Focal Point

Guest (Male): Pull up a chair and get yourself a steaming cup of coffee. It's time to sit down and spend a half hour getting to know our pastor and teacher Mike Fabarez on another edition of Ask Pastor Mike here on Focal Point.

Dave Druey: Welcome to another Q&A session with Pastor Mike Fabarez on Focal Point. I'm Dave Druey. You hear it in the news, on late night shows, at school, and even in the office. Foul language grabs our attention. And at the same time, it seems to be growing more common and less taboo in modern culture. But what if you hear it coming from the pulpit? Today, Pastor Mike addresses the current fixation with cursing and swearing. Our executive director Jay Worthen kicks it off for us as we step into the study to ask Pastor Mike. Jay?

Jay Worthen: Thank you, Dave. I am here with Pastor Mike. Pastor Mike, today's question has to do with pastors using foul language, may it never be. But is this ever acceptable?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: This is a hard question because you can look in the New Testament and you can see Paul using some very graphic language to describe things, like in the book of Philippians regarding our own righteousness and counting it as skubalon, that's the Greek word. And that's a very harsh word regarding our waste product, feces. It's rough.

And yet, I don't think it has the kind of vulgarity, to use a word that we would use in terms of someone speaking in a vulgar term, like a sailor or whatever. It doesn't have the crudeness in that respect. It's colorful, but it's not the vulgarity that sometimes we do see pastors or other people use. I think whatever applies to anyone would apply to your pastor.

Let me break this into three categories. Ephesians is so helpful in this regard, Ephesians chapter five, when it speaks of our words. There's three different kinds of discussions that we have there, at least it brings my mind to three different categories, two that are embedded in the text with two different phrases.

One is obscenity. One is that kind of corrupting talk, it's called, the kind that tears down. It's a statement regarding words that just don't belong in our mouths and usually have that connection to things that would make people just like fingernails on a chalkboard. Words that just are not appropriate, they're not fitting for who we are.

It says that we shouldn't be speaking about things that people do in darkness, that they do in secret. So it has that sense of this is not appropriate talk in open conversation. So obscenity is the kind of language that would not be appropriate, the kind you wouldn't want to use in front of children or in the olden days at least they'd say in front of ladies. I just think there's no place for that as part of our conversation, just to color up our conversation.

The other thing it says in the very next verse, verse four, actually earlier in the passage, I just quoted verses 11 and 12, but Ephesians 5:4 talks about crude joking, which I do think is probably a bigger problem in our society than just obscenity, although obscenities are a problem.

The crude joking is trying to get a laugh because you're talking about impure or sexually immoral things or even in a more juvenile way, kind of the bathroom humor. If it's crude, even saying that, we can identify things that fit into that category. Certainly for the sake of a laugh or to spice up a conversation, make someone smile or whatever. That's the kind of stuff, the locker room joking, never should be a part of what goes out of a Christian's mouth.

We should be saying things that build up. If they're going to make someone smile, the things that I say, I want them to be because they're positive, not because they're crude. So those are kind of a nuanced distinction between obscenity and crude joking, but I don't think that has any place in our lives.

The third one that I think of when I think of that, maybe fitting as a subset under obscenity, is blasphemy. This is something I hear as a problem. I heard a Christian just yesterday use at least a modified kind of blasphemous phrase. And when I hear that, I struggle with that and often get a chance to correct that when I can, if I can do it graciously in the setting, to say, "Listen, we shouldn't be using words like hell, for instance, unless they're being used in their proper context."

That's blasphemy. That's taking something that has a very important and sacred meaning, in this case hell, a meaning of something that is set apart to represent God's just judgment on the ungodly, and then using it in common ways. Hell shouldn't be used like that. I think that's Satan's tactic to get it to be commonplace. Hell should make everyone shudder, Christians and non-Christians alike.

