Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Coming up on Light on the Hill, as our study in the book of James continues.

James Kaddis: James is going to talk to us about certain aspects of our walk that we need to get a hold of, but he's not encouraging us to get a hold of these issues because they're the major issues that he sees need to be corrected. He is giving that to us because he's about to set us up for a more significant instruction, understanding full well that we will never be able to grasp the more significant instruction being given to us until the basic stuff is understood to be second nature.

Guest (Male): Welcome to another week of Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. If you read and study the Bible with us here on the radio, as well as in your local church, and even in your personal time with the Lord, that's great. But we shouldn't stop at just hearing his word. We need to act upon it. Not doing so is a fatal error, the kind that can leave a wake of destruction beyond our wildest imagination. Here's Pastor James in James chapter one.

James Kaddis: All right, James chapter one, and so far we have already been talking about a series of issues that have come up. And as I have said before, perhaps the fastest way to summarize the dissertation that has been brought to you concerning this passage is that James is, in essence, the proverbs of the New Testament. There are a lot of insights being given to us by James that I consider to be actually anybody who, you know, has any depth of insight or thought or awareness of truth would look at and recognize is extraordinarily valuable, right? The things that he says are remarkable and they are powerful.

Now, where the proverbs is tricky, and I've talked about this before, but I'm going to provide a little bit of analysis for you so that you'll have a better depth of understanding from what James is doing here. But where proverbs gets tricky, and this is true particularly in almost all of the proverbs, with the exception of a few chapters, is that proverbs gives you one sentence, and that sentence in and of itself carries a remarkable dissertation, right? The thesis is found in the content of one sentence. The closure of the concept, the wholeness of the truth is encapsulated in that sentence.

And so if you're teaching through the book of Proverbs as a Bible teacher, it could be substantially difficult to do so because the temptation is to make a sermon out of every single verse you read. And it was designed to be that way. Perhaps that's why the wisdom that is found within that book is so substantially abnormal compared to the heart and the mind of man and whatever man can concoct that you begin to recognize very quickly upon reading those passages that they are without a doubt supernatural, right? That they have been inspired by the Lord and that there is no way what you read in a book like Proverbs is comes from man on any level.

Now, of course, that's the truth of all of the Bible, but when you get into James, James takes it to a slightly different place. And it is on a different level, not necessarily higher or lower than what you might read in the proverbs, but it is at a different level because what James does is he, unlike a lot of people, will not create a series of grammatical constructs to illustrate one particular concept. In other words, he won't say something like this is my statement, let me back up my statement by giving you an illustration, and then let me add to the illustration by perhaps creating a metaphor that might better enable you to understand what I just said.

He does do that a little bit when he describes the tongue, but he really doesn't do that here. What he actually does is something that I think is a little bit more intensive and perhaps a lot more significant if you are looking at it from an analytical perspective. And I'm going to argue that you need to look at it from an analytical perspective in order to be able to bring to the table every foundational truth that he wants to bring. So unlike the proverbs, James is not giving you one sentence and saying take that to the bank.

What James does is he sets you up for the receipt of one sentence, right? By giving you a series of principles and context that you will need to understand initially before you are able to take in what he will deem as his thesis for that particular statement, okay? So the whole idea here is this. He's basically saying I need you to understand this, this, this, and this. And I need you to know these principles well, and I'm not going to give you the statement that I want to give you until you understand the four things that I've just told you.

Now, that is a an amazing and perhaps spectacularly insightful thing for James to do because what you might not realize is when James insists based on his writing style and the grammatical construct of the particular encapsulation of his thought process, he is forcing you into understanding the underlying variables before he makes the major statement. Now, here's the problem that comes with that because there is a problem that comes with that. We often times look at the underlying variables that James puts in this passage and we make them the main points and often times reverse what is the main point and make it sort of a an an area on the side because the underlying intonations are the ones that we tend to identify as the greater struggles first.

