Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: When God plants a seed in your heart, he expects you to allow that seed to germinate in a way that it will multiply. He does not expect you to be a simple consumer. He doesn't expect you to be some overjoyed, excited, happy guy that's like, "Yeah, praise the Lord!" then the cares of the world come and choke you up.

God is a person that wants to see you take that seed, put it into soil that is rich, put it into something that is prepared to receive all the insight that it can provide. God says each and every single one of you will multiply. Now, some of you will multiply smaller amounts than others; it doesn't matter. What matters is, are you taking what you have and are you being faithful with it and are you actually multiplying?

Guest (Male): We must be careful about what we allow ourselves to hear because it has a profound effect on so much of our lives. Today on Light on the Hill, Jesus warns us to be careful what we hear because we're required to act on it. The words we find in Mark chapter four are important for lots of reasons. Let's see why as we join Pastor James Kaddis for Light on the Hill.

James Kaddis: All right, Mark chapter four. We're going to be in verse 21. Just to give you a little bit of background, as you guys already know, Jesus is speaking in parables here. He's already explained to his disciples why he's speaking in parables. He is seeking to provide some tools that give people an understanding, a discernment, and a relationship between practical life and the things that God says. As a matter of fact, what I shared earlier in the study is very much the same kind of tool and tactic that Jesus is using here. He is providing this parable, and these parables bring insight and discernment.

Jesus here is talking about a very unique subject, in that he's talking about what happens when seed is planted and what the results are of that seed being planted. He speaks about the parallels that exist within the parables to teach us what the practical applications in life are: what happens to the person who receives the word but lets the cares of the world choke them out, what happens to the person who receives the word that is on prepared, very rich soil, and what happens when there's 60-fold or 100-fold. There's this multiplication term that we've actually learned that when you obey God, God brings results with variables that are in multiplication terms, not necessarily in addition terms.

It's interesting because so many of these illustrations that the Lord is giving are powerful because they're using terminology that we understand. The way that these things relate becomes very viable to us, and I think that's what Jesus is doing here. The picture that he's drawing with this illustration of the seed being planted and multiplication taking place is he's demonstrating some very important core principles. Some of which we didn't even get to talk about last week, one of which is very relevant to the subject that we're discussing today, and that is this: when you allow yourself to receive from the seed of the word of God being planted in your life, it does not have added results, it does not have divisive results, it has multiplication results.

It literally multiplies because the fruit that it bears is something that is absolutely consequential. If you think about it like a farmer, you have to think about it in terms of agriculture. If you're a farmer and you have a tree that you grow, and you are very familiar with the tree and the fruit that that tree produces, you can make a reasonable assertion as to how many pieces of fruit you're going to get out of that tree. For example, we had a lemon tree that was in our yard many years ago, and every single time that tree produced fruit, my mom was able to tell us how many lemons that tree would be able to produce within one or two accuracy.

We have a sister at the church here who has a grapefruit tree. Every single time she grew grapefruit and brought it to church, my mom and I would fight over the grapefruit. We would actually hide it in the refrigerator, and whoever ate it first was the one who won. The sister knew; she would always be able to tell us, "James, we have five more coming," or "We have eight more coming," or "We have four more coming." It's funny because she was always right. It was right on the money. Very much like my mom, when the fruit would grow on the tree, you knew how much it would produce. You had an idea because it was consistent. It ultimately produced the same fruit every single time.

You could look at the fruit on that tree, and you could actually make a relatively good and accurate assertion as to how many pieces of fruit you expect to receive during that season. As a matter of fact, that's how farmers make their money. They're able to make estimates and they actually sell their crop oftentimes before it's actually grown. This is something that happens and it's a normal part of the ebb and flow of the agricultural world. But here's the thing that you don't know. Here's the thing that you can't discern. Here's the thing you can't possibly understand because there's no way of being able to guess it.

Although I can take a look at a full-grown tree and tell you how many pieces of fruit it's going to give me when it's time to yield fruit, there's no way I can take a look at each and every single one of those pieces of fruit and give you an idea about how much that piece of fruit can actually produce. What if I take every seed that is in that fruit and I plant every seed and every single one of those seeds grow? There's no way of being able to tell how much that growth can multiply. It's almost impossible; as a matter of fact, it is impossible.