So when it comes to obscenity, crude joking, and blasphemy, those are the three things I think of when you ask the question, and I don't think they have a place in Christians' lives.

Jay Worthen: As a pastor, are you held to a higher standard?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Oh yeah, I think in all things. When you think about the book of James, it says that we're going to incur a stricter judgment. He's talking about people in the church that are called to teach. He says we all stumble in many ways in that context, and then he says you better be taking care of what you say and be super careful about what you say.

Pastors are going to stumble in what they say. That's true. Where there's an abundance of words, transgression is unavoidable, the scripture says. So I understand that. But they are going to be held to a higher standard and they ought to be very careful.

Thousands and thousands of my words are recorded every year and it's hard to keep a rein on every single word. I just thought of one this morning, it wasn't a blasphemous or an obscene word, but it just wasn't the right description of something I was trying to teach in a classroom. I grieve over that.

I don't want to lead anybody astray because of the words that come out of my mouth and I don't even want to leave the wrong impression. Sometimes that's impossible, but sometimes we fail at that and we need to be very sensitive if we are teachers or preachers to put a tight rein on our mouth and be very careful.

Jay Worthen: As a Christian, what should we be striving for in our language? How do we kick a foul language habit?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I do think we need to think about what we're putting into our ears, at least when we are free to put in our ears what we are free to put in. There's maybe guys at work and you work in a context where you're going to get some foul language as a regular diet of what you hear throughout the day.

But then at lunch, if you get in your car and you turn on music that's got foul language in it, well that's on you. That's a situation where you shouldn't be feeding your mind this. So yeah, you need to filter what goes in, because sometimes what goes in will often translate into how you speak and how you spice up your language when you're trying to be animated about what you're saying. And instead of using words that are still appropriate and have that sense of propriety to them, you start saying things that are vulgar and obscene.

Jay Worthen: Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. You know, before we go, on Focal Point this month we're offering a book you might be familiar with. It's called Lifelines for Tough Times by Mike Fabarez. You've heard of him, right?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I spent a few hours with that little book.

Jay Worthen: I was wondering if you could tell us a little about that book and how you came about writing it.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Harvest House, the publisher, we had several ideas we were talking about when we were talking about putting this project together and we settled on that. It was really a good thing for me to work through.

As I've said before, the impetus for this was my daughter's serious diagnosis that I share about in the book, her prenatal diagnosis. Going through the process, I remember interacting with Joni Eareckson Tada, who was kind enough to endorse the book. I thought what a great example of someone who has understood what it is to have an irreparable problem, here she is with her four limbs that don't work, and yet she understands something about the goodness of God in spite of her own pain.

She also knows what it is to recognize that goodness and be able to promote the glory of God in the midst of that pain. So just having that real connection with so many other Christians who've gone through things that are difficult, would want them to be different, have prayed for them to be different, and yet God has said no, like in that 2 Corinthians text about the thorn in the flesh for the apostle Paul, and instead he said, "My grace is sufficient for you."

In our family, as we dealt with our own medical issue there with my daughter, who's now 13 and still struggling with a lot of the medical issues related to her diagnosis, we wanted to have a book that would give that perspective that God's grace can be sufficient for your struggle, even if God doesn't answer it the way you want. Like Paul, "Take this thorn away." No, no, no. Three times he said no and then he resolved that God is going to do what he wants, he's going to accomplish good through this, and that's the promise of Romans 8, that he's going to work all these things together for good and we look for that in the book and we say God's grace can be sufficient to get us through it.

Jay Worthen: Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. I'm sure this conversation has been informative for our listeners and I trust helpful. We're going to continue this topic with a message you gave called Taming Fire: The Fight to Harness Our Words.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I had the opportunity this week to be out at our junior high and high school camp preaching all week. The first night I was there we passed out over 500 12-inch tactical hunting knives to all the campers. It was great because we sent them out there just to have fun with them, do a little knife throwing, play with them.

