Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Are you using your time wisely? Perhaps after listening to today's Light on the Hill, some reprioritization will be needing to take place.

James Kaddis: God has given us the benefit and he's given us the gift of being able to utilize the time that we have to grow the very things that he expects us to grow. The rewards that come from that are also beyond our capacity to be able to comprehend or to find out or to understand. The reality of it is when we begin to put that into play, when we begin to think through it at a deeper level, it begins to change everything that we do.

My prayer and my hope for you is that you will begin to think at that level. My prayer and my hope for you is that you will begin to reprioritize what you do in your life and how you handle the things that are presented to you in your life.

Guest (Male): What must I do to inherit eternal life? This was a question posed to Jesus by a wealthy respected man of great stature. It's also been asked by many others over many years. Although the answer is simple, you may be surprised by how Jesus answered it. Stay tuned for a very important study in Mark chapter 10 here on Light on the Hill as we discuss an issue that very few people truly understand. Here's Pastor James Kaddis.

James Kaddis: At the expense of maybe sounding a bit depressing, let me just share a sentiment that I've been carrying for a little bit of time now. The sentiment that I'm about to describe to you morbidly started when my brother and I were sitting in the parking lot outside of the place where my oldest nephew had just graduated from high school. It was a very special ceremony because he's homeschooled and just a very special time.

As we're out there and having a conversation while the rest of the family is doing other things, my brother in what might be one of the most morbid ways that could possibly be imagined begins to talk about how it's so weird to think that my dad is now with the Lord and we're in the same place that my dad was when we were looking up to him at a certain age. This sense of reality begins to set in.

Then we started going through the timeline of where my dad was at the age that we are now. John of course starts talking about the amount of years that means we have left and what that calculates to and how many Christmases that translates to. How long it's going to be before kids do things like get married or whatever. I told John none of mine are, maybe Sam, but that's it.

My whole point behind it is this discussion like we don't have a lot of time. That time continues to grow shorter and shorter and shorter and I think perhaps more than any time in my life, especially over the last couple of years, but especially over this last year, I'm beginning to realize just how little time we actually have and how precious of an asset it really is.

It's funny because if you stop for one moment and just contemplate where you were 20 years ago and think about how fast that time has gone by, you'll understand completely what I'm talking about. If you're a kid right now and you're thinking, well, I just can't wait to become an adult. Listen, cherish the time you're in right now because when you do get to that adult age, you're going to wonder where all the time went. Then you're going to start asking other questions that are going to be very difficult to ask.

So one of the things that happens when you start thinking about time and when you start thinking about priorities and when you start thinking about circumstances and situations and all kinds of different things that surround that, you begin to look at life completely different. The things that you used to prioritize that really should not take any precedent in your life now go away and the things that you never prioritized are becoming the new priority.

That's because when you stop to contemplate how little of your time you actually have left, in your own mind you feel the need or sense the need to want to make the most of that time to bring into fruition the very things that are important and the things that really matter. Especially when eternity becomes more and more of a reality to you and especially when you begin to realize that you very likely are at the point where there is less time in front of your life than behind your life.

You stop for a moment and think about all of these things and in my own mind and in my own heart it causes me to really think about the things that actually matter. That's why studying the Bible, learning the Bible, understanding what the Bible says about the life that we live from day in and day out is really important to me, but that's particularly why passages like this become of great importance to me.

What you're facing is you are facing what appears to be a man who is in my opinion of great stature. This is a man who's incredibly wealthy. This is a man who is well established in his community. He's a man that's well respected. He's a man that is very much appears to be loved by the people, respected by the people, is prominent in virtually every way imaginable and he's beginning to think about things that he's probably never thought about.

So much so that he's willing to commit social death by going to the Lord himself, by going to Jesus and asking a critical and very important question. It's interesting because the dialogue that happens between the two of them causes me to really think about the things that are important and reminds me to really put into priority the things that are the most critical in putting into priority.

It significantly convicts me with great conviction. It moves me with great conviction when opportunities to take advantage of time are squandered by wasting it. I begin to hate the agents that the enemy uses to rob people of their most valuable asset, which is time. One of the things that I've learned over the years is that when time is wasted, the amount of flirtation that exists between the fine line into eternity and out of eternity becomes more of a game of Russian Roulette than it ever does a game of assurance and excitement.

The reason why is because the person who will not respect the time that God honors and rewards them with is the same person who will never put into consideration eternity. They're the same person that will never put into consideration the very things that matter in life as opposed to the here and now.

As short of a passage as this is, I'm not talking about length in terms of the amount of verses, but as powerful and to the point it really is, I want to encourage you guys to think about what I'm about to present to you in a completely different way. If salvation and eternity is the thing that you're constantly trying to put at the forefront of your mind, then doing that demands that you make the most of the time that's been presented to you.

