Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: God is just taking us to a brand new level to this place that changes literally everything. That literally when we know that what we're supposed to do is in front of us and we don't do it, it's actually a sin. Simply refraining, simply not getting involved can actually be a sin. Simply not speaking up can be a sin. Not doing what God is asking you to do, it can actually be bad. That's what he's telling us.

Guest (Female): Thank you for joining us for Light on the Hill. Pastor James Kaddis will resume his verse-by-verse study in the book of James. We left off in chapter five. As you heard a moment ago, when we know what is right or good but choose not to do it, that's a sin. In this day and age, there are many Christians who are choosing not to get involved or refraining from saying something that needs to be said, so take this to heart. Here is Pastor James.

James Kaddis: James chapter five. Let's get right into it. And again, the thing that we really want to do is establish a sense and an understanding of the context by which this presentation is being made to us. And so the last thought that James leaves for us is one that is so absolutely extraordinary that it breaches that area that we call extraordinary and we bring it into a place that is just unbelievable. It goes from extraordinary to a term that everybody's misusing right now, but we're not going to here, and that is revolutionary. There's a principle that James teaches us that is so incredibly life-changing that to hear the words alone is to be challenged to live your life a completely different way. And he closes off chapter four by telling us this. It's a very powerful moment. Look what he tells us. He says, "Therefore." Now of course when he says "therefore," he's talking about all of the things that he has spoken of prior to that point.

He's talking about the scriptures not being in vain, and he starts talking about the idea that God will give grace to those that humble themselves before him. And he talks about the fact that when we begin to carry ourselves in a way that is given to marked obedience to God and in complete and full denial of the desire and the wants of the flesh, and when we choose to say, "God, I am going to do that which you have called me to and I'm not going to allow my flesh to drive me in a different direction." When he talks about the idea of putting our faith literally to life by acting upon the very thing that God has given us. The fact that we're thankful to God for all that he's done for us and the fact that God has given us so much, and through the decision that has been made by God to save us and intervene, our gratitude that we show him is to walk in a way that is repentant, to walk in a life that's brand new.

And as we walk in that newness of life, and as we begin to allow ourselves to be changed by all the beauty of everything that God has put around us with those things that are right and correct and true, we begin to actually develop a closeness to God that we have never felt before. We begin to understand God in new and very different ways and things begin to make sense. Things become more, we become more aware of those things. And it's sort of the proverbial, as we've talked about it, "wax on, wax off." It's a type of thing where you're never going to understand the substance of it until you actually put your faith into action. You're never going to really understand the depth of everything that's being presented until you get your hands in it, and until you allow yourself to be exposed to it, and until you actually move forward in that which God has asked you to move into. You're never going to understand the depths of the context by which these types of principles are brought forth. You're never going to understand how it practically feels and what it actually means. And I think all of us have gone through this in areas that might not necessarily relate to our faith.

We can talk about practical areas in our lives like all of you that have a job that you've been doing for quite some time, maybe a career that you've been invested in. Go back and think about when you first started doing it. Maybe you were mechanics and when you learned how to first start working on a motor vehicle or an engine or something, whatever it might be that involves a specific type of skill set. You think in your mind, you were never good at it when you started it, even when you thought you were good at it. As you got better, it was something that became second nature to you. I know lots of people that are naturals and are very much mechanically inclined and they go and they touch something and they appear to be very good at it, but then as they get some time under them and they begin to do the things that sort of present themselves as you get involved in the work, you begin to realize something very powerful happens. And you begin to realize that all of a sudden you become beyond proficient at what you do. You've been doing it for so long that it actually is second nature to be able to do it well.

And it's something that you don't even have to think about anymore because it's something that you've developed a certain muscle memory for. It's something that just happens and you don't even put any thought into it because it's something that you've become very accustomed to. And all of you know what I'm talking about. Whatever it is that you started in, maybe even you're a student and you just started getting involved in sports or maybe it's a class that you were learning. When you started, it was kind of difficult. Maybe you stumbled around in it a little bit. Maybe you even thought you were good at it initially, but as time goes on and you get invested in the work and you start doing it and you start getting your hands put to the plow, you begin to realize, "Wow, I'm actually good at this." And for all of you that have been doing your jobs for quite some time and understand the fact that you have gone beyond that which is proficient and you've actually developed a marketable skill set, most of you will never be able to go back and tell me the day that you actually got good at it.

You'd never be able to tell me, "Oh, well, it was July the 17th, 1999." You're never going to be able to do that. You're just going to open up your eyes one day and you're going to recognize something. You're going to say, "Wow, I actually think I'm pretty good at this." And what you begin to realize is you realize that it was because of the fact that you made a decision to invest and allow yourself to be given to the work that the work was the very tool that was used to develop the skill set in you that you would have never been able to have developed had you not done that. And it's kind of funny how that works and there's many areas like this in my life that I can talk about. Probably the most nominal, the one that means the least, that is probably the most meaningless happens to be a hobby that I have. And perhaps the reason why I love the hobby of radio-controlled helicopters is because it's remarkably challenging. It takes brainpower on every level. When you build it, you have to have certain mechanical inclinations.

