Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Living in the light of the Lord's soon return. Next on Light on the Hill.

James Kaddis: Think about it, folks. Everywhere we look today, there is more and more and more evidence that shows us that Christ could come at any moment. Do you understand things are happening right now in world history that have never happened before in human history? Do you understand things are taking place today that are unprecedented? Christ could come at any moment.

If you know that Christ could come at any moment, wouldn't you go out of your way to make sure you're on your best behavior for Him? Wouldn't you go out of your way to make sure you were living life the way God intended for you to live life? I would think so.

Just look around today and it's not hard to see that we are getting very close to the coming of the Lord. If we know and really believe that, it should completely change the way we live. We're running out of time and we must make the most of what remains. Let's talk about that now on Light on the Hill as Pastor James Kaddis returns to James chapter five.

Look at what he goes on to say. This is powerful stuff. He says, "Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth." Meaning the people that you ripped off, the people that you behaved selfishly with so that you could get ahead, God's going to hear their cries. He's going to know.

But look at what he goes on to say. "You have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton. You have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter." You've nourished your hearts as in the day of slaughter. In other words, when your heart lusts after something, the heart wants what the heart wants, and you give into it and you feed it again and again. It's like you're fattening yourself up to get yourself completely slaughtered, to get yourself completely cut.

"You have condemned and killed the just, and he doth not resist you." It's interesting when you think about that. The man who decides they're going to take their eyes off God or not walk with God and allow their riches to produce the environment around them that they continue to produce because they know it's a tool that will allow them to make more money, even though the money that they're making is off the death of the future. Even though the money that they're making they know is killing people, destroying people.

There was an interview recently with Soros's son. Many of you know who Soros is, a very wicked man. A very wealthy man, but a very wicked man. His son actually said something to this effect. He said, "My dad knows that all the things that he does create all kinds of problems, but he does it because he knows that the bigger those problems are, the more money he has an opportunity to make." Imagine how crazy of a statement that is. Imagine how brutally evil that is.

I'm going to bring in DAs that hate the police and love the murderers. I'm going to allow my money to change the world for the worse so that I can profit more from the destruction. This is the type of man that God is warning about. But then look at what's said here because this gets even more interesting. Look at this. "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and latter rain."

The picture is awesome. He's making a reference here that's interesting and I love what he's actually referring to indirectly. This is why understanding the content and knowing the context of the book that we're reading really enhances our understanding. You might remember this in James chapter one. When we read over verse 18, I said hold fast to that verse for a second because it's going to carry a theme throughout the book of James. Let's go back to verse 18 of chapter one of James. Actually, we'll start in verse 17.

It says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." Firstfruits of his creatures. Go back to the verse that we just read and it'll begin to make sense to you when we talk about the idea that we are the firstfruit of his creatures, the description of his creation.

Look at the description that he gives again. "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord." Why? "Behold, the husbandman waited for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and latter rain." It's an interesting picture of what the description of the early and latter rain is. The early rain would be the rain that would come after harvest. You go and you harvest the crop and then the early rain comes. That early rain is a tool that's used to soften the ground that ends up getting tilled for the seed to be planted.

When the rain comes down and begins to nourish the ground and you begin to see rains happen throughout that coming winter season and beyond that winter season, you start getting into the spring and you're able to begin to see the fruit of some of the planting that goes on. You begin to plant and in that beautiful weather, you begin to put the seed in the ground. It's the latter rain that actually feeds the ground the way that it should to allow the crop to come forth.

It's funny that when you think about how that works, the picture of what's created. We all of a sudden see God getting a hold of us. He plants the seed. He gives us fertile ground. The rain comes down and we feel a refreshing that actually comes as a result of it. In our impatience, we want to take what little we have and we want to run with it and create a result that God never intended to be created. We get impatient and we start walking outside of our calls.

We begin to do things that we take our own lives in our hands and we decide to do things that God never intended for us to do when what we're actually being told is to be patient. Observe how the farmer does what he does. There's patience involved. He doesn't go and plant into the ground and at the first sign of a crop growing completely reap everything out of the ground. No, he waits for the latter rain. He waits for the perfect moment where the nourishment happens and he's able to reap the benefit of the fruit.

James made it clear to us at the beginning of this book that we are that fruit of God. We are that firstfruit. We are the ones that God has created for a very specific purpose, that purpose being centrally tied around bearing fruit. But it's all about being patient, knowing that the Lord is coming. Understand that the Lord is coming. Look at what he goes on to say. I love it. "Be you also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draws nigh."