I didn't want to get into the rules a lot because I don't want to burden them with rules. So I did say just try to put them back in the sheath at night between midnight and six, don't pull the knives out then. But other than that, have fun. You may say, "Well, that sounds dangerous, Mike. I don't like that. I don't want to send my kids to camp anymore if that's what you're doing."

If there were intruders in the camp, they'd be great for protection. They were so shiny and sharp that they could just hold them up against the sun if they had to signal a boat way out there, or a boat broke down, they could flash the sun on the blade. So there's a lot of upside to these knives that they all got.

You say, "Well, I don't think they should have them. You could cut someone, you could kill someone. I think you should take them away." Well, that's going to be hard because by the third day of camp I flew in all these surgeons that surgically attached the knives to their forearms. I mean, hard to function, but I put this titanium hinge on every kid's forearm so it can retract back on the forearm.

Then I got it to where they could just go like this with their forearm and that knife comes right back in their hand. So it's good. You can put it away, you can have it right back out. You say, "Well, I'm not going to send my kid to camp anymore if that's what you're doing with our kids, and we're going to go to another church."

Now if that were all true, that would concern you, wouldn't it? "I just think, Pastor Mike, it's a bad idea all the way around." Well, here's the thing. Every retreat I've ever done, they came to camp with knives.

The Bible says it is your tongue that if it's used rashly, I'm quoting now the Bible, it's like thrusts of a sword, Proverbs 21:18. If you're not careful, your mouth is like a knife and it can cut and it can wound. As it says in Proverbs 18, the power of life and death is right there in the tongue.

Now the rest of the verse, and I only quoted half of it here, goes like this, "but the tongue of the wise brings healing." So the mouth and the words that we use, they can certainly damage and hurt and cut and even kill in many ways. But it can be trained to be used in a manner that is healing and helpful and constructive.

I'd like to reflect a lot of what I preached on in this sermon from one text, Ephesians chapter 4, verses 29 and 30. Ephesians chapter 4, verses 29 and 30, I'd like you to turn there. When the apostle Paul, by the direction of God's Spirit, says to us, "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths." Dramatic way to put it.

Instead, here's the healing part, "but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God." What's the first word in verse 30? And. We don't read the word and because we like to divorce this word from its context.

Context here is our words and our mouths. Can we grieve the Spirit with our actions and our thoughts? Absolutely. But the context here is our words. In light of our words that can either be, as it says here, corrupting talk or fitting and grace-giving talk, you've got to be careful how you do that because the Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption, he can either be grieved or pleased by the words that we use.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. If you've quoted that out of context enough in your life, you may need more proof that this is tied to the context. So let me read for you, though it's not a part of our preaching portion, verses 31 and 32.

Notice how this continues: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor," all those things are the emotions that drive these words. Then he gives one word that is a speaking description: "and slander. Let it be put away from you along with all malice. So get rid of those corrupting words." Verse 32: "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you."

Well, let's work with the first verse, verse 29. "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths." Now you picture someone almost putting their hand over their mouth going, "No, no, no, don't say that." You may feel it, you may think it, and all of a sudden it's about to come out. Jam that back in your mouth. Don't let it come out of your mouth.

Because it's worded so dramatically, I want to introduce this phrase into our first point. We need to be ruthless about harmful words, ruthless. We need to be implacable and careful and merciless about the things that come out of our mouths and we're ready to shut it down.

Now I can't use the word ruthless, I hope, without you thinking of Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount. When he was talking about sin and avenues of sin, he was talking about the eye and the hand and he said this: "If your eye causes you to sin, close your eyelid and make sure you don't look out your eyeballs."

Is that what he says? You know the verse: "If your eye causes you to sin," the ESV translates it, "gouge it out." I don't want to picture that. And yet the Bible says that's how you ought to respond to the avenues and conduits of sin in your life. Now is this literal or is this hyperbole?

