Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: Today on Light on the Hill, we come to a fork in the road. In every moment in your life, you find yourself in a place where you can go one way or you can go the other. Going the other way can be the road to life, or the other can be immediate death. You have to think about the roads that you're taking. You have to think about what it is that you're doing. The only way to discernibly be able to take the right fork, the right road in the fork, is by walking in obedience to the Lord.

Guest (Male): Yogi Berra was quoted as saying, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Jokes aside, throughout our lives, we'll be faced with a fork in the road—left or right. One way leads to life and the other leads to death. As we'll learn today on Light on the Hill, the way to life is paved by obedience to God. Pastor James Kaddis will be finishing up Mark chapter eight in part two of his message, Life or Death.

James Kaddis: Look at verse 27. And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, "Whom do men say that I am?" Notice this: they're following Jesus, they're going to Jesus, they're walking with Jesus, they're having a talk with Jesus, they're trusting in him. The pattern is replicable here. Look what it goes on to say. And they answered, "Some people say it's John the Baptist. That's what they mean. But some say, Elias, which is Elijah, and others say one of the prophets."

But he says unto them, "But whom say you that I am?" And Peter answered and said unto him, "Thou art the Christ, the Messiah." And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. Wow. Here's an interesting thing that we learn about God's methods, and I think that these are pretty incredible methods to learn. I think they're pretty remarkable. This goes back to thinking about those same questions that I imposed earlier: Does God act in our best interest? Does God know our hearts? Does God know our minds?

Go back to look at the interaction that happened. By the way, in my mind, I have this picture of Caesarea Philippi because every group we've ever taken to Israel, we take them there. We go through this Bible study with them because it's a fork-in-the-road type of a Bible study. It's a type of Bible study that causes you to think. In every moment in your life, you find yourself in a place where you can go one way or you can go the other. Going the other way can be the road to life, or the other can be immediate death.

You have to think about the roads that you're taking. You have to think about what it is that you're doing. The only way to discernibly be able to take the right fork, the right road in the fork, is by walking in obedience to the Lord. Jesus asks them a question that forces them to stop philosophizing, for lack of a better term, to stop this exercise of intellectual ascent and to translate it into something that is very viable, that involves a commitment.

You can talk about it until you're blue in the face, but when are you going to actually do it? When are you going to put the rubber to the road? When are you going to say, "Okay, this is who I say you are." I know lots of guys right now in the ministry who will tell you every wonderful thing that you can imagine about Jesus. They'll tell you the stories of Jesus. They'll even use AI to help them tell you the stories. They'll get into every detail they can get into. They can talk the talk and they even look like they can walk the walk.

They study how to smile and how to create their pauses when they communicate and so on and so forth. They are experts in telling the world what everybody says about Jesus. But when confronted with the question, "Who do you say that I am?" oftentimes the subconscious answer will be, "You're the source to my income. You're the path to my social desires being fulfilled. You're the door that opens for me to get this done," instead of saying, "You're the Messiah. You're the true and living God. You're the one who's come to save me."

It's a very different mindset that he's bringing them into. I think it's interesting to note that at this moment, Jesus is telling his disciples to not say anything. I'm willing to bet that he's telling them to not say anything because of his concern not only for the timing of everything that needs to happen to happen, because he's said this on many occasions, "My time is not yet come."

But I think the other reason why he instructs these men to do these things is because he knows what they're capable of and what they're not capable of. He knows what it's going to take to get them ready for the thing that they're about to step into. It must be predicated upon a perfect timing. Just like Jesus took that man outside the city and gave him an exposure of his eyes being opened for the first time, to not be so overstimulated that it would cause him to go nuts, and then gave him another opportunity to see, and then the second time he saw with great clarity.

I think Jesus is doing the same thing with his men here. He's doing everything that he can to bring them into a place of personalizing the relationship that he has with them. But he's also teaching them to understand the timing of his perfect will. I think for me, if there's any area where I feel a great hypocrite talking about it, it's the whole timing thing because I'm the type of person where I see something and I want it done now.

It might be one of the most humbling experiences that can ever come with being in a situation where you've been entrusted by God to manage people who work with you, whether it be on a volunteer basis or whether it be on a paid basis, from the consultants to the people that work with you every single day. I want something, I want it done yesterday. That's my personality. I mentioned it, that means it needs to get done. I didn't mention it because it's some abstract thought where we'll get around to doing it when we do it. I hate that mindset. If it's on your list, get it done now.

I think there's a part of me that's flawed in thinking that way because in my desire to want to get everything done now, immediately and in the moment—not that it's an excuse to slack off by any stretch of the imagination—I forget about what the real mission is. I forget about the fact that God desires for us to honor what is involved in the journey as much as the result. As a matter of fact, you can make a biblical argument that Jesus oftentimes puts the emphatic bent on the journey because the journey is the place where you can often walk in disobedience, thus the outcome becoming something that you wanted instead of God.

This is where God brings to us the theme in the Scriptures of trusting in him, giving him our best, and then committing everything else to him to allow him to bring the outcome. That's the whole idea of what planting the seed means. It's an interesting thought process here. Look at this, verse 31. This is so interesting, so interesting. I think they're all intertwined. If you ever want to discuss intentionality or the subject of intentionality, the greatest example in the Bible is Christ.

