Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Today on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis.

James Kaddis: We're at war. We are. Whether or not anybody wants to admit it, we are at war. That's number one. Number two, and this one is perhaps a little bit more condemning. This is a little bit more harsh. But your comfort is going to kill your spiritual walk. Your comfort will literally kill your spiritual walk. You can never ever ever ever be off guard. You can never ever relax. You can never ever rest.

Guest (Male): I have found the peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you. Cuz all I need is you.

Guest (Male): In the words of the late great Walter Martin, Christians who fail to engage in this spiritual war become the first casualties of it. Perhaps one of the leading factors that contribute to this type of casualty is the desire for comfort over prayer and obedience. Today on Light on the Hill, we're going to talk about what may be one of the most important passages in the Bible to give us a better understanding of what all this means. Here's Pastor James Kaddis in Mark chapter 14.

James Kaddis: Okay, Mark chapter 14. Now, before we get into the text that we're going to get into, there is one aspect of our discussion that I feel the need to reiterate, and that is the fact that Jesus in the way that he generally operated with people was very different from what you might expect anybody to do. As a matter of fact, as you know, and of course, we've had this conversation on multiple occasions, Jesus was unique on a lot of levels. Besides the fact that he's the son of God and is God at the same time, besides the fact that he's the creator of the universe, besides the fact that he's committed no sin, uh besides the fact that he came very missionally understanding the fact that he was saving mankind, you know, there's a lot of those unique things that we have to bring up and talk about a little bit.

But perhaps the most consequential aspect of what Christ did day to day was how he interacted with people. You have to understand that Christ was not the type of person that would walk up to somebody, hear what they were saying, and then respond immediately to the words that were being communicated. Rather, Jesus would be the one who would hear words being spoken to him, but never really paid any attention to what those words were. Rather, he paid attention to the heart in which those words came from. And then he would speak to the areas that were maybe necessarily not so visible.

And he was always really good at doing this. Matter of fact, he was so good at doing it that he dealt with issues so much faster than anybody else, and he opened up a lot of people's eyes to understand and discern things about themselves that they could have never ever known had it not been for the intervention of the creator of the universe. And I think there's one emphasis we have to put here, and that is it's critical for us to learn what Christ does when he does these things because they teach us so much about ourselves, number one.

But number two, and perhaps more importantly, we have to understand that God is one who speaks to the invisible. God is one who speaks to the matters of the heart, the things that we often times can't see or often times fail to diagnose. The Lord sees the bigger issues, and he speaks to those issues very vividly. He speaks to those issues in many cases individually uh or in some cases collectively. But the reality of it is he always spoke to the issue that could not be seen. He always spoke to the heart. And guys, we see examples of this all throughout the Bible.

I mean, they're everywhere, okay? You could look at the situation where the woman is at the well, and the woman at the well has a series of questions to ask Jesus, and Jesus responds by saying, hey, go get your husband. And she says, well, I don't have a husband. Jesus says, well, yeah, you're correct, you know, you've actually had five husbands, and the one that you're with right now, no, he's not your husband, you know? And all of a sudden, she walks away after that whole interaction telling the world, I just received something I've never ever experienced.

I was told things about myself that I could never possibly be able to discern on my own. I just met in essence the creator of the universe. And there's something important to understand here because right now you guys I want I cannot emphasize this enough, okay? I just can't. We are living in a world that is covered by spiritual darkness. Like I need you guys to see this. I need you to understand it. I made this prediction several years ago. Now we're in the midst of it, and I think I'm right. And I want to reiterate what I predicted years ago, and that's this.

I believe right now in human history, if you were to look at it as a timeline, we are living in what I believe to be the most greatest, or shall I say active spiritual warfare time in human history. I don't think we have seen more spiritual warfare during this time period than any other time period before it. Now there are only two exceptions to this. I think that we are third to what is first and second. First, I think there was this level of warfare when mankind fell, okay? Well, when mankind pretty much rebelled against God.

The second time that I think we had spiritual warfare this intense is when Christ was crucified. So I think right now, especially living in the world in which we're living today, the most important types of texts we could be looking at, especially if we're concentrating our focus in the Bible, are going to be texts that deal with the creation of mankind and that time period when mankind fell and looking at texts that deal with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Because by examining those two time periods, you're going to be able to better understand how to navigate through these very difficult circumstances and why they're so critical for us to be able to move forward in.

