Have I Stopped Fighting the Good Fight Without Realizing It?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Declaring war on sin is our obligation. Recognizing when we fall that the grace of God forgives us, that's also an important reminder. Repent, confess it, and get up, and let's move on and keep fighting. You fail? Okay, great. Welcome to the human race. We're all going to fail in our fight against sin. Get up and go. Let's keep fighting. Don't give up.
Dave Druey: There's nothing quite like the energy of a live sporting event. Sitting in the crowd, cheering on the home team or our favorite athlete. But when it's our turn to get out there and play, that's a whole different story. Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez turns to Hebrews chapter 12 and encourages us to fight the good fight. The Bible presents all kinds of men and women who lived lives of ambitious faith. And now it's our turn. Here's Pastor Mike with his message, Spurred On by Godly Examples.
Pastor Mike Fabarez: Do you realize how much of your life, the quality of it, the fulfillment of it, the gratitude, the joy that you experience, it really comes down to this one basic thing: How well are you following the Shepherd? Or are you distracted and are you struggling as you have all these competing forces in your life? With so much hanging on whether we faithfully follow the Shepherd and your life really, the daily quality of it contingent on that, I think it would do us well as we take Hebrews 12 seriously to open ourselves up to God and His Spirit and say, "I need to get serious about this issue. It needs to be priority one, top priority. And I am willing to walk this path and run this race and get serious about fighting all the distractions and everything that wants to take me off the path of walking in step with our great Shepherd." We saw what we called ambitious faith and we looked at all these examples of people that said, "I'm going to follow God and do the right thing and I'm going to trust Him no matter what. I'm going to do that and God is good and it's worth it and I'm going to go after it." Verse after verse and paragraph after paragraph. And finally, we get to chapter 12 in Hebrews, and it's as though the inspired words of Hebrews turn a corner and now it points its attention right at us. Okay, those were the great people who followed me then, but what about you and what about now? Take a look at these words, Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1: "Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses and there are people that have done it well and there's all kinds of examples we could continue to give, but since that's true of them, then how about us? Here's the main verb here: Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us." The writer of Hebrews is crafting together this homiletical bullet that's moving through all these reasons to live for God. And then he says to these people, "Listen, now you live godly lives. This is about you taking all the sin and all the temptation, all the lure and getting it out of the way. Don't be entangled in sin. Let's move forward and live for God and follow the Shepherd faithfully." This is a great passage and there's so much here, but the bottom line is since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of testifiers who have testified to the appropriateness, the value, the reward, the requirement, and the rightness of doing the right thing, here's the deal: Let's throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And bottom line now, let us run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us. There's the heroes, chapter 11. Now you've got a race to run and you better throw that sin out of your life because you've got to run that race. But here's the virtue you're going to need. Circle this word. The virtue that you're going to need is perseverance. I've got to have perseverance. I cannot do it without that. I need to persevere. I cannot think that the Christian life when I become a Christian solves the problem. No, it creates the problem. Now the world is declaring war on my values. My body is rebelling against the resolve to follow Christ. And that battle, as Paul said in the last chapter of the last book he ever wrote in the New Testament, the second epistle to Timothy, he said, listen, it's not until his dying day that he could say this line: "I've fought the good fight. I've finished the race." He doesn't say that till he's about to die. The preceding phrase is "I'm going to be poured out like a drink offering." He's on his deathbed and his amanuensis is standing next to him and he's dictating these words. "I'm dying tonight. And because I'm dying, I've finished the race. I've fought the good fight and now I'm going to get the crown that's stored up for me." Do you think Paul was a godly guy? I'm thinking he was. I'd like to have him as my Sunday school teacher. He's a pretty godly guy. And the Bible says that on his deathbed, he finally could say, "Now I'm done." What does