When you begin to develop the tools that create the gyroscopic stabilization function, we call them now flybarless systems. When you begin to program those things, you have to be aware of PID loops and you have to begin to understand what the difference is between proportional and integral and all of you that understand this, you're engineers and you understand how that all works. You've got to develop an understanding between all of those things. And then you begin to develop an awareness of what it means to develop a good skill set for things like soldering and understanding wiring and actually doing calculations for where amperage draw comes into play and doing the math that you have to do to be able to make sure you pick the right size battery and then once you put the whole thing together you have to be able to balance it all and make sure it all works and then the very moment it goes into the air you get all jittery because they're actually dangerous units. I don't fly little mall-type helicopters, I fly helicopters that my biggest one is bigger than anybody in this room. You go and you spend a lot of years working on these things and building them, you spend a lot of effort and energy and I remember when I first started flying these things.

This is how you knew you were going to crash one. This is how you knew you were going to crash: if it got more than four inches off the ground, it was going to crash. That's the way it was because the skill set is a very specialized skill set. Back then, you had to really develop that. Now it's a little bit easier because of the tools that we have to prepare you for it. And I just remember this one time just thinking, "Man, I'm tired of crashing. I'm tired of wasting money here and there." I'm a single guy and I don't have any real financial obligations. This was back in the day. And I'm just thinking, "I just need to go and have a guy begin to instruct me." So I went out and I found the best flight instructor in the country who happened to be not too far away from me. And that was awesome because we actually developed a close relationship and the Lord became a topic of conversation every time we got together, but he gave me a really powerful skill set and he taught me a lot of things. And I used to remember every single time I'd get out there and fly, I would just be nervous.

My hands would be shaking, I would be so scared. Like, it would just freak me out. It was just a completely weird thing. Now I could literally in my sleep, I can do all kinds of things: flips and rolls and maneuvers and pirouettes and all kinds of things. Fly upside down and cut the grass and do all kinds of crazy things and literally just have a conversation with somebody: "Hey, what's up, man? Hey, oh look at that. Hey look at the hawk up there." It's just funny because it's like second nature and it's because I can't look back and go, "Oh yeah, it was on that day right there that it all snapped for me. Like it all just became second nature on that day." No, it happened with time. Or how about this? How about me having to do the most painful thing that I have probably ever done in a very, very long time? And yes, there's a little bit of sarcasm that you'll be able to detect in just a second and that is listen to a Bible study that I taught that is so old that it was actually recorded on cassette.

So I'm talking about old here. I'm talking about mid-'90s old. I'm talking about like 1994 old. And listening to it and just cringing, hearing me saying every other word like, "What? Did I even read the Bible? What did I say?" I butchered the language and I'm an Arabic speaker but I sure didn't act like one and I know Bible languages and what in the world was that? And if somebody had taken that voice and changed it to where I didn't even recognize that voice and I thought it was somebody else and they came to me and they said, "Hey, can you please listen to this guy? He's our new pastor and I was just wondering if you could give me an opinion on him." I would listen to that study, the one that I taught, if it was in a different voice and I would say, "That guy is a heretic. Stay away from him. He doesn't know what he's talking about, he doesn't know the word. You've got no business listening to him." And it's funny because you think about that and you look back at how bad it was.

Even if I looked at some of the early broadcasts on YouTube from three years ago and I just, "What was I thinking? What was I saying? What did I do there?" It's really funny because with time you begin to develop a skill set and the point behind James is that your faith, if it does not have works accompanied with it, is literally dead. And the thing that happens is when you begin to work at it, when you do the proverbial wax on and wax off, you develop the skill set. Your faith begins to grow. The thing that's amazing is that the works do too. The way you live changes. The way you see things is completely different. When I was new in the Lord, really brand new in the Lord, even before I knew the Lord, I would listen to a rap song that had every kind of curse word in the book and I would be giddy. "This is so dedicated to the brothers who was down from day one." Hearing all the cursing and it's like, "Great, I love that." "Welcome to Death Row." I'd be so happy to listen to those, that was music that was out in my day. So you see how far back that goes.

And you just listen to it and be all excited about it like, "Yeah, there's another curse," and you just get a thrill. And then you start walking with the Lord and then two years later you find an old CD that you had or an old cassette actually in my case and you put it in the player and you start listening to it and you're like, "Well, that sounds cool." And then the very first curse word that comes out of there, "Oh, that kind of sounds nasty." You kind of cringe listening to it. Before you were like, "Yeah!" and that was just the way it was. And it's funny because what happens is when you get your hand involved in the work and the work happens to be what God has called you to do, everything completely changes. Everything does. And the revolutionary statement that comes at the end of chapter four is remarkable because he says this, he says, "Therefore, understanding all of this, understanding the wax on and wax off, understanding the fact that with time being in the work as a person full of faith, you get good at what you do."

