Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Making the connection between the disobedience of God's clear commands in Genesis to the destruction we see around us, here is Pastor James.

James Kaddis: When you look at Genesis, you'll find some core commands that God issues. We've talked about this on multiple occasions, and you'll realize that a violation of these core commands is, in essence, what the core cause is of the destruction that we're experiencing every single day.

Singer (Male): I have found that peace only comes from you. I have found that joy only comes from you, because all I need is you. All I need is you.

Guest (Male): Calvary Chapel Signal Hill presents Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. We're in a five-part series on the various prophecies concerning the death and resurrection of Christ that changed the world forever. Today, we'll be in the book of Genesis and the first of three passages that really help us understand why the world is in such a mess today. In a word, sin. However, God has a solution. I'm happy to say and that's found in Jesus. Here is Pastor James.

James Kaddis: Okay, I have said this on multiple occasions, and I think a lot of it just comes from the fact that I oftentimes go back to it so much. Some of it really is, I think, based on the fact that I use it all the time, that I depend upon it all the time, and that I oftentimes lean into it more than most people ever know or realize, but I love the book of Genesis. I think that Genesis, in my opinion, is perhaps the most profound book in the Bible, maybe right in line with Revelation.

I think they are the most consequential, and I'm not one of these guys that says, "Well, if I pick one, it's going to be this," because I would just go into Insanityville if I had to do that because every single one of the books that are in the Bible are consequential for so many different reasons and they work so well together. The topography of the Bible is something where, yes, you can focus in a little bit closer to see the power of something deeply looked into, but it's almost unusable when it stands independent of all of the plan found in each and every part of it.

And that's why I think it's so remarkable that we have the whole biblical canon in front of us and that it's there to show us and to educate us about a lot of variables that we don't understand or would never understand had it not been for the insight that we find in it. And that's really what I love about the Bible, that's what I think is so special about it, but the book of Genesis is a book that I think is very misunderstood on a lot of levels. I believe that if you understood the book of Genesis, if you understood the idea behind how God wanted it presented to us, it would completely change the way you did everything.

It would change the way you do business, it would change the way that you raise your families, it would change your philosophy of parenting, it would change your philosophy of how you study things, it would change the way you actually teach things if you're doing a lot of teaching. It would change the way that you even look at some of the things that you do even for your own personal care, you know, how you view the subject of rest, what work looks like to you under a normal context. There's so much that you can find in the book of Genesis, and what I love about it is it sets pretty remarkable precedent.

Now, what's interesting is when you look at the book of Genesis as it was designed to be given to us, it also lays out for us this incredible standard that God had intended for us. Like you look at just the account of creation and you look at God's declarations for us as mankind and what he had intended for us as human beings, you would recognize that what God had in store for us was bliss. I mean, what God wanted for us was nothing short of perfection.

He created us in an environment that was untouchable, second to none. He gave us the best of everything. He intended for us to live in a literally opulent state, and we took it and we completely ruined it. We destroyed it. I mean, with Adam, we brought into the world that God created for us sin and death, and that destruction is something that has carried on from generation to generation. And I have a theory on something that I think is really important to probably discuss for just a second.

And that is when you start examining the overall causes of death that have risen here in the United States of America, and actually worldwide, a lot of people would directly relate it to the type of foods that we eat, which may very well be true. A lot of people would relate it to maybe the expanded use of cell phones now, which also may be true. It might be related to a whole lot of variables, and there's a lot of people who speculate as into the reason why people are dealing with hormonal problems or why cancer is at an all-time high.

I mean, it's like we see instances of Alzheimer's increasing in ways we had never seen before. As a matter of fact, it's really interesting because less than 100 years ago, the rate of people developing Alzheimer's or any kind of brain function disorder was very, very nominal. There was not a lot of people that were even having it. It was something that was very unheard of. Matter of fact, it's interesting, as early as the 1940s or the 1950s, if you said somebody had some kind of dementia, that was almost like a mysterious, scary thing because it just wasn't all that common.

Matter of fact, it was something that people initially right off the bat thought it wasn't even real. Look at something as simple as autism. You guys understand right now in this country, literally, it's one in every 12 kids is what they're saying now. It used to be just a year ago, one in every 30. I mean, that's crazy. Now they're saying that it was as bad or as little as one in every what, 30,000? But it's like you think about it right now, the statistic in something like that is just shocking.