that mean? That means you're going to be fighting this thing for the rest of your life. How old are you? Think about it. Ten years from now, if you're still alive, you're going to be fighting this fight. Young people, 35 years from now, if the Lord tarries and you're still alive, you're going to be fighting this fight. You're going to win a battle, maybe in the next eight weeks over some area of your life, and then it's going to creep up and the onslaught and the battle and the temptation and the opportunity for sin, it's going to come again and you're going to have to fight it all over again. Wow, tired of fighting it. Couldn't this be easier? No, it's not going to be easier. It will be a lifelong struggle. It's not a sprint. The picture here is a marathon. And a marathon means it's going to hurt the whole time. Running is excruciating. Why do people do that? You don't need to do that. But in the Christian life, you have to do it. And when you're sucking air and there's all that self-talk going on, "Oh come on, I can do this." I was in a little running club. I was in a marathon club. I know that's shocking. It was junior high, okay? A long time ago. Lean and mean Mike in junior high. And I remember the 50-mile club. We were running 50 miles, not at one time, after school every day. It was the most ridiculous, excruciating thing I ever did. But I think to myself, all those thoughts you have when you're running. Some runners here? Some of you healthy ones who run? I don't understand, but you run. What goes through? You're just dying inside. And I'm sure you say this: "Keep going." Don't you? "Keep going. Keep going." When you have the ability to do that, that's called perseverance. But there's a word that underlies this that translates it from the original Greek New Testament to our English translations that is so descriptive. I want you to write it down. Some of you have been around for a while. You've heard me preach on this word. We've done whole sermons on this word. But the word in the Greek New Testament right here that translates perseverance is the Greek word hupomone. I'd like you to write it down. And plus it rhymes, so it's kind of cute. You and I need to pray, number three, for hupomone. Pray for hupomone. It does rhyme. Why do you need to teach me a Greek word all of a sudden? Here's the reason. This little compound word has two distinct parts. Hupo is a preposition. Hupo is the Greek preposition that describes something underneath something. Hyper, and we get all these from Greek. Hyper, you're hyperactive, that means you're overly active. Hupo, like hypothermia, that means your temperature is too low. Hupo means something that's underneath. And what God now does in this text by the Holy Spirit, He gives us this verb: meno. The root of this word, meno. And he says hupomeno, you're going to stay under. Meno is the word to stay, to remain, to be resolved, to don't move. Just stay there. Don't move. You can handle it. Don't give up, don't quit, don't fall down. And I'm always thinking of this word when I go to Israel with our group and we have the Bedouins with their camels. Remember that? Those of you that traveled to Israel with us? They've got their camels there. And then there's inevitably always the portly, stout couple that comes up and wants to ride it tandem. They want to ride it together. Camels are interesting animals. And those camels, they're very expressive about their displeasure for the weight of the riders. You watch them. Little kids get on them, no problem. But when you get the big, stout, portly couple saying, "Please, Pastor, take a picture of us," and the camel stands up and it always goes [grunting sound]. You watch. And they hate it. But the Bedouin sticking the ones in his pocket, he's going, "No, no. Come on, come on." Speaking in Arabic to the camel. "Come on." And the camel [grunting sound]. And you know what? I've yet to see the camel toss the big stout couple off his back. Every time, those camels, they may not like it, they may feel the strain on their back, they hupomone. They bear up under. They stay under. They don't toss, they don't fall down, they don't quit. You and I need to pray for hupomone. I just came back from this vacation. We were having a little time in this coastal town and we went to the lobby of the hotel and we said, "We want to do something with our family." We've got a family, three young kids. "What's good?" "Oh, you need to go on this little boat, and this boat ride's really cool. And they let you go in this little cove and you get to snorkel." Okay, that's okay, we'll do that. So we pay way more than we should for the boat ride at the lobby of the hotel, and then we show up to go on the boat ride. So it's vacation time. I'm in non-pastoral garb and I'm there and tourist ready to go snorkeling. We get on the boat, we sit down, very beginning of the three-hour tour of the harbor. And I sit down and this lady sits down right next to me. I've got my family on this side. She sits down right there and she