Speaker 1
Are you obsessed with sports or has your kid's athletic schedule taken your family hostage? Well, you're not alone. Today on Focal Point, we're having a timely conversation with Pastor Mike Fabarez about one of America's favorite pastimes.
I'm Dave Drouy, your host here on Focal Point. Glad you could join us today because around this time each week we have a standing appointment with Pastor Mike. It's a chance to sit down one on one and ask those tough questions about life and faith while getting some clear answers. We welcome your questions as well. Stay tuned to find out how to contact us.
In the meantime, let's join executive director Jay Wharton inside the Pastor Study for this edition of Ask Pastor Mike. Jay.
Speaker 2
Thanks, Dave. I am here with Pastor Mike and Pastor Mike.
We have a question from a listener. It's about sports. As a sports fan, I enjoy football. This question worries me just a little bit.
Should Christians watch or play sports, and what about the competitive side of it?
Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, and this is a good question. I've been asked before about the topic of sports in general. And I think one way to look at this is to look within the Scripture. See, anytime the Bible touches on the topic, it does so in a way that can be insightful.
In what way? Well, it's used as an analogy, for instance, throughout the New Testament. Wrestling, boxing, track— all those things are used, and Paul employs them as illustrations of concepts that are compatible or have some reference to the Christian life. I always say, if something is inherently immoral, would you ever find the apostle Paul using it or enlisting it as an illustration? You wouldn't find prostitution or stealing or anything like that being used as an illustration of how to live the Christian life.
So, I can't possibly believe that the aspect of the competitive nature of sports is somehow inherently wrong because the Bible is freely using it as an example. Sometimes the example is that someone wins and someone loses. We see these competitors compete. Paul says to the Corinthians to win this wreath that's going to perish. I mean, we are competing, and we are competing in a way where we're either going to win or lose, right?
When it comes to the competition, if you will, of sound doctrine and truth about Christ and what justification is, all those issues— I mean, clearly there are winners and losers, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. So, no, there's nothing inherently evil about sports per se.
Speaker 2
Well, there's winners and losers in the sense that some go to heaven, some go to hell, but what about all the ones that are going to heaven Are there winners and losers there, so to speak?
Speaker 1
Sure.
Speaker 3
Yeah. And 1 Corinthians, chapter three would reference that. You've got people there at the Bema seat of Christ, and there is a suffering of loss for those who find that their lives, as is analogized in that passage, filled with wood, hay, and straw, and there's too much of that. What they have, when that's all put under the examination of God, is left with very little. They have very little gold, silver, and precious stones. So, you know, they suffer loss because they made stupid and foolish investments of their time and their priorities and their lives here on earth.
So even in that regard, they're winners and losers. Sure. I mean, think about Jesus saying to the disciples, you know, when we have that debate about who's the greatest and who can sit at my right hand and left. Jesus didn't say, stop talking about that. You know, stop talking about this hierarchy of, you know, who's going to sit at the top of the table here with me. He didn't say that. He said, that's not right now for me to decide. That's the Father's decision.
And, you know, this is going to happen. It's just, this is not how we're going to deal with it right now, with your mom coming to ask who's going to do that. You know, there's a lot more to that passage, but the point is, clearly there is Matthew 19, I think, of the 12 apostles sitting on the 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel. Clearly there are winners and losers, if you want to think in those terms.
Everyone in the kingdom obviously is a winner, but you're going to lose certain things in terms of privilege or responsibility or blessing in the kingdom because of foolish decisions. Your Christian life, and I've heard you.
Speaker 2
Illustrate that with being at the fair and having a prize pie or something where the judge gives you a blue ribbon or a right.
Speaker 3
Yeah. There's two kinds of judgment, right? The judgment of heaven and hell. And that's a judgment that's used with the word in the Bible. It's the same word used for us going before the Bema seat of Christ. We're going to be judged on our lives. It's a different kind of judgment.
You have the judge at the county fair, you have the judge at the county courthouse. They're deciphering someone's behavior, but one is for reward and one is for some kind of retribution. And all I'm saying is just because you can be rewarded or not rewarded doesn't mean there's certainly not a gradation for the Bema seat or that you're not going to be disappointed that you didn't do better in terms of living your life a certain way.
And that is an error. Today in a lot of modern theology, it's like, hey, straight A's for everybody. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter.
Speaker 2
Everybody gets a reward, everybody gets the.
Speaker 3
Prize, everyone gets the gold, the trophy. And I'm thinking, hey, that seems to be reflective of a lot of stuff going on in our culture.
Yeah, Air Johnny gets an award and Brian gets an award and Jimmy gets an award. Everybody gets the same award.
