Light on the Hill

Jean: When we failed, what is next? Let's talk about it on Light on the Hill.

James Kaddis: Anybody here in this room messed up before? I put up both my hands. I could put up both my legs, but then that would be a crazy dog and pony show you don't want to see. Okay? We've all messed up. We've messed up bad. We've made big errors. We've had failures. God is here to tell you that you may have denied him, but he certainly has not denied you. You in your strength may have failed to the point where you have been brought to bitter weeping. But he goes to you and says, do you love me?

And he asks you that for as many times as you need to hear it because he has a path of redemption available for you.

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

Jean: Welcome to Light on the Hill, the radio ministry of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. We spend a lot of time studying the Gospel of Mark on the program, and today we're in chapter 14. We've all messed up more times than we can count, and when we do, there's something you need to know. God still loves you. There's a path of redemption and there's life after failure. The next step is to trust and obey. Today we'll hear about a time in Peter's life when he denied the Lord three times, and Pastor James will relate this to our lives in a powerful way.

James Kaddis: Well, Peter gets his warning before he does it. Peter disobeys. He falls into, walks into what he does. Then God warns him. The rooster crows. Okay? Verse 69. And a maid saw him again and began to say to them that stood by, this is one of them. So this time she's not even directly confronting him. This time she's going to other people. Funny how that works, isn't it? When when you don't deal with it the first time, then the second time when it comes, it's going to come in a way that will effectively run you down.

Now she got the whole crowd involved in this one. Look at what he does. This is interesting, right? And he denied it again. They just No. That's not me. When look what happens. They that stood by said again to Peter, surely thou art one of them, for thou art a Galilean, and thy speech agreeeth there too. Bro, come on, man. You have to be one of them. You are here in Jerusalem, but by the way you talk, you're Galilean. We know you're from the hood. You came with him. Now somebody else is about to jump in.

Watch what happens because Did you notice that he gets condemned for being something that was actually honorable? Did you notice that? Well, you're one of them. Could you imagine if somebody started beating you up because you were one of Christ's? Look what happens next. But he began to curse and to swear saying, I know not this man of whom you speak. And the second time the cock crew, Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him before the cock crew twice, thou shalt deny me three times. And when he thought thereon, he wept.

You know, the Bible actually tells us that the last time Peter was confronted, he actually started cursing using language that wasn't even characteristic of who he was because that's what happens. When you absolve yourself of the fear of man to walk in obedience to the voice of God, you find a strengthening like nobody else. When you allow yourself to be given to the fear of man while strictly disobeying the voice of God, you become vulnerable in ways that the world will eat you up. Now I want us just to say this right off the bat because but by the grace of God, so go we, right?

This is not something that is as easy where you snap your fingers in all as well. It doesn't work that way. Never has. This is a situation by which you must prepare yourself for walking into. This is a situation by which you must allow yourself to become that which God has called you to become in order that your perspective may be completely changed. Look, we've been talking about this a lot and and I can tell you how this works. I spend a lot of time behind the pulpit. I spend a lot of time at the proverbial teaching table, so to speak.

I spend a lot of time making videos and a lot of my words go out to hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions of people every single day. And I get condemned for so many things that I say. An overwhelming majority of the time, the reason why people will actively condemn me is because they don't understand what's actually being communicated. And in their lack of awareness of the matters being brought forth, they speak from the place of which they believe they understand because they don't have the view of God on it because they're not coloring it under the authority of God's word, and they make detrimental errors.

Huge errors. Big. Finances is probably one of the areas that this comes up a lot with. This is why I've been talking about it a lot this year. Like my goal is that the body of Christ, especially the local body of Christ here, become financially literate. I want to see that happen with every single person that watches me. Why? Because the Bible has a lot to say about it. I want people to begin to understand what it really means to walk obediently, not perfectly according to what culture or society demands. Big difference, right? But when people are not familiar with the subject matter by which you speak, they will oftentimes mock you for it because they don't understand the matter before them.

Now there's a danger in that. Here's the danger. The danger is people do that and then you have a tendency. I have a tendency. We have a tendency to want to back off because we don't want to deal with the confrontation that comes with doing what you know God has asked you to do while ignoring the lying voices that surround you. That can become very very difficult. Very very difficult. It can become very very hard. Why? Because people don't know what they don't know. And then to make things worse, we have an enemy who hates us.

He hates me. He hates you. He hates the lost world, and he will take advantage of your ignorance, of my ignorance. And he will speak lies into your mind and my mind, into your heart and my heart. And he will seek to destroy you by the very things that you allow yourself to be given to because you don't know what you don't know or you you refuse to know what you should know. I see it happening so much. Maybe at the expense of talking about myself, and maybe it's because I can I can relate to it a little bit.

It's amazing how many people don't know me. Yet they will comment about me as though they're subject matter experts concerning things that only a few people are privy to. Isn't that funny how that works? Look at what they are doing. Look at look at what they are doing with Erica right now. Look at the lies that they are saying about Charlie's wife. They don't know her. They pretend they do because of a demonically, satanically inspired person who goes up there and continues to speak about things that she knows nobody knows about, and she knows she doesn't know about.

