Light on the Hill

Announcer: God shows up in our lives all the time, but when it happens, will you notice? Light on the Hill is next.

I have found the peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you, because all I need is you. All I need is you.

Last time on Light on the Hill, we learned that God works supernaturally using the natural, even though we don't often notice it. We'll see a great example of this in Exodus chapter 3, and that's where we join Pastor James Kaddis for today's message, "God Showed Up! Did You Notice?"

James Kaddis: Look what happens. This is where it gets really, really cool. Moses says, "Here am I." He responds, right? He knows. I love this. And he said, "Draw not nigh hither. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."

Now, there's a lot of people that speculate as to why he had to take his sandals off of his feet or his shoes off of his feet. Pastor Chuck told a really interesting story when he taught through this, where he would go to churches in South Korea. In South Korea, you couldn't, as a pastor, stand behind the pulpit unless your shoes were off. It was their cultural thing, and he said he couldn't figure out where they got it from in the culture, but he figures they got it from here.

I always laugh at that because if you're not from the Middle East, you're going to be just as puzzled as Pastor Chuck was. But anybody who's from the Middle East understands this principle very well. As a matter of fact, anybody who knows me well understands this principle and is sometimes irritated by it. You could ask Pastor Dell; he'll confirm this for you.

If I'm sitting down at a chair and somebody is sitting right next to me, and that person crosses their legs—most of the time I deal with this, it's men—they cross their legs in a way where the bottom of their foot is pointed towards me. I get to the point where I'm like, "Knock it off. Put your foot down." Sometimes if they know better, I'll just knock their foot out of my way.

I'll tell you why. Because in the culture in which I was raised—and by the way, if you ever do this to me, don't ever give me the line "We're in America," because you're not going to get a great response from me on that one—but my point is this: when that happens, this is what you're doing. This is culturally what you're doing. You're telling me, you might as well tell me, "You're a piece of dirt. You're not better than the dirt on the bottom of my feet, on the bottom of my shoes."

That's what you're telling me. Whether or not you are telling me that, whether or not your culture says you're telling me that, that's what you're telling me. When you show me the bottom of your feet by doing that, you're basically disrespecting me. By the way, it's one of the worst forms of disrespect. You can say blankety-blank this, your mom that; there is nothing. That is one of the worst things you can do. It is so unbelievably disrespectful.

By the way, it's to the point where to me, to this day, I hate it when people do it. To the point where I won't even sit by people that I know are prone to do it. People that I'm close enough to, I'll be like, "Put your foot down," because it just bothers me. As a matter of fact, if you want to see a good true-to-life example of this, one of the funny moments that we had in politics, at least to Americans it was funny, but it was a very serious moment.

Remember when Bush Jr. was in Iraq? He was at a joint press conference. I actually watched it live when it happened. At a joint press conference, while the joint press conference was going on, this guy says something in Arabic. I couldn't discern what he was saying; I wish I could. He says something in Arabic and then George Bush, who's very agile, just goes like this while the shoe flies over his head.

If you remember, all the comedians were going crazy with it. Jay Leno was making the funny sketches, and all these guys were making all these funny sketches about it. It was a very, Dave Letterman was really heavy on it. It was just a really hilarious moment for a lot of people. But people like us that are from the Middle East, we understand right now it was not a hilarious moment.

As a matter of fact, it may have been one of the most significant moments in US history in that there was somebody who was in the reporter bank that was allowed to show the ultimate form of disrespect to a United States President in front of the Middle Eastern audience. Because when he took off his shoe and threw it at him, he was basically saying as a man and as a leader, "You are less than the dirt that I step on every day."

If George Bush's team understood what was really going on, they would have handled that situation a lot differently. They would have treated that with a very strong repercussion and a backlash, but they didn't. As a matter of fact, they made humor of it, and the Middle Eastern world looked at George Bush as a weak man. They recognized him as that. They recognized Americans as weak in that moment because of that.

So understand, in our culture, Middle Eastern background, you don't do that. You do not show the bottom of your foot to somebody because it's disrespectful. So now you should be able to understand why God says, "Take the shoes off your feet because the ground in which you are standing is holy ground."

What he's saying is, it's set apart for you to be on and not the dirt that you've been tracking from all over the place. Now some of you might say, "Well, that's ridiculous, James. He's in the desert." Well, it might be ridiculous to you, but the thing that you have to understand is when God chose to appear in that bush, and the fire began to engulf the bush and it was not consumed, then God made that very place holy.

