Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: 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): Calvary Chapel Signal Hill welcomes you to Light on the Hill and our new study in the Gospel of Mark. Pastor James Kaddis will be in chapter four shortly. You’ll see today why we need to be careful about what we allow ourselves to hear as we’re required to act upon everything we do hear. Consider this a warning from Jesus. Here’s Pastor James.

James Kaddis: When Jesus says, be careful what you hear, yes, clearly we could draw a great application from this in that why would I want to expose my ears to something that will provide an incursionary force into my brain and take up real estate? I said excursionary, incursionary, that’s what I meant. 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. But there was a game that my wife used to play with her sister, her younger sister. They used to have fun doing this because they’re both beautiful singers. They both have amazing voices. And so 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.

And 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 could 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, okay? I’m just telling you, it probably wouldn’t be a good thing.

But 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, right? It’s very interesting. You could 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. He’s saying, hey, take heed to whatever you hear, for what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you. And unto you that hear shall more be given. In other words, when you choose to say, okay, I accept it, now you’re required to act on it.

And if you act on it, guess what? More is coming your way. Kind of funny how that works. When I was young in ministry, I never understood why some of the guys that I respected in ministry always chose to be very careful about what they took on. I actually thought it was a weakness in their character. I actually thought that it was a flaw. And now I’m beginning to realize, no, it has nothing to do with that.

It has everything to do with the fact that they’re acting in wisdom because they only have so many hours in the day, and they have to do what they know God has asked them to do instead of what somebody else has claimed that God has asked them to do. It’s a very important thing. So this is important when he says that. So for he that hath, to him shall be given. And he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.

You know what I believe is happening here? I believe this is Jesus making one very important principle clear. And that is if you have, it’s because you’ve been faithful with what you’ve been given and thus you will be rewarded with receiving more. But if you don’t have, it is clearly a function of your decision to not make the most of what you’ve been given and from you it’s going to be taken away.

Why? Because why would I let you keep something just because you’re lower income or just because you’re poor? Oh, I know, I’m going to get myself busted for making that statement. That’s going to be a really bad thing to say. Now, if somebody is low income and poor because of a series of unfortunate things that happened to them, and even with their preparation they went through a difficult circumstance, then by all means, I’m throwing everything I can at them.

Let’s help them. Let’s help the people with the fires. Let’s help the folks in North Carolina. Let’s help those situations. My goodness, by the grace of God, so go us, right? That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the man who is given a resource but chooses to be lazy with the life that God has given him. I’m talking about the man who God has given brains to. God has given talents. God has given physical ability.

I think about this. I look at some of the younger generation kids, forgive me for saying this, to a degree there’s a bit of despising that goes on in my heart when I see some of the younger generation of kids. It’s shocking to me. It’s actually despicable. And it’s despicable because of the way that they’ve chosen to pretty much defecate over the things that God has given them. It’s a terrible thing to say.

I was with my buddy from another state who pastors a large Calvary Chapel, relatively large Calvary Chapel. And me and him are enjoying a cup of coffee while we’re standing in the parking lot on a Sunday morning, I believe it is, watching people enter into the church building. And as I’m with him in the parking lot kind of reflecting on the ministry and what’s going on, I see this older lady. She’s clearly, clearly, clearly, clearly in her either 80s or 90s.

She’s got a walker. She is struggling with everything in her to walk across the parking lot in relatively cold weather. Now when I say relatively, 50 degrees over there is a beautiful summer day. 50 degrees to us is freezing, okay? All right. You have this wonderful lady, clearly excited about going to church. She can barely hold the Bible in her hand that’s got one of those handles, you know what I mean?

She’s got her purse that’s kind of hanging from her a weird way. I don’t even remember how it was hanging from her. And she is struggling with everything in her to get up to the place where she’s supposed to open the door and go into the sanctuary. There’s two young kids that are standing there. They couldn’t be more than 20 years old. Each of them have their Starbucks coffee in their hand.

I don’t know why it’s always a Starbucks cup, but it is. I’m not putting down Starbucks. And they’re staring at this lady walking right up to the door, watching her struggle to open the door, let her struggle to open the door, and only when she looks like she’s going to fall, appear to be inconvenienced and even somewhat make it known by their reaction the fact that they’re holding the door open so that that lady walks in.

And I looked at my buddy and I said, you see that right there? Yeah, I see. That’s what’s wrong with these young kids. They’re a selfish, God-hating generation. That’s what they are. He looked at me and he’s kind of embarrassed. He looked like I just hit him in the face. I said, what, you don’t agree with me? Well, I agree with you, but those two guys are my staff employees. What? We’re buddies. I’m telling you this right now. Fire those guys. Fire them.

Look, there is a mindset right now that exists in the younger generation that says I’m entitled. I have these amazing resources at my fingertips, and I’m not going to do anything with them. I don’t know how my dad did it. When my dad came from the United States of America, he came with $100 in his pocket. A responsibility to a future family. A medical degree that did no good to him until he got re-certified.