But the lies are believed. The lens of God is being completely ignored. Here's a scary part about that one. It's a scary one, right? Go ahead and see what happens when you mess with Daddy's little girl, especially when Daddy's little girl is a widow. Go ahead. Just just wait. Just wait and see. Look, my point is this. If you if you don't know what you don't know and you allow yourself to not gain insight and awareness of what you actually did in the moment of fear, you will never grow as a result. I bring all of that out because there's one last section of this verse that I absolutely love at the end.

Look what it says. It says, and when he noticed this, when he thought thereon, the word can actually be translated meditated. When he thought, when he took the time to deeply engage in the process of realizing what he had done, what did he do? He wept. Why did he weep? Because he mourned the loss of something. He mourned the loss of an opportunity to make something right. He mourned the loss of an opportunity to actually glorify the God who was suffering at the moment that he was not. He mourned the loss of not speaking up before everybody else spoke up.

You ever see those guys? By the way, it's always a hilarious thing, you know? You see guys that don't say anything. As a matter of fact, they just completely hide from the west of the world until what they should have said 5 months ago now becomes the popular thing to say, and then they start speaking it like they're heroes. There's a lot of cowards like that all around. I know tons of cowards like that. What I love about Peter is Peter contemplates the brevity of what he just did. By the way, it's in the moment.

It's not like he he Like he took a few months to go back and be on a sabbatical or No. He immediately contemplated what he did. He literally meditated on it and he wept bitterly. His heart was broken. By the way, this is um this is where I get a little sticky about people who do not treat the teaching of the story of Peter speaking to Jesus again correctly cuz I think it's a very broken idea. We all hear this a lot. Everybody talks about God's agape love, you know? Agape is the highest form of of love that any person could reach.

It's God's love. Eh, no, that's not true. It's That's a wrong assertion. If you've been taught that, you were actually taught something that wasn't correct. Love in Greek works very much the same way it works in English or within any other context. Okay? The context of the representation of the word matters. And although Greek has multiple words that we use for love, they are oftentimes interchanged for literary flow. That's typically how it works. So I could go to you and I could talk about the fact that I love. I absolutely love one aspect about Sees Candy on Valentine's Day.

So when they come up with those cinnamon hearts, if I can get them, which I forgot If I could go get them, man, they're great. I used to stockpile them. Can't do that anymore. Oh, I love those things. Absolutely love a good a real Okay? Not a fake, a real Chicago pizza. Love it. Absolutely love it. You got a real Chicago pizza. Sorry, New Yorkers. Nothing beats it. Nothing. Especially Jersey. Sorry, guys. All right? Nothing beats it. Absolutely love a really really good burger that's been grilled. Man, there's nothing like that. Absolutely nothing like it.

I love a beautiful sunny day where it's crisp like the one that we had today after a rainstorm. Oh, man, do I absolutely love days like that. I also love my wife. I love my children. I love my God. Let's take it a step further. God loves me. You understand how it up the ante? Context always determines the value of the actual word that's being used. Loving my pizza is not the same as God loving me. So let's go back to a moment after Jesus or after Peter weeps, Jesus confronts him in a very interesting way on the shore of the very place where he first started.

Peter has a very shocking realization that the man he is talking to at the moment he starts talking to him is the creator of the universe. It's Christ, resurrected by the way. Can you imagine the guilt that he's overwhelmed with? He hung out with him, you guys, for three years. At the moment where you could argue Christ would have needed him the most, he ran and even denied him when there was no real cost for simply saying, I know him. Now what? And Jesus goes to him and he says, Peter, you love me? If I were a betting man, I would bet based on the way I read it linguistically.

I'd I'd bet that Peter paused a little bit when that first question was asked. Peter looks at the Lord. Yeah, I love you. Peter, you love me? Second question. Yeah, Lord. I love you. Jesus responds both times, you know? Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs. Well, Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord. You know I love you. Feed my sheep. Now everybody plays on the language issue, which is dead wrong. Peter, do you That's the first time the word the Greek word is used, the Greek word indicative of like a oftentimes used contextually for literary flow, for brotherly love, oftentimes.

These words are used interchangeably. The second time he says, Lord, do you or Peter, do you Yes, Lord. I the third time he says, Peter, do you agape me? That 's a stronger love. Okay. Let's just Let's just put that argument to death for just 1 second. Okay? If agape is the strongest love according to your Greek expertise, if agape is the strongest love that can be obtained by God, only God can bring that love into a person's heart. Having loved this present world, speaking about somebody who backslid in Timothy, having loved this present world, agape Wait.

Agape is used to describe somebody who loves the world. Can that mean that it's God? Like God put his love in his heart to love ungodliness? Sorry. We have a We We not only have a theological problem, right? We have a language problem. Why does Jesus ask him, do you love me three times? If you take the focus away from the word, which by the way I think was used for literary flow, that's what I believe is happening here. It's a literary flow. Then what else do you have left? You have what the most important part of the whole story is.