Doing that demands that you become somebody who is a good steward with every opportunity handed to you because what that can bring back is something beyond a lot of people's capacity to be able to understand. God has given us the benefit and he's given us the gift of being able to utilize the time that we have to grow the very things that he expects us to grow. The rewards that come from that are also beyond our capacity to be able to comprehend or to find out or to understand.

The reality of it is when we begin to put that into play, when we begin to think through it at a deeper level, it begins to change everything that we do. My prayer and my hope for you is that you will begin to think at that level. My prayer and my hope for you is that you will begin to reprioritize what you do in your life and how you handle the things that are presented to you in your life.

Perhaps one of the best ways that I can introduce this to you before even reading the passage is telling you about a very common dynamic that we experience when we go to Israel. Israel for a lot of people, they don't realize this because they're so engulfed in the novelty and the idea of walking on the same ground that Jesus walked on, which is what you do when you go to Israel.

Seeing the biblical sites that you've never been able to picture in your mind, even with the advent of multimedia and all the other things that we have available to us, being there is completely different than seeing the pictures or watching the videos or anything else. One of the things that people experience is this enthrallment that comes before they get there with being able to take in the sites and the experiences, the smells, the language.

All of that stuff is super exciting but there's one thing they don't take into account and we do our very best to prepare them for this and that is this: that trip in Israel is excruciatingly, excruciatingly challenging on your body. It's a very difficult trip physically. We tell people when they go on these trips to start walking every day and get yourself to the point where you can comfortably walk at least five to eight miles a day.

If you can't walk five to eight miles a day, you're going to really struggle when you go to Israel. Some of you might ask, James, how in the world are you able to do it? Miraculously. It is literally miraculous completely because even in the last couple of times I've been to Israel and I did it with a mobility scooter, it was still excruciatingly difficult. It was still a very hard physical trip because that's just the way it goes. You've got to prepare yourself for it. You've got to think through it.

Here's the thing that comes up every single time and every person that we bring with us into the group still asks us the same thing when it gets tough. You get off the plane, you're dealing with jet lag. Most of the time when they get off the plane, they're getting off the plane at a pretty unreasonable hour. They're walking into the airport at Ben Gurion at probably around 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening when in reality their body is telling them that it's the morning time.

They're completely exhausted. They want to sleep but they can't because their body says I'm tired but something is happening that's causing them to need to stay awake because of everything that we all know about jet lag and what happens. Typically by the time we get to day three, they go through this level of shock in their body that is extraordinarily hard to get past.

This is what we tell them by day three because around day three is when we have to go to the Dead Sea. We tell them this: your wake-up call is at 5:30 AM, your breakfast is served at 6:15 AM, and you are required to be on the bus at 7:00 AM. Now if any of you are late, you will be left behind and then you'll have to take a taxi in a foreign country to the hotel room that we're going to be at a few hours away.

I at least get 20 of the 80 or 90 people that are on the trip that will come up to me and say, is there any way we can just adjust? Can we have a couple of extra hours anyway? No, we can't. Then there's people that always go to the tour guide and they say, can you help me book a taxi because I just can't deal with it, I have to get my sleep. Then I have to in the evening before we release them, gather them all together and explain one very important principle to them.

Most of them get it and most of them thank me after the trip. Some of them don't and they say, I wish I would have listened to you. But this is what I tell them. I say, here's the deal. Don't ever forget this, just think this through. When you are back in the United States a year from now, two years from now, a month from now, two months from now, and you open up the Bible and you read about an area in the Holy Land and you recognize that what you're reading about you never got to see because if you go on our trips, you get to see everything that the Bible talks about other than Assyria, but you get to see everything in Israel.

You know what the thought is going to be in your head? It's not going to be I wish I got a few hours of sleep. You're going to not even remember the sleep by the time you get to day three or day four. What you're going to say is I wish I did not throw away my opportunity to go see this just so that I could sleep a few extra hours. A lot of people come to me and say, that makes perfect sense.

Then others say, I'm still sleeping. They always come back to me and say you were right, I wish I listened to you. I think that's what God tries to prepare us for every day that we're alive. I don't think we're ever going to find ourselves in a position where we're going to say I wish I slept three extra hours on this day. We're never going to say things like I wish I actually went and watched that movie. We're not going to say things like I wish I got to level 15.

We're going to say, why did I give up this opportunity just for this? Why didn't I do the few minutes of extra work? We were having this conversation recently about the accrual effects. A friend of mine this morning, we're having this conversation about the accrual effects of what happens when you just over time, you just decide to put a little bit of money away over time in something that isn't exciting.

Like maybe a mutual fund that's tied to the S&P. Just something that gives you small amount of interest that's a little bit more than your savings account but a little bit less than somebody who's going crazy on the hyper investment side. It'll blow your mind when you start looking at statistics of what would happen if you had just started at a young age and put a few dollars away.