Like literally, that means that every single American on the face of the earth, and worldwide the numbers are very quickly catching up, but every single American that lives on the face of the earth has been affected by somebody that they know that has it. Like it's that crazy. And people are shocked by it because they're thinking what in the world happened that has contributed to that? And there's a lot of speculation. Some people will say, well, it's the kind of medicines that people are taking. Some people say it's vaccines. Other people say that it's the kind of food that everybody's eating.

Some people say, no, it's the kind of stuff that we're actually chemically treating food with. Some people say it's the red dyes that people are eating in their food or in some cases their clothing. I just watched a lecture on one guy that basically says a lot of the sicknesses that we have are based on microplastics. So if you're drinking water out of a bottle, that could be something that could be tremendously detrimental to you. I mean, there's a lot of different philosophies that people have, but I have one that I think trumps all of that.

I don't think it's a philosophy, I think it's biblically based. I think sin, based on what we learn in the book of Genesis, sin has the single greatest destructive effect on mankind on every level. Sin destroys man physically, it destroys man spiritually, it destroys man's environment, it completely radically annihilates the minds and the hearts of mankind as well as the physical bodies of mankind. What I think is interesting is, yes, have we seen an astronomical increase in eating foods that are dangerous to us?

Have we seen an astronomical increase in the consumption of medicines, the pharmaceutical industry, all that stuff? Yeah, all of that's true, and all of it carries a large contributory variable that leads to the things that we're seeing. But how about just how about the fact that we stopped and we looked at the correlation between the increase of sin in our world in these last days versus the presence of it even 30 years ago? 30 years ago, forget 30 years ago, 15 years ago, if you said you were a female when you were born a male and you wanted to compete in a female sport, you would not only be laughed off of any conversation that related to it, you would be sent to the insane asylum because you were viewed as mentally ill.

Now we're taking mentally ill people and we are calling them normal in the name of some type of equity that really is based on a Hegelian approach to the way we should be living our lives. We have gotten to the place in our world where the sickness of sin has actually driven people to the point where they believe men can get pregnant. I'm not kidding you, that's how bad it's gotten. And if you think about it, with the growth in disease, with the effect of cancer on people, with the effect on all of the things people are suffering through, nerve diseases and all the other things that are going on, you have to think that it has to be the overall result of a world that has rebelled against God.

Now, what am I saying? If you have cancer, you're sinning against God, or if you're sick with some kind of disease, you're sinning against God? To the contrary, of course not. That's not what I'm saying. As a matter of fact, some of the godliest people that I know are dealing with sicknesses like cancers and all kinds of illnesses. But what I am saying, and I think this is a really important point to note, is that the condition that we're in as a society as a whole was created with the petri dish that we've developed that has involved the side effects of sinful practice.

And I think that if we just stopped and really examined the effect of unrighteousness on the pharmaceutical industry, for example, or sin on the food industry, or sin on any of these other things that are around us, it would blow your mind. You know, it's funny, I spent some time researching a little bit of this, and some of the stuff that I read, I wish to the God in heaven, to our God, I never read some of these articles. I wish I never heard some of these lectures, but it's terribly sad.

Here's one great example: I engaged in a little bit of a back and forth with somebody who I argued with them. I came from the premise that the industries that we regulate the most should not be nearly as regulated as they are, and if we stopped regulation, then maybe things would be a little free. And the person I was talking with responded to me in what I thought was a ridiculous answer, but the more I examined it, the more I realized it probably came from a lot of intelligence because the answer that I got is the reason why we've gone to the place of super heavy regulation is because of the wicked, evil, and dishonest practices that we see lots of corporations doing.

Now, in my mind, I think, well, actually, that's just probably the same kind of leftist nonsense that wants to shut every single corporation down, but in reality, you can't make it that simple because it isn't that simple. When you stop for a second to look at some of the things that people have done, I'm telling you guys, it will make you sick. Okay, let me give you an example of things that you might not think of that are not so obvious that are being done every single day under your nose, things that you might not even realize.