I think I've referred to this story on multiple occasions. Kind of an interesting picture. When we got home from school oftentimes, especially if we had had a long day or maybe those days that there wasn't any recess and the rains had come down and we couldn't go outside and play in the playground. So we had all this pent-up energy. We'd get home and when we would get home as siblings, we would just cut it up. We'd just cut up everywhere. We'd be going crazy.

We were playing games with each other, we'd roughhouse, we'd do all kinds of things that now if you did as kids today... we did so many things that they say you're not supposed to do. All kinds of dangerous stuff. We did all that kind of stuff. We got carried away so much it wasn't even funny. There were so many things that we did. When I was growing up as a kid, I grew up in an era where your parents would practically say, "Go out and play and come back in the evening."

It wasn't that bad, but it was practically that way, especially in the summer. Many of you that are my age will remember that time, and some of you that are even older, you'll remember that way. It's not that way today. It's a very different world. I used to remember we'd get home, especially during summer school. We hated summer school because we thought that it was wrong that we had to go to summer school. We earned a summer. We were not supposed to do that.

For a few years, our parents sent us to summer school and we wanted to make sure they regretted doing that. So we really cut up when we got home. It was just crazy. We'd get home at like noon because that's when it would be over with and we were yelling and screaming and throwing things around and just having a good old time because we shouldn't have been in summer school in the first place. I don't want to do the work anyway. It was always that kind of thing.

We learned the trick, by the way, in summer school. You had to work really hard to fail. So summer school was kind of easy because they did crafts and just weird things like that. There wasn't any major stuff. You weren't going over calculus or algebra or anything like that in summer school. But we'd come home and we would just completely cut up. That's just the way we were. But something happened around the 4:00 hour. Noon, oh, we were going nuts. 2:00, probably the height of it. We just played baseball games, whatever. Very much my childhood was a Sandlot type of childhood. If you've ever watched that movie, it was very much a Sandlot type of childhood.

We got to around 3:30 and we began to realize something. Around 3:30, we began to realize that we were going to have to pay the price of our sin. Then we got to 4:00 and we realized we've got an hour left. We got to 4:30 and we realized, okay, we have a half hour. We can't play anymore. We've got to go home and we've got to offer to do everything that we could possibly do to butter up mom. We would offer to wash the dishes, we would call her every beautiful name in the book. We love you, Mama. We love you.

My mom was way more cunning than we were. She would take advantage of that witching hour. She would take full advantage of it and we would do all the work. "Thank you for calling me beautiful." She just played the game. But when 5:00 came, it was a wrap. It was over. Why? 5:00 came, my dad came home. When my dad came home, my dad would sit down with my mom immediately and would start taking inventory of all the misbehaving we did.

It was at that very moment that we had to pay the price for the misbehaving. My dad was not by any stretch of the imagination an abusive man, but he was a strict man in many ways because he loved us and he was a godly man. He raised us up in a very godly way. But when 5:00 came around, the literal fear of God was in us. You understand that our attitudes completely changed when we got near that hour.

I heard somebody erroneously say many, many years ago, and I still despise him for saying it. I think it's one of the most evil things a man behind the pulpit can actually say. I don't know if there's too much more evil than what a guy behind the pulpit can actually say. But he made a comment years and years ago about how erroneous it is as a pastor to teach young kids about Bible prophecy. Because if you teach kids about Bible prophecy, they're never going to want to do anything to serve the Lord.

Now, his reasoning was completely backward and flawed, but here's a sad thing about that. His assertion as to the reason why kids should not engage in Bible prophecy is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches. Think about it. If I at 5:00 with my brother—not so much my sister because she was always the goody-two-shoes—but me and my brother really began to experience the fear of God because we knew at any moment my dad was going to walk in the door.

When he walked in the door, literally the chickens were coming home to roost. It was a wrap. We were done. There was a fear that came with that. How much more of a fear should we have in our heart knowing that at any moment Christ could come? Think about it, folks. Everywhere we look today, there is more and more and more evidence that shows us that Christ could come at any moment.

I don't have to start getting into the geopolitical analysis side of this. I don't have to start getting into the fact that Israel, that had no identity as a nation, completely lost its national identity when Titus came into the temple and destroyed it in 70 AD and literally destroyed the lives of a million men, women, and children on the 9th of Av. Which happened to be, ironically, the same date that Nebuchadnezzar went into the temple in 586 BC and destroyed it.

From that point, Israel had no king, had no leader, had no nation, had no national identity, had no land, had nothing. They had nothing. And 2,000 years later, almost 2,000 years later, in 1948, all gathered like Ezekiel 37 says, in unbelief, and become reestablished as a nation. We begin to see the fulfillment of passages like Amos chapter nine where God begins to restore to them so much. How in the world can you not look at the day in which we're living and say Christ could come at any moment?