It's not how it is in the Bible, clearly.
Speaker 2
Well, if competition and sports are okay to participate in how much should we be doing this? What if your child has a game on a Sunday or, you know, it interferes with church or maybe church related activities? How far do we take this?
Speaker 3
Well, yeah, you have to be careful with raising children and making sure you instill in your children. We're supposed to raise them in the way they should go so that when they're old they won't depart from it.
And we certainly don't want to allow anything to supplant the priority of the local church, the Bride of Christ, the teaching of the Word, fellowship with other Christians. So that needs to be a priority.
My kids, when they were young, playing in organized sports, clearly there were times when the game would conflict with certain things at church. One of the advantages we have here at our church is that we have multiple services, and a lot of times we could two-step around that and be able to get them to their game and still go to church. Not everybody has that luxury.
Speaker 2
Sometimes there had to be some conflicts.
Speaker 3
Sometimes there were conflicts. And I think you have to be wise as a parent to continue to impress on your kids that church comes first. All right? This is not a career for them. You're not a professional golfer that has to play on a Sunday and go to church on Sunday night or something like that. You're a kid, and you need to be showing your kids the priority of the local church and of the word of God.
Unfortunately, a lot of parents just don't have the strength as a parent to put their foot down and make that a priority. My kids have missed things because of church events, and that's just the way they have to see the prioritization of their parents and what we expect from them while they live in our home.
Speaker 2
What are some of the warning signs that we might see that Sports has become an idol.
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think that's like anything else. When you see your mind and your life being all about finding my identity in something else. This is all I think about. This is all I want to be good at. This is what I want to be known for.
Anything can supplant my identity in Christ and my goal to serve and love God. And it can be a man's job, it can be a wife's appearance, it can be the house that you live in. It can be your kids and their sports, could be an adult in his sports.
So I think the problem is something you can see, no matter what the object is, is it becoming something that displaces the priority, the ultimate priority of God.
Speaker 2
In my life, we're becoming great in the world rather than great in the kingdom of God.
Speaker 3
Right. And that's God's concern. And all of that will not last. What lasts is what we do in terms of serving Christ. I understand you can serve Christ in a lot of different arenas, even in athletics, but we have to make sure that we're not just throwing a Jesus tag on top of something to justify the fact that my life is really all about this thing, when it should not ever be all about anything except my relationship with God.
That may sound bizarre to people who are listening to this right now. I'm not saying we don't participate in those things, but, you know, when Paul looks at his life and he says in Galatians, the world is crucified to me and I to it. The idea of whether or not we are going to see our identity and our worth in something other than Christ, that's easy to do.
I need to say nothing's going to take the place of that. That has to be my goal. And so if I do play sports, I'm playing sports for the glory of God. I know that if I'm doing that, I'm never going to allow that to take so much of my attention or my time or my effort or my loyalty, that somehow God and his agenda is supplanted in my life.
Speaker 2
Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. I'm sure this conversation has been a challenge to some of the sports parents and sporting fans out there.
But I hope it's also an encouragement.
And in our remaining time together, we're going to listen to a message you gave called "How to Keep Running When You Feel Like Giving."
Speaker 4
Today, more than ever, it seems that our world is filled with weary, tired, and discouraged people. People are giving up on their jobs. Over 3 million people quit their job this year. You've got students giving up on school. Do you know that one out of every five adults in our country didn't finish high school? And about 18% of the people that enroll and pay money in college end up dropping out and never getting the advantage of their investment. Couples are giving up on their marriages, and you don't need to be told that. You know the stats on that. Over half the people in our country end their marriages in divorce, and about 60% in their marriages here in the state of California. Parents are giving up on their kids. You don't want me to quote the abortion statistics in our country. And I guess ultimately some people are so weary, discouraged, and tired that they give up on life itself. Over 30,000 people a year in our country successfully end their lives. That's 82 people a day that say, "You know what? I've had enough. I'm fed up. Forget it, I quit." Add to that the 400,000 people per year that attempt suicide, and you've got a lot of statistics that reflect the weary, discouraged culture that we live in.
You've got some discouraged people. Well, thank God that Christians don't get discouraged and grow weary and tired. Right? I mean, I'm so glad. We never feel like giving up on anything. Oh, you do? Okay. You know, there are a lot of godly people that feel like giving up. As a matter of fact, the most godly people I know, lives that have graced the pages of the Bible, are lives that have felt like giving up. And I mean giving up on everything. Moses, I assume you would think would be a pretty godly man, right? Numbers 11 records these words. He once said, "If this is how things are to be, Lord, put me to death right now." He reached the end of his rope. How about Elijah? Hard to pick a man who is more powerful and more respected than the great prophet Elijah. He once said in 1st Kings 19, "I have had enough, Lord, please take my life." I mean, if the biblical greats struggled with discouragement that was that profound and sincere, then how in the world are we, as just your average Christians today, supposed to succeed in our fight against discouragement and fatigue that comes from a weary heart?