Well, if it's literal, we got a problem because the next line says: "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off." And he's very specific, your right hand. Problem is if I cut my right hand off, I got another hand over here. Same with my eyeballs. So I think even just reading this with any objectivity, we're talking about hyperbole here. And the hyperbole is to try to get to something that I think is well described with the word ruthless.

If you have something that keeps on happening that is an avenue of sin, it needs to be dealt with in a very vicious, merciless way. Sometimes I say things and I think, "Mike, you should have bit your tongue." Now that's an idiom, that's a figure of speech. But literally I suppose not a bad idea to bite your tongue and cause just a little bit of pain, no blood, no blood, just pain. Just to say, "Hey Mike, that should not be said." Be ruthless about those bad words.

Now the word here that's translated in ESV corrupting, some translations say unwholesome, is the word sapros in Greek. The Greek word is helpful because it describes something that's rotting or putrid, putrid words, stinky words. And speaking of stinky things coming out of your mouth, that makes me think of bad breath, does it not?

We've already got a lot of unpleasant illustrations in the sermon, but let me pile on at this point. Bad breath, don't like it. And isn't it amazing people that walk up to you and talk to you, especially those people that get right up near into your comfort zone, who have bad breath? It's like you want to say, "Don't you realize you have bad breath? How can it be in your mouth and you don't taste that? And you don't even know that it's going on?"

It's interesting how people can have bad breath and not know they have bad breath and I think it's the same with corrupting talk, halitosis if you will, verbal halitosis. It's when we often say things, we'll see it in other people when they say something that seems harmful, hurtful, corruptive, but when we say it, we don't really have we don't see it.

Now that's a universal problem. Romans chapter 2 says we're great at seeing sin in other people, we just have a hard time putting the mirror up and seeing it ourselves. And when it comes to words, I guess there's some kind of spiritual exercise where we need to do a lot of this with our words: assess them.

I've got to learn to assess my own words to see if whether or not what I'm saying is corrupted. Now God's word's got to be the standard. So let's look in the context, go up if you would to verse number 25. He's spoken here in verse 25 written to us about a kind of speech he calls falsehood. "Therefore, having put away falsehood." Let's talk about lying words, lying words.

Now I'm never going to advocate full disclosure of every thought you ever had. Don't say everything you think. But when it comes to what I do say, it ought to be truthful. It ought not be false. Think about the deception of flattery, flattery. Jot this reference down and it's very insightful.

Psalm 12 verse 2, the psalmist is talking in Psalm 12 verse 2 about the problem of flattery and here's how he starts: "Everyone utters lies to their neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak." There's the picture of deception. When I'm speaking to someone and I have one kind of apparent heart toward you when I speak to you, then I turn my back and speak to some confidant of mine and I make it very clear and it may just be self-reflexive thoughts I have that make it clear I didn't mean anything I just said to you.

Why would anybody flatter? Now don't confuse this with some kind of compliment. A real compliment in the scripture is me giving you a gift, a verbal gift with no strings attached that is sincere and accurate. The Bible would encourage that. But the thing about flattery is they're the same kind of complimentary words, it's just I don't believe it, I don't buy it, I'm not sincere about it.

"Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak." We need a singular heart, a sincere heart. Flattery, how about this one, boasting? Boasting is some kind of exaggerated expression that embellishes the reality of myself.

We got flattery and boasting. Now I want to talk about slanderous words. Slanderous words is precisely the pattern and paradigm of boasting, it's just inverted. Boasting accentuates, it exaggerates, it puts a spin on things that have some kernel of truth in it, but it makes more of it than it is in my own self-promotion.

Now I turn it around to slander. It's my making more of and exaggerating and elaborating on something that's bad in someone else to make a more serious response from the hearers in a negative way, a condemning way toward that person. So it's just the same as boasting, only it's turned from an angry heart to try and do some kind of damage in someone else's life.