You didn't go out when everybody did and buy the jet skis. You didn't go out and eat the extravagant meals when you couldn't afford it. When everybody bought a new car, you bought a beat-up Pinto or whatever it might be. The reality of it is when people are 70 years old and 60 years old and 50 years old and they're struggling with still paying the bills that they allowed themselves to be given to 20 years prior, when they are wondering where their next paycheck is going to come from, which is why they have to still go work and make a living, you'll be the multimillionaire that is shocked at the fact that the amount of money you invested in those earlier days actually built up to something because you never thought in a million years it could ever do what it did.

Then you really regret it because you realize I could have just given up a few cups of coffee and a few bites of food to eat and I could have been in a place where I had millions of dollars in my pocket to give to my family and to give to my children. That's not an exaggeration. We do this with eternity. We do this with the Kingdom of God. We do this with the opportunities that God gives us on a regular basis.

By the way folks, I just want to remind you of something. If you remember the Parable of the Talents, although it has phenomenal application for financial principles, it has nothing to do with financial principles. The Parable of the Talents centers around the fact that Jesus just told his disciples about the things that were going to happen in the future. He just gave them a masterful class on the end times. What he was telling them was don't take the information I've given you and bury it. Take it and invest it. Sow it into people, share it with people, and watch the return that it will bring.

I think this is the thing that we're going to be talking about here that has significant and dare I even say life-saving value. So let's look at what happens here. This is a very powerful story and it's not powerful for the reasons that people want to make it out to sound to be. These are very important things and yes, there's a lot of misnomers that are here in this passage and some brutal misconceptions that end up coming. We're going to have to remember the context of what Jesus said about children last week when we read in order for this to all make sense.

Let's dig into this because this is super important. We're starting at verse 17. And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running and kneeled to him and asked him, "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" Now I'm going to bet that the question that this so-called rich young ruler has just imposed to Jesus is one that is founded and based in sincerity.

I am willing to bet that the wealth that he has brought him probably to one of the same places that we see Solomon bringing himself to when he described his condition. I will bet you he's at a point in his life where he is realizing that there is more than the situation that he's in, that he's concerned about his salvation.

The problem with people that are concerned about their salvations is there are lots of people that are not concerned enough to remove the things that distract them from being able to experience the fullness of that salvation because they don't understand what correct prioritization looks like. When a man has millions of dollars in his pocket and can do anything with that money and is a relatively young age, he will think about eternity differently than a man who is in his 70s and could have the whole world to his name but knows he's about to die.

You've got two people in notable positions. One is going to think differently than the other. Why? Because they understand how close they are to that moment. The question of preparation to get into that place is going to become a bigger and bigger issue. What Christ is actually saying here, and this is really important, what he's about to tell us is the preparation for the mindset required to be in that place is a lot harder than meets the eye when there are certain distractions that are being given to it.

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. Let's get back to our Bible study. We're in Mark chapter 10 and we left off at verse 18.

James Kaddis: Verse 18. And Jesus said unto him, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God." Now this is interesting. A lot of people will hear this verse that Jesus speaks here and say that this is Jesus denying his own deity. But that's not what Jesus is doing here. Jesus is challenging the statement that the man is making and is forcing the man even in the imposition of his question to acknowledge God for who he is and to align his priorities in a way where he's willing to think differently about the moment he's in in order to obtain the knowledge necessary to grow in the place he needs to grow.

Let me give you an example of this. Let's just pretend, and I'm not God so I don't know what happened to this man's life, but let's just pretend that this man hung out in circles that despised Jesus. By the way, it's probably very likely that he did. It's very likely that he hung out in circles that did not like Jesus because if he was a rich young ruler, he very likely would have been very well acclimated with the religious group that was living at the time of Christ. They hated Jesus.

If you wanted to maintain your stature as a rich young ruler, the last thing you would ever want to do is refer to Christ using any terminology that would depict him as God. You would never want to elevate him in any way because if you did, you would lose your stature. So Jesus hones in on a word that this man imposes and he recognizes that the man is very likely walking a fence.

He recognizes that Jesus is God but maybe isn't completely willing to actually acknowledge the fact that he's God, but will go so far as to tote a very subtle line in referring to him as good. Good Master. That's a title you wouldn't give to anybody that you did not consider to be God. The problem is that title would also be a title that would not be known by a lot of people and the implications of that title from a theological perspective would not be completely understood.

So it's very likely that he's using terminology that nobody would be able to understand except Jesus in order to communicate something that he was embarrassed to communicate potentially. Kind of interesting how that works. This is a funny dynamic that we have in human nature where we want to tote a line in a way where we want to be accepted by everybody. It's kind of like the internal politics that exist within our own minds, but we won't go so far as to ruin any ties that we have with people even if it means that I'm willing to compromise the truth.

Guest (Male): We'll finish up this message in the book of Mark next time on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis, a presentation of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.