squares her shoulders up to me. We haven't even launched from the dock yet. And I don't know what, but she just peers at me with her eyes and she leans over and says, "So, what do you do for a living?" "I'm an auto mechanic." I don't want to get into it. Not now, we're just starting. You're going to think I'm weird now. Come on, just let me be with my family. Just, oh! And so then the conviction. Speak the truth to one another. I'm like, "Pastor." "You're what?" "I'm a pastor at a church in California." "Really?" And then she turned her whole body. "Oh, we got to talk." She starts in. And it was great. I want to hear your testimony. Off she goes in her testimony. "Oh, I became a Christian in college and my life was a mess and I came to Christ and got involved in this church and..." and then the story just went on. And then it was like, "You know what, though? My life right now is so hard." She's got a family which she's totally ignoring, and they've just wandered off on the boat somewhere. She's squaring me up and my family's lost interest in me at that point. "And now my life is just awful. It's just awful. My marriage is just in the dumps and my kids I just..." and then she says, "And I'm thinking of taking my life." I said, "Well, then we need to talk." And here's the problem. She grew up in a church in her college days and early marriage where they taught her the Christian life solves your problems. It'll be great. And I said, "Well, you need to go to our church, because I remind them every week it's not supposed to be great. Your Christian life's going to be a battle." And you know what passage I was in that morning? Hebrews chapter 12. And I said, "Listen, I got a passage for you. You got to run with endurance the race that is set out for you. You need to run with perseverance. You need hupomone, and you better start asking God for it. Because it wasn't meant to be easy. You're going to fight the good fight until the very last day and God doesn't want you to quit. He wants you to keep fighting it." "I know it's hard and I know there's marital issues and I know your job's an awful thing, but here's the deal: you got to fight this." I said, "Do you remember Isaiah chapter 40?" I said, "What does it say? Here the prophet calls out and he says, 'Have you not heard? Don't you know? The Lord, the God of the universe, He does not grow weary. He doesn't get tired. He doesn't faint, He doesn't sleep. But here's the deal and here's the next verse and it's so good.' It says He gives strength to the weary." "Those who wait on the Lord, they'll renew their hope, they'll renew their strength. If you hope in God, fight the good fight and keep fighting it, because you're going to fight it till the end of your life. But hope in God, ask God. God wants to give strength to the weary. Even though young men they stumble and fall, they do. People get tired. You grow weary, they're exhausted. Here's those who hope in the Lord, they'll renew their strength. They will mount up on wings like eagles. They'll run and not get weary. They'll walk and not faint." I said, "No fainting, no killing yourself, no ending your life. Get back in the game." And it was so great to watch her countenance just pick up and say, "You're right." And at the end, she's high-fiving me, thanking my wife for taking her husband away. And you know what? "I'm going to go fight the battle." And you know what grieved my heart the most? She's never heard that stuff. Going to church every week and hearing, "Oh hey, you know what? It's going to be great." It's a fight. You and I got to fight sin. We got to fight sin in our lives and when it comes up and it creeps into our lives, we got to say it's a battle. Let's just fight the battle. And if you need endurance and you will, you know where to get it. You get it from God. And by the way, let me just point this out. Once you're done praying for it and you got to pray for this every day, get off your knees and remember what we learned in chapter 10 of Hebrews. There is no one in this room who can do this on their own. No one. You and I are all called to do this together. The Bible says this: it says you and I ought to be spurring one another on to love and good deeds. I mean the thing about her was, and I found out in her testimony, now she's lagging on her church attendance. Well, I think you're going to the wrong church, but let's get you in a better church and then let's get there. Not just on Sundays. Get involved. And immediately I said, here's the problem. Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together, as is the habit of some, but encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. What's the assumption? As we see the day approach, things will get harder. And as things get harder in our world, in our families, in our lives, here's the deal: we're going to need each other even more. So as you pray for hupomone, know this, God is going to take His hand on your back and push you into the center of the life of your church. He is going to say what you need now to encourage, bolster and strengthen that hupomone is your church family. The word that is translated in Hebrews chapter 10 "encourage one another" is the word parakaleo, to come alongside of. The church will be called alongside of you to encourage you. Here's the deal: you and I need to say we need it now more than ever. We need to be more involved. All the more as you see the day approaching. You'd be better off playing basketball with your brothers in Christ at Compass Bible Church on Sunday night than sitting in front of the TV and flipping channels on Sunday night. You realize that? Because here's a group of guys together playing basketball and reaching out into our community to lead people to Christ. Do you think that might help encourage you to say no to temptation and to walk a path of righteousness? Absolutely. Do you think you got a better chance of saying no and winning battles over sin and temptation if you were in the trenches with our kids helping them learn Bible verses in Awana on Thursday nights? I think you will. I don't know what you're doing the weekend of men's retreat, men. I don't know what you're doing the weekend of women's retreat, women. But I guarantee you got a better chance of having hupomone and winning battles against sin if you're sitting there sacrificing all your domestic responsibilities for a weekend to say, "Let us learn together and bolster our relationships with one another and learn what God's word has to say in a unique setting that will equip us to live for God." This is not just, "Hey, we want more work for the staff. Let's put a bunch of stuff on the calendar this fall." The point is that you and I need this and we need it all the more as we see the day approaching. And I do not understand those churches out there that think it's really cool or godly to say, "Well, we don't want to take any more of your time up." We're not a commune. We're not moving in together. So don't worry about that. Next they want us to live at the church. No, you don't live at the church. You got a job, you got a neighborhood. Go live there. And I guarantee you'll still have opportunity for evangelism and outreach. But a couple more hours at the church this week, that'd probably be a good thing. Another night at a small group called a Home Bible Fellowship where we really dig deep and apply God's word. That'd probably do well for your fight against sin. Because Satan's strategy is to isolate you. Because if he can get you away from the group, you've seen National Geographic. Those animals go after that struggling wildebeest. He's out there. "I don't know, I don't want to go with the group." Great! I'm going to eat you then. That's what the roaring lion says. And here's the deal: that's just exactly what Satan would want to do to you. You need hupomone. You need to pray for it and you need to know this: once you pray for it, God's going to put His hand on the small of your back and say, "There's your church, go get involved." And I'm not trying to just create more activity at the church. I'm trying to say that's what you and I need and all the more as we see the day approaching. Well, we got to fight. There are a lot of good reasons for fighting. We need hupomone to fight. Let me just give you one short word. Let me give you one verse that may help tie this together for those of you that came in under a cloud of conviction and you're already afflicted and you're going, "Oh, this makes me feel even worse. I'm such a loser. I can't live righteously." One verse. Ready? 1 John chapter 2. Last verse of the day. 1 John chapter 2. Sermons like this, sermons on sin, they afflict the comfortable, but maybe we need to comfort the afflicted for just a second. You come in here, you go, "Wow, that's just what I need: a reminder of what a sinful loser I am." That's the wrong attitude. I know Hebrews 12 is designed to get us to fight sin. But if you've been fighting it and you're coming in here and you're weary from the fight this week, and you have been on your A-game fighting sin, please know this: that if you failed at it a few times next Thursday when you stumble and fall, remember this passage. 1 John chapter 2, verse number 1: "My dear children," the apostle John writes. I write this to you so that you will not sin. That's the goal. But if anyone does sin, and he's already said we're all going to fail. Punctuated failure. It's going to happen. Remember this: we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense. This is not an adversarial relationship. We've got a friend here, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. John is speaking to this little Jewish group out there and he says, "Just don't think it's just for us." He says, "And for the sins of the whole world." There'll be people 2,000 years from now on some little coastal county on the other side of the planet, and Christ's death covers their sin as well. The atonement on the cross paid it all. This is not about penance. It's not about purgatory. Are you tracking with