Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): We study the word every day here on Light on the Hill, but if we don't listen to God and obey him, we've missed the point. For the Egyptians, it was a matter of life and death.

Guest (Male): Unless the rapture happens in our lifetime, each of us will face death. It's inevitable. For many, it's hastened because of a lack of willingness to do the right thing. No matter how or when it happens, we must be ready. Are you?

That's the question God forces Israel to ask when being confronted by the death angel. Here's Pastor James Kaddis to tell us about it on Light on the Hill in Exodus chapter 12.

James Kaddis: Exodus chapter 12. As we start in that chapter, there's a couple of things that I want to remind you of. One, actually, that we didn't really talk about a lot, but we have talked about it off and on, but I'll emphasize it today, especially for purposes of this study, it's really important.

First of all, we need to understand the fact that it's never a good idea to harden your heart before God. When God's word gives us insight and tells us to live a specific way, we ought to live that way because the reality of it is there's a tremendous consequence that comes as a result of not listening to God's voice. When God gives us his word and he asks us to do things, he's doing those things because not only does he love us, but he also wants us to gain the maximum benefit that we possibly can, and it obviously comes from listening to his word.

I talked about this on Thursday in light of the situation with the Black Hawk crash and even what we're finding out with what happened in Philadelphia. It's the same thing. It's very easy to crash and burn in a world where you continue to fly blind. The thing that you have to understand is that the world in which we live is a world that is predicated upon the things that we cannot see.

We are literally looking in a world where so much of what really happens behind the proverbial scenes is taking place in a realm that we cannot see. More than ever, we have to use our instrumentation. More than ever, we have to pay attention to the tools that keep us understanding exactly what's happening in the area that we can't see. The only tool that we have, and perhaps the greatest and most foundational tool that we have, rests in the word of God.

If we're walking obediently to God's word, if we're saying, "Listen God, we'll obey you, we'll do it," it doesn't make sense because we're all flying blind. We all can't see. Then the thing to understand and to know is that we will be okay because God guides us. God gives us the tools that we need to be guided by him. Yes, it's going to feel uncomfortable. It's not going to feel so good. It's going to be one of those situations that isn't going to feel the best at the moment that we're going through because we're flying blind, and we need to rely upon the word of God to be able to understand that as we navigate, only God can see for us, which is why we've got to obey his word.

The tragic situation that we just heard about in Philadelphia, there's a lot of people online saying that that plane stalled. There's a lot of people doing these debriefings and saying that that guy pointed him a little too high and then he stalled and the plane flew out of control. I've got news for you: a plane going at over 240 knots dropping at a speed of 8,000 feet per minute is not a plane that falls because of a stall.

What you are looking at is you are looking at pilots who were spatially disoriented. They got in the clouds, they lost their bearing, they actually thought that they were flying out of a circumstance and didn't realize they were going into the ground until they got out of the clouds. That happens when you're in the clouds and you're trying to rely on your naked eye to try to figure out where you're going and not having a clue that you're pointed down and into the ground. You can see it; it's very obvious. That's exactly what happened.

It's a reminder to me, and I don't know why I'm becoming so affected by a lot of these aviation accidents as of late, but many of them are all going back to the same issue. Were you paying attention to your instrumentation? Are you looking at the tools that are in front of you, especially when it's so easy to become disoriented? Even on a clear night, you can have a terrible accident if you're not focusing on the tools that were given to you to help you see what you can't see.

It's hard to imagine, but that helicopter was looking at another plane. It didn't even have its eyes on the right plane. It's hard to imagine how that could be the case, but it is. If you're not paying attention, if you don't take advantage of the tools that are in front of you and you're not utilizing those tools, you can make a terrible and tragic mistake. I think that's the thing we have to understand when it comes to our walks with the Lord.

As we walk with the Lord, as we seek him, as we serve him, understand this: God's given you the greatest instrumentation that you could ever have. This book right here will allow you to be able to see in the areas that you can't see. This book will give you the ability to navigate in a way where, although you can't see a single thing, you will be able to literally navigate through that world of darkness. That's what God's word does.

The problem is when you choose to deny the word of God, then you will harden your heart. As you harden your heart, there will come a point in time where God will say, "Okay, you've hardened your heart. This is a decision you've made. You're clearly not going to change your mind. So, I'm going to make strong your position. I am going to allow you to stand in the position that you've already made, and I'm going to harden that position that you've already stepped into."

It's not a good place to be when you harden your heart towards God, and it's in a worse place to be when you've hardened your heart so much that God says, "I'm just going to simply make strong the decision you've already made." That's exactly what's going on with the Pharaoh right now. Pharaoh hardened his heart to a point where he has entered into the area of no return. Now the people in Egypt are going to suffer immensely. They're going to be wailing like nobody's ever wailed before because they're all going to lose their firstborn.