And again, I want to say this. I've said it before, I 'll say it again. I have I have quoted it a million times, and I have no problem giving credit to where credit is due. I love the words of the late great Walter Martin who always used to say this. He said in Christians, if they don't engage in spiritual warfare, they become the first casualties of it. And I think it 's really important because that's exactly what we're seeing here. What I need you to understand is not the failure of the disciples here in the story we're about to read.

What I need you to understand isn't even necessarily the sharp rebuke that Jesus provides to them. What I need you to understand is the pain that Christ is experiencing in recognizing the fact that the people that are ministering with him are not ready to experience the time period upon which they are about to enter. Now, we know that later on God fixes that through the Holy Spirit coming and taking residency in their hearts and giving them all that they need to not only recall the words that Jesus prepared them with, but to also give them the strength to be the witness that God had called them to be.

But in the moment that this is happening, Jesus is recognizing that they're not ready. And unfortunately, we as mankind who read this Bible text time and time and time again, day in and day out, day in and day out, we only look at the failure of the disciples to pray, but we don't recognize the core that drives that failure. We don't take the time to understand why it is so consequential and what it means for us. And the bottom line is this. We're at war. We are. Whether or not anybody wants to admit it, we are at war.

That's number one. Number two, and this one is perhaps a little bit more condemning. This is a little bit more harsh. But your comfort is going to kill your spiritual walk. Your comfort will literally kill your spiritual walk. You can never ever ever ever be off guard. You can never ever relax. You can never ever rest. Tell you an interesting story. This one was oh my goodness. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was writing in um in a police unit, and I was a police chaplain, very active police chaplain. And um I decided that I was going to hop into a unit with a sergeant who was a very aggressive policeman.

I mean, he was very aggressive. As a matter of fact, he was one of those sergeants that, you know, he would go on patrol. Matter of fact, interestingly enough, when he even was a higher ranking guy, he was like another guy that worked with him. He was one of his partners that as a chief would still go out on patrol and arrest people. Like no joke. And this is Southeast Los Angeles County, okay? And so um I get in a police car with him, and this is very early on as a chaplain. And um he sees something that appears to be some pretty ugly activity happening.

He's got this sixth sense in him that something really bad is going on in a vehicle that he sees. And so he initiates a traffic stop, and these people take off. And sure enough, what ends up happening is we leave the city that we're in. We end up in another city. And I get out of the car, but by the time I get out of the car because I'm not nearly as fast as my partner is, I find myself in a very difficult situation because I'm looking at my sergeant literally fighting for his life. Now the reality of it is my sergeant, I know, was more than capable enough of being able to handle the fight because I've seen him fight before, and I uh probably should have been praying for the criminal, to be honest with you.

It was not going to end well for him, okay? I I'd been with this sergeant. Matter of fact, one of the very first encounters that I had with this sergeant was was a shooting that he had got into that was just hellacious. I mean, it was bad, and and he just naturally it was like no big deal to him, right? Tough guy, smart guy. So we see this, and the sergeant doesn't have his radio with him, his walkie talkie because the walkie talkie got ripped off when he got out of the car and it got pulled back, so he had no way of communicating.

So he looks at me and he says, tell dispatch we're here, tell them what's going on. And I just remembered the terrible terrible feeling that I had in my heart, knowing I couldn't run fast, knowing I was not in great physical shape, and realizing I had no idea where we were. It was a terrible feeling. I had to run down to the street corner to find out where we were so I could go back and broadcast it to our dispatchers, completely out of breath. And thank God there was another unit from the neighboring department that saw what was going on and showed up to assist.

But from that day on, I learned at that moment I will never be comfortable in a patrol car ever again. I will never ever ever go down a street and not know the name of the street that I'm on. I'm never ever going to second guess and assume that everything is okay. To this day, by the way, I'm not kidding you, to this day, if I'm not staring at the street corner signs, I'm staring at the map that tells me what street we're on. I kid you not, I'm still that way to this day. To this day, I cannot sit in the middle of a restaurant.

No way. I have to sit in the very back with my back against the wall. It's got to be that way. If people that are in here that are in law enforcement or military, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's just the way it is because that's the way you're programmed. Why? Because you don't know until you know. And what you don't realize, what most of us don't realize is the things that we experience in this physical realm is a reflection of things that are going on in the spiritual. And so much of the time we don't realize how unprepared we are because we are comfortable with what we have in this realm that we can feel and see, not recognizing that everything that drives whatever you have in this realm, this physical realm is happening in the spiritual.