I could take a tree that produces fruit and I could simply consume the fruit and never do anything with the fruit that's produced and I could say that for the rest of my life, this tree can viably produce this many pieces of fruit and that's the estimate. But if you choose to take the very fruit that you have been provided with and you choose to multiply it because it's your desire to take advantage of a great opportunity, and you say, "I won't eat so many pieces of fruit and I'll take a few that I didn't eat and I will use it so that I can actually plant more seed to create more trees," there is no telling how much that multiplication effort is going to pay off.

When you start to plant seed, what you end up doing is you produce for yourself a much greater result than anything that you could possibly imagine. By the way, I just want to make myself very clear. When I go to you guys all the time and I tell you that God teaches you how to manage your finances and how to manage your resources every single day in the Bible, this is a perfect principle that I'm speaking about. The Bible tells us that creation, God's very creation, shouts, literally speaks of who he is, because when God creates, his creation is a direct reflection of who he is.

When you look at the trees and the plants and you look at all of the things that we take advantage of that have been made available to us, it's a reflection of the ingenuity of our God. When you look at humankind, when you look at mankind, it's an indication of the image of God because the Bible says that God created us in his likeness and in his image. And so when we are able to effectively witness what multiplication looks like within the context of God's natural structure that he's created, you can also see a very beautiful picture of what his intent looks like for us.

When we talk about it, let's talk about it in terms of finances for just a second. Let's look at the tree and let's talk about how the tree works. Let's pretend God blesses you with a beautiful orange tree. We're in California; we'll use the term orange, okay? You've got a beautiful orange tree. Now you can have the attitude with that tree that you are going to protect that tree at every expense possible, that you will build a fortress around it. There's a tree, by the way, that's like that in Riverside. It's one of the oldest trees ever planted in the state of California. They've got a big old fence around it and they've got walls around it. Nobody can get to it because they want to protect it.

The point is, you can build a fortress around that tree and make sure that tree gets all the nutrients it needs and be satisfied with the fact that that tree will always produce a certain amount of fruit for you and your family every single year. You can live on that and exist and say, "Okay, that's great." Or you could seek to replicate the pattern that God has demonstrated to us in nature, and you can say, "God's given me the resource of this tree. This tree's an incredible tree. It produces fruit for me and my family, and my family doesn't need to eat all of this fruit."

As a matter of fact, what me and my family will do is we'll discipline ourselves on the number of fruit that we eat and actually limit our consumption so that we can take half these fruits and we can use the seed from that fruit to actually plant new trees. And as we plant new trees, then maybe we could start to give trees to other families that can multiply the efforts of growing their own trees, and maybe we can actually build an empire of trees that we could be able to provide for our children and our children's children and our children's children's children. Maybe we can support economies around us everywhere.

Maybe we can help people around us, and maybe we can actually take what we've done and make something much bigger than just one simple little tree that we've worked so hard to protect our whole lives. Again, the model and the pattern is really unique. You can also be entrusted by God with a certain income, and God can bless you with it, and you can say, "You know what? This is great. I'll just live on what I've worked for my whole life, live on my retirement, and everything's going to be okay. My family will be okay, my children will be okay, maybe my children's children will be okay; it won't be a big deal."

Or you could stop and you could say, "God, you've provided for me. You've given me a relatively comfortable life. You've given me enough money where maybe I can take a little bit of what I've had and then I can use it and leverage it to grow a bigger farm." Maybe I can take the little that I have and I can use it to do something with it. Maybe I can seek to create a multiplier that will enable me to be able to provide for my family, not just provide for them but to bring something back to me that will actually do a greater thing.

Problem is, we haven't been trained that way. In our education system, we're not trained that way. Within the secular humanistic world, we're not trained that way. Nobody is trained to think that way. We're not trained to view time as an asset; we don't buy our time back. We're not trained to be able to take the little that we have and leverage it so that we can actually multiply. As a matter of fact, in many churches under lots of very good people who really mean well and are actually righteous and love the Lord, they'll actually teach you that debt is completely bad; it's a terrible thing to do because God says no debt.

In reality, the Bible doesn't say that. God says if you want to get into debt so that you can be reckless with it and simply continue on the pattern of consumption of things that you don't have money for, well then yeah, shame on you, you're doing the wrong thing. But if you're going to engage yourself in the context within the confines of producing an asset for yourself, then debt is actually a biblical principle. It's a very biblical principle.