Well, I'm glad you asked that, because I'm going to give you some answers from Hebrews 12. I'd like you to circle, as I often do, the key words in this passage, and the one that sits right in the center, which is what this passage in this message is all about, is the word "Perseverance." Do you see that? Let us run in the middle of verse one with perseverance, the race that is marked out for us. Perseverance. That word translates a little Greek word that I'd like to reveal to you. It's the word "hupomne." Hupomne. It's a great word to expose to you because it's so graphic in how it's made up. It's a compound word made up of two simple parts. "Hupo," which is a Greek preposition, which simply means under or underneath, and the verb "meno" or "mene," which means to stay, to remain, to abide, underneath, under, stay, remain, abide.
I suppose we could illustrate Hupomne by the Olympics. These huge guys get these huge barbells loaded with an immense amount of weight, sometimes upwards and over 500 pounds. They bear up under this weight. And you've seen them, right? They sit there and jiggle, and they hold that weight. That's hupomne. I'm able to, underneath all the pressure, hang tough. I can stay there. I can hang in there. I cannot collapse. The text says that's what we need. And it may be of interest to you or maybe a little confusing to you perhaps, that the Christian life would require hupomne. I mean, why in the world would we need hupomne for the Christian life? Because we've heard it advertised so long as kind of a stroll in the park, right? You come to Christ and things get better; they don't get worse. And yet it was the founder who advertised the walk of the Christian like this. He said, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself." You know the rest. Take up his cross and follow me. The Christian life certainly requires hupomne.
And you can remember when Christ took up his cross and literally walked through the streets of Jerusalem. The text says he collapsed under the weight of the cross. Now, for you and I, it's not a very identifiable analogy to think about a man carrying his cross because the only time we've seen it is when old Joe or Herbert or Fred, you know, portrayed Christ in the Easter drama or the Good Friday drama. And, you know, that's all we know of it. We don't know of the real agony of dragging crosses through the town and watching people be crucified. But thankfully, the Bible is filled with a variety of other analogies that help us with this. First Corinthians says, and Paul analogized it this way, the Christian life is like a never-ending boxing match. The book of Ephesians also says the Christian life is like a wrestling match that never ends. And here in our passage, the writer of Hebrews analogizes the Christian life to running a race.
If you'll take a look at that word that's used for race, this is not the word in any way that can be translated a sprint. This is not the 50-yard dash, nor is it the 100-yard dash. The word here clearly represents a long-distance test of endurance. God is saying that for us to succeed in the Christian life, we are going to need an indispensable ingredient called perseverance. But I like to work through it backwards because I think in this passage there are some things assumed that we need to get kind of brought up to speed on. One is, if you'll look at the bottom of verse one, something about the race that is marked out for us. Now that's a very clear, concise, almost a mathematical phrase that tells us that there is a course that has been designed for us that is marked out clearly. As a matter of fact, the word literally translated means it is set there before us. The com and the markers are there. There is a course.
And I think the first thing we need, number one on your outline if we are going to acquire more hupomne, is that you and I work hard to understand, or I put it this way, know the course we're called to run. Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Second Thessalonians and let's highlight this verse in our Bibles and understand this as a good summation of all that the Christian life is. The kind of life that Christ wanted to analogize and compare to carrying a cross. The kind of life that the Apostle Paul compared to boxing or wrestling or warfare. The kind of life that our passage says is compared to running a long-distance marathon. Second Thessalonians, chapter three. Look if you would, at verse number 13 just for a great concise statement about the kind of life that needs perseverance. Second Thessalonians 3:13 says, "As for you brothers, never." And there's our concept of hupomne. Don't grow weary, don't lose heart, don't give up. What? Never tire of doing what is right.
You want to summarize the Christian life in practical terms? Put it down this way in your mind. It is a calling to do what is right. Circle that verse if you would. That should jump off the page for us because we are in a long-distance race to do what is right. First John 3:7 says, "Dear children, don't let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous." It is a commitment that you and I are called to as followers of Christ that is going to require some discipline and some endurance and perseverance that the Bible characterizes and summarizes as doing what is right. In whose eyes? His? Not mine? Not theirs? Not the world's. And is that that hard? Is that really all that tough?
