I'd be really careful. I might pray that things work out if we think this is an issue of justice and pay that should be paid and it's only appropriate given what we do. Great, pray for it.

I would just be careful that you don't take your reputation, Jacob, and say, "Yeah, that's what Jacob's a really good fighter for this paycheck increase." I'd much rather be seen as someone that gets in the fray for Christ. That's where I'd say I want you to be known as an evangelist. I want you to be known as someone who is an apologist who goes out there and defends the faith, who cares more about people's souls than money.

That's where I just, if I were you and I don't know all the details, I got three sentences here, but I would say I would be careful. I'd let it play out. I'd let the leaders deal with it and see what happens. Are they asking you to do something, Jacob, that you feel like is impinging on your conscience?

Jacob: No, they're asking, what it is is the they're not agreeing on the aspect of the company is willing to give us originally it goes from a 25% increase, the company's willing to say 21.5% and our union is still saying no, we're unhappy with that. We want more.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Okay, but what's your choice now? Your choice is to let them work it out because it's they you talked about. So your leaders are going to deal with this and you're going to wait to see what happens, right? You're not talking about crossing a picket line or some kind of strike line, are you?

Jacob: No, that's what I am asking is, is it okay to cross the line on the 26th so then I can still get the money so I can support my family and provide?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Okay, if that's what we're dealing with, yes. I'm going to say this. I would look at the details of what I've committed to at the outset of me joining this union. I want to make sure I don't go back on my word on that. If it says that you can't cross the line, you've got to wait for your leaders to work this out. I've never been a part of a union but I'm just saying make sure you can keep your integrity to say, "Hey, I got to deal with my family. That's my responsibility. 21% is fine with me for now. I wish it were 25%. I wish it were 75% increase."

But I'm just going to do this because I'm going to get to work. I'm going to earn my bread and get to work. That's my job. As a man before my family, that's what I'm here to do. So I would have no problem crossing a line even though they're going to throw eggs at you saying why you didn't hold out with us for the greater increase.

Then it goes back to Curtis's question. I don't want to be known as someone that that's my top priority. Your top priority is providing for your family. If ever I see a conflict between am I going to take seriously my desire to provide for my family versus I'm going to fight with the union guys to make sure I get that extra 4%, I'm going to say I'd rather be known as a guy who's going to work for my family.

So yeah, I'd cross the line as long as I'm not violating anything I previously agreed to. If I agreed to it at the outset of joining the union and I said no, I wouldn't cross the line, then I guess that's part of joining a union and you picked a job where your unionized and I would hold true to my word if that's what I committed to and that's in writing and something I signed.

Jacob: Okay, thank you very much.

Dave Druey: That's Pastor Mike Fabarez and you're listening to Focal Point. What you're hearing today are actual calls from Ask Pastor Mike Live, Pastor Mike's weekly call-in broadcast where listeners bring their real life questions straight to him. Here's the thing: you can be part of it. Ask Pastor Mike Live airs every Tuesday through Thursday at 1:00 PM Central and the phone lines are open. To get the call-in number and everything else you need, head on over to askpastormike.live. More questions and more of Pastor Mike's answers coming up right now.

Catherine: Hi, thanks for taking my call. So my question is, we were attending a church and the pastor was teaching that you could lose your salvation based on Matthew 6:14 and 15. That's the first part of my question. We had never heard that interpretation of that verse before, those verses before. The second part of my question is, is that a healthy thing to be teaching a church that you can lose your salvation? What would the impact be on a church body?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Two things here. There is a kind of a classical Nazarene doctrine or people in other denominations that'll say you can go in and out of your salvation. They have a much more on-again, off-again sense of what it means to be saved and then not be saved. It's all about the ebb and flow of your Christian life which then they say it's you pass the line you're not a Christian. That's worse than what we have so often in terms of its effect: insecurity, works-based, not faith-based. It's about my performance and I keep myself in this thing.

As opposed to, there are people, good men, good teachers that have a view of saying losing your salvation, but in my mind the distinction is that they are looking at the people that give lip service to Christ that they would say, "Well, they gave lip service to Christ." So the doctrine of how you become a Christian and what that looks like is probably the lower bar than I would have because that then it may last for a while but then the riches and problems of the world pop up and then they fall away and become unfruitful. They would say, "Okay, well they had it and then they lost it."

What I would say is if you go back to a lot of these passages and you look through these, even the one you're talking about in Matthew 6, the sign of real forgiveness is that you forgive. The sign of real faith, to quote James 2, is that you will produce works. The sign of having a free gift of salvation that is not by works but grace through faith, well it's the next verse, verse 10, that God has prepared good works and we walk in them. He's prepared those for us to walk in them. We're supposed to walk in them and we do walk in them.