You think of the situation of the friend of the prophet who dies. He himself is a man dedicated in some way to serving the Lord because of the friendship that he has with the prophet. And the widow says, "We've got nothing left. We don't have any food; we don't have anything." What does the prophet tell her? "Go to the neighborhood, borrow jars from everybody. Go get jars from everybody." What does God do? God meets that effort halfway.

He fills the jars with all of the oil, and then she has whatever she needs to supply for her family, take care of her family, and do all the things that she needs to do. Then she takes whatever is left and what does she do? She goes and she sells it. She's told to sell it, and she makes a profit from it. She literally leveraged debt to be able to multiply. Again, these are all things that you learn from simple pictures in nature.

Believe it or not, although the primary application of the parable of the sower has nothing to do with financial principles, one of the applications of it can undoubtedly be financial in nature. But the bigger picture and perhaps the more significant principle is when God plants a seed in your heart, he expects you to allow that seed to germinate in a way that it will multiply. He does not expect you to be a simple consumer. He doesn't expect you to be some overjoyed, excited, happy guy that's like, "Yeah, praise the Lord!" then the cares of the world come and choke you up.

God is a person that wants to see you take that seed, put it into soil that is rich, put it into something that is prepared to receive all the insight that it can provide. And God says each and every single one of you will multiply. Now, some of you will multiply smaller amounts than others; it doesn't matter. What matters is, are you taking what you have and are you being faithful with it and are you actually multiplying?

Are you able to say, "God, you've given me this. I'm going to be faithful with what you've given me and I'm going to do more"? I think each and every single one of us has to ask that question: if God has given you a talent, what are you doing to allow that talent to multiply the efforts for the kingdom? What are you doing to say, "God, I'm going to choose this day to walk faithfully with the things that you've presented to me"?

And that's the thing. The discourse that Jesus is about to enter into with his disciples is a really powerful one, in that he's communicating that when we've been given the light, the light was never intended to be brought into some type of self-consumption mode where you basically receive it for yourself, you don't bring it out anywhere, and you don't do anything with it. Light was not designed to do that. People don't just purchase a light or get a hold of something that they want to light up and then basically put it under a bushel. It doesn't work that way.

That's what Jesus is about to say. He's already laying the groundwork for the expectation that we have to be fruitful with the things that he's given us so that we can make the most of the opportunities that he's put in front of us. And that's a very important thing to be able to examine. Look what it says in verse 21 as we continue. He says, "And he said unto them, is a candle brought to be put under a bushel or under a bed and not to be set on a candlestick?" Now, this is a really important picture that he's drawing, right? Jesus is asking some questions.

Now, as you guys know, especially those of you that I taught to study the Bible, you have to ask yourself what type of question is being asked here. Is Jesus providing a question that is in nature inquisitive, meaning it solicits a response from the person that's actually listening to the question, or is it a question that was designed to be rhetorical in nature? In other words, is Jesus making a statement based on asking a question in which the answer is so obvious that it necessitates an understanding of what's being said?

By the way, we utilize rhetorical questions all the time in the English language. We just do it in different ways, oftentimes used in contexts that would be considered to be mildly derogatory. Like for example, this is a question that I find myself asking all the time, sometimes of my own children: "What were you thinking?" We all know when somebody says "What were you thinking?" in essence, that is them making a statement that says you weren't thinking. Or, "Are you crazy?"

That's pretty much a very emphatic, more of a slightly derogatory way of calling somebody crazy. I'm not asking you that question so that you can tell me yes or no, as though you will have the ability to be able to make that determination, but I am imposing that question because I'm seeking to make a statement that is uniquely emphatic. I'm trying to demonstrate something in a way that is extraordinarily powerful. And Jesus is doing that.

By the way, the Greek language is filled with moments like this from within the context of the writing, which is why it is so powerful when it is reflecting something that was originally said in Aramaic because the languages carry over. It's funny because Greek for some reason does a really good job of accurately reflecting concepts that you see and can only find in Semitic languages. It's just interesting that Jesus is saying this in Aramaic at the time that he's speaking, yet I believe the Greek language is reflecting it quite well.