But James is actually saying the things that most people will place an overwhelming emphasis on are the things that I want you to accept as basic or standard before you move on to the next principle. Now, perhaps one of the most effective ways that I can demonstrate this to you is my very first class that I ever took in law school was contracts. Now, most people will tell you this. If you're a law student, you ever go to law school, there are three classes you take in your first year of law school, right? You normally take contracts, you normally take torts, and you take criminal law.

Those are the three classes that we take. If you're like me, you you know, you you jab in a few other things. You try to get like I got constitutional law in between my first and second year and we you break some rules, right? But the point is is those are the first three classes that you take. Now, when you take contracts, that's typically what you start off with because there are a series of legal principles that are very easy to understand. And in understanding those principles, you can then base the rest of the approach to the law based on something very easy, right?

And contracts can be very easy or at least most fundamental when you jump in the law school. Now, I'm going somewhere with this. Bear with me. You didn't come to hear a law student education here. You came to learn the word of God, but I want to demonstrate the principle for you so that you'll better understand it. In that very first day in class, I had a teacher that told me this. He said, and now mind you, when I was in law school, it was very new to take classes online. Now, everybody can take classes online and it's not a big deal.

At the time that I was doing it, we were one of maybe five law schools around the country that were taking online instruction. So my professor said, look, you are the class that's going to have to take the baby bar, right? Which is otherwise known as the first year law students exam, right? Which is harder than the actual bar, right? It is. It's designed to flush people out that aren't taking the law seriously. And he said if you are going to succeed in taking that test and if you are going to succeed in going beyond this class, that big stash of flash cards that you have, the one that is roughly 500 flash cards high, you need to memorize it.

You need to know it like the back of your hand. It isn't like a basic vocabulary test that you take in school. You are not going to be quizzed on any of this. It is assumed in your education that you already understand those things. Now, if you have any background in this, you would understand how absolutely painful that can be. If you have a background like an engineer's background or you have a background that is, like for example, law enforcement, where you have been taught your whole life that it is A and B and A + B = C, right?

Learning how to understand a Socratic type of approach can be very difficult and you will fail miserably in looking at it if you don't understand the basics of legal terminology. And so I didn't take my professor seriously. I actually thought he was a joke when he said that. I'm like, this is dumb. I've been around lawyers my whole life and you know, I I I nab I've been the court a bunch of times and you know, I I I had all kinds of different ideas behind it until I took one of my first exams and literally failed it so bad.

It was just painful because I didn't understand everything. And at that point I got really crazy about it and I went nuts, right? And I memorized everything actually to the point now where it's really really weird how much I still remember from all of those days. But one of the things that I learned was all of the things that people will look at from the outside and say are the big lessons you need to learn from the law are actually the most basic of the lessons. They are the lessons that are the underlying, the under rowing toes.

And if you will understand those things, then you will be able to get to understand the bigger issues that most people don't even consider or look at as a bigger issue, right? Uh by the way, this is why when there was a lot of analysis that came out regarding the case that was filed by the attorney general in Mississippi, how it would not be a a big case and it wouldn't be a big deal. Well, I got mocked, I got beat up. I got a lot of people that put me down because the day that that case got released, I said that's going to overturn Roe v.

Wade. I made that very clear. And people thought I was nuts for actually saying that. And sure enough, it actually did do that. I did not see it overturning Casey, but you kind they kind of go hand in hand and you kind of get the idea. The whole point behind it is most people don't know how to look at the bigger picture because they never understood the underlying issues to be the more minor aspects of it. And so as a result, when they don't understand the things that you are assumed to have to know, you don't get the bigger things because you're so caught up in the things that you're not even paying attention to because you never took it seriously in the first place.

So here's the issue here. James is going to talk to us about certain aspects of our walk that we need to get a hold of, but he is not encouraging us to get a hold of these issues because they're the major issues that he sees need to be corrected. He is giving that to us because he's about to set us up for more significant instruction, understanding full well that we will never be able to grasp the more significant instruction being given to us until the basic stuff is understood to be second nature, right? That's a difficult thing to get.