Everything that Christ did was done with specific intent. Nothing of what Christ did did not walk void of calculation. Everything Christ did was perfectly accentuated in calculation, all of it. That's why I would never, ever make the heretical statement that Christ's love is reckless. I'd never, ever say it, not in a million years, because there's nothing reckless about his love. His love is very calculated. It's so calculated that his love is the very thing that creates the cohesion necessary in order to bring people together who, by their own nature, would never be able to do it themselves.

That requires intention and calculation. It's a very, very important thing to be able to understand. I've had somebody come to me recently in the ministry and get really upset. They came to me very upset. "I don't know why. I always do a video and sometimes I think my videos are better than most, but I only get 15 people that watch it." I asked, "Show me your process. What do you do?" He said, "I just whatever comes to my mind, I just turn on the camera and go."

That's good for a little while. It works for a little while, but you have to have intention. What time are you spending thinking about the things that you're doing? What kind of time are you spending meditating on the things that you're doing? What kind of time are you spending asking God to give you insight into what you're going to say and what you're going to do? How much effort are you putting into understanding your craft to bring about the right result? It doesn't just happen where you just put it all up and all of a sudden you're famous.

Let's all say it together. If it was that easy, then everyone would do it, right? I think the Lord is perhaps the most fantastic example we have in human history of walking with intentionality. This is why I'm not such a fan of the mindset or the personality that says, "Whatever, we'll just do wherever the wind blows, we'll just go there that day." God doesn't work that way. God has never worked that way, God never will work that way. Don't even think of coming to me with the wind illustration that Jesus comes with because the context of that illustration is very different.

But isn't that funny how that works? You know, I'll tell you a funny story about Pastor Jeff. This is a really interesting story. Everybody that you get to know really well, you learn what buttons you can push to tick them off almost instantly. There was one button we learned we could push with Pastor Jeff that would make him so unbelievably mad that he might, just might, actually show it. He was very good at containing his emotions. He was not a fly-off-the-handle type of a guy. Very rarely flew off the handle.

And I'm proud to report that the majority of times where he did fly off the handle, I was in the middle of it. I'm being a little sarcastic there. I knew how to push his buttons, and that's not a bragging point. If you really wanted to upset him, you would tell him, "Alright, bro, I'll meet you at this time." And then what you would tell him is you would say, "Are you alright with that? Is that really, really good?" And Jeff would always have this phrase. It would be, "Calvary Time! Be here Calvary Time!"

Now to Jeff, what that meant was that if you're here on time, then you're late. Calvary Time meant if it was at noon, you better be here at 11:40. Don't come at noon. Calvary Time, be here at 11:40. If you really wanted to make him mad, you would say, "Alright, bro, then I can be a little bit late," when he said Calvary Time. And every single time he'd say, "Why are you saying that? Because around here, when you say Calvary Time, it means you just show up whenever." Oh, it would make him so mad.

It would make him so mad because he understood something. He understood something that a lot of people didn't understand. He understood something because he was one of the men that did the type of thing that got him to the place that he was, and that was: God is a God of intention. The intention that God oftentimes expresses is founded in a level of order and organization that most people will never know or recognize or understand. It's the thing that separates the excellent from the mediocre.

Jesus was all about intention. Everything he did was with intent. So he just finishes telling them or affirming to them that he's the Son of God, he's in essence the Messiah. What do you think those guys were thinking at this moment? "We're going to take over the Romans, we're going to mow them down, we got this, I'm going to be the king that's on the right side, you can be the king on the left." That's what they're thinking.

But look at the kind of intent that Jesus expresses here. Look at the intention that he brings to the table. I just love this. Verse 31. And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. What a heavy statement. "Oh yeah, I'm going to be persecuted. By the way, they're going to kill me, and I'm going to rise from the dead." I bet the moment he said, "They're going to kill me," they probably just tuned out.

They certainly didn't remember "rise again." They certainly didn't remember that. We know later on, based on their accounts, that they didn't remember until it actually happened. And he spake that saying openly, and Peter took him and began to rebuke him. "Don't let these people hear that, Lord!" is kind of what he's doing. He doesn't want anybody to hear that he's about to suffer.

But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men." You see, Peter, you're using reasoning that is based in a mechanism driven by worldly things. Peter, you're not looking at what I'm talking about through my eyes. You're seeing men seeking to kill me and to take my life as an action that makes me a victim, when in reality the fact that men are going to find me and take my life is a cause of the effect that I seek to put forth because I am intentional in my death taking place so that I can resurrect.

But look at what happens because this is heavy. There's a rebuke here. Jesus tells him, "Get thee behind me, Satan." Jesus is helping the men to recognize that any interference with the intent of God is satanic. What is God's will? Once we know God's will, anything that opposes the will of God is going to be satanically inspired. That's why Jesus says, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

Look at this. And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." By the way, the way that it's worded in the other Gospels is follow me daily. In other words, you do it, you never stop. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospels', the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. What a powerful statement to make.