Here's one great example: Did you know that an overwhelming amount of the corporate establishments that exist right now that involve retail, like larger retail stores, actually put into place music that sends subliminal messaging that suggests you should not steal? Now, it started with that, but then they realized that it didn't have as much of an effect on their top-line dollar amount, so what they started doing was they started taking those subliminal messages away from the music that they play in their stores and they actually started subliminally messaging messages like "You need to buy more of this. You need to buy more of that."

It's literally forms of hypnosis, in essence, very mild forms of hypnosis that cause people to actually want to buy this or buy that. Now, the regulators caught wind of that, and they basically said, "You can't do anything of a sort, you're not allowed to," so do you know what a multi-billion dollar industry has now wrapped itself into? This is a multi-billion dollar industry. Now they are learning to research different types of music combinations of news reports and every other kind of thing that goes around the law with respect to subliminal messaging that basically shows them how to influence people's minds based on where you go and at what point.

That's why there's a lot of stores that play different music in different sections of the store, because they put in tons of research to actually learn what makes you more sort of inclined to want to buy when you're in this section of the store versus that section of the store. That's how bad it's become. Did you know that many of these restaurants, these big food chain restaurants, actually spend hundreds and millions of dollars to diffuse certain smells within their store that are likely to get you to want to buy more food items than the other?

If you ever wondered why every time you walk in a Burger King, it smells the same as all the other Burger Kings, you would think, "Oh, that's because they're cooking the same food." Not so much. If you walk into a different restaurant, it's amazing how all of that has changed. And the thing that is just mind-blowing is if you just go through in a very calculated fashion how people go through great lengths to manipulate you in the everyday decisions that you make, you'll realize just how distorted our world is today and just how messed up it is because of sin.

And all I'm saying is this: I'm saying there is a direct correlation between the heightened levels of sickness that we're seeing in our world today and the blatant disregard for God's word. If God's word governed and regulated the mindset of the people that lived in this world, it would completely change the way we do business on every level. And I think it's really interesting because when you look at Genesis, you'll find some core commands that God issues—we've talked about this on multiple occasions—and you'll realize that a violation of these core commands is, in essence, what the core cause is of the destruction that we're experiencing every single day.

So what happens here? God makes some declarations that we should be mindful of. And keeping that in mind, we're really going to go over three main passages today. We're going to go over one verse in Genesis chapter 3, we're going to go through another verse in Genesis chapter 12, and then we're going to go through one verse in Genesis 49. Now, going through Genesis and looking at all the instances of Bible prophecy, there are tons of these instances. There's probably 30 or 40 of these instances, but I thought that I would spend time because of the limited amount of time that I had, I thought that I would spend time in the areas most pertinent to prophecy related to Jesus, especially considering the season that we're in, all things that relate to the death and resurrection of Christ.

I think that's why I chose to limit what we're going through to three verses, but more specifically, I want us to develop the foundation that I'm talking about. Genesis tells you everything you need to know about how God intended for you to live. And if you learn that from the book of Genesis, then you will deeply understand what the end game looks like by looking through Revelation—or the end cap. How about we call it an end cap? How about we call Genesis one end cap and Revelation the other? If you look at it, you'll understand the correlations between the two and you'll also understand why it's so critical that they both be familiar with each other's premise because they're built on each other.

So let's look at Genesis chapter 1 for just one second. Obviously, it tells us in Genesis 1 that God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void. And then God goes on to describe to us how he, in essence, put into effect all the elements of creation. But we get to a very specific place in Genesis chapter 1 where we get into verse 27 and it says that God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.

But look what it says in verse 28. It says, "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply.'" Those are two commands there. The third command: "Replenish the earth." The fourth command is "Subdue it." And of course, the fifth: "Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." So you can see it right away: Be fruitful, number one. Multiply, number two. Number three, he talks about replenishing. Number four, he talks about subduing. And number five, he talks about having dominion over.

I think it's really interesting because on so many levels, the body of Christ has been willfully ignorant of all of those commands. We've become willfully ignorant of the fact that we were created in the likeness and image of God. If we were created in the likeness and image of God, we would value each other's lives. We would value our own life. We would recognize that we were all created with a very specific purpose. If the church understood the fact that we were created in the likeness and image of God, abortion would be nonexistent in the church.