It's going to be a terrible tragedy, and the people of Israel are now about to be briefed about what's going to happen. They're about to be asked to do a whole bunch of things that don't make sense. As a matter of fact, there are people today that will read these passages and still can't make sense of certain things. We'll come across one of them which doesn't seem like it's so hard to connect, but a lot of people seem to have a hard time with it.

There's so much here that they're being asked to do that doesn't make any sense. The problem is if they ignore God and they choose not to do it, they all die. But if they say, "Okay, God, we'll listen to you," then they'll be exempt from what the death angel is about to do within the next 15 days or so from the time that God is talking to them. It's a really important picture for them to be able to draw because you have to understand that their only way they're going to survive the impending doom that is coming upon Egypt, including Goshen, is to listen to what God says.

If they listen to what God says and they do exactly what God tells them to do, then their lives are completely spared. There's something that's very important about this. We're in a place right now, especially in this country, where we've learned how to live very comfortably. Everything is comfortable. We don't do anything that's uncomfortable in this country. Everything that we do centers around enjoying the comforts that have been afforded to us, but the reality of it is it can become a great distraction multiplier.

You get so comfortable that you don't see the need to pay attention because oftentimes it's fear and a lack of comfort that causes you to reach out to the very tools that help you through these things. But when you're feeling pretty confident, when you're feeling pretty comfortable, it's very easy to take your eyes off the word of God and to trust in what the word of God says. We've seen this with countries throughout the history of mankind.

We see nations turn their hearts towards God, God blessing them, them taking their eyes off the Lord, and then them bringing a curse upon themselves. When you look at Israel, it's a perfect example of that. If you want to know what that looks like, go read the book of Judges. You can see the ebb and the flow. You can see the people of God turning their heart toward the Lord, God blessing them, and them going, "Yeah, we got this. We're all good," and then falling apart spiritually, only to wait for another spiritual awakening.

The spiritual awakening is what saves them, and then after that, they get confident, they get arrogant about it, and then they take another nosedive. Actually, that's the whole reason why I'm hoping that God is going to do something great with this country, because we know that Trump can't save this country, but only God can. God can be using the president right now to make a set of situations available to us where we can seek the Lord more freely, where we can look to the things of God, where we can position ourselves in a way that is going to glorify God in such a unique and such an incredible way.

If we take advantage of it, we may see the greatest spiritual awakening we've ever seen in human history. God, I'm praying that we will rapture the whole world—meaning the church out of the whole world. What if the United States of America becomes inconsequential in Bible prophecy, as I believe it does, by virtue of the fact that it's been vacated because of the rapture as a result of something that happened with respect to a spiritual awakening that is beyond our capacity to be able to understand or discern?

That could be an incredible thing, but it requires walking in obedience to the Lord. It requires taking advantage of the things that God has put in front of us. If there's ever a chance within the last 15 or 20 years for Christians to really capitalize upon the moments that we're watching right now, the chance is right now. I don't even know if you saw this, but the Department of Defense just basically issued a statement that they are washing away, like eliminating, all of the history month celebrations.

They're not celebrating Gay Pride Month, Black History Month, Asian Month. They're walking away from all of it. What they're only going to be doing is recognizing the celebration of the birth of our nation. I think they made a statement about Christmas as well, believe it or not, which is hilarious. My point behind it is when we begin to start focusing in the direction that I believe God has called us to, we have this immense open door. Let's walk into it, folks. Let's take advantage of it.

The fact that God has given us an opportunity to use this instrumentation to glorify him, we have it right here. This is the other thing that we can learn from all of this, from God's judgment. One of the things that should inspire you when you consider God's judgment is this: God will not judge his own. When his own chooses to walk in obedience to him, he will not judge them.

Of course, he disciplines his own. He does that on a regular basis, and of course, that discipline can seem a lot harsher sometimes than the judgment that the world takes on. But the reality of it is God will not judge his own when his own is walking obediently towards him. So, there's a huge lesson that we can learn from this. That's exactly what's about to happen.

God is about to bring upon the people of Egypt the worst thing that they have ever seen to this point. God is going to allow, or send, a death angel to take the life of every single firstborn child, every single firstborn in the cattle, every single thing that's alive. The firstborn is going to die. That's a big deal. Now God is giving instruction to Moses on how to prevent that with the people, and this is where we get the Passover from, which is kind of an interesting thing.

Let's look at this. We'll start in verse 1 of chapter 12, and it says this: "And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying, 'This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.'" It's interesting because it can get very confusing as to when the Passover falls in line because it's different every single year. Again, that's based on the lunar calendar, which is going to be different based on what happens each year.

Sometimes the Passover falls during the same time that we celebrate the resurrection of Christ; sometimes it doesn't. But the one thing that we should note is the reason why we associate the resurrection of Christ with the Passover is because when Christ died, he died during the Passover. That is a very significant picture, as we're about to find out, because the Passover itself and the celebration of God sparing his people from the death angel has always been a type of Christ. It speaks about Christ in the future, and there's a lot of stuff that we can learn from that by simply looking at this.