So my hope and my prayer is that as we spend a short period of time in these 10 verses that you will develop a discomfort with the way you live your life understanding what is happening in the spiritual realm. Because right now what's happening in the spiritual realm, folks, is ugly. Is does anybody spend any amount of time online looking at social media or hearing about the things that are going on? Anybody quick show hands? Okay, well, praise God. Not a lot of you. Okay, it's ugly. If you if you really want a good idea of how dark it's getting out there in the world, spend some time on social media.

You'll see exactly what I'm talking about. It's literally demonic. We are seeing it manifest in places that are just unbelievable. Just it's just crazy. My friend I had two friends responsible for this outreach that took place yesterday over at Harvest Christian Fellowship, okay? My friend Greg Laurie, obviously you know my friend Erica Kirk, they decided with turning point they were going to put on a big outreach. They're calling it the Make Heaven Crowded outreach. Nobody should have been surprised to know that the gospel was being preached, people were getting saved, encouragement was happening. Yet there were darn near riots going on outside.

People going absolutely berserk, wanting to fight, calling everybody I mean, you racist, you this, you that, you hear that there. And what they don't realize is all of those manifestations that are going on come as a direct result of a spiritual war that is being ignored so much so that it is now intensifying at a level that it's beginning to take casualties. And the casualties that it's taking first are the ones of people who should have been aware of it because they have the relationship, they have the tools, and they have the word. And it's my prayer that as we walk away from our short period of time in the world tonight, you will get yourself uncomfortable the same way I was uncomfortable during that very first confrontation where I didn't know where I was and had to run to the end of the street.

I want you guys to be people who are always considering what is in the invisible. So let's dig into this because Jesus is now after the Passover is finished, having left the uh the room, Judas is on his way to betray Jesus, okay? Jesus is going to a garden where he is normally unknown for praying, the Garden of Gethsemane, okay? So he goes there, and this is sort of where we leave off, okay? Look what it says in verse 32. It says, and they came to a place which was named Gethsemane, and he saith to his disciples, sit you here while I shall pray.

Okay, so he looks at his disciples. He says we're at that basically they're at the outer room of the garden, okay? And he's saying, I need you to basically stand guard. I need you to stay here, be awake because I am going to go into the inner portion of this garden and I'm going to spend some time praying. What I think is probably happening is Jesus is recognizing the need to spend some intimate time with the father knowing exactly what was about to happen, knowing that he was going to get arrested, knowing that he was going to get crucified, knowing that he was going to suffer, understanding what he was about to go through.

He knew that he needed to prepare himself for what was coming for what was happening. I think often times we do not think this way. I think often times we do not even want to contemplate how this works. Look, one of the greatest things that you can do for your mind and your heart upon entering into a time of great difficulty and hardship, knowing what you're entering into And by the way, all of us are entering into that right now, is to sit still for a little while. It's one of the best things you can do.

Jesus is teaching his disciples the discipline of sitting still and in essence standing guard while he's going in to do the heavy lifting. He says, wait here until we pray. But then watch what Jesus does because this is very interesting. Look what happens next. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John and began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy. Okay, he brings in his inner circle. He's bringing in these three guys. And as he brings his inner circle with him, he's showing his humanity. He is clearly getting very very very heavy hearted.

I like the fact that the that the terminology here is not reflective of uh stress in the way that he's stressed because he doesn't know what's going to happen. He's actually heavy hearted because he knows exactly what's going to happen. So he's very heavy hearted here. And this is what ends up happening as we get into the next verse. Look at what Jesus tells them. And he saith unto them, my soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. Tarry you here and watch. By the way, he says that I am so burdened right now by what's going on that I recognize that it is going to bring me to that place of death.

Now, there's some debate as into what's being said here. Some people say is the stress level I I don't even like using that word. But is the burden that Christ is carrying, is that the thing that's going to cause a physiological reaction that he's darn near close to death? You can make a very good argument for that. Why? Because we know later on the account that Luke gives us that Jesus had hematidrosis, which is the sweating of blood, which actually physiologically, the definition scientifically, medically means he's about to die. Very rare occurrence when that happens.