I saw a T-shirt once, and a lot of Christian T-shirts aren't worth the cotton they're printed on. But this one was really pretty good. It had a picture on the front of it of a bunch of fish swimming in one direction. And there was a little fish swimming the wrong way, but the wrong way was the right way. And here's the problem with doing right: if you want to do right, your right will be different than the world's right. Your calling and my calling will require perseverance because you and I are called to do right in a world that calls right wrong and calls the wrong thing right. Have you experienced that? You and I are called to do what Christ did.
And by the way, that leads me to another point. We're all familiar with Romans 8:28, aren't we? We hear this quoted; I can't get through a week of my Christian life without someone quoting this to me. We're always throwing around Romans 8:28. But I want to show you that the goal of the Christian life, as seen by God himself, is a marked-out decreed course from heaven itself, to do what's right. But if we have any question about what that is, it's clarified for us in Romans 8:28-29. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him. Now, you're familiar with this, right? Notice the last phrase of verse 28: "Those who have been called according to his purpose." Well, there's a period there, but there's more to this thought. I'm begging the question, what's his purpose for my life? If you have any doubts, we should just always in the Bible, when you get a confusing verse, keep reading verse 29. "For those God foreknew, he also predestined." What's that mean? God has a purpose for us. He's decreed a path for us. He's got a goal for us. And what is that goal? "To be conformed to the likeness of His Son." We're all called to do the same thing. Our course is all the same: do what's right.
Now, by God's sovereignty, he chooses to put different obstacles on different courses. If you're taking notes, you might want to jot down James 1:2-4. You know the passage, I suppose. It says, "Consider it joy." As a matter of fact, literally, it says, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of various kinds," or trials of many sorts, and you never know what those might be, and I don't know what yours are, and you don't know what mine are, and they're all different. But the goal is the same. As we conquer these and do what Christ would do in the midst of them, the text says, you'll know that the testing of that faith develops. Guess what the word is? Hupomne. Perseverance. And perseverance must finish its work so that you can be even better at doing what's right. You'll be teleos. You'll be complete. You'll be able to do the right thing, lacking in nothing.
One last passage, and I want to sum it all up with this. In Isaiah, chapter 40, God wants to infuse you with hupomne, to be able to endure and persevere with fortitude and determination, continuing to do what's right, no matter what obstacles God puts in your course, in your path. The text reads this way. Isaiah 40. Drop your eyes down to verse 28. It's almost rhetorical; it's almost sarcastic. "Don't you know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary. It is understanding. No one can fathom." And you know what he does, verse 29. "He gives strength to the weary." Are you weary? "He increases the power of the weak." You feel weak? "Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the Lord, they will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint."
Let's pray. God, we know it is easy for us in our world that seems now more than ever—and I know it's not true, but it feels that way—to affirm that the wrong things are right and the right things are wrong. It's hard to run against that kind of traffic in our world and not be stressed out, not be fatigued, not be tired. Man, a quick scan of the Bible, and I haven't even exhausted the list, has shown me four prophets of God who all got so tired in their walk that they lost heart. They grew weary. They wanted to end it all. But God, help us to remember what we're never to quit from, and that is this course of doing what's right. We can be encouraged that endurance does pay off. Perseverance and stick-to-itiveness and the ability to hang in there when it's hard to bear up under the weight of difficult circumstances is something that all Christians and all people of God have had to deal with. God, infuse us with strength so that we can rise up like those who soar on the wings of eagles. We'll run and not grow weary. We'll walk and not faint. We pray this in the authority of Christ. Amen.
Speaker 1
How to keep running when you feel like giving up—that's the title of today's study on Stick to Itiveness here on Focal Point. It's part of our conversation about sports from today's edition of Ask Pastor Mike. If you joined us a little late today and would like to listen again, or if you'd like to view the message notes, you can find them online free of charge at focalpointradio.org. You can also listen through the free Focal Point app or on many of your favorite podcasting apps.
If you have a question for Pastor Mike, click on the button that says "Ask Pastor Mike" when you visit focalpointradio.org. On our website, you'll also see that right now we're saying thanks for any donation you make this month by sending you a book titled *Heavenly Rewards*. This eye-opening book explores how the choices we make, the sacrifices we offer, and the way we live each day accumulate eternal rewards that will be revealed when we stand before Christ. Don't let the busyness of this life cause you to lose sight of the imperishable inheritance awaiting the faithful. With this book, you'll discover how keeping eternity in view can reshape the way you steward your time, talents, and resources today.
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Just give us a call. Our number is 888-320-5885, or online, go to focalpointradio.org. Well, I'm Dave Drouehe wishing you a wonderful weekend. Be sure to tune in again next time as we continue exploring the depths of scripture right here on Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.
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