Do you understand things are happening right now in world history that have never happened before in human history? Do you understand things are taking place today that are unprecedented? Christ could come at any moment. Now, here's my thought. If you know that Christ could come at any moment, won't you go out of your way to make sure you're on your best behavior for Him? Wouldn't you go out of your way to make sure you were living life the way God intended for you to live life? I would think so.

Kind of funny how that works, isn't it? Having an awareness of the fact that Christ could come at any moment should change the way you live in that it'll motivate you to live pure. Think about it for a second. I had a guy come to me years ago. Seemed to work for him. And he said, "I have such a problem viewing pornography. I just hate it. I do it around the same time and it's a real terrible addiction."

I said do me a favor. The next time you're at home and you decide you want to do the very thing that you say you have struggle doing, think a few things. Just think a few facts. Remind yourself of the fact that Israel's a nation. Remind yourself of the fact that the Middle East is becoming the place that no one would have ever believed it could come, but the Bible correctly predicted it.

Think about this last fact. There is nothing biblically that has to happen in order to keep Christ from coming for His church. Everything that needs to happen biblically has happened. With the exception of the sound of the trumpet, but by the time you hear the sound of the trumpet, it's a wrap. Everything has happened. So when you decide you want to pick up your magazine or you want to engage in that type of activity, put this thought in your mind.

You could be in the middle of engaging in that content only to look up because the light is shining as the trumpet is sounding. Is that what you want God finding you doing when the trumpet sounds? I don't think so. That scared him, by the way. It kept him from never wanting to do it again. I think he's actually been pretty victorious since. But the picture is this: what do you want to get caught doing? How about we take it a step further. God sees the way you live every day, doesn't He?

He watches you every moment of the day. How much more should we be motivated to live for Him? How much more should we be excited about putting our hands to the plow and doing the difficult work because we serve the Creator of the universe who, by the way, is going to come back for us one day? Think about that for a second. That's not a lie. It's not a myth. It's not like some weird thing we tell people to falsely motivate them into action. It's true. It's going to happen.

If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't be here right now. I wouldn't be wasting my time. Why waste my time? You only live life once, right? YOLO. Might as well get out there and just do whatever you want. That's the truth. The reality of it is we know better. We know what the real truth is. We know about the Creator of the universe. Look at what he goes on to say. This is really heavy. He says be patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draws nigh. Verse nine: "Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest you be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door."

In other words, don't stand in bitterness. Don't be bitter. Why? That door that's closed in front of you, you know who's on the other side? The judge. The Creator of the universe. You stand in bitterness, you're going to face the judge. Bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting the poison to kill the person you hate. Doesn't work, does it? Don't drink that poison.

I have to tell you, my wife and I have two completely opposite personalities from one another on so many different levels. We are so unbelievably different it's not even funny. You see, I'm not the type of person that gets hurt by somebody and then as a result wants to fatally give up. That's not me. I'm the type of person that gets hurt by somebody and then I want to kill you. That's just my personality. Don't get scared anybody that's done me wrong.

But you get the idea. I tend to be very hostile in a way. I'm going to speak up and I'm going to be aggressive and I'm going to be loud. And what goes with that is I oftentimes have to guard my heart because what comes with that personality is a tendency to want to be bitter. That's the way I am. I kind of react that way. I tend to be that way, which is why I'm very guarded against it.

My wife, on the other hand, I can guarantee you, I can promise you, I'm going to make you this promise and I haven't even asked my wife this, but I know it to be true. I can guarantee you that there are people over the years at this church that have done things to my wife that have not been so nice. Hard to imagine that because she's such an incredible lady. And my wife, for the sake of those who have mistreated her, probably wouldn't tell me about it.

I'd be willing to bet you anything that there probably isn't a single thing you could throw at her that she wouldn't end up forgiving you for eventually and treating you like gold. And if I could be open and honest about some of the evidence that makes me say that statement with great confidence, you would be blown away. You would not even believe some of the things that she has faced and has come out swinging like an absolute monster, a straight spiritual giant.

Why? Because she knows the judge is at the door. She's not going to be bitter. Why be bitter? She's the mother of three precious children. She's the wife of a husband that needs her to keep her eyes on the Lord. She has a job to do. So she's going to deny the emotion of anger and bitterness. I don't know about you, but that's indicative of a person that knows Christ is coming, right? The energy that we waste on anger towards people, spend that energy in other places.

Why? Because the judge stands at the door. By the way, everybody thinks of the picture of the judge standing at the door actually means that the judge is standing at the door to beat you down if you actually walk in bitterness. But the bigger picture that you can draw from this is don't be bitter.