It's like baptism and you can see this in a microcosm. People say, "Well, baptism saves you." And I'm saying, "No, it doesn't save you, but I got a real problem saying you're saved if you refuse to get baptized because that's clearly what God called you to do." Being a person who trusts in Christ, you trust in him not just to give you a ticket to heaven but to be your king, to be in charge. You're under new management, therefore you do what he says.

So the problem I think so often is trying to preserve the fact that real faith produces works. Now I can sit here with a pastor that may have a different view on losing your salvation, which I don't have, but I'm going to be very careful to clarify. There are a lot of people that look like Christians that are not and they in time eventually prove it.

That's why there's a much more subtle, nuanced perspective between those that say, "Well yeah, you can get saved and then lose it," versus people like me that would say, "Yeah, but if you really examine what real salvation is, they don't lose it so they didn't have it to start with." They look to things like they were very sincere, they were very into their Bible, they shared the gospel. I get all that. That's where I think the parable of the soils leaves room for that or better yet, the parable of the wheat and the tares.

The weeds and the wheat look almost identical. Well you're looking at them and they look identical. But they don't bear fruit. The point is at the end, it doesn't become consumable. It's not something that God says, "I'm well pleased with this." Real Christians end up producing fruit. Not perfectly obviously. Some 60-fold, some 30-fold, some 100-fold in all different amounts, but they they produce fruit and they they proceed on to the end.

So I'm with you, Catherine, in your view of it that I would really want someone to say no, when this is real conversion that conversion results in real regeneration and real regeneration is going to hang in there and persevere to the end. That's my doctrinal view, although I know that some people have a different view, but they're really just trying to say, "Hey, if it's real, it's going to produce fruit long term." They say, "Well I guess they had it and lost it." I say, "Well, you never had it to start with," and that's where we disagree.

Other churches would say, "No, this is about you trusting in Christ and then you walk on this road and as long as you're walking well on the road you are saved, and then if you're not then you're not saved." All of that I think gets back to the fact that people then start looking at whether I'm putting myself in by good works and I'm getting myself out by bad works. I think that's a much more serious doctrinal deviation.

So it would depend on the kind of way that they're teaching this. But if I'm teaching as I have Matthew chapter 6 verses 14 and 15, I'm going to say forgiveness is like a part and parcel good work of real converted people. That is what is going to be there. That's why you can state it the way he does in verse 15, that you're not forgiven if you don't forgive. Just like, "Hey, if you don't produce good works, you're not a Christian." Do you get saved by good works? No. Do you get saved by forgiving? No. You don't get forgiven by forgiving. But real forgiven people, they forgive.

So it's more nuanced than the second category and it's more troubling in the category I talked about where some people really just base Christianity on you get in it by your works and you stay in it by your works. Clearly the Bible doesn't leave room for that. Does that explanation help at all? It really depend on on your church and how the pastor views this. That's where I'd want to say the grace of God really is about saving you and changing you.

The Old Testament promise was when the new covenant came, he was going to change our hearts, the internal part, the cockpit of our thinking, cockpit of our lives. He's going to move us then by the invasion of his spirit to keep his rules and his precepts. So that's the internal transformation I think Second Corinthians 5's talking about where we're new creations in Christ, the old things pass away and the new things come.

What new things? Well, you forgive people who wrong you. That's what happens. Maybe hard and you may not do it 100% consistently, but your batting average goes way, way up and you're now known as someone who forgives because you've been forgiven and that's a sign of being forgiven. So that's why you can focus on the works like baptism. Yeah, you should get baptized. Does the baptism obedience in baptism save you? No, but you certainly should and anybody who says they don't, I've got a serious problem. How can you say you're saved because you need to do what God has asked you to do?

As long as we keep the equation the way it it should be. I kind of write this in a little book I wrote called Exploring the Gospel. You need to create this equation: it's the grace of God and the gospel plus our God-graciously-produced response of repentance and faith, and that equals salvation plus good works. Where the plus is missing, we don't have the equation adding up.

The problem is some people have taken the works part and put it before the equal sign and they say, "Oh, it's the gospel of grace plus repentance and faith plus good works and then you're then you equal then you get salvation." I'm saying, "No, that's not it." The equation is the gospel of grace, your response to it, equals salvation plus good works. The works are going to be there and if they're not there then we're going to question whether or not you had the right gospel or you had the right response. Because if you do, the spirit of God is going to dwell within you and you're going to be moved to keep his commandments and you're going to endure, as Hebrews 2 says, to the end. Hebrews chapter 3. So that's my view and I know there are guys that that disagree with me. Let's go to John. John, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help?