And he had to work with everything in him to build what he built for all of us. You guys are the beneficiaries of my father’s labor. Forgive me for saying this, but I despise the mindset of a young man today who will sit at home all day and do nothing. I despise the mindset of somebody who is, whatever you want to call it, playing their video games all day, get on their computer, watching videos.

I despise that mentality. And I’ll tell you why, the core of why I despise that mentality is this. Because I sit here as a man who has one-twentieth of your ability, one-fiftieth of your ability physically. How is it that I’m doing 100 times more than you? How in the world is that the case? That’s not a look at me, look at who I am. That’s nothing to do with me.

The question is, how many people are taking the wonderful resources that God has given them and basically throwing it away? Now here’s my thought on that. And this is kind of sad to say. But there are a few kids that aren’t doing that. There’s a few kids that are busting their tails and they’re working hard and they’re doing everything that they can to take advantage of every resource.

You know what the tragedy of all of that is? In 10 years or 15 years from now, when that kid who’s doing everything he can has built a literal empire for himself and his family so that he can unapologetically do whatever he wants to do in the name of God without any concern or worry about the future, the kid who chose to burn his life away and waste his life away will be the one complaining because he’s being discriminated against or has an unfair situation or anything like that.

It’s a disgusting mindset and it makes me sick. And Jesus makes it clear why it should make anybody sick. Because you do not feel empathy for a person who chose to throw every opportunity away who then stands in the seat of poverty complaining that they have nothing. It’s ridiculous. You did not take advantage of the opportunity. When people read this, by the way, I’ve been confronted by activists with this, these Antifa types, who read this passage and go, see what the Bible, the Bible is just ridiculous, it’s all supported the corrupt rich and so forth.

No, actually what this passage is saying is this passage is saying the people that have nothing will have it taken away from them because they’ve been able to aptly show that they are incapable of being good managers as stewards of what they’ve been given. Why should I give it to them? Why should I? Why should I entrust them to that? I had a friend, he’s still my friend. He’s a dear man, very dear friend of mine, was one of the guys that stood in my wedding.

Every single time he calls me and asks me to borrow something, I am like, dude, I’ll drive it to you. Whatever you want, I’m happy to give it to him. You want to know why? Every time I get something back from him, it’s upgraded. I’m serious. Oh yeah, I borrowed this from you and it looked like this wasn’t really working right so you know I bought this part and then I added this and then I fixed it. Anything else you want to borrow?

And then there’s other people that you know if they ask you for something, the only reason why you’ll give it to them is because you pretty much anticipate that you don’t need it anymore and it’s gone and it’ll never be used and it'll be taken. I could tell you story after story after story about this. There’s a reason why the Bible brings this to our attention. But look what it goes on to say because it becomes even more powerful than this.

And he said, so is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground and should sleep and rise night and day and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear, and after, the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth immediately he putteth in the sickle because the harvest is come.

Think about that for a second. You know, I hear the complaints that people make sometimes about the rich getting richer. Oh, it’s such a terrible thing how the rich get richer. But you understand it’s a reflection of a natural law that God has created within the world. You see, you put seed in the ground and the seed works for you. It grows. You do the little that it takes to make sure it’s supposed to do what it’s supposed to do.

You don’t have to know the ins and the outs. All you have to do is create the infrastructure that it takes to do what’s necessary to put into motion what it will already do, and you can allow the multiplying to take place by default. There’s a principle there, right? You can learn a lot about building a business model from that. You can learn a lot about how to run your family from that.

You can learn a lot about how you carry yourself from day to day. You can learn a lot about how you study in that principle. You see, there are certain things and rules that we go by in the things that we do that we just know if we do this, it will bring this result. I don’t have to know the mechanics of why it brings that result. All I need to know is if I go down this pattern and I do it, I’m going to get that result.

It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s just the way it goes. Some of the people that have taught me to do the things that I’m the most proficient at always taught me things in ways that never made sense. They just didn’t. It just felt broken to me. Start with this step. Well, this is dumb. Start with this step. Well, this is dumb. Just start with that step. Master it.

What is there to master? You tell me to pick this up and drop it. Pick it up and drop it. Do that a thousand times. But this is dumb. Come back to me when you’ve done it a thousand times. All right, I’ve done it a thousand times. Okay, take that same piece of paper and fold it, and then unfold it. Fold it and then unfold it. Fold it and then unfold it. Okay, I’m using the most basic of terms here.

I master it. Okay, I can unfold and fold a piece of paper. Okay, now do this. Now do that. Pretty soon he’s given you what appear to be fifteen of the most nominal, menial tasks that you can think of. And you’ve done them all. You get to the end of doing the last task and you have done what’s called stacking the masteries. You’ve got fifteen things that you’ve learned to master.

Each of you, by the way, have learned to master things. Like how many of you have to think about how you’re going to tie your shoe when you tie your shoes? Nobody. My two-year-old, of course, would have to think about it because he doesn’t know how to tie a shoe, right? But all of you have mastered it. You’ve done it so many times every single day. There’s lots of different ways that this works.