Slander, there's much we could say about it, but it comes as verse 31 says from bitterness and you're not going to have bitterness unless you don't deal with your anger before the proverbial sun goes down, which is a way to say right away. When you have wrath and anger and clamor, you're going to be sure to have a lot of slander pouring out of your mouth.

Those are the angry words we need to be done with. Be angry but don't sin. It would be sin for me to slander. Gossip, Proverbs chapter 17, verse 9: "Whoever covers an offense seeks love." I'm not going to expose it, I'm not going to talk about it, I'm not going to embellish it, I'm not going to let people shine the light on it. I'm not even, I'm just not even going to talk about it.

That's a loving person. I'm not saying you lie to cover it, but I'm just saying it's not something you shine the flashlight on. Next line, Proverbs 17:9: "but whoever repeats the matter," whoever goes out there and continues to share it with people, that's the hating heart. That's the heart that wants to separate people from each other, separating close friends.

When there's a problem, if you want to be a solution to the problem, go deal with the person, go talk to the person. You don't need to share it with all your friends to be part of the remedy. One more category, Ephesians chapter 5, verse 4: "Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking."

Let's call this crude words, crude words. Words that are crude and usually like this text says, a lot of times it's an attempt at humor. I want words coming out of my mouth not to be harmful, not to be stinky in God's perspective. Crude words, no subcategories there, it's not worth articulating. You know them when you hear them.

I hope as you breathe into your palms, so to speak, you'll start to recognize when they come out of your mouth. Be ruthless about them. Just like Jesus said. I know it's hyperbolous, but look at those things and say, "I'm going to bite off my tongue if I say that again."

Bottom of verse 29, Ephesians chapter 4. Instead of that corrupting talk, that sapros stinky talk, that putrid talk, you need to only let words out of your mouth that are good for building up. Are these words going to help? Are they going to build up? "That it may give grace to those who hear."

Number two on your outline let's put it this way: we need to be intentional, intentional, thoughtful, and strategic about helpful words. Be intentional about helpful words. Replace harmful words for helpful.

Dave Druey: You're listening to Pastor Mike Fabarez here on Focal Point. You've just heard a portion of the message called The Fight to Harness Our Words, and you can get the complete unabridged study when you go online to focalpointradio.org. Look for the series titled Taming Fire.

Today, Pastor Mike warned that unfettered words can destroy, but the right words spoken at the right time have the power to heal. It's such a great reminder of the power of words and why each of us needs to be firmly rooted in the truth of God's Word. We trust these teachings from Pastor Mike strengthen your engagement with scripture, providing you with biblical insights to share with people in your sphere of influence.

And to help you grasp the magnitude of God's faithfulness, we want to send you Herbert Lockyer's All the Promises of the Bible. This resource examines every commitment God extends throughout scripture, demonstrating how his pledges speak directly to your circumstances today. Lockyer arranges promises thematically, addressing subjects from everyday sustenance and spiritual vitality to lasting hope in God's constant companionship.

Request All the Promises of the Bible when you donate today by calling 888-320-5885 or donate online at focalpointradio.org. Have a question you'd like Pastor Mike to address? Well, we want to hear from you. Submit it online at focalpointradio.org or post it on Facebook at facebook.com/pastormike.

Looking for a unique way to grow spiritually while experiencing the beauty of fall? Join Pastor Mike from September 19th through the 26th for an unforgettable cruise adventure through New England and Canada. This voyage combines thought-provoking Bible teaching with visits to historic ports like Boston, Halifax, and Quebec City.

Grammy-winning worship artists Keith and Kristyn Getty will minister alongside us and you'll forge friendships with fellow Christians while enjoying breathtaking fall landscapes. Cabins are filling quickly, so claim yours today at focalpointradio.org.

I'm Dave Druey wishing you a refreshing weekend ahead and plan to join us next time as we keep unpacking the truth and authority of scripture right here on Focal Point.

Guest (Male): Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.