It is because with we don't do things by second nature, if there's certain aspects we don't do sort of as a function of our normal everyday life, we're not going to survive when we go to level two. And that's what James is doing here. The proverbs doesn't do that in that sense, in that the proverbs just says here. Here it is. James is saying before I set you up with the overall thesis, I need you to understand the basics. Now, what is the overall thesis? Okay, I'm going to just tell you this right now so I can help you out a little bit.

The overall thesis is this. You are armed with information. You have been transformed by the spirit of God in your life through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You are a child of God. Thus, it is no longer acceptable for you to simply hear the words and not do the words. He's actually saying it's not acceptable for you to watch something from the sidelines and not act. When you watch things from the sidelines and you don't act, you get Nazi Germany in World War II. When you watch things from the sidelines and you don't act, you get the United States of America.

When you sit on the sidelines and don't act, you get a whole world that is going to suffer the consequence of hell because they have been led to believe that the way that they live is acceptable because very few people have mastered the underlying issues. And as a result, they are failing the bigger issue. This is important. What you might think here is the bigger issue, believe it or not, is the smaller issue in that God doesn't just expect you to be aware of the problem and face it when it comes. God expects you to master the issue in your life understanding that there are certain things that are never going to be an option, right?

In marriage, there are certain words in the vocabulary of my wife and I that will never be acceptable. Divorce is a word that is not acceptable, right? There are certain things that we will never say, right? Because we know they are not an option. There are underlying fundamentals that exist within our marriage that we know we will never cross because in doing so, we understand the bigger picture will never be able to be accomplished and it is a given that there are certain things that must be given over to the Lord in order for the Lord to do what he wants to do with us.

James is about to go over those underlying issues for us. He is about to go over issues for us right now that have to be understood as a given before we start talking about the confrontational process that involves observing evil and acting on it, right? Living your faith out. You cannot live your faith out the way God would have you to live your faith out unless you have mastered the issues that James is about to talk about. Now, some of you might say well then James, I'm never going to be able to live faithfully for the Lord.

Well, the reality of it is you're listening to a lie from the enemy because God has mastered every single one of those areas for you. And the issue is not you mastering those issues in and of yourself. The issue for you is how much are you willing to yield to God to allow God to master those problems for you. And if you're willing to give it all to the Lord and put it all out on the line, you're going to win. It's that simple because God's already won for you. It 's a simple process. So look at what James here says in verse 19.

And he says this. He says, wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Okay, now this is a tough one. By the way, this is a verse that gets quoted to me all the time. And the reason why the verse gets quoted to me all the time because people conflate the construct of a series of words being used very quickly and aggressively with a man who will not be quick to listen, right? There's a big difference.

There's a big difference between a man who is quick to listen and slow to speak versus a man who is fast to speak and slow to listen. Big difference. You realize you could be somebody who listens very you're quick to listen, but speak quickly, not quick to speak, but you speak quickly. They can be conflated, right? You understand what I'm saying? The idea here is learn to be a person who understands the need to listen to the matter before you act upon what you are seeing and hearing. The idea here is do not allow the emotion of anger that is produced by a willful disobedience to God in not allowing yourself to understand the matter.

Do not allow that emotion to overwhelm you because it will rip you off. It will keep you from doing what God has asked you to do. To tough issue to bring up because how many of us get angry in the name of righteous anger, right? How many of us allow our emotions to flare up in a context that maybe God never intended for that to happen and we act upon that emotional state of being and in reality immediately disqualify ourselves in that moment from doing that which God has called us to do. The Bible makes it very clear that the obligation that we have as believers is to be people who are not only desirous to want to hear the matter, but to look for opportunities to understand the whole picture before you provide commentary or react to the thing that you are observing.