And that's this. As a creator of the universe, I know that my child deeply contemplated the fact that he denied me three times. He failed me three times, and he wept over it. And before I send him off that he may do the work that I have called him to, I am going to give him an opportunity to stand in redemption of the denial that he gave himself to by confronting him directly as into whether or not he loves me. If he wasn't doing that, I promise you he wouldn't say feed my sheep because he's taking the personal and deeply rooted love that Peter has for the Lord and he's associating it with his testimony before people.

He gives him an opportunity to be redeemed. And I believe that it's at that moment that God did what was necessary in Peter's heart to be prepared for being filled with the spirit of God as we read about in the book of Acts, that he might then go out and do something that the world never thought he could do. Now why is that such an important part of this story? And why is it that I feel the need, even if as a spoiler alert, I feel the need to tell you this story. I feel the need to end this chapter by telling you this story.

Not just because God is a God of redemption, but because you need to understand that no matter how much failure you have had in your life as a result of the fear that you have been given to or that you have capitulated to, that is not of God. God has provided for you a path of redemption by which you may start executing the function of obedience to bring a level of healing in your life that you never thought could be possible. Guys, this is where the problem of secular humanistic philosophy comes in when we start dealing with the discussion of psychology.

See, I could sit down with a person and deal with every terrible flaw that they went through in their childhood. I could talk about every major abuse thing they went through. I could talk about every painful thing. I could talk about all the things that causes their fears that receipts their inhibitions. All the I could do all that. But if the mechanism of redemption is not presented and the function by which you might be able to experience the application of that redemption through obedience, there's no hope. I could allow you to spend the rest of your life dwelling on the painful experiences that you had or I could introduce you to an opportunity that says the pain that I'm suffering in the very moment will be the very thing that God allows me to redeem because he's already done the work, and what he wants to do with you now is change the world around you through your application of that redemption in the function of obedience.

It's that simple. Let's simplify it a little bit, can we? Let's just simplify it a little bit. Anybody here in this room messed up before? I put up both my hands. I could put up both my legs, but then that would be a crazy dog and pony show you don't want to see. Okay? We've all messed up. We've messed up bad. We've made big errors. We've had failures. God is here to tell you that you may have denied him, but he certainly has not denied you. You in your strength may have failed to the point where you have been brought to bitter weeping.

But he goes to you and says, do you love me? And he asks you that for as many times as you need to hear it because he has a path of redemption available for you. That each and every single one of you that if you are willing to walk down that path will be able to the experience the very fullness of the reward that that brings. Here's the question. Are you ready for that? I would argue that even if you're not because you don't know what you don't know God is. And it's a matter of saying this.

Lord, help me to trust and obey. If there's anything that you write down during this Bible study, write this down. This is the shortcut. This is the quick key. Okay? Lord, help me to trust and obey. By the way, be very careful. That's a dangerous prayer to pray. But the reward that comes from that very thing is beyond anything you could possibly imagine. Time to trust and obey. Amen.

Jean: This is Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis, and we're currently going through the Gospel of Mark. Listen to this study and more at lightonthehillradio.com. Pastor James's teachings are also available through the Light on the Hill app and at oneplace.com. You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts as well. Pastor James, I appreciate this passage in Mark. As you said, we all mess up just as Peter did. Why do you think the Lord included not only the successes, but the many sins and failures of man in the Bible?

James Kaddis: Well, Jean, I think the answer is obvious. And and I know we've talked about this before. It's very obvious to you, but the reality of it is if we did not have a record of people failing, we would not be able to relate to the struggles that we face every single day. And I think God showing the good bad and the ugly gives us a very powerful indicator as into not only how his spirit works in many ways in our lives, but it speaks to the lack of exclusivity when you choose to say, I put my faith and trust in you, Lord.

In other words, God takes you just the way you are and he deals with you in the rough and you are the work in progress. I'm the work in progress, and it's a beautiful picture. And thank God he shows that to us.

Jean: Thanks, Pastor James. When you have a moment sometime today, send us an email. We'd love it. It's encouraging to hear what the Lord is doing in our listeners' lives, and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what he's doing. There's a place to contact us at our website, lightonthehillradio.com. We've been blessed by the feedback we've received thus far regarding Pastor James's new book, The Last Book. If you haven't ordered a copy yet, we'd encourage you to do so. This Guide to Revelation covers the first half of the book, giving you what you need to know about the rapture and the end times in a clear and concise manner.

Request your copy today at lightonthehillradio.com or through Amazon. If God is leading you to support this radio outreach, there's also a place to make a donation at lightonthehillradio.com. Throughout the week you can watch our live shows and short videos, many of which relate to Bible prophecy and help you to see current events with a biblical worldview. Look for these at jameskaddis.com. More from the book of Mark coming up next time on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. This listener supported program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.

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