The very moment God made that place holy, he would not allow anybody to profane it. I think there's something very important to say with that, and that is this: that when you live your everyday life serving God and seeking God like Moses was doing, then you detect the anomaly because you recognize it's different from the rhythm.

Then after you detect the anomaly, you investigate it. After you investigate, God speaks to you. Then it should be in that very moment you fear the God who speaks to you, and as such, you should recognize the moment that you are experiencing is a holy moment and it should be treated as such. There's no reason why you should ever understand it any differently. The idea of taking off your shoes because you stand on holy ground is a very, very critical thing. As a matter of fact, I would venture to say that in some context, it probably would have been very puzzling to people from that culture had they not read that specific detail in this particular circumstance.

So Moses says, "Here am I." Look what happens. This gets really interesting. I love this. He said, "Draw not nigh hither. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon you stand is holy ground." Verse 6: "Moreover he said, 'I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God."

I think this is spectacular because I want you to notice what's happening here and it's a dynamic that we have to learn to follow and adhere to and recognize. You see, I'm going to repeat the pattern again. Moses is living a life dedicated to the Lord. In living his life, he acknowledges God in everything he does while he's shepherding.

Because of that, he lives in a rhythm, a very discernible rhythm, a discernible pattern. The pattern is broken by the anomaly that he witnesses. He recognizes the pattern being broken by the anomaly that he witnesses, and he goes to investigate it. When he goes to investigate it, God honors the fact that he paid attention to the anomaly, thus investigating it, so God speaks to him.

God makes it very clear who it is he's speaking to. At that very moment, the shoes have come off. What does Moses do? Moses fears God. He recognizes immediately who he's talking to and he listens to God's voice in a way that he understands that he is about to be put in a position to do what God has told him to do.

By Moses turning his face away from the Lord, he is communicating the fact that he fears God more than he fears what God is asking him to do or what God is going to tell him to do. Folks, I'm going to make myself very clear. God has asked me to do lots of things throughout the years and he has spoken to me very clearly and very vividly. In many of those items, what I when I did what God told me to do, people called me crazy. They said, "You're insane, you're nuts, that's crazy. What are you doing? What are you thinking?"

Every single time my sentiment has always been, "I'm more fearful of what happens when I don't fear God in obeying him than I would ever be obeying him and watching the failure take place." I can fail all day, I can be humiliated all day, I can be embarrassed all day, but the one thing I don't want to do is I don't want to be accused of not fearing what happens when I don't obey God.

I think that's really important. That's why we discipline our children the way that we discipline our children. If my children don't say "Yes, Pop" or "Yes, Mom" after we ask them to do something, or our children choose not to listen to us, ignore us, which is a form of rebellion or anything like that, there is an immediate consequence. There's no question. It doesn't matter how inconvenient the consequence is, doesn't matter how hard it is.

Why? Because I want my children to fear the idea of what happens when they disobey their parents more than fearing the idea of what happens when they choose to go out on their own limb and do whatever it is they're going to do. You want to know why? Because when they learn to do that, they'll learn how to do it with God.

If they can learn how to do that with God, then they're going to live fearless lives, if you know what I mean. They'll learn how to do anything and not be worried about the consequences because they know the authority by which they're doing it on. By the way, on the authority issue, more on that to come because I'm going to tell you this right now, I struggled with this passage for years and years and years.

At least the first 15 years of me teaching through this, I struggled with this passage because there were some difficult questions that I refused to plow through because I knew how hard it would be. Then finally I did and I began to realize how rich and deep and powerful this passage is. So Moses turns his face away, understanding and knowing who it is that he's dealing with.

Watch what happens here, verse 7: "And the Lord said, 'I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of the land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, unto the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel came unto me, and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.'"

Interesting. You know, as a pastor, I get called on a regular basis, and when I do, most of the time it's not because people want to give me a praise report. Most of the time when they call me, it's not because they want to say, "Hi, let's talk for a few minutes." No, most of the time when they call me, it's because they're going through major crisis.

The crisis that they call me with is not nominal. Most of the time, by the time they get to the point where they have to call me or they feel like they have to call me, they're going through stuff that's so major that nobody can deny it. I've had calls from fathers that watch their daughters commit suicide. I've had calls from parents that have survived their children, whether it be cancer or whatever.

I've had calls from situations where people have just experienced getting their whole lives taken away from them through theft, rape, I mean, you name it. Everything that you can think of, I've seen it all. I've sat in the living room of people that just watched their children get killed by a motor vehicle. I mean, you name it, I've been in the midst of it and I've seen it.