this? I understand our sins are covered by the grace of God and the cross of Christ. It is. I'm all there with you. Declaring war on sin is our obligation. Recognizing when we fall that the grace of God forgives us, that's also an important reminder. So if you're coming in here going, "Don't lay on another layer of guilt about my sin," guilt has one purpose in scripture. One purpose: to lead you to repentance. Repent, confess it, and get up and let's move on and keep fighting. You fail? Okay, great. Welcome to the human race. We're all going to fail in our fight against sin. Get up and go. That's why I like that poetic statement in Proverbs 16:24. Says the righteous man, he falls seven times, but he gets up. Just get up. Did you fall a few times this week? You come in discouraged today and you're going, "I didn't need that sermon." Maybe you need this last word: the atonement of Christ has covered your sins. God just wants you to get back up. Let's keep fighting. Don't give up. Let's pray. God, help us to be people that take the fight against sin seriously. We want to get serious about our sanctification. We're not going to throw on a bunch of manmade rules about do's and don'ts here. We just want to look at your word and if it's sin, we want to say it's wrong and we want to declare war on it. And we want to be smart enough, wise enough by your Spirit's leadership in our lives to say if there's an avenue through which sin comes, we want to shut it down. It is not worth it. God, I pray that you would help us to declare war on sin, always remembering we're not trying to earn our place into your family. It is not about some meritorious structure that keeps us out of purgatory. This is all about the reality that our lives are indebted to the grace of God. That the grace of God, because it's forgiven us completely and Christ said tetelestai, paid in full, that all of our sins, past, present and future, have been atoned for. God, it's just a reminder that that kind of grace instructs us to deny ungodliness. So we want to take that beckoned call, we want to take it seriously. We want to respond rightly. So God, give us the courage, the discernment, the wisdom and even, God, the boldness to say to you, try us, search our hearts, see if there's any wicked way in us. God, we want to be changed, we want to be transformed, we want to be more like your Son. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Dave Druey: You're listening to Pastor Mike Fabarez on Focal Point and a message titled Spurred On by Godly Examples. It's part of our current series called Our Fight with Sin. And every lesson from this study is available to stream and share at focalpointradio.org. Or download the free Focal Point app and subscribe to the podcast. At Focal Point, we're committed to delivering clear, verse-by-verse Bible teaching to the widest possible audience. And listeners like you make that happen. Through your generous giving, Pastor Mike's expositional preaching reaches people by internet, podcast, app, and on radio stations across the country. If you've been equipped by these daily programs, we invite you to join the mission by becoming a Focal Point Partner. It's easy to sign up. Just call us at 888-320-5885 or go online to focalpointradio.org. To show our appreciation for your gift today, we'd love to put this month's featured resource in your hands. It's a powerful book by David Klotfelter titled *Sinners in the Hands of a Good God*. Klotfelter sets out to answer a question that every serious Christian needs to grapple with: How do we hold together God's absolute holiness and His genuine, active goodness toward sinners? He gives an honest, scripturally-grounded answer that will reframe the way you think about God's character and your own standing before Him. This is an important book and we want you to have it. So request your copy of *Sinners in the Hands of a Good God* when you give a generous donation to Focal Point today. To give and make your request, call us at 888-320-5885. Again, that's 888-320-5885. Or give online at focalpointradio.org. You can also send your donation by mail. Just write to us at Focal Point, P.O. Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654. And by the way, when you get in touch for the first time, we'll be sure to send you a free copy of Pastor Mike's booklet, *Storing Up Treasures*. Call today at 888-320-5885 or contact us online at focalpointradio.org. I'm Dave Druey, inviting you back again tomorrow when Pastor Mike Fabarez shifts our focus to the ultimate example of endurance, Jesus Himself. That's Thursday here on Focal Point.
Pastor Mike Fabarez: Hey there, Pastor Mike here. We're almost out of time, but before we go, I wanted to personally invite you to contact us here. Let us know how we can be praying for you. Head on over to focalpointradio.org and click the contact page, or send me a note on Facebook, facebook.com/pastormike, or x.com/pastormike. Can't wait to hear from you. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.