When you sweat blood as a result of the release of stress hormone and everything else physiologically that happens, it pretty much means you're dead. We only have a few known cases of this, actual recorded cases. So it's very obvious that you can make the argument here that Jesus is saying, I'm so I am so burdened in my heart over this that I am in that danger place of dying as a result of it. There could also be a dualism here, which is where I lean, because I think he could be talking about that while at the same time making it very clear that my heart is getting heavier as I approach what will be my death.

I think he's saying both things. I think they both fit. But I want you to understand what he's telling them here. Okay, he's not saying go figure out, go spy for me, figure out who's trying to work against me, go do No, no, he's not saying that. He's saying, I want you to stay here and I want you to hold watch. In other words, just stay awake, watch, keep your eyes open. Be aware. Again, he said it to two people, two groups of people. The first group of people that he asked to stay and to in essence watch.

He didn't say it specifically as we have it read here, but he's asking them to stay there because he wants them to hold the perimeter, basically. He says it to the group of disciples that are not as close to him, but they're all I mean, they're all very close, but they're his disciples that are the larger number. And he says, I want you to stay right here and I want you to just wait. Then as he gets closer in with the people that are closer to him, he says, my heart is burdened, basically. And I want you guys to be watchful.

I want you to open up your eyes. I want you to be aware. I think it's interesting because this is a key point in this passage that I cannot let you guys forget about because I want you to understand the propensity that has been developed within mankind based on its sinful nature and the tactics of the enemy to get you to disengage from the spiritual when you become more stressed. And if you don't believe me, we live in a world that encourages this. We do. Okay, you're stressed out, you're having a hard time, guess what?

You can watch a movie. You go get a drink. You go I mean, these are the things that the world does. Guys, when COVID happened and we were in the greatest times of stress and worry and craziness, you know who was making the most money on many levels? The things that people do when they want to run away, amusement or drinking I I mean like alcohol sales went up some ridiculous number at one point, like 12,000%. Why? Because the spiritual tactic that the enemy would prefer to deploy with you is to get you to become so inebriated by the mechanism that distracts you that you forget about the fact that you were in the greatest and most deepest portion of the warfare that you're fighting.

When you get stressed out, he wants you focusing on something else. When you get bothered, when your heart is heavy, when something is going on, he wants you to distract yourself from it. Why? I'll make it really simple. This is not hard. Let me make it really easy for you to understand, and this is not a difficult one to be able to communicate, okay? God created those emotions in you to signal you that there are matters in the spiritual realm that need to be attended to.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us today for Light on the Hill. What you just heard is one part of a study in Mark's gospel from Pastor James Kaddis. You can hear it again at lightonthehillradio.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Not long ago, Pastor James released his new book on the first half of Revelation. It's entitled The Last Book. He points out that Revelation isn't a book of fear, but rather a book of hope. Pastor James will help you understand the world we live in and current events through a biblical lens, preparing your heart for what lies ahead.

Get a copy by going to lightonthehillradio.com or through Amazon. We're so grateful for your support. Each donation that's sent in is an investment in what God is doing over the radio and internet. Lives are being impacted daily for the glory of God as a result. If you'd like to stand with us through providing either a one-time donation or ongoing monthly support, please visit lightonthehillradio.com. While you're there, you can also send us an email. It would be great to hear from you and have you share the station you listen to as well. Just visit lightonthehillradio.com and then click on contact.

Pastor James, I don't think it's a stretch to say that many Americans make it their goal to live a comfortable life, and they'll do just about anything to obtain it. Yet as you pointed out, this desire for comfort can actually kill our spiritual walks. Do you have any final thoughts on that as we close?

James Kaddis: Yeah, I I my final thought is amen and amen. And I think the pursuit for comfort often times create a mechanism within our very way of thinking uh that encourages the ignorance of spiritual things. And I'm not saying that you're spiritual if you're uncomfortable. What I'm saying is you have to be willing to be obedient at the expense of a lack or removal of comfort. And when that happens, that's when you really begin to see breakthroughs. The kind of breakthroughs that you would never be able to experience unless you step into that boat and choose to walk in faith understanding and knowing that God has a bigger plan.

And that's very difficult especially especially when you're confronting having to sacrifice your comfort in the moment.

Guest (Male): Well said. We look forward to hearing the rest of this message next time on Light on the Hill, a listener supported ministry of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.

Guest (Male): I have found the peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you. Cuz all I need is you.