Now, I’m going to speak in the most simple terms because there’s been lots of times where I’ve had people walk me through something using this method. And by the time you get to fifteen, then he asks you to do something that is so insanely complicated that it doesn’t even feel like it’s tangible in your own mind. Like, what you’re asking me to do? You start by telling me to drop paper and pick it up and now you want me to do this crazy thing?

You’ve got to trust me. Here’s how you take the first step. Go do this. Man, this is crazy. Just do it. Then I do it and I realize, wow, I just did the thing that I thought was impossible effortlessly. And when I begin to take apart the mechanics of it all, there’s certain aspects of what I just did that produces a result I’ll never understand. But what I do understand was I mastered the basic, menial, nominal tasks that developed the proverbial muscle memory to get through the whole process.

You plant seed in the ground. You don’t know how the mechanics of it all work, but in due season, it grows, it multiplies, it provides fruit, it changes shape, it brings something to you that is tangible and monetizable. And all of a sudden, everything is well. Problem is, you don’t get to experience the benefit of any of that if you don’t do what it took in the first place to start the process and then do what it takes at the end to reap the benefit of the process.

The lazy man won’t start it and the lazy man certainly would not reap it. If you started the process for the lazy man himself and then expected him to go reap the benefits of it, he still wouldn’t know how to reap the benefits of it. That’s the problem, by the way, with our welfare system in the United States of America. We start the process for the people that need it and then we beg them to try to reap the benefits, but they don’t know how to reap the benefits.

You ever heard those stories of these people that win the lottery, win $100 million and they’re broke within the next six months? It’s the same principle. That’s what Jesus is saying here. So this gets really heavy because watch this, look look what he says. Verse 30, whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God, or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed which when it is sown in the earth is less than all the seeds that be in the earth.

But when it is sown, it groweth up and becometh greater than all the herbs and shooteth out great branches so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it. And with many such parables spoke he the word unto them as they were able to hear it. But without a parable spoke he not unto them, and when they were alone, he expounded all the things to the disciples.

So it’s interesting because God uses the simplicity of the parables to teach them, the average person, the person listening to him, the principles that it takes to get things started. And with the disciples, Jesus broke down the mechanics of it. I think there’s something really spectacular about that. By the way, verse 33 and verse 34 were the verses that God used to teach me my philosophy in biblical counseling.

I’m not kidding you. Someone comes to me for pre-marital counseling or they come to me for biblical counseling and they say I need help with this. I tell them this, go and do the homework. This is what I want you to do. Here’s your assignment. Go do this. If they come back to me the next week when they committed to having it done and they say I was too busy and I didn’t do it, you know what I say? We’re done.

Why should I keep going to you? You are never going to understand the things that I am trying to get you to understand until you do the basic work and watch the end result of it. Think about it like this. This is like a really cool thing that I think about a lot. The best teachers that we ever had when we were kids. The best teacher I ever had when I was a kid wasn’t even my teacher.

He was my brother’s science teacher and the guy had a teaching method that I guarantee you was absolutely biblically based. He spent most of his life in the mission field. I think it was in Africa and he came to teach at the high school level, maybe it was junior high, I don’t remember. And the way he taught was actually pretty incredible. This is what he would do. He’s a science teacher, so he taught very difficult concepts, mathematics, anything STEM, that was his thing.

And his specific field that he was teaching in class was physics. All kinds of stuff. So his style of teaching was interesting. He would do things that would ooh and ah the kids. He’d say, okay, today we’re going out in the parking lot. So when I saw his class go out in the parking lot, I kind of snuck away and I would always go look what he’s doing in the parking lot.

That was the first time I ever saw dry ice rocket go off. I can’t say it online, but anyway, that was the first time I saw all kinds of crazy explosions and sounds and all kinds of wild experiments. Let me tell you the brilliance of his teaching. He would do that and the kids would be astounded by what they saw. Then they would go back into the classroom and they would want to know why it is that happened.

How could you make a Coca-Cola bottle fly so high in the sky like how in the world did that happen? Okay, well that’s a physics thing. Let’s talk about chemical reactions. But you can’t talk about chemical reactions unless you understand elements and this is how. And those kids were the best taught kids in the school. Why? Because he demonstrated a biblical principle and the biblical principle was do the work you’ve been told to do.

Be fascinated by the result that you can’t explain. And when you are fascinated by the result that you can’t explain, you will be motivated to understand how it works. And only then will you understand the mechanics that will take you to the next level. You see, the people that Jesus was teaching the parables to, they were blown away. Wow, look at that, that’s so cool and they kept following Jesus because they wanted to see more of it.

The disciples saw that, wow, that looks cool and it’s amazing, but I want to learn how that works. Show me how that works. And Jesus, when he would go tell everybody the parables, came back to inquisitive disciples that were fascinated by how it worked. And then they said, give us your mindset, show us, teach us. Give us an understanding.

And those men that learned that way from the Lord wrote books or wrote letters to people like the church in Philippi where he says have the mind of Christ. This is what the mind of Christ, where they start breaking down the mechanics of it all. It was because God took them deeper.

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. 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.

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