Things become second nature. You're aware of things like you've never been aware of before. You begin to understand things like you've never understood before. He says, "Keeping all of that in mind," therefore allowing the encompassment of all of that and the full encapsulation of what happens when you say, "God, I'm going to walk with you. God, I'm going to trust you. God, I'm going to follow you." He makes this one statement and it's revolutionary. It's something that changes the ballgame because it completely affects how we deal with one another in relationships. Look what it says. "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is a sin." Uh-oh. That's a harsh one, isn't it? Because this no longer involves a person who refrains from getting involved in something because he doesn't want to get involved. This now begins to get you into the type of territory that men during World War II were ignoring.

This gets you into the territory where there were only a few pastors that lived during that time in Germany that would tell each other, "You know what's right and it doesn't matter what the potential consequence is. If you know what's right and you don't do it, you're sinning." It's cheap grace. It's not something that God has called you to do. When you know it's right and you don't do it, it's a sin. And this was during a time and an era where there were pastors in the midst of World War II who were turning up the music, asking people to sing louder to drown out the sounds of Jews being thrown in the trains, being sent to concentration camps. Why? Because they didn't want to get involved. They didn't want to be a part of things. But what they knew was that they were obligated to do the right thing. And when they chose not to do it, they blew it. They were sinning against God.

And God is just taking us to a brand new level. Last week we talked about this. He brings us to this place that changes literally everything. That literally when we know that what we're supposed to do is in front of us and we don't do it, it's actually a sin. Simply refraining, simply not getting involved can actually be a sin. Simply not speaking up can be a sin. Not doing what God has asked you to do, it can actually be bad. That's what he's telling us. I think it's really interesting because when you look at men like Bonhoeffer, for example, that chose to walk away from the conventional way of thinking amongst his peers and to say, "I know what is good, but I choose not to do it. I'm a sinner. I cannot do that. I cannot live with myself in doing that. I must do what is right, knowing exactly what I'm called to do." It's as revolutionary as Jesus going up to somebody and saying, "Listen, do unto others as you would have done unto you." He completely just flipped the switch. He just basically said, "It's no longer all about don't do to people the things that you don't want done to you." No, he says actually in the affirmative, "Go do to others what you would have done to you." Get involved. Put your hand to the plow. Do the work.

So this is interesting because now he's going to give us a practical implication of what's involved here. He's going to give us a really practical picture of how to put into practice everything that he's talked to us about in the first four chapters. He's really going to start putting the rubber to the road here. And look at how he starts off with this. Very interesting. He says, "Go to now, you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them shall be a witness against you. You shall eat your flesh as it were fire and you have heaped treasure together for the last days." Very interesting. What is he saying? Is he condemning people that are rich? No, he is undoubtedly not condemning people that are rich.

But what he is doing is he is giving a strong exhortation, remember the context of all of this, he's giving a strong exhortation to those that are within the church that have unthinkable riches because the problem that they were allowing themselves to be given to, and of course we find this out a little bit later, the problem they were allowing themselves to be given to was the fact that they were allocating all of the resources given to them through their riches, the advent materialism that existed amongst them, to be the very determining variable for their security. They looked at it and they said, "My condition right now in the moment is going to be determined directly by how much money I have, how much security I have, what island I can go buy to get away from the accountability, what I can do, what I can't do." The whole picture of riches is one in where people who develop that kind of responsibility end up using it to make it their security rather than as a tool that God has given you because your real security is founded in him.

So when he tells the rich person who's happy and joyful and excited because they find themselves in a place where their faith is made strong because of their riches, he's telling them right now, "Don't waste your time. Go back and spend some time mourning and grieving over the very things that are happening because in reality what you think is golden and valuable is actually rusted and cruddy." It's actually getting to the point where none of it is going to be of any value. And it is kind of interesting because I will tell you this from a very personal perspective. I have spent a lot of time with men on their deathbeds. Many times I have gone through this scenario. Lots and lots and lots of men I have spent by their side on their deathbeds, knowing that they only had 24 hours, 48 hours, three days, four days to live. In some cases, 15 minutes to live, 20 minutes to live. And they knew it. And they never tell me things like, "I wish I had more time to make money." Not one man ever told me that. Not one wealthy man ever told me they wish they could have made more money.

I've never had a wealthy man tell me on their deathbed things like, "I wish I could have allocated more resources to invest more and gain a little bit more capital." They never said things like that. You know what they all tell me? Every single last one of them have said something like this: "My family is the only thing that matters. I wish I spent more time with my children. I wish that I spent more time walking with God because I'm scared right now. I'm about to enter into a time that I'm kind of unsure about because I never really took the time to invest in what I know I needed to invest in because I was so enthralled by the idea of earning money. It was something that overwhelmed me and overtook me." And I understand the addiction that comes with that. Every man worth a dime, every man worth a lick who cares about their family is always going to look for the next way to get ahead, to be able to take care of their family in the event that something happens to them.

I'm in a rush to pay off the house before I die, or I'm in a rush to take care of this, or I'm in a rush to take care of that. And every single one of us that love our families and care about the future generation is always going to look for a way to take whatever resources we have and multiply it radically in order to ensure the future security of our families. But there's one hugely erroneous issue that lies within that mindset, and it's this: When you do not allow that mindset to be tempered by the fact that the most preparatory mechanism that can ever be put into place is spiritual, then you've got it wrong.