Almost every single time I can say things like, "I'm with you, I hear you, I see you, I feel the pain that you're feeling to a degree," but almost in every single one of those situations, you know the overwhelming emotion that I have? I'm helpless. There's nothing I can do. What am I going to do with a man who finds out that his daughter just killed herself?

Am I going to tell him, "Don't worry, time is going to heal that"? Time isn't going to heal that. You know all time is going to do? It's going to cauterize the wound, yes, but it's going to create a scar the likes of which you've never seen and will always remind you of what happened in the past. Time doesn't heal things; time just gives you the ability to be able to better handle those things as you come across them. But they will always be a wound; they're always going to be something that you're going to suffer with.

So when I hear God saying, "I hear you, I see you, I can identify with you, I feel it, but I'm going to do something about it," can you imagine how spectacular that is? It's one of the things that I've learned. When I'm helpless and hopeless and I can't do anything about the situation that's going on, I always call upon the God who can.

I always call upon the God who I know can be the person who repairs these things because God is faithful and he can do it. God is saying, "Listen, I heard the prayers of the children of Israel. I know exactly what's going on and I tell you what, I'm going to heal them." But look what he does. Not only does he say he's going to fix that problem, but look what he says: "Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt."

Okay, let's go over the pattern again. Shall we go over the pattern? You're living your everyday life. You're in tune to the Spirit of God. You're doing the things that God's called you to do every day. You could be a trash man or a lawyer, doesn't matter what you're doing. Any work that's honest is honorable.

You're doing that work, you're filled with the Spirit of God. As you're doing that work, you develop a rhythm. You have a, you're a creature of habit. There's a rhythm in your life. That rhythm is disrupted momentarily because you recognize an anomaly. When you recognize the anomaly, you've learned over the years to understand that these anomalies are created by God in order to gain your attention.

So when you see the anomaly, you take a moment to investigate the anomaly. It's not until you investigate the anomaly that God sees that you've done so, meets you there, calls upon you, and speaks to you. When God speaks to you, then in essence, what you do is you walk in fear knowing that what you're about to hear is going to be life-changing and eye-opening and it's going to be significant.

Then you know what God does after that? God oftentimes tells you of a problem that he's going to fix. He says, "I intend to do this. I see this and I intend to do this." You know the most spectacular part about that is after he does that, he says, "I'm going to make you a part of it."

Why is he going to make you a part of it? He's going to make you a part of it because he took the time to tell you about it. If he took the time to tell you about it, he's going to make you a part of it. Isn't it spectacular when you know that something is going to get changed by God in a dramatic way? Something that is insurmountable for you, something that you could never change in a million years, but God says, "I'm going to change it, and I'm going to make you a part of that."

Imagine. Imagine. Look at Moses' response. Look what happens. This is pretty significant. Look what he says; it's powerful: "And Moses said unto God, 'Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?'" Pretty big change, isn't it?

Remember a few years ago, 40 years prior, he thought he was called by God because he was, to deliver the children of Israel. As Stephen says, that was embedded, that was embedded within him. He knows. But what does he do? He doesn't need God. He takes it upon himself. He kills the Egyptian, he tries to become a ref among the Hebrews, and he realizes how quickly that backfired.

Now God takes him over 40 years and humbles him. After being 40 years in the wilderness, you know what he does? He says, "Who am I to do what you've asked me to do, God?" The same guy 40 years ago who could do it all on his own is now the guy that says, "I'm a nobody and I can never do this. Who am I to even take this call?"

One of the amazing things that's going to come out of the conversation that I had with Jack that you're going to watch on Friday is Jack says something that he said he's never told anybody in his life, and he puts it out online. He says it to the whole world. Because I don't know if you guys know this, but Jack had a stuttering problem just like Moses did. Jack couldn't say a word edgewise without a stutter.

When God called him to teach, he took the stutter away. First time he went and obeyed God, God took the stutter away. Jack told us that every single time he walks up to his pulpit, there's a demonic voice in his head that says, "You're going to start stuttering again." That voice is so strong that it makes him not want to teach.

Can I just tell you this? When people that are so powerfully used by God are used by God, it's probably because every time they're about to be used by God, they have the "who am I" mentality. I can't tell you how many times I have sat here in front of you during the opening prayer and it went, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to say?"

Sometimes when I say "Good morning," it's my way of like, "Lord help me, Lord help me, Lord help me, Lord help me." It's like the time to regroup. You want to know why? Because everything you hear coming out of my mouth, everything that comes out of my study times, every bit of insight that God develops within my heart has nothing to do with me. It's all God.