What is Jesus saying? Jesus is saying that if you're going to be a follower of mine, you must follow me with the same intention that I've expressed to you. Let me ask some pretty pointed questions. Does it take intent to deny yourself? Yes. Look, it's a big fat yes. We'll talk about this for a second. If I say I've got to watch what I'm eating—believe me, I'm a fitness expert, you guys should listen to this. I can probably speak about this better than most because I'm the one that falls to the trap faster than anybody. If I say I'm going to take better care of myself, how much intention is required in order for me to follow through on that? It's a lot, right? It's a lot.

If I know that my moment of weakness in eating food that's going to be harmful to me is at the nighttime, then I better express some intention when I'm in the sober part of my thinking to make it extremely difficult for me to access the very thing that I'm stumbled by in the moment. If I have an addiction to alcohol, I will never be cured of my addiction to alcohol unless I express intention in my desire to stop, which means I will never allow myself to walk into a bar ever again.

Do you know we have people in this fellowship that came to me as very serious alcohol addicts? So addicted to alcohol that they were rapidly destroying their lives. One of the guys in this fellowship, and he wouldn't mind me saying this, was so addicted to alcohol that he basically came to me and said, "I'll do anything to stop this addiction." And I said, "Okay, if you'll do anything to stop this addiction, then I'm going to put a plan together with you that will help you intently to do everything you need to get out of this." "Will you do it?" "Yes."

"Let's bring your wife in. This is the plan." "Oh, really?" I remember. I remember day one, watching him outside to the car and being angry having to blow in a breathalyzer in order to start his car. He drives all the time for his work. He can't have a quick swig and drive his car with a breathalyzer in there. When he opened up the account, he made it to where the account could never be removed unless his wife did it. And his wife knew that if he tried to do it, that I would be the first call that I would get.

For the first few months, he was really struggling. A year in, happy as could be to blow in that dumb thing. Happy as could be. Three years later, five years later, when he's beginning to realize things that he never could have had had he not expressed that intention, it all changed, didn't it? You know the funny thing about intention? The moment you express intention, there is always going to be disruption in that process, isn't there?

The intent of Christ was to do what? Was to save us. And boy, was there some disruption with that intent being expressed. Funny how that works. Jesus says, "If you're going to follow me, you're going to have to take up your cross." In other words, you are going to have to have intent in the destruction of your flesh. When I say the destruction of your flesh, I'm not talking about self-mutilation. What I'm talking about is you're going to have to be willing to deny the desires of your flesh in order to be successful.

I know these guys that do these crazy physical things, my brother being one of them. My brother's an Ironman athlete. He's done a few of these things. I didn't even realize it, I could get my numbers backwards, but when you do an Ironman, you have to do 2.4 miles of swimming, it's 112 miles on a bike. Okay, that's just... I just can't. When I bought my tricycle, I bought a tricycle with a bike seat that's literally this wide. I'm not kidding you. And that hurts my rear end after biking on average about 11 miles. 112 miles!

You swim for over two miles, you bike for 112 miles, and then you run a 26.2 mile stretch, and then you're done. And you think anybody can just wake up in the morning and go, "Oh yeah, I'm going to be an Ironman athlete, I'm going to go run right now." Is that going to work? No. No. There's intention. You have to prepare for it. Go ask anybody who's done any extensive military training, anybody in the special forces community, anybody. Do you know how much work they have to do in order to be able to survive just the training? There's intention.

I've never understood why people don't express intention in their walk with the Lord. He says to do what? Deny yourself. There's real intention there, isn't there? That's the first thing that he says to do. He says deny yourself, take up your cross, and then follow him. Taking up your cross means this. When you walk with the cross—I always thought about this extensively. When Jesus took up his cross and he walked, he took the most difficult road possible to the most treacherous place that he could imagine, that was the place of his death.

When you pick up your cross, what you're doing is you are taking the very authority that you allow your life to be given to. Christ knew that he would be crucified on his cross that we might be able to find salvation. And I would venture to say that when we take up that which God has called us to take up, we in essence are making the decision that we will live with the need to die to ourselves in order to produce the result that God wants us to produce.

And then he says only when you've taken up your cross after denying yourself can you follow me. Why? Because the only place that Jesus would have ever gone to in that time was to his death. If you're going to follow Jesus to his death and you yourself are not going to die, then what you will meet is judgment. If you're going to follow Jesus to his death while you take up your own cross that you may join him in that death, you will find life.

And Jesus said it. You try to save your life, you're going to lose it. You lose your life for my sake, for the Gospel's sake, you're going to find it. Does this mean Jim Jones, drink the Kool-Aid type thing? No. What it means is this. What it means is that when you chose to put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, you were literally crucified with him. You were buried in your old life to only be resurrected in newness of life. And God says, "I want you to walk intentionally in that newness of life. Walk in a way where you set yourself up to avoid the very thing that will destroy you and put yourself in the middle of the situation that will always bring the best result for your walk." That's what it's all about.

Guest (Male): God is doing something that so many people today are missing. We'll tell you about it next time on Light on the Hill when Pastor James enters Mark chapter nine. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill. Online at LightontheHillRadio.com.

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