Now, I learned this very early on, not only from my grandfather, but I learned it from my father and I even saw modeled in my pastor on a few occasions. And that is when a man who is walking with God closely finds himself in a position where he is quick to react to a particular situation. The only time that it is acceptable for him to react quickly to that situation is when in that situation they are clearly hearing the voice of God commanding them to react in that moment. Makes sense? When God speaks to me, there is no point in waiting to accomplish the very thing that he has asked me to do.

This is why we have a philosophy with our children as we raise them up that when your mom or your dad asks you to do something, delaying in doing it is the same crime as choosing not to do it at all. You have functioned in the infractionary world and you will now experience the consequence as a result of your decision to delay compliance because your decision in delaying compliance is reflective of a rebellious heart. And so when believers are being spoken to by the Lord and that believer understands it to be the voice of God, you are rebelling against God and giving way to the flesh if you choose to delay your response in walking in compliance with his word.

So sometimes people will see a fast reaction on the part of a leader and say well they they they just flew off the handle and they just did that very quickly, when in reality all they were doing was they were listening to the voice of God. And often times listening to the voice of God quickly as we're about to find out is a great tool that prevents the emotion from overwhelming you and causing you to second guess what God is actually saying and thus acting or walking in sin. Very important that I bring this out because the reality of it is when we are affected by the temptation to want to react emotionally, the only thing that matters is what does God want me to do?

Show me what the matter is, Lord, before I choose to react to anything. Here's the bottom line. The bottom line is there is nothing good about reacting quickly in anger. There's nothing good about being angry about anything and allowing that anger to influence you because the reality of it is that anger will always, almost always lead you to a response that is contrary to that which God has actually set forth. That's a tough issue to balance because the real issue here is what is it that God is asking you to do in this situation. And any emotion that you allow to overwhelm you becomes the variable that takes away your sobriety in being able to walk in compliance with God has said and you miss the mark.

It happens. So the underlying issue that he wants us to pay attention to is do not allow anger to become the thing that controls you. Do not allow yourself to become angry.

Guest (Male): We are with Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill. As you close today's program, you were talking about reacting quickly in anger. That's something many struggle with, but is there a righteous anger? What is the difference between sinful and righteous anger?

James Kaddis: Well, listen. I don't think there's any anger that's going to amount to righteousness when it comes to us. I think um as human beings, all anger uh for the most part needs to be avoided. Now, yes, there are situations where we observe anger and that anger is righteous because it is four issues that are righteous and the anger that comes from it are righteous. When we see uh the unjust continue to gain their uh way uh when doing evil things, when we see the righteous being hurt, those are reasons to be angry. Uh perhaps one of the most significant uh reasons why Christ was angry and it was righteous is when he observed people who were supposedly spiritual leaders actually taking advantage of these people that wanted to experience God.

And so they took the desire that people had to grow close to God and they used it as an opportunity to profit. And so there are these times where we see these moments, we become angry as a result of it and that anger is righteous. But most of the time we as human beings make it unrighteous because we act in an unrighteous way after being motivated by righteous anger. So the thing that we have to look at is being careful in our response when we become angry over righteous things and then we need to adjust it in light of what God's word says and how we should react and the things that we should do.

And it's that simple. Sometimes I think it's very easy to take your eyes off of the main thing. And the main thing is walking with discipline and obedience even when those moments of righteous anger take place.

Guest (Male): Thanks for clarifying that, Pastor James. Listen to this study and more at lightonthehillradio.com. Again, that's lightonthehillradio.com. Pastor James's teachings are also available through the Light on the Hill app and at oneplace.com. Listen to us wherever you get your podcasts too. We'd love to hear from you. It's encouraging to hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord. There's a place to contact us at the website lightonthehillradio.com. If this is a ministry you would like to support, there's a place to make a secure donation at lightonthehillradio.com or you can give through the Light on the Hill app.

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 through a biblical worldview. Look for those at jameskaddis.com. More from the epistle of James is coming up next weekend on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. This listener supported program is brought to you by 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.