Look at verse 3. He says, "Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, 'In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house: and if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take it according to the number of souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats.'"

We'll just stop really quickly because there are some things that the commentators have a difficult time with. For example, I haven't read any commentaries that make any sense out of the tenth day, the lamb being selected or taken out specifically for a purpose. I do think there's something very interesting there. We'll get into that in just a second. The other thing that God wants is he wants the lamb to be selected according to the size that would be necessary to feed the family.

For example, if your household is a household of eight people and the lamb that you select is a lamb that can only feed four people, then obviously you need to get a bigger lamb. The idea here is that it goes a little backwards because let's say you're a family of four and you've got a lamb that can feed eight people, then God is saying find another family, join them together, and you both can share that lamb. So, that's very important here from what God is saying.

There's something very calculated about this. Notice it talks about a male of the first year, you shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats, and the restriction is there should be no blemish. Now this is interesting because a blemish speaks very specifically about this lamb not having any physical damage as a result of something incidental that takes place. In other words, this lamb cannot be one that was bitten by a wolf and caused a scar.

This lamb can't be one that broke its leg a few days prior. This lamb can't be one that had some injury a while ago and now it's never the same. This has to be a lamb that's never had anything externally affect it, meaning it has to be untouched by the effects of the world around it. It's interesting because Jesus, when he was crucified, he had no spot or blemish. There's a big difference between the two because the blemish speaks of something that happens externally to the lamb.

The spot actually would refer to the fact that there was something that was natural or genetic that took place. Jesus had neither. Jesus was not affected by the genetic problem of sin because, if you remember, he was sired by the Holy Spirit, not by Joseph. If you remember, Joseph's bloodline was actually the cursed bloodline. Joseph's bloodline was the bloodline that came from Jeconiah, and that cursed. Yet Mary also came from the line of David but did not come from the cursed line.

The Bible says through one man sin entered the world, and each and every single one of us were born in a condition of total depravity. But since Christ was born to this world through the insemination of the Holy Spirit and not a man, that also means that Christ was born into this world without sin. That's why the Bible refers to Christ as the last Adam, not the second Adam but the last Adam, because like Adam, Jesus came to this world without sin at all in him.

When Adam was created by God, Adam was created without sin. The difference between Adam and Jesus is the fact that Adam did choose to sin, rebelled against God. Because he did that, we were all born with sin. I was thinking about this the other day, how bad the sin nature affects us and how dramatic you can see evidence of the fact that we were born with sinful natures when you're a parent, you have children, and you're raising them.

It's just unbelievable. I was at Home Depot yesterday, and we take the kids there typically on a regular basis at the beginning of the month. I kind of like it because, although you have to wake up super early, the kids get to build stuff over there and it's kind of fun, and then I get to go buy stuff. I just enjoy doing that. For a long time, I would normally carry my son, who now is just over two years old, and I always enjoyed that side of things.

Anytime we'd go to the store, I always carry him. He always cuddles up on his dad, and it's always one of those fun moments. Well, this time, I'm with him and for the first time in as long as I can probably ever think of—and it's kind of sad that it happens this way—but I'm holding him and he is fussy. Everything is fine. He doesn't have a dirty diaper, he's not tired, he's been fed. There's none of the issues that would make a kid fuss.

He already has his words, he's already beginning to use words. I'm holding him and he's crying and all that, and I'm shocked because, first of all, he understands what you tell him very clearly. He's a very smart little boy. He's a little Kaddis; of course he's going to be smart. I'm telling him, I'm saying, "Hey, son, knock it off." That's what I'm telling him while he's doing his thing, and he stops. "Knock it off, son," and he stops.

Then he waits for the opportune time. "Knock it off." And then he stops. Then it gets to the point where we're kind of going through our thing and he's just going and nothing is... he's not listening and he's going. I checked everything. There's nothing that's making him be fussy. He's just being fussy. Then all of a sudden, you can just sort of tell. Now granted, he's still a little under the weather, I get that.

Then granted, somebody from the church sees me. I talked to that person for a while, and that little boy stays quiet the whole time. He doesn't fuss one bit, he doesn't say a word. Why? Because he's naturally kind of shy and when he sees me get so close to somebody, he's just very quiet. Then you think about this in the back of your mind and you go, "Man, that's the evidence of that sinful nature is so alive and well."

It's just amazing because that kid has gotten so sophisticated now, sophisticated where he even knows the right way to moan and cry. He knows how to manipulate Mama in a very specific way, and he knows that he can't hustle Dad. It's very funny how that works. The tone of his cry changes when he sees Mama than the tone that he's trying to give me. He's trying to give me a tone that he knows is going to irritate me a little bit so that I might stop. When he sees his mom, it's a completely different "Hooo!" He just knows how to play the game.

These kids were born with sin natures just like we are. You never have to teach your kid how to lie, lie, lie, deny, deny, deny. You never have to teach your kid how to run a hustle. They're already born that way.