It's a supernatural action, and every single time God speaks to you and tells you what he wants to do with his people, and your response is, "I got this, leave me alone," you're going to crash and burn. But when your response is, "Who am I that I would do this, Lord?" it's a completely different world.

I still think about this to this day. I am shocked at how many people actually watch us online on the radio. It's like, who am I? I'm completely different from every single person around me that does this. We go to one of these YouTube conferences; none of these people are my people. None of them.

They're all very like, I mean, you should, I'm just telling you, you should see some of these folks, okay? Some of them are just outright freaks to me. Like it's just weird. Like I'm not, I don't have all of the, anyway, I'll just leave that alone. But by God's grace, God uses me, but it's him that's doing the work.

When you walk with that humility, things begin to change. Now watch what happens next because this is where it really gets awesome. This is where the real rubber begins to meet the road: "And he said, 'Certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee: when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon the mountain.'"

You know how many times God has told me about a future event and said, "This will happen in the future, and when it does, this is how you'll know that it was me that was in it in the first place"? You know how many times it's happened to me in my life? It's been remarkable.

God tells me to do something; it feels crazy to me, it feels insurmountable, and God will say, "When you walk past this place at this moment, you'll know it's me because you were here." You know how many times God has done that? I think God did that with Moses, saying, "You know what, I'm going to not only bring the people out of the land, but when you come back to this place, and you will come back to this place, you'll know at that moment that it was me because I told you it would happen."

I love people that are driven by God's voice when God promises and that things are going to happen. Thus they come back to the place that God told them they would go to, and they are able to say, "To God be the glory, look at all the wonderful things that he has done." I think it's a pretty significant and powerful place to be.

I can tell you this right now, folks, God is in the business of doing that. The question is, are you willing to take the risk in allowing God to do what God wants to do while at the same time facing what could be humiliation on your part? If you're already humiliated, if you're already humble, you're not going to worry about that aspect of it.

You're just going to do what God's told you to do and God's going to do great things. When you circle around, you're going to recognize, "Yeah, God called me here." It's one of the first conversations that we have with people that come on and work with us on a regular basis. We say, "The one thing you need to know that you know that you know that you know that God called you to do this."

Because if you don't know that God's called you to do this, when you circle back around, you're not going to have anything that's going to show you where God's call on your life was, and you're going to walk away bitter and angry and you're going to be frustrated and you're going to hate Pastor James because almost everybody does.

It's about do you love God more than you love anybody else and are you listening to the voice of God? If you'll listen to the voice of God, then everything begins to change, and it changes dramatically. So God is saying, "When you come back around this mountain, you'll know it's me."

And Moses, now this is the thing that I think is spectacular, okay? Moses said unto God, "Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me unto you,' and they shall say to me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say unto them?"

Okay, I'm going to just stop to tell you this right now. Every time I used to read this, I would think in my mind, Moses is a moron. I'm not joking. Like that has to be the most stupid question you could ever ask. It's just like my thought, my thought process. By the way, this is clearly in my youth.

I would look at it and say, "You've got God's attention and you're asking God what his name is? Like that's the dumbest question in the world." In my own mind, I still feel that way to a degree. I knew that God called me to marry my wife before I knew her name. I'm not joking.

So like in my mind, why in the world would you ask what your name is? It's kind of a crazy, like it's just nuts. But then when I started researching it and looking at it and just really drilling my brain into it, weeks and weeks and weeks and just toiling in pain over the issue, God showed me it was not only a stupid question, it was actually the most brilliant question that any man in any period in history could have ever asked. It was the most brilliant question Moses ever asked at any point of his life. He could have never asked a greater, more brilliant question.

Let me explain what I mean when I say that. How many people here have a paramilitary background or military background? Anybody? Quick show hands. Okay. All right. Answer this question, just speak it out loud: Who has more authority, a private or a lieutenant? Lieutenant. Higher ranking, right?

Okay, is there ever a time that the private will have more authority than the lieutenant in a military structure if they're higher ranking? See, my older guy says yes, my younger guy says no. You want to know why my older guy says yes? I'll tell you why my older guy says yes, because he understands a principle that you would have to understand being in the military for a very, very long time. Okay, here it is. Watch this. And my younger guy's going to go, "Oh yeah, you're right, I didn't think about that." Always works this way. Right? The private will have more authority than the lieutenant if—and listen to this very clearly—if the private is acting on orders from the general.