Yet, unfortunately—ready for this staggeringly painful statistic—40% of all abortions that are taking place in this country are taking place inside of the church, not outside of the church. Yes, that means as many as 55 to 60% of all abortions that are taking place are taking place either with what people believe to be the permission of God or in the name of God in some cases. Is that a staggering number? It's a crazy, staggering number.

40% of all divorces that are taking place right now are taking place within the context of the Christian church. 40%. If we knew and truly believed and understood that we were created in the likeness and image of God, we wouldn't have those. There would be no killing of babies. There would be nothing like the kind of numbers that we're seeing with divorce. But because of that, we have completely forgotten it.

Being created in the likeness and image of God, we look at a God that has free will, we look at a God that has the ability to be creative—that's all he does, he's a creator. You think about it, we are all called by God to be creators in one way or another. And when I say creators, I'm not talking about like little god creators, I'm talking about God has given us this amazing ability to reason, God's given us the ability to be able to think through things in a much different way than any of the animal kingdom.

He's given us this ability to relate to one another, to grow with one another, to develop families and cultures and societies, and if God is the one who created us in his likeness and image, wouldn't it be the acceptable thing to understand that when we work at our optimal place, in the finest place, in the best place, that we would then be working in the way of imitating God? Like did anybody ever think about that? That if a human being wants to operate optimally, then the way to operate optimally is to do what? It's to walk in the image and likeness of God. If you want to work at your best, then the best thing to do is to work the way you're intended to work. Isn't that funny how that works?

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill and part of our new study, Prophecies that Changed the World Forever. Pastor James will be right back with more. There are a few ways you can listen to today's message or the entire five-part series again. We post all our programs to Lightonthehillradio.com as well as Oneplace.com. You'll also find Light on the Hill on most major podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google. We also have an app that makes listening to messages easy to do on any of your mobile devices. Just search for Calvary Chapel Signal Hill in the App Store or Google Play.

We're thankful to the Lord for the listeners that come alongside us with their prayers or financial support. It helps us do what we do every day. If you'd like to donate to the ministry today, please visit Lightonthehillradio.com. You can also give through the Light on the Hill app. Start following James Kaddis on X, Instagram, and YouTube. Throughout the week, he shares biblical encouragement and videos that deal with current events and Bible prophecy. Pastor James is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill, and we'd love to have you join us for our Good Friday and Easter services, either in person or online. For more information, visit CalvaryChapelSignalHill.com. Now with these final thoughts, here is Pastor James.

James Kaddis: If we do not, out of the shoot, function the way that God designed for us to function, we're off the bat going to create malfunction. It's the way it's going to work. God designed us to be people who don't sit around all day and don't do anything. God designed us to be people who are productive. God designed us to be people who will multiply. God designed us to be people who will walk fruitfully.

If we sit there all day and do the most destructive things imaginable to ourselves, like don't do anything, stare in front of a screen, or even more than that, put ourselves in some virtual world that we don't leave for 12 hours at a time, we're walking away from God's intended purposes. And now are we shocked that things are going broken, things are going wrong? What's even more interesting is right off the bat, man decided that they didn't want to listen to God in following God's instructions as into the way God told them to live.

And the first time we see this happening in the book of Genesis, we see Eve being deceived by the devil and then Adam walking in disobedience. Now, the direct result of Eve being deceived and Adam walking in blatant transgression, in blatant disobedience, was that God had to punish them. God had to create a consequence. God had to curse them.

And the one thing that I think about that I just have to believe in my heart is remarkable about God is that even in God's first consequential action, even in God's first punitive declaration of judgment, he actually gave us an indicator that he was giving us a way out. Like you think about that. I mean, I just think, man, God laid it out for us. He gave us everything that we could ever need. He gave us the perfect path, he gave us the best environment, he even gave us the formula for how we should operate in the most optimal way.

And we walked away from all of it. And God was forced, his hand was forced to judge us. And he did. He did. But yet in his judgment, he declared a solution to bring us back to the place that he designed us for. It's one of the reasons why I love Bible prophecy so much, and it's one of the reasons why I think it's so important that especially during this time of the year, we pay attention to what the Bible says is going to happen in our future.

Guest (Male): There's more to come in our study entitled Prophecies that Changed the World Forever. Join us each day for Light on the Hill and remember, you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.