Obviously with English, we have to expound on some of these things because the English language is not even close to being as poetic as you would hope that it would be. It certainly isn't. Poetry in the English language is something that is a lot more nominal than what you will find in some of these Semitic languages. But I bring all of this out to say that Jesus is being deeply emphatic, while at the same time drawing out a very poetic picture for you.

He's basically trying to make something clear that says you've been given something so spectacular, so precious, why in the world would you not want to display it? Why in the world would you not want to use it for what it was designed to do? If you have light, you want to put light where it belongs. Anytime you don't have light, it's probably not a good thing. So when you have it, you don't just take it and hide it. People don't think that way. And that's what Jesus is saying here.

Again, the association that he's making with the light happens to be the word of God. It happens to be the message of the gospel. It happens to be the things that result from the fruit that the word of God produces. That's what he's talking about here. It's a secondary action that he's speaking about. So he's going to answer his own question in essence or actually supplement what the obvious answer is.

Look what he says in verse 22: "For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was anything kept secret, but that it should come abroad. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear." What Jesus is basically saying, folks, is if something is being kept from you and you are refusing to discern it, it is because of a decision that you are making. That's just the way it is. Nothing that was ever intended to be secret was going to stay secret.

When things are spoken out loud, it was never intended to be hidden. In other words, Jesus is going to make everything known, and if you are willing to give yourself to that understanding, you will be the person who will be the direct beneficiary of it. If you have ears, you need to hear this. You need to be capable. You need to be aware of what's going on. And so as Jesus proclaims these things, he's calling upon us to listen and to make tangible notes of this.

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.

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James Kaddis: Look at this in verse 24. "And he said unto them, take heed what you hear. With what measure you mete, it shall be measured unto you; and unto you that hear shall more be given." It's funny what Jesus is saying because there's a lot of very interesting applications that are drawn. The number one context that this application is oftentimes drawn in is going back to the "be careful little ears what you hear" way of thinking. And by the way, that's not a bad application to this, but it's not the main intention of what's being communicated.

When Jesus says be careful what you hear, yes, clearly we can draw a great application from this in that why would I want to expose my ears to something that will provide an inclusionary force into my brain and take up real estate? Why in the world would I want to open myself up to hearing something that could actually damage my way of thinking for quite some time? By the way, there's more nominal examples of this, examples of this that people tend to make fun of, but I'm one that doesn't take nice to this.

There was a game that my wife used to play with her younger sister. They used to have fun doing this because they're both beautiful singers and they both have amazing voices. What they would do as kids is they would pick a song and they would sing that song to each other again and again and again. The name of the game would be sing that song so many times that you get it stuck in the other person's head. And if you can get it stuck in the other person's head, then you win. I think that's a cruel game, okay? I think that's a jacked-up game. If I had siblings that played that game with me, they would all get socked.

You guys know what I'm talking about, right? Sometimes I hear things being sung in front of me, or I hear something being said, or I hear a phrase being said, and there have been times where I've told my kids, "Stop saying that." Or I'll tell them, "Don't sing that right now." And I'm not saying it because I don't like to hear them sing or I don't want to hear them talk; I'm saying it because I know that if I allow them to keep doing it, that thing is going to get stuck in my head with their voice for probably the next two days.

That's not what this is talking about, although there is some application to that. You certainly take heed to those things. You don't want to expose yourself to a bunch of language that's going to trash your mind. You don't want to expose yourself to just a bunch of things that you probably shouldn't be hearing. Certainly this is true of people who are addicted to certain types of genre of media that they don't need to be addicted to.

Sometimes this is the power of music, how music can damage a person's mind and can have a dramatic effect on the way that they think about things, how music can shape their reactions, how music can motivate the things that they say or the things that they do. And those are clearly very good applications to this principle. But the most significant application that we should draw from this is what it meant in its interpretive value.

And that is Jesus is basically putting us on notice saying, "Be careful the things that you hear because everything you hear is going to require that you act." That's what Jesus is saying. In other words, the message that he's communicating is you are required by God to act on everything that you hear. It's not like you can just simply say, "I'm not listening, I'm not listening." Once you've been made aware of the truth, you're now called by God to act upon the truth. And the more you listen to the truth and the more you choose to ignore the truth, the more you begin to act in a way that tells God you have no interest in hearing from him.

Guest (Male): 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.

(Song: I have found the peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you. 'Cause all I need is you. All I need is you.)