John: Yes, sir. I was just wondering what you thought about. My preacher keeps saying, well for one, I've been doing a little preaching on and off for the last couple years and he won't let me preach the rapture, nothing about the rapture. But he keeps making comments saying that the rapture could have already happened and that there's no way to prove that it ain't happened. So-and-so said the rapture's already happened and he knows I get upset about that. So now he likes to point it out that to the church that that upsets me whenever he says that the rapture could have already happened and there's no way to prove that it ain't happened.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Oh, there is. I can prove it right now. I'll bet in my county alone, I'd have to check with the coroner's department, but every time they exhume a body for whatever crime they're researching, the bodies are always there. So the dead in Christ are going to rise first and then the rapture's going to take place. This is a combo event. First Corinthians 15, First Thessalonians chapter 4. If there's a bunch of bodies every now and then these coroners go out and the detectives exhume the body, you're going to find some of them that are gone if this happened already. It didn't happen already.

Clearly the saints being translated up into the sky that we're going to be together with the Lord in the air, then I'm thinking that's an admission that your pastor is saying he's a non-Christian and that you're a non-Christian because the rapture's already happened. The promise is if he goes and prepares a place for us, he's going to come again, receive us unto himself that where he is, we'll be also. So I'm not with him in a new place. I'm still here.

My grandfather's grave is untouched and his bones are still in his coffin and probably his body, well preserved from the embalming. So I'm thinking to myself, why in the world would I ever believe someone saying it's already taken place and there's no proof that it hasn't? Well, if the Bible's true, it's a combo event. And if it's a combo event, where are all the dead, where are all the dead rising that trusted in Christ?

I'm sure every now and then there's an exhuming of a body of a Christian and the Christian's body is still there. So yeah, it's nonsense. I would say really, John, if this is something he's saying repeatedly, it's not only there's some guys that don't believe in a two-phased return of Christ, that he meets the church in the air and then comes back for Israel and touches his feet on the Mount of Olives. I don't have a problem really if you have a different view of eschatology, but to say weird things like you just said he says, like, "Oh, there's no way to prove it," I think maybe it's time, hopefully there's another church within reasonable driving distance of your home.

Yeah, I'm going to say I might start looking for a new church. There's got to be some reason in his mind that ties his reason and his speculation to scripture and scripture does not allow us to say yeah, it's already taken place. And that is an early church heresy and it's talked about in the scripture. Some say it's already happened. Paul's writing the Thessalonians saying that and he says stop. There's no way. If we missed it, and that's the point to the Thessalonians, we would see the Antichrist rise to power and we haven't. So no, we didn't miss the rapture and if we did miss the rapture, there'd be plenty of people that were Christians that would be gone and every dead body that believed in Christ would be gone. So no, this is nonsense.

Dave Druey: That's Pastor Mike Fabarez and you've been listening to Focal Point. Today's program was a special edition of Ask Pastor Mike Live, where real listeners bring their real questions straight to Pastor Mike during his weekly call-in broadcast. If you'd like to be part of the next one, Ask Pastor Mike Live airs every Tuesday through Thursday at 1:00 PM Central and the phone lines are open to you. Get the call-in number and tune-in details at focalpointradio.org/live.

To find more teaching from Pastor Mike, head to focalpointradio.org. And if you haven't yet, download the Focal Point app. It's stocked with messages, study tools, and everything you need to keep digging through the week. This program gets to you free of charge because we believe solid verse-by-verse Bible teaching shouldn't come with a price tag. If what you've heard today has been worth something to you, if these conversations have sharpened your thinking or strengthened your walk, we'd ask you to consider standing behind this ministry with a gift. You can make a one-time donation or step up as a Focal Point partner with a monthly commitment. To give today, call 888-320-5885 or go to focalpointradio.org.

With your gift this month, we'll send you a copy of Songs of the Son by Daniel Stevens. If you've ever read the Psalms and wondered who's actually speaking or felt like you were missing something just beneath the surface, this book addresses that directly. Stevens shows how the author of Hebrews read the Psalms as songs about Jesus. Songs that carry his voice, tell his story, and bear witness to his kingship, his priesthood, and his work on our behalf. The method he walks you through isn't complicated, but it genuinely reshapes the way you approach the Psalms. Request Songs of the Son with your gift today at focalpointradio.org or by calling 888-320-5885. Well, I'm Dave Druey. We'll see you back here next time for more from Pastor Mike Fabarez right here on Focal Point.

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